The Sea is Full of Stars

The Grabant System

There had been no dreams. that was the strangest part; there was a sensation of time passing, of an experience ongoing, yet if anything was going on in her mind during that period or if she was in any way aware, it was gone now.

After all the dancing around and threatening talk, the exchange had gone quite normally. The boat from the warship had come alongside, a temporary dock established, then the hatches were opened and the Rithians and the Kharkovs went over to the other boat. There was little noise, since the locks were automatically sealed except when accessed in an emergency, and it took about fifteen minutes to affect the transfer. Finally, the Kharkovs had returned, bearing a very large case of dark polished wood. An ornate seal was carved on it, in what was almost certainly pure gold, and it was studded with precious gems. The case—about ninety by 106 centimeters, and a good thirty centimeters thick—was a beautiful work of art, but what was inside was far more precious, and Jules Wallinchky could hardly contain himself as it was carefully, almost reverentially, handed to him by Ivan Kharkov. The jeweler was wearing surgical gloves, and Wallinchky put on his own pair before going further. Then he sat back, the case on his lap, and looked back up at the master jeweler.

“You’re certain?”

“There is no doubt,” Ivan Kharkov assured him. “I never believed that I or anyone would ever see them, not in this lifetime, and I never dreamed that I would have this opportunity. If those are not the Pleiades, then no creature living or dead would feel any differently toward these than toward the real ones.”

Wallinchky slipped the small manual locks that seemed something out of ancient history and then actually crossed himself and took a deep breath before opening the case. Then the crime king gasped, seeing what Ivan Kharkov had meant. Angel was numb and passing in and out of consciousness, but still managed a glimpse of the case as he stared into it.

The seven jewels varied in size from enormous to impossible; seven colors, but with one cut and finish, set into a metal that seemed almost liquid and which burned, throbbed like something alive, making the gems themselves seem to beat like seven alien hearts.

“Pass them the codes as soon as we are positioned opposite the tow,” Wallinchky said at last, his voice low, almost reverential, as if he were in a grand cathedral and in the presence of God Himself.

Angel was unclear about what happened next. It seemed there was a lower deck composed entirely of coffinlike transparent cages stacked one atop the other, and that she was carried down there by one of the Mallegestors. He untied her—there was hardly much risk, as she couldn’t feel her extremities anyway—and ripped off all her clothing, even her religious medals, which she found particularly offensive. She was then shoved into one of the transparent coffins, hooked up to probes attached within, and then the enclosure was shut with a hissing sound. After that, all she could remember was that it grew incredibly cold, and it became harder to think, harder even to breathe. The last thought she could remember having was: This must be what death feels like when it comes slow and steady upon you.

Then there was darkness, a darkness without sound, without sight, without thought, but a darkness that somehow existed in time. It went on and on and on, but she didn’t care, didn’t think of it, nor anything, but just lay there in the nothing.

And then there was pain. Horrible, racking pain like she’d never experienced before, had never believed possible to experience. It seemed as if every cell, every point of skin, every organ, was in full rebellion, and even her blood consisted of searing white-hot fire.

It did not go on for long; nobody could have stood it for any length of time without passing out. Still, it was longer than she ever wanted to feel that kind of pain again.

There was a horrid ringing in her ears that seemed to mask more ordinary noises, and it took a while to subside, although it never completely went away. Her eyes were open, she had control of them, but everything remained a featureless gray. She attempted to move her arms and legs, to clench her hands and bend her toes, but could feel nothing beyond the elbow or knee. There was a smell of disinfectant and other related substances, and a few lingering odors she wondered if she wanted to find out about.

Angel coughed, at first a little, then violently, uncontrollably. There were the sounds of people running to her; someone grabbed her shoulders, someone else gave her a shot, and then one of them or perhaps a third person gave her a strong, foul-tasting drink that nonetheless relieved her dryness and actually eased a lot of her immediate discomfort. The coughing stopped completely after she drank some of it, and after she downed it all, the cough didn’t come back.

They seemed satisfied, whoever they were, and then she heard them walking away, talking softly, although she couldn’t understand a word. She tried to call them back, so they could tell her where she was and what was going on, but only meaningless gurgling sounds emerged, which hurt her throat.

After a while the pain subsided further, becoming a dull burning. Angel then became aware of the tubes attached to her, which she guessed was some kind of intravenous feed, and concluded it was why she felt neither hungry nor dehydrated. She worked her head around in increasing circles, flexing her neck. It was painful at first but soon felt very good. She could control her head, and to some extent her shoulders, and began to concentrate as her teachers had instructed and to try and feel all her body.

Her skin seemed to have been mildly burned, apparently from the cryo units in the lifeboat. Well, that might be expected; those units were intended for emergency only, and not for use in deep space. It was likely that only the Mallegestors and maybe Tann Nakitt hadn’t been burned, the former because nothing could penetrate that hide, the latter because of his fat and fur layering. If that was all that this was, she knew it would pass.

The same severe conditions might also have caused her blindness, she reflected, if she’d been in shock from her tightly tied arms and legs and her suspension, and then gone under with her eyes not completely shut. Could be; they’d never gotten their emergency lecture! If that were the case, though, would she remain blind unless given new eyes or lenses or whatever, or would vision slowly return? It frightened her, but she fell back on her faith and her prayers and calmed down.

She was definitely sitting up, not lying down, but she had no idea what the support might be. She was on something, some kind of device or prosthetic, since she could feel a rubbery form and seal that covered her crotch area and went back to near the top of her buttocks. It wasn’t the only support because it wasn’t wide enough, but it certainly had a utilitarian purpose. It caught, washed off, and flushed waste.

Angel began to chant softly, attempting to hum, and after some false tries she managed it. She was so pleased to get a steady tone, she tried shaping some words while still keeping the monotone hum, in effect singing or chanting them. “Hmmmm… Is anybody else here?” she managed, her voice sounding unnaturally low but giving a fair Gregorian chant sound.

Someone else was there! She was right! The other tried to respond, but had the same kind of gargling noise she’d tried. Slowly, Angel attempted to teach the other to hum from the diaphragm, then up and out, form the words, keep singing. She had no idea why this worked, but felt her voice growing stronger and her command of it returning the more she did it.

The other used a different sort of tonal scale but managed eventually to raise a steady tone, then a series of tones. The other’s voice, too, sounded unnaturally low, but was definitely another woman.

“Just answer me simply,” Angel chanted. “I am Angel. Who are you?”

“Ming,” the other managed to sing back, keeping the tone going, except for breathing in to help retrain the larynx.

Ming! “Can you see at all?” Angel sang to her.

“Light and dark. No shapes,” Ming came back, increasingly getting the hang of it.

“Better than I am,” Angel told her. “All is gray to me. Can you move at all?”

“No, I cannot,” the other sang back. “I cannot feel my arms and legs.”

There was the sound of a door opening at the other end of the room and of footsteps approaching. The person walked very close to them, then stopped.

“Well, I see you are both awake.” It was Ari’s voice. He sounded pleasant, even friendly, his old self. Ming hated him most for that, and Angel tried hard not to. To her, God had for some reason delivered her to the devil and was testing her. She did not know why, but it was still God’s will.

“I heard what sounded like singing. That’s actually a fair method of getting vocal chords working again after cryo paralysis, which is itself very common. The Kharkovs also had problems with it. Feel free to keep doing it as long as it is comfortable. I don’t mind. It’s actually kind of pleasant.”

“I cannot sing the words I have for you,” Ming responded, doing just enough of a chant as she could.

“Umph. I know how you must feel. I didn’t want this, Ming. You weren’t supposed to be here. You were supposed to be on the first lifeboat.”

“I did not know your depths,” Ming managed.

“Hey, I didn’t know you were a cop, either! All this time, and we find out we have our nasty secrets. You were more undercover than I was. All my standard work was for companies owned or controlled by Wallinchky, most of them legit. There is just this occasional job that requires me to get on the unpleasant side of his works. It’s not like I have much of a choice. I’m the third generation to work for him, and he’s been my patron, sponsor, and employer for all my life.”

“Where are we and what has happened to us?” Angel asked him, attempting a sentence without singing it and pleased to get it basically out.

He turned. “Well, hello! Bad luck for you, too, but you were born and raised to do what you do, too, right? By the way—the one or sometimes two octave drop in voices generally goes away over time.”

“Can you answer her question?” Ming managed.

“Okay. You’re in the Grabant System, on the fourth planet from the sun, a chilly ball of rock with an atmosphere so thin you’d asphyxiate before you’d freeze if you ran outside, but outside’s a real interesting place. It’s one of those ancient worlds with those weird remains of the Ancient Ones all over. You’re in the infirmary in Wallinchky’s getaway and museum here, which doesn’t impact the ruins. The infirmary is entirely computer run, including surgery, but it’s first rate. Right now you’ve both been—well, operated on and placed in recuperative mounts, but once things heal 1 think you’ll find that the intent is to regenerate.”

“Regenerate! Then—” Ming gasped.

“That’s right. Don’t panic, though. There’s nothing here that can’t be restored. Still, at the moment, you both are basically just heads and torsos. Really great-looking torsos, I might add, but that’s about it. Wallinchky will be in to see you sometime today or tomorrow. When he does, he’ll— well, outline the options. Believe me, though—I’ve seen worse than you in here, and they looked fine when all was said and done.”

“You mean like Wallinchky’s two lethal airheads?” Ming asked.

“No, only some here-and-there stuff had to be done to them. Hell, I’ve had an arm replaced here, and another time a toe.”

There was a buzzing sound from Ari’s direction. Then they heard a clicking, and a moment later he said, “Yes, sir?”

The muffled rush of conversation was too scrambled to be overheard, obviously through a communicator, and Ari responded, “Yes, sir. Right away. Yes, they’re both awake. Yes, I’ll be right there.”

A moment later he was speaking to them again: “I’ll have the medlab give you whatever functions you may feel better having, but I have to go.”

“Yes, don’t forget to wag your tail when you lick your master’s ass,” Ming responded acidly. “As to what we want, how about a nice, big bomb?”

Ari sighed, and they could hear him walking out.

Almost immediately robotics within the infirmary started to click and whir into action. Angel felt something come over her head, a helmet, it seemed, with clicking and whirring sounds inside. A membrane that came across her face briefly, let up before it caused any real discomfort, then rose back up again, freeing her.

“What was that?” Ming wanted to know, but in a short while the same thing happened to her. After it was over, they could only compare notes and some feelings about Citizen Martinez. Ming was far less charitable; she’d never been all that religious.

It didn’t take long to discover what was happening. The machinery snapped back into action again, and Angel felt something being placed over her eyes and held by a band on her head. They were more like goggles than glasses, and extended out a bit, but after a bit of disorientation they snapped on, and for the first time since coming to she could more or less see. Her vision was limited to straight ahead, and it had little color, but the detail was quite sharp. She was able to look over and see Ming for the first time, and watch a similar but not identical procedure, employing artificial hands and thin prehensile tendrils from above. Ming’s eyewear resembled a rectangular dark piece of plastic or glass in a welder’s frame, with an elastic strap to hold it to her head.

Ming was set in a metallic box about a meter square, and appeared to emerge from it about at the navel. Her naked form was apparent the rest of the way, but her arms had been cleanly amputated just below the shoulders and even tapered in. Her face was fine, but as hairless as Angel’s, and she didn’t seem to have eyebrows.

Angel realized that she must look essentially the same, and in the same kind of outfit. She had a long enough neck to be able to get at least some sense of herself.

“So, we’re talking heads,” Angel said.

Ming gave a dry chuckle. “Well, at least we can feel assured that nobody is going to rape us, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Mister Big didn’t try and ensure that we felt entirely helpless and victimized. He gets off on that.” She sighed. “I’m sorry you got sucked into this. I’m sorry I didn’t get on that boat myself. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do, but I just never expected Ari to blow me away like that. I’ve known him since university, for Heaven’s sake! Of all the people I might have thought would be my enemy, he would be just a bit higher than my own family.”

“I know how it must hurt,” Angel told her. “Still, I sense the conflict in him. Who knows how he might be if he were ever outside of that evil man’s influence?”

“Fat lot of good that’s going to do us,” Ming noted. “He didn’t need to do this to us. We weren’t going anywhere. He did it deliberately, not only to leave us helpless, but also because he knows how people like me are trained, and he saw the video of you outmaneuvering Tann Nakitt—who, I must tell you, is in trouble himself here someplace because he decided to cast his lot with you, although I think he might have in any event. I wonder what happened to him?”

“Probably being defanged and declawed,” Angel guessed.

“Do not underestimate him. Still, what can any of us do here? Where would we go?”

Angel thought about that. “What do you think they will do with us?”

“Play with us. Terrorize and victimize us if we give them any satisfaction. And then they’ll try and break you. Me, I think, they’ll just go directly for a mindscrub.”

“You mean like the Rehabilitation Centers?” Angel was aghast.

“Yes, the ones for the worst offenders and those who cannot be let back into civilized company. They wire up your brain, send in their signals and probes, download what they find in your thinking parts, and then they erase. Then you get reprogrammed by uploading a very simple routine, after which you’ll be happy and smiling and totally obedient and do and think and believe everything your trainer tells you. You’ll have no memory of who or what you were, and no curiosity about it, either. If you have anything valuable and unique, or might be useful as your old self, they might take the download and create a virtual mind in the computer, then catalog, categorize, rearrange, pick and choose. It is tricky to do, but it’s done all the time. It’s known as a ‘turnaround’ in the psychiatric trade. I doubt if they’ll try it with me, though. We’re regularly tested each time the passwords and authorities are changed, which is often, and it has never been undetectable.”

“It sounds like killing the soul but leaving the body intact. It is the most immoral thing I have ever heard,” Angel told her. “How can we stop this?”

“Honey,” Ming said sadly, “look at the two of us, look around, and remember what that son of a dung dealer Ari said about where we are. There is no way to avoid what will happen. None. The only hope I have is that, somehow, I can either kill myself or at least take some of them with me before I disappear.”

It was impossible to tell the passage of time in the infirmary, with just the two of them there. They spoke almost nonstop, until it seemed to Angel that she’d told Ming everything about herself, and that Ming had told her much the same. The closeness they felt at the end of it belied their radically different backgrounds, traditions, and experiences; they felt a bond closer than sisters.

The medical cubes, or whatever they were, provided all they required; neither felt hungry, nor, after being awake for a while, was there any sense of thirst, let alone dehydration.

There were long gaps, though. When the medical computer wanted them to sleep, it simply injected something and they went to sleep, often in mid-sentence. Awakening later, there was clear evidence that work was being done on both of them, although it was difficult to tell what, save in the eyes. Ming’s vision was clearing, so that enhancement was no longer needed, but she found it impossible to focus. In fact, her vision was excellent, but she seemed locked in to a fixed focal length of infinity. Things far away to about two meters were fairly clear; closer was a blur.

Angel had a different treatment. Although damaged eyes could be replaced or regenerated easily, one of the things they took for granted, hers were replaced with artificial eyes that appeared normal, but retained the fish-eye vision and poor peripheral vision. She could focus, but it was like focusing a telephoto lens by willing it, rather than the natural sort of focus she’d had.

“They probably are cameras,” Ming guessed. “Transmitting type as well. Somebody will be able to see anything you do. They’re common in dangerous undercover work, but I don’t think that’s the purpose here. It shows he has different plans for you than for me, that’s for sure.”

Ari showed up now and again, but didn’t speak to them much and got out as quickly as possible. Ming’s bile was far too nasty to be taken for long, but Angel could see that his reaction did prove he was something of a wimp, as Ming had said. A Jules Wallinchky would have slapped the hell out of her for what she was saying, as she was held there helplessly.

Finally, the big man himself appeared. He’d trimmed his hair and beard and looked distinguished, even dapper, although, like most little men who’d risen higher than they dreamed, he was overfestooned with expensive rings and jewelry. He wore pure satin lounging pajamas, not the synthetic kind.

“So, my living statues, I am so pleased we’ve been able to get you back up to strength so quickly,” he greeted them, sounding like a genuine humanitarian.

“Yeah, we’re so pretty you should plate us and put us in your study,” Ming responded acidly.

He smiled. “You know, I know people who did things like that. Among the drug lords there’s almost a mania for it. They trim down and freeze up their enemies, captives they’ve gotten the best of, and sometimes people they hold for blackmail purposes, and they actually make living statuary out of them. The idea is mostly a reminder to would-be competitors and their own ambitious underlings, of course. I consider the practice rather tacky and low-class myself. If you need a lamp, buy a good one, I say.” He sighed. “Well, I heard you’re both well enough for us to get you out of there, and that the unfortunate eye damage is repaired. Putting you in regeneration tanks for long periods, while eventually the goal, would keep you out of circulation too long, and I have other business elsewhere. So, first we’ll rig you as temporaries, and then perhaps we’ll be able to give you some semblance of humanity again. It won’t take much practice, they tell me. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

And then he left, leaving Ming amazed at how little he’d lorded it over them.

“He almost sounded human,” Angel commented.

“Don’t worry. He won’t disappoint us. I know him too well,” Ming promised her.

What the “temporaries” were was revealed the next day, when both of them awoke for the first time not inside cubes but on real hospital beds.

Angel was astonished to wake up in a reclining position, and it was a few seconds before she realized that she had stretched her arms. Arms!

Well, not quite.

The blend was seamless; there was nothing of the bloody stump, only a blur where her flesh met a tough rubbery skin that extended down to an elbow, out to a wrist, then to hands. They weren’t her hands, nor models of them—the fingers were much longer, for one thing—but they were very human hands.

Except that the whole thing was semitransparent, as if the arm and hand had been made in some kind of machine from a mold and then attached to her nerve endings and nervous system somehow. It was odd to almost see through your arm and hand. It also didn’t feel like real flesh. Oh, it bent and manipulated quite naturally, but aside from a real concentration of feeling in the fingertips, it felt kind of dead. She drew a transparent nail across her right arm and could follow its progress, but did not have the sensitivity she expected.

Pulling off the covers, she saw that her legs and feet were the same, extending down from an area that covered the lower part of her buttocks. There was a nearly full-length mirror on a bulkhead near the bed, and she slowly rose, gingerly put her feet to the floor, then got up and stood for the first time in a long time. It took a little practice; she was unsteady, and used a table to remain standing, but it wasn’t all that hard to do. Then, again slowly, taking tiny steps, she managed to cross the two meters or so to the mirror.

Her eyes looked odd, as if they had tiny reddish-brown lights centered in them. Her face, and body, were entirely hairless—no eyebrows, no pubic hair—but she did have unnatural-looking black lashes.

The overall effect was of a kind of android, a very human-looking robot, with clear, soft, plasticlike limbs and an eerie cast to the eyes. It wasn’t her, but a kind of artistic approximation.

She looked around, found some kind of pastries on a large dish and a glass of what appeared to be grape juice. She saw no reason not to eat it, and felt an urge to do so anyway, and it tasted very, very good. She could feel every bite, every gulp of liquid go down, at least until it hit her stomach. If I had this stuff for my chest as well, I’d be a living anatomy exhibit, she thought with a trace of silliness. The more she stood, the more she used her arms and legs, the more comfortable they were. It wasn’t that they became normal; she always knew that these were artificial. It was becoming easy, though, to tune out that feeling and simply use the limbs in a natural fashion. The arms, lacking true muscles, also had little lifting ability; there was enough strength to do anything basic, but hardly enough force to really smash a cream puff. The legs were more reinforced; she could feel a kind of stiff bonelike presence there even though it wasn’t visible. Still, she suspected that while she could walk all over and stand almost indefinitely, she couldn’t run or kick much, if at all.

She wondered where Ming was. She looked around for some kind of robe or cloak, but found none. She tried the door, which to her surprise slid back to reveal the main infirmary, and went to the next door and opened it.

It was clear from the look of it that Ming had been there, and that Ming had already undergone what she just had, but she wasn’t there now. It seemed ridiculous to wait, and she was concerned about whether they were already erasing her friend.

She turned and walked toward the infirmary exit doors, trying to pick up her pace. She discovered then that she could walk so fast and no faster; the legs simply wouldn’t respond beyond a normal gait.

Still, when she reached the doors, they opened for her, and she found herself in a darkened hall going in both directions with no clue as to where.

Turn left, walk to the end, turn right, and go into the third room on the right. This was a whisper of sorts, not actually spoken aloud, but rather, heard inside her head.

And she found herself walking as directed even as she continued to ponder the directive’s origin. It wasn’t that she’d decided to do it; her body was obeying without her having to consider it.

The room she entered was vast, and on a scale of opulence she’d never imagined. She almost sank into the lush carpet with its intricate designs, and all about there were what appeared to be exhibits, more than simple art objects.

Part museum, part great room, it was designed to awe, and it did.

Along the walls were paintings, apparently great works by great masters, all in gorgeous frames and with their own special lighting. She knew nothing of art, nor could she understand why so many of those were probably coveted, but there was some religious art that was clearly ancient and stunning.

There was a kind of artificial hallway created by the carpeting and the cases, which were lined up in a row about four meters from the walls but facing the “corridor.” They went around the room, forming a square, with breaks so that someone could enter beyond them and into the center of the room. The cases contained jewelry. Monstrous jewels, encrusted settings, fabulous arrangements. Some of it had religious settings and was clearly originally intended for some church or faith, but only maybe half of it was Terran in origin, and the kinds of minds, and eyes, that saw some of those settings before making them were never inside a human.

She was fascinated in spite of herself, although there was no way to know what they were. You were supposed to already know that, she supposed, or perhaps the only one who needed to know didn’t need little notes and plaques.

There were ancient books as well. She’d seen a few like them in retreats and seminaries, but they were old and prized, or ceremonial, and never opened save by the Minister of the Service. She couldn’t read them, of course; reading had been a lost art since people could hook into a computer for anything they wanted or needed. Still, she knew that some of them were ancient religious texts by their decoration, possibly Bibles.

How odd that a man such as this would have such a love of religious art, religious settings for the gems, and religious books.

She was still uncomfortable, though. She knew she wasn’t here to see this collection, and as much as she was pleased to once again be able to walk around and feel almost human again, it wasn’t the time or place for admiration.

Angel walked around a case and into the center area, which proved to be a statuary garden. She felt uneasy at discovering this, remembering Wallinchky’s comments about “living statues,” but these did seem to be pretty much what they seemed. Again, the accent was on ancient, but many of these sculptures, the Terran ones anyway, had erotic poses or themes. It was hard to tell with the non-Terran ones, but there was a definite theme. Men in erotic poses with women, in erotic poses with other men, women in erotic poses with other women, and with unfamiliar but clearly animal creatures.

She knew she should look away and pray, but she couldn’t stop looking at the sculptures, nor could she explain the odd gut-level reaction she had to them.

In the middle was a round area of especially deep, thick, furlike carpet with erotic designs visible in the middle. Ming was lying there, in a pose not unlike some of the statuary.

As expected, Ming looked very much like she did—the artificial arms and legs. The artificial look and fluidity of movement of a person also had the same fluidity as her own movements.

“Ming? Are you all right?” she asked.

“Just put your mind in some other place and don’t think,” Ming replied, her voice not sounding right. It sounded… well, sultry, even deeper than it had been. She was moaning and breathing funny, and yet she managed, “They got us all wired up. You can’t fight it. Just try to think of other things.”

But Angel couldn’t think of other things, and as she knelt down to see to her friend, she felt—strange. Not unpleasant, not like the artificial limbs, but like she’d never felt before, except perhaps once, in a fit of religious ecstasy at her ordination. But this was much more physically intense, though mentally confusing, since she could keep a little of herself apart and could not understand it.

And after a while Jules Wallinchky got into it with them; she remembered that much, and she tried with what little corner of her was left to push him away, to get him out of there, but her body kept doing what he wanted no matter what she tried. Ming had been wrong. Wallinchky had the ultimate power trip in mind, and he went at it with gusto.

“Angel, you have to talk.”

“Go away! I just want to die, but they will not even let me do that!”

Ming shook her head. “Poor kid,” she breathed, then realized that in fact Angel was just a kid. Not only a young woman barely past whatever girlhood that order allowed, but with lifelong religious indoctrination and sequestering from most men in the retreats and religious schools, and even from the mission, where Angel had said there were only two Terran males on the whole planet, which was otherwise inhabited by an agrarian race of some kind of small lizard folk.

Evil was something you saw in videos and interlinks, or heard about second- or thirdhand or from religious instructors. When evil did appear, it was the unforeseen injury or death, the horrible storm that wipes out the crops, that kind of thing. And when you were out in company pretending to be just another citizen, the martial arts and mind control tricks were generally enough to save you. Otherwise, somebody shot you and you went to Heaven or whatever. Many trillions knew evil firsthand, of course, although a large percentage didn’t recognize it as quite that, but Ming knew it took a cop like her to know the names and addresses of the chief perpetrators.

Angel had come face-to-face with more of the real stuff in the past two waking weeks of her life than she’d ever imagined confronting before, and it wasn’t like the easy answers of her ivory tower theology teachers or show business hysterics. Few people, even clerical types, really believed in evil anymore, which was one reason evil kept winning.

For Angel, it was a matter of simply not understanding how God could allow her to sink to this. What had she done to deserve such a fate, or was she a new Job, punished simply to show piety to the devil? If that was the case, it wasn’t a good bet. She felt—dirty, abused, and for the first time she knew the glimmerings of real hatred. With that came some wisdom, at least; now, at last, she could taste what Jeremiah Wong Kincaid must feel. But Wallinchky was as evil as she could imagine, and he had been in Kincaid’s power, as it were, and was instead used merely as a tool. If Wallinchky wasn’t evil enough to be an end object in himself, then what must that Hadun creature be like?

She didn’t get over it, but began to learn to cope with it, much to Ming’s relief.

Finally, Angel had to ask, “How did he do what he did? How can it be possible to do that to someone?”

“He’s got us hooked into the neural net running this entire complex,” Ming guessed. “We’re like any of the automated stuff here, from the cleaning machines to the medlab stuff to the rest of the automated place. I have tried to walk down certain hallways here, or enter certain rooms, and I simply cannot. It’s not willpower—my legs just will not do it. Just after that time you tried harming yourself. You couldn’t. We’re a part of this place now, just like the furniture. There was a lot done to us internally, as well as giving us these limbs and eyes.”

“But—I can understand how it stops us, but how did it get me to do—that? I mean, I had never even done it before.”

“Programming. We were ordered to go in there, ordered on the bed, and then a routine was run that not only gave us exactly what we were to do, but provided the proper hormones and other brain chemicals to trigger it all.”

“Is this what he does to the others who work for him?”

Ming shrugged. “Probably he has ones like us in all his dwellings, but we’re not real portable this way. We’re not just prisoners in this place, we’ve literally become a part of it. It is, I suspect, what he does to people he wants to keep around but who are too ‘hot’ to travel. My people will be looking for me, yours for you. Our genetic codes are on file. So, as he said, we’ve become part of his collection.”

It was not the most pleasant of thoughts.

It also became clear that whatever the medical program was doing, there was no sign of regeneration procedures— requiring either sequestering in a tank or removal of each artificial limb one at a time and giving it intensive treatment—and transplanting specially grown limbs from living tissue also didn’t seem to be in the cards. Instead, the artificial limbs appeared to be integrating into their nervous systems, so that they now felt almost normal, even if they still looked very strange. They exercised in an elaborate exercise room at least a couple of hours a day; this was not a choice. It obviously wasn’t to build up leg and arm muscles, but it got the heart pumping and made them tight in the stomach and very firm in the breasts. They were also growing hair; for Angel, it was a strange sensation, since apparently there was a genetic trait against it in her sect. It itched at first, but then began to come in at a rate much faster than normal growth. It was straight, thick, wiry, and jet-black.

What was most odd, although to them a relief, was that they rarely saw anyone else. There was little sign that Wallinchky, or Ari, or the others, were anywhere nearby. It was like being trapped in a public building. Of course, they couldn’t go into many areas, so it was unclear if they were alone or not. Certainly the central computer was running things.

They did go wherever they could, studying and almost memorizing much of the great art and sculpture the place contained. It was some time before Angel could bring herself to go into the sculpture garden again, but after a while they went farther, to an unnoticed anteroom of the great hall that looked out upon the vast dead world beyond.

It was a beautiful if daunting landscape, all oranges and purples and filled with twisted rocks. The sky was never normal looking, but always dark, a very pale blue through which nearby stars could be seen in the daytime and was jet-black at night.

They sat there and looked out and tried to imagine they were beyond this prison, and you could almost completely clear your mind and believe it now and again. Of particular dreamy speculation was a formation well off toward the horizon that seemed to be almost by itself, but framed by twisted mountains and untouched by craters big and small, or at least apparently so from this distance.

It looked like some dark, mysterious alien city, abandoned in the eons but clinging on, refusing to crumble to dust.

Was this a place where angels and powers greater and lesser once convened before the creation of Adam? Was this once a garden as Earth had been in those most ancient of days? And was the serpent now returned to look upon the desolation it had created?

“That’s quite poetic,” Ming commented dreamily. The worst part of this wasn’t the anticipation of more horrors, it was the sheer boredom.

“Huh? What’s poetic?”

“About the places where angels met before the Creation, and how this was all that was left of the devil’s lair.”

Angel shook her head slowly in wonder. “I didn’t think I spoke aloud.”

Ming was startled. Am I going nuts or what? I’m not sure she said it aloud, either.

I didn’t. What s happening here?

“I think,” Ming answered thoughtfully, “we’re reading each other’s thoughts. Telepathy. Never had it in my family. You?”

“I—We can sometimes tell what someone is going to do a split second before they do it. It was thought that it might be a kind of very limited telepathy. It saved me from Tann Nakitt’s fangs. But not—this.”

It’s the neural net connection, I think, Ming guessed. We’re both using identical transmitters and receivers implanted in us. Just as it can send and receive, so can we between ourselves. I doubt if it works with anyone but us. Keep your thoughts open. Do not speak of this again aloud. It is possible that our master never suspected this, and if we can keep it from him, it might work to our advantage.

Once this new channel of communication was open, it remained open no matter what, and seemed to extend itself. All thoughts, knowledge, feelings, and fantasies of the one were open to the other. It was quite strange, but stranger still because there still was no true meeting of minds. The two had backgrounds too different, and knowledge, experience, and beliefs so different that there was a point beyond which each could not go without losing perspective entirely.

But there was an underlying suspicion that somehow this was another computer subroutine; that in some way the computer itself was causing this, and it was a new stage in whatever their ultimate fate was to be. This suspicion was reinforced by the mandated routines they were forced to follow, but also by the times during each waking period when they would lose control of their emotions. It might be crying jags, or sexual arousals, love, hate, or fear; clearly, something was playing them like an instrument and recording the results. Thus, it seemed likely that this telepathy was merely a by-product, and that perhaps their memories, their personalities, were really in storage inside the larger computers, and that they were as much operating as inhabiting their bodies.

Ming was particularly concerned about this, since she knew a lot about the usual techniques of mind control. What worried her, and through her both of them, was whether they would know they were being remade according to someone else’s direction. There were periods, even now, some of apparent length, that were totally blacked out. There were other times when they were fully conscious, but essentially passengers in their own bodies, doing things and going places without any control on their part.

The only time that seemed genuinely theirs, with no manipulation, was the time they reserved when they were not being ordered to the infirmary or exercise hall, and just sat together, staring out at the ever-fascinating alien landscape with the unchanging stars all around.

And then there was the one time when they both were simply staring outward and it seemed suddenly as if something was alive out there. It wasn’t a shape, but more a sense of something else beyond the compound, beyond the dome and superinsulated windows, something centered in that strange citylike place way out there but wasn’t just there. Some kind of—energy. That was the only way to explain it. In many ways it seemed like they had a sudden awareness of a second, much larger and more powerful neural network. The compound had a centralized computer and a series of thousands of smaller units with more specialized interests, all tied together at the speed of thought, combining their power to make a unified whole that could in some ways think, make basic decisions, and run all that needed to be run; even them. They could feel their master, could sense the connections, but could not reach it as it could reach them.

That night, though, they sensed another, very different— entity—which nonetheless performed the same sort of functions. But the neural net that they were somewhat a part of was in many ways the entire compound, all that was within it, and all of the functions of maintenance and preservation as well. The whole place was alive, but the whole made logical sense and was for a specific purpose.

So what was this other far stronger but more alien net? What was it doing, and for whom? Did it run the city out there, ancient and dead as it was? What could be run there, for whom, and to what purpose?

There was no way to actually contact it, touch it, ask it. The speed, the internal language, the whole way of operation was beyond them or anything they were connected to. Nonetheless, it was there. It existed.

They could almost sense the compound’s computers musing on the same thing. This was old hat to the Many in One, and they had longed for contact since first sensing this power and obvious systematic intelligence, but had never had a way in.

I would like to go to that city, if that is what it is, they both thought. I would like to find out, at least, if it truly is a place where the Ancient Ones once dwelled, and if this power is their mark of Creation or, perhaps, still a place of their power awaiting their return as I await the return of the master of this place.

That was not far off. There was no announcement, no broadcast, but the next time they awoke from sleep they knew, courtesy of their own hookup, that company was coming.