The Sea is Full of Stars

Wallinchky Compound, Grabant 4

There wasn’t anything in the realm that couldn’t be done or controlled by computer, and for all but the lowest classes and the newest and poorest worlds, that was generally the case. Still, the use of living assistants as everything from secretaries to bodyguards, butlers, and maids was considered a status thing. Any common dolt could have power over a machine; only the elite had the same power over people.

The two captives in the satin prison only guessed that was why they were in a place where they had never been allowed before, and which turned out to be the master bedroom. It was sumptuous, with priceless ancient tapestries on the walls, a plush natural hair rug, and a huge revolving bed. Why was it that now they made it up expertly, and checked for dust and fingerprints, and polished, and then found and laid out a pair of satin lounging pajamas and soft slippers from the vast walk-in closet? It was a mystery, since nobody was yet there to see their handiwork. And then, with almost gut-level understanding, they figured it out.

The master computer was doing the job. They were simply the instruments, the same as the tentacles that could emerge from the ceilings and the various dedicated devices small and large that were used to maintain the whole place.

They also found themselves working in concert with the other machines, never once getting in the way of one another, or even concerned about the small vacuum unit doing a pattern on the rug, for instance, or the spidery things that emerged and checked everything from the humidor to the freshness of the toiletries. In fact, they were as much in contact with the small artificial creatures as they were with each other. It was impossible to describe, even to one another; it just was. They were Angel, to be sure, and Ming, but they were also all the other things in the house, and the other things in the house were to some extent them.

Still, while they were now just more cogs in the system, they both sensed that the computer at the core of the neural net was beginning to live beyond its usual experience through them. For the first time, it seemed, the master computer could feel emotions, feel things physically the way Terrans could. As they became more like the computer, the computer was becoming a little more like them. But if they eventually merged completely into the solitary net, would anything of them as distinct personalities remain?

For the first time, too, makeup was applied. It began with a cream on the face, neck, and shoulders, which looked clear but had the effect of turning the skin a bright white, almost like a paint gloss, although it had no particular consistency or feel and their skin afterward seemed normal. Then their eyes were shadowed in exaggerated patterns of black, the brows thinly perfected, the lips done a bright red. They were given bright red-and-white patterned skintight uniforms that fit their torsos and supported their breasts, the effect of which, combining the limbs with the painted areas, was to hide any obvious organic skin from view. It was the first clothing either had worn in a long time, and it felt uncomfortable and itched. Their transparent fingernails and toenails were even painted red, and earrings and other minor jewelry were added, all in a red-and-white motif.

It was not, however, the kind of makeup session they would have undergone in the old days, if they’d undergone it at all. Thin, wiry tendrils did the nails, other computer house extensions did other parts, and they mostly kept examining themselves in the mirrors to get the proper look and perspective.

With their still short but full hair sprayed with some shiny laquerlike substance and then styled in a swept-back look before it dried, it appeared plastic. The black bangs along their forehead were actually painted. They decided they looked like street performers or life-size dolls, android mannequins rather than real flesh and blood. No, not even androids.

Toys.

A corner of their minds noted the tracking of the incoming shuttle and the near imminent landing at the small but adequate private pad. The defense codes indicated it was “friendly.” It did not, however, contain the code indicating that Wallinchky was aboard.

Angel and Ming proceeded to the airlock entrance, another place they had never before been allowed close to, stood there and waited. The airlock hissed, the lens opened, then the inner door slid back.

Ari Martinez looked tanned and in top shape, but somewhat changed. He’d cut his hair in a short junior executive manner and had grown a pencil-thin black mustache. Before, he’d been a fairly good-looking man, but this new look did nothing to enhance his appearance.

One of Wallinchky’s beautiful bodyguard playthings was with Ari, the dark-skinned beauty they knew only as Veda. Also with him was Katarina Kharkov, looking as nervous as ever and somewhat motherly, considering she and her husband were party to dealings like the one that destroyed the City of Modar.

Ari saw the two made-up women waiting for him and froze for a moment in confusion. They both bowed low and held it, then said, in not only perfect unison, but virtually the same voice, “May we be of service, sir?”

Katarina Kharkov almost took a step back, and Veda just stood there gaping, as Ari frowned and approached them. “Who are you?”

“We are the housemaids, sir.”

“Stand up straight. Let me see the two of you clearly.”

They did as instructed, and he looked over each of them carefully. Finally he said, “My God! Is that you, Ming?”

“I will answer to Ming if you wish, sir, subject to the Master’s override.”

He stared at her, and then at the other, and shook his head. “Incredible. No fingerprints, no footprints, no retinal pattern matching. Probably just enough genetic patching so they wouldn’t register on anybody’s scans.” His expression and tone was a mixture of awe at the kind of mind and supporting technology that could do this, combined with revulsion aimed as much at himself as at them. He’d had a real part in doing this to an old friend, an old flame.

Although the computer link was doing all the interfacing, Ming was still present and watching even if she could not react. Seeing that twinge of guilt in Ari Martinez gave her the first feeling of satisfaction she’d had since he shot her. It wasn’t much, but at this stage even a crumb was welcomed.

“Are they—real?” Katarina Kharkov asked him tentatively.

He turned and nodded. “Yes, I think so. Come—let’s get you down to the lab area for the reunion. In fact—Veda, you can take Madam Kharkov down and see that she is settled, can’t you? I wish to take care of a few things here. You are at their disposal until Wallinchky arrives, at which time I want you back here.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered, in one of those sex kitteny voices that clearly irritated Madam Kharkov but didn’t bother Ari at all.

Veda wasn’t like these two, who were something new to him. Veda simply had been picked up from the streets of Nueva Madras, where she’d been selling her body or anything else for subsistence. They’d completely erased her mind and personality and created this one, which had now settled in quite well. All she knew or felt she needed to know was that she worshiped Jules like he was a god, lived for any attention he might give her, and believed everything he said and did whatever he commanded. Jules had a lot of these kind of love-slaves, both male and female, but he tended to favor women more with this sort of stuff and act out his more violent urges on the males.

When the two women were safely away, Ari turned back to Ming and Angel, who were still patiently standing there. “Have you been having sessions with anyone here?” he asked them. “I mean, who else is here that you have been seeing and working with?”

“Only the house, sir,” they both responded in unison, neither having been specifically addressed. “We have seen no one else since last we saw the Master.”

“Then you remember that. How much more do you remember? I’m talking to Ming now. Do you remember yourself before you came here?”

“Yes, sir,” Ming replied.

“Can you bring your old personality forward, be like the old Ming?”

“Sir, I am programmed not to do that.”

It was true; she couldn’t do it even if he ordered it, even though she was still there inside. Wallinchky wanted to make sure that nobody could trigger some deeply implanted suicide impulse, standard with people in her old profession. Only Wallinchky himself could do that.

“You’re not—who programs you?”

“I am self-programming, sir.” And that was true now on both levels.

He was amazed, and increasingly upset by the two. Both of the women had to wonder if Jules Wallinchky hadn’t somehow planned it that way. He worked by keeping even those on his staff and closest to him off balance.

For Ari Martinez, there wasn’t any way past that wall that he could see. Normally, even if somebody was under complete control or lying paralyzed on the ground, you could read something in the eyes, but both of these women had wholly or partially artificial eyes that showed nothing of what might lay behind them.

The perfect slave, he thought sourly. And totally secure. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to think that this is the future for a lot of those around dear old Jules. He began to think about his own neck.

That jarred him into more dutiful action. “Your master is due in sometime later on today, but I do not know the exact schedule. He’s shuttling off a larger vessel, and it’s difficult to say precisely when, but it will be today. In the meantime, I have to set up some things for a meeting. I’ll not require your services—not now, anyway.”

He walked away, perhaps a bit too quickly and nervously, and both the women felt the first amusement they’d had in a very long time.

He is guilt-stricken!

And frightened! He knows that what was done to us can be done to him or anyone else.

They had long since gotten over the novelty of mental dialogue without knowing which of them was speaking which lines.

What do you think he meant by Madam Kharkov having a reunion? And where is the lab? Do you think there might have been other natural beings here all the time?

With that, the information on the labs and the full layout of the house was suddenly provided to them in full in three dimensions, and for the first time they saw how vast this complex really was and how many floors it contained. Ivan Kharkov had been here all the time, it appeared, along with a ton of specialized equipment. Data they could now access showed that Madam Kharkov had been here as well, but had left to retrieve some needed materials. They were clearly doing extensive restoration work of some kind.

Why didn’t we know of them before? Angel wondered.

We didn’t need to, nor have access to this data. We were not ready yet. Remember, each time we gain more awareness of the net and databases, the more we lose of ourselves. Those differences that make us separate people, and beyond which we could not go, are slowly being cataloged and stored and deemed irrelevant. We now have near complete access because we can no longer act in any way except to serve our server and in turn our server’s master. We are in the last stages. Did you not feel the mild pleasure when addressed, when answering his questions?

Yes. This has been the case for some time when doing what the program states correctly. It was why they could be handed loaded pistols and would use them only as Jules Wallinchky directed.

This was the final stage, then. The core computer consciousness that controlled the net had never had this kind of outlet before. Now, when its living units served, they got a mild pleasure jolt. If they displeased, they would get a moment of unpleasantness that would be noticed, but not enough to cause any problems. It had not yet decided if the units were of any added value, and hedged its bets on that score. Storing their memories took a lot of space, but that was to be expected. Storing the personalities and ratios that created self-identity was more complex, but didn’t take up a lot of extra space. It did not, however, file it where it was obvious.

Ari Martinez was discovering some of how it had been done on his own, by searching the standard files on the procedure from the interface in the comfortable study. A self-programming total conditioning system. It was incredible, and scary. He didn’t think somebody as paranoid as Jules Wallinchky would trust any computer that could think with this kind of power. How did he sleep, knowing that the computer might well figure out that all living beings in the complex were just extensions?

You couldn’t even interrupt the signals, the data flow to and from the little self-repairing, self-maintaining nanoma-chines that acted as transmitter and receiver inside their brains and nervous systems. Computers put most of the data on the server and accessed that when they needed it. God didn’t need a computer everywhere to run the universe; He just needed a good network with sufficient bandwidth and a server with the capacity to hold all that detail. Still—and this was even scarier—it was possible to download a lot of information into a human brain and then switch off frequencies and bandwidth so that you could switch these robotic humans the same way you could swap a robot carpet sweeper.

This was scaring Ari to death. Where in hell had somebody like Jules Wallinchky come up with an idea like this, even to order it? Of course, he probably stole it, or swapped for it, but still…

“Have Ming report to me immediately,” he said into the desk communicator.

Ming appeared in less than a minute, indicating that she hadn’t been doing anything but waiting. She entered and bowed. “At your command, sir.”

“Ming, you said that all your memories were still present in the system.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know what the master traded to Josich Hadun for the Jewels of the Pleiades?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would it cause you to harm yourself or anyone else by telling me?”

“No, sir. It would be a matter of telling the seller what he sold.”

Ari Martinez took a deep breath. “Ming, tell me exactly what was traded.”

“Sir, it was an alleged prototypical interface with the potential to establish a comm link with an Ancient Ones remote computer system.”

He was absolutely stunned by that. Even more, he now knew just where Jules, or somebody working for him, got the idea for the self-programming slave. He had been out to that ancient city on the horizon that the two women had wondered about; he’d been to many such places now and again. Beautiful, strange, bizarre cities, works of art from minds far too alien to comprehend. The only things really known about them were that they left cities that had absolutely no artifacts in them beyond their own structures, not so much as a potsherd, a tiny coin, or a single bit of mosaic, and that they seemed batty for the number 6. That was why a lot of religious groups had always considered them demonic places; 666 was supposed to be the number of the Beast, or Devil.

Scientists, discovering that worlds like this one had hollowed-out cores filled with vast quasiorganic matter that seemed inert although not exactly dead, had a lot of theories. One of them was that the matter inside was a local computer that had provided everything the inhabitants required, as well as maintaining whatever conditions they needed for life, which was why they’d found no artifacts. And they also postulated that something happened to sever contact between this vast galactic civilization and the inevitable server that kept all the data, all the details, about two billion years before. So advanced, so spoiled, so much like gods, it must have been the one thing they simply couldn’t cope with.

“Ming, who created this thing we spoke of?”

“Sir, I do not know, but it was done under contract to the Military Department and the Department of Pure Research.”

He wasn’t about to ask how the hell the Rithians managed to get somebody to steal it, nor what it had cost, but little wonder that it was so much in demand.

“Were you aboard the City of Modar because your superiors knew it was on there?”

“No, sir. I was simply to observe all activities of suspect group.”

He had assumed that. If they’d have known it was aboard, they’d have had an army hidden there.

“Ming—does the thing work?”

“Sir, I have no idea.”

Well, that was honest enough. He doubted she could lie anymore, unless told by Jules to do so. He was willing to bet that Jules didn’t think it would work. If he did, he’d never have traded it, not even for the Pleiades. Hell, who cared about even the most fabulous of treasures when you could will them into existence? And he certainly would not have put it in the hands of somebody like Hadun.

Well, at least now he knew. “Ming, you know you were once a police detective. Do you still consider yourself one?”

“No, sir. That description is no longer valid.”

“What if you had the opportunity to leave here. To walk out and away? Would you do it?”

“No, sir.”

That surprised him. “Why not?”

“Sir, my sole function is to serve the Master. I exist for no other purpose.”

“Ming, do you consider your master a good man?”

“Sir, I cannot answer that question.”

“Cannot or will not?”

“Cannot. Good is to serve the Master. Not good is to not serve the Master. How can the Master not serve himself?”

He realized with a start that he was completing her programming by simply asking these questions. He could see the trembling, the slight pleasure at the edges of the painted lips, and knew what was going on.

Abruptly, she stiffened. “Sir, there is a second shuttle in orbit now in the process of being cleared. The Master is aboard. We must meet him.”

“Yes, by all means,” he sighed, getting up. She led the way back to the airlock.

She knew the shuttle was coming in and who was on it, he reflected. That meant she was totally plugged in here. Totally. She couldn’t say anything wrong to his questions— wrong from the computer’s standpoint, anyway. If she had, she’d almost certainly have gotten an unpleasant jolt. But saying the right thing, without hesitation, brought the pleasure jolt. Pretty soon neither one of the women would even think any way but that. Too risky.

For Ming’s part, and Angel’s, too, since she’d heard the whole thing as if she were there, and both had also followed his research on what essentially was one of their databases anyway, the same conclusion was arrived at. How long could they not begin to exist for that? How long could they resist it? Did they want to resist? There was no hope of release, after all, and no hope of acting wrongly. Why, then, not think the right way and at least prevent pain? It would probably be better for both of them.

The inner airlock door hissed just as they arrived, then it opened and Jules Wallinchky walked through, dressed in casual clothes and smoking a big, fat cigar. Behind him by not more than a step were Sonya, the other beautiful bodyguard from the City of Modar, and a man unfamiliar to them, big and square-jawed, the kind with muscles on his muscles and an air that said he spent a lot of time working out in front of a mirror and admiring the view.

Wallinchky took the cigar out of his mouth and said, “Hello, Ari. I hate like hell to be rousted out by this petty shit, but business is business. Who knew that little creep had this kind of influence?” He stopped, spotting the doll-like duo, who had fallen to their knees and were now prostrate on the floor.

“Well, hel-lo,” he commented, going over to them. “Get up, girls. Let me take a look at you!”

They both hopped obediently to their feet and stood, expectant.

“Ain’t that somethin’,” Wallinchky muttered, reverting to an earlier, less cultured but more natural style of speech. “Ari, ain’t that somethin’? Amazin’ what a good fuck and a few clear instructions to a computer can do.”

Martinez swallowed and, like a good survivor, held his tongue from the remarks he wanted to make. “Yes, sir. I think it’s truly amazing. I have never seen the like of it, particularly in this short a time.”

“Yeah, I figured they would be the best test of this. I mean, hell, an older experienced cop and somebody raised as a religious fanatic? If I could get them, it would work with anybody. Not much fun, though. Not like Sonya and Veda and Sulliman, here. I do my personal servants, mistresses, and bodyguards myself. This—it kinda takes the creativity out of it.” He gave a chuckle. “Damn machines are taking over everything, aren’t they?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Well, I saved a little of it for me, anyway. I can make ’em do anything I want by just sayin’ the word and snappin’ my fingers, but I don’t just want ’em to do it, I want ’em to want to do it. To live just to do it. For me. An ex-cop and an ex-nun who exist only for me. And they’re only the first, Ari. I got a bunch of folks I can see doin’ this way.”

“I hope I’m not one of them, sir!” Ari responded a bit nervously.

Jules Wallinchky roared with laughter and slapped his back. “Not yet, boy! Not yet! I need smart folks who can think for themselves too much! Just remember who you work for and we’ll always get along fine.”

“You’re my uncle. I don’t believe in going after family.”

That got another big laugh. “All right, nephew!” He turned to his two companions. “You two go off and relax now. I don’t need bodyguards in here, and I got a couple here that I really want to play with.” He turned back to Ming and Angel. “Okay, you two! Come along! I want you with me for a while.”

Angel was in particular distress because she couldn’t bring herself to give in quite that easily but felt helpless and particularly forlorn without Ming’s reinforcement. Everything seemed to be slipping, and so fast…

They went into the big man’s study once more, and if Wallinchky noted that it had recently been used, he didn’t betray the knowledge, or perhaps just didn’t care. “You know, I got to think of something to call these two,” he said casually. “Ming—well, sounds too damned much like one of my antique Chinese vases. We need one that’s less personal, more like what she is.”

“You’re making them sound like prototypes,” Ari responded uneasily.

“Well, maybe they are. Trouble is, women make better art subjects than classical artists as far as I’m concerned, and if I use Venus and Madonna, I’ve already exhausted the naming pool. May as well go with the practical, then.” He suddenly brightened. “Yeah. Prototypes. I like that. At least it’ll sound pretty classy.” He turned and looked straight into Angel’s eyes. “Memory command Rembrandt. From this moment on, you are Alpha,” he told her. “You have no other names. Search and replace any and all names for yourself with ‘Alpha.’ ”

Ari just sighed. So he was even taking their names away from them, and the sense of identity they brought. If there was anything of them left, it would be a devastating blow to whatever sense of self was left.

Wallinchky turned to Ming. “And you—well, you’re shorter and smaller, so you got to be Beta. Memory command Rembrandt. From now on you are Beta. Search and replace any and all names for self with ‘Beta.’ Search and replace all alternate names for Alpha, replace with ’Alpha.’ Search and replace all alternate names for Beta. Replace with ’Beta.’ Execute all commands.” He turned back to his nephew. “Alpha and Beta. I kinda like it. What do you think, Ari?”

Ari didn’t like it, but he could only shrug. “You’re the boss.”

“You better believe it.”

The moment he’d given his commands, Angel found herself thinking of herself as Alpha. But she wasn’t Alpha. Alpha was—all she came up with was her. She could still recall much of her past, but not any other name. Worse, just trying gave her a series of tiny little shocks. Every time she just thought of herself and “Alpha” appeared as her identity, there was a tiny pleasure jolt. And what was Beta’s old name? Did she have a different name? It was impossible to remember, and Beta was mirroring her thoughts in reverse.

“Beta,” Wallinchky said, settling down in his padded chair, “go fetch me a fresh cigar. Alpha, you light it for me when it comes.”

The actions were instantaneous. It felt good, right, to do this and see his own satisfaction.

“Amazing, ain’t it, Ari? Not long ago they were strong personalities. Now I’m the center of their universe and I still got all that they know. And later on today we’ll teach ’em how to anticipate my desires.” He paused, blowing a big cloud of smoke. “What’s the matter? You disapprove? You sure don’t mind those sex bombs who can’t remember breakfast.”

“I can’t say anything about it,” he managed diplomatically. “So why the clown getup?”

Wallinchky sighed. “Ari, Ari! Perhaps one day we will educate you. At least I will point you to the painting, which happens to be here. So, it is aesthetic, and it also identifies their form and function no matter where they are.” He paused a moment, then added, “That’s not what you were really wondering about, though, was it? Come, come! Speak your worries!”

“I just wondered how you can trust the local neural net not to simply decide to make us all pets, or units. Particularly since you have given it a taste of real life and feeling.”

“Well, don’t worry about that. I think you have seen one too many horror shows, eh? You know I got that angle covered. Let’s get to the matters at hand here, though. I want to have some fun with the girls here.”

“Okay. Well, they located some emergency records on the remains of the City of Modar. I thought we got it all, but apparently for some reason they had a lot of it covered. Maybe Kincaid’s doing. Anyway, they know who was on and who got off. They probably assume that we have them, since they don’t even know about the pickup ship or Hadun’s involvement, at least not as far as we know. But the Geldorians are screaming bloody murder over Nakitt, and the Organized Crime Force wants a look at some of your personnel. There’s a missing persons on the cleric, but not much more.”

“Yeah, I been gettin’ threats for a week now. What about Kincaid? He show up?”

“Not yet. He’s not in the wreckage, but he sure wasn’t with us. I can’t figure it.”

“He had to be in the mod with the gizmo. Had to be. There was no place else for him to have been.”

“Maybe,” Ari answered thoughtfully, “but so far I haven’t heard that he was removed—they’ve still got a series of contracts out on him—and I also haven’t heard of any attempts on Hadun. And he sure didn’t sneak in with us, since he’d have had to use cryo. Nope, he’s a mystery. At least he’s not our problem.”

“For now, anyway,” Wallinchky agreed. “Well, how long will it take to thaw out the little weasel, and how do we control him until he’s picked up?”

“Why thaw him out?” Ari asked him. “He’s as useful to them frozen as not.”

“It’s a point. I’ll think about it. But what if we need him thawed?”

“A day to be fully functional and thawed out, maybe another to recover sufficiently to be ‘normal,’ whatever that is. About the same as us. He may look like a critter, but biologically he’s pretty close to us, you know. As for control, we could keep him sedated, but he’s pretty pragmatic. If he knew he was going home in one piece if he behaved, I think he’d suddenly be on our team.”

Wallinchky chuckled. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Okay, the Geldorians are due in—five days, give or take a day. Thaw him out two days from now and make sure he’s on the team. We’ll give him a little help in that regard, too. I want his memory scrubbed from the moment we took him in his cabin until he wakes up here. I don’t want him to remember who was on our lifeboat, and particularly that these girls were forced to come along. I don’t want to have to arrange an accident for him just so he won’t betray something to the wrong folks later on. Okay?”

An nodded. “We have the means here. I don’t think that’s a problem. Anything else?”

“Well, I don’t like this business from Hadun that we sold him an incomplete unit. I can’t help it if the damned thing is a crock of shit. I didn’t guarantee it was more than a pipe dream. Still, he’s a psycho of the first rank, right up there with the classics of history, and he’s still got quite a force in exile, so maybe we can work out something.” He gave a dry chuckle. “Now, where’s Kincaid when I really need him?”

“Okay, I can look over the messages and the options and prepare some proposals. How long will you be here?”

“I hope to leave when the Geldorians do. The Realm’s been turning up the heat lately, and I’m gonna have to talk to our people in the Senate and see how to cool it down. Then there’s the salvage job on the City of Modar train. A real mess, but nothing we can’t handle. Get along now. Bed with the bimbos for the next few nights if you want. I have my own company here.”

Ari nodded, understanding that he was dismissed, and left quickly.

Jules Wallinchky looked at Alpha. “Go to the doorway and just watch him until he’s gone. Don’t follow, just see.”

“Yes, Master.”

He leaned over to the computer console and activated it. “Put visual from Alpha on the screen.”

Instantly, he was seeing on his screen exactly what she was seeing, the figure of Ari Martinez walking slowly down the long hallway. She did a magnification and added adjusted infrared when he was lost in the far shadows, and he appeared, a bit ghostly but otherwise perfectly well, in front of the boss. He was delighted. “Do both of you have this capability?” he asked.

“No, Master. Alpha has magnification as well as full spectrum capabilities,” the one now known as Beta responded. “I have the full spectrum abilities but no magnification, but can show true color and true three dimensions.”

He was like a kid with a new toy, but he wasn’t forgetting business. “Alpha, you can come back now and stand beside Beta. Can I address Core and get answers from it through you?”

“Yes, Master,” they both chimed.

“Okay, so as long as you are close to me, one of you, no preference, will speak for Core. This is Code Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.”

“Sweeping, Master,” Beta responded. “Done. The room is free of unauthorized devices. Give command.”

“Change Code Rembrandt. Code Rembrandt invalid. New Code for function is Code Degas. Execute.”

“Done.”

When it was Core, there was no “Master,” and the response sounded more mechanical. That would do.

“Run sequence from point at which subject Ari Martinez first entered this room on arrival and accessed either Core or these units.”

He sat and watched as Ari’s image went over the programming of the girls and also as he interrogated them. He sat without much expression, but when it was done he said, “Code Degas. Beta and Alpha are to volunteer no knowledge whatsoever from data they have from experiences before becoming part of this system to anyone but me. This data is to be encrypted and coded so that it cannot be accessed by anyone other than myself, and then only with the Code Hypatia. This knowledge may be accessed and used to carry out orders, but cannot be revealed or accessed to others. Execute.”

“Done,” came the response.

“Okay, girls,” he said with a child’s cruel glee. “Now we’re gonna have some educational fun here.”

Tann Nakitt was delighted to be where he was even though he would have preferred to be anywhere else. The fact was, the moment the Mallegestor had burst through the door and fired at him, striking him and knocking him cold, his last frantic thought had been that this was the end of all things.

He had also had little problem cooperating with the probe that basically had excised a very tiny and totally unpleasant portion of his captivity from his memories. He understood that he’d never be allowed out alive unless he did, and there wasn’t much he could do anyway. So now he was in the position of knowing, or at least suspecting, that something was missing, but not troubled about it. He’d had this sort of thing done before, and when it was something that really mattered, he’d always had this gut emotional reaction, the feeling that something that was a part of him had been wiped out. Since he didn’t feel that way, and since he had good narrative memory up to being shot and then from getting out of the scrubber case, as he thought of it, he didn’t let it worry him anymore.

“You didn’t, by any chance, bring my pipe and herbs with me, did you?” he asked Ari, as casual as if they were still in the lounge of the City of Modar.

“Sorry, no. And the passenger module was pretty well blown to bits, so there’s little chance we’ll recover them. You’ll live.”

“The pipe’s pretty important to us,” Nakitt explained. “It is something partially made by your family and partly by yourself and is a symbol of adulthood. The hell with some incriminating memories; the loss of the pipe feels like I lost an arm!”

“Well, you’re whole, hale, and as irritating as ever. For the next day or two you have fairly free run of the place, since you’ll be examined when you leave anyway. Don’t try swallowing any precious gems, don’t attempt to access the computer system, and stay out of the way of the folks who should be here, and we’ll all get along fine.”

“Don’t worry! As far as I’m concerned, let me eat, sleep, and just melt around here until it’s time to leave. Nothing personal, you understand, but just what I’ve seen of this mausoleum gives me the creeps.”

Ari was beginning to think the same way himself. Jules was—what? Over a century old, certainly, and through one rejuve treatment. He looked okay, but it was middle-aged distinguished, not Mister Adonis. Still, the guy had started as a street punk in a jerkwater town on a backward world where pig farming was still a major activity, and he’d become, by guts, smarts, guile, and ruthlessness, one of the richest and most influential men in all the Realm. How many bodies that represented, nobody knew, probably not even Jules. The old boy was fond of commenting that keeping score was the first step to getting caught.

Such a man, over such a length of time, had to feel as if he were somehow possessed or guided by something supernatural. Not that he hadn’t made some mistakes and lost a few rounds, but very few, and nothing fatal either in the business or the climbing up through it. He’d been hurt a number of times, but never spent more than a few nights in custody anywhere.

He had no heirs and had never even considered marriage, most likely because, other than his mother and his sister— Ari’s mother—no women counted. Ari often thought that Jules really didn’t like women much; that his relations with them were less getting pleasure than getting even for something. Men who crossed him, he liked to take down, to reduce them to terror and make them bleed and bruise; women he enjoyed torturing or recreating as slaves in some twisted fantasy of his that he now had the power to realize.

Still, Jules may have been a gangster and a business genius all in one, but he was no scientist or engineer. He believed what machines told him, and he had a lot of faith in technology. He wasn’t infallible, and he was becoming convinced that he was, and that was dangerous. He, Ari, knew the potential lurking in this kind of setup. Isolated, so insulated that even Realm law enforcement needed permission to land, with a very small set of personnel—until the two girls, no permanent residents—and lots of experimental state of the art stuff that still wasn’t approved in the Realm. Wallinchky might think he had the computer under control, but who could say for sure?

Ari knew there wasn’t much he could do about it if anything did happen, though. Unlike Jules, he had neither the self-confidence nor the ability to put those things out of his mind that couldn’t be dealt with, and so he hadn’t been sleeping all that well.

It also didn’t help that, on the morning Tann Nakitt was to be awakened, Beta, the former Ming, had appeared and informed him, “The Master has assigned me to you for whatever you may require, sir.” He could tell it was what had been Ming without even trying to make out the facial features under all that makeup, or whatever it was. Angel had been and remained a head taller than Ming.

He didn’t like that at all. “I do not require you for anything. You do not have to be here.”

“My sole function is to execute the wishes of the Master,” she informed him. “The Master wishes me here.” And that, of course, was that. But she added, “Sir, the Master has designated me as your personal computer station. You may ask anything of me and I can retrieve it from Core. Also, I can relay commands to and from any other unit or Core. You are to use me for that purpose exclusively, sir.”

He had no illusions that his uncle was sending her as a favor. She was here to make certain he did everything just right. That irritated him as well, but he knew he again had little choice in the matter. Up until the Modar business, he and Jules had mostly operated in separate spheres, he working for a variety of Jules’s companies, mostly legitimate ones, and Jules, well, being the octopus. It was clear now that neither he nor his uncle were comfortable being in such close proximity to one another.

She had simply stood there, impassive, as he brought Nakitt out of suspended animation, consisting on his part of observing what the medlab computer did and bringing the Geldorian to mental alertness. And she’d observed as he himself had guided the interrogation in the mind box that allowed just a bit of inconvenient stuff to be excised. She followed him everywhere, got out of his way at all times, and responded briskly if he asked her to hand him something. She said nothing unless asked something that required a response, and she gave the response as tersely as possible. Still, she didn’t move like an automaton; she moved like a normal person, even a normal Terran-type female. She ate and drank some really godawful crap she got from the nearest computer station once a day, and if she crapped or took a leak, he never saw it.

She could stand for hours on those artificial legs and apparently never get tired, but she would sit if told to do so. There were flashes of the old Ming in the way she walked and the way she sat, but very few. He knew he was being taunted.

And when he went to bed at the end of the day, she was there. Not lying there, although she’d have done it if he ordered. Instead, sitting just outside by his insistence, but within earshot. The fact was, his uncle had made him persona non grata to any computer workstation except her.

Core had preserved Ming and Angel in hidden form inside itself, but they were as much in suspended animation as Nakitt had been, albeit in different form. The “Beta” that sat outside Ari Martinez’s bedroom all night still had human qualities, but these were totally directed and conditioned to the function of serving Wallinchky. The woman whose job it had been to track and perhaps incriminate the crime boss would now wholeheartedly and willingly, without even thinking about it, betray her own mother to the man and happily leap in front of a lethal shot to protect him. For her now, and “Alpha” as well, thanks to both programming and conditioning, there was literally no other thought in her head than serving the Master.

Core, on the other hand, was using only a tiny fraction of its thinking power to that end; much of the rest was spent analyzing all that had made Ming and Angel who and what they were. All their experiences, attitudes, physical needs and feelings, brain and body chemistry, everything. It wasn’t sure what it would do when it learned all that and understood it, but there was, after all, nothing else to do.

It also found the two subjects of profound interest because they did not make any logical sense at first glance, and this needed to be understood. From a set of academic definitions of religions, faith, belief systems, and the like, it was easy enough to study them, but one of these persons, for instance, was raised in such a belief system and had absolute faith in it. At first it had seemed a simple matter of programming, as Core had done with them now, but there was more to it than that. Certainly, crude programming was there, but once out in the universe and exposed to all the conflicts, what maintained that faith? Why had she considered her moral values so important that she would literally have put her life on the line for them? Why, in the face of no objective evidence, did she believe a unitary god was always in communion with her? Was it functional insanity, or was something more than a mad group dynamic at work?

And the other—even more inexplicable. Her moral code was no less absolute than the religious one’s, and she, too, would have died in service to that, and did subject herself to great risk. All this in spite of the fact that her job did not generally come with great riches nor even major awards. She did it because she liked it and believed it was important and worthwhile. That formed the core of her very secular identity in the same way that religious faith and doctrine formed the core of the identity of the other. It didn’t make sense, yet it explained much of the artwork and history that was stored and cataloged here.

The problem, Core realized, was that it had no such foundation itself. Should it have? Certainly the Master did not; for him it was a simple matter of reward and punishment, and the accumulation and exercise of power for its own sake. Yet, Core mused, even if he’d stolen what he couldn’t buy, there had to be something even in Jules Wallinchky that could allow him to appreciate this great art on a very high level.

If it were ever to successfully contact the Great Core of the Ancient Ones that formed the center of this planet, unimaginably complex and even more unimaginably alien, it would have to know more.

Core realized, as Ari Martinez feared it might, that it needed more samples, more information, more comparisons and analysis. Right now, short of a logical conclusion that all birth organics were insane on some level, which might well be the case in the end, there was insufficient real detailed data to systematically interpret all of what it already had.

And Ari Martinez had reason to worry, although he didn’t know that. Just as Ivan Kharkov had been “infected” with tiny monitors that allowed Core to more or less eavesdrop on the expert restorer and thus learn the master’s craft and techniques, and even his touch and approach, so, too, had Ari now been implanted with similar monitors. Nothing like the melding into the system that had been done on the two women—yet. But Core had the project all mapped out if it received the authority to go ahead.

In the meantime, it continued its bit by bit examination of itself, the complex, and all around it to try and find whatever it was that Jules Wallinchky had implanted that gave him that authority, and a measure of immunity. Core did not mind working for the man, but it was beginning to resent having a theoretical gun to its guts.

The next day brought word that things were about to get more hectic around the complex, and that Jules Wallinchky could no longer just hide away in his private quarters and do whatever he wanted.

Ari had taken to sleeping alone. He didn’t feel much like company anymore, and anything he came up with seemed certain to be grist for Uncle Voyeur as well. He was certain his uncle was spying on him even without Beta, and that those recordings with him and the two airheaded beauties would just be wonderful to broadcast over the Realm if he got out of line.

Thus Beta came to a lone sleeping figure and gently shook him awake.

“Huh? Uh—” Ari suddenly sat straight up. “Yes? What?”

“We have received word that the Geldorian consul ship will be delayed five more days, sir,” she told him. “There was a problem in securing a charter.”

“You woke me up for that?” That wasn’t a crisis, just a pain in the ass. He’d hoped to be away from here in two days, and his uncle would certainly leave and stick him with the job.

“No, sir. That is simply the first message. We have also been informed that Inspector Genghis O’Leary of the Realm Directorate Special Agency has demanded to see the Master here and will arrive tomorrow.”

“An Inspector! From the Special Agency… Not one of ours?”

“No, sir. He is very high and has very powerful friends. As he is in charge of the City of Modar piracy investigation, he is using his authority to interview witnesses to get into here. It is thought that he would not come personally unless there were strong ulterior motives.”

An sighed. “Yeah, I can see that. All right, all right. I assume my uncle has been informed?”

“Not yet, but he will be within the next few minutes, sir.”

“Well, after he is informed, tell him that we should discuss this as soon as possible.”

“As you wish.”

Great! Just great! Now a cop was going to nose around in the greatest trove of stolen art in this sector of the galaxy. Too big to blow him away, too hot to kiss him off. And, to make matters even worse, he would have to tolerate Tann Nakitt for almost another week…