The Sea is Full of Stars

Possibly even experience against Josich?”

The Baron laughed. “Where would we find such a one as that?”

“Possibly at this meeting. At least I hope so. There are at least two people who came in with my party who fit this description, and I have heard nothing from or about either. Please let me just eat this chocolate ball to get some energy and then I will go and see, with your permission.”

“By all means! But—what could anyone do at this stage? It is not like anyone could get to us without a long sea voyage at best, and they would have to see the land, I think. Remember, the Gate only takes us to and from Ochoa; it takes others to their own homelands. Our geographic position makes us ripe, but that same control and isolation makes it nearly impossible to reinforce us if we are attacked. That alone is why I believe we are the target. Still, what have we to lose?”

“What, indeed, Highness?” She munched down the chocolate ball with obvious relish. The Baron had tried it, since she seemed so fond of it, but found its appeal a mystery. She popped in the last of it and went to the mirror and vanity to make sure she looked better than she felt. “Highness, tell me this. If the task force really is intended for us, how long before it would reach Ochoa and be in position? Once they attack us, after all, they will also be fair game for some of our underwater allies surrounding us, a couple of whom could do some nasty work on ships’ bottoms. We can assume we’ll have some Chalidang special units to guard against that, but they have a nonexistent supply line. That means they will have to gather and then come in only from either the northwest or the southeast or due east facet. Those border the only hexes where the inhabitants cannot get up top enough to help us. How long have we got?”

The Baron thought a moment. “If the intelligence we have is correct, they will not be ready to muster and sail for another week. Nine hundred kilometers from the logical mustering point, nonstop, with heavy warships and freighters, and we can say we’d be unlikely to see the forward line make more than ten kilometers per hour tops, but allowing for storms, tides, whatever, certainly less. The speed record is 270 kilometers a day, which would give us three to four more days. Realistically, five days for anything serious, six with the main body. With maneuvering and positioning, add one more. Two weeks, Nakitti. Two weeks from right now.”

That was not a lot of time. “And how long before their intention becomes clear?”

“If there are no intelligence leaks ahead of it, we will know for certain about two days after they sail. That is even less. We cannot wait that long.”

She nodded. “No, we can’t. I had better go get some help quickly if I can!”

“Nakitti?”

“Yes, Highness?”

“What were you? Back there in that other existence, that is? Before Ochoa?”

“Why, Highness, I thought it was obvious! I was a spy! I have copied and read the military secrets of empire!”

With that she bent her head and opened her wings in respectful salute and then, folding them again, backed out of the room.

The Baron stared after her, still not sure what to make of this brilliant newcomer. A spy? For whom? All the information he had was that this Realm was a sort of empire of races that coexisted peacefully after the defeat of a tyrant who had massacred whole worlds, and gotten so far because before that there was no unity. A reflection of this situation here, in fact, even down to facing the exact same tyrant. So who was she spying for? And against?

He had little doubt that she was very much on his side.

Across the expanse of the embassy sections, the Kalindans, too, were facing the same summons, only now they had an extra complication.

“It cannot be permitted to go! We still don’t know just what is in that head, or what someone with that power might have done when transferring the true personalities to the other body!” Mellik was genuinely upset, but she was also doing her job.

“My dear, we have no choice in this,” the Interior Minister told her. “I believe we must send them all and simply monitor the response. It is not like they can get away, and we must know about these people now. Considering that bounder Josich and its relatives, a lot of high officials from powerful and influential hexes here want to simply do away with all of them. The only thing that stops them is that this always remains an option, and they may just be of use. Our own position is that they know this enemy better than we, and if nothing else, we need their experience. Fortunately, the current High Commissioner, Ambassador Dukla, agrees with us, but his term expires in a week. Let us go along. This is Zone, child! Even the Chalidangers, who are of course not here, respect the sanctity of Zone, since to not do so would bring down the weight of all the others upon it in ways few know and understand. Let us go.”

Ari and Ming were almost as shocked and appalled as the Kalindan investigators at the truth, and had been only too eager to submit to all sorts of mental tests to determine if they were still the same people. But as far as anyone could tell, the only thing that had changed, to Ming’s great irritation, was that they were now very definitely female, something they were going to be in the first body anyway.

Pity, though, Ming told him. I’d so hoped that one of us could have had the other body and the other would have this one. I figured it was the one that was supposed to be either of us anyway. In fact, it probably is the way it was supposed to be. Who would believe that a computer could do that? Or would want to?

I wonder if that’s a small scale version of this whole world, of what we’re sitting on, Ari worried. If a machine we designed and built can move into flesh, then what could a monster built by the Ancient Ones do?

Well, he says we, or he, broke it. At least, it didn’t work the way it was supposed to. And if something of the Ancient Ones isn’t working like it’s supposed to, what’s the surprise that one of ours isn’t? Besides, it’s been hundreds of years since any organic brain could design and build a computer. This was designed and built by other computers. You know that. Makes you wonder about back home, doesn’t it?

Huh? he responded. Worried about what back home?

Suppose this is the start of a trend? The beginning of the end? That the machines are going to move into our bodies, or maybe declare them irrelevant and start doing their own things? You think maybe that’s what happened to the Ancients who built this place?

It was an unsettling thought. More unsettling to them, though, was that the Other, whom they’d accepted as a twin—in fact, they’d just about accepted that they were the copies—was something totally alien who nonetheless knew everything they knew. Ari in particular was worried that the mental slavery he’d experienced on the way in was possible once again. Could this—creature—take control of them at will? What about the others? Was this really just a way to turn them into a multiracial Alpha and Beta with the ability to swim, walk, fly, breathe air or water? Was Core, as it said to call it, more of a threat in the long run than Josich?

Ming had no memory of being Beta; she remembered up to the point where Jules Wallinchky had begun the final indoctrination and then it was all a blank. She knew what she’d been like, but it was secondhand, as seen by Ari’s memories, not hers.

Well, if it’s telling the truth, it’s left a major complex under the complete control of a committed nun or priestess or whatever that group is. It may throw a real jar of glue in the evolution of the machine!

That worry’s not our fight, she noted. Let’s go see what’s literally become of the rest.

They didn’t have far to go. Because it was least practical for them to have to travel and cope for long in the land environment, particularly with its dry, conditioned, mostly low humidity air, the others were coming here, to the meeting room above.

Once out of hiding, Core had assumed an essentially neutral personality that was neither of them, nor the slavish absolutes of Alpha and Beta, but rather an odd but pleasantly social sort. Neither the voice nor the manners had much personality at all, but in that it wasn’t unlike a lot of people they’d known over the years. It made them very uncomfortable, though.

Waiting inside was a creature of a type they’d never seen before. It was unquestionably a water hex