The Sea is Full of Stars

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