The Sea is Full of Stars

been a house number. Nothing. Inside the structures it was the same; although large enough to be multistoried and have lots of specialized space, they were in fact hollow, as if cast and left only to be seen, not lived in.

“Ari, why don’t you help the girls set the thing up? It’s kind of obvious how it goes,” Wallinchky said. “I think I need to sit and rest for a few minutes.”

Ari complied, meanwhile wondering why he was here, doing this. It was the last place he wanted to be, with a cop raiding party almost certainly overhead, a giant supercop maybe a few kilometers away, and maybe an obsessed nut case coming along while his uncle was, well, clearly in poor health and becoming more and more unhinged. Still, as Ari helped the women unpack the thing, slide it out, then steady it while their augmented limbs positioned it as if it were foam, he couldn’t help but reflect that something inside him was just too weak to resist his uncle, even now. At least I’m not like those two, he thought, but that very idea brought him up short.

Maybe he was like them. Maybe he could no more disobey Jules than they could. Damn! The only way to know was to disobey, but how the hell was he supposed to do that here and now?

In the meantime, they began to assemble the thing, whatever it was.

It didn’t seem sufficient to threaten or kill anybody over, let alone risk a lot. It looked in fact like something molded out of cheap plastic, although its weight and balance said that something was buried inside, something heavy. It unfolded in a pattern that soon became clear: a hexagon, with internal bracing between each junction point, much like the layout of the great ancient city. In the center was a hexagonal hole, and into this a large and definitely not hexagonal device fitted. This was the heavy part; he could guide it, but the two women’s augmented strength was necessary to lift it into place. The big unit was a good four meters across unfolded, but covered maybe a third of its center and used both hub and ribs for support.

“The power supply,” Jules Wallinchky told him. “I have no idea what’s in it, but it’s not the kind of thing you want to start taking apart to see how it works without maybe a solar system between you and it. Is it seated?”

“Looks to be,” Ari told him, stepping away from it. “Alpha, go up to the central unit and press a panel on the side. Yes—just look for it. There! Now open it!”

She did so, and a small control panel was revealed as the door slid back. There were seven active lights on it, six green forming a hex, and one yellow and larger for the center.

“It turned itself on?” Ari asked, fascinated in spite of himself.

“Naw,” his uncle responded. “It never turned off. There’s no way to do that. But all those lights were red when it wasn’t here and set up. They were still red in the lab back at the house. Now look! Green!”

“Yeah, but the center’s yellow!”

“Caution, as always, nephew. The people who built this thing were Realm types, maybe Terrans like us. This isn’t any ancient stuff.”

“Are you all right, Uncle? You don’t sound so good.”

“My heart is telling me that something gave or didn’t take well, nephew. Doesn’t matter now, so long as this thing works, and if the replica did with that ersatz power supply we gave him, hell, this should do wonders.”

“But—surely they tested all this out. Why didn’t it swallow up the makers?”

Wallinchky laughed. “Maybe it did, and that’s what scared ’em so much. Then again, maybe this ancient machine needs more motivation. It didn’t take the ones who came after, and it didn’t take old Josich when it was turned on. It only took him when he wanted to be taken. Well, nephew, I sure as hell want to be taken. I got nowhere else to go, and I wouldn’t even survive the trip back to the house.”

Ari had a sudden hope that maybe Wallinchky would croak before this went any further. That would solve a lot.

“Beta, come stand by me and be ready to assist me as needed,” the old man commanded, breathing hard but still very much alive. “Alpha, touch the center yellow light, then touch each of the green lights in turn as the display indicates. When the whole thing blinks, come over here with us.”

“Yes, Master,” she responded, and pushed the yellow button. A white light emerged and went to the top left light. She pressed it, then followed as it drew the hex completely around the center and then went back so that she pressed the center again. The center light turned green and the whole display began to blink. The center power plant started vibrating, and Alpha made her way quickly out and over to Jules Wallinchky’s side.

A dark, man-sized shape appeared just opposite them, its e-suit dark and impenetrable.

“You’re too late!” Wallinchky shouted with satisfaction at the newcomer. “It’s already begun! Even we can’t stop it now!”

“You’re wrong,” the newcomer responded in a deep, eerie voice that seemed as much machine as human. “I am just in time.”

Ari was beginning to relax. Except for a slight whining in the comm system of his suit, the great device didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. He finally got up, walked over to the newcomer, and looked to see if anything of the face could be made out in the permanent night.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

The figure laughed. “You know who I am—or who I was, anyway. I know you’ve guessed that. Want to see my beautiful face?” He switched on the internal helmet light so his full face was visible.

Ari screamed and stepped back. There was flesh on only about a third of the head; the rest was a blue-gray metallic color and looked horribly robotic, but robotic in the shape of a human skull.

“What are you?” Ari cried.

The figure pointed at the two women. “Much like what was done to them, only mine was from quite an explosion and a fair amount of exposure to an atmosphere I wasn’t designed to use. It burned off most of my false skin, and I just decided I didn’t have time to grow new flesh.”

“Kincaid!” Wallinchky exclaimed. “I thought it was you! Some replacement parts, eh? That’s why the height didn’t jibe!”

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s serviceable,” responded Jeremiah Kincaid, or what was left of him, now more machine than man. “It’s better than yours, Wallinchky. Before I could have a heart attack, I’d have to have a heart, wouldn’t I?” He turned and stepped up to the device, which continued to power on to no obvious effect. “What the hell are you waiting for?” he screamed at it. “I will follow Josich the Emperor Hadun all the way to Hell itself!”

The center area exploded with light, and Ari Martinez backed up and fell over a curb. When he looked up, there was a fountain of energy rising up to the heavens, and more radiating from the points of the device.

Back at the house, Tann Nakitt watched in awe as the energy became visible, grew, and spread in geometric patterns, as did O’Leary on the maglev bike from just outside the city. It didn’t save either one of them as the energy ribbons flowed out from the city and down the ancient roads, striking the compound just below where Tann Nakitt stood. He suddenly felt its danger and turned with a curse to it and a prayer to all the Geldorian gods, then everything went black and it seemed he was falling down a bottomless pit of darkness.

Genghis O’Leary saw the ribbon coming toward him. It struck and enveloped him before he could do more than feel sudden alarm at its approach, and then the bike shook and fell to the ground with no sign of a rider.

Closer in, those near the center of the city felt only the falling sensation, nothing more.

Back at the house, the Kharkovs felt a queasy sensation, and there was a momentary sense of reality vanishing and then coming back, but they were still there, in their laboratory, when it was suddenly over.

Core lost contact with the two women at 2.3 seconds after Kincaid’s outburst, but managed to capture some of the surge and sensation and to photograph the phenomenon for its own records and later examination.

Now it had to decide what to do. Wallinchky’s orders, to be executed only in the event of his death or if this worked, were clear, and final. Core was not to oppose a landing, but was to destroy the device if possible.

It was possible but hardly necessary. The energy surge, which it might possibly not have caused at all, considering the timings, had melted the device into a shapeless mass on the plaza.

Core’s orbital eyes, however, had noted the convergence of a signal and the shoot into some kind of extradimensional space, the properties of which could not even be guessed at. An examination of the phenomenon,