The Sea is Full of Stars

riding it. Something short and furry.

“That’s a Geldorian!” Kincaid exclaimed. “What the hell?”

The Geldorian, for its part, had been leaning on the rail and moving along when it spotted them, and particularly the figure of Kincaid, and stiffened. Abruptly, the belt stopped, and it was just a couple of meters from the others. It looked at them all and said, “Where the hell am I? Who or what is that?” He was referring to Kincaid. Then, regarding the unconscious Wallinchky: “And is the bastard dead or just hopefully in great eternal pain?”

“Tann Nakitt? What are you doing here?” Ari asked him.

“All I know is, I was watching your light show from inside the house, and this stream of energy came up the road and I woke up down there. When nobody sent out the welcome party, I figured this thing out and set off. I don’t suppose any of you have any food or drink, do you? And by the way, what’s wrong with him?” He gestured toward the comatose man.

“Heart attack, we think, or possibly stroke. Same difference. He’s dying,” Kincaid told him. “I’m Jeremiah Kincaid, by the way, without my usual makeup.”

“Kincaid! Good grief! It’s a City of Modar reunion! Still, I have to say that I liked you better when you were just scary looking.”

“How far have you come?” Kincaid asked him.

“Far enough. Hard to say, but it’s about three segments, a good kilometer or so. From the smell and look, it seemed like the other way was going to quickly reach water, and the last thing I wanted was to ride into drowning. Gravity also gets a little heavier down there, and it’s lighter here. You notice that? Each segment’s different.”

“This is the only one we tried, but—water, you say? Not now. Not yet.” Kincaid sighed. “Then we should start off in the opposite direction, I think. I suspect it’s some vast circle, but who knows how long and how far? Come! Step onto this one and we’ll see if it goes back.”

Oddly enough, it did, which surprised them until Kincaid noted, “Well, each segment runs whichever way will take the folks on it to the other end. What happens when you get folks on the same belt at opposite ends I have no idea.”

They reached the next segment, about where they’d come in, and realized that Wallinchky would have to be moved at each junction point, even if slightly. His color was ashen and his breathing labored. It was clear that he didn’t have long.

“In any part of the Realm, he’d have instant and total help and be up and around in a short period of time,” Kincaid mused, looking at him. “In older times, before that kind of response, they used to teach people what to do in emergencies like this. Isn’t it odd that the more advanced we’ve become, the more ignorant we’ve become? Could any of us plow a field, live off the land, even know how to safely build a fire or hunt game? Without our machines and data banks, we’re pretty damned helpless. Masters of the universe! We who don’t know how to piss outdoors!”

Tann Nakitt looked around at the vast chamber around them. “Maybe that happened to them, huh? Maybe they had a problem. Solar storm or something, disrupted their mental links to their magical computers and all that power. Ever think that maybe they were so advanced that when they were cut off they died? That they’d become one with their machines? Neat thought, isn’t it? And, by the way, I have both hunted and fished and I can make a fire by rubbing two androids together. Still, I wish I had a drink.”

“We’ve got the stuff in our suits, but that’s not easy to transfer,” Kincaid responded. “It’s best we find the exit.”

“I’ll go,” Ari volunteered. “Better than sitting here on deathwatch.”

“No!” Alpha said sharply. “You will remain here with Beta and the Master. You are wholly organic and therefore have the potential to do things Beta herself cannot if need be.”

“You can’t stop me,” Kincaid told her, not threateningly, but as a statement of fact. “And Tann Nakitt is not a party to this. I say the three of us go, and Beta and Martinez remain.”

“Very well. Time is of the essence, then. Let us go.”

Ari started to follow them, but Beta moved and blocked him. Although she was much smaller, the reinforced limbs the two women had been given after they were properly programmed were more than his match, and he couldn’t easily reason with or argue with them. He sighed, watching the figures vanish from sight. It didn’t take long before he decided that even talking to a slave was better than nothing.

“Beta, do you remember who and what you used to be?”

“The question is meaningless,” she responded. “Beta has never been anything but Beta. I have the memories of the one who was and is no more except as data, but I am not her.”

“So you have all of Ming’s memories, but you don’t see any connection between her and yourself?”

“The name you speak is not in my data field. I have no name for the other.”

“Well, it was probably erased, but it was Ming Dawn Palavri. Alpha was Angel Kobe.”

“No, Alpha is Alpha. She simply has the data of another, as I do.”

This was tough. “So it’s just data? But what good is that data if you cannot assume the identity of the one who lived those memories? Every memory in the brain is subjective. How can you interpret it if you weren’t ever her?”

“I have the module to do this, but I can integrate it only on command of the Master.”

“And what if he dies? If your sole purpose is to serve him, and he dies, then you have no purpose? No Master? Do you die or what?”

“In the absence of the Master, and death is an absence condition, then we would both serve the Oneness.”

“The Oneness? Who or what is that?” He was sure his uncle hadn’t come up with anything like a Oneness.

“We are both part of the One. We are detached from it, but still part of it. We would then become self- programming autonomous units but in its service.”

He finally got it. “The One—you mean the house computer? The server core?”

“Yes.”

He sighed and leaned back against the wall. All his life he’d thought of himself as basically a moral guy, that what he did was basically honest work, and that what his uncle did was between his uncle and the cops. Now he’d been dragged into it, not just a little larceny but big-time, with deaths and worse, and he’d managed to some degree to rationalize even that. But what his uncle had done to Ming, particularly Ming, hit home with him. It made him feel… well, dirty. In an age when machines could do anything and if you had the money, you were at least a minor version of what they thought these Ancient Ones were, only somebody who could have everything would decide he wanted human slaves. Even an honest death would be preferable. Hell, he’d known this woman. Jeez! He’d even had a good time in bed with her on a couple of occasions, the last time on the City of Modar itself. To see her reduced to this just to feed a rich old man’s fantasies and ego—it was wrong.

Merely feeling this was a revelation to him. Somewhere along the line he seemed to have grown a conscience, and while it didn’t make him feel any better, it made him feel… well, superior to that old bastard down there. All his life he’d wanted to be his uncle, envied him everything. He didn’t want to be Jules Wallinchky anymore. He wanted a warm shower, a change of clothes, and a chance to walk away and see if he could do something decent with his life without being reinfected by his uncle’s cesspool.

But he was stuck here with two bodies, one dying and one quite possibly dead.

And the worst part was, he’d been the instrument of the latter. He had fired the gun that knocked Angel and Ming cold. He’d delivered them to his uncle. This was his punishment, his circle of Hell, for doing that.

Beta’s head snapped up, a happy expression on her face. “They have made contact with someone! Help is being dispatched!”

That got him out of his reverie. “Made contact? With who?”

“Someone. Someone from—here.” She stood up, walked over and faced him. It made him uncomfortable, but he wasn’t sure what she was doing now. Who could figure out a creature like this, created by a man of evil?

“You must understand the Oneness,” she said. “We may need you.”

Her hands suddenly shot out and grasped both sides of his head, bringing him down. To keep his neck from being broken, he had to kneel. He tried to resist with his own hands, but the grip was absolute.