The Sea is Full of Stars

He felt helpless, and then, worse, dizzy and disoriented, almost as he had when the transport had kicked in, but different. She was looking into his mind! Not like a telepath would, but as if their two brains were a single physical unit. Information flowed back and forth, but at a speed he couldn’t follow and with a commanding force he couldn’t resist. He also felt physical sensations—cold and hot, pain and pleasure, a whole range of things sweeping over him like a beam switching on and off. He started to laugh for no apparent reason, then felt incredibly sad, tears welling up, only to have that cut off and then feel sexual desire, then none, then hunger, thirst—Our minds link one to another, so that there is only Oneness. He felt and understood the command rather than hearing it.

She let him go, and he sank down and tried to steady himself as the place seemed to fly around him. He understood now that his uncle left nothing to chance, that most likely everyone who stayed in one of his houses for more than a few days got implanted with the same neuroreceivers and transmitters as the two women had in themselves.

Unlike Ming, he still knew just who and what he was, and with the same feelings as before. But now, and possibly till death, his mind, every thought, even his innermost feelings, was an open book to her and to Alpha/Angel as well. He could feel the permanence of the connection but could not reach out to her mind in the same way she could to his.

Stand up! They come! Again his mind filed it as words, but it was on a level way beyond that. She was not speaking to him telepathically; rather, having cataloged his entire electrochemical set of stimuli and responses, she was operating him. He found himself standing up and looking in the direction where the others had disappeared, with no conscious act of will on his part.

The worst part was, when they came, he couldn’t even tell them what had happened.

Giant Emperor butterflies, two meters tall with wing spans four times that and heads that seemed like death masks, as grotesque and skull-like as Jeremiah Kincaid.

There were three of them, one on the walkway, another flying past and landing beyond them on the walkway behind, and one more hovering over the huge transport area, its wings creating a wind sufficient to whip Ari’s hair into a frenzy.

But they weren’t giant butterflies; that was obvious from the start. Butterflies didn’t wear some sort of belt around their midsection, and butterflies didn’t carry what were most definitely alien-looking but still quite identifiable heavy duty rifles. And butterflies didn’t stand on their hind legs and hold such rifles comfortably in soft but clawlike hands.

Ari felt panic; these babies looked mean. Just as suddenly, he found his panic evaporating, and a calm coolness come over him. In concert with Beta, he and she were protecting Jules Wallinchky’s body.

“You will remove your spacesuits and all mechanicals from yourselves and from the one who is dying,” an eerie, almost nasal voice said in a language they both easily understood. It had the kind of threat in its tone that would have been there even if it had simply said “Good evening.”

“We will do nothing of the sort,” Beta told them firmly. “We will die to protect the Master.”

“Then you will die,” the voice answered, unconcerned. “We do not care about you one way or the other. However, if you do exactly as we say, there may be one chance to save the dying one, but you will have to obey, and now. Time is something it does not have and it may already be too late. It is also a moot argument, since we do not care about him or you and if we have problems we will simply shoot you and be done with it. You will find that your weapons will not work here. Ours will.”

There was hesitation on her part, but there was also still a connection, albeit not as strong and direct as she would have liked, to Alpha, and Alpha basically was telling them to do it. There was also the unalterable logic of what the thing was saying. Pragmatically, there wasn’t anything else to do.

They stripped themselves down completely and threw it all over the rail, then carefully they stripped Jules Wallinchky as well. Ari didn’t lose any of his attitude and feeling for the old S.O.B. under this condition, but he tried to suppress such thoughts, knowing she might take offense and punish him. With the kind of control she had over his mind and emotions, he could become Gamma in seconds if she had a mind to do it.

The old boy was flabby, and parts of his body were almost covered with scars of one kind or another. None of those should have been there; clearly he’d been through something since the rejuve that he hadn’t talked much about, which contributed to his current situation.

What was the old adage? The wages of sin is death! When you could be the most self-indulgent person in the galaxy and lived in a time when everything you could need, even medical aid, was always there, you tended to get a bit sloppy…

“We will transport the one who is dying,” the chief butterfly told them. “You two will proceed along the walk in the direction your friends went and we shall be covering you.”

“We cannot!” Beta insisted. “Our sole purpose is to serve our Master. We cannot abandon him.”

“I weary of this,” the creature responded, sounding disgusted. “Both of you start walking now or I am going to kill you.”

“For God’s sake! Do it!” Ari screamed at her. “How can you serve him if you die for nothing?”

That logic already had occurred to the woman, who turned and stepped onto the next section, and he found himself following and slapping the control to activate the walkway. One of the creatures followed, rifle pointed at their backs. There was no question that it would use it, and no doubt that the two of them together could not move faster than it could fire.

It was decided that Ari might try and reason with it, either to gain an advantage or simply to gain information. These things looked pretty in a bizarre sort of way, but not like the kind of folks you’d sit down with in other circumstances and buy each other beers.

“What race are you?” he began, trying to get a frame of reference.

“I am of the Yaxa.”

Well, that was a start.

“Did your people come here like us?”

“We are native here. All races are native here, but I was born here.”

“I am called Ari Martinez. Do you have a name?”

“Yes,” was the cold reply.

Ooooo-kay… “You say all races are native here. What do you mean? Have you seen our sort before? I mean, native on wherever this is?”

“Your people originated here. Some are here, yes, but they are a bloodthirsty and unpleasant lot and we have little or nothing to do with them.”

“Then—why are you bothering with us now? Are we being marched to a firing squad?”

“No. This is the ambassadorial region as well as Well World ingress and egress. All civilized races take their management turns here, and we are on this watch.”

“Ambassadorial region you say. But that means even enemies talk here without shooting. So why the guns?”

“Outsiders are already causing a great deal of suffering and hardship on the world. Until that is resolved, all outsiders are suspect. You do not have an embassy here.”

There was the whoosh of great wings to their left, over the vast chamber, and they both turned and saw the other two Yaxa flying, pushing an apparently levitating but still comatose Jules Wallinchky in front of them. They were making good speed and going off at an angle, although it was clear that both he and Beta would catch up with them in a few minutes.

So outsiders were making trouble. That certainly brought up a nasty thought, considering that the only outsiders likely to have been teleported here of late were certain water-breathing monsters. “Those outsiders now causing hardship and suffering—one of them is not by any chance named Josich, is it?”

“The one of that name is involved, yes. You know that one?”

“I only know of him, but his reputation where we come from is just as ugly as he seems to have wasted no time in reestablishing here. He is no friend of ours, and the large man who seems half machine who went with the rest of our party to find help has devoted his life to finding and killing Josich. He’s on your side.”