The Sea is Full of Stars

There was a pause, and then the Yaxa asked, ominously, “Why do you assume that we are against the powers this Josich has joined?”

Uh-oh. “Because you used the words ‘suffering’ and ‘hardship.’ I would have expected a different slant if you were on his side.”

“You make assumptions that other races think like you. It is a mark of the arrogance that seems always in your race.”

“Then the Yaxa are with Josich’s forces?”

“I did not say that, either. I merely told you to refrain from assumptions. None of this will likely make any difference to any of you. Josich is a very rare exception in making any impact at all, let alone a large one. I have no doubt we are about to hear the last of your group, although if the one who lives to kill is as determined as you say, he may be the exception. Or not. You will not find your spaceships and spacesuits here.”

After a half hour, maybe longer, they reached a section where corridors branched off and away from the walkway. They were internally lit so that they essentially glowed, but were clearly hewn out of whatever this place was made of, and they had that same odd shape as the doorways of the Ancient Ones’ city. There were some symbols embedded in the floor and where each corridor started and at each intersection, but they were of a sort impossible to divine. Beta assumed them to be numbers, since that would be the most likely common element in a place with a variety of races. Numbers could be agreed upon and then used in conjunction with maps and directories in local languages.

Although basically a helpless onlooker, the link to Beta’s brain did bring with it some respect as well as discomfort to Ari. He realized she was using all of it, and at a speed faster than he could imagine. He seemed to remember from school that the human brain’s speed and capacity was established early on, and maintained by constant stimulation and the building of dense clusters of neurons. Had they somehow been able to build densities that simply wouldn’t happen in nature? And had the constant linkage to that supercomputer in the house provided constant stimulation even when they were doing nothing at all? Her own speculation and deductions concerning this place, just based on what she could see and hear and what they were being told, was filling in quickly and building a very complex picture that he would never have accomplished on his own.

If that was the case, whatever else his sadistic uncle had done to Angel and Ming, they were both among the greatest geniuses the human race had ever produced. Even more, that concept of the Oneness while keeping an identity was becoming clearer. If she needed it, and they were in this kind of proximity, she could use the unused areas of his brain to augment hers! Temporary storage. The telepathic link was probably agonizingly slow to her, but think of the possibilities…

The Yaxa stopped the belt. “Go ahead of me, single file, down this corridor,” it instructed, and they did so, Beta leading, he following.

The route was complex, the kind of back and forth and up and left and down and right that would have confused Theseus in the Maze, but Ari knew that Beta could retrace it in a moment. It had been, perhaps, another fifteen minutes and several hundred of those symbols, but she was already reading them as if they were her native system. Base six, of course. The numbers were suddenly obvious, but the symbols accompanying them were still just squiggles to him; there was nothing to match them to.

Ari felt a strange sensation that grew stronger as they walked along. He was beginning to sense Alpha as well, her thoughts and her connections. They could function as one or as three, or any combination of that, and they all had access to whatever the other knew or was thinking. They were still too damned fast for him to fully follow, but he was getting the idea.

Don’t make the turns until the Yaxa says the instruction, Ari cautioned mentally. You almost risked giving this away. We need every edge we can get here.

The contribution surprised her, but she adjusted just in time. They were geniuses and devoted slaves and half computer, but they just didn’t think sneaky.

Now they passed some very large chambers that they walked right past. These seemed to be offices, some larger than others, inhabited by the damnedest assortment of bizarre creatures he’d ever seen. He was used to alien races, of course, but some of these were more bizarre than anything he could imagine, while others were eerily familiar. Centaurs and Minotaurs, and tall creatures with great white wings, and tiny self-illuminated creations. Bipedal reptiles wearing opera capes, creatures that looked like giant bowling pins with big round eyes, giant hairy spiders writing in ledgers… It was amazing.

Each of the chambers had a number on it, no two numbers alike. So the numbers on the corridor indicated creatures; the symbols were either corridor names or referred to the type of creatures who might collectively be along it— hairy oxygen-breathing mammals, maybe. They didn’t see enough to have a definitive sample, but Beta registered every number that had a race attached and by now had enough to draw some conclusions. Okay, so type, then number-number. That was the key. The numbers ran serially but in base six.

Some chambers were deserted, and apparently had been for a very long time. They looked something like the inside of the houses of the Ancient Ones, and gave no clues other than a lonely number without anything to attach itself to.

“How many races are there?” he asked the Yaxa.

“There are 1,560 races in the world,” it told him. “As this is the South Zone, only those carbon-based life- forms who have a toleration zone compatibility are here. That is exactly half. Races one to 785 are in the south. Races 786 to 1,560 in the north. We are almost there. Soon all will be explained to you. No more talking, please.”

Fifteen hundred sixty races on one planet? How big was this place?

The mother of races. The Well World, the Yaxa had called it.

They soon walked into the Yaxan embassy, where the rest of the party, plus one surprise, were already waiting, all as stripped to nothing as they had been.

Ghengis O’Leary, at least, was as tall as the average Yaxa, and much bulkier. He also was as huge in the areas otherwise hidden.

Where is the Master? Beta queried Alpha.

They will only say that he is being treated. Impossible to verify. We need more data to act, however. I am absolutely certain that the Yaxan statement that they would kill us without a second thought is correct, so resistance is profitless at this point.

Well, that was a relief, Ari thought.

The Yaxan Marines were there, all right, and they were at the ready. They probably all looked very different to one another, but to anybody there in the chamber, they looked absolutely identical.

Ari looked around. “How did it miss grabbing the Kharkovs?”

“I think it provides an exit to those who require an exit,” Jeremiah Kincaid responded. “They didn’t need an exit.”

“I didn’t need an exit!” Tann Nakitt snapped. “I was ready to go home!”

“You weren’t going home with all that spy data locked in your head, Nakitt,” O’Leary told him. “That’s why your ship didn’t come. Somehow it knew this, even if you yourself didn’t. Maybe from my mind, or Kincaid’s. I’m surprised to be here, too, for all that. Maybe I wanted Josich, or at least closure, more than I realized.”

“You look a little odd, Martinez,” Kincaid noted. “Are you all right?”

“Um, yes, sure. I’m just cold, that’s all.”

“I can understand that. What about Wallinchky? He still alive?”

“When they took him away he was, or at least I think he was. After that, couldn’t say. We had rifles up our asses.”

“Well, you made the right decision to come here and not fight them for him,” Kincaid assured them. “The Yaxa are all females, all born warriors, and they’re quick, smart, and with something of a hive discipline. You better believe they would pull the trigger.”

Ari sighed. “Yeah.” He sat on the floor with the others, finding it no more comfortable. “So how long do we wait?”

“I suspect that’s up to our hosts,” Kincaid said. “At least we’ve been able to determine that the first batch, including Josich, came through here.”