The Sea is Full of Stars

other species—had two halves to their brains. In the Kalindan case, according to the biology text, the brain was divided much like the Type Forty-ones. Just a comparison of how she talked, her problems in coming up with relatively simple terms for some things, was a textbook case of the sort he’d studied in braindamaged victims. She was entirely in the right side of this body’s brain. She clearly had a dominant left hand and left side; the right barely moved. She thought in pictures rather than words, and had to grope for verbal expression. He was surprised she had much of a vocabulary at all; it must have been how the stuff was stored up. Ari was over on the left side. He’d been right-handed almost to a fault. He’d been verbose, but totally incapable of interpreting or doing graphics. Sooner or later these two were both going to be awake and aware at the same time. He wasn’t sure whether that meant cooperation or a mental lockup.

Still, laboriously, he got much of the story from her that overlapped Ari’s long recorded themes and variations, and they did tend to confirm each other when they matched up.

Finally he asked her the big questions. “If you and Ari are both in the same body, do you think at some point you can come to terms with each other? The alternative is madness, you know.”

“We must. It—It will be hard. He did shoot me, and when that bad dream was done to me, he did not do one thing to stop it. But I do not want to die, so I have to learn to live like this.”

“Why do you want to live?”

“I want to see the faces of the ones who did that to us when they are caught or die. I want to stop them. If Ar—if he helps, he will be on the good side.”

And the kicker. “What do you think would happen if you came face-to-face with this Jules Wallinchky again? Knew it was him no matter what he looked and sounded like here. Would you have to obey him? Would that programming and conditioning appear again?”

She had been mulling that over herself. “I—I do not know. I wish I did. I hope not.” She paused a moment. “Do you know where he is? What he is?”

“Not yet. Right now we aren’t even certain that he was still alive when he went through. We know pretty well where and what everyone else is. A couple have memory problems much worse than yours, although not two people in one body, so it’s so far been impossible to match some to the names. Still, so far there is no unaccounted-for odd one. Either both you and Ari are truly in this body and count as two, in which case he is one of the ones with no memory, or he’s someone and something we haven’t come across yet. It is entirely possible that this could happen. At the moment, though, we have much more serious problems than finding everyone. We have every evidence that a nasty, wider war is building. It may well come our way. Until then, you two may have to work out your own truce.”

Ming? Is that really you?

She had been sitting in the room that was a low security cell of sorts on the fifth level, staring out at the complex beyond through electrically charged bars, when she heard him in her mind.

She made no effort to speak aloud. Yes, I think so. You are…? A holographic memory picture of Ari as he was came up.

Yes, it’s Ari. This is—strange. I was linked up with you when you were one of Uncle Jules’s grotesque creations, but this is you/ This is a real person!

You made me into that thing. You shot me. You gave me to Jules.

Her stream of thought was clear but unusual, composed less of words than of a series of images. Images of actions, images of people old and new, images of startling if subjective quality. Clearly she could understand everything he or anyone else was saying, but her method of communication was almost entirely visual. With trouble she could create simple sentences, but he found he had to prompt her for her to properly think of certain words. Still, it was easy to have an exchange, and it certainly felt like her. Or sort of like her. She seemed to bubble with emotions, to use them in her communication as well. He understood them but didn’t have that kind of intensity; in fact, he realized, he felt curiously cold and detached.

Still, they began a dialogue, one at the speed of thought, back and forth, simultaneous and intertwined, yet never synthesized into one. She had the right brain and a little bit of linkage to the left allowing very basic vocalizations; he had the left, and all the words and phrases and cold mathematical abilities that were both present and latent, and maybe some left over from the union with Beta.

Ming, I had no choice. I think I was just a more subtle version of what he did to you, only I didn’t even know it. I hated what he did. You can see and feel that; I can’t hide much from you like this. I wanted none of it. I had to do it. Look into me, check my memories such as they are, and you will see that I’m telling the truth.

Incredibly, to her, he did open up, drop virtually all the barriers, let her poke and probe and look at memories and feelings he’d had, the memories now stored throughout the left brain. She found no evidence that his uncle had him under that kind of control, but he certainly had some of it implanted or he could never have been linked to Beta. If in fact he had a transmitter and receiver in his old, original head, he might well be telling the truth. Or it may not have been necessary. He believed that it had been done to him, though, and that was as good as she could expect.

She also found other things. Guilt over some of his actions, which suggested some free will, but whether he was rationalizing or was enslaved and didn’t realize it was beside the point now. His genuine affection for her, his feelings when he saw her after a year’s absence on the City of Modar, was more instructive. He’d actually been smitten by her; his feelings of affection were undeniable. She’d never suspected that depth in him for anybody, least of all her.

We are stuck with each other now, she noted.

More than if we were married, he agreed. So now what do we do? We’re in a single body that needs both sides of us to be whole, but I don’t want it to be that way. I would much rather that you had one body and I another and we could still get this closeness. This is a chance to start anew, but here we start as freaks.

Well, we cannot change what is. What do we do about it? How do we live the rest of our life?

As partners. We can’t do anything else. Partners, or we die and be done with it. I would love to know, though, who that other one they have is or was, and how much memory and personality remains buried there.

I think the same. And where is poor Angel? Can she be the other? We need to know. And we need to find your uncle. And kill him.

He gave a sigh that, oddly, came only out of the left side of the mouth. If we can, he replied. If we can…

Ambora

Jaysu was no longer empty, nor was her loyalty and devotion in the least bit questioned by her people. In the morning, after devotions, she would often be chosen to go to those readying for the dawn patrol, and fly with them as their blessing and messenger to the gods.

The people, too, now accepted her as an acolyte of the temple and loyal member of the clan, an orphan foundling who had been taken in and raised as one of them, with the Most Ancient God as father and the High Priestess as mother, and the other priestesses, adepts, and acolytes her sisters.

Like them, she had no doubts about their primacy among all the clans of Ambora, nor that their faith was the true one. She saw and felt the gods and spirits in all things, and acknowledged and accepted their power and primacy over all of them. They were to a one the willing servants of all the gods, and dependent upon them for all that was good. The prayers were always simple ones, for those the gods appreciated. For enough food so that all of the clan might eat and be in strength, for enough skill and faith so that no enemy might overcome them, for forgiveness from all sins, for health so that they could serve their gods and their clan, and for shelter against the