The Sea is Full of Stars

about it, but all of them thought it was a matter of symbiosis or twinning.

Kalindans moved from point to point using what were basically trains, except these were open cars, with the passenger belted in, and they traveled very fast along electromagnetic lines of force. It was exciting just seeing the world after being cooped up for so long, and fascinating to see the landscape as they passed, even if by means they had never used so readily in the artificial environment of the city. Virtually no light penetrated this far, and what life there was with some self-illumination was too weak to reveal anything but the creatures themselves. Still, it was as clear as day to them, seeing by sound and by reading magnetism, radiation, and changes in heat. It wasn’t colorful, but it was as detailed and precise as any vision they had ever experienced.

As with all high-tech civilizations, the place wasn’t what it used to be. The marks of Kalinda were all over, not just in small structures, the remnants of old commercial enterprises like mines and farms, and old physical roadways now disintegrating, but also in the surprising lack of abundant larger life-forms other than their own kind. Oh, there were some, scurrying across the bottom, swimming by here and there, and clustered in dense sea growths, but nothing they would have expected from an underwater paradise.

“You see the same story everywhere,” Shissik commented, not sounding upset. “Screw up the environment, change things, plow up all the plants in an area, dig out all the minerals from another that were also used as part of a local food chain’s diet, and you eventually wind up with a lot of desolation. It is the price of progress.”

They wondered about that, even as they knew a lot of the Realm had done exactly the same thing both under and above the waves. Still, Ari asked, “So all the high-tech hexes are as desolate? No exceptions?”

“Oh, there are exceptions, sure,” the Inspector answered uncomfortably. “Too late to restore here, though. You’d have to create something new. They’re always talking about it, since a lot of other hexes have compatible life-forms comparable to what was lost here, but then they cost it out in time and labor and it never gets anywhere. I think they all hope that one day we’ll crack the secret and be able to turn water and rock and sand into fields of sea grass, and recreate the now extinct crion and solander that used to be food staples here. But I doubt it. The Big Computer ain’t gonna allow anybody here to do that. It would make things impossible to manage. Some things, I think, are reserved for the gods.”

There was no way to answer that, given what they now knew and understood about the place. They’d been walled off from the world too long, while being too preoccupied with dealing with their own problem of separate personalities within the same body.

Instead of eventually merging into one combined new personality, Ari and Ming had grown more distinct, and each was more comfortable when in control. Since taking the left half of the body one way didn’t work if the right half was trying to go the other way, some compromise had been worked out. The fact was, everyone usually operated on automatic, a right/left consensus. For them, during any pause by one, the other assumed control if they wanted to do something or had something to say. Relax, and the other would reassert control. In a few cases, particularly arguments, it could get bizarrely comical, but for the most part it seemed to work.

After a lot of initial struggles for privacy, both had grown so used to the situation that they had relaxed their control and opposition when nothing was happening—which, during all this time, was a long part of their days. It had been facilitated by psychotherapy drugs administered in the hope that it would result in a third combined personality that was stable. It hadn’t done that, but it had opened Ari’s mind, his experiences, memories, personality, and outlook to Ming’s, all the way back to childhood, and it had opened her to him. In both cases it was a shock and a revelation. First to fall had been the “grass is greener” outlook by the sexes, as he discovered what it was like to be raised female and she discovered that it wasn’t easy to be raised male, either—just different. She found it a shock to see herself as a sexy and supercompetent intellectual woman she’d never met but would have liked to be, and he was disappointed to discover that she’d thought he was a pretty good one-night stand but no big deal.

Their cultural backgrounds could not be more different, but their resultant likes, dislikes, and general adult outlooks were surprisingly close. Still, the one basic factor that continued to create friction was his shaky moral compass and her strong sense of right and wrong. Where she saw most things as absolutes, he saw only compromises.

But they were becoming lovers now, in an odd sort of way, simply because each could fully comprehend the other’s views and their different take on things. The sincerity of his guilt and remorse at what had happened was beyond doubt and made things much easier.

There were, however, gaps in both their memories. Not big things, but a ton of little things, things they should know, should remember about their growing up and past careers. For example, she could not visualize her mother. She could think of a hundred things they’d done together and recall how she felt, but there was no face, no voice there. He had the knowledge of his long studies to get his accreditation as a business analyst and consultant, but he had no memory of where he’d studied to get that, nor with whom. It was weird. He could catch glimpses of places, but he didn’t have anything to hang them on.

In the end they decided that eighty to ninety percent of each of them was in that one brain. But where was the rest of them? Had it been edited? Replaced? Damaged in the process? Or was it in somebody else’s head?

They needed to know, and the authorities in Kalinda needed to know, just where these strange people would fit into the coming troubles, and deal with them early on. And thus it was that they were free, and on their way to the capital city of Kalinda, to meet the one they both only thought of as the Other.

“There is Jinkinar!” Shissik announced, pointing, and out of the gloom in front of them was a startling vision, all color and heat and straight lines. It was a vast fairyland of a city with spires reaching high into the darkness above, and it throbbed with life. It made Mahakor look like a tiny provincial suburb; this was one hell of a metropolis.

The “train” came in high over much of the city, yet still below some of the tallest buildings, and then descended near the city center, toward what had to be the capital building, from its grandiose and excessive design and waste of space. A long platform about three stories above street level jutted out from a building and provided a landing zone. Riders could exit either way and directly into the water to their right, but if you had a lot of luggage or wanted to form a group, the platform was handy.

Living in a deep, dark environment where the sun never shined had created a round-the-clock urban culture. Cities never closed; shifts changed, usually staggered to keep people from literally clogging things up, but they were always around. It made for high productivity, and a great deal was manufactured in Kalinda both for domestic use and, most particularly, for export to other high-tech hexes and even lower-level technologies whose limitations prevented them from producing certain goods themselves. Once, in ancient history, only rich people could afford pins because each had to be made or machined by hand; an automated high-tech pin-making plant could make billions per day, and even nontech societies could use pins.

There were countless such products that an industrial society could make and trade, and if a nontech hex could not make the factories run, well, it had some resources, be they agricultural products, raw minerals, art of all sorts, that were of use to high-tech hexes that had fouled their own agricultural land and mined every last mineral from their soil. Although they were omnivores, there was simply no way that Kalinda could feed itself, not now. But trawlers could bring in vast quantities of fish and shellfish, well-packed and stored sea grains and undersea plant delicacies, and lower them down into the deeps. Meanwhile, other ships, with orders from a hundred different hexes, would dock and load large containers of manufactured products at the island docks above.

It was now taken for granted that most Kalindans did not see the irony of trawlers carrying fish to the sea.

It also made them incredibly vulnerable, both Ari and Ming realized.

“If anybody got control of surface shipping, you’d be starved into submission in a matter of weeks,” Ari commented.

“Oh, we have vast reserves in great freezers and in specially sealed containers,” Shissik responded, “and no one is ever truly isolated here because of the Zone Gate, but you are right. Eventually, if someone could drive all the shipping away, they would own us. Once the reserves were depleted, you could not bring enough in through Zone per day to feed all of these people, and if our topside power plants were also blown, well, yes, I see what you mean.” He clearly didn’t like the idea, but it reminded him why Kalinda wanted them at the conference.

“We will check in at the Interior Ministry and get our papers and permits in order, then you will find lodging over there in the government employees’ hostel.”

“What about you? Where will you stay?”