The Sea is Full of Stars

for pabas entrails, and if I eat them when he’s awake, I suffer…” He shrugged, and they went out and floated down to the restaurant level. She got her favorite dish, he got some seasoned sea grain cakes, and they started to eat as Ari began to stir. She wolfed down the dish before he got clear of who, what, and where, but not quite fast enough.

Ugh! Yuk! You aren’t putting those things into my stomach, are you?

It’s my stomach, too, and I can feed it what I want. If you don’t like it, next time you wake up early. Aloud she said, “Ari’s here.”

Too late to stop it and too full to top it off with something he liked and she detested, he settled for coming to the fore. “So, Inspector, you have a group of traitors at high levels. Are you going to root them out?”

“We know some of them,” he told them. “The rest—well, it’s a secret organization but they’re almost all amateurs. I found it interesting that she said that most of the delegation wasn’t their people. It’s an interesting revelation. There’s only a dozen going—the rest will be commuting back and forth from here via the Gate. Not a lot of room in Zone when thousands will be there representing all the races, since only the border areas of Zone are really useful. We’ll be looking closely at any of them. A couple are undergoing personal changes, so it’s hard to tell the physical from the treason sometimes.”

“Really?” This was interesting. “What sort of changes?”

“Well, the two members of the Cabinet who were both male and still young enough to bear kids are undergoing changes to the feminine. That’s not usually the case unless there’s already been a big loss of life, or it’s so stressful that the fear can be cut with a knife. That level’s not here, but it’s going on. A couple of the older guys, including the Premier, who are by far too old for that sort of change, have been seeing medical counselors lately, and all for the same reason. Impotence.”

That got both their attentions, and they were suddenly of one mind.

“Inspector—am I turning—’fem,’ as the broker called it? Physically?”

“I can see some of the signs, but it’s hard to tell with Ming in there, too. I suspect nobody mistook her for a man when she was herself. Still, I could point to areas and say that, yes, it might be the early stages. I’ve had that myself, though; I’ve got early signs now. I’ve had it before. Sometimes it reverses, sometimes it happens. You never know.”

“Inspector, do a very quick research project,” they told him. “Call your office, ask them for current statistics on male-female changes, how many people have reported these changes, how many were female to male as well as male to female, how many older men are being treated for impotence or loss of desire, that sort of thing. I’m sure it can be done without breaking the bank or taking people forever to compile. You have basic computers. I think you may have a bigger problem than it seems.”

Shissik wasn’t sure if they were crazy or not, but they seemed so single-minded that he phoned in the assignment to the Data Section and was told they could probably have raw data in a couple of hours. He told them to go ahead and call him back with the data.

Now they floated out and across the broad plaza to Government Center, a series of not terribly high buildings that were totally artificial but had been built to resemble a grandiose coral reef. There were no living coral reefs in Kalinda; the water temperature was too cold and the shallows too few.

It was, however, not solid, but a series of buildings all blended together, giving a melted appearance; inside, it was quite busy although not terribly crowded.

They were escorted to a large office with real, huge fancy doors—a sign of status—and when the doors opened, they were almost sucked into a vast and opulent office. A huge shield with the oval and diamond was mounted on the back wall, and in front was a massive desk with very little on it, the mark of a Very Important Politician.

He was markedly older than most Kalindans they’d met, save a few seen in the alleys and clubs the previous evening, but he was immaculate right down to his professional smile. “Come in, come in! I am Ju Kwentza, Minister of the Interior. Inspector—please. Over there. I want to speak to this remarkable citizen—er, citizens, I suppose.”

And talk he did, although he did a little listening. Both of them wondered if he had impotence and loss of desire. Probably, but he was the one person in government who would never show up on a statistical table. The Ministry of the Interior, after all, ran the national police, both public and secret, and much of the internal security apparatus as well.

Finally he finished, they said a few more pleasantries, and he pushed a buzzer that brought in a young woman with a bunch of passes hung around her neck.

“Mellik, here, will give you passes. Then I think you should meet with the other from your region. We are most curious to see what effect it will have on her. So far not even drug therapy has been able to bring out very much. She’s rather passive, and not faking, I can assure you of that. We hope that perhaps getting you two, or three, or whatever, together might bring out something locked away.”

Ari put on the pass, as did Shissik, and they followed Mellik down a series of tubular corridors, through a number of security checkpoints—the guards, at least, seemed very military, and their weapons looked formidable— to a room with a lot of amenities but no particular view. A young female was inside, wearing an elaborate headset, and she seemed off in a world of her own.

“What is that she is using?” Ari asked Mellik.

“It is called an indoc, short for ‘indoctrinator,’ although that’s not what it’s being used for. She has been almost desperate to learn how to read Kalindan—you can see some children’s schoolbooks over there. This device can inject a great deal of rote memory material directly into the mind’s memory sectors and tie it in with the developing skill. It is generally used on those with grave reading problems or those who have been in situations where they never learned. It’s a miracle worker. But it has never, to my knowledge, been tried on someone not born and raised here.”

Originally developed for the Interior Ministry, I’d bet, for different purposes, Ming noted to Ari.

“Should we disturb her now, in mid-trance?” Ming asked Mellik, concerned about scrambling things up. A similar but much more sophisticated device, and in fact a whole family of devices, was common in the Realm and wouldn’t do harm unless you designed it to do so, but you never knew about such gadgets.

“It wouldn’t do much except truncate the lesson,” Mellik assured her. “But we’ll wait. The light is flashing on the control panel there in front of her. It’s almost done. Come.”

The program ended just as they entered, but for a moment the Other just floated there, eyes closed.

The moment Ari and Ming came close, they could feel the attraction, a sense of connection, a tie.

The Other could feel it, too, it seemed, because suddenly her eyes opened and she looked at the newcomer in front of her and gasped. “I know you,” she said, sounding somewhat confused. “Not like this, though. Like—Like…”

“Do you have any memories of us together?” Ming asked her, taking over again, this time with Ari’s agreement. “Do you remember any scenes? Any thoughts? Any names?”

The Other shook off the interrogation. It was too much too fast. “Remember—sisters,” she said. “Not sisters. Sisters who were one but not sisters. It’s—confused.”

Great! Ari said sarcastically. Looks like we got the Alpha or Beta model. No wonder she can’t remember much. Without the computer she’s nothing!

The Other gave a gasp and looked strangely at the newcomer. “There is—-someone else? How can there be you and not you? I—I do not understand.”

She heard me! Or at least sensed me! Ari exclaimed to Ming. Are you sure you want to go any further with this?

The Other looked totally confused, then reached out and grabbed their hand and held it, hard, in a firm handshake.

They both felt a connection, then an extreme shock, as if a bolt of electricity had hit them. A whole series of strange, bizarre images passed between them, back and forth, and they felt as if in a churning whirlpool, and were both too dizzy and too powerless to get out.

As soon as it happened, both observers saw the two stiffen and then seem to lapse into unconsciousness.