The Sea is Full of Stars

Immediately, Mellik and Shissik rushed to them, attempting unsuccessfully to loosen the death grip and pry the two apart. Then each took one and they pulled, trying to pry them apart, but failing.

“Get a doctor down here to knock ’em out, and get some of the biggest guards you can!” Shissik snapped to Mellik. “We’ve got to break this up!”

But drugs appeared to do nothing, and it was still beyond their strength to separate them. One particularly beefy guard suggested chopping the hands off, but this was rejected as being too late to do much good.

It went on for almost three hours, but at the end the grips of each loosened on their own and both bodies floated in place, unconscious. Perhaps because of the drugs, but more likely due to shock, they didn’t wake up for a while. When they did, it was together.

For Ari and Ming, finding each other still in the same head came as a bizarre relief. They would have preferred separates, but not in the state they were in now, and not with somebody else also lurking.

What the hell was that? I feel positively drained! Ming exclaimed.

I’m not sure. For a time, I thought I was in her body, then back here, but then I got too dizzy and passed out.

They heard shouting, then Shissik rushed into the room, stopped and looked at them, even as a medic arrived to examine them.

“Who are you?” the Inspector asked.

“Ari—and Ming. Same as before. At least, I think we are. You’ll have to be the judge of that. How would we know?”

“Hmm… Recount my conversation with Ming about your visitor. As much detail as you can, including what breakfast was like.”

Ari did so, suitably outraged at the breakfast choice, as always.

Shissik then asked to speak to Ming, and quizzed her on earlier conversations and on her background. Finally he asked her, “You are satisfied that you are back to normal and that Ari is Ari?”

“Yes, of course! Why do you ask?”

They were suddenly aware of another presence behind them, and managed to get out of the medic’s examination long enough to turn and gasp.

“Hey! Wait a minute! We haven’t been Kalindan that long, but I’d swear that that’s our body!” Ari exclaimed.

“No, it’s our body,” the other one responded. “You are the Other.”

Ari and Ming looked at Shissik, who nodded. “I’m afraid so. You’re in the young female’s head. The one that didn’t appear to have anything in it. And they seem to have the same information and the same memory and the same dual personalities that you now do.”

“My God! How is that possible? I thought we were a one of a kind Well of Souls processing error!” Ming II responded.

“Apparently something inside the other one connected and caused the entire contents of your brain to be copied as a mirror image to the brain of the other here,” Shissik told them. “It certainly would have been more practical if just one of you had transferred, but it’s done. It will be interesting to discover if there are any variations in the two of you. There seems to be some. They woke up before you did.”

“Then—we’re the copy!” Ming II asked, incredulous. “I don’t feel like a copy!”

“Me neither,” Ari put in.

“We must assume so. The question is, how exact a copy are you two? If something, some routine, was lurking inside the Other waiting for such a contact, where is that ‘something’ now? And what is it?”

“But—But…” There was no making sense of this.

“And by the way,” Ari I said to them, “our hunch was right. There’s been a nationwide surge of conversions to female, a regular epidemic of loss of desire and impotence on the part of any male too old to change over. As of two weeks ago, there has not been one single reported case of female to male. In fact, even some well along are reversing. And as all births are gender neutral until puberty, there are no new males from that quarter either.

“My God! That’s what the woman was talking about, then! Slow genocide. They won’t even have to starve us. A nation of females. No more children. And they alone have the cure, I bet. How is this possible! I thought the all-powerful Well of Souls computer was supposed to make this kind of imbalance impossible!”

“We don’t have an explanation, not yet,” Shissik told them. “Not until the meeting next week will we hear the best suppositions about it. There is some feeling, though, that when you all were reprocessed through the Well you somehow—broke it. There is supposedly some sort of fix-it deity or computer repairman or some such that comes and fixes it when it breaks, but if he’s here, there’s no sign of it. It may well be that the Well doesn’t know that anything’s wrong…

South Zone

Around much of the southern hemisphere, they gathered up their staffs and runners and went to the centers of their hexes, the movers and shakers, the foreign and defense chiefs, often the political chiefs and their top aides. All else was being coordinated from back in their home capitals, using the Well Gate to get messages and requests for consultations and data back to them as things proceeded.

Both sets of Kalindans were there with the others, notably Mellik, who turned out to be a psychologist working for Interior, basically keeping an eye on them, as well as the Premier, Magnosik; Corrivit the Defense Minister; and Chaskrit, Foreign Minister. All the high officials were there with two aides, making for a larger delegation than was specified. They didn’t care, nor did most of the other races, it appeared. They brought whoever they wanted and stuffed them in someplace.

There was room, of course. Not everybody showed up, including, thankfully, anyone from Chalidang, although with some cheek, there was a small Cromlin delegation. These somewhat colorful lobsterlike creatures had not been directly involved as yet in any conflict, but it turned out that the number three in the delegation was in fact a reprocessed one himself, and had been physically, and remained mentally, Josich the Emperor Hadun’s half brother.

Nakitti thought it was a damned weird conference anyway. More critters than you could imagine, and no auditorium for more than a hundred people who all breathed the same stuff. Basically, it was done on monitors beamed to the reception rooms of the embassies, so there wasn’t a lot of interaction except in the corridors and going to and from the Zone Gate. There was a constant stream of creatures, some not very friendly, in a two-way parade.

For a semitech hex, the Ochoan Embassy was plush and high tech. Even a lot of the nontech hexes enjoyed the luxuries of technological comfort here, which often spoiled those posted here for going back home. For instance, there was a system for ordering or obtaining whatever food and drink you liked; no need to send home. Bring your favorite delicacies, have them zapped by the computerized stations, and within minutes it became part of the database. Then, anytime you wanted it, you just ordered it and there it was, perfectly synthesized and delivered to a food station near you. Better than home, really, because you knew this hadn’t been anywhere else, and thus contained only pure food. Wines? Give the machine a sample, and it would deliver bottles or jars as required. There was little this system couldn’t handle except volume; it wasn’t designed for mobs of people per embassy, and the more orders that came in at once, the slower the system became. For that reason, some of the hall traffic was simply going home for dinner; others were bringing catering, some of which, on the way to being eaten, tried to eat other creatures going by.

Nakitti had no trouble figuring all this out; once you recognized a food that was the equivalent of something you knew, it wasn’t that hard to manage. This explained why she was gaining weight even though her bill pouch was nearly empty, and why some of the things she’d been eating were rather strange to the other Ochoans. It was disappointing to discover that some old favorites were now repulsive to her tastes, but rich, dark chocolate and