The Sea is Full of Stars

but while it was easy to see that they could do a lot of tasks performed by more normal hands or even tentacles, it was impossible to figure out how those reptilian eyes could see what it was doing under there. The body was about four meters long and as thick as O’Leary had been as a Terran male, and it slithered slowly but quite firmly into place and curled itself up, leaving only the head and hood resting on top. Unlike a snake, its tongue did not go in and out constantly; there was a sense that it had both a keen sense of smell and ears buried somewhere in the head or hood.

Equally striking was the back of the creature, which was mottled and gave a false but clear impression of having feathers on a part of it, and, just below the hood, sported a bizarre set of upfolded wings that looked leathery, more like an Ochoan wing than an Amboran’s, but with the same multicolored, featherlike pattern. Its underside was bluish-white and quite uniform. If it weren’t for the wings and the extra length, it would have reminded some of the water types of a large land manta ray.

“I know, you’re all wondering what the devil I am,” O’Leary said conversationally. “Well, we’re called Pyron, it’s what’s called a nontech hex, we’re not reptiles but warmblooded, it’s a bisexual race, and I’m a man. Truth to tell, there are some real interesting qualities to this body and this race, although I wouldn’t have chosen it myself, and the thing I miss most is what I’ve been finding here—the comforts of technology.”

“Do those wings work?” Nakitti asked, fascinated if a bit nervous, considering the relative size of the creature to herself.

O’Leary chuckled. “If you mean can I fly like a bird, no. Can I fly like an Ochoan, even? No. Can I push off from a rock and glide at a fair speed in any sort of headwind? Yes. It’s rather difficult to explain the other uses, but let us say I don’t float in the air.”

“How long have you been here, O’Leary?” Ari asked him.

“Since before the conference began. I’ve been in the offices here trying to trace you all down, truth be told, and see what became of you. Rather an odd lot compared to how we arrived, I’d say.”

“More important to us is where this Pyron is,” Nakitti noted. “If you’re on the other side of the world from the rest of us, you’re no help.”

“Yes, I thought of that,” he admitted. “In fact, I’m southeast of you all and one hex away from the Overdark, although the hex between is high tech and inhabited by giant dancing jack-o’-lanterns, and as we’re not partial to vegetables, we get along quite well, you see.”

They let that one pass. Those who understood the jack-o’-lantern reference simply didn’t want to know.

“Are you poisonous?” the Ochoan pressed.

“Of course! But of more importance, I can swallow a good-sized cuttlefish whole.” And, with that, he gave a huge yawn, revealing a mouth as much like a great cat’s as a snake’s, but clearly able to swallow a large animal. “I have a cuttlefish that slipped my net and I don’t like it. I think that’s why I’m here. I want to finish this job, and if that means goin’ fishin’, then so be it.”

Nakitti nodded and turned back to the High Commissioner. “Sir, what do you know about Josich? I don’t mean the gory details of her rapid rise, but beyond that?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Dukla replied. “Explain.”

“I think you do, to some extent. I think that’s why you called this gathering. You’ve seen the entry recordings that I have seen, and heard the comments. From the indoctrination lecture as well as what we’re told in the hexes we’re assigned to, we’ve been drilled with this system, this history, all of it. But we aren’t the only ones where some of us broke the rules. You said that it’s a one-way trip here, yet Josich clearly knew precisely where he was when he got here. That implies that either he was here before or that somebody left and told him. Now he appears with this knowledge and manages to wind up pretty much the same sort of creature he was when we knew him. About the only thing different is he’s a woman here, and that seems to have actually made it easier for him to rise quickly. His four half brothers haven’t been here but are still under some kind of orderly plan, and they wind up in key hexes very close to Chalidang. This is quite a coincidence when you consider what happened to us. Look around. Pyron, Kalinda, Ochoa—what was yours, dear?”

“Ambora,” Jaysu responded.

“Right. Very different, rather random, and with the hexes spread over Hell and gone. I think we’re all within reach of the Overdark, but the Overdark’s six thousand kilometers wide! Never mind the amnesia and the two-in- ones, it’s mostly as advertised anyway. Not Josich. His brothers wind up close, as an armored, semitech water civilization that’s almost a natural ally to Chalidang; another is a high-tech hex of those who live in water but breathe air. A third is land-based, somewhat like giant bugs, and can march right up rock walls. The fourth are the sea slugs that can hypnotize you into marching right into their bellies. The only thing he missed was a flying race, and you get the feeling he only missed that because either he was rushed or because not all the party he was transporting here made it, thanks to Inspector O’Leary and his friends. He stole that device to deliberately trigger the Gate. He just was a tad premature, or the gods know what we’d be facing now!”

For a while the High Commissioner said nothing, but finally he responded, “Yes, we do see the same things. I hadn’t been as aware of the circumstances as you have outlined, but I noticed from the recordings and from his and his brothers’ actions that they seemed to be rather well-organized for those who just drop in here. It’s not unprecedented to wind up in the same race, provided such a race is still one of the active ones here and also certain very strict conditions are met. Usually it’s when someone has a well-established pregnancy. The Well is programmed to safeguard life, and adapting someone to a whole different race while also adapting a still developing fetus is simply not done. But the Haduns were all male when they arrived. Josich is the only female after processing, in fact, although the Quacksans are asexual. I had to believe it was coincidental, but there were always those doubts deep down, no matter how much I didn’t want to think on it.”

“Josich was definitely born a Hadun in the pre-Realm Confederation,” O’Leary assured them. “His birth and upbringing, his entire history, was quite well known.”

Core was equally skeptical. “Josich could not have interfaced with the core computer of one of the worlds of the Ancient Ones,” it maintained. “I was as well-equipped as any in all creation to do so, and the basics of it were so far beyond anything our advanced civilization understood it bordered on magic.”

“You were a computer,” Ming pointed out. “Maybe you still are, I think. You can’t believe in magic!”

“Magic,” Core responded, “is anything observable and perhaps repeatable that cannot be explained in terms of any existing knowledge on the part of the observer. To your own ancestors, all this would be magic. To us, well —we have an excellent example right here. The Amboran is magic. Some of her remarkable abilities are easily explained, of course— a natural telepathy, an uncanny ability to identify an individual from the data in our own minds and then identify him in a vast location like Zone, and who knows what other attributes? The radiant glow— hardly a defensive condition, but one that can inspire fear, awe, respect, if that one does not need a defense. A unique multigenerational evolutionary advance in her species? Perhaps. But since all of this is conjecture and leaves some holes, right at the moment she is magic.”

The point was taken.

“Well, enough of this,” Nakitti said grumpily. “It’s good to see you all, but none of you have the enemy at your gates and a native population where most of them are so fat and corrupt they won’t even realize they’re conquered when they lose. We had military commanders who refused to test-fire coastal guns because it would make the guns dirty! Can you imagine such a thing? I tell you, if I had more time I know enough chemistry that I have a whole raft of nobles I could cheerfully poison in the old-fashioned Ghoman way! Instead I’ve got the ear of the only man with common sense in the whole damned kingdom, and he and I have two weeks to come up with a defense against a concerted land-sea assault.”

“You seem convinced they are coming your way,” Dukla noted. “Others do not think so.”

“One look at the map and the composition of the enemy so far, not to mention all those shiploads of refugees passing through who now have established nice fifth columns in friendly other countries all over the Overdark region, and you’ll see it can’t be anywhere else. It’s far enough, and Chalidang so far has conquered only neighboring hexes, so others can’t see it. It is an ancient game, but very much in the traditions of great generals. Josich has her most dedicated forces. Now she takes control of all shipping on the world’s largest ocean. The few Well Gates here can’t handle but a trickle of supplies. Most of the high-tech hexes are so comfortable by now that they can’t even repair breakdowns. They import what they need. But they can produce massive quantities of gas-