The door opened slowly, and they all trained their weapons on it, ready to fire as soon as the creature was visible.
It was the Ghiskind"s ptir, against which they had only the energy pistols, but they fired anyway.
Which played right into the Ghiskind"s hand.
The shots ignited a series of smoke and concussion grenades attached to the creature; these went off with a deafening roar that almost blew the door apart and filled the entire area with a dense, acrid yellow smoke.
Everyone was blinded, and Yulin started coughing. As he did so, something struck him hard on the back of the head and neck, knocking him down and rendering him semiconscious. His pistol skidded into the yellow fog.
The Ghiskind, its sh.e.l.l destroyed by the blasts, drifted across the room to the two horselike creatures it saw cowering helplessly against the far wall and entered the first one it encountered, taking control. Suddenly animated, Mavra made for the Torshind"s crystal sh.e.l.l and plowed right into it, sending it sprawling. The horse reared and with its forelegs struck the fragile crystal form repeatedly, shattering it like gla.s.s.
The fog began to clear, allowing Trelig and Vistaru-who were wearing the breathers from their s.p.a.cesuits-to join the action.
The Torshind abandoned its ptir for the body nearest it-Wooley"s. The Yaxa was surprised, but the Torshind knew the Yaxa system well and was in complete control almost immediately. It quickly turned on Trelig, spitting the brownish substance.
The material didn"t devastate the reptile as it had the Agitar, but the goo did blind him for a minute. Wooley then turned to the horse, which was finishing the job on the Torshind"s sh.e.l.l, and raised its pistol.
Joshi, still amazed at Mavra"s jumping into the fight, noticed Wooley"s threat to her, although none of the others did. Without thinking, he leaped to the center of the room, placing himself between the Yaxa and Mavra, who was just turning around.
The pistol fired full-force, enveloping Joshi in a blinding electrical light that flickered like a photographic negative and then faded into nothingness.
Seeing this, Mavra"s mind suddenly exploded, expelling the Ghiskind with unexpected force. "Joshi!" she screamed and started for the Yaxa. Disoriented, the Ghiskind followed just above her, almost as if attached. Vistaru, who had managed to fly out of the smoke, saw what had happened and dived for the Yaxa.
At this moment, Ben Yulin was rising shakily to his feet and noticed a blur of motion from the corner of his eye. Lunging for a saddlebag, he flung it with full force at the shape. The saddlebag struck Vistaru straight on, knocking her to the floor and pinning her under it.
She looked up to see Mavra"s horselike form bearing down on the possessed Yaxa, whose pistol rose to meet the threat.
"Kally! For G.o.d"s sake fight it! Take control! My G.o.d, Kally! She"s our granddaughter! My G.o.d, Kally! She"s our granddaughter!" the Lata screamed.
A tentacle tried to squeeze the trigger, but could not. The Yaxa body convulsed, and Mavra Chang struck, knocking over the Yaxa and landing on top of the b.u.t.terfly-creature.
Trelig, meanwhile, spied Yulin picking up his pistol, and leaped for the minotaur. Yulin whirled, saw the frog, dived-and the Makiem sailed over him.
Like a swimmer in a sprint, Trelig didn"t miss a stroke. He turned in midair, and his powerful webbed feet struck the wall, propelling him forward again. He landed, somersaulted, and rose with a pistol on Yulin.
And Yulin had his pistol on Trelig.
The Ghiskind, atop Mavra, regained its senses from the stunning mental blow it had received. No mind that strong had ever been experienced by it or any other Yugash.
In the meantime, Mavra extricated herself from the convulsing Yaxa to avoid being crushed. Clearly, a major battle was being fought within the shiny yellow-black head.
Trelig and Yulin looked at each other. "Standoff," Trelig chuckled. "How about a truce, Ben? We"re old friends. Let"s see how the rest of this comes out. You and me, together again on New Pompeii!"
Yulin"s big brown eyes shined, his manner softened. The pistol dipped slightly. "Okay, Antor. Partners this time, though. Right?"
Trelig kept one of his eyes on Yulin while the other followed the drama being played out on the floor.
And it was clear now who was winning.
Slowly and unsteadily, the Torshind emerged from the body of the Yaxa; Wooley collapsed and was still.
The Ghiskind immediately hurled itself at the emerging ghostly red figure. As the two met, their forms became less distinct, just a blurry dull-red sheet of energy, a ball of dull fire suspended two meters or so above the floor.
While this was occurring, Vistaru managed to free herself of the heavy saddlebags and rose groggily to her feet. She looked around, saw Yulin and Trelig through the thin yellow haze not three meters apart, pistols half on each other but attention mostly on the drama now in the center of the room.
Mavra lay unnaturally on her side, still but breathing hard. Huge, thick tears fell from the horse"s eyes.
The fight between the two Yugash had intensified. The energy sphere grew denser, more compact, and more intense. Now, suddenly, there was but a single glowing bright-red ball, almost too bright to look at, in the air above the room. It was about the size of a grapefruit.
There was a sudden, violent explosion and thunder reverberated along the halls of the building, rattling part.i.tions, doors, and anything else that was loose. The odor of ozone was sharp.
Then, so dim that it could hardly be seen, a figure dropped to the floor and seemed to inflate, like a balloon. It moved slightly, but was terribly weak and stunned, that was obvious.
One of the Yugash had survived.
"Which one?" Vistaru breathed. "I wonder which one?"
Trelig turned slightly to face her. "We"ll only find out when it can get into a body," he said. "Until then-"
His words were cut short as Yulin, taking advantage of Trelig"s preoccupation, suddenly dropped to one knee and fired directly at the frog. As Joshi"s had, Trelig"s form froze in fire, seemed to become a negative of itself, then winked out with a flash.
Antor Trelig had made the first mistake of his long life, and now he was dead.
Vistaru gasped and had her own pistol from its little holster in an instant. Yulin turned to face her, gun ready, and saw that she had him cold.
He paused, shrugged, and tossed his own energy pistol away to the other side of the room where it fell with a clatter.
The Lata was amazed.
"Why?" she asked him in wonder.
He laughed. "I"m your only way into Obie now," he reminded her. "And the only pilot with hands. I think it"s time for a merger."
Vistaru didn"t trust him, but was uncertain as to what to do. Mavra was apparently in shock; the Yugash, whichever it was, was badly hurt and unable to communicate; Wooley was out cold; Trelig was gone; the rest of her allies were out cold or dead.
She and Ben Yulin were the only whole and conscious people in the room, perhaps in the whole building.
Yulin stood up and looked around. His ma.s.sive bull"s head surveyed the wreckage of bodies, the charred and smashed equipment.
"G.o.d! What a mess!" he breathed.
The Launch Complex Four Hours Later
Bozog attendants wheeled out the last of the problem cases, janitorial crews swabbed down the floor, and blowers cleansed the air. Several decisions had been made by the survivors, which had pared things down nicely.
Of them all, Renard had been the least hurt; the paralysis from the Yaxa venom wore off within an hour of the battle. Wooley was slower to recover; she had lost some blood in the first clash and had a debilitating headache as a result of the second. Burodir and the centaurs were sent to the Zone Gate for return home. The form of a Yugash still lay on the floor, indistinct but definitely alive. The survivors still had no idea which Yugash had survived; to most of their tastes, it would have been better if the two enemies had destroyed each other.
And now they sat-just Renard, Wooley, Yulin, Vistaru, and Mavra Chang-and the odd red form on the floor.
With Bozog help, they"d managed to get Mavra to her feet; she hadn"t made any protest, just remained limp and gla.s.sy-eyed.
Ben Yulin looked her over carefully, trying to get some reaction, but none was forthcoming. "Think it was the Yugash battle that did it?" he asked casually.
Wooley, still nursing her head, emitted a sigh that sounded like metal sc.r.a.ping gla.s.s. "No, I don"t think so. Certainly her experience would have been no worse than what I went through, which was bad enough-and I surely had the crazy one. The creature was totally insane, its thoughts flooded into my brain somehow. It hated us-it hated all of us, everything and everybody. It was incredible. And I almost lost. If Vistaru hadn"t yelled . . ."
"So what is wrong with her?" Vistaru asked, perplexed. "Why won"t she say anything?"
Renard, now cleaned up thanks to a chemical suggested by Wooley and provided by the Bozog, got to his feet and walked over to her.
Twenty-two years, he thought. She has changed more than I; she had a nasty life for that period while I enjoyed things. The guilt he felt was mixed with admiration for her. She was here, she"d come this far. He was also convinced that she"d survived because of her total egoism, her absolute belief in self, in the ability to do anything no matter what the odds.
He looked at her. "Come on, snap out of it!" he said sharply. "You"re Mavra Chang, d.a.m.n it. Perhaps you loved him, cared for him as wife or mother, but you"ve gone through that before! You never let it get to you! You survived! You triumphed! That"s what life"s all about to you! The chase is coming to a climax after all this time! Come on! You can"t give up now!"
He sensed a flicker in her eyes, minimal animation, fleeting but nonetheless very real. She heard him and understood him all right.
"Don"t you think you"re being a little hard on her?" Vistaru asked, concerned.
"Let him be, Star," Wooley whispered. "Let"s face it, he knows her a lot better than we."
The Lata nodded silently. "You feeling as guilty and rotten as I am?" she asked after a moment. Wooley didn"t reply.
Renard threw up his hands in exasperation and walked over to them. "So much for psychology," he sighed and sat back down. They were silent a time, and Yulin drowsed off. Finally, Renard turned to Wooley and Vistaru. "Are you really really her grandparents?" he asked. her grandparents?" he asked.
Vistaru nodded. "Yes-although I didn"t know it until Ortega told me. This This b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s known for over twenty years, but didn"t even tell me when we met on that island and joined forces to find her." b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s known for over twenty years, but didn"t even tell me when we met on that island and joined forces to find her."
Wooley chirped a dry chuckle. The Yaxa couldn"t manage to change its cold voice, but there seemed an extra dimension of humanity, of warmth in it somehow. "You want to tell him the story, or should I?" she asked.
The Lata shrugged. "I"ll start and you can join in any time you want." She turned to face Renard. "Let"s see-where to begin. I suppose we ought to go way back, to the first of our three lives."
Yulin was suddenly awake and interested, too. "Three lives?" he said. lives?" he said.
Vistaru nodded. "I was born on a Comworld, one of those where you are made into little plastic ten-year-old neuters and raised and conditioned only for a specific function. The theory"s to produce a society much like an insect colony-and it works, after a fashion. I was called Vardia Diplo-I was a courier, a kind of human tape recorder. You understand this was two centuries ago."
""My background was much the same," Wooley put in. "I was a farm worker who didn"t work out on a world that didn"t work out, either. It was Com, but syndicate-controlled. I suppose you know about that, Yulin."
Yulin"s bull"s face could show no human expression, but the minotaur"s bearing seemed to grow sheepish and apologetic. Yulin could show sincerity and conviction-whether he felt or not.
"I was never involved with that," the Dasheen responded defensively. "Look, I was born born into the syndicate, the son of a major controller. Raised in luxury on a private world a lot more human and humane than Trelig"s. Who knew? Educated in the best places as a scientist and engineer. You have to understand-when the big-shot villains of the galaxy are your father, mother, friends, family-everybody you know-then they aren"t villains at all. Not to you. Not to me. It"s true I had no particular regard for anything but family law, but, then, again, aren"t freighter captains like Chang there just variations of the same att.i.tude?" into the syndicate, the son of a major controller. Raised in luxury on a private world a lot more human and humane than Trelig"s. Who knew? Educated in the best places as a scientist and engineer. You have to understand-when the big-shot villains of the galaxy are your father, mother, friends, family-everybody you know-then they aren"t villains at all. Not to you. Not to me. It"s true I had no particular regard for anything but family law, but, then, again, aren"t freighter captains like Chang there just variations of the same att.i.tude?"
In Mavra Chang"s case it was particularly true; she"d been a rebel and a thief the first half of her life.
"Never mind the alibis, let"s get back to the story," Renard snapped impatiently. Yulin shrugged and settled back down.
The Yaxa paused a moment and continued. "I was developed as a woman, put in a Com wh.o.r.ehouse for party bigwigs, and got so screwed up and was so abused by the men who came by that I became unable to relate, s.e.xually or socially, with men at all. That made me wrong for the job, so they gave me to a b.a.s.t.a.r.d controller in the sponge syndicate to use as a sample-hook me on sponge, then decrease the dosage very slightly as a living example."
Renard nodded sympathetically. "Remember, I was a spongie, too-and I saw New Pompeii in its heyday."
"Well, the two of us found ourselves on a freighter bound for Coriola.n.u.s," Vistaru continued. "The captain was a funny little guy named Nathan Brazil."
Renard"s dark eyebrows rose in surprise. "It"s been over twenty years since I heard that name. I can hardly remember where. Mavra, I think. He"s not for real, if I remember. The Wandering Jew."
"He"s for real," Vistaru a.s.sured him. "He discovered that Wooley was on sponge and decided to make a run for the sponge world without us knowing. We got detoured by a strange distress signal from a Markovian world, discovered a ma.s.s murder, and wound up falling through a Gate and winding up here. Wooley came out a Dillian first, I came out a Czillian-you may have seen some. Intelligent plant creatures."
Renard nodded. "Seems to me I met one-named Vardia, come to think of it."
She nodded. "That was me, too. The Czillians reproduce by budding off. There are probably several of the original me still around, with memories complete to that point."
"Wait a minute!" Yulin objected. "You say she was a Dillian and you were a Czillian. That"s not possible! You only get one trip through the Well and you know it!"
"Most people," the Lata corrected. "We got more. Brazil"s immortality is easily explained. We accompanied him on a journey much like this one, to the Well of Souls itself-and it opened for him. He was a Markovian, Yulin! Perhaps the only one still alive!" people," the Lata corrected. "We got more. Brazil"s immortality is easily explained. We accompanied him on a journey much like this one, to the Well of Souls itself-and it opened for him. He was a Markovian, Yulin! Perhaps the only one still alive!"
Yulin was fascinated, and so was Renard. "A living Markovian!" the Dasheen breathed. "Still around! Incredible! What did he look like? Did you ever see him in his natural form?"
Both Wooley and Vistaru nodded. "Oh, yes, for a while inside the Well. It looks like a huge human heart on six tentacles. Brazil-well, he claimed to be more than that."
"He said he was G.o.d," Wooley put in. "He said he created the Markovians and saw them go wrong, and he was waiting around to see if we did a better job of it."
The prospect was unnerving. "Do you believe him?" Renard asked.
Vistaru shrugged. "Who knows? One thing"s for sure-he"s at least a Markovian, and he could work the Well. Somehow, during the worst of the journey, the two of us had grown closer together-I guess I was learning how to be a real human being. As for Wooley-well, she kind of loved Nathan Brazil, but he was too inhuman, and she also hated being a woman. Nathan fixed it. We were transported from the Well World to Harvich"s World, which was then on the frontier. He put me in the body of a beautiful but suicidal wh.o.r.e, and Wu-Wooley-well, became a farmer named Kally Tonge, a big, handsome man who"d just died in an accident. We became those people and got together-as Nathan had planned, I think."
"We ran the farm together for years," Wooley added. "They were great years. We had nine kids, too, and we brought them up right. Some got real big on their own-politicians and s.p.a.ce captains and Com police, that level. Most left Harvich"s World for greener pastures, but one stayed."
The Lata nodded. "Our daughter Vashura. She was smart as h.e.l.l, and beautiful, too. Became the senator for the district, and would have been councillor if she"d had enough time. Kally and I went through one rejuve, and it took pretty well, I guess. Both of us went out-system, did a lot of work with the Com police on the sponge trade after selling the farm. Interesting work, but it grew increasingly frustrating as we got older. Finally we faced another rejuve and maybe some loss of memory or ability along with it. We decided not to. About the only thing we had to stay around for was helping Vashura fight the Com threat to Harvich"s World. A local party apparatus had grown up, and it looked weak until suddenly lots of key votes switched. We knew sponge was the cause, but we couldn"t prove it. Finally, the strain became too much for us. We decided to pack it in. Neither of us could bear to be around and see the world that had so much of our sweat and blood in it turn into another cookie-cutter insect world."
Renard understood. "What about your daughter, though?"
"We tried for the longest time to convince her to take the family and get out," the Yaxa told him. "She was stubborn-got it from us, I guess. Thought she could fight them. By the time it was clear she couldn"t, well, it was too late to leave. We barely got out in time ourselves. We didn"t know what to do. Vashura would fight to the death, but there were the grandchildren to think of. So, before finding a Well Gate, we used every bit of pull, contact, IOU, and subterfuge we had to locate Nathan Brazil."
"And did you?" the Agitar responded, surprised. "He actually returned to our part of the universe?"
Vistaru nodded. "Oh, yes. He promised to get the kids out if it were physically possible and if their parents would allow it. All he managed was Mavra." That last was spoken with incredible sadness.
"This Brazil-when you found him, almost two centuries later-how did he look?" Yulin asked, genuinely interested.
"Exactly the same," the Yaxa replied. "Not a hair different, not a sign of aging. I think he"s looked like that since mankind was born."
"I wonder why he picked us to live among?" Renard mused. "Couldn"t be our superior good looks."
"As a Markovian he"d helped establish the original Glathriel," Wooley explained. "As he described it, it wasn"t his project, but he was-well, the manager. He arranged the transfer to Old Earth. But, unlike the others, he never transformed himself totally and irrevocably. He stayed a Markovian."
Yulin nodded. "A temporary line. When we built Obie, we found out all about that. The whole universe is just stabilized energy fields. How that energy is transformed and manipulated creates the different elements we know-and the Well-or on a smaller scale, Obie-stabilizes them. You can have a permanent change, literally writing an equation to hold the elements so thoroughly together that your creation becomes normal reality and is perceived as such by everyone around you. Using Obie, we changed a woman into a centaur long before we heard of Dillia, and, sure enough, everybody always remembered her as a centaur, there was even a logical reason for it going all the way back to her birth. That"s how the Markovians recreated the universe."
"Clear as mud," Renard noted.