Jack Chalker - The Sea is Full of Stars

Well, if it’s telling the truth, it’s left a major complex under the complete control of a committed nun or priestess or whatever that group is. It may throw a real jar of glue in the evolution of the machine!

That worry’s not our fight, she noted. Let’s go see what’s literally become of the rest.

They didn’t have far to go. Because it was least practical for them to have to travel and cope for long in the land environment, particularly with its dry, conditioned, mostly low humidity air, the others were coming here, to the meeting room above.

Once out of hiding, Core had assumed an essentially neutral personality that was neither of them, nor the slavish absolutes of Alpha and Beta, but rather an odd but pleasantly social sort. Neither the voice nor the manners had much personality at all, but in that it wasn’t unlike a lot of people they’d known over the years. It made them very uncomfortable, though.

Waiting inside was a creature of a type they’d never seen before. It was unquestionably a water hex creature, but large and with some weight, and it clearly was able to withstand being out of the water, although it had a breather wrapped around where the gills probably were, making it look like it was wearing giant earmuffs, and it was in one of the pools but clearly uncomfortable in it.

The head was equine, very much like a horse’s, but with a solid snout that ended in a circular orifice that pulsated in and out. The eyes on either side of the head were huge, black, and slightly protruded from the skull, and were clearly independent of one another. Two tiny ears twitched on either side of the body, and there was a membrane that suggested a mane that started in the center of the head and moved down its back. The neck went into a serpentine body and ended in three armlike branches. The center branch terminated in a fan-shaped membrane and seemed designed for something other than the other two; the other two, however, ended in extremely long fingers, three on top and one beneath and a bit shorter in opposition, ending in dartlike suckers. The arms, indeed the whole creature, appeared fragile, but they sensed that this was only true on land, and that in the water this creature could more than take care of itself.

“Come in, settle into the pools,” the creature invited them, appearing to speak Kalindan with a neutral accent. Since the orifice pulsed but was not designed to speak such words, they knew this one had a translator implanted inside it. “The duo over to my right, please, and Core, take the one on my left. The others are on their way. Everyone can speak freely here. I have enabled a device here that effectively creates a zone of translation within the room. It’s the only way we can negotiate with each other over long periods here—personnel both in the hexes and in Zone are constantly changing, and not everyone can have a translator implant. Be warned, however, that if you leave this room you will no longer have this ability.”

Core settled in, then looked at the creature. “And you are?”

“My name is Dukla. I am High Commissioner in South Zone, which is a fancy title meaning I am the titular head and station chief here representing all the embassies. About half of us rotate in this position, which is not one of great power but is necessary because somebody has to be able to say yes and no or, more often, ‘buy it’ or ‘forget it,’ to all these creatures. Next week they’ll draw somebody else’s name and I’ll be back to being merely the ambassador from Olan Cheen. That probably means nothing to you, but it is another nation like Kalinda that sits beneath the Overdark and happens to be in a direct link between Chalidang in the west and an isolated volcanic archipelago in the middle of the ocean called Ochoa. That significance will become obvious in a few minutes, I think. I am a native but I know quite a bit about your old race and the Realm. Neither you nor the Hadun are the first through here. People fall into the Gate now and then, and we get perhaps a half dozen or so a month. Not necessarily from the Realm—it’s a very big universe—but some are. We try and keep up. The Hadun slipped through the cracks because we couldn’t believe they were the very same people who had caused such misery a century and a half ago. A little knowledge doesn’t always work any better than no knowledge at all.”

“You called this gathering?” Ari asked him.

He nodded absently. “Something is very wrong here. Wrong beyond Josich, I mean. Two individuals in one body. A personality with no memory in another. A third that turns out to be a truncated computer core program. Even the Well is not totally self-aware, you see. The Ancients gave it very strict limits so it would be God the Maintenance Worker of the Universe, as it were, and not just God. I do not mean that it doesn’t think, but it thinks in a way that even our Mister Core here, I don’t believe, could understand.”

“You are most certainly correct in that I have no concept of how it thinks, if that limited term is applicable to such a being,” Core agreed. “However, I also am not at all certain that it does not have an active role. It simply has one on a level beyond the ability of any of us to comprehend.”

“You show your own limits with that reply,” Dukla commented. “You assume that it is superior to the Ancients. I think not. In the rare cases where Ancients have interacted inside the Well, they have clearly been the operators.”

That brought the other two up straight in their pools. “There are living Ancients !” Ari managed.

“Well, at least one or two. They hate it here and do not stay. They wander the universe and do what we cannot know. When something goes wrong, one of them or all, it is difficult to judge, are summoned to repair the Well. As far as we can tell, this has not happened in this case. Either the Well is not broken, or its ability to send for help is impaired for some reason, or, for still other unknown reasons, the watchers cannot or will not come. Either way, we are on our own.”

“But how do you know that they are not here?” Core asked.

“Because we know what they look like. It is in the records. We know where they will appear and as what. None known have come. It is—ah! Here is another!”

Nakitti entered and looked around. “Too bad,” she commented. “I like a nice bath myself, but I’ll never fit in one of those .”

“Nakitti a Oriamin of Ochoa,” Dukla said in introduction. “Formerly known as Tann Nakitt the Ghoman, I believe. These are the ones you knew as Ari and Ming in one body, and that, over there, calls himself Core.”

Core looked up at the Ochoan. “An evolutionary branch off certain types of pterodactyls,” he noted. “Extraordinary.”

“Hey! Watch who you’re calling a—whatever you called me!” Nakitti snapped.

“An ancient flying creature related to both reptiles and birds that became extinct sixty or more million years ago on ancient Terra,” Core explained. “Similar designs have been found on other worlds, but you are the first sentient branch I know. Of course, I do not have my full databases anymore so I cannot be sure.”

“Sure sounds like a damned machine,” Nakitti snapped. “So? This thing stole a body and you two are married forever whether you want to be or not, huh? If one of you wasn’t a cop and the other one of the guys who got me into this mess in the first place, I’d feel real sorry for you.” She turned back to Core. “And what about you? If your old master showed up as a giant asshole right now, would you be required to kiss it?”

Core took the question seriously and replied, “I simply do not know the answer to that.” It put a real chill in the room.