Jack Chalker - The Sea is Full of Stars

“Yeah, so, who’s missing? The martial arts girl who got turned into a roving terminal? I’m sorry, Ambassador, but I was a kidnap victim of these folks and I’m here by accident and I don’t have many friends among that group. I do have a ton of problems to solve and the clock’s running, though, so I can’t waste an entire afternoon here singing ‘My Old School Walls.’ ”

“Just relax, Nakitti,” Dukla told him. “Remember, I am on your side and solving Ochoa’s problem also solves my problems. Ah! And here is another most unique new inhabitant. Please! Come in, child!”

Jaysu walked into the room and looked around uncertainly, feeling more out of place than ever. She had never seen the like of any of them before, even in the brief time here in Zone, and she found them more like the totems of Ambora than real people. Even so, she wasn’t scared of them. It was odd, but she hadn’t been scared of anybody lately.

“Oh, my god! She’s an angel !” Ari breathed. “Right out of the great religous paintings. She’s even got a halo of sorts!”

Wasn’t that her name originally? Angel something or other? Ming reminded him.

She stared at Ari and Ming. “There are two of you in one? How is this possible? And you know who I was and where I came from?”

Take it, Ming. Too much of a Catholic upbringing, I guess. She gives me the creeps.

Jaysu frowned. “I do not want to give anyone the—what did you call it? ‘Creeps?’ ”

“You can read our minds?” Ming asked her. “You are still telepathic!”

“I-Is that what I am doing? I do not know. I know only that I have somehow been able to read what others read or write, and that I can understand many others even if they do not have this translator thing. Am I truly reading minds? That is most disturbing. I do not wish to do it.”

“Don’t knock it, if it’s you doing it and you’re in control,” Ming told her. “Can you read the minds of the others?”

She turned and looked at Dukla, then at Nakitti, and finally at Core. She stopped only when she looked at Core, shuddering. “This one is not like any of the rest of you,” she said.

“You got that right,” Nakitti commented. “So, we don’t need to keep introducing ourselves with you, anyway. Wow! Are those real feathers? Those are so gorgeous !”

Ming looked over at Core. “Don’t get any funny ideas. Let her alone!”

Core seemed transfixed somehow by the angelic being. Finally he said, “I—I have no intention of doing her harm. I— There is something proactive about her on levels I cannot fathom and have never seen. Look deep. I do not believe anyone can do her harm. I think she is beyond where even I am in one sense.”

“I have known the Amborans here since I took this position,” Dukla told them, “and I have never seen one such as she. Accelerated evolution?”

“Possibly,” Core responded.

“Well, you made her,” Ming snapped. “If you don’t know, who does?”

Jaysu felt the tension in the room and it disturbed her. “Please stop this! If I am the source of any animosity between you all, then I shall be more than happy to leave. I did not wish to be here in the first place, as I know none of you do and have no memories of anything in my past.”

“Do you want to know?” the High Commissioner asked her, both curious and because it was now possible for her to do so.

“I used to anguish and agonize over it,” the Amboran admitted. “Now, though, I find it curiously irrelevant. I have no interest in it.”

“Did anybody tell you what you were then? A priestess?” Ming asked her. “That should at least tell you that you’re where you are supposed to be.”

“I have not doubted that since my installation,” she responded. “Again, it is irrelevant. I am who and what I am. It was ordained this way by powers higher than me, powers I neither understand nor question, but serve. You both are afraid that this other one can make you slaves and do things to your mind. He can, but only if you do so willingly. He cannot do it merely by touch. Does that make you feel better?”

“How do you know that?” Ming asked her.

“I know that the sun rises and the air is fresh and clean where I should live. I do not question how I know. I seem to know things as required.” She turned and looked at Core. “You are afraid that you will be returned to slave status should your old master return. Again, only if you so choose. If you do so choose, however, the decision will be irreversible. You have never had to face a choice of your life or your soul before. You may.”

“Do we drag out the crystal ball and watch the table rise?” Nakitti griped. “Then perhaps we could do horoscopes for that new sky out there, the one with a million times more visible stars and not a one we knew. What’s the difference?”

She looked over at Nakitti, who felt the power of that gaze. It was unnerving; it seemed to go right through her.

“You mask fear and worry with cynicism. It is a part of you, but it is not an attractive part. He is already smitten with you. If you were to truly let go, if you are capable of doing so, he may even love you, and there will be far less of the nobility in the coming times.”

“Okay, you do your homework. You’re good. I’m not sure whether to hope that you’re right or you’re wrong, but it doesn’t do anything for me,” Nakitti said with the same sour tone.

“It may,” she responded. “You and he do not know it yet, but you are already carrying his child.”

It was said so matter-of-factly, Nakitti almost believed it, but hoped there was nothing to it. The last thing she needed now was pregnancy. Hell, even in the best of times, she wasn’t at all ready to be a mother. You had to at least not want to eat all children first, and the Baron was up to his wingtips in heirs as it was.

Yeah, sure.

Damn, she was irritating! When you can’t even lie to yourself around her, you’re really vulnerable. I wonder if we could send her to Josich?

For her part, Jaysu had no idea where all this was coming from, but she couldn’t avoid saying it, and knew the moment it passed her lips that it was right. It was as if something inside her was somehow able to reach all the way down inside them and yank out their feelings and even their self-delusions, strengths, and weaknesses.

She looked at the High Commissioner. “Not everyone is here. Two are still missing, including one who is essential. You cannot hope to defeat the evil that so threatens the world without the Avenger.”

“Indeed? And who is this ‘Avenger?’ ” Dukla replied, not sure himself what to make of her. He couldn’t help placing a mental bet that her own people would love to see her get interested in being anywhere but home, though.

She shook her head. “I do not know. I suppose it is one of those who is not here.”

Nakitti felt relieved. “Then you don’t know everything!” She looked around. “Well, I guess it’s either Uncle Jules, that muscle-bound detective, or the robot monster.”

Jaysu shook her head in puzzlement. “Please—say the names again. Slowly. One at a time.”

“He means,” Ming told her, “Jules Wallinchky, the man who turned the both of us into slaves for a period just for the fun of it, and who may or may not still be alive somewhere—”

“No, not him. I do feel that he is still alive, but I feel nothing more about him now. What is the next, please?”

“Genghis O’Leary, a detective I once knew, and the guy who almost nabbed Josich back in the Realm and saved this world a lot of grief—”

“He is here! Somewhere here!”