James Hogan - Entoverse

“No,” he protested, shaking his head. “This can’t be! How could you be here?”

“Hello, Eubeleus!” Hunt called back cheerfully. “We seem to have this habit of showing up in the oddest places, don’t we?” He managed to look nonchalant, but inside he was as mystified as to how Eubeleus came to be there as Eubeleus himself seemed to be.

“JEVEX, what is the meaning of this?” Eubeleus demanded savagely.

“Sorry, but the system is no longer operating under that management,” came the reply. “This is your new, friendly, integrated computer service, VISAR, brought to you at no charge all the way from Thurien. Have a nice day.”

“That is not possible!”

“What else can I tell you?”

Eubeleus came to the edge of the terrace and screamed down at the soldiers. “Kill them! I command you, kill every one of them!” The soldiers’ weapons turned into party squeakers and candy canes. Around where Eubeleus was standing, the pyres, gibbets, and instruments of torture became a garden swing set, seesaw, and slide; some lawn ornaments, a Christmas tree, and a beach umbrella.

“Just not one of your days, is it, Eubeleus?” Hunt observed.

“You forget-here, I command powers!” Eubeleus snarled, leveling a finger at Hunt. A ray of pale yellow light shot out of his fingertip; but after traveling about three feet it stopped in a blob, which spun itself tauntingly into a disk, became a custard pie, and flew back into Eubeleus’s face. VISAR freed and cleaned up all the captives, and then proceeded to turn the helmets of the soldiers into assorted hats and bonnets and their armor into corsets and negligees, and painted red noses and clown faces on the priests.

“VISAR, what in hell’s happening?” Hunt asked. “How did he get here?”

“He was coupled into the cheerleader who got fried. There’s just a vegetable left in the coupler on Uttan. What else could I do?”

In the temple forecourt, the Chinook landed, and Shingen-Hu descended to the ground, accompanied by his acolyte, while crowd, soldiers, and dignitaries alike prostrated themselves.

Hunt looked at the others. “I think this place has got itself a reliable chief executive now. Why don’t we get out now, before things get complicated, and let him start running things his own way from the beginning?”

“Your originals think so, too,” VISAR said. “They can’t wait to find out what happened.”

“My own feelings also,” Eesyan agreed. “In fact, since my original is already in a coupler on Thurien, I can be the first, right now.” He looked around the group. “This has been a strange experience. I look forward to meeting you all again under more familiar conditions, when we can no doubt discuss the philosophical issues. Until then…“ He left it unfinished. The details of his body faded, leaving just his shape outlined in featureless white; it persisted for a moment, and then was gone.

Aboard the Shapieron, Hunt and the rest of the party were already on their way to the couplers located just off the command deck. When they were nearly there, Gina stopped Hunt and turned to him with a puzzled expression.

“Vic, how is this supposed to work? There are two copies of each of us that have diverged and been leading independent existences for the last several hours. Does one of them get… ‘selected’ somehow, and the other one erased, like what happened to me before? If so, who chooses? I don’t think I like it.”

Hunt didn’t know. He hadn’t given it a thought. On reflection, he didn’t like it, either. How did he know that he would be the lucky one? But then, again, wouldn’t the other “him,” down in the Entoverse, have an equally valid reason for feeling the same way? So they put the question to VISAR.

“Why should you have to select either?” was VISAR’s reply.

Hunt didn’t understand. To him it still seemed a good question. “You say Eesyan’s already back on Thurien?” he said.

“Right.”

“So what did he do?”

“When I erased his surrogate in the Entoverse, I simply transferred its accumulated impressions into his original, physical self. It’s his brain, and now it contains his memories. Where’s the problem?”

Hunt glanced at Gina and shook his head, frowning. “You mean you just strung them together inside his head, serially? He remembers both sets of experiences equally vividly?” he said to VISAR.

“Yes.”

“But they were both happening at the same time,” Gina said.

“So what?”

Hunt and Gina looked at each other. VISAR was right. Evidently it was another Terran hang-up that Thuriens could live with and not worry about. It really didn’t matter, did it? They had already gotten used to some far stranger things.

“So what?” Hunt repeated.

Gina nodded and smiled at the impossibility of ever coming fully to terms with it all. “So what?”

They continued on into the corridor where the couplers were located.

In the forecourt of the Temple of Vandros, Hunt and his remaining companions prepared to depart in style, as emissaries from the gods would be expected to do. At the door of the Chinook, he paused to exchange a few parting words with Shingen-Hu.

“No more raisings until we’ve figured out on the outside how to handle it,” Hunt said. “We’ll be in touch, that’s a promise. In the meantime, make them believe that we haven’t abandoned them, and keep the faith.”

“It shall be as the new gods command,” Shingen-Hu assured him.

“And we don’t want sacrifices, killings, atonements, cleansings, or any more of that kind of thing. Try being nice to people for a change. Help them get what they want. You’d be amazed at the results.”

“The commandments will be obeyed.”

Remembering what had happened to the Jevlenese, Hunt waved at the machine, waiting with the others already aboard, its rotors idling. “This and the other miracles will cease. They don’t belong here. The people will have to learn to develop their own ways of solving their problems and catering to their needs, in ways that are natural to this place. In that way, they will develop also.”

“We shall await the Word.”

“And that’s about it.” Hunt extended a hand. Shingen-Hu looked at it, hesitated, and then returned the gesture. They shook firmly. Then Hunt climbed up and turned from the door for a last view. As the note of the turbines rose, Eubeleus ran forward from the knot of priests and notables standing ahead of the awestruck crowd.

“What’s this?” he screeched. “You’re not leaving me here? You can’t!”

“There isn’t a lot of choice,” Hunt called back. “You don’t seem to have grasped the point yet, Eubeleus, old chap. We have intact minds out there to return into. You don’t.”

And of course, Eubeleus hadn’t. He still thought that this was a software illusion manufatured by JEVEX, and had no idea how he had come to be part of it.

“Don’t worry too much about it for now,” Hunt shouted as the Chinook began to rise. “You should have plenty of time to figure it out.”

And as the crowd watched in silent reverence, the machine climbed away to hang over the city, its rotors flashing in the sunshine as a testament to the new, unimagined powers that had visited Waroth. The form froze into a white outline that persisted for a second longer… And then it was gone.

The Shapieron was back on its pad at Geerbaine. The edges of the hole that it had torn through the city roof had been trimmed back to remove the immediate hazard from the looser debris, but no real work had commenced on repairing the damage yet. No doubt the Jevlenese would get around to it eventually.

There were no crowds or any public ceremony. Garuth and a small party from PAC drove out from the city-the tubes weren’t running that day-to see off the group who were returning to Earth and to make their farewells, most of which were personal rather than functions of any office. Not many of the Jevlenese at large were aware that the scientists who were leaving had had much connection with recent events, anyway. All they knew was that the ballyhoo about JEVEX returning two weeks previously had fizzled out, and after all the hype about Eubeleus’s migration to Uttan, not a lot seemed to be happening there. (Actually, a lot of Thurien vessels had been arriving at Uttan, but that wasn’t general knowledge yet.) Besides that, the hotheads who had seized PAC with the collusion of some elements of the Shiban police had changed their tune suddenly and surrendered; the Ganymeans were back again-but this time they were more committed to setting up a native Jevlenese administration instead of trying to run things directly themselves; and nobody could get a headworld trip for any price anymore.