The soldiers moved in to separate the two groups. As they began moving, Hunt trod on a piece of one of the runners from the disassembled coach. His foot skidded sideways as if he had stepped on a ball, throwing him off balance and causing him to fall down painfully onto one knee.
“See he who calls himself a messenger from higher gods!” the Examiner called to the crowd, pointing. “Doesn’t even a child know that shoe leather is repelled by mobilium?” The crowd laughed derisively.
Shingen-Hu stooped to help Hunt back to his feet. As he did so, he surreptitiously picked up a couple of slivers of the broken skids of mobilium metal and hid them in a fold of his robe.
From Thurien, Calazar was able to contact Parygol on Uttan through VISAR. But Parygol discovered then that his Thurien caretaker force was cut off from the rest of the planet, and that the facilities they occupied, which they had believed controlled both the planet’s industrial complex and its links to a Jevlen based JEVEX, were suddenly inoperative. Eubeleus had gained control of the system from elsewhere.
Porthik Eesyan, who was occupying a coupler still connected to VISAR and had “joined” Calazar and the others, confirmed their understanding of the situation. “Yes, that’s the way it would work. There’s another version of me still functioning in the Entoverse at this moment-and of all the others, of course. It’s a strange feeling to know it.”
“And you don’t have any idea what’s been happening since you-the other one of you-was transferred in?” Caldwell checked.
“No. The updating was to have been effected when the surrogates were erased and the originals reactivated,” Eesyan said. “But the disconnection happened too abruptly.”
There was a long, brooding silence.
“They’ll be in trouble there, without VISAR,” Calazar said quietly at last.
“I am aware of that,” Eesyan replied. The edge to his voice was unusually sharp for a Thurien. “I happen to have a rather personal stake in the matter.”
“My apologies,” Calazar acknowledged.
Caldwell sat with his craggy jaw clamped in a downturned line, saying nothing. The knowledge that the original Hunt, and Danchekker, and the Marin woman, and the Jevlenese girl were intact and walking about somewhere on Jevlen was not comforting. As Calazar had said, the surrogates were now every bit as real. Caldwell didn’t like the thought that was nagging at the edge of his awareness and which he knew he was refusing to face up to fully: the implication of their being somehow “expendable.” He didn’t like it at all.
Leyel Torres, the Shapieron’s acting commander, looked from one to another of the faces. “We have to do something,” he said simply.
“Without another link into JEVEX, I’m not at all sure there’s much we can do,” Calazar answered.
Torres fidgeted, clearly not satisfied. “How did Hunt manage to get the link that we did have?” he asked.
“Through the Jevlenese criminal ring somehow,” Eesyan replied.
“Could they do it again if we restored contact with them?”
“Only they know that. And they’re loose in Shiban somewhere.” Torres thought for a moment. “VISAR, when you had the connection, did you know where Hunt was in Shiban?”
“Almost certainly the club that they found Baumer in,” VISAR answered. “ZORAC has located it on the city plan from its communications routing codes.”
Torres stared hard at the floor, then looked up suddenly with a resolved air. “There is something that we can do,” he said. “Excuse me, gentlemen. VISAR, disconnect.” And at once he was back in one of the neurocouplers that had been installed aboard the Shapieron. He got up, left the room, and walked through into the ship’s command deck. The crew, who were on standby, stirred at their stations.
“ZORAC, report the ship’s status,” he called. “Flight ready, as instructed.”
“Prepare for immediate takeoff.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Inside the Planetary Administration Center in Shiban, Garuth had been brought to the communications room next to what had recently been his own office suite. One of the main screens of a bank standing in the center of the floor showed Eubeleus’s control center deep beneath the surface of Uttan. Eubeleus had gained control of JEVEX, which was now operational and directing the i-space link carrying the channel into PAC; the Thurien occupying force had been fooled with a dummy system and was now isolated.
“I wanted you to be here to witness the futility of your fool’s errand on Jevlen, and the first stage of our final triumph,” Langerif gloated from the center of his entourage of officers. “Our reports are that the fervor we’ve been building up among the followers of the Axis has served its purpose well. There are thousands of them out there in couplers right now, eagerly waiting for JEVEX’s promised restoration. And tens, hundreds of thousands more will follow as soon as it becomes known that the promise has been fulfilled. By tonight we will have taken Shiban. By tomorrow, Jevlen.”
Garuth remained grimly silent but shifted his attention as Eubeleus himself moved into view on the screen. “A very different state of affairs from your last encounter with Jevlenese,” Eubeleus said. “This time you’re not dealing with the fools who tried to set up the Federation. Did you really believe that you could pit yourselves against manifestations of an intelligence that by its very nature is destined to supplant you?” He paused, seemingly having expected more of a reaction. “I believe you are aware of the method that JEVEX had devised to project itself into the outside universe, of which those like myself are privileged to be the prototypes.”
Garuth said nothing.
On Uttan, an aide approached and stopped a short distance back, making signs to attract Eubeleus’s attention. Eubeleus turned away and raised his chin inquiringly. The aide moved a step forward. “Iduane is in communication with the Prophet now. All is ready in the city.”
Eubeleus nodded and looked back at the screen showing Garuth. “Never mind. You’ll see for yourself soon enough,” he said. Leaving the aide with the rest of those by the screen, he turned away and crossed the floor to the door leading to the coupler bank. In the passageway beyond, he met Iduane coming the other way.
“All’s ready,” Iduane said. “The Prophet is waiting.”
“Take over in the control center,” Eubeleus said, and continued on toward the booths.
Iduane entered the control center. As he passed beneath the overhead gallery surrounding the floor, he saw consternation breaking out around the screen still open to Jevlen, and quickened his pace.
“What’s happening?” he demanded as he joined the group. He saw that another screen had come to life beside the one showing Langerif and Garuth at PAC. It was an outside view of the Thurien spaceport at Geerbaine. He recognized it at once by the sleek, unmistakable, half-mile-high tower of the Shapieron, with its distinctive, swept tail fins, on the pad that it had occupied throughout the period of the Ganymean presence. But now it was moving, sliding upward slowly at first but picking up speed even as he watched.
“What’s happening?” he demanded, hurrying across and joining the group.
One of the aides gestured needlessly. “The Shapieron, on Jevlen. It’s taking off.”
On the screen showing PAC, Langerif was shaking his head, baffled. “The news just came in this second from Geerbame. There was no warning, nothing. It’s just taken off.”
“What does it mean?”
“We don’t know.”
Iduane turned his head to the aide. “Go to the booths, quickly. Get the leader back here. Don’t let him couple into the system yet.” The aide nodded and left at a run.
On the screen from Geerbaine, the view had changed to another showing the starship’s immense shape slowing down again to hang as a black silhouette, looking like some fantastic bird hovering above the Shiban skyline, with the city seemingly shrunken by perspective in the background below. Keeping its nose pointing upward, the ship began moving slowly sideways, over the city.