While Eubeleus stood staring at the outside of the matrix, one of those beings found its mind being penetrated by a cosmic flux that carried meaning. The communication flowed from the mind of Iduane, who by this time had linked into the system via one of the neurocouplers located near the control center some distance above, from which Eubeleus had just descended.
“I hear you, Arisen One,” Ethendor intoned in the temple of Vandros, raising his arms and looking skyward as the vision engulfed him. “What is desired? Thy servant awaits.”
And the voice spoke: “Soon now, the stars shall shine again and the skies be relit in splendor. Prepare, for the time of the Great Awakening draws nigh.”
“How shall we prepare?” Ethendor asked.
“The earth and the air of Waroth must be cleansed of the deceivers before all can be ready to arise. Nieru must be avenged for harmony to reign once more among the gods, and then shall the Arising be universally blessed. The false prophets who blasphemed the image of the purple spiral must be hunted out and destroyed. Only then will the heavens be appeased. Go therefore to the king and bid him set his forces to the task. Thus has Vandros spoken.”
“They shall be purged from the land,” Ethendor promised.
“And thereafter, when the lands of Waroth have been cleansed, the king shall lead the faithful into the realm beyond, and exterminate the false legions of the Spiral who have gone before.”
The high priest’s eyes widened. “Shall the task continue, even in Hyperia?”
“Hyperia is the task! Waroth has been merely thy proving ground.”
“There, then, shall I go to serve the gods!” Ethendor cried.
“Fail not, and there thou shalt become as one of them,” the Arisen One promised.
It would be a good way of getting their fighting spirits up before they came out to join the real action, Eubeleus had decided.
Hunt leaned back wearily in the chair in Murray’s lounge and felt the contours adjust to his changed posture. “I don’t know, Chris. We came here to evaluate Ganymean science, not to stop a bloody invasion. I’m a physicist, not a general.”
“Well, actually that’s not quite true,” Danchekker said. “It was merely the official story. We came here, if you recall, to help Garuth get to the bottom of his problem with the Jevlenese. I’d say that objective has been accomplished quite effectively.”
“To get to the bottom of it, and see what could be done about it,” Hunt replied. “What have we done to accomplish the second part? Garuth’s locked up, the Ents have got JEVEX back and half the Jevlenese working for them, and they’re all set to take over here completely.”
Murray sent a puzzled look from one to the other. “Ents? What Ents? I’ve never heard of them. What the hell are Ents?”
“It’s an involved business. But you can think of them as the personalities that people here are sometimes taken over by,” Danchekker said by way of some kind of an answer.
Murray didn’t follow. “I thought that was just headworld freaks getting their brains scrambled,” he said. “That’s what most of the Jevs think.”
“It gets rather more complicated than that,” Danchekker told him. Gina, listening from a chair at the table and thinking to herself that none of this talk was going to get them anywhere, stood up abruptly. Attention focused upon her. For a moment she hesitated, unsure of how she wanted to continue. Hunt was watching her, his eyebrows raised questioningly.
“I’m not sure I understand all this.” She moved over to the door, then turned to face back at them. “This whole planet is wired to operate as a fully computer-managed environment, like Thurien, right? Before the Pseudowar, VISAR ran Thurien, and JEVEX ran Jevlen.”
“Can’t argue,” Hunt agreed, nodding.
Gina tossed out a hand. “VISAR connects all over the Thurien system of worlds via its network of i-space links. JEVEX used the same technology. So, there has to be Thurien-designed i-space hardware all over this planet, which can talk to JEVEX, which turns out to be on Uttan. Have I got that right?”
“Pretty much,” Hunt said. “The i-space connections come in through a number of trunk-beam termination nodes scattered around Jevlen. Those are where the black-hole triodes are generated that give you the I/O ports. You can have smaller ones, too, for special purposes, like the one we’ve got at Goddard. There are a couple inside the Shapieron, too.”
Gina nodded. “Okay. But just sticking to the regular trunk nodes, won’t they have to be reactivated to talk to Uttan when Eubeleus turns JEVEX on again?”
“Yes, I assume so. Otherwise there wouldn’t be much point to the whole business, would there?”
“Fine.” Gina nodded, as if that made her point. “So if these trunk nodes can connect to JEVEX from light-years away, why can’t VISAR?”
Murray nodded slowly as he followed the gist, regarding Gina in a more approving light. “You mean, like it could drown Jevlen out? They wind up the power, and it muscles in?”
“Something like that,” Gina said.
Murray turned his head toward Hunt. “Sounds like a good question to me, Doc. Why not?”
“It isn’t like swamping a radio with a stronger signal,” Hunt explained. “The link terminations on Uttan aren’t simply passive devices that VISAR can force its way into. The nodes here on Jevlen have to be set to a resonance mode that enables them interact with the other end.”
“You mean, like tuning a radio?” Gina said.
“Oh… you could think of it that way. It means that VISAR would have to match JEVEX’s operating parameters as set on Uttan.”
“Oh.” Gina propped herself back against the door and contemplated the far wall. She seemed reluctant to abandon her line of thought without at least some token of a fight. “And VISAR couldn’t match them?” she tried. “Wouldn’t it be like seizing a radio channel with a transmission on the same frequency?”
“I suppose it could-if you knew what they were set to on Uttan,” Hunt said. “But Eubeleus is hardly going to publicize that, is he?” He spread his hands, at the same time sighing in a way that mixed genuine regret with respect for her tenacity. “And even then, it wouldn’t be enough. There’s also an involved coding procedure. When we were upstairs in Osaya’s, Eesyan said that the i-space links would be secured against external penetration. That was what he meant. In other words, after what happened last time they’ll be ready for it.”
“Hmm.” Gina folded her arms and stared down at the floor, stuck for a follow-on but still unwilling to concede. Silence fell upon the room like settling dust.
Then Murray said, “So what did he mean about VISAR getting to JEVEX from the inside? How was that supposed to happen?”
Hunt shrugged. “I don’t know. That was about when he was cut off, wasn’t it?”
“You say that he said something about it having to be done by us, here on Jevlen?” Danchekker said.
Gina looked up. “Because the nodes here will be coded to interact with JEVEX,” she said, stepping forward and sounding insistent again as a new angle presented itself.
Danchekker nodded distantly. “The parameters for connecting to VISAR are public knowledge. So two channels, one into each system, could be established from here.”
Gina looked around, gesturing excitedly. “And if they could be connected together, before JEVEX is fully operational, the way Eesyan said…” She stood, inviting them to complete the rest for themselves.
“Not bad,” Hunt complimented. “But there’s still a small problem with it. I’m sorry to sound negative and all that, but you’re forgetting that Eubeleus’s people control the nodes. I mean, yes, they’ve obviously got the information to close a line into JEVEX. And as Chris says, anyone with the equipment can get access to VISAR, too. But we don’t have any. And the people who do aren’t likely to be very cooperative. In fact, now that the Ganymeans are out of the way, I don’t think you’d even get near one of their sites with a combat assault team. And personally I can’t think of anyone who’d set up the access codes to Uttan for us, even if we did get inside one. Can you?” Gina stood staring at him with an expression that almost accused him of having created the problem. Then she seemed to deflate visibly. “No,” she confessed heavily, turning away. “I can’t.”