Hunt was looking perplexed. “What, then?” he asked, shifting his eyes from one side of the screen to the other. “If we’re not going to get rid of it and we’re not going to cut it off, what are we going to do? What other alternative is there?”
“The real problem that we’ve got in the short term is staving off a mass exodus of Ents,” Caldwell said. “JEVEX is simply the means that would make it possible. But it wouldn’t happen at all, regardless of whether we continued to control JEVEX or not, if the Ents could be persuaded to change their minds-at least until we’ve had a chance to understand the situation better and figure out how we can help them solve their problem without wiping out a Jevlenese every time one of them comes out.”
“What?” Hunt said. This was a completely new twist. He glanced at Danchekker, then at Gina. They both looked as much at a loss as he was.
“I don’t understand,” Danchekker said to the screen. “Persuade them? How?”
“By talking to them,” Caldwell said, as if that explained everything.
Hunt was completely befuddled. He shook his head. “They’re just patterns in a computer, Gregg. How’s anyone supposed to talk to them?”
“That’s what we’ve been thinking about,” Caldwell replied. “Why don’t we go down there and check the situation firsthand? Then, maybe, we’d have a better chance of figuring out what to do.”
Hunt’s bemusement changed to suspicion. “Who’s ‘we’?”
Caldwell answered in an unapologetic, matter-of-fact kind of way. “Okay, since you’re the agent assigned to the job on the spot: ‘you.’”
Hunt’s misgivings deepened. “Down where?” he asked.
“There,” Caldwell replied simply. “It was Eesyan’s idea: down into the Entoverse.” As Caldwell spoke, Eesyan’s head and shoulders came into view on the other side of the screen, next to Calazar.
“We can’t,” Hunt replied. “It takes another Ent to get inside another Ent mind through the couplers. They evolved there. They’re the only ones who have the knack.”
“Ah, that was before, when the couplers into JEVEX were the only way of gaining access to the Entoverse,” Eesyan said. “But now we have another way.”
Hunt still wasn’t with it. “What way?” he asked.
“VISAR,” Eesyan replied. “Which has a far greater natural affinity for manipulating JEVEX’s internal processes than even the Ents have.”
Hunt stared. It was obvious. In the Pseudowar, VISAR had obtained the unconditional surrender of the Jevlenese by creating a gigantic Terran battle force that existed only in JEVEX’s imagination.
“If VISAR can scan the matrix and locate and analyze the data structures that constitute the Entoverse-which it should have commenced doing already, if your connection there is working-it ought to be able to figure out how an Ent is put together: literally, at its ‘atomic’ level,” Eesyan explained. “Then, VISAR would know all it needed to write an artificial Ent-being of its own into the Entoverse.”
“I have identified the planet and its orbit,” VISAR interjected. “There only seems to be the one. It’s interesting-about a hundred fifty miles in diameter. It’s detectable only through correlation analysis of the cell activity states. I can see why JEVEX would never have been aware of its existence. Now let’s take a closer look at the surface details…
“Extraordinary!” Danchekker breathed.
Eesyan went on. “Given permission, VISAR would also have access to the full set of mental constructs of anyone neurally coupled into it. Therefore, it should be able to impress that personality into the Ent-being that it had created down there in the Entoverse.”
“That’s you,” Caldwell put in, as if the look on Hunt’s face didn’t say plainly enough that he knew exactly what Eesyan was talking about.
“I would go, too,” Eesyan said. He looked out at Hunt. “Then we would, literally, be down there in the Entoverse, and could talk to them.”
It was typical of the Thuriens. After pursuing reasonableness and caution to the point where it seemed they would never be capable of initiating any action at all, they had come up with something so stunning that it made everything everyone else had been talking about look tame. For a moment Hunt was speechless at the audacity of it.
“Then what?” he managed to ask finally.
Caldwell shrugged. “Then it’s up to you. But with VISAR on your side, you ought to be able to pull off something pretty effective. After all, in the Entoverse, VISAR will be God.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Hauled by two slow-plodding drodhzes, their six legs moving in a lazy, lumbering shuffle, the cart slipped and bumped its way down the rocky trail toward the village. A company of cavalry from the Royal Guard went before, while the Examiner and his assistant priests rode in a carriage following, with another squad of soldiers bringing up the rear.
Thrax sat with Shingen-Hu and a dozen or so other captured adepts, tattered and filthy, staring dejectedly out over the side of the cart at the ravaged crops and orchards withering in the gloom. His body still ached from the welts and bruises he had collected when they were captured. The rough chains chafed painfully at his wrists, neck, and ankles. Despite the springy coils supporting the cart’s floor, every bump and jolt of the boards beneath them seemed to find a new sore spot and send another stab of pain shooting through his stiffening joints.
So, finally, it had come to this. After all the hopes and aspirations of one day joining the Arisen, and having come so close-only to see his opportunity cruelly snatched from within his very grasp, and to be exterminated ignominiously as a deceiver. For the high priest, Ethendor, had proclaimed all Waroth’s afflictions to be a result of Nieru’s anger at the pretenders who had been allowed to desecrate the sign of the Purple Spiral, and promised that the stars would return to the heavens when atonement had been made. As a consequence, all the teachers and adepts not affiliated with the temples were being hunted down. The people, frightened and desperate for better times to return, heeded the warnings and gave no sanctuary. He looked at Shingen-Hu, next to him. The Master’s eyes were dull and empty, resigned to whatever fate lay ahead.
A crowd of villagers grew and followed as the procession came into the village. Some jeered and pelted the cart with rocks and garbage. Others cheered and called out praises to the priests. The soldiers rode haughtily, jostling aside those who were slow to move, and swinging their rods freely to clear the way, while the Examiner and his retinue sat erect in their carriage, maintaining their stony-faced composure and dignity.
A platform had been erected in the square at the center of the village, where an excited crowd had already formed. On the platform were three stakes with fagots piled ready for lighting, while the executioner and his assistants stood impassively in front, watching as the procession drew up. The guards clubbed and prodded the prisoners down from the cart. From the dignitaries’ carriage, the Deputy to the Examiner descended with two acolytes and pointed to three of the prisoners. Guards hustled the terrified three up onto the platform. Thrax and Shingen-Hu were herded to one side with the remainder, while the Deputy climbed the steps behind and raised his hands to address the crowd.
“People of the hamlet of Rakashym, these are the heretics who have brought pestilence and ruin to the lands of Waroth.” He paused, while the crowd erupted in a new frenzy of ridicule and abuse, then gestured down at the group who had been moved aside. “These shall be taken to Orenash to join the others who have profaned, and there will the vengeance of the gods be exacted. Then will the stain that has sat upon Waroth be cleaned, and a pronouncement shall be heard then of momentous times that are about to befall us.”