“I’m not sure. I didn’t notice,” she confessed.
“Eesyan, did you…“ Hunt’s voice trailed away as the Wurlitzer music in the background ceased suddenly. He turned and looked across the square. The carousel had stopped, pitching the startled passengers on its revolving menagerie forward onto the necks of their mounts and, in some instances, off onto the floor. The steam engine, cable spinner, and bottling machine were all frozen in silent immobility. Already, people in the crowd were muttering discontentedly and giving each other puzzled looks. “What’s going on?” Hunt demanded, jerking his head back around bemusedly.
“They were just props,” Eesyan said, but in a puzzled, faraway voice, as if still trying to work it out himself. “There was no internal motive source. VISAR was causing them to operate, externally.”
“VISAR, what is the meaning of this?” Danchekker demanded. Hunt waited, then looked at Danchekker uneasily. “VISAR?” he repeated. There was no response.
Gina shook her head in sudden alarm as the implication hit her. “We’ve lost the connection?” she said, turning her head toward Eesyan. “You mean we don’t have VISAR to back us up anymore?”
“Worse than that,” the Thurien told them somberly. “We don’t have a way back.”
Mystified, Keshen, the Jevlenese engineer in the pay of the Ichena, frowned at the monitor displays and stabbed repeatedly at the panel controls in the communications room at the rear of the Gondola. “What is this? The connection’s gone.”
Scirio heard the commotion from the room outside, where he was sitting at a table, snatching a drink with Murray and several khena. Frowning, he got up and walked over. “What is it?” he asked through the doorway.
“The beam from Thurien has gone down. We’ve lost the connection to JEVEX, too.” Keshen sat back and tossed up his hands. “That’s it. Zilch.”
“There’s nothing you can do?”
“What can I do? Somebody’s cut the links. They’re dead.”
In the room behind, the others were on their feet. Scirio bit his lip, thinking furiously. He hadn’t expected repercussions so quickly. Maybe Grevetz had had connections that even he hadn’t known about. And they would need to be high-level connections for this to have happened. He had backed what had sounded like the winning side; now it was all a mess. Did the freaks from inside JEVEX that these Terrans had talked about own the whole city already?
Fendro, the club manager, who had been out in the reception office, burst into the far side of the club’s main lounge through the door from the front passage.
“Boss! Boss! Where’s Scirio?”
Scirio went back out to the lounge. “What?”
Fendro pointed excitedly back toward the front entrance. “Cops! There’s cops outside like walking artillery. No messing. I mean, they’re coming in!” A series of solid concussions sounded from the front of the club to emphasize the point.
Another of the staff appeared from the back. “They’ve got the yard covered. Ain’t no way out that way.”
“Shit,” Scirio muttered. What had he stirred up now? “Okay, look, take a couple of guys, get back up front, and try to stall them there. Speedball, Beans, dig in here to cover Fendy when they pull back. We’ll go on up the tower to move out the hearse. Split as soon as you get three beeps on the box. Blow this place to hold ‘em if you have to.”
Murray waved along the corridor in the direction of the booths. “What about the guys dreaming in there?”
“You brought ‘em here. They’re your problem. If you want ‘em out of here, get ‘em up the tower. We’re getting out.”
On Thurien, in the Government Center in the principal city of Thurios, Calazar turned a bewildered face toward the others who had been following events in the village with him. In reality they were still coupled into VISAR at different locations, including Caldwell in Washington, and Leyel Torres aboard the Shapieron at Geerbaine, and not together in the same room as they perceived.
“VISAR, what’s happening?” he demanded.
“The channel through the i-space link from Jevlen has been cut. I don’t have access to there, or to JEVEX.”
“You mean you’ve lost them? Aren’t they still there?” Caldwell had not completely followed the technical dialogue between the Thuriens and VISAR about autonomous personality transfers and temporary state suspension.
“They’re all still there and functioning in the Entoverse,” VISAR replied. “But I can’t communicate with it to talk to them or manipulate events anymore.”
Caldwell looked confused. “But those were just… ‘copies,’ or whatever, weren’t they? The original people are still in the couplers, right?”
“Yes,” VISAR said. “But the capacity of the one channel wasn’t sufficient for me to continually update the original personae-inside the bodies that are in the couplers-in real time. So they were left in a suspended state. The transformed versions that I wrote into the Ent surrogates are the only ones functioning as coherent, conscious identities. In effect, they’re there: inside the matrix on Uttan.”
Caldwell was still uncertain. “But the bodies in the couplers still contain the original personalities, surely. Won’t they reanimate independently?”
“They’ll reanimate, yes,” VISAR said. “But without any knowledge of what happened to the surrogates in the Entoverse.”
“Then we’re okay-” Caldwell caught the looks on the Thuriens’ faces. “No? Why not?”
“I don’t think you quite see our point, Gregg,” Calazar said. “As far as we’re concerned, ever since the transfers down into the Entoverse were made, the beings that VISAR created there are real, bona fide identities in their own right, as much as any other Ent. Whether or not they originated as psychical clones of other beings existing out here in the Exoverse is beside the point. They’re stuck there, and we can’t get them out.”
“Okay, go knock ‘em dead,” VISAR’s voice said. “You’re on.”
Hunt tensed with involuntary apprehension… And then the distant, dreamy feeling brought on when the mind was being flooded by sensations fed in from the machine left him suddenly. He opened his eyes, puzzled. “VISAR?” The booth was silent. He sat up in the recliner. The image of the three terrified figures chained to the stakes, the executioners advancing toward them with knives, and the ragged prophet shouting from below was still vivid in his mind. What had gone wrong?
The door opened and Murray appeared, gesturing frantically. Distant bangs reverberated through the building, like explosions, along with the sounds of running footsteps and more voices. “Move it! Everyone’s getting out. We’ve got cops coming in shooting.”
“What the hell’s it about?” Hunt gasped, jumping up.
“Who knows?”
“VISAR?” Hunt called one last time, just to be sure. Nothing.
“Forget it,” Murray threw back over his shoulder as he disappeared again. “You got cut off.”
Hunt came out into the corridor. Nixie was there already, with Gina emerging from another booth and Murray hauling Danchekker from the door adjacent. Dreadnought and several other Ichena ran past, holding weapons. Keshen, the engineer, was hurrying through from the club with Scirio behind him, shouting orders.
“What’s going on?” Gina asked. “Those three guys? What-”
“No time now,” Murray interrupted. “We’ve got a war on here. Everyone back up the tower. We’re getting out in the hearse.”
As Nixie and Gina hurried away after Keshen, Danchekker glanced at his watch. A strange expression came over his face. He caught Hunt’s sleeve just as Hunt was about to follow the others. “I’m not altogether certain that there’s any point in worrying about those three unfortunates now,” he said. “The episode to which I think you’re referring would appear to be history.”