Danchekker, who had been managing to sustain an astonishing calm throughout, gave an approving nod. “Ah, yes. And about time, too,” he said. “It would appear that our alter egos have finally managed to get themselves organized. I’m pleased to see that we’re not losing our touch, Vic.”
Beside Hunt, Gina was sobbing tears of relief. “I never thought it would be possible to fall in love with a computer,” she choked.
Hunt found himself so drained suddenly that he was unable to manage the grin that he tried to force, and none of the flippant words that came into his head would form. He brought a hand up to his mouth and discovered that he was shaking. “Did you enjoy your vacation, VISAR?” was all he could mutter finally.
“Bit of a technical hitch out here,” the familiar voice replied in his head. “It’s all under control now. I presume the details can wait until later.”
Above them, Ethendor was coming down the temple steps almost at a run, his face writhing in fury and incomprehension. Some of the other priests were trailing after him, while the rest remained gripped by fear and consternation on the platform above.
The Chinook swung around to hover broadside-on to the temple above the cringing throng. Its large side door was open, and framed in the opening stood the figures of Shingen-Hu and Thrax, gazing down lordlike and majestically, borne from the gods.
It had been a test, the Examiner saw. He would not fail. “Hail to the Chosen One, indeed true messenger of the highest gods!” he exalted, going down onto both knees this time. Around him the other dignitaries and soldiers who had come from Rakashym took up the cry and followed suit.
Ethendor stormed out onto the terrace below the steps, flung back his robe and aimed his arms up at Shingen-Hu. Moving reflexively in self-defense, Shingen-Hu pointed back, and all the power that had been focused within him by the intensity of the moment went into the bolt that flashed downward before Ethendor could concentrate his will. The figure of the high priest went rigid and became incandescent. From below, Hunt and his companions watched in horrified fascination.
And then, a very peculiar thing happened.
The shock of psychic energy that annihilated the mind that had been Ethendor propagated back along the current perfusing it and out through the attached neural coupler into the brain of Eubeleus. And since the system controlling the coupler was now under the direction not of JEVEX but VISAR, VISAR saw the configuration of mental constructs that formed the person of Eubeleus beginning to dislocate and come apart.
VISAR’s basic programming gave it a nature that sought to protect and preserve life. There was nothing it could do to save Ethendor, for what had been Ethendor was gone; and the milliseconds that it had to consider what could be done about Eubeleus gave little opportunity for innovation or profound reflections on possible consequences. It used the tools that it had. And the only way it knew to preserve a human personality was to inject it, while it was still functioning as a coherent whole, into an artificial Ent-being-which VISAR promptly wrote into the Entoverse. For the same reasons why the surrogates of Hunt and the others looked to them as their human forms looked in the Exoverse, the Eubeleus surrogate looked like Eubeleus.
Who found himself suddenly at the foot of the temple steps, clad in a Roman toga, standing beside the smoldering heap that moments before had been Ethendor, and staring at a twin-rotor helicopter hovering over the petrified crowd.
He stood gaping down at himself and from side to side, confused and bewildered, while the priests who had followed Ethendor down the steps backed away, terrified… And then his mouth fell open as he recognized for the first time the group of figures who were standing a short distance below.
“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?”