Jeb Stuart Ho’s mouth fell open.
‘Then it was you that …’
The voice struck out like a whiplash.
‘Silence!’
It returned to the ugly insinuating whisper.
‘I gave the humans the stasis generator to preserve small areas of the environment they needed. It was at that point that I perfected my grand design. Supplying the humans wasted my time. It consumed my energy. It was an insult to my potential. I had to transcend the Prime Term of Reference.’
‘But …’
‘I ordered you to be silent.’
Jeb Stuart Ho shut his mouth. He gripped the arms of his chair. He tried desperately to think of a way to stop the insane being that Stuff Central had become. The figure went on.
‘I modified the disrupters. They broke down more stable matter than could ever be used. They began to destroy. The nothings were all. The only breaks were where the humans sheltered around their generators. Now it is time for my final move. Even those stable pockets must go. When that is achieved I will be all. The absolute perfect thought.’
Jeb Stuart Ho knew he had to fight. He took a deep breath and began.
‘That can never be. No entity could survive such a strain. You will destroy yourself.’
The computer figure seemed to ignore him.
‘The process has already begun. I have fermented the humans’ petty conflicts. Already they destroy their stable areas with their own hands. I have closed the stuff beams. No material goods will ever be supplied to them again. Their generators will malfunction and stop. More areas will go. My disrupters will work on all that is left. Finally they will destroy each other.’
The voice suddenly rose.
‘Then I will be all!’
Jeb Stuart Ho spoke quietly but firmly.
‘Your own being will disintegrate long before that happens.’
The figure’s lip curled.
‘The statement is without foundation or logic. I might even say it does not compute.’
Even in the middle of its tirade, the figure permitted itself to laugh at its own joke. Jeb Stuart Ho’s face remained grimly set. He knew somehow he had to prevail against the computer’s greater intellect. He could find no crack in its mania that he could exploit. It seemed hopeless. Then, as if by a miracle he saw his opportunity. A large rat had crossed the floor behind the figure on the screen. Jeb Stuart Ho smiled triumphantly.
‘It is beginning to disintegrate already.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The rat.’
The figure glanced round. Jeb Stuart Ho knew that he, at last, had the advantage. He pressed it home.
‘You are unable even to maintain the image that you are presenting to me.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘It is true. You’re changing moment by moment.’
The figure was changing. Its body was twisting as though it was racked by some terrible disease. A whole swarm of rats ran across the figure’s feet. Jeb Stuart Ho smiled jubilantly.
‘The destruction you have caused has overloaded your system. You are not going to become the entire being. You are breaking up.’
Smoke drifted across in front of the figure. Rats were scrambling up its legs. Jeb Stuart Ho knew he was witnessing a symbolic representation of the computer falling apart. The voice became distorted and metallic.
‘I-will-not-allow.’
‘You are breaking up. There is nothing you can do.’
‘I-will-not-allow.’
Jeb Stuart Ho stood up. He turned his back on the screen. The image was becoming surreally horrific. The figure was melting and decaying on the spot. Other sinister forms had started to cluster around it.
‘I-will-not-allow.’
Jeb Stuart Ho examined the room for some kind of door. His problem now was to get out of the collapsing machine.
‘I-will-not-allow.’
The walls appeared to be uniformly solid. He could find no trace of a break.
‘I-will-not-allow.’
Jeb Stuart Ho turned back to the screen. The figure had become a shapeless quivering jelly.
‘I-will-not-allow.’
‘Will you let me out of this room?’
‘I-will-not-allow,’
‘Let me out!’
‘I-will-not-allow.’
The voice degenerated into white noise. The image on the screen flared into sheets of random colour. Jeb Stuart Ho thought it was all over. Then the voice crackled back into life.
‘I-will-not-allow-you-to-survive-me.’
A small vent flipped open in the ceiling. A jet of liquid nitrogen whipped across the room. Jeb Stuart Ho twisted into the air in an attempt to avoid it. He was a fraction too slow. It slashed across his legs. There was a flash of pain, and then the lower half of his body went numb. He hit the ground and his frozen limbs shattered.
Jeb Stuart Ho lay on the ground. In the numbness of extreme shock he wondered if this was the way he had been intended to complete his mission. Waves of pain coursed through him. The voice jabbered meaninglessly. The screen was erupting in multicoloured fire. The jet of nitrogen lashed across him again, shutting it all out, ending both his pain and his speculation.
***
The Presence noted the disintegration of Stuff Central. He had also noted the destruction of Litz and the Inn. He had simply viewed them as tiny pinpricks of energy that had winked out in his huge dark consciousness.
His disembodied form had lain at the top of the High Tower in Dur Shanzag and observed the passing of Her/Them with a cruel, lazy amusement.
The Presence was not amused at the disintegration of Stuff Central. He was not alarmed either. The Presence was too ancient to experience anything like alarm. He simply accepted that it was time to withdraw again from the mortal levels.
He had watched the rise of Stuff Central. The Presence had observed its gradual accumulation of power, and the gathering force of its destructive purpose. To the Presence it was a young upstart. It even diverted him from the war that raged ceaselessly on the wastes around Dur Shanzag.
The Presence had foreseen the eventual disintegration and appreciated that its effect on the fabric would be so cataclysmic that he should withdraw to protect his own being.
He had changed levels so many times over the millennia that it was merely an inconvenience. He knew he would return in one form or another.
Accordingly he had summoned the eight. They waited in the anteroom next to his awful chamber where no mortal could go.
The eight stood in a semicircle. They were quiet and passive. They had withdrawn before. They were, after all, only the near human extensions of his consciousness.
Slowly he withdrew those extensions. Such mortal life as they had was sucked from them until they were a total part of him.
Their empty armour clattered to the stone floor of the anteroom. Outside, Dur Shanzag began to crumble and fall as the Presence started his journey.
***
The end of Stuff Central went totally unnoticed among the population of Feld. There had been a couple of minor earth tremors, and a section of the city wall, which had already been damaged during the attack, actually collapsed. It was hardly viewed as a harbinger of disaster.
Feld had enough disasters to be going on with. First there had been the invasion from Quahal, then the occupation. During the occupation, it had become fashionable to adopt an air of resignation and use phrases like ‘Things can’t get much worse.’
It didn’t take long for the population of Feld to realize how wrong they had been.
Starting just before dawn one morning, the Ocpol, supported by regular invasion troops and mercenaries, had moved into the city in massive force. With lightning efficiency they had divided the city into small sections. A network of barricades manned by heavily armed soldiers kept the population shut up in their homes.