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see. The results of his request for Korkal's archive had come back. He was
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familiar with almost everything examined, all except for one thing. Korkal
had done something never done himself. There were actual physical artifacts
in the well, things so ancient, trivial, and dusty that the Packlord had
bothered to examine them. But Korkal had.
And now an aide a metal box, something incorruptible enough to survive five
years, yet still bearing the marks of age. The aide set it on the opened it.
He began to remove items, small things, one after the
"Stop!" the Packlord said. "That one. Give it to me."
The aide handed the object over. It was a bit larger than the lord's hand;
rectangular, heavy, smooth, cool.
Some sort of holographic representation, but ancient, physically frozen in a
clear plastic like substance. Captured thus, a figure, immobile, mysterious,
stared mildly across five thousand years into the pack lord wondering eyes.
In all the files, all the archives and history, he had never seen anything
like it. Gelden had vanished forever, and no one had any idea what sort of
creatures had lived in that insignificant system before they Leaped.
Now Hith Mun Alter wondered what sort of power it had taken to erase every
single image of those long-vanished people, erase them so thoroughly that only
the single physical image he held in his trembling hand survived.
The eyes stared back at him, daring him to guess.
A native of Gelden. How old? How long ago?
As he stared in horror at the incorruptible physical artifact that had sucived
five millennia, the image wavered. It shimmered and faded. It vanished.
He held an empty plastic cube.
Every one of his hairs stood on end. He'd thought that Leaper dead fifty
centuries now. But it wasn't. It was here. It was now.
It knew him.
Outsider and Korkal faced each other across the silent room. Char had led
Harpy, still quivering, away to find his own cabin, offering the both of them
a general glare of pure hate as she made her exit.
"I'hat's an angry young woman," Korkal said.
"Just so you understand, I control this ship," Outsider said.
"Yes, I assumed as much. I couldn't do anything when we were fighting the
fleet."
"Keep it in mind, then," Outsider said. "No use trying any tricks.
They won't work."
"No, I didn't think they would. What else do you control?"
Outsider searched his face slowly. "Do I control you? Is that what you
mean?" He paused. "What do you think?"
"I'm not sure," Korkal admitted. "You were in my mind when I was
jacked into the ship's brain, but I didn't feel you there later. was in my
cabin and shielded from the rest of the ship's
"I'm not controlling you now," Outside said.
Korkal wandered toward a shelf on the far wall that beautifully turned steel
bottles. He touched one and it immediately, covered with a thick rime of
frost. "Which is not thing as saying you can't control me."
Outsider said nothing to that. Korkal shrugged. "Do you drink?" He twisted
off the top of the bottle and honey-golden liquid into a tall, clear glass.
"It's a type But I synthesize it here on the ship."
This artifact I use can drink, certainly. It is in every way body.
Just between us, I fail to see the point, though. It can it isn't me."
Korkal sipped, arching his bushy brows. "Not you. But artifact's sensations?
If it did drink, you could taste the same "Certainly. I
could even selectively sort, amplify, and order ous inputs so that I
could directly experience a far wider and " range of tastes, better than the
artifact itself could ever though it is the for lack of a better wordmreceiver
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of them."
"Hm. Must be strange. I find it hard to imagine. Is all of, the artifact's
skull ming the brain?"
Outsider shook his head as he watched Korkal sink into chair. "I think
I will join you in a sip," he said, moving toward board. He fussed with
bottle and glass, then turned.
"Am I here? No, of course not. The human brain can code to-the-seventeenth
bits of informationmthat's a one followed teen zeros, or one hundred
petabitsDand it operates at a about ten trillion floating-point operations per
secondDten But I am a distributed entity lodging in a mechanical administers
approximately a billion brains, and that you call the array linkages allows
these brains to transfer among themselves at a rate a thousand times faster
than a can transfer information /ns/de itself one petaflop. In other only an
unimaginably small part of my entire thinking here' he tapped his skull gently
with one finger' at any
Korkal tried to imagine what being Outsider must be like. All he could think
of was something dark and unimaginably a great storm moving slowly across the
face of the universe. A ceaselessly churning information.
"And Jim can---could do that, too?"
Outsider raised his glass, sipped, then chuckled harshly. "Jim? to
Jim, I'm as crude as a garden gate. I'm like a conductor my baton at the
orchestra. Jim becomes the entire orchestra. I the individual brains into
the array. He melds them into a single a single mind!"
Korkal stared at him, then shook his head. "I guess I really can't can
I?"
"You? I can't understand. Nothing in this galaxy has the ability to what Jim
Endicott becomes when he takes full control of mind arrays.
Nothing, except..." "Except what?"
For the first time since Korkal had first met Outsider, he sensed thought he
saw a flicker of uneasiness wash across his ascetic features.
'l'here is something around A'Kasha, or maybe only touching ha--the place
where Harpalaos comes from. I don't know what it It is able to block me,
shield itself from my investigations. Nothing be able to do that."
Korkal blinked. "A'Kasha? But where is it? In the Hunzzan Empire?"
"Yes," Outsider replied. "In it, but not of it. I've been trying to learn
about it for some time now--some time by my standards. But I've failed. So I
have to try something else."
"Something else? Like what?"
Outsider drained the rest of his glass and set it on the sideboard. He
shrugged. "What do you think, Korkal Emut Denai? I'm going there to take a
look for myself. I'm going, and you're going, and the Pr/de is going."
"When?"
"We've already started. We left Sol System and entered hyperspace half an
hour ago."
Korkal licked his dark, rubbery lips. "what are you going to do?"
Outsider moved to the door, opened it, then paused and looked back.
"what I should have done in the first place with your people, and the
Hunzza as well. I'm going to kill it. Then I'm going to kill the rest of you
as well."
"Kill us? But Jim wouldn't--"
Outsider smiled. "Jim's dead. Remember?"
His smile grew wider as Korkal sank back. Then he was gone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
skander stood in the door of Ikearos's room, watching him in silence.
was just smoothing his robe, and Iskander stepped forward. "Let me help with
that, Egg Guardian," he said.
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Ikearos waved him away. "I'm not entirely crippled yet, Nest Watcher."
gave himself a final pat. "And what of your watching is so important
I have to be awakened in the middle of the night?"
Iskander glanced about the room. There were no communications in evidence.
Strange that aleader who oversaw the business entire world could---or [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]