7red nodded slowly and exchanged glances with the woman. In their featurelessness, they seemed to communicate. He turned back to the humans. "We know you're here to destroy the ancient Mind, what you call Centrum . . ."
"Wait a minute!" said Cornwell. "We don't want to . . ." 7red held up a pale hand, silencing him. "It doesn't matter what you intend. That is what you have come to do. We want to join you."
"Why?" asked Krzakwa flatly, his voice echoing from the hardening stone of the chamber. "That'll mean the end of you all."
Cooloil spoke for the first time, her voice portrayed as a rich, deep flow of liquid syllables. "We know that. We don't care. This has gone on long enough. Our people have never been free, and if we cannot be free, we would as soon cease to exist."
The humans could find no reply to this, each buried in his own secret responses. Cornwell found himself recalling his feelings as he'd emerged from his first submergence into the world of Centrum, when they'd followed Sealock's fleeing soul down into the depths. "Poor bastards, indeed," he murmured, and,
"Join us, then. We'll do what we can."
The Seedee reached forward and grasped his hand, touching him only fleetingly, while the others pressed forward, animated by an eagerness to begin.
Achmet Aziz el-Tabari was in Montevideo, in Tupamaro Arcology so far from Paris, to meet with his technical adviser for the first time. He walked through the cool, dark, quiet hallways, thinking of what it could mean. Brendan Sealock. He rolled the name around, considering its feel. It was an ordinary-seeming sort of name, a Sean Smith-like Anglo-Irish pastiche, but the syllables had a rolling dignity to them that was unusual. It sounded like the name of an impressive man and he wondered what sort of figure would be attached to it. He smiled. Probably a typical sort of brain-worker: short, skinny, stuttering. A hundred years ago he would have had rotten teeth and thick glasses. This character would probably smell bad. The vital statistics had been sparse. Born in the Deseret Enclave Complex thirty-two years ago, moved to New York Free City when eighteen, and spent the rest of his life at NYU. Typical. Some kind of theoretical design engineer working for MCD. A high-caliber type. Unlimited Comnet access.
That puzzled him a little. When he'd applied to Comnet for professional assistance in designing the Illimitor World, he'd been expecting to get a list of good programmers, preferably people working right in Paris, where he could easily visit them in person. He liked to work closely with the craftsmen he hired. You never knew when some sexy flesh might wander by. After his request, Comnet had asked for a set of specifications, so he'd sent in a précis of what he wanted the program to do. Astonishingly, there had been a wait of several minutes, then the unit had sent him one name, Brendan Sealock, and a single-digit TY-com address. Weird.
Whoever heard of a one-number address? Not only that, but why had Comnet referred him to a design engineer? The world held millions of top-quality programmers, many of them—hell, most of them—working in artistic fields. Surely the program wasn't so difficult that it would require new hardware! The idea was beginning to disturb him.
He arrived at the correct door and announced himself. He stood in front of it, staring at his own eye level, waiting for a person to appear. The door slid open and he was gazing at a chest. Demogorgon gasped and took a sudden step backward. The man was huge! At least a hundred kilos, close to a hundred and ninety centimeters tall. He looked upward from a broad, heavily muscled body into a face marked by unreconstructed scars. Details began to force themselves on him. At some point the man's nose had obviously been broken, and his eyes were dark green, sunk into shadows beneath heavy brows. His hair was a reddish-blond tangle, cut short in what looked like a homemade butchery of a coiffure. Sealock was grinning at him, showing big, square white teeth. He let his eyes drift downward, drinking in the minutiae of his physique. The man was dressed in white tennis shorts and a sleeveless shirt. His arms were thick, laden with big, slabby muscles and roped with thick veins; his legs were sleek, hairy pillars ending in short, broad, blunt-toed feet. His hands had knobby, white-scarred knuckles, as if he'd spent a lot of time fighting with stone walls. "Ah . . ." He swallowed, convulsively, fighting confusion. "Mr. Sealock?"
The behemoth nodded. "Right. You must be Tabari, the artist." He stood aside from the doorway that he blocked, moving with a lithe grace that somehow fitted in with his otherwise megalithic appearance.
"Come on in. I've been waiting for you."
Demogorgon followed him into the apartment, watching the muscles of his buttocks bulge inside his shorts, following the rolling movements of the sinews in his back and legs. The man's arms swung lightly at his sides, fingers slightly flexed, a delicate-looking posture. Good God! he thought. I'm in love. Somehow he found himself sitting in a soft chair, sipping from a tall, cold, mildly alcoholic drink the man had made him. The glass helped to cover up the difficulty he was having, giving him something innocuous to do with his hands as they talked. This was going to be more difficult than he'd thought. Sealock sat down opposite him, swilling foamy red ale from a glass mug.
"You know," said Sealock, "that's a pretty interesting idea you've got. You realize no one's ever called for user/program interactivity on that level before?"
Demogorgon shook his head. "I had no idea what I was asking. I just know what I wanted it to do." The man grinned. "Which was quite a lot! This thing is really beyond the reach of the public-access Comnet levels. We're going to have to work with Tri-vesigesimal, at least! And that may disappoint you. But, look, I have to tell you— the ultimate barriers we will run into are legal, not technological. If we ... Is something wrong?"
Demogorgon realized with a start that he'd been staring fixedly at Sealock's face, fascinated by the complex interplay of the savage features as they were animated by speech and thought. "I'm sorry. I, uh .
. . excuse me, but why do you have all those scars and muscles?"
"Huh?" The man burst out laughing, a thrilling resonance from deep within his chest. "It's from my hobby."
"Your hobby?" Allah! Why am I acting so stupid? He felt as if he were totally out of control.
"I'm a boxer."
Shit! A boxer? This was ridiculous! The man must be likesome kind of comic-opera hero, all the muscles and brains a human body could hold gathered into one place. And he probably had the manners and wit of a nineteenth-century fictional nobleman. "I see." Oh, witty reply!
They got to work, laying out the initial questions and problems that would finally lead to the creation of Bright Illimit. Later, far into the night, they were sitting side by side, poring over a preliminary flow diagram, when he got up the courage to make his move at last.
He put his hand on the man's thigh and let it drift around to the sensitive skin of the inner side. The action seemed to go unnoticed, but the contact of the flesh under his hand made his finger tingle, egging him on. He ran his hand up the thigh, touching the place where a thick tendon ran into Sealock's trunk. Still nothing? No.
The man stopped talking and stared at him, then leaned back on the couch, grinning wryly. Demogorgon gazed into his eyes for a moment, searching for some kind of acceptance. There seemed to be nothing there, no movement in the soul. He sighed. For the moment, maybe this would be enough. These things often took time. He gripped Sealock's waistband and gently slid the shorts down, then buried his face in a hair-tangled crotch, greeted by the exciting start of an erection. When it was over, he rubbed his face against the man's side, feeling the power enclosed beneath his skin, and softly said, "That was nice. Want to do something for me now?" He still ached with desire. The man opened his eyes and looked down, then seemed to smirk, an ugly expression. "No," he said. Demogorgon felt a vague surprise dawning. "But . . . I ..." Sealock grinned. "Your choice, asshole. I didn't ask for that." But when Demogorgon burst into tears the man held him close, stroking his long dark hair and murmuring softly, trying to comfort him in some strange way.