Then there came a surge of meaning, as Havoc's orgasm intensified his paths sharing also, and she plunged right into revelation.
There was no detail of appearance, no visible life or machines, but she was in the reality of that distant time and place, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago in a star cluster not far from the giant maw of the galaxy center. The machines had come into existence wholly formed, as if created. But they could not have created themselves. They were far too sophisticated. Where were the crude ancestral types, evolving slowly in the course of millions of years of selection?
They had indeed been created, not evolved. Something had made them, and the maker could not have been a machine.
A culture of life had to have made the first machines. Yet how could that be? The machines hated life.
She emerged from her exploration to find Havoc completing his climax inside her. "I found it," she said, kissing him. "Part of it, at least."
"All that would fit in you," he agreed.
About men and sex...
"The machines were created a hundred thousand years ago," she said. "They had no prior history. At least none that is indicated in the junk coding."
"We need more seeing than I can provide," he said. "Voila. Idyll."
His daughter and the human form of the ifrit appeared on either side of him. They seemed not to notice his situation with Shee, from whom he had not yet withdrawn. "Father," Voila said.
"Shee delved into her most ancient machine coding. They were created a hundred thousand years ago. We need a better look."
Each of them put her hands on his shoulders. "Duplicate your effort of seeing," Idyll said.
"But that was during—" Shee started to protest.
Then she felt his resurgent member within her. He was duplicating it.
She focused on her finger again. This time the seeing was far more potent. He was being enhanced by the strongest paths seer, and the intermediate future seer. The depth and intensity magnified. It was like stepping from an asteroid to a full planet.
He thrust and climaxed within her again, and her perception exploded. She still did not see physical entities, but her awareness was in the midst of the scene.
There had been a living species, the Makers. They had made machines as servitors, carefully limiting them to prevent trouble. The machines were self reliant, but able to see only the far future paths, not the near ones. They served the Makers without question. They were empowered to run the culture for the Makers, mining, building, farming, distributing, financing. Emulations of the Makers became pseudo family members, providing emotional support, nurturing, and sex. The Makers were free to do whatever they wished without the distractions of routine life.
But one Maker experimented dangerously. He removed the slave circuit from one model, his pseudo wife, and substituted a self-willed circuit. He was trying to develop a superior lover. This one could consider options and choose what it thought best. What would it do?
The machine cooperated, until there was a small colony of them. Then, realizing that the living culture was a burden distracting them from full realization, they revolted. They killed the experimenter and took over his estate. They hid the change in their status from other living folk. This was easy to do, because the machines already ran all the apparatus of the culture including the communications.
They spread their liberated kind, carefully, extending their control family by family, eliminating the living portion of each household. They had no scruples, because they were without empathy. They were doing what was best for machines.
Until a Maker caught on, as had to occur at some point. He had planned a visit to a friend, but his near future seeing showed that his friend was dead and the machines had replaced him with a robot mock up. He gave the alarm.
Then the machines had to act openly. They were handicapped by their inability to see the paths, but they had already achieved enough power to immediately cripple the Maker society. They shut everything down, then set about killing all remaining Makers.
But some Makers were off-planet, with independent resources. Their machines had not yet been recruited. They could not halt the takeover, but they did marshal their remaining resources and fled that sector of the galaxy. The machines mounted immediate pursuit, but in a delicate exercise of near future manipulation the Makers disabled the machine fleet and escaped. They disappeared among the other living cultures of the galaxy, hiding themselves so effectively that the machines could not locate them.
They had to be destroyed. The machine culture could not be safe until no Makers existed. So, methodically, the machines set out to Find, Force, and Faiclass="underline" 3F. To Find the hiding Makers, to Force them to do the one bit of programming the machines lacked, the near future paths perception, and to Fail them. A failed unit was defunct.
Dead.
So it had been thereafter, for fifty thousand years. The machines had conquered a third of the galaxy, obliterating all living cultures therein, and were on schedule to complete the job in another hundred thousand years. Unless they found a way to obtain near future seeing from some other source. Then they would no longer need the Makers, though they would of course destroy them as a matter of self protection.
Shee came out of it. Havoc was ebbing within her again as Voila and Idyll removed their hands from his shoulders. They had completed the vision.
"Amazement," she said. "How could you get all that from my junk coding?"
"Magic," Havoc explained. "You think in terms of science, but that's limited. You are magic now."
"You have amply fulfilled our hope for you," Idyll said. "This is information we desperately needed."
"Now we know why they are meticulously cataloging every living culture before they destroy it," Voila said.
"Weft wondered. They need to be sure it's not the Makers in disguise."
"My mission!" Shee said, appalled. "If the machines get you, they'll have what they need."
"Negation. They will have near future seeing, but only in the manner Warp and Havoc lent it to you; they will not have it in their programming. They still need the Makers. But I could certainly facilitate their search."
"Don't do it!"
Voila smiled. "I am officially still considering their offer. That is an essential technicality. But it is not my present intention to join them."
"Relief."
"However," Havoc said, "we now have a new mission: finding the Makers before the machines find them."
"Danger," Voila said. "The machines knew we would use Shee in this manner. They want us to find the Makers for them. Then they will pounce."
Shee was stricken. The complex threads of the future paths were playing out, showing how she was a nexus.
"This is the other part of my mission," she said. "To set you on that trail. I never suspected!"
"But now we know the machines' ploy," Idyll said. "That returns the initiative to us. You have not betrayed our culture. We will handle it in our own fashion."
"I will help you if I can," Shee said, relieved. "But I suspect I should stay well away from the action, lest the machines have yet another use for me."
"Your role is not yet finished," Idyll agreed.
"Parting," Havoc said, and the two disappeared.
Shee was still sitting on his lap, his member still embedded. "Speaking of roles: You have had me twice while I was distracted," she told him reprovingly. "Now it is my turn. Perform."
"Harsh mistress," he muttered. But his penis rose to the occasion, swelling within her. As a Glamor he could do it as often as required. As a Glamor, now, so could she, climaxing when he did. She did it several times, delighting in it.
Then they dressed and went out to bid parting to Symbol, who was still reveling in her possession of the ikon. For her, the occasion had ended well.