“No problem, Mavra.”
A violet glow surrounded the Athene, her form seemed to sparkle. Then the glow died out suddenly.
The Athene stood, smiled at them, gave the crossed-arm salute, and asked softly, “How may I serve you?”
Yua was astonished, first at her superior and then again at Mavra Chang. Knowing nothing of Mavra’s link to Obie, Yua took this as further evidence that she was in the presence of a goddess.
“Who is in charge of Olympus?” Mavra Chang wanted to know.
“The Holy Mother, of course,” the Athene answered.
Mavra nodded. “She has the ultimate, absolute power here?”
“Why, yes, of course. We all obey the Holy Mother.”
“She is here, in this Temple?”
“Always,” the Athene assured her.
“I wish an audience as soon as possible. Can you arrange it?”
“Oh, yes, surely, although it is highly improper for her to do so. But—I shall need a reason to give her.”
She had considered that. “Tell her that Mavra Chang Tonge returns from the dead to find Nathan Brazil!”
The Athene supervisor returned shortly. “Please, follow me,” she requested.
They walked a short way to an elevator. Mavra saw from the buttons that there were ten floors—five above and five below ground, most likely. The Athene picked none of them; the door closed and the elevator descended of its own accord. Mavra watched as each floor button glowed when the elevator passed, until they reached the bottommost—and they descended another thirty meters or so, judging by the time that passed.
The door slid open revealing a dimly lit chamber. Mavra’s eyes could operate well in the infrared as could the Olympians’. Their view was distinct. The chamber was circular, the walls artificial but hard and without trace of opening but for the elevator doors, which stood at four opposing points and seemed to provide the only entrance and exit.
Mavra Chang turned to the two Olympians who had accompanied her. “Return to the surface and await my instructions,” she ordered in a whisper. They saluted and did as instructed. She was alone in that cold room.
Or was she? She wished she had Gypsy’s ability to say for certain. Her instincts told her that she was being observed from somewhere, but her eyes could not locate the source.
Suddenly the room seemed to burst into light; it was just that, but the effect was disorienting for a moment.
Obie’s voice came to her. “They’re projecting hypnotics at you. I’m neutralizing them.”
It figured, really. You couldn’t be a truly awesome leader unless you gave an awe-inspiring show. Again she thought of Gypsy. He’d love all this.
And now came the voice, incredibly ancient, impossibly weary, and altogether nonhuman. It was a voice somehow powerful yet filled with infinite sadness, a voice unlike any she’d heard before, and it seemed to issue from nowhere and everywhere at one and the same time. “Who and what are you?” it asked.
“Computer-amplified thought waves, first order,” Obie informed her. “This isn’t part of the show. It’s too complex for that.” He sounded puzzled, and Mavra didn’t like that at all.
“I am Mavra Chang,” she told the voice while straining to locate the source. If Obie was correct, the source could be in her own mind.
“Mavra Chang is dead,” the voice responded. “Mavra Chang is more than seven centuries dead.”
“Mavra Chang did not die,” she told the unseen person, creature, whatever. “No one can kill Mavra Chang.” Her own voice, she noted, echoed slightly; the other’s did not.
“You are mad, my child. Receive the spirit of your Holy Mother.”
Suddenly she felt pain, a massive headache and an attack along her entire central nervous system. Mavra dropped to the floor in agony. Slowly she could feel the other, the presence, creep in, invading her mind, starting to take control.
Obie, taken by surprise as well, was quick to react now. Through the link to the body he’d fashioned for Mavra he fought back, casting out the alien mental presence. It was not a battle; once Obie had analyzed the manner of mental attack he countered it instantly, leaving Mavra free but exhausted on the floor. She was in shock and would have liked to collapse but didn’t dare; her survival depended on a different tack. Slowly, unsteadily, she got to her feet and looked around. With a bravado she didn’t feel she shouted, “You see? Shall we talk or will I now come to your mind?” Anger was always a good tonic, and Mavra was mad as hell. “Who dares invade the mind of Mavra Chang?”
Obie approved. “Atta girl, tiger-cat! Steady and I’ll make you into you again! That’ll put the fear of god into ’em!”
She knew that Obie was reaching down to her, that her form was bathed in the violet glow, but the renewal was very quick and was not consciously apparent to her. She knew, though, that her lithe, black-clad human form was being seen by the unseen other or others. If they had any historical records they knew upon whose visage they now gazed. She could sense the astonishment in that strange alien voice-not-voice as it gasped, “You are Mavra Chang!”
“I am,” she acknowledged, grateful also that Obie had eliminated the shock. She felt in complete command. “And who are you?”
The voice was silent for a moment, apparently still astonished and perhaps a bit troubled by the power it had just witnessed. Finally it said, “I am Nikki Zinder.”
Once again it was Mavra’s turn to be shocked. “Now wait a minute! I know how I’m still around—but that’s not possible.” A computer, she guessed. A computer programmed to think it’s Nikki. That has to be it. Obie was strangely silent; built by Nikki’s father, he had considered the girl his sister.
Mavra remembered the original Nikki. Fat, naive, sheltered from reality by her father until they’d landed on the Well World. Nikki had been full of sponge. Mavra had battled to lead the girl and Renard, a servant who was also sinking fast because of the sponge, to a haven of sorts on the Well World. Renard had made love to the girl when they’d both thought they were dying; he, though, had been changed by the Well World into one of the satyrlike Agitar; Nikki had been grabbed by Obie and cared for by him in the minor control room. There she’d borne the daughter Renard had fathered, and named her Mavra. And it was there that both of them had been changed into the form now called Olympian or Pallas. They had been among the First Mothers.
But that had been seven centuries and more ago.
A machine that thinks it’s a long-dead person, Mavra thought glumly. How do you deal with a machine?
“New Pompeii was destroyed,” the voice noted. “I saw it with my own eyes. Obie was destroyed. The history tapes bear me out. You cannot be Mavra Chang.”
“Obie is alive. I remained. We only made it appear that we were destroyed. You know the power of Obie, you know that he could do this, know why I can still be alive and much as I was then. You have Nikki Zinder’s memories—you must know that this can be so.”
There was a short pause. “You speak as if I were not who I say,” the voice noted. “I tell you that I am Nikki Zinder. I have remained alive, now bound to this machine. But I am not a machine. My mind and soul live, are preserved and amplified by it.”
Mavra considered this. “But why? Why you, Nikki? Why not the others?”
“The others, like me, grew old. When it was clear that they would die, when Touri did die, they gathered and made their decision. They would find a Markovian gate; they would return to the Well World and be reborn yet again. They all left and, as far as I know, succeeded, my daughter included.”