“But not you?”
“Not I. We were barely two centuries started; the population was just approaching viability. The Pallas needed guidance to build the proper society, guidance only we of the First Mothers could give them. We had the proper technology. I proposed that we First Mothers be preserved, cybernetically linked to computers capable of sustaining us indefinitely, so that we could lead. The others refused, but they could not force me to accompany them. Since then I have remained; I have shaped the growth and development of my people and led them through the founding of the Fellowship. The greatness you see today is my work.”
Obie?
“I’m afraid it’s true, Mavra. I wish it weren’t. This explains the aberrant culture. Brain and soulcanbe preserved as she says, but brain cells do not regenerate. She’s got to be senile, Mavra—senile, probably quite mad, and still in complete control of a people who don’t know any better. Better play along.”
Mavra considered her words carefully. “Nikki, look. Your own people must have told you. The Com is doomed, perhaps everything is doomed, by stupid people who misused your father’s research. We must stop it, and that can only be done by fixing the Well of Souls itself. Only Nathan Brazil can do so, so we have common cause, your people and us. We have brought together the Com government and ourselves for this; we need your people for the legwork. Will you cooperate with us? Will you order that cooperation?”
Nikki seemed lost in thought. Finally the voice said, “Yes, Mavra. You will have whatever you require. The only condition is that Olympians be present when Nathan Brazil is found.”
“I think we can agree to that,” Mavra replied. “We think he might have been spooked by the cul—Fellowship, though, so we’ll have to be very careful when we find him that we don’t lose him again. I give you my word, though, as the same person who brought you from New Pompeii and kept you alive on the Well World, that your people will have access to him. Will you accept that?”
“It is sufficient,” the voice responded. “Go now. The orders have already been given.” She hesitated. “You can survive in our atmosphere as you are now?”
Mavra nodded. “Oh, yes.” An elevator door opened. She turned and walked toward it, then stopped and turned back to the empty chamber. “Good-bye, Nikki,” she whispered, then got on. The door closed.
Another elevator opened across from Mavra’s and two Athenes emerged in their cloaks of priestly scarlet. They entered the chamber, knelt, and awaited command.
“With a computer such as Obie, the Com records, and our own followers, Nathan Brazil will soon be found,” Nikki Zinder told them. “But beware. You saw how both the High Priestess Yua and the Arch-priestess Tala are bewitched?”
“We saw, Holy Mother,” they responded in unison.
“From Obie our race issued, but it issued at the command of the Evil One,” Nikki said. “We do not know what the Evil One did while in control of Obie, but we can be sure that he was the last one to control my father’s creation. It is more than likely, then, that Obie is still doing the bidding of the Evil One, for, as a machine, he has no choice. Mavra Chang was deformed and died in the assault on the Evil One; this I know for I was present. The thing we just saw was but a construct made by Obie, and, if made by Obie, it too is under the spell of the Evil One. Remember at all times that we are dealing with the devil incarnate; make certain that no others are placed under the spell as our two sisters have been. We require them to find Nathan Brazil. We have a pact with the Evil One, but the devil will keep his word only as long as it suits his needs. There is no honor in him, no trust or goodness. Monitor the operation; do what is requested, but keep out of the Evil One’s control, trust no one under it, and, when Nathan Brazil has been located, be certain that only we get to him. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Holy Mother,” they responded in unison. They had been dismissed and knew it; they reboarded the elevator.
Nikki Zinder, locked into her computer, was alone once more. Nevertheless the eerie voice continued to issue, a horrible crackling laughter.
“Oh, Evil One!” she said to no one. “You think to imprison the Lord God so that you may destroy the Universe! But you will not, you’ll see. As your visage haunts and torments me in the male child, now your very self comes to trick me! I’ll not let you, I’ll not, I’ll not…”
Silence reigned briefly in the chamber, then the eerie voice spoke once more, this time in the forlorn, plaintive tones of a very small girl.
“Oh, Daddy! Daddy! I want you so…”
Kwangsi
Marquoz lit a pipe by breathing on the bowl, then sucked on it for a few moments, blowing billowing clouds of acrid smoke everywhere. Finally he said, “The problem, of course, is keeping the Com out of it. I’m having one hell of a time lying through my prodigious teeth just to get us this access.”
Mavra Chang’s sharp, black eyebrows rose slightly. She was getting to like the little dragon, not only for his cynical, self-confident personality but also for the streak of larceny in him. Obie thought that Mavra liked Marquoz because the Chugach was shorter, not counting tail, than Mavra although, in sheer bulk, he outweighed four of her.
“You think they’re catching on?” she asked.
He nodded. “I think they are aware that there’s more to it than we’ve told them. After all, they are not stupid. Their agents report a great deal of change in the cult and its operations and a businesslike transformation of its Temples. Right now, because of Oiympus’s economic clout, they are humoring an influential interest group at little cost, but they’re getting worried at how suddenly un-nut culty everybody’s acting. They know such a powerful group can be a severe threat.”
Mavra sank back, stuck a cheroot in her mouth, declined the dragon’s offer to light it, and brought things more to the point. “So how close are we? Obie is digesting enormous gulps of data but it’s all secondhand. You know we don’t dare bring him in this close to Suba and the Council itself.”
A speaker barked into life. It was an ordinary intercom, but some modifications had been made. Obie might not be able to risk a direct link with the Com computer complex but he could risk a small private line.
“Hello, Mavra,” the computer’s pleasant and uncannily human voice broke in. “I couldn’t help overhearing. Want an update?”
“Please,” she invited and settled back. Obie could, of course, simply continue the link she’d had with him on Olympus, but she was paranoid about keeping that sort of state up for any length of time. To her Obie was another person, and she valued her privacy even as she knew she enjoyed it only at the computer’s sufferance.
“He’s well hidden, I can tell you that,” Obie told her. “Nobody can be erased totally from the computers, you know that, but if anybody tells you that no individual can do anything without computers knowing and reporting it he is dead wrong.”
“You’ve had problems finding data on Nathan Brazil?”
“Oh, no. Not really, Mavra. Despite a really good coverup it was fairly easy to sort out the facts of his life back a couple thousand years—back to Old Earth. He’s been born in at least three dozen places and died more than that.”
“How’s that?” Marquoz put in.
Obie laughed. It was eerie to hear a machine be so damned human, particularly a machine as powerful and absolute as Obie.
“Oh, yes. After all, records are kept. If you don’t have logical backgrounds, then somebody’s bound to notice. I’ve had to trace a very good mind determined not to be traced, and if it wasn’t for three factors I can tell you it would have been impossible.”