Upon that desolate, featureless land of unchanging gray, the small party stood before the great gates of the sole structure they had seen since leaving the first. The second was in many ways like the first: some great single crystal of unknown composition that seemed to change before your very eyes in ever so subtle ways, thrusting upward from its place embedded in the otherwise polished rock floor. It was, however, smaller, and thinner, than the one that had extruded into the known universe through which they had entered this eerie plane, giving some hope that there weren't endless chambers within.
In front of it was erected a great ceremonial gate which appeared to be made of some marble-like rock, so finely polished they could see their reflections in it. Two massive rounded columns rose up on either side, then bent seamlessly in until they joined at an arch in the top center. From the inside of the columns and arch, a thinner, flat panel extended from the arch and from the sides, creating a smaller, rectangular entryway rounded at the top to match the angle of the arch above. It was on this panel, above the opening, that the words were carved, perfectly, and inlaid with what appeared to be solid, polished, gleaming gold.
"Why, it's in no Mesok tongue," Krisha commented, a bit awestruck. "It is in Hindi!"
"No, it is in Torguil, the language of my ancestors," Morok maintained. "Savin's translation, though, is fairly close."
"It is a demon trick!" Manya rasped. "I see it in my mother tongue, as you all see it in your own!"
"Not quite," said Gun Roh Chin. "It's nothing but a line of very small golden dots arranged in squares. I read nothing in New Mandarin, which gives me a thought." He turned to Krisha. "Scan that thing, right where it is, as if it were a living creature," he instructed. "See if you get anything."
She tried. "A headache," she responded. "I cannot keep on it for any length of time."
He nodded. "Savin? Morok? Try your own powers on those words, right where you see them."
Morok looked up, concentrated, then his long legs buckled and he caught himself just before he fell. "Vertigo," he said needlessly.
"Static, like a de-tuned transceiver," Savin told him. "There was a real burst when Morok almost fell just now"
"It's some sort of broadcast device on the neural band," the captain replied, feeling a theory confirmed. "The difference in most Talents is nothing more than sensitivity to one or another part of that band, but the frequencies aren't that far off. The message it is actually broadcasting is in a purely holographic form; your minds change it into the writing of your native tongues. It's quite clever. I know that a great deal of research has gone into trying to manufacture just such a device, in all three empires. Even ones without Talents would get the message; only ones like myself, who are essentially crippled, unable to even receive or send or otherwise use those bands, see nothing but what is really there."
"I've tried to block it out, but I cannot," Krisha told him.
"Its band is too broad, beyond the mere telepathic limits. Still, its purpose is clear. It means 'Keep Out' in everybody's language."
Morok studied the ground. "Well, they went in."
"Naturally. People who erect the signs perforce exclude themselves," Manya noted sourly.
"There is something else," Savin said, hesitating a bit. "Come over here—about twenty meters to the left."
They followed him, more curious than apprehensive now that one mystery had been at least rationalized. They looked where Savin pointed and Morok gave a noise halfway between a squawk and a gurgle that passed for a Stargin gasp. "A trail! Leading away!"
Savin nodded. "It just—starts. Nothing leads from the structure to it, or from anywhere else. Notice something else, too, Holiness. You've been studying our trail since the start."
"Similar to the markings we've been following—only there are many more, over a larger area. Strange . . . if I didn't know better, I'd swear that the main markings were the ones we've been following all along."
Manya ran her basic equipment over them. "The Holy Gods and Their Mighty Angels be with us! They are the same marks! See? You can see the demon strides easily here, and the pair are the same!"
Krisha shook her head. "You mean those are the same tracks? And our own? That, somehow, we've come two days' march in a circle? That's not possible! I admit we could easily have gone in a circle for all the landmarks, but that is not the demon structure from which we came!"
Gun Roh Chin nodded thoughtfully. "Nonetheless, the conclusion is hard to avoid. We're dealing here with a totally different set of rules, even if things seem similar. Some of the similarity might be due entirely to what our own bodies and minds are designed to perceive. The fact that the trail emerges out of nothing, away from this new structure, indicates that we did indeed emerge at some other point, but came to this one."
"But why didn't we just then see this thing behind us at that point, then?" Manya asked him.
"I have no idea, Manya. How did we get from that Exchange world to this one?" He got up and looked back at the new structure with its warning gate. "If this is some other universe, then the natural course of things we take for granted might not all apply. Certainly some do—we have gravity at a manageable level, and air, and suspended water. Better to ask why the demons, who know this place and its rules, didn't just double back as well. This sounds totally insane, I know, but we have left conventional wisdom behind."
"How can we cope without the anchor of natural law?" Morok asked him, disturbed.
"Don't ask me how—divine intervention, maybe, if you want to think that—but I am convinced that logic is not out the window with the rest. Logic demands that any such place have natural laws and rules that are consistent. I fall back again on the records we saw, that the demons are carbon-based life, and not that radically different than a number of races we know, except, perhaps, in the head and the spirit. Their major advantage over us is that they know the rules, but our advantage is that the rules cannot deviate radically from what we know without causing them as much of a problem as it does us. It is a matter, then, of deducing those differences."
Krisha looked at him. "Captain, you remember what we talked about? About the physiological differences even between us?"
"Yes?"
"Suppose—just suppose—there is a difference. Just as the two of us can't see into the infrared, and others of us either cannot see colors or perceive them differently, perhaps these demons can see things we cannot. Things native to this environment. There might be things all around us that none of us are equipped to perceive and which even our instruments have no way to detect."
He nodded "I've thought of that, and it's most likely true, but their primary perspective overlaps ours, it's clear. We can't worry about what we cannot see, hear, feel, or touch. We can only trust that the situation is mutual, in which case the price is that things are pretty boring to us. I am more concerned with getting the rules straight."
"Such as, Captain?" Morok prodded.
"Logic suggests that we did not go in a circle, at least not in practical terms. Most likely it is a spiral. The demon houses angle down, suggesting some sort of descent. Somehow, we could not get that short distance between there and here without walking around—and, most importantly, neither could they. Now, what did they—and we—have to do to get to this point? We had to walk around anti-clockwise—to the left. Somehow, under the strange rules of this place, left is down, right is up. How we can perceive the old, upward, trail is a mystery to me, but I would wager that if we refused entry there, as the sign suggests, and continued on, we'd walk around again, two days, to this very spot. If we retrace, going right to do so, we'd wind up back where we came in. It's important. It means that, even if we lose the trail, we know the general way to go."
"I am feeling dizzy once again, but not from that thing," Morok said. "Still, I have been around a long while and have traveled far. I've seen races that were clearly intelligent, industrious, and totally incomprehensible, who spent all their days creating bizarre structures they never used, who had no languages as we understood them yet somehow communicated with each other, and who would act in ways one could only consider erratic and insane—except that they were consistent. How can someone converse with, let alone convert, creatures so alien that they have no apparent common mental ground with any known race? If whole peoples can be thus, then why not some demonic universe? There is no alternative but to accept your theory as a working hypothesis, Captain—until it fails, if it does."
"That is all we can do," replied Gun Roh Chin. "However, Holiness, if my theory on dimensional directionality is correct, we have problems. There are a lot more marks over there than can be accounted for with just our passage. I particularly dislike that series of nicks, three and then three, as if sharp metal points had dug into the rock. Nothing we or the demons did accounts for them."
"The Corithian!" Manya gasped. "It had six such legs when I saw it!"
Chin nodded. "And that means we've got our Mycohlians behind us, and not very far behind, either, I'd wager."
"I was also concerned with the extra pair of prints similar to the demons', only smaller, with a shorter stride," Savin noted. "Over there, to one side. The forward scuff is definitely hard and rounded, like hooves, but I know of no hoofed races other than demons that are also two-legged. Do we have another demon behind us? Perhaps joined with their worshipers?"
"I have no idea," the captain said honestly. "All I know is, if we stay here, we're going to have very unpleasant company once more. We can either try and set up an ambush here, using this place for cover—after all, they have to come here—or do we go through?"
"I say nail them right here!" Savin exclaimed forcefully. "We have cover. They have none at all. There might not be another spot this ideal."
Morok considered it. "Don't forget that we'd be facing a pretty strong telepath, if Krisha is to be believed, and a Corithian as well. I'd like at least a full charge on the power packs before I fought a pitched battle, and we didn't get that here. And there's the matter of the smaller demon figure. I'd rather know more of Gunny's rules for this place before taking on one of them directly. No, for a good ambush I want better than even odds, and I doubt if we are even at that point in this place. Let us go through. Perhaps there will be someplace ahead to camp, to recharge, to wait for them, that gives us an edge. Right now our best edge is to remain in the lead. It allows usto pick the time and the place."
Gun Roh Chin turned and looked back up at the sign only he could not read. "Well, we are supposed to discard all hope at this point, but I haven't gotten to that point yet. Step up! Who will be the first to enter the upper Hells while still alive?"
"I'll lead," Krisha told them. "I have no fear of what might be in there." I am in lower Hell already, she added to herself.
The inside was pretty much the same as the first demon structure had been: the same indirect lighting emanating from the walls, the same melted plasticine texture to everything. They went from the outer chamber to the inner one with no sensation of going down, although from the angle they must have been descending and rather steeply, and stepped into a new grand chamber, only slightly smaller than the one they'd first encountered, but still pristine, unchanged, without bodies or gore.
Krisha stopped and stared at the center of the chamber, and the others all froze and gaped with the same sense of awe and terror.
"The Evil Ones!"Manya screamed, and raised her pistol, and it took both Chin and Savin to stay her hand.
"They're still in suspension!" Chin yelled at her. "You shoot them and we'll just get what they got back at the first one! You want that? Think, Manya! Think!"
She trembled, and they could tell her resolve was shaken, but it was more than a minute before they felt safe to let go of her.
It was as if they had stood there on slightly raised platforms, the male and the female, and allowed the strange material that made up the inside of the crystal structure to ooze down upon them, covering them and locking them eternally inside semi-transparent columns.
"Just like on the recordings," Morok managed, his twin hearts somewhere inside his rubbery beak.
Krisha nodded, mouth still partly open. "There is the enemy," she managed at last, her voice cracking, her throat impossibly dry.
"But not the enemy we chase," the captain reminded her.
Savin, for all his fierce looks, was equally stunned. "Evil," he muttered. "Impossible, pure evil. It beats inside my mind like a drum. Cold, horrible evil. Repulsion. Revulsion. Every dark emotion I have ever felt, magnified a thousand—no, a million times. Never in my studies, never in my wildest nightmares, could I conceive of an evil like this."
Chin was fascinated. "You feel that empathically? From them?"
Savin nodded. "I cannot conceive of how those scientists did not also feel it. Surely they, too, used empaths. Even now I fight an insane, driving urge to flee this place."
"Krisha, are you getting anything?" the captain asked her. The telepath did not answer, but kept staring at the two figures as if in a trance.
<Unlock Us! You can do it! Unlock Us and worship Us and become Our priestess. We can free you as you can free Us. Our priestesses know no limits; their power is Our power, and, for them, there is no such thing as excess. Free Us and worship Us and We shall free you from the tyrants who did this terrible thing to you and aid you in revenging yourself against them all. Our time is coming once again. Soon We shall be free again to conquer and rule and reign no matter what you do. Free Us now and you shall reign over a multitude of worlds in Our name. Refuse and We shall be free soon in any event, but We shall keep you as you are, frozen in this state for eternity, allowed neither madness nor rebirth. Free Us! Free Us now, and you shall be High Priestess to the very stars!>
Gun Roh Chin suddenly grew concerned. "Morok! Get to her! If those things can send that kind of dread into Savin, they might be getting into Krisha's mind!"
<We are the gods of pleasure, the gods of passion. All that you desire We can give you, and things so wondrous your mind cannot even dream of them. Free Us! All you must do is free Us and worship. Since the dawn of time We were, and to the end of time We will be, and during all that time We have acted according to Our own code. We are always honorable; We always keep Our promises, enforce Our word and Our bond. Even the legends of your own silly church admit that much. Do your false gods answer all those prayers? You can do it. That much of your curse We lift even here, trapped as We presently are, but you must do it of your own free will. Only by that can you prove yourself worthy to serve us. Your false gods are long dead and gone. Your faith is enforced by carnival tricks. Free Us and We shall make you more powerful than your false and foolish gods. Free Us . . . free Us . . >
"I cannot get through to her! Something is blocking me!" Morok shouted.
Savin moved swiftly for so large a creature, grabbed Krisha, whirled her around although she resisted, and, with a huge, leathery fist, knocked her cold.
She went down like a suddenly empty sack collapsing to the floor. Savin caught her, and picked her up as gently as he could, and turned to the others. "We must get out of here, and now! What I have done has enraged them so that I cannot stand it much longer myself!"
"Yes, now!" Gun Roh Chin shouted. "Everybody! Get by those living mummies up there and out the back way! Quickly!"
They did not hesitate, and moved forward and around the creatures on a run. They all felt it; even the captain felt something, although he wasn't sure if it was real or merely his own feelings reflecting what he'd seen and experienced. It didn't matter. It didn't matter where this thing led them next, either. Clearly they were not yet up to taking on demons, even demons in amber.
As soon as Josef accepted that they weren't likely to catch the Mizlaplanians, rest became the number one essential. He had hoped to catch up to them, knowing that they couldn't be that far ahead, and could hardly hide in this flat wasteland, but he finally had to admit that there just wasn't much chance at this stage. He would have to count on the fact that they, too, would need to stop and rest, and that, being ahead, something would eventually slow or stop them, allowing his people to close.
Tobrush sent hundreds of slender tendrils into the medical kit. "Kalia, remove your suit. I have limited knowledge of Terran anatomy but a burn is a burn, and the book says to keep treating it. Do you have any pain?"
"A little," she admitted. "Not as much as when I came to, and not nearly enough to lay me out. I am very stiff, though, on my whole side."
She deactivated the environment suit, which caused it to suddenly loosen, as if it were three or four sizes too large, allowing her to pull down the fasteners and essentially let it drop.
Although the burnt side of her face looked awful, Josef was unprepared for the red, flaking skin underneath the suit. She hadn't had any deflectors on when she'd been shot, since that would have slowed her down and limited her maneuverability somewhat, and the energy blast from the Mizlaplanian whatever it was had partly gone through the suit to bare skin. The suit itself was undamaged; it was simply the heat, which had been of sufficient strength to get through the normal insulation at that range.
He, frankly, couldn't understand how she could walk at all, let alone this far, and without complaint or collapse. The left arm and upper thigh had taken the most damage. They weren't the fatal, near disintegration, strength that she'd have gotten without the suit on at all, but those were pretty mean burns.
Well, there wasn't much he or anybody else could do about her now. In a way, seeing the damage and knowing what she'd done after it, he felt glad that she was on their side.
"You know, at any normal distance the suit would have prevented all but the head damage," Tobrush commented. "Even at stun or wide spray it would have done some, lesser, damage to the exposed skin on the face, but little else. That Holy Horror had her weapon on tight beam maximum and from a distance of probably no more than three meters. As it is, only the fact that she was using a tight beam and had a bad angle kept you from dying on the spot."
"Skip the lecture," Kalia responded, slurring her words slightly as if a bit drunk due to the damage to her face. "Just patch it up and I'll make it."
"Well, you survived what the medikit calls shock, which is apparently the real killer in such cases, and the medication and spray-on mediskin seems to have done quite well, so I suppose I guessed right," the Julki told her. "However, I am going to keep giving the series of injections and applying new mediskin until things settle to natural healing. According to the kit, if you lived this long you'll survive, but it recommends at least three weeks in a healing tank for this scale of burn."
"Fine. I'll just trot on over to the nearest hospital. Just do what you can."
"Yeah. She's too mean to die," Josef said, trying to sound jocular, although the extent of the burns really shook him. He wasn't sure if he could have walked back out of the shuttle after that, let alone get all the way here.
Kalia was a genuine psychopath, but she was his psychopath.
Although he felt uneasy about stopping, at least Desreth made it a full rest for everyone; the Corithian didn't seem to require sleep or rest, and seemed content to do virtually nothing for hours.
Sleeping was easy, even on the flat rock, but waking up was hard, even when as a result of a warning. Josef checked his chronometer first and saw he'd been out a bit under five hours; his body screamed at him that it was not enough. Still, Desreth couldn't be ignored. Better to be tired than dead.
"What's the problem?" he called.
"Others coming behind us. Small group, probably no larger than ours."
"How far off?"
"Estimate approximate. About one and a quarter hours at current speed. I can detect them only with my receptors on maximum range."
Kalia yawned and tried to shake herself awake. "Could it be the Holy Ones? Got behind us somehow?"
"Doubtful. The rock tracings have been most consistent," Desreth told her. "More likely it is a troubleshooting team from the Exchange. It was their territory and their personnel, after all. It was inevitable that they would show up sooner or later."
"Bad news for us," Tobrush commented. "That makes us the middle of the layer, with the fanatics ahead of us and the Exchange behind us, which is bad enough. Desreth, however, indirectly makes an equally telling point in that those people, if Exchange, are the ones with all the rules on their side."
"The dead do not quibble over rules," Kalia spat.
"Perhaps not, but we are quite alone here and it is unlikely any more of our own forces will cross the border in our defense. On the other hand, we can only regard an Exchange team as the vanguard of many, many more. Consider: if this world were in our own territory, and we came upon the same scene with our own dead lying about, half the military of the Empire would be called down upon the spot. Unlike the prayermongers, if we take out the first Exchange group we will almost surely face a second, larger force, and a third, and so on, and most likely they would jump to the conclusion that the Mycohl were behind all of this. After all, does not the primary religion of our leaders venerate demon-like creatures? The distress call itself could be interpreted as signaling not an alien force but rather a Mycohl attack. 'Demons at Rainbow Bridge' and all that."
Josef nodded. "Tobrush is right. There's the threat of actual war over this. Damn! This is getting more complicated by the moment." He looked around. "Get everything together! Let's move and move fast while we still can. It's possible that they haven't spotted us as yet, and if we can open up a little lead, we might be able to keep it that way for a while." He looked around. "If there was just some damned cover around here we might be able to let them slip past us! Let them take out the Mizzies and us heroically coming to the rescue. For now, we just have to move."
Josef liked to think that the superior training of the Mycohl military gave them an edge. Few of the enemy, whichever one, could double-time for so long with so little rest and very shortened rations.
About two hours of that and they came to a minor mystery.
"The tracks diverge," Robakuk noted. "Most went off that way, and these two only go on."
They looked around, but saw nothing but the same gray expanse as always. There seemed no reason for the sudden divergence, but Josef had no doubt which one to follow. "The one to the left," he told them. "That has to be the Mizzies, and they are our first priority here."
"If the other two are with them, they might be circling around to catch us in a trap," Kalia pointed out.
"I can't believe they'd split their forces here on some off-chance of catching us. No—to the left. Go!"
After almost an hour, they saw the demon house and gate in the distance, and it energized them just to see something in this wasteland. Still, they approached with caution, widely spread apart, fearing that perhaps the team ahead of them was lurking there around and behind the gate and structure, waiting to pick them off against the glow of the sky and the flat plain without cover of any kind.
Kalia, for one, was mystified to discover that nobody was there, and, truth to tell, so were the others. "A perfect spot for it," Josef noted.
"Are you certain that invisible bitch isn't lurking back here for us?" Kalia asked, pistol out, nervous and ready to shoot at shadows.
"No," Tobrush replied. "I could at least hear that interminable praying and you could sense her, too, if you'd use your head. They are gone, and almost certainly through the gate."
"Perhaps the sign had something to do with it," Josef said nervously, pointing at the underhang below the arch.
The warning caused them the same initial fears that had struck the Mizlaplanians, but, as Gun Roh Chin had with the earlier group, Desreth was able to solve the mystery in a manner that at least made sense and kept things on a rational basis.
Josef thought a moment. "That thing, building or transport or whatever, interferes with the neural bands," he mused. "If we got up close and behind it, the team behind us might not detect our presence."
"Too risky," Tobrush responded. "They will certainly check out the entire structure as we did, and with the same caution. That would mean a firefight with no advantage to us. I don't think the situation favors our continued existence in that case." The military oaths and honor of the Mycohl military did not permit surrender, and that was understood from the start. You triumphed or you perished.
"Shit!" Kalia swore in frustration. "Ain't we ever gonna get to shoot anybody?"
"Patience, Kalia, the time Will come," Josef soothed. "For now, Tobrush is right."
"That sign may be more than a mere warning," Robakuk noted. "The place could be filled with traps. I read it as 'Keep out—or else!' I don't know what the 'or else' is."
"Well, we can't stay here," Josef pointed out. "Okay, the same system we used before. Weapons out, Desreth and Tobrush in first. Kalia, you come in with me. Robakuk, rear guard, thirty seconds and in. Be extra careful and take nothing for granted! Even if there's no trap set by whatever made these things, inside that thing is an even better place for an ambush than here, and we don't want to get pinned down between the Mizzies and the Exchange, either."
There was no sign of a trap from either their enemies or the builders inside, just the expected entry chamber. They moved as before, a precision team, but when Tobrush and Desreth entered the second chamber, they could hear the Julki say, "Oh, my!"
"Tobrush? You all right?" Josef called, worried.
"Yes, I'm all right. But I think the rest of you had better get up here. Desreth says I'm not seeing things, but I need confirmation."
Josef and Kalia entered the chamber cautiously, then stopped, struck equally dumb for a moment by the sight of the two demons in suspension in the center of the chamber. Robakuk, coming in last, had no less a reaction, but Josef's professionalism snapped him out of it a bit. "Robakuk—keep back in the corridor. I don't want the Exchange walking in on us until we've had a chance to look at this."
"Uh—yes, at once, sir!"
"Not even as a hatchling have I ever believed in these things," Tobrush said in a distant tone. "Or anything else I couldn't see, hear, and feel."
"Are they real?" Josef wanted to know.
"Yes, sir," the Julki responded. "Nor are they comatose, at least not mentally. They know we are here!"
"Such power," Kalia sighed, and Josef was startled to see her fall to the floor and prostrate herself before the two figures and begin a low chanting prayer.
Desreth was clinical, as usual. "The subjects are definitely warm-blooded, carbon-based. The smaller of the pair is the female, indicating probable bisexuality of the race."
The Julki made a noise unlike any they'd ever heard him make before.
"Tobrush? You all right?" Josef asked, concerned. It didn't take a detective to figure out that this was pretty much what the Exchange had found in the first structure, and that a pair much like this one had gotten out and done all that destruction.
"They are speaking to me!" the telepath responded. "They are—powerful. Hard to think. Can't block them out!"
"Well, you're our medium! What are they saying?"
The Julki's body shivered, and it was clearly having real problems. Then Tobrush spoke, but the voice was not Tobrush but someone, something else, a kind of voice none of them had ever heard before, and one which, if coming through Tobrush, strained the creature's abilities.
"We welcome you, who are Our grandchildren," said the voice from the Julki.
"Who are you?" Josef asked, not sure why he was shouting. They obviously could read minds.
"Before the universe was, We were," replied the voice. "We were among those who created the universe and the worlds within, and planted the seeds that would become you all. Those whom you call the Mycohl, your masters, are Our children and Our guardians of the countless nests of worlds We designed. Our other children have, it seems, followed a rebellious path, but Our time is almost at hand once more, when, with the Faithful at Our side, We shall re-establish Our rule and reign over the whole of your galaxy and more, to the edges of Creation. Then shall the Faithful rule as gods over all the others, with power and glory undreamed-of."
Josef felt a little uneasy, wondering what sort of speech the other demons had handed the Exchange scientists before wiping up the place with their broken remains.
"Those were unbelievers, followers of the rebellious ones," the demon voice responded, reading his mind. "Had they been discovered and Our comrades freed by the Faithful, the result would have been very different."
"Why did you kill all of them?" Desreth asked. "It seems—excessive."
"Why not?" came the chilling reply. "The numbers of the unbelievers are like the stars; a few one way or the other matters not at all. In any case, it was practical; Our comrades did not at the time realize how powerless those creatures were."
"And what will you require of us if we follow you?" Josef pressed.
"Your worship and your faithfulness," came the response. "You have nothing else to give."
"Your claim to be the gods who created us all is suspect," Desreth noted in its flat monotone. "If in fact that cannot be shown, then we cannot trust your word as to the rest, including our own fates."
"Why do you doubt, Corithian?" the demon voice asked.
"First because, by asking, you show that you cannot read my thoughts," Desreth responded. "By any logic, a creation should have no secrets from the gods. Second, you are imprisoned, as, obviously, were the others. Who can imprison the gods?"
"There are things beyond your limited ability to comprehend," the demon responded, sounding, to Josef, a little bit pissed off. "We are the commanders of this station. By Our own choice and the necessity of remaining one with the station, We are here, sleeping until someone activates the station. Only Our mature grandchildren could reach, let alone activate, a station. When that happened, it placed in motion a chain of events leading to Our reclamation of Our rightful rule."
"I regret that I do not believe you," the Corithian responded. "You are not necessary to run this station; the first one we used required no operators. Nor would you place yourself in such a position that there was no emergency override to extricate you. The most telling argument, however, is that your own comrades, as you call them, passed through here and they chose not to liberate you. If your own people, imprisoned themselves, do not trust you free, then how can we be expected to do so?"
"Fools! Worthless hunk of self-maintaining machinery! How dare you question Us? Free Us and pledge your souls to Us and We will make you the vanguard, Our first priests and priestesses with power beyond your wildest imaginings! Those who free and pledge themselves to Us will reign in Our names; those who refuse shall be Our first sacrifice!"
There was a somewhat desperate tone to their pleading now, something not lost on either Josef or Desreth and perhaps not Robakuk as well. It was hard to tell just how much control Tobrush retained.
"Girl! We shall make you the Goddess Kalia, and give you power over all the world that used and abused you! You will avenge yourself against all who caused you harm, and command your enemies to grovel and eat the dung of animals, and all will worship you and sing your praises and your glory, even the very Lord of your clan! All you need do is take out your pistol and set it to narrow beam maximum and cut through the columns above Our heads."
Josef's hand went to his own pistol, and he made ready to draw and fire, wondering if in fact he was faster than she.
Kalia's head came up, and she raised her torso up on her two hands, but she did not reach for her pistol.
"Feel a pale shadow of what We offer you," the demon voice said, and the woman's body stiffened for a moment, then began an incredible, sensuous writhing, her face a picture of absolute ecstasy. The empathic signals the demons were able to impart even from their prison must have been incredible.
"Draw your pistol," cajoled the demon voice. "Break Our seals. Shoot anyone who might try to stop you, for they are not worthy. Do it now, and you'll see that there is nothing which you cannot have, nothing you cannot be, or do. Do it!"
"Sergeant!" Josef snapped. "You took an oath of obedience to orders! If you break that oath now, you will be no more trusted by them than you deserve, for you will have forfeited your honor!"
He saw the longing in her face, saw her good hand go to the pistol, then hesitate.
"Do not draw! That's an order! Move to Desreth and around the pair!"
"A command of your gods supersedes any oaths or promises to mere mortals!" the demon voice responded. "You are relieved of all such oaths! Free us!"
She hesitated a moment, then tensed, and, just as slowly, her hand moved away from the gun. Slowly, ever so slowly, she moved toward the Corithian.
"Desreth! Get her out the back!" Josef commanded. He looked over at Tobrush, who seemed held there, and wondered if he had to leave the telepath.
Suddenly the Julki's body quivered and began to move, first toward the demons, then around them to the right of the pair.
"You join the others, sir! I'll make certain Tobrush gets out of here!" came Robakuk's voice behind him.
Realizing that the Julki was being moved by the telekinetic powers of the Thion, Josef gave a wry smile and a salute to the two demons, then made to join the others, even as Tobrush's demonic voice was screaming, "You cannot do this! We command you to return! You will suffer in agony for all eternity for this!"
For the first time since he was in his early teens, Jimmy McCray crossed himself as he stood before the gate.
"Abandon all hope, all you who would enter here," he read. "Not quite where it should be, nor as complete, but I'm a bit taken aback to see it here at all."
"Huh? What?" Tris Lankur responded. "Where do you see that?"
"Up there, above the gateway."
"There's nothing up there but some kind of gold dot pattern."
"I read the same thing in Durquist," said the Durquist. "Modra?"
"Just reads in standard Commercial to me. Kind of weird, like everything else."
"Obviously a holographic message, intended to be read by anybody," Lankur responded. "But you seem to know the passage, McCray."
"Indeed. The full thing—it's been a very long time—but, the full thing should read,
'Through me you pass into the woeful city;
Through me you pass into eternal pain;
Through me you pass through a people lost.
It was justice moved my lofty Maker;
Divine power brought me into being,
The first love and the highest wisdom.
Before me were created only things eternal.
And I endure for all time.
Abandon all hope, all you who enter here.' "
"More of this primitive poet?"
"He's lookin' less and less primitive as we go, although more the poet," the telepath responded. "If it holds, what we stand before is nothing less than the gates of Hell itself. The place where all the interestin' folks wind up, and where I half expected to wind up one day myself—but not like this, in a suit and still alive. Still and all, it's the very place you'd go if you were a demon, and the very place to go if you wanted one."
Modra Stryke stared at him and frowned. "You're not seriously suggesting that that's Hell in there, and that we're chasing real, live demons?"
"Either that, or somebody's gone to a whole lot of bother to make it seem so," McCray replied. "And I, for one, sure can't think of a motive for that."
"I think it's a bit difficult to swallow either explanation," the Durquist responded. "This is hardly a primitive age. It's the age of spaceships and interstellar, interracial empires, and technology so extreme that we deliberately limit it for fear it will overwhelm us. It is an age far removed from sun worship and glorified tree spirits. It's an age when we already know almost everything."
McCray looked around and swept the horizon with his hand. "That so? Then explain this!"
The Durquist was nonplussed. "Well, I said 'almost.' Still, we've gone a long way, both in and out, and we haven't found a single god yet."
"But we found two devils," McCray shot back.
"Enough of that, you two!" Tris Lankur snapped. "I will grant you that we have stumbled on something totally new, something we don't understand, and the major reason we're here, other than investigating the thing, is to find out if our people somehow also triggered something nasty. That, in fact, is my main concern, the real reason I had to follow those two. The universe is still full of surprises, no matter what you say, Durquist, and the more we discover, the more we find we don't quite know. That's our job, remember? To find the nasty little surprises before they do major harm. Before it was always a new world, and was localized, at least. Now we've stumbled onto something big, maybe the biggest thing anybody's stumbled on in history. Big and as nasty and mean as anything any of us have ever faced before. At the very least a fourth empire, with technological powers we can't even come close to figuring, and a mind-set that doesn't seem to like any competition. But that's all it is, clear? That's enough!"
"I'll admit it must be a comfort not to have been brought up Catholic," McCray responded. "For one thing, you didn't have to endure all those years of those bloody interminable catechism classes. I long ago abandoned the faith of my ancestors, but I can no longer shed the mind-set than I can my skin. And, as a rational man of the great technological now, I'm beginnin' more and more to see that those old priests and nuns got it close. Closer, at least, than any New Planet Survey I've ever been given."
"Well, there's no use standing here arguing," Modra pointed out. "From the traces, it looks like not only the demons but half of creation's been through here ahead of us, and those type of folks we do know. Having seen no bodies on the way, I assume they got here spaced enough that they haven't had another gun battle, or been set upon by monsters, or whatever, so we're still ahead of the game in following in their footsteps. Either we stand here and let them go on and wait for reinforcements that might or might not be able to follow us, and hope they come before our water and food run out, or we go."
"The lady indeed has a point," Jimmy McCray admitted. "Shall we ignore the sign and go on in?"
Modra nodded, but said, "Uh, tell me, McCray—this Dante you keep spouting? How'd he wind up? At the end, I mean."
"He made it all the way to Heaven, lass," the telepath replied. "And then he got home and wrote his bloody epic."
"Let's hope we come out the same way," she replied. "You know any more about demons than that book?"
"Quite a bit," he admitted, "although filtered through many years of total neglect. At the age of thirteen, demonology was far more fun than bein' an altar boy."
They entered the first chamber.
<I don't like this, Jimmy,> Grysta noted. <I feel something—like something's waking up.>
He felt it too. "On your guard," he hissed. "Something's ahead."
Coming before the two demons had no less an effect on them than it bad on the first two teams. For most of them, it was their first true visualization of creatures which, up to now, had been more loosely defined; Lankur had no problems replaying the recording from the other cymol and matching the scene rather exactly. For the second time in a matter of minutes, Jimmy McCray found himself crossing himself.
"I told you," the cymol said softly.
"They're aware of us," Jimmy warned. "I felt a probe just now."
"You mean they're awake?" the Durquist responded nervously.
<Don't resist Us, telepath. You cannot resist Us in the end, and it will only cause you additional strain.>
"Grysta! I am under mental attack!" McCray called in an unusually loud, somewhat panicky voice.
<Reinforcing, Jimmy. Hold on!>
The demons seemed suddenly taken aback, even a bit confused. <He blocks Us! How can he possibly have that kind of power?>
Even with Grysta amplifying his defenses, Jimmy was under severe strain from the concerted attack of the two most powerful telepaths he'd ever come up against. He wasn't at all sure he could hold out for long.
Something deep inside his mind welled up from a half-forgotten childhood, a combination of idly acquired half-knowledge and a strength in belief he'd felt he'd long abandoned.
<In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I command you to depart my mind! In the name of God, get out!>
To his utter amazement, the pressure lessened, although it was still there, still strong, still capable of attack if he let down his guard.
The demons seemed thoroughly confused and frantically sought to regroup.
<What are you that you can withstand and dare command Us?>
<An Irishman, you spawn of the Snake! We Irish have a way with snakes.>
The reference went completely past the demons. <He is infected,> said the female demon. <He has a parasite which controls him! I read it in the minds of the others!>
<To whom do We speak?> they asked him. <To the host or the master?>
All the old lore that he'd somehow absorbed during the times he'd sneaked into Father Donovan's private library seemed to come instantly to the fore.
<I am James McCray. What are your names, demons?>
They didn't answer, which fit. To know the name of a lesser demon was to have some control over it, or so the old books had maintained.
"You all right, McCray?" Lankur asked.
He nodded. "I think so, Cap. Me and the boys, here, are just havin' a little get-acquainted session."
"Who are they?"
"Well, they're not too polite and they won't give me their names, but as to what they are—oh, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."
<I am Astaroah,> said the male demon at last, <and My companion is Tahovah.>
McCray smiled, feeling more confident, although he whispered, "Keep me blocks up, Grysta, girl." To the demons he sent, <Now, strictly telepath-to-telepath, you and I know that those aren't your real names. We can't really lie convincingly, even to each other, can we?>
They were mighty strong telepaths, though, clearly not limited to the conscious band and unfazed by the reflexive blocking systems that Modra and the Durquist, at least, had implemented the moment they'd been warned.
Frustrated at their inability to get McCray, the demons turned their attention to Modra, without letting up much of the pressure on the telepath as well. The empath was suddenly filled with monstrous, overwhelming waves of despair, as if all the pain inside her, all the guilt she had carried and brooded upon, was suddenly amplified a thousand times. She gave a sudden sob and moaned horribly, dropping to her knees.
"McCray! Tell them to stop it! They're killing her!" Lankur shouted, even as the Durquist moved near the stricken woman to aid her or prevent her from doing harm.
<In the name of God Almighty, who made even this dismal place, I command you depart from that woman!>
The demon laughed. <Your puny God has no hold on us here! Free Us, and let Us into your mind, or she shall be beyond helping! Even now she is sunk so deep she reaches for her gun. Shoot Us—or herself. It is your choice, telepath!>
"Stop that!" Molly shouted at the demons. "You hurt her bad! You stop that now!"
Frankly, they had forgotten about Molly, the poor syn who was along for the ride. Forgotten, too, that she also was an empath.
Molly walked forward on her two hoofed feet and faced the demons. "You look like me, but you bad inside!"
Jimmy, for the life of him, couldn't figure out why the hell the same waves of terrible despair didn't fell Molly as well. Maybe, just maybe, the demons couldn't use anything that wasn't already there, and Molly was too simple and childlike to have those things within her that were being amplified. Until now, she'd never actually seen a demon, nor had any real concept of what they looked like; to her, the creatures seemed just another kind of syn, the evil sort. Although they really looked nothing like her, the somewhat goat-like lower half and the tiny horns did make her seem some kind of opposite of what was inside the pillars.
Molly turned to Modra and laid her long, four-fingered right hand on the sobbing woman's head. Slowly, Modra seemed to grow calmer, more in control, almost as if Molly were drawing the hostile empathic waves striking the Terran woman into her own self, where they were harmlessly dissipated. Modra now stared only into Molly's eyes and as she slowly got to her feet a strange smile and sweet expression replaced the pain on her face.
<Holy shit! Modra looks like a love-struck kid!> Grysta commented.
"Shut up, Grysta!" Jimmy snapped. "I need all your concentration right now."
Lankur was as confused as the others—including the demons—but he was, as always, in full control of himself. "Durquist! Lead them past these bastards and out the back! McCray! You think you can make it past them?"
"I'll make it," he responded. <Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou among women, and blessed be the fruit of thy womb, Jesus . . . !>
Slowly he edged his way around the pillars.
The demons were suddenly driven to near panic. <Wait! We will talk fairly and with no other tricks! Come back!>
<Sorry, you black-hearted bastards,> Jimmy shot back as he went past. <Stand there and rot in your plastic prison for another ten thousand years like you deserve!>
As soon as he was down the corridor and into the next chamber he felt the pressure lift so completely it was as if someone or something had thrown a switch. Tris Lankur saw his relief and asked, "How are you feeling?"
"Sweatin' like a stuck pig, but I think we showed 'em!" the telepath replied. "How's Modra?" He shot a probe to the empath's mind and got back such a tangle of confusion he didn't try long. Sweet Jesus! Modra's turned on hotter than a neutron star! he realized suddenly. And she's got the hots for Molly!
Molly turned, assuming that he'd know, and smiled at him with a look of complete and utter satisfaction. "It what I do, Jimmy. It the only thing I do. Did I do right?"
He sighed. "Yeah, Molly, you did right, as complicated as it might he until that wears off. Durquist? You all right?"
"Indeed. I had some very odd feelings in my head and body in there, as if they were trying to figure a way in, but they did not, and there's no ill effects. I suggest we move out of here to wherever this takes us, though, before we get any more nasty surprises."
<Nobody asked if I was all right,> Grysta said grumpily. <I got such a headache you wouldn't believe!>
"Yes, let's get out of here," Jimmy agreed. "Those were strictly lesser type demons, and we were almost corned beef from them. If they'd gotten out of there, we wouldn't have had a prayer. And, just think, if this thing works out as it has, everyone we meet from now on will be stronger and more powerful!"
"Well, I hope you're wrong," Lankur told him. "Still, we have to find someplace out of here, and now. Preferably someplace with water and food and a lot of direct light so we can recharge the suits."
They moved down the next corridor and suddenly found themselves outside once more.
The sound was almost deafening, like the moaning of countless millions of lost and damned souls all around them and echoing here and there and back and forth and swirling around. The only thing that kept it to a mere unpleasant roar was the even greater sound of torrential rainfall. They all pulled on their helmets to keep as dry as possible.
Lankur had his wish for water, but light and food were nowhere to be seen.
The rain was so dense it was nearly impossible to see. "Which way?" the Durquist asked.
"Left, me boy!" Jimmy McCray came back. "The ancient word in one of the old tongues of my world was sinister, and, around here, that seems just the way to go!"