The limousine ascended again, passing galleries of machinery and storage tanks to emerge suddenly into surroundings of bright, tree-lined avenues where high blocks finished in pastel-colored panels and glass rose above screens of urban parkland and greenery. Whether the pale green sky above was real or simulated, Hunt couldn't tell.
They swung in through a pair of high gates and followed a short driveway beneath an arcade of branches and flowering shrubs to a glass-enclosed entrance in the base of one of the towers. It stood between buttresses of natural-looking rockeries, with water cascading down into walled pools.
Everyone in the rear compartment of the limousine got out. The doors of the building opened automatically to admit them to a tiled lobby area with seats set among low, irregularly shaped plinth tables, and elaborate ornamentations on the pillars and walls. A stream hemmed in by mossy rocks holding clusters of red, pink, and purple plants flowed the full width of the lobby from one side to another, separating them from an inner entrance that lay across a bridge in the center. Overhead, none of the enclosing surfaces were flat, but met in curves and parts of spirals that twisted away to form other, partly disconnected spaces, without a straight line or regular corner anywhere. As they walked with their escorts across the bridge, Hunt had the feeling of being inside a gigantic rendering of an exotically convoluted seashell. Murray thought that whoever dreamed it up must have liked bagels.
Inside were a doorman, a hall porter, and a security man at a desk, all of whom knew the company, and the party passed by without stopping. An elevator whisked them noiselessly upward. Emerging from it, they came onto a platform that seemed at first sight to be hanging in midair. One side looked down over a vast well, plunging through several floors of promenades and what looked like an open-plan restaurant, while the other was a transparent wall through which they could see the locality outside, with the mass of the city rising like a line of cliffs over the treetops. Looking up, even from this height, Hunt still couldn't decide if the sky was real or fake.
As they began following the platform, it transformed into a terrace skirting the well, leading around to the ends of several corridors opening on the far side. Dreadnought led them into one of the corridors, which turned out to be curved but quite short, bringing them to a door at the end. A white-jacketed valet and a maid were waiting inside when the door opened. Across the hallway behind them were two more hefty men in dark suits. After being checked for weapons, the visitors were conducted through into the residence.
Again, the style was to the general curviform theme of the whole building, but less extreme. Hunt had seen traces of it in other areas of Shiban also, including parts of PAC. He wondered if it reflected a regional or historical Jevlenese style. They moved on through a series of richly carpeted and furnished rooms adorned with pictures, sculptures, pottery, and metalwares of unfamiliar styles, some explicit, some abstract, but all with a distinct feel that Hunt classed as "modern," as opposed to anything even remotely antique. But from a culture shaped by an alien race that had been flying starships before mankind existed, he should hardly have expected anything else, he supposed.
The whole place descended in stages toward the rear, making it larger than first impressions suggested. From an open lounge they followed a set of wide, shallow steps down a crescent-shaped lower floor with an outer wall of glass, which looked out over a pool to a roof-level garden. Scirio was standing in the center, waiting for them. Instead of wearing the cleancut, Terran-like, two-piece suit that he had worn previously, he was wrapped in a loose, ankle-length robe, splendidly embroidered in a design of maroon and silver with black embellishment, fastened with clasps and a tied belt, with full sleeves and a wide, velvety collar.
He stood staring at them for an unnaturally long time without moving, his expression impenetrable. His gaze seemed to be fixed for most of the time on Nixie, Hunt realized after a few uncomfortable seconds, as if Scirio expected her to say something. Finally he spoke in a curt, questioning tone, directing his words at her despite the fact that Murray had done the talking before. Perhaps it was because he recognized her as native Jevlenese. She answered in a puzzled voice, and a brief exchange of short utterances followed. Hunt raised an eyebrow questioningly at Murray.
"I'm not sure," Murray murmured in reply. "It's some kind of out-of-town dialect that you don't hear too much."
There was a pause. Then Scirio said something in a different tone, indicating Hunt with a nod of his head. Nixie spoke to Murray.
"What now?" Hunt asked.
"He says, you said you had something that you wanted to talk about. So talk," Murray answered.
Hunt drew a long breath. He had been composing himself for this moment all through the ride across town. The best place to begin with such people, he had decided, was right where it was going to affect them.
"Tell him," Hunt said, "that he's being set up like a sucker. The whole
Ichena
operation is being set up. The police and the people with them who took over PAC are being set up. After they've done the messy work and drawn all the attention, they'll all be swept away. The real power behind what's going on is political, and the people who are running things need scapegoats to blame the trouble on. Once they get jevex running again, then they'll take over."
Scirio stared hard at Hunt with the same inscrutable expression as before; then he uttered a couple of syllables. "Tell him about it," Murray interpreted.
Hunt unfolded a summary version of the whole story, covering the phenomenon of possessed Jevlenese, the cults, Eubeleus, and jevex, all of which Scirio would obviously know something about. Hunt hadn't really expected a receptive hearing. But what alternative had there been for them to try? The story sounded farfetched, to say the least, and putting himself in Scirio's place, he heard his own words sounding more and more like a desperate attempt concocted by Thuriens and Terrans to prolong an unworkable hold over Jevlen which they felt to be slipping. And what motivation would Scirio have to help prevent the restoration of jevex, when he had evidently done pretty well for himself under the regime that had operated jevex previously? Despite the urgency of the circumstances, Hunt was unable to prevent his voice from echoing the cynicism that he presumed he was being heard with, and while he forced himself to persevere with the help of Murray and Nixie, he found himself conceding inwardly that he had already written off his own cause.
But to his surprise, Scirio remained attentive. Although his face and manner gave away nothing, his reaction was not one of ridicule. The questions that came back through the interpreters were serious and probing.
The people who became possessed weren't all cult-crazies? Many of them remained sane and found niches in society where they functioned normally, generally unrecognized and unsuspected? Correct, Hunt replied. Scirio was talking to one. Hunt indicated Nixie. Did she come across as insane or a cult-fanatic crazy?
A lot of these people were obsessed with power and control? Scirio asked again. They were the kind who were infiltrated into Terran society and had been causing some of its biggest problems throughout history, the way the Jevlenese had been hearing?
"Yes." Hunt waved an arm at the surroundings and was about to say that one could find them installed in just such a place as this; then he faltered as the implication hit him.
Murray saw it, too. "No point in worrying about it now," he muttered in an aside to Hunt. "If this guy's one of 'em, we're as good as dead anyway." But Scirio showed no sign of having been leading them on, and carried on asking questions.
This condition wasn't some kind of mental unhinging caused by addiction to jevex? It's really what it says: a "possession" by a different being?
Yes.
And Hunt was saying that these beings had originated inside jevex somehow, in a different kind of world, in a way that Scirio didn't pretend to understand?
Yes. A world in which insecurity and unpredictability were the norm, where there were strong motivations to escape. They could literally invade people using the couplers.
And that was what had happened to Nixie?
Yes. It was irreversible; they couldn't go back. How they reacted varied from individual to individual and with circumstances.
"I think we're getting through," Murray whispered. "Don't ask me how, because to tell you the truth I thought this had no chance. But he's listening."
And what was going on outside was all a smokescreen? The ones who were the real threat were all set to mount an invasion when jevex came on again?
"jevex is located on another planet: Uttan. That's why Eubeleus has gone there."
And the only way to try and stop him activating jevex was by letting visar at it? And the only short-term way to do that was by getting access to one of the
Ichena
's illicit channels into jevex?
"Yes."
"You've got it," Murray confirmed to Scirio via Nixie.
Scirio seemed satisfied, though still with the same, vaguely defined air of finding something amiss that had hung about him since their first entry. He directed his attention to Nixie again and began an exchange in which he didn't pause for Murray to translate, at the same time drawing her away until they were standing by the curved window, looking out over the pool and the garden as if the other two had ceased to exist. Nixie answered in short sentences, sounding uncertain and puzzled.
"He's saying he thinks the boss should hear about this," Murray said in a low voice to keep Hunt informed. "Name of Grevetz. Lives outside the city someplace. He wants to know how Nixie feels about it."
"What does she say?"
Murray shrugged. "Sure, if he thinks it's a good idea. Why not?"
"Why's he asking Nixie?"
"I don't know . . . Neither does she. He's saying we could get this guy Grevetz over here now, or maybe go see him. How'd she like to come along? She says okay. But she seems about as mystified by it as I feel."
Hunt frowned, thought about it, and shook his head. "Does it make any sense to you?"
"No . . . but most things that Jevs do don't make any sense to me, either. Who could make sense and run a planet like this one?"
Scirio was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, sounding casual and chatty now, and gesturing toward the window.
"What now?" Hunt asked.
"He's talking about the pool, all the parties they have here . . . Something about accidents that sometimes happen. Nixie's just going along with it. She doesn't know what it's all about either . . . Now he's going to call the boss man."
Scirio turned and walked back toward where Murray and Hunt were standing, passed them without a word, and went up the shallow steps and across the lounge above to disappear into another room. Nixie came over to rejoin the other two. "Is all very funny," she said. "He talk about his pool and his boss. I think he know more than he say."
Hunt flashed Murray an uneasy look. "These people he's calling. It couldn't be the hit squad, could it?"
"I dunno. What can we do about it if it is?"
"If he
was
one of them, an Ent, would Nixie know? Would she be able to tell?"
Murray asked her in Jevlenese. "He is not one," she said. "I would know."
For the next hour they appeared to have been forgotten as a buzz of activity erupted over the house. Jevlenese appeared from other parts of it or arrived from places outside, muttered in twos and threes, and went away again on mysterious errands. Much conferring went on behind closed doors, and the tones and chimes of incoming calls sounded constantly. Through it all, Scirio was everywhere, calling out orders, checking details, hurrying to take calls, usually accompanied by Dreadnought. Tenseness crackled in the air like static. Nixie was unable to make out what was going on. It felt like the preparations for a military operation.
Then Dreadnought came out of a doorway that had been in constant use and called out something, at the same time beckoning. Nixie got up from a couch she had been perched on. Hunt unfolded from a deep, leathery chair, close behind Murray, who had been leaning against a pillar. "Well, here goes," Murray murmured.
"What's happening?" Hunt asked.
"Search me. But whatever it is, it looks like we don't have much choice."
Scirio, now wearing a dark suit and short blue topcoat, was waiting at the outside door with three more
Ichena.
After a brief exchange of questions and answers delivered in curt, harsh voices, the group went out into the corridor and followed the terrace back around the well to the elevators. But instead of returning to the seashell lobby with the bridge crossing the stream, they went up.
They came out into an airy, metal-walled space with wide, low windows running almost the full length of two adjacent walls, giving it the appearance of an observation floor high over the city. From the score or more of what were clearly flying vehicles of assorted shapes and sizes parked about the place, it was evidently a rooftop landing deck. The three henchmen led the way to a sleek machine, finished in yellow and white, at the end of one of the rows. Its general form was a bubble-canopied front end and solid center fuselage, tapering to the rear in a way that vaguely suggested a helicopter, but with no rotor or stabilizer. The rear body sprouted a pair of low-mounted, steeply anhedraled stub wings carrying streamlined pods at the ends. There didn't seem to be any wheels.
The doors were already open. A pulsating hum emanated from low down at the rear, and two men in black jackets were in the nose seats. The remainder of the forward compartment contained three rows of three seats each, and there was an
Ichena
already seated in the back. Hunt and Murray were guided into the other two seats next to him; Nixie and two of the group who had come up from the house got in the center row, while the third, along with Dreadnought and Scirio, settled themselves ahead of them, behind the two nose seats. The doors closed, and a moment later the vehicle lifted from the floor, turning at the same time. It moved forward, and the whole section of wall and windows in front of it swung down and outward to form a takeoff platform projecting out from the building. The flier soared out with barely a feeling of movement over roof gardens similar to the one outside the crescent-shaped room they were in earlier, and screened from each other by the landscaping. Then came more rooftops, with the neighborhood avenues and strips of parkland visible farther below. On looking up, Hunt made out a faint seam joining part of the sky. It was one of the canopies: simulated, not real.