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rock walls. The fourth are the sea slugs that can hypno-tize you into marching
right into their bellies. The only thing he missed was a flying race, and you
get the feeling he only missed that because either he was rushed or because
not all the party he was transporting here made it, thanks to In-spector
O'Leary and his friends. He stole that device to deliberately trigger the
Gate. He just was a tad premature, or the gods know what we'd be facing now!"
For a while the High Commissioner said nothing, but fi-nally he responded,
"Yes, we do see the same things. I hadn't been as aware of the circumstances
as you have outlined, but I noticed from the recordings and from his and his
brothers' actions that they seemed to be rather well-organized for those who
just drop in here. It's not unprece-dented to wind up in the same race,
provided such a race is still one of the active ones here and also certain
very strict conditions are met. Usually it's when someone has a
well-established pregnancy. The Well is programmed to safe-guard life, and
adapting someone to a whole different race while also adapting a still
developing fetus is simply not done. But the Haduns were all male when they
arrived. Josich is the only female after processing, in fact, although the
Quacksans are asexual. I
had to believe it was coinci-dental, but there were always those doubts deep
down, no matter how much I didn't want to think on it."
"Josich was definitely born a Hadun in the pre-Realm Confederation," O'Leary
assured them. "His birth and up-bringing, his entire history, was quite well
known."
Core was equally skeptical. "Josich could not have inter-faced with the core
computer of one of the worlds of the Ancient Ones," it maintained. "I was as
well-equipped as any in all creation to do so, and the basics of it were so
far beyond anything our advanced civilization understood it bordered on
magic."
"You were a computer," Ming pointed out. "Maybe you still are, I think. You
can't believe in magic!"
"Magic," Core responded, "is anything observable and perhaps repeatable that
cannot be explained in terms of any existing knowledge on the part of the
observer. To your own ancestors, all this would be magic. To us, well we have
an excellent example right here. The Amboran is magic. Some of her remarkable
abilities are easily explained, of course a natural telepathy, an uncanny
ability to identify an indi-vidual from the data in our own minds and then
identify him in a vast location like Zone, and who knows what other
attributes? The radiant glow hardly a defensive condition, but one that can
inspire fear, awe, respect, if that one does not need a defense. A unique
multigenerational evolutionary advance in her species? Perhaps. But since all
of this is con-jecture and leaves some holes, right at the moment she is
magic."
The point was taken.
"Well, enough of this," Nakitti said grumpily. "It's good to see you all, but
none of you have the enemy at your gates and a native population where most of
them are so fat and corrupt they won't even realize they're conquered when
they lose. We had military commanders who refused to test-fire coastal guns
because it would make the guns dirty! Can you imagine such a thing? I tell
you, if I had more time I know enough chemistry that I have a whole raft of
nobles I could cheerfully poison in the old-fashioned Ghoman way! In-stead
I've got the ear of the only man with common sense in the whole damned
kingdom, and he and I have two weeks to come up with a defense against a
concerted land-sea assault."
"You seem convinced they are coming your way," Dukla noted. "Others do not
think so."
"One look at the map and the composition of the enemy so far, not to mention
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all those shiploads of
refugees passing through who now have established nice fifth columns in
friendly other countries all over the Overdark region, and you'll see it can't
be anywhere else. It's far enough, and Chalidang so far has conquered only
neighboring hexes, so others can't see it. It is an ancient game, but very
much in the traditions of great generals. Josich has her most dedi-cated
forces. Now she takes control of all shipping on the world's largest ocean.
The few Well Gates here can't handle but a trickle of supplies. Most of the
high-tech hexes are so comfortable by now that they can't even repair
breakdowns. They import what they need. But they can produce massive
quantities of gas-powered crossbows and ultralight machine guns and billions
of bolts and bullets for them, so that semi-tech and nontech hexes don't need
to make them. Cut all that off, and everybody can be absorbed at will. Those
who won't, fall into line and embrace the new conqueror and yell 'Comrade!
Lover! I was always with you!' Then, with their agents mixed in with the real
refugees and now well-established, they can reach out to the mainland."
"But why not just go the other way?" O'Leary asked. "In a sense there are more
prizes to his west and to his north in particular."
"Because Chalidang is a water breathing hex, for one thing, and most water
breathing civilizations are the other way
my way," the Ochoan replied. "But, as important, when you run the hexes and
the Overdark trade through the com-puter here you see how interdependent the
whole region has become and how self-sufficient, say, the water hexes to the
west are. The only major worthwhile target there is Czill, and it would serve
Josich just as well if she could simply blow it up and deny its knowledge
resources to the world. The rest? Well, in time, but those will be continental
land campaigns. A different sort of fight with real extremes. No, she's going
east because that's the only logical thing to do. She's practically advertised
her moves and they still don't see it!"
"And you do," Ari commented skeptically.
Core shifted in its bath. "The Ochoan is correct. Do not confuse the utter
insanity of Josich with the
Hadun capa-bility to wage logical war. Even in Realm history, Josich's
campaigns were utterly ruthless, often genocidal, but bril-liant. His failure
then was in not reading other histories of conquerors, particularly those of
other races. When you show this kind of genocidal lack of regard, then those
who might normally turn and join you, or at least not oppose you, will fight
to the death because they have nothing to lose. He lost almost a quarter of
his fleet because desperate people of many races and from many worlds hurled
them-selves at them with total disregard for life or casualties. I believe he
might have learned from that here, but it is diffi-cult to say. I
can say, Ochoan, that I believe I can help you."
"You!
You've never been in a battle or off a fixed structure buried deep inside a
mountain on an isolated and barren planet," Nakitti noted. "What can you do
for me?"
"I cannot explain how Josich knew this world or how to make it all work to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]