The ghost of Demetrios hung translucent and unhappy before Rhita. Her face was white with horror; she had expected nothing like this. Now she understood she was beyond the reach of any god or gods; or in the hands of the wrong gods.
The escort told her, “His mind patterns have been stored. His body is also in storage. He is not using his body at this moment; nor are his thoughts moving through his brain. They move through a different medium, where you also were once stored.” He stood beside Rhita, examining her face, gauging her reactions. “Are you in distress?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you want the display ended?”
“Yes! Yes!” She backed away, hiding behind her clenched fists, and began to cry hysterically. Demetrios reached out with ghostly arms, beseeching, but could not speak before he vanished.
In the indefinite chamber that was her prison, she squatted on the soft floor and buried her face in her hands. All of her remaining scant supply of courage had fled her. She realized, beneath her horror and hysteria, that at this moment she was completely vulnerable to her captors. They could put her back in a fantasy, in a dream, and she would live there happily without protest, answering their questions, just to be in some place like home, away from this nightmare.
“There is no reason for your fear,” the escort said, stooping beside her. “You would be speaking to your friend, not to an image we have made. He is still thinking. He occupies a pleasant illusion, as you did before you insisted on returning to your body.”
The escort waited patiently, saying nothing more as the paroxysm faded and she regained control of herself. She had no idea how long this took. Time was not her strong point now. “Oresias and the others…are they dead, too?” she asked between her last few sobs and gulps.
“Death has a different meaning for us,” the escort said. “Some are active in illusions; others are inactive, as if in deep sleep. None are dead.”
“Can I speak to any of them, if I want to?” she asked.
“Yes. All are available. Some might take more time to be brought here than others.”
She decided it would be best to try again, although she was not at all sure she could control herself. “Can you make Demetrios seem more real? He frightens me…. He looks like he’s dead. He looks like a ghost.”
The escort seemed to savor the word “ghost,” repeating it several times and smiling. “He can be made to seem as solid as you and I, but that will still be an illusion. Do you want such an illusion?”
“Yes. Yes.”
Demetrios reappeared, more substantial but no less miserable. Rhita got to her feet and approached him, leaning forward, arms stiff by her side, hands clenched into fists. “Who are you?” she asked between gritted teeth. Still, her body shivered.
“Demetrios, mekhanikos and didaskalos of the Mouseion of Alexandreia,” the figure replied. “You are Rhita Vaskayza? Are we dead?” He spoke as a shade might speak, voice slow and quavering. Rhita could not stop her teeth from chattering.
“I d-don’t think so,” she said. “We’ve been captured by demons. No.” She shut her eyes tightly, trying to think how Patrikia would have approached this situation. “I think we’ve—we’ve been captured by people who are not human, but with very advanced…machines.”
Demetrios tried to take a step forward, but seemed to be walking on ice. “I can’t reach you,” he said. “I should be frightened, but I’m not…. Am I the one who’s dead?”
Rhita shook her head. “I don’t know. He says you’re still alive. You’re dreaming.”
“He says? What is he?” Pointing to the escort.
“One of our captors.”
“He looks human.”
“He’s not.”
The escort didn’t seem to think it was necessary to pay attention to the image. He focused on Rhita. This frightened her even more.
“Are the others dead?”
“He says they’re alive.”
“What can we do?”
The escort, eyes still on Rhita, said casually, “Nothing. Escape is not possible. You’re all being treated with respect, and no harm will come to you.”
“Did you hear him?” Rhita asked, jerking her thumb vehemently at the escort. She really wanted to strike him, but knew that would accomplish nothing.
“Yes,” Demetrios said in a thin voice. “We opened the wrong doorway, didn’t we?”
“He says years have passed on Gaia.”
Demetrios looked this way and that, squinting as if through smoke. “It seems only a few hours ago…. Can he take us back to the real Gaia?”
“Can you?” Rhita asked.
“It’s possible,” the escort answered diffidently. “Why would you wish to return? It’s not the same world you once knew.”
Demetrios did not react. Rhita felt sick to her stomach; she had enough of her grandmother’s knowledge and instincts to half-visualize what that meant. These were Jarts; Jarts were rapacious. So Patrikia had been told by the people in the Way.
I may be responsible for the destruction of my home. Her hands rose automatically, like symmetrical claws, to just under her chin. “Demetrios, I am so frightened. These…people don’t seem to care. They just want information.”
“On the contrary,” the escort said. “We’re really quite passionate. We’re very interested in your welfare. Very few people have died since we claimed your planet. A great many of them are in storage now. We waste nothing. We cherish all thoughts. We have scholars, and we save as much as we can.”
“What are you talking about?” Demetrios demanded. His voice was so calm, calm and deep and thin; Rhita remembered what that felt like, to be in the illusion and not feel true fear.
“Do you wish me to address your companion?” the escort asked Rhita.
Dumbfounded, aware there was some protocol here of which she was ignorant, she gave her permission with a nod.
“It is our duty and destiny to study and preserve the universes, to spread our own kind, the best and most efficient of all intelligences, to serve the ends of knowledge. We are not cruel. Cruelty is a word and concept I learn only from your language. It is wasteful to cause pain and to destroy. It is also wasteful to let other intelligences advance to a point where they will slow our growth by resistance. Wherever we go, we gather and store, we preserve, we study; but we do not allow resistance.”
Demetrios absorbed this soberly, with a puzzled expression. He knew next to nothing of Patrikia’s stories; only what she had told him on the grasslands, before the arrival of the Kirghiz horsemen.
“I would like to see my home,” Rhita said resolutely. “I would like Demetrios and Oresias…and Jamal Atta, as well, to accompany me.”
“Only part of your request can be granted. Jamal Atta killed himself before we could capture him. Not enough of his personality has been preserved, I fear, to present a complete image, or to control a rebuilt body.”
“I must go,” Rhita said, sticking to this one demand, unwilling to be distracted by her own mounting horror. If she wept, if she let her hands reach her face, she might lose all control, and she would not shame herself before these monsters. Or before pale Demetrios.
“We will take you there. Do you wish to observe the process, or would you like your journey to be instantaneous?”
Demetrios looked at her pointedly; she wasn’t sure what he wanted her to say, but it was obvious to both of them that she was the important one to their captors. “I want to see everything,” she said.
“It might be confusing. Do you wish for me to accompany you, and explain, or would you like a supplement added to your own psyche, to your memory, to guide you?”
She bowed her head, face almost touching her hands. She did not understand the first alternative, or perhaps she refused to understand it. Can they make me more than what I am? Perhaps she had already been changed. That thought was almost unbearable. “Please,” she said, her voice little more than a harsh whisper. “Come with us. Just take us.”
She had one hope left; that the Jarts were liars.
If they were not, then she might as well be dead, and she would work very hard to die. Somehow, she did not think the Jarts would let her. To their way of thinking, it might be a waste.