"Chalker, Jack L - Quintara 3 - Ninety Trillion Fausts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

Ninety Trillion Fausts -- Jack L. Chalker -- (1991)

PRINTING HISTORY
Ace hardcover edition / October 1991 Ace mass-market edition / November 1992
All rights reserved. Copyright й 1991 by Jack L. Chalker.
Cover art by Darrell Sweet.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
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ISBN: 0-441-58103-X
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
e-book ver. 1.0
For the late and much underrated
Mark Clifton,
one of whose books convinced me that anything was possible,
and, of course,
a special tip of the hat to
the late, great Eric Frank Russell,
as always.
SPIRAL SINISTER

THEY HAD ENTERED THE STRANGE ALTERNATE Universe of the demons in full e-suits with supplies, weapons, and communications, and they had fought each other and faced down demons in amber, some of whom offered them almost anything for escape, while others had simply laughed at them. Now, at the end of their long journey, they were naked, essentially defenseless, and still at one another's throats.
There were now far fewer of them than had started out, too. The Exchange was essentially reduced to Jimmy McCray, a small, sandy-haired Irishman with a hint of a brogue, a sample of a culture whose homeland, and, indeed, home planet, he'd never really seen, and Modra Stryke, a fiery redhead on a near constant emotional roller coaster. True, there was Molly McCray as well, but Molly was a syn, a synthetic life form created to perform in surrealistic roadshows for distant and far-flung Terrans, with an upper body made for Terran sex and a lower torso much like a blue goat's terminating in wide, almost cow-like cloven hooves, but she had a genetically engineered limit on her I.Q. and the permanent mind of a small and innocent child.
The Mycohlians, whose ruling superculture was the only one of the Three Empires who had a favorable view of demons in their mythologies and religion, were down to three as well. These included the dark, somewhat brutishly handsome yet arrogant hypno, Josef; the once incredibly beautiful Kalia, whose left side was now scarred and burned, presenting a wonderful profile from one side and a hideous one from the other, and" the Julki, Tobrush, a creature vaguely resembling a Terran-sized snail with a leathery rather than hard shell, who could extrude thousands of wire-like tendrils from all points of its body, each under complete control, and send various chemicals and poisons through them as well.
The Mizlaplanians, mostly by being last most of the journey, had fared the best. Their leader, a bird-like Stargin, was the hypno Morok the Holy Ladue, Holy Father to the Arm of the Inquisition and its chief. Next was the dark-skinned, athletic Terran, Krisha the Holy Mendoro, who'd been forced into the priesthood against her will and who now believed that withstanding the temptations offered on this odyssey had cleansed her of all sin. Manya the Holy Szin, a gnome-like Gnoll, a fanatic who believed that the demon universe confirmed all of her beliefs, and whose racial ability to cloud the minds of others so that they could not see her for brief periods had come in handy, also remained, as did the one non-priestly member of the team, the Terran captain Gun Roh Chin, a null immune to the powers of paranormal talents like telepaths, hypnos, and empaths, and whose loyalty and support of his culture and Empire were based on a pragmatic belief that he'd seen no better elsewhere.
All now, save only Chin and Molly, had had their paranormal abilities magnified tremendously by the demon cave where the great crystals they used for transport grew; now all were telepaths, and empaths, and possibly hypnos as well, violating all the known rules of one talent to one individual, but each only master or mistress of the talent they'd grown up with.
All, again save Chin and Molly, had experienced an out-of-body experience in the crystal cave, and a perception of a great path lined with evil at the end of which was a
magnificent circular city. Now, at last, they were approaching that city in a more concrete way, if only they could solve a labyrinthine maze of hedgerows, and the evil statues and idols that lurked within to snare them at the end -- and, possibly, avoid each other's team as well.


<. . . maze gobble gobble based gobble gobble obtuse mathematical factor . . .>

"How do you stand it, Jimmy?" Modra asked as they sat and took a break in the midst of the maze. "I'm having trouble just keeping nine other minds at bay, with only some success -- sometimes I feel like I'm talking or walking one place when I'm in another, other times I have the oddest thoughts and can hardly tell if they're mine or somebody else's. How do you block them out in a whole city?"
"I'll admit it's more of a problem here than in a big city, at least before," he told her. "The problem is that telepathy conveys basically leading, or forward thoughts, both words and pictures, and does so with no emotion or inflection. It sets everybody else apart, and that's the first step in blocking. With the addition of the empathic sensations, we're all receiving the emphasis and feelings of the other as well. The only thing that's keeping any of us from going completely bloody bonkers is that we're all thinking in different languages. Where there's a holographic correlation, our own minds hear most or all of the thought as if we were thinking it. Otherwise, it's garbage. Take the Terran woman whose feet hurt. So do yours, and mine, so that comes through as a single hologram, a concept. The common things -- the maze, the idols, appeal to deities, and the like -- come through. The more abstract things don't. That's why it's harder to make sense of any of the abstractions of the Stargin, Julki, or Gnoll than the Terrans. On the other hand, they practice far more around us Terrans than we do around them, so they get more from us than we get from them."


Jimmy sighed. "Always the critics. It's like being at a telepath's training class."
She sighed and shook her head slowly from side to side. "I think I'd go mad if I went back -- like this. If it weren't for the idols breaking concentration, I think I'd go nuts even here. I let my mind wander back there, and so did somebody else -- God knows we're all exhausted! -- and suddenly I felt like I was in a man's body and I got suddenly confused as to not only where but who and what I was. Only lasted a second or two, but it was scary."
He nodded. "I caught it in your mind, and his. Perhaps there's a reason why people don't have multiple talents. Or, maybe some do -- but they're all the ones who go quickly mad. What happens when two empaths have sex? Don't both of you have problems with identity there as well?"
She chuckled. "I never would have sex with an empath. You can't fake anything. Don't telepaths have the same problem?"
"Empath sex best sex," put in the empathic Molly firmly.
"I suppose it would be even worse," he admitted. "I don't know -- never tried it myself. When two telepaths are close and emotional and all blocks are down, your innermost thoughts and feelings, not just the surface stuff, are wide open as well. You risk what we call a merger, when the two minds become so intertwined that they become one. That's what you briefly experienced back there, due to fatigue, but that kind is never serious. I had that a lot while growing up and learning to handle it."
"It was pretty scary," she admitted. "What -- what happens if two people do come so together they can't get apart?"
"The mind's simply not equipped to be in two places at the same time. Together, they'd have to be institutionalized. Even when separated, worlds apart, which is the normal procedure, each mind is faced with conflicting memories, backgrounds, tastes, standards, likes and dislikes. The result is that you get a totally split personality -- sometimes they're totally their old selves, the other totally the other person."
She found the idea both fascinating and chilling, now that she was something of a candidate for such a threat. "Have you ever seen it?"

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