Not like a supreme command cluster?
–No. I am not a god.
We do not understand GOD.
The command cluster was much larger than a normal noocyte cluster. Bernard estimated it held at least ten thousand cells, with a commensurately greater thinking capacity, he felt like a mental midget, even with the difficulty of making judgments in the noocyte realm.
–Do you have access to my memories of H.G. Wells?
Pause. Then, Yes. They are quite vivid for not being pure experience memories.
–Yes, well they come from a book, an encoding of an unreal experience.
We are familiar with *fiction*.
–I feel like Cavour in The First Men in the Moon. Speaking with the Grand Lunar.
The comparison may be appropriate, but we do not comprehend it. We are very different, BERNARD, far more different than your comparison with the unreal experience would suggest.
–Yes, but like Cavour, I have thousands of questions. Perhaps you don’t wish to answer all of them.
To keep your fellow macro-scale HUMANS from knowing all we might do, and trying to stop us.
The message was just unclear enough to show Bernard that the command cluster was still unable to completely encompass the reality of the macro-scale.
–Are you in touch with the noocytes in North America?
We are aware there are other, far more *powerful* concentrations, in much better circumstances.
–And…? No response.
Then, Are you aware that your *enclosing space* is in jeopardy?
–No. What sort of jeopardy? You mean the lab?
*The lab* is surrounded by your fellows in *uncertain hierarchy relationship*.
–I don’t understand.
They wish to destroy *the lab*, and presumably all of us.
–How do you know this?
We are able to receive RADIO FREQUENCY TRANSMISSIONS in several LANGUAGES *encodings*. Can you stop these attempts? Are you in a position of hierarchy INFLUENCE?
Bernard puzzles over the request.
We have memory of the TRANSMISSIONS.
–Then let me hear them.
He can taste the passage of a flagellate, intersecting the messenger of the command cluster, returning with a packet of data. Bernard’s cluster absorbs the data.
He “listens” to the transmissions now in memory. They are not of the best quality, and most of them are in German, which he poorly understands. But he can understand enough to realize why Paulsen-Fuchs has been looking worse and worse of late.
The Pharmek facility is surrounded by camps of protesters. The countryside all the way out to the airport is dotted with them; the protesters number perhaps half a million, and more are arriving by bus, automobile or on foot every day. The army and police do not dare break them up; the mood throughout West Germany, and most of Europe, is very ugly.
–I have no power to stop them.
PERSUASION?
Another inner chuckle.—No; I’m what they want destroyed. And you.
You are far less influential in your realm than we are here.
–Oh, yes, of course.
For a long period, no messages issue from the command cluster.
There is even less time. We are transferring you now.
He feels a subtle shift in the voice as he is moved by flagellates away from the command cluster. Follow. He realizes that a group of clusters has broken away from the command cluster. They are communicating with him, and their voice seems oddly familiar, more direct and accessible.
–Who is guiding me?
The response is chemical. An identifying string is brought to him by a flagellate, and suddenly he knows he is being guided by four clusters of primary B-lymphocytes, the earliest versions of the noocytes. Primary B-lymphocytes are accorded a place in most command clusters, and treated with great respect; they are the precursors, even though their activities are limited. They are primitive in both meanings of the word; less sophisticated in design and function than recently created noocytes, and the ancestors of all.
You may enter THOUGHT UNIVERSE.
The voice fades in and out like a bad telephone connection. Choppy, incomplete.
The sensation of being in a noocyte cluster ended abruptly. Now Bernard was neither embodied nor shrunk to the noocyte scale. His thoughts simply were, and the place where they were was excruciatingly beautiful.
If there was any extension in space, it was illusory. Dimensions seemed to be denned by subject; information relevant to his current thinking was close at hand, other subjects were farther away. The overall impression was of a vast, many layered library, arranged in a sphere around him. He shared this center with another presence.
Humans, human form, the presence said. A scurry of information surrounded Bernard, giving him arms, legs, a body and face. Beside him, apparently sitting in a reclining chair, was a wispy image of Vergil Ulam. Ulam smiled without passion or conviction.
“I am your cellular Vergil. Welcome to the inner circle of the command clusters.”
“You’re dead,” Bernard said, his voice an imperfect approximation.
“So I understand.”
“Where are we?”
“Roughly translating the noocyte descriptive string, we are in a Thought Universe. I call it a noosphere. In here, all we experience is generated by thinking. We can be whatever we wish, or learn whatever we wish, or think about anything. We won’t be limited by lack of knowledge or experience; everything can be brought to us. When not used by the command clusters, I spend most of my time here.”
A granite dodecahedron, its edges decorated with gold bars, formed between them. It rolled this way and that for a moment, then addressed Vergil’s pale, translucent form. Bernard did not understand the communication. The dodecahedron vanished.
“We all take characteristic shapes here, and most of us add textures, details. Noocytes don’t have names, Mr. Bernard; they have sequences of identifying amino acids chosen by codons from the introns of ribosomal RNA. Sounds complicated, but really much simpler than a fingerprint. In the noosphere, all active researchers must have definite identifying symbols.”
Bernard tried to find traces of the Vergil Ulam he had met and shaken hands with. There didn’t seem to be many. Even the voice lacked the accent and slight breathlessness he remembered. “There’s not very much of you here, is there?”
Vergil’s ghost shook its head. “Not all of me was translated to the noocyte level before my cells infected you. I hope there’s a better record somewhere. This one is hardly adequate. I’m only about one third here. What is here, however, is cherished and protected. Shade of honored ancestor, vague memory of creator.” Its voice faded in and out, omitting or sliding over certain syllables. The image moved sparingly. “The hope is they will connect with noocytes back home, find more of me. Not just fragments of a broken vase.”
The image became more transparent “Must go now. Supplements coming. Always part of me here; you and I, we’re the models. I suspect you have precedence now. Be seeing you.”
Bernard stood alone in the noosphere, surrounded by options he hardly knew how to take advantage of. He held his hand out toward the surrounding information. It rippled all around him, waves of light spreading from nadir to zenith. Ranks of information exchanged priorities and his memories stacked up around him like towers of cards, each represented by a line of light.
The lines cascaded.
He had been thinking
“Just another day for you, isn’t it?” Nadia turned and stepped gracefully onto the courtroom escalator.
“Not the most pleasant,” he said. Down they went.
“Yes, well, just another.” She smelled of tea roses and something else quiet and clean. She had always been beautiful in his eyes, no doubt in the eyes of others; small, slender, black-haired, she did not draw immediate stares, but a few minutes alone in a room with her and there was no doubt: most men would want to spend many hours, days, months.