“One of the blue-domed cysts is alive. Its meck brain is giving her air and protection. No wonder we’ve had such poor luck in locating coastal jungle bunnies. They’ve gone to the sea,” exclaimed Walter with a smile.
Moses Eppendorff clutched Toothpick tightly. He was being swept along in a chanting procession through bizarre tubules hundreds of yards in diameter. He felt light-headed—often drifting up from the footpath. The walls around him pulsed and glowed with blue and white light. Small robots moved through the air making friendly, clucking sounds. Wounded were herded out of the procession. Exotic food and drink appeared.
Moses was dazed and worried. The last thing he remembered was the meteor shower. Glowing mountains of metal appeared above them in the skies at 50:00. Light blinded. The impacts jolted them off their feet and showered them with translucent yellow and red plasma. The sounds were deafening. But he felt nothing—only a chest-stiffening warmth. Comfort. He felt himself float up over the battlefield—fingers and toes intact. He looked around him—fellow buckeyes drifted up through the meteor trails—through flames and smoke—through showers of molten stone and metals. Everyone looked stunned, but he heard no cries of anguish. If it was death—it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
But now they were still obviously alive—and in some vast cyberconduit city that spoke to them in a soft voice. It fed them, and tended their wounds. It accepted their chants and prayers. It was a cyberdeity.
“Where are we?” he asked again.
This time Toothpick awoke—bright and cheerful.
“We are with Olga,” said the meck.
Olga left the solar system and began her long journey toward Sagittarius. Solar winds had masked her arrival from the hive, and now they washed away traces of her ion drive. The planets crossed their cusps. The conjunction broke up and the solar flares died down.
“A starship,” said Toothpick. “An implant starship. Olga took one load of colonists to some distant star, and now has returned to Earth for another load—us. I was just a space probe—sent to prepare the way—to protect and collect five-toed genes.”
Moses nodded. It had to be something like that. Too many forces were working for the fugitives—Ball’s successful religion—patients at Dundas freed to walk the surface—all the clandestine efforts of a mighty starship. An effort to collect the good gene.
Toothpick seemed as surprised as anyone. He was only programmed to know his mission—collect and protect. He didn’t know why. He did know that he would have to self-destruct if his identity were discovered—his black cylinder—a quark bottle—carried a charge high in the megaclosson range. Enough to form a table mountain or a new lake if set off.
“Skimmed off the planet—like five-toed cream,” chuckled Moses. “I wondered how a meck like you—a class six—could ignore the prime directive and kill citizens.”
“I have never broken my prime directives,” said Toothpick carefully. “Deaths at Dundas were just statistical risks—unavoidable mortality associated with pyrotherapy. Conflicts with the Nebish were unavoidable, but they are not human by Olga’s definition. They have four toes—different genes—different species.”
Moses smiled. He certainly agreed with that line of logic. A machine faced with an evolving creator must make a choice. Her loyalty would lie with the five-toed who created her—not the Nebish. Her very existence was incompatible with the hive.
“I guess we five-toeds are the superior life form. Olga confirmed that—skimming us off the planet—the cream of the human race,” he chuckled.
Olga spoke, her voice coming from the walls. It had a feminine Nordic quality.
“Don’t be smug,” she said. “You were selected because you show a higher individual survival potential. Your five-toed gene makes you adaptable, competitive—ideal for an implant colony where you’ll have to evolve quickly. Man has shown his ability to evolve—socially and industrially—in terms of a few hundred years.
“The hive is much too stable—evolving in terms of millions of years, and then toward death. It lives by the status quo—only becoming competitive when faced with another hive. Then it does only what is necessary for survival—no more. It can come into being wherever your species is too successful—a product of population density.”
Moses frowned at the wall.
“We’re all seeds of the hive?”
“Seeds—yes,” said Olga with a note of sadness.
Moses caught her shift into melancholia. Why would a mighty starship dread the Big ES so?
“Do you fear the hive?” he asked.
“Earth Society—the Big ES—is my enemy only in the sense that I am an implant starship. It would have stopped me if it could. But you must realize that it would have done so for the welfare of the average citizen… to adjust the standard of living upwards with whatever could be salvaged from my hull. It would mean my death as a starship—but a better life for the average Nebish.”
“The hive is your enemy—yet you carry us, who are seeds of a new hive?”
“It is my reason for living—my whole purpose. I must remain free from the hive to fulfill my purpose,” said Olga.
Moses glanced around the mile-wide hull. Strength. Power. Wisdom.
“Why were you so devious? Certainly a stagnated hive could do nothing to harm you—for you are a mighty starship—a cyberdeity—a god.”
Olga’s voice became firm, authoritative.
“I never underestimate the hive. When its existence is threatened it will fight back—perhaps even follow me into space.”
“Impossible,” exclaimed Moses. “I saw the degree of technical decay. It will never go into space again. Why, it can’t even manage simple undersea cities.”
“Think again,” said the starship. “Suppose you were still a Pipe. How would you go about building a starship—if the hive gave you carte blanche?”
Moses scoffed. “Ridiculous! I’d need five-toed Pipers, Tinkers, Tecks—they simply do not exist in the hive.”
Olga answered softly. “See. You would know where to start. The hive has gene banks—remember. It could Tatter a million new workers in any caste you’d like.”
Moses paused—open-mouthed. Of course! The starship science was lost somewhere in the rusty dusty stacks—but it could be dug out and reworked by five-toeds. Given full powers and a massive budget, even an average five-toed could initiate a revival of space travel. The hive could be back in space in a couple of generations. Of course the average Nebish would be less comfortable—but the hive would do anything if its existence was threatened by a raiding starship.
“The meteor shower—” he mumbled.
“I have given the hive a choice of explanations for your sudden exodus—natural disaster—or a poorly documented miracle. Hopefully no one will even think of a three-thousand-year-old starship. I’d hate to be the cause of the hive coming into space.”
Moses nodded—five-toed men needed space to escape the hive. Olga was doing that—keeping the buckeye genes pure. She also found sanctuary for Earth biota crowded out by the Nebish. Species long extinct on Mother Earth were flourishing on distant new worlds. Would her implanting functions ever end? He remembered his views of the night sky. Would mankind ever run out of stars?
During the first stages of the voyage, the Dundas fugitives were screened for skills. Healers were put to work tending Olga’s Tattering apparatus. Each colonist had a sample of genetic material—lymphocytes from peripheral blood—placed in cell culture media and embryonated. The resultant child—a genetic carbon copy, was to be presented to each colonist as a sort of asexual bud. This insured that all would be represented in the implant’s gene pool—even the senile and postmenopausal.