Finally exhausted, after Neuronius was left far behind, he stopped. He had left the path and had been plunging through dense vegetation, ripping it out by the roots when it would not yield otherwise. He stood there, recharging his reserve pack. Inthe wild scramble, he had used all the output of his microfusion reactor and more, bleeding his reserves until he was forced to stop.
Then he slowly began to transform from one imprint to the next, trying to find peace of mind, going back from Jacob to Synapo to Wolruf to Derec and finally to KeenEye, to the form in which he had first known being and BeastTongue.
Inthe wolf-like KeenEye imprint, using only a fraction of the output from her reactor, she began loping easily through the forest, finding and following the animal trails that had been created by the natural denizens of Oyster World. She found a measure of peace in the pleasant natural scents left there by those very basic creatures, creatures much lower in the scale of life than LifeCrier, but still so like him in their familiar but dissimilar musky scent.
The night passed as she roamed aimlessly through the Forest of Repose.
Dawn found her at the edge of the forest below The Cliff of Time, back at the trail that led to the clearing where Neuronius had lectured her. The night had served to clarify one thing. She must talk to Synapo again before she could make a final judgment of the humanity of Neuronius.
She could find Synapo by radio, but the only tactful way to talk to him was on the wing. She could not ask him to come to her. He had left the clear impression he did not want to talk to her further. She must go back to the Synapo imprint in order to talk to him on his terms.
When SilverSide finished the transition to blackbody form, the sun was just rising over The Cliff of Time. There was a Ceremyon circling high over the dome in Synapo's accustomed station. SilverSide wobble-hopped into the air and climbed in a long, slanted rise, gaining the necessary altitude to reach the alien in the course of spanning the distance from The Cliff of Time.
When SilverSide arrived above the dome, the alien's hook was pointing aft, so he must be amenable to conversation.
With his hook also pointing aft, SilverSide quietly glided up beside the alien and said, “Leader Synapo, I need to resolve a matter of…”
“Sarco,” the alien said. “Synapo will arise late this morning.”
Talking to Sarco might be better than talking to Synapo. Sarco knew both Neuronius and Synapo and was a leader himself. Who better to judge between the two?
“I must get a matter of extreme urgency resolved, leader Sarco, a matter of understanding Synapo better so as to compare him with Neuronius-and properly place him in a hierarchy of intelligence relative to Neuronius-who claims to be the most intelligent creature on this planet.”
“Neuronius? By the Great Petero,” Sarco hissed, emitting a small green flame simultaneously.
“Neuronius says further that he is a human, and not a Ceremyon, that there are no others of his species on this planet.”
“I hesitate to term him a Ceremyon myself,” Sarco said, “but unfortunately he is-a paranoid Ceremyon suffering delusions of grandeur. He is certainly not more intelligent than Synapo, take my word for it. He wouldn't have been ejected from the Cerebron elite if he were.”
“He has been a member of Ceremyon society then?”
“Most certainly. Something we all regret now, but did little about at the time, because Neuronius was so insidiously clever. Cleverness, however, does not equate to wisdom and intelligence.”
“Thank you for your help. You have been of great assistance. I will take my leave now.”
SilverSide balled and dropped.
Chapter 21. Reprieve
They had posted Jacob and Mandelbrot on the balcony of the apartment to watch throughout the night for premature closing of the dome.
“This reminds me of another night before you came,” Jacob said to Mandelbrot. “I spent it much as we are destined to spend this night, but I did not have your company.”
“I trust nothing untoward happened that night,” Mandelbrot said.
“No. But that was the last night Miss Ariel spent under a dome that might imprison her inescapably. She spent the next night in the lorry, sleeping on the back seat. The next morning that first crisis with the aliens was resolved. “
“Let us hope this crisis will be similarly resolved with a pleasant ending. What are the chances of the wild one, do you think?”
“As you observed earlier, he is unpredictable,” Jacob said, “but I wished him a great deal of success for Miss Ariel's sake. It would seem that wish has gone astray. His return is long overdue.”
“I fear you are right,” Mandelbrot said. “Master Derec observed that the alien leaders returned in midafternoon to their normal stations, though that was not altogether clear to me, since one looks so much like another.”
They had all waited, sitting in the lorry outside the dome, watching for SilverSide's return.
A flock of the black aliens had returned from the direction they took when they flew off with him in their midst. But he was not with them on their return. That did not bode well for the safety of the wild one.
For Jacob, the night passed much as it had before, except that this time he had the company and the conversation of Mandelbrot: They had a short inconclusive exchange regarding the Laws of Humanics, and then they began a long investigative conversation, delving into the many ramifications of Jacob's new knowledge of hyperwave communication, the knowledge that there were two types of modulation, not just one: the old discrete type that they were all familiar with, and now this new continuous type, that they had deduced from the aliens' remarks, and which now explained Derec's mysterious internal monitor link with the supervisors of the robot cities. The technology for that link was developed by the erratic Dr. Avery, and understood only by him until Miss Ariel had pushed them into drawing parallels and connections with the two types of hyperspace traveclass="underline" jump teleportation, which was related to discrete hyperwave modulation, and Key teleportation, which was related to continuous hyperwave modulation. In the course of the long night, they drew parallels and derived conclusions that they recorded by joint effort as a long and comprehensive dissertation for the robot city's archives, an exhaustive treatise that was intended to answer any and all questions on the subject.
It was a longer night for Ariel and Derec, a night they spent closeted in their bedroom to avoid exposing Wolruf to their disagreement. That friction had now escalated beyond the mild and not unusual interplay for dominance that characterizes the relationship of many pairs of lovers.
It started immediately after dinner, when Ariel had gone into the bedroom to get away from the rest of them. She was feeling intensely sorry for herself. Why was it so important that she pull off this effort at conciliation and cohabitation with a bunch of aliens, this attempt to save and incorporate into their galactic community a world she didn't give a dam about?
Was it merely a matter of pride, an attempt once again to prove her capacity for leadership? Derec had never insisted that his must always be the last word, the final and ultimate judgment on things that affected both of them and that they were both mutually responsible for.
Yet why did he always make her feel childish when she tried to establish her individuality in that regard? She had as much right to make decisions as he did, and frequently the decisions he made that were right, were right only because her advice kept him from going astray.
Certainly she knew more about controlling robots than he did. He might know more about what made them tick physically, but she knew far more about how to get the most out of them socially, even out of Mandelbrot, who Derec had created himself. Her upbringing on Aurora, surrounded by robotic servants, had given her experience in that regard, a natural dominance over robots that could never be achieved without that easy confidence one acquires in childhood when waited on hand and foot by robots. Strangely, Derec had not had that common upbringing.