As to the question posed by Louis Nenda concerning the means by which other parties from the Pride of Orion had reached Marglot and the Hot Pole, Tally gave it not a microsecond’s thought—for the simple reason that they would soon enough be in a position to ask the question directly of the people concerned.
To address all these minor issues he deployed only a tiny fraction of his computational resources. The cabin was quiet as it flew through the night sky, and Tally was free to work without distraction on the main problem: understanding what the silvery beetle creatures had said. He was undeterred by Atvar H’sial’s revelation that they were inorganic forms. Was he not himself an inorganic form? The chances were excellent that their utterances when finally interpreted would prove to be logical, lucid, and rational, unencumbered by the glandular effusions that so often contaminated the speech of humans and other organic beings.
Although detailed understanding was far away, one point was already clear to E.C. Individual beetlebacks did not possess separate intelligence. They were more like social insects or Decantil Myrmecons, in which each unit was capable of movement and action, but only if those actions supported a decision somehow made by the whole group. More than that, in the case of the beetlebacks even the group that had met with Tally was not a complete mind. It formed one node of a distributed intelligence, whose parts included every cluster of beetlebacks on Marglot. There were many thousands of those; and, just as each individual beetleback was an expendable unit, the whole complex was itself expendable. It was on Marglot for a reason—the sense of purpose was overwhelming; but once that purpose was fulfilled, the future was undefined.
There was also an impression, and Tally could put it no more strongly than that, that the beetleback activity level was increasing rapidly. It seemed to lead to something with no physical meaning: a singularity. Although a singularity could not exist in the real universe, one might exist in the universe as perceived by the beetlebacks. Suppose, for example, that at some point they themselves ceased to function?
Tally looked around the cabin. He felt that he had achieved an important if imperfect breakthrough. But to whom could he express it? Sinara and Claudius were sound asleep. However, the pinnace was not flying on autopilot. Louis Nenda was—let us hope!—still conscious.
“May I speak?”
Nenda turned a fraction in his seat. “You know, normally when I hear you say that, I grit my teeth. But there’s so much nothin’ goin’ on around here, I can use a change. What you got?”
“A partial understanding, perhaps, of beetleback nature and purpose.”
Tally summarized his findings, collapsing the results of quadrillions of data sorts, merges, and compressions into a five-minute description. He expected skepticism. His conclusion was admittedly radical. But Nenda merely said, “Give me a second. I want to make sure this gets through loud and clear to Atvar H’sial.”
The silence that followed was far more than a second. Tally assumed that some considerable pheromonal discussion was going on between human and Cecropian.
Finally, Nenda said, “At thinks you’ve nailed it on the button. Your buddies are one small piece of a much bigger operation, and when that’s done they’ll be history. At believes the Big Chill is on the way. The sun will go out and Marglot will become the ultimate icebox. Does that make sense in terms of what the bugs have been sayin’ to each other?”
“I do not know.” For the first time since his original embodiment, E.C. felt that the speed of his mental processes was inadequate. First he needed to frame Atvar H’sial’s hypothesis in strictly logical terms, then he must evaluate its consistency in terms of the entire mass of beetleback recorded data. “The question is difficult. The necessary analysis may take hours.”
“Well, hours is what we’ve got. About three more of ’em, is my guess, before we touch down near the suit beacons. Go to it, E.C. Oh, an’ Atvar H’sial says there’s one thing we need to know in particular.”
“Ask, and I will seek to determine it.”
“It’s a simple question: If there’s goin’ to be a big freeze, how long until the action starts? When is Showtime?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Help needed from the Have-It-All.
Hans Rebka had trained himself to sleep at almost any place and any time. That talent, however, was not an asset in times of danger. Then you normally slept little, if at all.
But when were you in danger? Sometimes common sense said one thing, while a part of your suspicious hindbrain declined to agree. Inside the cone-house everything was quiet. Outside, the rain had ended and the wind died away. With no animal life, large or small, night on Marglot should be both silent and safe.
That certainly seemed to be the opinion of the rest of the party. Hans, with the headlight of his suit reduced to the faintest glimmer, moved quietly from figure to still figure. Torran Veck—Julian Graves—Darya Lang—Teri Dahl—Ben Blesh—all were asleep, though now and again Ben would murmur something unintelligible.
So why was Hans awake? The sound when it came was at first no louder than the rustle of wind across tall grass. It seemed like imagination, until as it strengthened Hans heard a rhythmic undertone. That was the noise of the engine of a ground or air vehicle—and it was approaching.
Hans went to Darya and shook her.
“Best if we’re awake, I think.” And then, when she stared at him as though she had never seen him before, “Help me rouse the others. Visitors are on the way.”
She blinked up at him. “Can’t be. We’re the only ones on the planet.”
“Not anymore. Trust me.” Hans moved on, to shake Julian Graves awake. By the time everyone was sitting up there could no longer be any doubt about the sound outside.
“Best if most of you stay where we are. I’ll take a look.” Hans expected opposition, but the others were still hardly more than half awake. He slipped out, pushing aside the thick leaf layers.
The night was unexpectedly cold. It was also cloudy. Was the area around the Hot Pole ever anything but cloudy?
He walked around the cone-house in time to see a pinnace making a soft landing about fifty meters away.
Smart thinking. Whoever was flying it had homed in on the suit beacons and knew that they were in the cone-house. But the pilot wouldn’t know who else or what else might be inside with them. Rebka walked toward the ship. When the hatch opened and the figure who emerged was Louis Nenda, somehow that was no surprise at all.
The cone-house was big enough, even for eleven. After the excited—and bewildered—greetings, comparisons began.
Comparisons, because you could hardly call them explanations. Each group in turn told what had happened after leaving the Pride of Orion and described how they came to be on Marglot. Julian Graves was the last to speak. Long before he was done, Louis Nenda was wriggling and fidgeting where he sat. He raised his eyebrows at Hans Rebka.
Hans waited for Graves’s final words, then said to Nenda, “I agree. You’re right.”
“Right? I’m more than right. I’m damned right, and this is all wrong.” And, when the others stared at Nenda, “Don’t you see it, any of you except Rebka?”
Hans said, “They don’t. We have to explain.” He turned to the rest. “There’s such a thing as coincidence, but this goes beyond it. Look at the facts. Every group went in different directions and did totally different things. But here we are on Marglot, all of us.”