Chapter 10
Then he saw something. It was small, green, and looked like a thick-legged spider. No, it was more like a tiny octopus. It was crossing the floor toward him.
The hatchling! He had forgotten it! Ordinarily such a creature would have revolted him, but this thing had been with Tappy, and was formed mainly of her flesh. He couldn't dislike that, even if it was some honker joke. Also, he did feel empathy for it, and for life in general. Malva had been right about that much.
He squatted. "Come here, you little thing. I won't hurt you. I'm about to die anyway. What's your business?"
The thing approached his hand. It extended a tiny tentacle and touched his finger.
Jack felt a warmth. It wasn't physical, though; it was emotional. He felt an increasing awareness of the linkage of all things. He was attuning to the exotic plants in the vicinity, and felt their discomfort: the Gaol had established a field which suppressed their natural ambience. And he felt Tappy, her consciousness fading as the drug slowly penetrated her system; she was being forced into sleep, but there were no dreams there. The Gaol did not trust the Imago even to dream safely.
He looked at the hatchling. He picked it up. The thing assumed flesh color and disappeared against his palm. "You're doing it!" he exclaimed. "The empathy— you're magnifying it! Are you the Imago?"
But as he considered the question, he knew the answer. The Imago remained with Tappy. It would not leave her while she lived. The hatchling was merely another agent of the Imago, of a different kind. It was alive, and it was mobile.
That trick of blending with his hand— was that a signal of something more? It had been green when it first manifested, and green when it had come to him. Jack moved to a green plant and set his hand against it, letting the hatchling slide onto the leaf.
The hatchling turned green again, matching the plant so perfectly that it disappeared. Quickly Jack reached for it, and found it where the leaf seemed to thicken; it was solid, but able to change its color and shape instantly.
He set it back on the floor, which was metal gray in this section. The hatchling became a perfectly matching gray as it flattened out. It was a chameleon! It had disappeared the first time, when Candy pursued it, not entirely by hiding behind a plant, but by blending with it
So now he knew two things about it: it magnified the empathy, and it was very good at hiding. But what good was either ability, when Tappy was locked away and the rest of the city was about to be destroyed? If the honker who had planted this creature on Tappy had intended to help her, how had it expected her to overcome something like this? Because it was now apparent that the nullification of the Gaol's volition block had been the work of that egg, as was Tappy's disappearance from the Gaol's tracking devices. The egg had hatched, and the hatchling had at least two other properties. Something else was needed— and perhaps the honker had anticipated this situation also, and the hatchling had what would be required.
Jack reached down to pick up the hatchling, but could not find it; its camouflage was too good. "Where are you, little friend?" he asked.
The hatchling turned green again, manifesting as it had before. Jack picked it up. "But how come you showed yourself to me before?" he asked it. "I never would have seen you, otherwise." Then he realized that that was why: it had wanted him to see it.
"But why now, when it's too late? Sure, we can be friends, but soon we're going to be dead. Do you have some way to rescue Tappy?"
There was no answer, just that overwhelming empathy. The hatchling did not seem to be intelligent or to have any telepathic communication. Apparently it had responded to him because of the empathy: it knew what he wanted, just as he now knew what the surrounding plants wanted. It knew he wanted to help Tappy.
Yet he hadn't wanted to see it when it came to him. He hadn't known its nature, and had forgotten about it after seeing it the first time. The hatchling had introduced itself to him by approaching and turning green. Didn't that indicate some separate understanding and decision on its part?
He reviewed the circumstance of that introduction. It was just after Candy had left, so he was alone. That made sense; she had wanted to destroy it, so it had waited until she was gone.
But if it wasn't intelligent, how had it had the wit to do that? To distinguish between her and him? He had part of the answer: Candy was not alive, and Jack was, so it could indeed distinguish them, and probably avoided any moving thing that was not responsive to its power. But the timing— how had it managed that? Well, maybe it was programmed to hide as long as there was any hostile thing nearby, whether living or dead. So it could approach Jack only when he was alone.
But the color change— it must have taken some wit to do that for him. It could have come up to him unseen, and worked its magic on him, and he might never have realized that it was responsible for his suddenly broadening empathy. It had made itself deliberately clear to him.
He went over the situation again. Candy walking out, himself calling sarcastically after her: "Bring it back here and introduce us!" Then she was gone, and the hatchling—
The hatchling had introduced itself. It had responded to his desire for an introduction, though his desire had been facetious. The hatchling was not smart enough to distinguish the pretense from the reality.
"Mystery solved," Jack said. "Much good may it do me. I think that the honker just didn't realize how bad a situation we would be in. It thought that maybe we'd be in Malva's hands, and you would touch her and make her have empathy for us, and help us escape. Instead we're with an AI who is now AG: Agent of the Gaol, and can't be corrupted. And we're going to be blown to smithereens by a real live Gaol—"
Then it dawned on him. "The Gaol! Can you make it empathize?" And knew it could. Because the Gaol feared the Imago, and the hatchling was helping the Imago.
Jack heard footsteps. Candy was returning. "Stay cool, hatchling," he whispered to the imitation palm of his hand, which mirrored even the lines and creases and slight variations of color. This thing was good!
Candy entered. Behind her rolled a weird machine. It was blue, with three wheels and three triangular handles, like a huge trash collector. Six little lenses circled it above the handles. The top was a rounded dome.
"There is the container for the host of the Imago," Candy said, indicating the enclosure around the coffin. "There is the human companion of the Imago." She indicated Jack. "There is one other creature, which hatched from an egg planted on the host. It disappeared among the plants."
The machine rolled to a stop before the coffin-enclosure. The dome stretched upward, becoming a column, then turned at right angles. Something shiny appeared at its end: a large lens. It surveyed the enclosure.
Jack realized with a shock that this was the Gaol. A seeming blend of machine and flesh, a natural cyborg. That wasn't just a lens— it was an eye on a stalk, the kind a snail had. The six little lenses must be primitive eyes, for general sensing in all directions, while the big one handled the detail work.
"Time remaining until destruction fifty-five minutes, Earth time," Candy said.
"You bitch!" Jack shouted. "You mean you've already set the bomb? That's what took you the time just now?"
She did not answer. She was no longer responsive to him, only to the Gaol. He couldn't insult her any more than he had been able to insult the image of Malva.
Then one of the triangular handles on the Gaol unfolded. The knob at its apex was actually a joint. One leg of the triangle was the upper arm, and the other was the forearm, with a claylike mass on its end. The clay sprouted fingers or tentacles and touched a panel on the enclosure.