The conflict between opposed entropic states had spawned the time storm. As Porniarsk had said, the storm as a whole was too massive for control by action of the monads belonging to our original time, or even to his. But a delaying action could be fought. The forces set loose by the entropic conflict could be balanced against each other here and there, thereby slowing down the general anarchies enough to buy some breathing time, until the minds of those concerned with the straggle could develop more powerful forces to put in play across the connection between the philosophical and physical universes.
I was a single monad (though, of course, reinforced with the other seven at their altered consoles), and not a particularly capable one basically. But I was also something of a freak, a lucky freak in that my freakiness apparently fitted the necessity of the moment. That was why I could think, as I was privately doing now, of creating an enclave in the time storm that would include the whole earth and its natural satellite, instead of merely an enclave containing just the few square miles surrounding us, which had been Porniarsk’s hope.
“I’ll need one more console adapted,” I said to Porniarsk. “Don’t worry, now. I can handle it.”
“But there’s no one to sit at it,” said Bill.
“That’s correct,” said Porniarsk patiently. “There are only seven other adults in your party. I haven’t any effectiveness as a monad. Neither has the little girl.”
“She hasn’t?” I looked hard at the avatar.
“Not... in effect,” he said, with a rare second of hesitation. “A monad is required to have more than just a living intelligence and a personality. It has to have the capability of reflecting the universe. Wendy hasn’t matured enough to do that. If you could ask her about it, and she could answer you, she’d say something to the effect that to her the universe isn’t a defined entity. It’s amorphous, unpredictable, capable of changing and surprising her at any moment. For her, the universe as she now sees it is more like a god or devil than a mechanism of natural laws—something she’s got no hope of understanding or controlling.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll settle for the fact she’s at least partially a monad.”
“There’s no such thing,” said Porniarsk. “A monad either is, or is not. In any case, even if she was a partial monad, a partial monad is incapable of helping you.”
“What about when it’s combined with another partial monad?”
“What other partial monad?” Bill asked.
“The Old Man, down at the village.”
“This is even worse than your idea of using Wendy,” said Porniarsk. For the first time since we’d met him, the tone of his voice came close to betraying irritation with one of us. “The experimental down below us are artificially created animals. The very concept of ‘universe’ is beyond them. They’re only bundles of reflexes, conditioned and trained.”
“All but one of them,” I said. “Porniarsk, don’t forget there’re a lot of things I can see now with the help of the seven sets you’ve already produced, even if they don’t have monads in connection with them yet. One of those things is that the Old Man may have been bred in a test-tube—or whatever they all came from—but he’s got some kind of concept of ‘universe,’ even if it’s limited to his village and a mile or so of the rock around it. When we first came in here and passed the initial test of their attack, all the rest of them immediately took us for granted. Not the Old Man. By design or chance, he’s got something individual to measure new things against, plus whatever it takes to make new decisions on the basis of that measurement. And you can’t deny he’s adult.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“I don’t think,” said Bill at last, “that Marie’s going to like Wendy being hooked up to something like the Old Man.”
“Wendy won’t be. They’ll both just be hooked in with all the rest of us. Anyway, I’ll explain it to Marie.”
“How’ll you get the Old Man to cooperate?”
“He doesn’t have to cooperate,” I said. “I’ll bring him up here, connect him to one of the consoles and chain him to it with Sunday’s chain. Then give him a day or two to get used to the feel of assistance, and his being in connection with my mind. Once he feels the advantages these things give him, my bet is he’ll get over being scared and become interested.”
“If you use force to bring him up here,” said Porniarsk, “you’ll undoubtedly trigger off the antagonisms of his fellow experimentals.”
“I think I can do it without,” I said. “I’ve got an idea.”
With that, I left the two of them and went back down to our camp, which was set up at the foot of the peak. I unchained Sunday and went looking for Marie. Sunday could only be trusted to stick around the camp when I was there. He had shown no particularly strong hunting instincts before in all the time I had known him; but for some reason the experimentals seemed to fascinate him. Since the first day of our camp at the foot of the hill, when I had caught him stalking one of the village inhabitants who was out hunting among the rocks, we had kept him chained up when I was up on the peak. It was possible he might not have hurt the experimental, but the sight I had had of him, creeping softly along, belly almost dragging the ground and tail a-twitch, was too vivid to forget.
At any rate, now I let him loose, and he butted his head against me and rubbed himself against my legs all the time I was looking for Marie. I found her, with Wendy, down at the creek by the foot of the peak, doing some washing.
It was not the time to mention that I wanted Wendy at one of the consoles. The little girl had come to trust me; and—I don’t care how male and solitary you are—if a small child decides to take to you, you have to carry your own instincts somewhere outside the normal spectrum not to feel some sort of emotional response. Anything unexpected or new tended to frighten Wendy; and any concern or doubt about it by her mother made the fright certain. The idea would have to be presented to Wendy gently, and with Marie’s cooperation. I spoke to Marie now, instead, about the other matter I had in mind.
“Have you got any of that brandy left?” I asked.
She put down in a roaster pan some jeans of Wendy’s she was wringing out and shook her hands to get the excess water off. She had her own slacks rolled up above her knees and her legs and feet bare so that she could wade into the creek. The work had pinkened her face and tousled her hair. She looked, not exactly younger, but more relaxed and happy than usual; and for a second I felt sad that I had not been able to love her after all, instead of Ellen.
“What’s the occasion?” she asked.
“No occasion,” I said. “I’m hoping to bait the Old Man in the village down there, so I can get him up to the roundhouse. We want to try him with the consoles. You do have some brandy left?”
“Yes,” she said. “How much do you want?”
“One full bottle ought to be plenty,” I said. “Is there that much?”
“I’ve got several full bottles,” she said. “Do you want it right away, or can I finish up here first?”
“I’d like to get down to the village before dark.”
“I’ll be done in five minutes.”
“Fine, then,” I said and sat down on a boulder to wait. It took her closer to fifteen than five minutes, as it turned out, but there was still at least an hour or so of sunset left. We went back to the camper; she got me an unopened bottle of brandy, and I walked down to the village with it.