The temptation was alive in Hans Rebka, but only for a split second. A return now would leave Darya and the others waiting on the Erebus, ignorant of what had happened — perhaps making a suicidal rescue bid. He, at least, could not run away.
“I won’t force anyone into more danger,” he said. “If the rest of you want to leave through the Builder transport system, go ahead and do it. But I can’t. I’m going back to the surface of Genizee. I’ll take my chances there.”
The others said nothing, but even before Rebka began to speak, the pheromonal dialogue had begun between Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial.
“We could be back home and safe from the Zardalu in less than a day.”
“Yes. That would be desirable. But reflect, Louis Nenda, on our condition should we elect to return to the spiral arm. We would be in no better position than when we arrived on Miranda: penniless, slaveless, and shipless. Whereas if we stay here, and can somehow win a portion of these riches… any one of them would make our fortunes. World-Keeper may not be sane, but he makes wonderful gadgets.”
“Hey, I know that, At. I’m not blind.” Louis Nenda noticed that J’merlia had moved closer and was listening carefully to the conversation. The Lo’tfian had better command of pheromonal communication than Nenda’s augment provided the human. J’merlia would catch every nuance. That couldn’t be helped, and anyway it didn’t matter. J’merlia’s devotion and obedience to his Cecropian dominatrix was total, so nothing would be repeated to Rebka or the others.
“There’s some amazing stuff here,” Nenda went on. “It makes the loot on Glister look like Bercian gewgaws. I agree, we may be a long way from getting our hands on any, but we shouldn’t give up yet. That means we hafta stick with Rebka.”
“I concur.” The pheromones from Atvar H’sial took on a tinge of suspicion. “However, I again detect emotional undercurrents beneath your words. I need your assurance that you are remaining from the soundest and most honorable of commercial motives, and not because of some perverse and animalistic interest in the human female, Darya Lang.”
“Gimme a break, At.” Louis Nenda scowled at his Cecropian partner. “After all we been through, you oughta know what I’m like by now.”
“I do know, very well. That is the basis for my concern.”
“Get outa here.” Nenda turned to Hans Rebka. “Me an’ At have been talkin’ about this. We think it would be wrong to run for it, an’ leave Julian Graves an’ Tally an’ Dulcimer an’… whoever else” — he glared at Atvar H’sial — “high an’ dry, wondering where the hell we got to. So we’ve decided to stay with you and try our luck back on the surface of Genizee.”
“Great. I need all the help I can get. Then that just leaves Kallik and J’merlia.” Rebka glanced at the Hymenopt and the Lo’tfian. “What do you two want to do?”
They were staring at him as if he were crazy.
“Naturally, we will go wherever Atvar H’sial and Master Nenda go,” Kallik said, in the tone of one addressing a small and rather backward child. “Was there ever any doubt of it?”
“And so for all of us,” said J’merlia, “it is onward — and upward. Literally, in this case. I will ask World-Keeper how and when we may be returned to the surface of Genizee.”
“As close as possible to the seedship,” Rebka said.
“And as far as possible from the Zardalu,” added Louis Nenda. “Don’t forget that, J’merlia. Rebka and I are gettin’ pretty hungry. But we wanna eat dinner, not be it.”
Chapter Seventeen
J’merlia was convinced that he was dead.
Again.
He wanted to be dead. Deader than the previous time.
Then he had merely been stupid enough to dive into the middle of an amorphous singularity, which no conscious being, organic or inorganic, could possibly survive.
That produced physical dismemberment: one’s body was stretched along its length, and at the same time compressed on all sides, until one became a drawn-out filament of subnuclear particles, and finally a burst of neutrinos and a ray of pure radiation. Long before that, of course, one was dead and unconscious. It was an unpleasant end, certainly, but one well studied and well understood.
What he had dealt with next had been much worse: mental dismemberment. His mind had been teased apart, delicately separated piece from piece, while all the time he remained conscious and suffering. And then inside his fragmented brain everything that was mentally clear and clean had been taken away from him, dispatched on multiple mysterious and faraway tasks. What was left was a useless husk, devoid of purpose — vague, irresolute, and uncertain.
And now that poor shattered remnant was being interrogated.
“Tell me about the human you call Julian Graves — about the Hymenopt known as Kallik — about the Cecropian, Atvar H’sial.” The probing came from the Builder construct, Guardian. J’merlia knew his tormentor, but the knowledge did not help. His mind, absent all trace of free will, had to answer.
“Tell me everything,” the questioner went on, “about all the members of your party. I can observe present actions, but I need to know the past before I can make decisions. Tell.”
J’merlia told. Told all. What he had become could not resist or lie.
But it was not a one-way process; for, as he told, into the vacuum of uncertainty that was now his mind there flowed a backwash of information from Guardian itself. J’merlia was not capable of analyzing or understanding what he received. All he could do was record.
How many are we? That I cannot say, although I have pondered the question since the time of my first self-awareness. I thought for one million years. And then, more than three million years ago, I sent out my probes on the Great Search; far across the spiral arm and beyond it, seeking. Seeking first to contact, and then to know my brethren.
I failed. I learned that we are hundreds, certainly, and perhaps thousands. But our locations make full knowledge difficult, and few of us were easy to find. Some lie in the hearts of stars, force-field protected. Others are cocooned deep within planets, awaiting some unknown signal before they will emerge. A handful have moved so far from the spiral arm and from the galaxy itself that all contact has been lost. The most inaccessible dwell, like me, within the dislocations of space-time itself. Perhaps there are others, in places I did not even dream to look.
I do not know, for I did not complete the Great Search. I abandoned it. Not because all the construct locations could not ultimately be found by extended search; rather, because the search itself was pointless. I learned that my self-appointed task could never achieve its objective.
I had thought to find like minds, a community of constructs, united in purpose, a brethren in pursuit of the same goal of service to our creators. But what I found was worse than diversity — it was insanity.
These are beings who share my origin and my internal structure, even my external form. Communication between us should have been simple. Instead I found it impossible. Some were autistic, so withdrawn into their own world of delusion that no response could be elicited, no matter what the stimulus. Many were fixated, convinced past all persuasion of a misguided view as to their own role and the roles of the other constructs.