“You sound like you’re looking forward to a nice, big war.”
“No, but unlike you, I see it as inevitable. Ah, here are the lawyers.” Two men in legalface, one People’s, the other Kluster, strode up. Wyeth bowed to Rebel. “Shall we?”
They crossed the bridge and walked in among the Comprise. First came Wyeth, arm in arm with Rebel, and then the lawyers. Constance hesitated, then followed, and Freeboy scuttled after her.
Four samurai brought up the rear. “Over the Rubicon,”
Wyeth said cheerily, but to Rebel it felt more like crossing the Styx, to the land where the bloodless dead dwell in perfect equality. The Comprise parted for them, closing back around the group as it passed. Hundreds of eyes stared at them.
Wyeth chose a man at random, grabbed him by the shoulders, and said, “You. Can you talk? We’ll talk through this individual.”
“That is not necessary,” the Comprise said.
“That’s how we’ll do it anyway. I’m going to ask you some questions. If I am not satisfied with the answers, I’ll charge you with violent aggression and see to it that the four hundred however many of you never rejoin Earth again. Do you want that? I can do that to you.”
The Comprise stirred uneasily. “You manipulated us into attacking you.”
“So what?” Wyeth turned to his lawyers. “Does that make any difference legally?”
“No.”
“No.”
Rebel touched her bracelet and saw the tangled lines of energy linking the Comprise in a shimmering haze.
Electromagnetic fields rose from them like wings.
Directional beams blinked on and off, converging upon the spokesman. He flashed bright as the eye of a coileddragon. “Ask, then.”
“What does the Comprise want?”
Almost scornfully, the Comprise said, “What does any organism want? To live, to grow, and to employ one’s abilities constructively.”
“I was thinking of something a little less sweeping. Why did you want the shyapples so badly? You almost killed young Freeboy here, trying to get information he didn’t even have. What information were you hoping to find?
What did you want that badly?”
“Earth is interested in all new developments in the mind arts.”
“Answers,” Wyeth said grimly.
Again the Comprise shifted in agitation. Individuals jostled against each other; heads turned at random.
Several cried out. “We…” the spokesman began. He paused as the interactive fields shifted configurations wildly, withdrew, and then closed in about him. “We seek integrity. We seek a means of maintaining our identity as Comprise when we are separated from Earth.”
“Integrity? I don’t understand.”
“Away from Earth, we are cut off, orphaned,” the Comprise said. “We lose identity. You could not understand. Our sense of being Earth fades and shifts. We become Other. You would say individual. We do not desire this. It is painful to us.”
“Ah,” said Wyeth. “Now that is interesting.”
“Are you satisfied now?” Constance demanded. Wyeth looked at her. “You’ve been torturing this creature for your own… your own paranoid fantasies, that’s all. You are a dangerous man, Mr. Wyeth, a machine running out of control and causing pain for no purpose at all.”
Rebel reached out, touched the spokesman’s wrist. “Tell me something,” she said hesitantly. “Is Wyeth right? Are humans and Comprise really enemies?”
“Of course not,” Constance snapped.
“Yes,” the Comprise said. “We are by definition natural enemies since we compete for the same resources.”
“Resources? You mean like… what? Energy sources?
Metal ores?”
“People. People are our most important resource.”
Constance stood motionless, looking pale and betrayed.
“I…” she said. “I thought—” Her voice was close to tears.
Abruptly she turned away and limped back across the bridge, to the land of the living. Freeboy scurried after her.
Not actually grinning, Wyeth favored Rebel with a nod and a wink. He turned to the Comprise. “Another question. Why haven’t you taken over human space already? You have all the resources of Earth at your disposal, and the kind of physics we can only dream of.
Why have you stayed put? Why aren’t you out here among us in force?”
The crowds of Comprise expanded slightly, then contracted, like an enormous beast taking a deep breath.
“We are held back by the speed of communication. It is not true that thought is instantaneous. Thought is only as fast as our electronic linkages allow. Even on Earth this causes problems. It is possible for the Comprise to be divided against ourself. Thought moves in vast waves, like pressure fronts, across the continents. Sometimes two conflicting thoughts arise on opposite sides of the planet.
The thought fronts race outward, and where they collide, there is conflict. It is like a mental storm. You would not understand it. But these are momentary unbalances, easily settled. The problem becomes crucial only when Comprise leave Earth.
“Earth has tried creating colonies of ourself in near orbit, on the moon, elsewhere. But small Comprise such as we are sicken away from the communion of thought. We become indecisive, we make errors. The large Comprise do not sicken, but they lose integrity and drift away from Earth, becoming individuals in their own right. Then they must be destroyed. Three times it has been necessary to apply the nuclear solution. It is not permissible that the Comprise of Earth become Other. You would not understand.”
“I see,” Wyeth said. “I think I see. That’s the reason for your interest in the mind arts, then? You want a means of keeping Comprise colonies integrated with Earth.”
“Yes. For a long time Earth has sought the answer in physics. A means of instantaneous communication would bind the Comprise across vast distances. But the speed of light remains an absolute barrier. It cannot be cheated.
There is no simultaneity in the universe. So we look elsewhere. Perhaps a solution can be found in the mind arts. Perhaps a new mental architecture.”
“That brings me to my next question—”
“No,” the Comprise said. “You are satisfied. Sickened though we are, we can read you that well, Boss Wyeth. You got as much from us as you had hoped for. We need give you no more.” The spokesman took a step backwards, merging into his fellows. Hundreds of eyes all turned away at once.
For a moment Wyeth stood open-mouthed. Then he laughed.
When they made love that night, Wyeth was awkward and he came too soon. He rolled away from Rebel, staring out the window wall. Faint strands of orchid floated slowly by as the sheraton revolved. “Wyeth?” Rebel said gently.
He looked at her, eyes bleak and hollow. “What is it?”
Wyeth shook his head, looked downward. “I have a sick conscience. I am not at all at peace with myselves.”
“Hey,” Rebel said. “Hey, babes, it’s all right.” She took his hand, held it in both of hers. “Which one of you is this?
It’s the leader, right?”
“Yes, but we all feel this way. Constance was right. About the kid. Billy was perfectly content as part of the Comprise.
Not happy, not aware—but content, anyway. And then I appear in a blaze of light and a rush of noise, and yank him into consciousness. Here, kid, have an apple. Bright and shiny. Let me make you one of us. I dragged him out of the Comprise and halfway to human, and made him into what? A crippled, crazy, unhappy animal of some kind.”
“Hey, now, it wasn’t your fault he ate the shyapple. The Comprise did that. It caught us all by surprise.”
Wyeth sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
He sat there, not moving. “You think not? I waved that apple under their noses. I wanted them to bite. I wanted to see what would happen. But when I pried Billy loose from the Comprise, it turned out he didn’t know one fucking thing. So what good did I do? None. I acted blindly, and now there’s one more miserable creature walking the sky.”