An existing intelligence! Something that had somehow survived the journey of endless years!
Babylon shouted into the din: "Do you mean that this object has a mind?"
"Perhaps many minds," the T'Worlie chirped somberly, and added, "It must be so."
Babylon turned away, unseeing. Cuckoo as an artifact was hard enough to believe—but to add to that the belief that somehow a guiding intelligence survived within it . . .
His imagination reeled. Only dimly did he sense that some new sound had been added to the noise. Doc Chimp snaked out a long paw and dragged Babylon to his side. The chimp's sad face had suddenly become more woebegone than ever as he stared, with the others, at the forgotten scene from the camera of his other self, far below. It had changed. There was no resting on the part of the slave procession now; all of them were up and moving, and the expression on the chimp who grasped his arm was mirrored in the one down below the shell of Cuckoo. "It's the Watcher," Doc Chimp moaned. "He's really gone mad now—and I'm down there with him."
"Pull yourself together, Doc," Ben Pertin snarled over his shoulder. "It's just a copy!"
"It's me," the chimp insisted. "And they're fighting, and—oh! Look at the Canopan!"
By now the entire chamber was watching the new challenge to their sanity. Everyone saw the Canopan suddenly covered with a swarm of Boaty-Bits, the wild scuffling, the insane flight of the Watcher, the terrible destruction of the green-glow weapon.
"They're trying to break it up!" Zara cried, as the green- glowing charge hurtled down toward the grating of slender silver rods that hung beneath the jungle of cables and branching structural beams. Babylon's breath caught. Those wire-thin rods were the rings that supported the sphere. If they were broken, the whole surface here would cave, falling toward the central sun—
Or something worse! If the frictionless motion of the unknown stuff of the rings was really more than orbital, any broken ring would mean faster and more dreadful disaster. No longer frictionless, its unknown stuff would tear into the fabric of Cuckoo at velocities that must be hundreds of kilometers a second. Everything it struck would be exploded into incandescent plasma. Including, probably, other rings in its path. Shuddering with something between awe and terror, he imagined all Cuckoo turning into a supernova.
How many of the supernovas in far-off galaxies, Ben Pertin wondered, were signals of advanced intelligence and ultimate technology snuffed out by catastrophic accident?
Not breathing, he watched the green-shining missile strike the silver rod. It exploded. The whole screen burned with green fire and went abruptly black. The camera had been overloaded.
"They're trying to kill Cuckoo," he tried to say. "Trying to kill us—"
He had no voice. Around him there was silence, then a muffled stir of breath and motion. He tensed in spite of himself, waiting for the final crash of sound, for the walls to buckle around him and the whole world to dissolve into fire ...
It couldn't happen that fast, of course. Cuckoo was too huge. Even a plasma explosion would take time to swallow it all, more time to reach the orbiter.
The screen lit, dimly at first, then with more brightness and clarity. Babylon could breathe again.
"Nobody," Doc Chimp whispered, "nothing could live in that!"
And it seemed true. They could see the cavern again. Apart from the Watcher there seemed no one, no being, alive within the range of the camera, except for a huge man with skin the color of weathered brass, and the other Doc Chimp—and the chimpanzee was blinded.
Even in the stereostage the sight was fearful. The viewers shrank away from the flare of green light that turned their faces queerly metallic. Ben Pertin laughed—hysteria, Babylon thought; but Doc Chimp took it personally.
"How can you?" he chattered furiously. "I thought you were my friend! If it was you down there—"
"If it was me," Pertin said brutally, "it would come to the same thing. So you're being killed! But we've both been killed so often already it just doesn't seem important anymore. It's the Boaty-Bits! They've been up to something all along. They have a lot of explaining to do—"
His voice broke off. His eyes darted around the room, and his face assumed an expression of comical surprise.
"What's the matter, Ben?" Babylon asked.
"The Boaty-Bits. Don't you see? There's not one of them in this chamber—they've sneaked away!"
At least the noise level had dropped! It was not that the beings on the orbiter were calmer—quite the reverse—but now they were dispersed, as Scorpians and T'Worlie, humans and deltaforms, every being of every race joined in the orbiter-wide hunt. Where were the Boaty-Bits?
Within a few moments Babylon had lost track of the other human beings—Pertin in one direction, Zara in another, Org Rider and Redlaw heading for the landers on the assumption that the collective creatures were trying an escape. He and Doc Chimp were flying down a corridor on the trail of a mixed mob of Purchased People and Sheliaks. It taxed all of Babylon's strength, but the chimpanzee was crooning to himself as he pulled them along the hoist-ropes with his powerful simian arms. "Died down there," he sobbed, half to himself, "going to die again! Oh, heaven help this poor old monkey in this terrible world—"
Babylon, panting, tried to reassure him: "But that's not true, Doc," he gasped. "You don't have to die again! Everything's changed now, don't you see?"
The chimp reached out with one long, black-furred arm and brought them to a jolting stop. "Changed?" he demanded, peering into Babylon's face. "You haven't been here very long, have you? Nothing changes! You just go on dying and dying! It's a pity us monkeys don't get manic depressive, because this is a great place for suicidal types— you get so many chances to act it out! I tell you, they're just going to decide to send down another party through the tachyon transfer, and somebody's sure to say let's take old Doc along, and—"
He stopped in midbreath. "Oh, Dr. Babylon!" he whispered softly. "The tachyon chamber. Of course! Come on!"
And, of course, he was right. In less than five minutes they were at the entrance to the tachyon-transport room, a long gaggle of beings trailing them in response to Doc Chimp's agitated yells, and at the door the chimpanzee brought them to a sharp stop. "There you are!" he whispered triumphantly. "You see?"
And, sure enough, there inside the chamber was a Sirian eye—perhaps the same renegade who had transported himself up from the catacombs—surrounded by a furious swarm of the steel-blue collective creatures. "What are they doing?" Babylon demanded.
"Can't tell," the chimp whispered, "but it looks as if they're pulling Purchased-People units out of the store. Only they're not here—"
But there was no more time for speculation; the rest of the lynch mob had caught up with them, and all beings together stormed into the chamber.
Jen Babylon had never seen one sentient being murder another before, but he saw it happen now. There was no stopping the furious mob. The Canopan was the first to die, and as he was struck down, bleeding a pumpkin-yellow ichor, the great equine skull crushed by a blow from a Scorpian, two Boaty-Bits flew out of the fleshy ruff that was its mane. They tried to join the rest of their swarm, but the swarm itself was disorganized, dying bit by bit as each one of them was struck by Sheliak tentacle, Sirian electric bolt or fist, hoof, horn, or whatever other striking appendage any being had. They died in the hundreds, silently at first. Then they swarmed together for a moment and buzzed fiercely, a screaming drone that the Pmals rendered as:
"Fools! You are doomed! Only collective intelligence will survive—and you will be part of it!"