For the first time in days, Babylon laughed out loud. "Spare me," he said, turning to watch the militia as they came out with body bags made of tough netting, each one containing the squirming, clattering body of one of the larger crabs. Two others were staggering with a huge sack containing scores of the smaller ones. Babylon wondered what they would do with the creatures and, queerly, almost felt concern. After all, the crabs had not actually hurt him. Or anyone else, as far as he knew; they had not even defended themselves against the clubs of the militia, simply tried to get out of the way.
Babylon said, "Well, thanks again, Ben. I guess I'd better get back to the school to set their minds at ease. And I wanted—I mean, that other 'I' on Cuckoo wanted—some linguistic data from me. He's probably—that is, I'm probably—getting pretty impatient."
Pertin's expression was suddenly tense. "Oh, of course," he said. "You couldn't know what's happened."
"What?"
Pertin shook his head fretfully. "God knows," he said moodily. "But Tachyon Base announced that all communication with Cuckoo has been cut. Terminated. The fault's at the originating station. No signals are coming in. The orbiter may have been destroyed, Jen, and what's become of the you and the me that's there, I can't even guess."
"I wish—" Babylon began, but what he wished was drowned out by a hissing, chittering sound that sprang from nowhere, seemed to come from everywhere, grew in volume—and then abruptly cut off. The human voice of one of the militiamen rose in the silence:
"The crabs! They're having a fit!"
It was the crabs—all of them—but it wasn't just the crabs. The human voices of the Kooks in custody had risen in hysteria, in the same way, and in the same way cut off. Babylon and Pertin were surrounded by stacked crabs in their mesh body bags, all writhing spasmodically, convulsively—and then, all at once, they stopped, rigid in tetanic spasm.
There was silence. Then Babylon said wonderingly, "What was that all about?"
But Pertin was pointing at the hovervan Sheryl had been taken into. She was pressed against the bars, rapt, arms outflung, eyes to the sky. She held that painful, precarious pose for a long moment.
Then she shouted something unintelligible.
Pertin and Babylon looked at each other questioningly, then Babylon shook his head. "I didn't understand," he began to say; and then Sheryl repeated it, louder than before and clearer:
"HE is waking!"
EIGHTEEN
The ancient history of the human race was scarred with endless examples of genocides, witch hunts, and pogroms. Nero's Romans hunting down Christians as scapegoats for the burning of Rome, Europe's Christians ferreting out Jews to revenge the onslaught of plagues—Cossacks and Ayatollahs, Papal troops annihilating Catharists, Boston zealots burning sick old women at the stake—the story of humanity was blotched with unsavory episodes of persecution.
But those were history! Ugly pages but forgotten ones, relics of a shameful past—and yet, on the orbiter, the purges and pogroms were being echoed with terrifying fidelity, as the shocked and vengeful inhabitants sought out their betrayers.
Of the three hundred eighty-six beings on the orbiter, collective entities like the Boaty-Bits not counted, no fewer than fifty-four were found to be part of the conspiracy. Two Scorpian robots, four Canopans—not counting the dead one. Eight Sirians, a dozen Sheliaks, nearly all the deltaforms, and one or two each from dozens of other races. No T'Worlie was part of it. Neither was any human, apart from the Purchased People. And no race was completely corrupted but one. The Boaty-Bits were one hundred percent among the forces of destruction. Two big swarms of them were destroyed, then only isolated members were seen, then none at all. "They're hiding," Doc Chimp whimpered, as he and Jen Babylon retreated from the scene where a furious Sheliak was methodically cremating the last scattered individuals of one swarm with his electrostatic whips. "Oh, they're mean ones, Dr. Babylon!"
Babylon demanded, "But why? What are they doing it for?"
The chimpanzee stared at him morosely, scratching his jaw with long, black fingers. "Seems to me if we wanted to know that we'd have had to keep a couple of them alive to ask."
"I don't mean just the Boaty-Bits, I mean everything that's been going on. All this strife and working at cross- purposes—from what you and Ben have told me, it's been like that almost from the orbiter's first days!"
The chimp was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. "Oh, even before that, Dr. Babylon. Back on the ship— back on Sun One—" He shook his head. "It's been a mortal long time that people have been betraying and hating each other, Dr. Babylon."
"I'm talking about here and now, and the Boaty-Bits!"
Doc Chimp nodded somberly. "They're the villains this time, no doubt about that. Maybe we should've guessed long ago—'course, we didn't really know they could take over other beings the way they do . . . But they're collective beings, Dr. Babylon. They don't think like the rest of us, and they don't much like us. Noncollective beings are too prone to individual aberration, as they call it. So they've been taking over individuals—the ones that were halfway rotten already, I expect, like the Sheliaks and the deltaforms, most of them—"
"That doesn't tell me why\" The chimpanzee shrugged his narrow shoulders without answering. "I can't believe that one single race could prevail against the entire Galaxy!"
Doc Chimp said, "No, and nobody else did, either—else we might have done something about it. Maybe they're not just one single race, though. Org Rider thinks there's something beyond them—"
"Org Rider!" Babylon cried. "That's another thing! I haven't seen him or Zara since—since I don't know when, since before we found out about the Boaty-Bits, anyway. Where are they?"
The chimpanzee licked his narrow lips, peering fearfully at Babylon. "Could you please ask Ben that question, not me?" he pleaded. "It's a kind of a—well, a secret, Dr. Babylon. I know Ben would tell you, but I promised."
"Oh, for God's sake! Now what?"
The chimpanzee was obdurate, though intimidated. "Please! It's just—well, Ben can explain everything. He's scared the Boaty-Bits might be anywhere, just one of them, you know, that might hear something and go back and tell the others."
Babylon said furiously, "They're only little bugs, Doc! They're not gods!"
"Oh, don't say that, Dr. Babylon," the chimp said earnestly. "They're pretty special! One or two of them are nothing at all. But put a few hundred of them together and you've got the beginnings of intelligence. A couple of thousand, like the swarms we've had here on the orbiter, and there's a collective being as smart as you and me!" He laughed sourly. "And none of us was smart enough to take the next step. Ten thousand of them, a hundred thousand—Dr. Babylon, can you imagine what a million of them would be like? Why, I'm surprised they didn't just take us over, long ago! The more of them there are, the smarter and stronger they are—and there's just nothing we can do about it!"
Babylon nodded, beginning to appreciate what a powerful foe they had in the Boaty-Bits.
He did not yet know how drastically he had undervalued them.
Ben Pertin was in his room, and not alone. Babylon pushed through the door, and stopped short. Hanging just before his eyes was the TWorlie, its butterfly wings waving like gentle palm fronds to support its body. "Mimmie," he said. "Are you all right now?"
"Statement: Physically well, emotionally satisfactory." The five bright eyes peered at him with humor. "Query: Are you well?"
"I'm angry," Babylon growled, peering around the room.