“For—for—” He did not know. He said almost as a question: “To be human again. Walk the Earth . . . my God, what are we doing?”
Willy began to cry with fright. Mercedes van Dellen soothed him.
“What are we doing?” Tropile asked again, trying to be calm. “We’ve ripped our friends out of the Earth and turned them loose to be vermin for our convenience. We weren’t a god; we were a devil!”
Like the flip of a kaleidoscope events had suddenly changed while he watched them. The steady certainty of the Snowflake which knew nothing except tasks and their economical fulfillment had become the inhuman fixity of a machine.
“We were a machine!” he cried. “We were as much a machine as the Pyramids. There was no soul in us, no pity.”
“Yes,” said Alia Narova, suddenly awed. “How could we have done it? Django Tembo, how could you have let us?”
The dung-bearer had the soul of a king—but an African king. Deeply troubled, he told them: “Look into my heart and you will see why I do not understand your objections.”
They looked and saw. He had been fundamentally baffled by “not a god but a devil.” To him it had sounded like the crudest, most naked illogic. Devil and god were the same to his people after millenia in fatless, acid-soiled Africa. Men do not eat other men calmly except in Africa. Siberian shamans used to tear madly at the flesh of those who watched them dance, but every unspeakable mouthful later was vomited up so that the lawbreaking did not bring ruin on the tribe. Polynesians and Melanesians dined on long pig to dare fate and trembled when they did it. Only in starved Africa was a man the same as meat, no more and no less. So it was that when Tropile spoke, Django Tembo heard him say: “We weren’t a devil-god; we were a devil-god.” He could not understand that as a value-judgment; nobody could.
Gulbenkian chuckled at the impasse.
Django Tembo said, puzzled and simple: “Strength is better than weakness, friends. Together we are strong. What more is there to say? Who can guide every step so that no ant is ever crushed by him?”
“You’ll never get me back in there,” said Tropile.
“Or me,” said Alia Narova.
“You cannot do this!” Corso Navarone cried. “Alia Narova whom I love, Glen Tropile, my trusted companion, deserters? Never!”
“I think the same,” said Spyros Gulbenkian with interest. “I mean really think, with the brain and not with the gonads—no offense, Corso. Exactly how are you going to desert? I think we can, so to speak, pull you under if we wish.”
“Try it!” Tropile snarled.
“Try it!” Alia Narova echoed.
“If it weren’t for Willy,” Mercedes van Dellen said apologetically. “He’d be lost without us—”
Kim Seong said delightedly: “I’ll just watch. I love a good fight between a pair of fools. It breaks things up.”
Tropile and Alia Narova felt the attack begin from Django Tembo; it came in the form of false memories insinuating themselves into their minds. Glaring deserts of rock and sand that merged into snowy steppes, the death of the last elephant, on Earth, Tembo’s totem, in the streets of Durban, the aged ivory-laden beast crashing to its arthritic knees and toppling on its side, grunting . . . Princeton and Gala dimmed in Tropile’s mind, Nice, and the old blind man in Alia Narova’s. The fierce, confused, inflated thoughts of Corso Navarone exhorted them to be brave, strong, united, gallant, dignified like him. Spyros Gulbenkian, never one to lead a cavalry charge, spattered them with this day in Paris six sun-cycles ago when he won the toll-gate franchise on the Ninth Bridge, the foundation of his fortune; that night in Frankfurt’s House of Regulations when he blew the wall and permitted his chief bookkeeper to escape—the charge was Wolf, of course; an afternoon between the paws of the Great Sphinx when he and a trader named Shalom bartered African grain for French sugarbeet. Mercedes van Dellen: Poor Willy. He doesn’t really understand but he feels better when we’re all together. He forgets that he doesn’t understand. Maybe he’s improving. Don’t you think so? Maybe the next time we come out he’ll be a little clearer. Wouldn’t that be good? Glen and Alia, won’t you let go for poor Willy?
And Alia Narova broke the flashing exchange with an angry sob. “Willy’s upset!” she cried. “He won’t answer me.”
With an effort, Tropile expelled the false memories and the pseudo-voices. “Stop a minute, everybody!” he shouted. “If you’re so worried about what Willy wants, let’s give him a chance to speak for himself.”
The Snowflake—seven-eighths of it—fell silent. It was the turn of the remaining one-eighth to speak.
It didn’t do so, however. Uncertainly, Alia Narova quavered, “Willy?”
No answer.
“He feels funny,” said Spyros Gulbenkian.
Then everybody knew that Willy felt funny, because the motionless body jerked into violent motion. “What’s he doing?” Tropile cried. “Willy! Cut it out! The way you’re wriggling around you could hurt something!”
The suddenly thrashing, sinuously writhing body of Willy became motionless again. Then, member by member, systematically it moved a finger at a time, a toe, an arm, like the owner of a new car trying out its controls.
“My God,” breathed Mercedes van Dellen, “it’s not Willy, is it?”
The voice of Willy said gently, “No. I have borrowed Willy to tell you that you must do something quite soon.”
“Willy!” Mercedes screamed.
Willy repeated, “No, not Willy. I’m sorry. I had to kill him, so to speak. He won’t be back. I’m what your friend called ‘the green boy with all the arms.’ “
“Told you so,” said Kim Seong.
“Yes, madam,” said Willy. “We had your sort in my world, too. It was an interesting world and a pleasant one, at least until we started running it for the benefit of the machines, and then let the machines start running it for their own benefit.”
“How can you talk our language?” Corso Navarone asked faintly.
Wistfully Willy said, “We used to have more than two hundred languages, some good for one thing, some good for another. We were expected to know them all. One more—what does it matter? We were a clever race. Oh, yes, we were clever! I have thought for some time that you would be interested to know how clever, ever since I first noticed you observing us.”
Mercedes whimpered. “You noticed? Did—did the Pyramids also notice?”
“Wait one moment, please,” said Willy’s voice. There was a lengthy silence. Then Willy’s voice said regretfully, “That is something else I would like to talk to you about at some length: What, exactly, do Pyramids ‘notice?’ But there is something you may think more immediate. You made a mistake when you broke into the Polar Library. You weren’t strong enough to do that yet. Of course, you couldn’t have been expected to know.”
Tropile, awe and shock to one side, had had more than enough of veiled hints and subtle warnings. “So?” he growled.
“So you touched off trouble when you holed through to the Library,” Willy said apologetically. “The Pyramids, ah—” It broke off for a moment, then resumed with an almost audible equivalent of a shrug. “Let’s say, they ‘noticed,’ though that is quite inexact. At any rate, the Omniverters—excuse me, what you call the Pyramids—have been waiting to take action for the arrival of the one they keep on your planet. It has arrived. All eight of them are now headed for this tank of yours, with, I believe, the intention of doing a thorough job of destroying it. I wish you well. You are not an unattractive race.”
Tropile gritted his teeth; there was nothing veiled or subtle about that; it was all too understandable. “Will you tell us what to do?” he demanded.
“I can’t,” it said. “I’m dead.”