he thinks, and seeks to turn the current of Our being. Leader truly, one of the great who appear in deep need; but it has been so long, so long, that even he can bend Us only to least-change, and Bladetree the Guard who was Questioner, answers: The only hope, and We are turned:
only hope
it may be, though
desperate, and
brave, but
is not desperation
always hope?
We acknowledge the truth of the equation, but Leader withdraws in sudden impatience. We let him go. For this too is the mark of the great, to retreat and consider and gather strength for Us all. And We have not strength to comfort one another’s moods. And his sometimes might weaken not aid Us; for he is first-source of an experiment whose outcome will be hope, or not. It will work, or it will not.
And everything has been experiment since a long-placed telltale, a Watchsetter long-ago’s shade, registered the Treecub transmission and stalking began. The less-than-People are coming, sailing toward Home, and their message comes before them, coruscating: We are intelligent carbon-based oxygen-burning bipedal intelligent intelligent intelligent…
Steersman comes through the muraled corridors. We look at them through Steersman’s eyes, and regard the darkened command chamber along with Leader. The walls once showed Us comforts of Our Nearhomes; but their seeming life depends on shared belief; and now there is not energy enough among Us to make them real, and they are arbitrary and meaningless lines that sink and waver, and darkness slowly overcomes them.
All is quiet, Leader says, and Steersman acknowledges, entering: All is quiet, and We echo in Our thoughts,
quiet…
quiet…
quiet…
Leader gives over to Steersman the traditional sidearm of the one on watch, its weight cold and heavy in Our hands. It is a relic of Renders, the transfer a custom spontaneously risen at the start of Watchsetting. Not that the Treecubs are prey to such weapons, with all their means of killing from afar; but the ritual commands Us to vigilance.
Relieved of weight and duty, Leader paces through the ship. We feel Ourselves together a pale shadow of Home in boundlessness, dying caricature of a Nearhome. We are doing well, he thinks, for so few so long in emptiness. But We have been out too long, We starve for Home, We are stretched thin and tenuous and Our functioning declines. How much longer should We wait?
He comes to the place of rushing water and strips off his clothing, thinking sadly of the waters of his Nearhome and Sunrise sporting there. Three other of Our living companions are bonded too, and find no comfort but in one another’s pain. There is no comfort but memory. Only those who endured before Us teach Us how to bear assault on the unassailable, loss of that We cannot lose and live, disjunction that ends and reduces Us to ash.
For an instant he sees Sunrise in the stones that surround him. We take alarm and warn him, as We always do. But not immediately; We are not so quick as before; and will the day come when We cannot? He will not look at the glimmering stone. Blossoms and fireferns hang over him in damp thick air, and he floats in warm stillness. We miss the pleasant pooldarter, the little animal that lived in this place, but in a mutual excess of revulsion We killed it and threw its body into vacuum; its timorous isolated animal thoughts reminded Us too vividly of Wildfire, who—
Is not what We wanted. Is not what We expected. Does not yield as she ought to yield. Forces Us to final measures and a new one, thus herself designing fate. Is something new—
The worry of it weakens Us, then and now. Weakens Home too perhaps, but no, he struggles to discriminate in thought between We and We. Five here alone so long however wrong We seem now must have been right, the consensus of the People: right in stalking, enticements, patience to wait for a few alone, plans changed by the differences perceived but not understood in Wildfire and later two others. Why was there no memory of Wildfire’s kind? So We could not watch as closely as We planned, because her kind perceives an eye. But We said take one and torment her and quickly she will show all We need for a crippling blow, their skills not Ours but We have had time to make them Ours and so We will save Ourselves.
But even faced with certainty, Wildfire does not believe it.
The final choice to which she forces Us is right, We say. Perhaps it were better to chance the one world, Wildfire’s Home…
Folly, Leader thinks, repeating the arguments that swayed Us to consensus. Her homeworld is not what We seek. In the changing years the species is spread and increased. There is no longer one homeworld. Wildfire has hers; but there are those others shining half-sensed in her ill-shielded thought like the light of a mighty fire seen through water, blurred and trembling. All that power to fall upon Us…and she edged toward death, and what is to be done must be done before she thus escapes. And maybe she is dead anyway. Maybe the Treecubs cannot repair her, despite her faith.
Bladetree says implacably, or they repaired her and the plan did not work, and Flametender stabs Us with fear from his sleep: and if it did not
work then. Steersman says,
and Apprentice echoes: what then?
Start again but
they are gone there is
only her Home which
is folly. Leader says, and
Sudden shock takes Us, driving all else from Our thoughts:
He is coming! Now! At last! Steersman cries, We sway waking and sleeping in his alarm, and the patterned lights that warn him are bright in Our eyes as lightning striking long-expected
here at last!
too late—
too soon…
Excitement sweeps through Us in storm waves, gathering momentum and rebounding one to another and gaining strength. Fear and apprehension not joy nor sureness; it takes too long to damp it; five are not enough, We are gone too long. Our rigorous training cannot hold—yet it does. Leader splashes from the pool and across mossy rocks, trembling, and the sleepers wake, trembling.
Identify. Identify. Identify!
He sees through Steersman’s eyes the keyboard We use, hands wavering in shock. He says: We will have no intelligible answer. There is no translation program. We must wait for the arbitrary code.
Steersman’s embarrassment washes over Us.
I forgot…
Leader pulls on his scarlet uniform and runs through the First Watchsetter, shedding droplets of water. Bladetree comes eagerly, Flametender in alarm, Apprentice uncertainly. But Flametender thinks: It worked!
Relief is a long-unknown softness. Steersman says: I was afraid. Wildfire was strong, but Bladetree who was Questioner says: Not at the end.
And it is true that at the end she is not strong; seems, even, to understand something of the essence of harvest, and properly yields her pain; but still she denies Us. She is a shapeless lump of flesh, intelligence suspended, docile, surrendering to Our claim; but also mad, nearly mindless, leaving unanswered questions We did not ask soon enough. She evades us though captive and helpless, and in the long distracting ecstasy of her dying, slips away.
Therefore a semblance of Leader has gone with her, and now returns.
* * *
Touch me, begged pseudo-Leader, yearning for his People, and Hanna crouched in darkness and watched him, brooding.
He paid her no attention. For a while he had searched for her and then given up, wishing her silenced forever.
She was not silenced but hiding. She had had some practice in enduring isolated consciousness without mobility. Her long recovery on Earth had taught her something about it. Then she had clung to Dale Tharan’s thoughts, inimical as they were, as to a lifeline. Now she was an observer of Leader-in-her-thoughts, though she hid from him.
Touch me, he begged, and they did, and Hanna flickered and was blinded by his/their burst of joy, and then went on detaching herself, observant and purposeful.
Home, Home, nearly Home and no longer alone—
Hanna was a mote, an atom, a spider death-still with its legs curled and balled, but they made a web
of living threads intricately loomed and she sorted them out. The steersman, the apprentice, the flametender who was the engine master, the one who had been The Questioner. And Leader; but there were two Leaders. One of them was mad, a parody, a crippled thing. That was Leader-in-her-thoughts.
I am Home, Home, I have returned, he rejoiced, but the other said: That is not I! and all of them, true-Leader, pseudo-Leader, Hanna too, froze in consternation.
It was I
it is We
but not I
it is thou!
I am thou
at least We—
Ripples of confusion surged around her. There was a beacon now, however, and Heartworld II made for it. It was close, very close, and They were altogether present.
Hanna floated in her unworld and studied them. She heard their thoughts as speech, although they could not speak. The web was raveled and bedraggled with their discomfort. If she had been able to smile, she would have smiled. The germ of an idea, born from her struggle with Leader-in-her-thoughts and fed by his memories, was practicable. One’s fear or distress affected them all. To control it they needed time, and this handful of long-sundered wanderers was susceptible to disruption and slow in control, like those who had found the colonists, the Lost Ones.
She knew how to do much that pseudo-Leader had done to her. She knew perhaps how to do more: she knew how to be alone: her human brain made it a condition of existence. And she had a Render’s single-minded savagery, and bound to it true-sight and all that implied and more than that implied for she was something new and knew it, and they did not; and all their suspicion, being vague and tenuous, fell short of the truth.
It could work.
She darted through their communion like a hidden fish, listening.
I/not-I do you not see?
it cannot be
you but think it
is that is
madness
danger
chaos
if madness I must
die you must
die I must
die, but not
into silence!
Stark fear; not of death but something more; an obliteration. Hanna did not understand it, and ignored it. She was not part of the web. She could ignore it.
Die, she thought with satisfaction. Into silence or not, you will die; not I.
I cannot look on my own madness!
But it is not ignoble its
will is set to duty though
it suffers; it has been
long alone and
in pain
True-Leader said suddenly: Where is Wildfire? Where is she?
Hanna retreated in alarm into a deeper blankness. But Leader-in-her-thoughts said: I do not know. She is gone into silence.
There came a burst of triumph that battered them. Hanna watched with interest their reeling.
It was truth! cried an ancient Celebrant,
truth! echoed Bladetree
truth! all of them said and Hanna sickly, savagely, closed out the memory of the Rite, the Rite that had claimed her, or nearly.
In the triumph and the glory of victory spanning eons pseudo-Leader said: Open the docking bay that I may enter.
And true-Leader moiled the ebb and flow of radiance piercing it with fear: That is I and not I!
She is gone into
silence you
said so—
The Persona itself is changed!
She would have held her breath, if she controlled breath to hold, for she felt him near her.
They fell back, doubt swirling among them. But Steersman said: Docking begins. I have opened the bay.
Heartworld II, shining in red light, moved forward. They said:
We do not understand
why We fear why
it is thou
it is We
but not-thou?
On a level that was not hearing she heard them muttering, uneasy and straining. The Celebrant and Celebrants were gone. But they had really/not really been there and were there. True-Leader reached for her, stretching and pulling their strength to break free. Or break through.
But Leader-in-her-thoughts was Leader too, and they paused to hear him, and he said: I do not think there is aught to fear, for We have claimed her.
Only Bladetree stirred uneasily, remembering personal hatred. Hanna felt his movements clearly as those of her own body as Leader-in-her-thoughts made it rise. He/she wore the knife. He did not know it. She hid it from him though it lay at his very hand, and laughter bubbled deep within all that was still Hanna. She thought with pure joy of what she was going to do to Bladetree, if she had half a chance.
Bladetree said, You are strong, and fear lurked in their thought.
Yes, Hanna thought, but only to herself. As you will see.
I am Leader. I am strong. I have been long alone, save for Wildfire.
Steersman said: Docking is complete. I pressurize the bay.
The space filled with air that she and they could breathe. Pseudo-Leader waited, barely restraining himself, eager to run to their arms. A secondary hatch opened at last (the primary having been destroyed; he had not forgotten that) and he leapt from it lightly in his new body. Hanna looked with savage alien eyes on the alien ship. Pseudo-Leader climbed stairs, with some unsureness; the risers were made for longer legs than Hanna’s.
True-Leader said suddenly: Save for Wildfire. She colors this change.
Their attention shifted from pseudo-Leader. He passed through wavering passages whose bare-sketched living images leered distorted and the face of Sunrise transformed by stony fear made him stumble and—was forgotten. Did not exist. Had not happened.
He laughed. He did not know where the laughter came from.
True-Leader said: In the work of the Students there was only negation of the Treecub, and identity. I do not understand this change.
Pseudo-Leader walked on. Hanna waited in shock. He was too close to truth; what if they regained the balance of their unity, and pursued Leader’s doubt with all its force?
But the command chamber of the First Watchsetter approached and surrounded her, and the moment of danger passed when they saw her, and forgot fear in common wonder.
Hanna watched it, and waited for her moment.
* * *
Deep in Our thought, Leader’s thought, not-his thought, since Steersman’s alarm, was this body. Surely We knew it would be she. Yet We are unprepared, for its thought is Ours. And its wholeness is wonder, because We remember a mutilated carcass, and memory sickens Us. Nothing could have made Us believe it would live a day past Our disposal of it; nothing but her conviction, until she passed beyond hope of life, that she could be repaired; and despite Our conviction We think now We had not believed.
Their skill in killing We believed, for that was Our long-present fear. But how can Renders be so skilled in healing? How can their biological science so far surpass Ours?
She looks as she looked when first she came into Bladetree’s hands, small and smooth and fragile and unharmed. But the destruction had been so great that now We think:
Keep them
keep some
to heal Us
they can heal
even death!
It stands before Us and it is cruel as the junction of two universes. The color of its eyes is impossible. We did not see that before. How can such a small thing be so dangerous? But it bears a Render’s spirit or would if it were not displaced by Ours:
We must know these things, it says,
these things! We answer in awe, and are distracted: drift helpless and suspended in a vision of knowledge and techniques past all Our experience. Machines move and hum, glistening; fluid bathes unfeeling limbs and the transparent air glows with energy; the Treecubs move around Us, shaping Us; cells dutifully reform remembered patterns: the tiny flame of life, almost extinguished, swells and grows steady.
And before it is time, before We are ready, he says/We say/it says from the alien
flesh: I will show you what We have learned.
There is an edge of anxiety and uncertainty in the thought and We do not see its source. We mill restless and wary in the chamber, the heart of the First Watchsetter. It seems there are not five of Us but six of Us, seven of Us, not seven! The air is faintly acrid with Our odor. What does this mean? A life-support flaw?
A Student long-ago remembers and all of Us remember: The disjunction of alien senses, and We did not experience this before because then Wildfire’s terror filled her and suppressed all else.
So this is right; but true-Leader says, It is wrong.
The alien that is We looks at Us with impossible eyes and says: You will not have to bear me long. When this is done you must kill me. How can I look on Sunrise through these eyes?
We tremble with many-edged grief for Hearthkeeper of Leader’s Nearhome who is to true-Leader Sunrise, to pseudo-Leader Sunrise too, beautiful and unfailing as the dawn. His other self’s loss is Leader’s own. He is gone from Sunrise too long, and in this moment his longing is doubled, rebounding from pseudo-Leader and gaining strength each moment from each of Us:
Not sundered forever! he thinks despairing,
but the other weeps, forever,
and the chamber shatters and the air trembles and Sunrise appears but to each she is his own and longing overcomes Us; for Our bonding is endless and unchanging as the stars, and the unPeople’s lack of it marks them beasts.
I did not mean to remember her!
Do not think of that!
We rock, are steadied, slowly make the vision fade. So slowly! Our weakness is greater, Our danger more each day. There can be no more storms of emotion. The bonds on which Our functioning depends cannot survive many more.
The alien body slumps in shared sorrow and apprehension. It says: We must finish quickly.
Clearly it is right; its very presence disrupts Us.
In Our acknowledgment of its reasoning it crosses to Steersman’s place. He moves aside and awkwardly it takes his seat. Wrongness nibbles at the edges of the aftermath of grief, but We cannot bring Our selves near it. The alien looks at an input bank and its confusion tugs and jerks at Us, distracting. It says apologetically: I cannot translate quickly from their terms. And this is not made for these hands.
The D’neeran Factor Page 29