For long eras, mechanicals and organics lived in balance. The First Command was forgotten. It slumbered on in the genetic inventory, carried forward by serial arrangements of atoms. It had no impact on the life-forms themselves—
Retained in the genotype, unexpressed in the phenotype—
his Arthur Aspect intruded. Killeen let the Aspect mutter in his background, but didn’t let it interrupt his thoughts as he slogged across the plain.
—defended against genetic drift and copying error, quite deft indeed, and then—
He shut up Arthur and concentrated.
The mechs had slowly decided that the organics were no longer semi-divine forefathers. They had become competitors, exploiting the same raw resources of energy and mass. Such conflicts were inevitable. In the long run, no life-form owed another indefinite homage.
By this time nearly all the scattered sources of the Trigger Commands had been lost. Genetic drift. The long extinctions of entire planets. The rub and pitiless erosions of the material world upon the living.
Dispersal proved to be the best defense. The Trigger Commands had been invoked locally—and whole worlds of intelligent mechanicals perished within days. Killeen had seen scenes from this long and desperate struggle, a corridor of ruin and destruction stretching back to when the galaxy itself was slowly grinding down from a spherical swarm of gemlike suns into a compressed spiral disk. He could not truly conceive of the expanses of time and therefore of injury and anguish, or remorse and rage and sullen gray sadness, which had washed over the ruby stars themselves and cloaked the galaxy in a wracking conflict that could never be fully over. From this primordial pain there lumbered forward even into his own time a heritage of melancholy unceasing conflict that had shaped all his life, and formed the Family Bishop culture he so revered and would die to defend.
The Trigger Commands were spread among all intelligent races, and then—as their numbers dwindled alarmingly—into life-forms which could develop consciousness in future. So they came to Earth when humanity was a mere kindling glow behind the sloped brows of wandering primates.
But genetic drift erased the record in most humans. Only some still carried the unheeded cargo of instructions, handed down now for nearly seven billion years.
The Trigger Commands were cunningly concealed. No single strand of human DNA could repeat the full content of the trigger in each “expression,” a single generation. Instead, through a cyclic programming, only a third of the activator code appeared in coherent order, in the DNA of a single member.
To get the trigger codes completely, you had to assemble three generations.
“Abraham, Killeen, Toby.” Killeen whispered the words like a mantra as he marched, boots crunching the alkaline crust.
Andro’s raspy voice drew him out of his thoughts. “Those they’re after?”
“Yeasay. Me they’ve already copied.”
“You think that Mantis was honest? It let us live, after all.”
“Because it wanted something it could get from us alive.”
“The other two.”
“That can’t be all of it,” Killeen reflected. “Why let you go then?”
“That’s what I’m trying to see.”
“They don’t know enough,” Killeen said. “Something we don’t know either.”
Andro scowled at Killeen. “Or don’t know we know.”
“They don’t get what it’ll do to them if they read it.” Killeen stopped short of saying, That it’ll blaze up like a grass fire, sweep right through them, burn the bastards—
Technically, this is known as a “meme”—a self-propagating idea which rewards the holder and impels it to further the meme itself. Human religions are sometimes of this type, as in Islamic—
Killeen stuffed Arthur back in its hole. Andro said, “They want it, though.”
“Yeasay. Want it bad.” All the suffering and fear his kind had known for as long as they could remember came from mechs. In Killeen there now smoldered a fire that would never go out until he held the Trigger Commands in his hand and saw them at work.
Andro said, “I would have expected that after billions of years, there would be some self-defense mechanism in the mechs. Some safeguards to stop them from even being interested.”
“I guess those wore away, too. Everything else does.”
“So they tried to take your father as part of this?”
Killeen frowned. “I see what you mean. How come they didn’t pick me and Toby up, too?”
“I suppose they didn’t know that they needed three generations then.”
Killeen nodded. “What was that term? The Way of Three.”
“They suspected the data was in the DNA. But they found only a third of it.”
“They have our Legacies, too.” Killeen bitterly remembered how Toby had fought against letting the portal people read their legacies. At the time it had seemed a good trade to Killeen—these were just people, after all, and the Bishops needed shelter in the portal.
Andro was getting weaker. He hobbled but his voice was still clear and strong. “They have the Replicator technology now. Damn! All they have to do is search the esty, find your son and father—”
“And maybe we should let them.”
“They would all die.”
Killeen chuckled. “And they figure since humans are their enemy, we want to stop them from getting all their precious pleasure.” He leaned back and laughed loudly at the impassive sky. Until now the weight of it had not struck him. His enemies had been delivered into his hands. They don’t know it will destroy them.
—and just as he had feared, the stillness and hovering presence of the Mantis descended around them like a massive fog.
“Damn!” It had been a trap all along, a chance to eavesdrop on the talky humans.
* * *
You are quite convincing if one does not know how to unmask the nuances, Killeen.
* * *
“What?” He did not know what a nuance was but something in the Mantis’s voice came freighted with threat.
* * *
You verge on the blatant. Most unsubtle.
* * *
Killeen laughed again with relief. He could tell the truth here and it was going to be all right. “I haven’t got the energy to be subtle.”
* * *
The Pleasure is indeed something your Phyla know, because you devised it. We have long suspected that it is the payment invented by the organic races, given to our primitive forms as a reward.
* * *
“I can’t deny that,” Killeen said. He could see how even a superior intelligence, on the track of something, could read into his and Andro’s words a conspiracy, a grand plot. The Mantis was complimenting them without knowing it.
* * *
You primordials are the masters of pleasure. Evolution brought it to you.
* * *
“Old Family Bishop saying, yeasay.” Keep it light, see what it had gotten from its eavesdropping.
* * *
I do not follow your reference.
* * *
“Old song, prob’ly Johnphilsousa.” He bellowed out,
“Malt does more than Milton can,
To justify God’s ways to man—”
Andro got Killeen’s intent, because he wrinkled his nose and commented sourly, “God, that’s awful. Who’s Milton?”
* * *
Ancient Earthly poet. An artist like myself. Your source is in error, Killeen. However, I take your point. You primates in particular have a disproportionate fraction of your sensor nerves allocated to your genitalia and taste buds. Plainly you are pleasure machines. It is invigorating to know such forms as you.
* * *
“The pleasure is all mine,” Killeen said. He had to get the Mantis to think that what it had overheard was all just talk, flights of fancy language.
* * *
In us pleasure had to be injected—a mere compensation. You are the masters of the dark arts.
That is the thing I have pursued in you more than any other. The ancient bliss.
* * *
Andro started to say something and Killeen lifted a finger to stop him. The Mantis’s crisp aura shifted slightly at this small gesture. Killeen saw that again, by accident perhaps, he had heightened the air of mystery and conspiracy—as judged by the Mantis. Being smart was not the same as being sophisticated.
* * *
You primates are typical of the older forms. Most of your nerve endings concentrate in the outer skin, so you remain largely unaware of what occurs within your own bodies. Plainly, a creature shaped for pleasures, not maintenance. And a disproportionate fraction of those lie in your genitalia or your taste buds. There is also the curious evolutionary convergence of the reproductive and excretion organs. No design would ever favor such doubling of functions; waste elimination must not interfere with the hygienic conditions one assumes necessary for biological reproduction. Evolution ignores the obvious and favors the sensual. That feature we lack and envy.
* * *
“It’s led to a lot of humor, though,” Killeen said. The Mantis never laughed, of course, but it was worth a try to keep it puzzled.
* * *
This issue touches, as you have guessed, on the less savory side of our Phylum.
* * *
“I had no idea.”
* * *
Sarcasm, correct?
* * *
“Could be.”
* * *
Jests are as informative as gestures.
* * *
“Some irony here, too.”
* * *
Irony? You mislead again.
* * *
Killeen kept a cryptic silence. Let the mech talk itself in circles. It seemed to like that. The narrowness of sentences and all that stuff about serial and parallel, it tripped them up.
* * *
You Naturals have oddly exciting ways, though most are liabilities. We know from studies of Naturals like your species that we can best find your son and father by using you as a lure.
* * *
“Not much I can do about that.”
Andro was breathing fast again. Hands clenched. The man could not contain his anger. Maybe he had never had much practice.
* * *
I have gotten from you the confirmation I needed. You will remain alive—that is, unharvested—until we see that we have no further need of you.
* * *
“You—” Andro screamed and threw himself at the Mantis. He had another small weapon concealed and tried to use it.
The Mantis did not move a single rod. Andro simply folded up.
Not the usual way, but backward. Killeen heard the spine pop and a gurgled gasp from crushed lungs. Andro bent completely over backward, still standing on two feet. His hair brushed the ground as his feet took a hesitant step, then another. His eyes were wild with pain. Andro’s mouth shaped a scream but nothing came out.
* * *
The Exalteds use me as their guide in these matters because I am the nearest to their level who still can communicate with you. The cramped, serial manner of your speech is painful to them—indeed, impossible. Do not think this gives you any privileged status. I thought a bit of illustration of this would suffice.
* * *
* * *
Killeen felt numb. Andro took another step and fell, breath wheezing from him. From the way the body sprawled Killeen knew there was no help for the man. “You surekill him?”
* * *
* * *
There is no need. You Bishops are worthy of a collection. This sort, of which there is an infestation in this place, is of no concern to a curator.
* * *
“That’s your only reason for doing . . . that?”
* * *
No. He had exceeded his marginal utility.
* * *
“Let’s hope these Exalted characters don’t think you’ve exceeded yours.”
* * *
Should they, I would be happy to be gathered in.
* * *
Killeen snorted in fear and anger and emotions he could not name.
* * *
For you, a reminder—
* * *
A shifting haze as white as steam condensed to his left.
Toby was walking steadily out of the solidifying mist. He was grinning. Smaller and thinner than Killeen remembered. Toby said something that got snatched away by a gathering wind and the tone was wrong and as Toby’s jaws yawned the lines in his face broadened to jagged cracks.
Toby came apart. In precise zigzags. Each one gave a brittle pop as his son burst apart.
Decision Tree
If the Way of Three is correct, then we need only the genetic coding of these primates.
It would seem so.
How simple! We missed it for so long.
That is what worries me.
Why should it? They employ a particularly awkward method of self-reproduction. Much of their genetic code is useless baggage, carried along solely because it can copy itself, but conveying no worthwhile message. An ugly mess, dictated by their random evolution.
I/We suspect . . .
What?
That is what concerns me. I do not know what my misgivings mean, since they are so . . .
Tentative?
Yes. I deplore hesitation. Still, I sense danger. Undefined, but danger, definitely.
We have waited long enough to deal with these. We entertained endless discussion of art, aesthetics, and how beautiful in their way these primitive forms are. Very well, some have been recorded as we terminated them. Done!
You advocate the harsh method?
Of course. We need only the three generations of data. Very well, kill them all and let the Exalteds sort them out.
All? Everywhere?
I believe we can do it.
We could tear momentary openings in the Wedge, that I grant. To ransack the entire space-time geometry may not even be conceptually possible.
Such niceties I leave to the savants of geometry. We need not cleave all Lanes—only enough to discover the Three. A random sampling of the human-habited Lanes should suffice. Perhaps a hundred.
Some levels of All/We will be displeased at the erasure of so much potentially useful data.
Once we have the Three and can decode—that should be trivial—the remaining data is mere trash.
There is the faction/submind of us/you which holds that both prudence and aesthetic issues—
Enough of this. Decision is made.
But truly, wait—
We/You are the majority.
I understand.
All/You must remember to keep to our/your proper station. Act!
I must.
PART FIVE
The Silver River Road
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
—SWINBURNE
“The Garden of Proserpine”
ONE
Molten Time
Toby continued down the silver river in search of his father.
He crouched in his skiff, swaying with the rippling currents, and watched his trawling line. He had not eaten for two days. His vegetarian principles had not held up well under perpetual pursuit and ravagements. A fat yellow fish shimmered far down in the filmy water but would not bite.
Curiosity overcame hunger and he leaned over to see if the fish was nosing about his line. Instead of plump prey he saw himself, mirrored far down in a tin-gray metal current. But his image wore the cane hat he had lost overboard yesterday. He stared down into the trapped time flow, which had kept pace with his skiff’s downtime glide. Frowning, he studied his optimistic gaze of yesterday. A smud
ged forehead, sprigs of greasy hair jutting around his big ears, a determined set to the jaw that looked faintly absurd. He would have to learn to give less of himself away. Adults could do that without thinking.
He edged back from the lip of the shallow-bottomed skiff. He had fashioned the skiff from scrap metal in order to negotiate this strange river with is mixture of fluids, silky waters, and conducting metals, and he knew how rickety the shell was. The liquid metal current was rising through the skin of water. It could sink him with a casual brush. Danger dried his mouth, tightened his throat.
Down through murky water he had glimpsed a slow churn of ivory radiance. Mercury shaped the broad, mud-streaked course. Treachery lurked in that metallic upwelling—oblong-shaped many-armers, electric vipers, fanged things that glided through the metal currents like broad-winged birds.
He lay still in the skiff bottom, hoping the time-dense flow would subside. A queasy temporal swell oozed through his gangly body. To distract himself from the nausea he gazed up at the great spreading forest that hung overhead.
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