by Damon Knight
Impossible; they’d starve to death first. But on the other hand—damn this fuzzy-headed feeling—wouldn’t it have to stop, to prevent the tenant from being digested with the first meal?
“Well?” McCarty demanded. .
That was wrong, George knew, but he couldn’t say why; and it was a distinctly unpleasant thought. Or—even worse—suppose the meal became the tenant, and the tenant the meal?
The nearest animal’s head went up, and four tiny red eyes stared at George. The floppy ears snapped to attention.
It was no time for speculation. “He’s seen us!” George shouted mentally. “Run!”
The scene exploded into motion. One instant they were lying still in the prickly dry grass; the next they were skimming at express-train speed across the ground, with the herd galloping away straight ahead of them. The hams of the nearest beast loomed up closer and closer, bounding furiously; then they had run it down and vaulted over it.
Casting an eye backward, George saw that it was lying motionless in the grass—unconscious or dead.
They ran down another one. The anaesthetic, George thought lucidly. One touch does it. And another, and another. Of course we can digest them, he thought with relief. It has to be selective to begin with, or it couldn’t have separated out our nervous tissue.
Four down. Six down. Three more together as the herd bunched between the last arm of the thicket and the steep river bank; then two that tried to double back; then four stragglers, one after the other.
The rest of the herd disappeared into the tall grass up the slope; but fifteen bodies were strewn behind them.
Taking no chances, George went back to the beginning of the line and edged the monster’s body under the first carcass.
“Crouch down, Gumbs,” he said. “We have to slide under it… that’s far enough. Leave the head hanging over.”
“What for?” said the soldier.
“You don’t want his brain in here with us, do you? We don’t know how many this thing is equipped to take. It might even like this one better than one of ours. But I can’t see it bothering to keep the rest of the nervous system, if we make sure not to eat the head—”
“Oh!” said Vivian faintly.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Bellis,” George said contritely. “It shouldn’t be too unpleasant, though, if we don’t let it bother us. It isn’t as if we had taste buds, or—”
“It’s all right,” she said. “Just please let’s not talk about it.”
“I should think not,” Gumbs put in. “A little more tact, don’t you think, Meister?”
Accepting this reproof, George turned his attention to the corpse that lay on the monster’s glabrous surface, between his section and Gumbs’s. It was sinking, just visibly, into the flesh. A cloud of opacity was spreading around it.
When it was almost gone, and the neck had been severed, they moved on to the next. This time, at George’s suggestion, they took aboard two at once. Gradually their irritable mood faded; they began to feel at ease and cheerful, and George found it possible to think consecutively without having vital points slip out of his reach.
They were in their eighth and ninth courses, and George was happily engaged in an intricate chain of speculation as to the monster’s circulatory system, when Miss McCarty broke a long silence to announce:
“I have now perfected a method by which we can return to camp safely. We will begin at once.”
Startled and dismayed, George turned his eyes toward McCarty’s quadrant of the monster. Protruding from the rim was a stringy, jointed something that looked like—yes, it was!—a grotesque but recognisable arm and hand. As he watched, the lumpy fingers fumbled with a blade of grass, tugged, uprooted it.
“Major Gumbs!” said McCarty. “It will be your task to locate the following articles, as quickly as possible. One. A surface suitable for writing. I suggest a large leaf, light in color, dry but not brittle. Or a tree from which a large section of bark can be easily peeled. Two. A pigment. No doubt you will be able to discover berries yielding suitable juice. If not, mud will do. Three. A twig or reed for use as a pen. When you have directed me to all these essential items, I will employ them to write a message outlining our predicament. You will read the result and point out any errors, which I will then correct. When the message is completed, we will return with it to the camp, approaching at night, and deposit it in a conspicuous place. We will retire until daybreak, and when the message has been read we will approach again. Begin, Major.”
“Well, yes,” said Gumbs, “that ought to work, except—I suppose you’ve worked out some system for holding the pen, Miss McCarty?”
“Fool,” she replied, “I have made a hand, of course.”
“Well, in that case, by all means. Let’s see, I believe we might try this thicket first—” Their common body gave a lurch in that direction.
George held back. “Wait a minute,” he said desperately. “Let’s at least have the common sense to finish this meal before we go. There’s no telling when we’ll get another.”
McCarty demanded, “How large are these creatures, Major?”
“Oh—about sixty centimeters long, I should say.”
“And we have consumed nine of them, is that correct?”
“Nearer eight,” George said. “These two are only half gone.”
“In other words,” McCarty said, “we have had two apiece. That should be ample. Don’t you agree, Major?”
George said earnestly, “You’re wrong, Miss McCarty. You’re thinking in terms of human food requirements, whereas this organism has a different metabolic rate and at least three times the mass of four human beings. Look at it this way—the four of us together had a mass of about three hundred kilos, and yet twenty hours after this thing absorbed us, it was hungry again. Well, these animals wouldn’t weigh much more than twenty kilos apiece at one G—and according to your scheme we’ve got to hold out until sometime after daybreak tomorrow.”
“Something in that,” Gumbs said. “Yes, on the whole, Miss McCarty, I think we had better forage while we can. It won’t take us more than half and hour longer, at this rate.”
“Very well. Be as quick as you can.”
They moved on to the next pair of victims. George’s brain was working furiously. It was no good arguing with McCarty, and Gumbs was not much better, but he had to try. If he could only convince Gumbs, then Bellis would fall in with the majority—maybe. It was the only hope he had.
“Gumbs,” he said, “have you given any thought to what’s going to happen to us when we get back?”
“Not quite my line, you know. Leave that to the technical fellows like yourself.”
“No, that isn’t what I mean. Suppose you were the C.O. of this team, and four people had fallen into this organism instead of us—”
“What, what? I don’t follow.”
George patiently repeated it.
“Yes, I see what you mean. And so—”
“What orders would you give?”
Gumbs thought a moment. “Turn the thing over to the bio section, I suppose. What else?”
“You don’t think you might order it destroyed as a possible menace?”
“Good Lord, I suppose I might. No, but you see, we’ll be careful what we say in the note. We’ll point out that we’re a valuable specimen, and so on. Handle with care.”
“All right,” George said, “but suppose that works, then what? Since it’s out of your line, I’ll tell you, Nine chances out of ten, bio section will classify us as a possible enemy weapon. That means, first of all, that we’ll go through a full-dress interrogation—and I don’t have to tell you what that can be like.”
“Major Gumbs,” said McCarty stridently, “Meister will be executed for disloyalty at the first opportunity. You are forbidden to talk to him, under the same penalty.”
“But she can’t stop you from listening to me,” George said ( tensely. “In the second place, Gumbs, they’ll take samples. Without anaesthes
ia. And finally, they’ll either destroy us just the same, or they’ll send us back to the nearest strong point for more study. We will then be Federation property, Gumbs, in a top-secret category, and since nobody in Intelligence will ever dare to take the responsibility of clearing us, we’ll stay there.
“Gumbs, this is a valuable specimen, but it will never do anybody any good if we go back to camp. Whatever we discover about it, even if it’s knowledge that could save billions of lives, that will be top-secret too, and it’ll never get past the walls of Intelligence… If you’re still hoping that they can get you out of this, you’re wrong. This isn’t like limb grafts, your whole body has been destroyed, Gumbs, everything but your nervous system and your eyes. The only new body we’ll get is the one we make ourselves. We’ve got to stay here and—and work this out ourselves.”
“Major Gumbs,” said McCarty, “I think we have wasted quite enough time. Begin your search for the materials I need.”
For a moment Gumbs was silent, and their collective body did not move.
Then he said : “Yes, that was a leaf, a twig and a bunch of berries, wasn’t it? Or mud. Miss McCarty, unofficially of course, there’s one point I’d like your opinion on. Before we begin. That is to say, I daresay they’ll be able to patch together some sort of bodies for us, don’t you think? I mean, one technical fellow says one thing, another says the opposite. Do you see what I’m driving at?”
George had been watching McCarty’s new limb uneasily. It was flexing rhythmically and, he was almost certain, growing minutely larger. The fingers groped occasionally in the dry grass, plucking first a single blade, then two together, finally a whole tuft. Now she said: “I have no opinion, Major. The question is irrelevant. Out duty is to return to camp. That is all we need to know.”
“Oh, I quite agree with you there,” said Gumbs. “And besides, there really isn’t any alternative, is there?”
George, staring down at one of the fingerlike projections visible below the rim of the monster, was passionately willing it to turn into an arm. He had, he suspected, started much too late.
“The alternative,” he said, “is simply to keep on going as we are. Even if the Federation holds this planet for a century, there’ll be places on it that will never be explored. We’ll be safe.”
“I mean to say,” added Gumbs as if he had only paused for thought, “a fellow can’t very well cut himself off from civilisation, can he?”
Again George felt a movement toward the thicket; again he resisted it. Then he found himself overpowered, as another set of muscles joined themselves to Gumbs’s. Quivering, crabwise, the something meisterii moved half a meter. Then it stopped; straining.
And for the second time that day, George was forced to revise his opinion of Vivian Bellis.
“I believe you, Mr. Meister—George,” she said. “I don’t want to go back. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“You’re doing beautifully now,” George said after a speechless instant. “Except if you can grow an arm, I imagine that will be useful.”
The struggle went on.
“Now we know where we are,” said McCarty to Gumbs.
“Yes. Quite right.”
“Major Gumbs,” she said crisply, “you are opposite me, I believe?”
“Am I?” said Gumbs doubtfully.
“Never mind. I believe you are. Now: is Meister to your right or left?”
“Left. I know that, anyhow. Can see his eye stalks out of the corner of my eye.”
“Very well.” McCarty’s arm rose, with a sharp-pointed fragment of rock clutched in the blobby fingers.
Horrified, George watched it bend backward across the curve of the monster’s body. The long, knife-sharp point probed tentatively at the surface three centimeters short of the area over his brain. Then the fist made an abrupt up-and-down movement, and a fierce stab of pain shot through him.
“Not quite long enough, I think,” McCarty said. She flexed the arm, then brought it back to almost the same spot and stabbed again.
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “It will take a little longer,” then, “Major Gumbs, after my next attempt you will tell me if you notice any reaction in Meister’s eye stalks.”
The pain was still throbbing along George’s nerves. With one half-blinded eye he watched the embryonic arm that was growing, too slowly, under the rim; with the other, fascinated, he watched McCarty’s arm lengthen slowly toward him.
It was growing visibly, he suddenly realised—but it wasn’t getting any nearer. In fact, incredibly enough, it seemed to be losing ground.
The monster’s flesh was flowing away under it, expanding in both directions.
McCarty stabbed again, with vicious strength. This time the pain was less acute.
“Major?” she said. “Any result?”
“No,” said Gumbs, “no, I think not. We seem to be moving forward a bit, though, Miss McCarty.”
“A ridiculous error,” she replied. “We are being forced back. Pay attention, Major.”
“No, really,” he protested. “That is to say, we’re moving toward the thicket. Forward to me, backward to you.”
“Major Gumbs, I am moving forward, you are moving back.”
They were both right, George discovered: the monster’s body was no longer circular, it was extending itself along the Gumbs-McCarty axis. A suggestion of concavity was becoming visible in the center. Below the surface, too, there was motion.
The four brains now formed an oblong, not a square.
The positions of the spinal cords had shifted. His own and Vivian’s seemed to be about where they were, but Gumbs’s now passed under McCarty’s brain, and vice versa.
Having increased its mass by some two hundred kilos, the something meisterii was fissioning into two individuals—and tidily separating its tenants, two to each. Gumbs and Meister in one, McCarty and Bellis in the other.
The next time it happened, he realised, each product of the fission would be reduced to one brain—and the time after that, one of the new individuals out of each pair would be a monster in the primary or untenanted state, quiescent, camouflaged, waiting to be stumbled over.
But that meant that, like the common amoeba, this fascinating organism was immortal. It never died, barring accidents; it simply grew and divided.
Not the tenants, though, unfortunately—their tissues would wear out and die.
Or would they? Human nervous tissue didn’t proliferate as George’s and Miss McCarty’s had done; neither did any human tissue build new cells fast enough to account for George’s eye stalks or Miss McCarty’s arm.
There was no question about it: none of that new tissue could possibly be human; it was all counterfeit, produced by the monster from its own substance according to the structural blueprints in the nearest genuine cells. And it was a perfect counterfeit: the new tissues knit with the old, axones coupled with dendrites, muscles contracted or expanded on command. The imitation worked.
And therefore, when nerve cells wore out, they could be replaced. Eventually the last human cell would go, the human tenant would have become totally monster—but “a difference that makes no difference is no difference.” Effectively, the tenant would still be human—and he would be immortal.
Barring accidents.
Or murder.
Miss McCarty was saying, “Major Gumbs, you are being ridiculous. The explanation is quite obvious. Unless you are deliberately deceiving me, for what reason I cannot imagine, then our efforts to move in opposing directions must be pulling this creature apart.”
McCarty was evidently confused by her geometry. Let her stay that way—it would keep her off balance until the fission was complete. No, that was no good. George himself was out of her reach already, and getting farther away—but how about Bellis? Her brain and McCarty’s were, if anything, closer together…
What to do? If he warned the girl, that would only draw McCarty’s attention to her sooner. Unless he could misdirect her at the same tim
e—
There wasn’t much time left, he realised abruptly. If he was right in thinking that some physical linkage between the brains had occurred to make communication possible, those cells couldn’t hold out much longer; the gap between the two pairs of brains was widening steadily.
“Vivian!” he said.
“Yes, George?”
Relieved, he said rapidly. “Listen, we’re not pulling this body apart, it’s splitting. That’s the way it reproduces. You and I will be in one half, Gumbs and McCarty in the other. If they don’t give us any trouble, we can all go where we please—”
“Oh, I’m so glad!”
What a warm voice she had… “Yes,” said George nervously, “but we may have to fight them; it’s up to them. So grow an arm, Vivian.”
“I’ll try,” she said doubtfully. “I don’t know—”
McCarty’s voice cut across hers. “Ah. Major Gumbs, since you have eyes, It will be your task to see to it that those two do not escape. Meanwhile, I suggest that you, also, grow an arm.”
“Doing my best,” said Gumbs.
Puzzled, George glanced downward, past his own half-formed arm: there, almost out of sight, was a fleshy bulge under Gumbs’s section of the rim! The major had been working on it in secret, keeping it hidden… and it was already better developed than George’s.
“Oh-oh,” said Gumbs abruptly. “Look here, Miss McCarty, Meister’s been leading you up the garden path. Look here, I menu, you and I aren’t going to be in the same half. How could we be? We’re on opposite sides of the blasted thing. It’s going be you and Miss Bellis, me and Meister.”
The monster was developing a definite waistline. The spinal cords had rotated, now, so that there was clear space between them in the center.
“Yes,” said McCarty faintly. “Thank you, Major Gumbs.”
“George! ” came Vivian’s frightened voice, distant and weak. “What shall I do?”
“Grow an arm!” he shouted.
There was no reply.
III
Frozen, George watched McCarty’s arm, the rock-fragment still clutched at the end of it, rise into view and swing leftward at full stretch over the bubbling surface of the monster. He had time to see it bob up and viciously down again; time to think, Still short, thank God—that’s McCarty’s right arm, it’s farther from Vivian’s brain than it was from mine; time, finally, to realise that he could not possibly help her before McCarty lengthened the arm a few centimeters more than were necessary. The fission was not more than half complete; and he could no more move to where he wanted to be than a Siamese twin could walk around his brother.