Khral swallowed carefully. “Station wants you to try the docking tube tomorrow morning—whether you’ve seen any more signals or not.”
The docking tube connected to Station at its innermost ring, where centrifugal “gravity” was lightest. Rod approached the gate with Khral, flanked by two medics who had swallowed their principles to attend. He knew his head swarmed with nanoservos, ready to detect whatever the silicate-suited micros did.
As he approached the gate, his steps slowed. In the smooth face of nanoplast, a dent formed, deepening as usual until a hole opened. Air hissed, as the pressure changed. Was this the signal the microzoöids detected? Rod blinked a few times, but he felt no different. What if they did nothing this time, he wondered. Suppose they wanted to visit the stars?
The hole widened until the nanoplast flattened to floor and ceiling, all around the gateway. Rod could see the usual round tunnel beyond, and he stepped into it. As always the artificial gravity gave a lurch, as the tube began to rotate; Rod gripped a handle for a moment, as he generally did.
Suddenly his head swam, and lights flashed in his eyes. He stumbled back through the gate, where one of the medics caught him. The room spun around him crazily.
“Rod, what’s wrong?” called Khral, as if from far away. “Can you see anything?”
One of the medics made an injection in his neck, and his balance stabilized. Rod squeezed his eyes shut, trying to make out the flashing letters. NO…NOT READY.
“‘No, not ready,’” he read aloud. “Not ready for what?” He tried to “see” the letters in his mind.
NOT READY TO LEAVE. LLAMA STAY.
He absorbed this. “I am not a llama,” he exclaimed. “A llama is a pack animal. I’m a man.” He tried to visualize each word.
YOU ANIMAL. MEN NOT READY TO LEAVE. ANIMAL STAY.
Rod was back in bed, dozing on and off while the instruments profiled his blood, sorted his cells, typed his proteins and a thousand other things. A tone sounded, and Khral came in. He sat himself up; his head felt not so bad. “Any news? How are the Elysians?”
“We’ve had a breakthrough.” Khral sat by the bed and leaned forward eagerly. “Your nanoservos monitored the silicates in your brain, all the while they were acting up. The chemistry gets complicated, but—let’s just say the microzoöids had to let down their guard, to put out their neurotransmitters. We figured out a way to neutralize them, so they do no harm as they’re removed. We tried it on the sicker Elysian first. If Iras remains stable, we’ll try it tomorrow on…the other one.” The hated creator of Proteus.
Rod sighed. “I’m glad something worked.”
“And you? Any change?”
He shrugged. “The letters come back now and then. They call me an ‘animal,’ and tell me to ‘go’ and ‘stay,’ like a dog.” For these rude creatures, his children had risked their lives? “I guess this is what it feels like to be a tumbleround, bossed by microzoöids.”
“Fascinating…That is, I mean, how awful,” said Khral. “I don’t envy Secretary Verid dealing with them.”
He looked up hopefully. “I don’t suppose you could…well, now that you’ve figured out how to—”
“Oh yes—we can get them out of you, too, and put them safely in the culture, whether they like it or not.” Khral half smiled. “Sarai will have plenty to work with.”
The medic returned, rearing its caterpillar-shaped body over the bed to prepare for the spinal tap. Rod rested patiently, thinking how he could rejoin the children again, free at last of his uninvited guests.
Before his eyes the letters reappeared. STOP. MEN NOT READY TO LEAVE ANIMAL.
Too bad, he thought to himself. Find some zoöid to live in.
ANIMAL WILL LEARN.
Pain filled his skull, spreading throughout his body, as if he were ripped apart very slowly, into very small pieces. Rod gripped his skull, trying to control himself, but it had come on too suddenly. “Stop, stop.” The pain went on, unending, for hour after hour, the kind of pain he would have severed his own limb to get rid of, except that it was everywhere, in every limb and crevice, within belly and brain.
At last the pain died. Still breathing heavily, Rod looked himself over, his hands and arms, hardly believing he was still intact. “By Torr, that was—” He looked up at the medic still rearing over him, though the instruments had been removed. “Couldn’t you hear? What took you so long?”
The medic said, “We required two minutes to withdraw the tap safely.”
Two minutes. He looked accusingly at Khral. “I thought you said they could only work with vision. Isn’t pain in a different part of the brain?”
“They must have learned something new—something the ones in the Elysian patients don’t know yet.” She looked at the medic. “Maybe they have research scientists, like us.”
“What if their ‘scientists’ learn more tricks? They could take me over completely.”
There was silence.
Station said, “We’ll have to figure out how the microzoöids trigger pain.”
“Couldn’t you just get them out, while I’m under anesthesia?”
Station hesitated. “We might, but what if the pain doesn’t stop when they leave?”
Rod fell back on the bed and closed his eyes. He tried to recall his Academy drills to endure pain.
The letters returned in his eyes. WELL DONE. ANIMAL LEARNS.
A new sensation filled his mind; a sense of pleasure, unimaginable, beyond what a thousand lovers could give. He floated in it, drifting helplessly as if on an endless sea. Only it came to an end too soon; he begged for it to return, for he would sacrifice anything, even any of the children, to float in that sea again.
His eyes opened. He was damp with perspiration, but otherwise felt fine. Khral and the medic were talking excitedly with Station, as if he were not there. They were helpless, he realized. There was nothing they could do for him. Whatever they learned, the microzoöids learned faster; they would keep ahead, destroying him by inches until there was nothing left.
“Khral.” His voice was hoarse. “Khral, listen. You have to help me.”
She came over, her face wrinkled. “What can I do?”
“You can give me a ‘final friend.’ Something to take, in case I have to, before they take me over.”
Her eyes widened. “Rod, you know I can’t do that. I wish it were me instead, anything—but that I can’t do.”
“You can,” he insisted. “You have all the chemicals. Give me one.”
“It’s not right,” she whispered. “You know it isn’t—your Reverend Mother would know.”
Rod dug his fingers into the mattress. “What do you know of that? Just give me something, so I can die as a man, not an animal.”
Beside the bed, in the nanoplastic wall, a pocket opened. A round tablet came out, the size of his thumb.
Khral stood up. “Station, no!”
“It’s your right,” Station told him, “by the law. Be careful how you hold that: One squeeze, and it seeps through your skin.”
He took the tablet gingerly between two fingers and set it by the bed.
Khral watched him, stricken. “Don’t you tell me about being an animal.” Her simian jaw jutted forward. “Where there’s life, there’s hope, I say. Must you always be in control?” She stormed out without waiting for reply. Rod remained, one human alone.
NINETEEN
In critical care, deep within the sentient Station, Nibur Letheshon began to waken. The Elysian tossed his head feverishly as he floated in and out of consciousness. For how long, he had no idea; he knew only that frightful phantoms crossed his eyes, shapes and forms unknown, like a virtual seascape gone mad, the waves rolling and cresting beneath him until he crashed upon the shore. All the while his hand clutched the collar of Banga, the dog standing there steadfast by his bedside, his ageless companion, now his only comfort amid torment.
As his mind cleared, the phantoms finally dwindled. Only a headache lingered: a nuisance
. Why could these provincial medics not clear it out? Once again he mastered his vision, clearly seeing the bed with its crude hospital covers, and the primitive servo analyzer of bodily fluids standing nearby. He shuddered; a wonder he had recovered at all, in this barbaric outpost. Why had they not sent him back to Proteus, where he maintained his own up-to-date clinic custom-designed for himself?
In his hand he held an empty collar. Curious. Why would they take away his beloved Banga, yet leave the collar?
A doorway appeared in the wall, opening to admit a hideous caterpillar of a sentient. Nibur’s face froze as he drew himself up.
“You are much improved,” the sentient brightly observed. “All your vital signs confirm.”
“Why was I kept here?” Nibur demanded. “Why was I not sent back to Proteus?”
“Proteus told us it lacked any treatment program for alien microbes.”
Alien microbes. His flesh crawled. That mad Sharer in the mountain, on Pavonis Three—had she cooked this up?
“Not that we had a treatment either,” the miserable sentient explained, “but we have researchers with…initiative.”
“Initiative be damned,” he muttered. “If I suffer any lingering effects, you’ll hear from Proteus.” He held up the collar. “Where is Banga?”
The sentient’s caterpillar head bobbed moronically. “I’m very sorry. Your dog passed away two weeks ago.”
Nibur frowned. “Impossible. I’ve had him by the bed, all this while.”
“A virtual image. You kept calling for him, and his presence kept you calm.”
The first moment of fear that this might be true penetrated his mind. Banga—his companion, who had followed him faithfully for centuries. Banga—reduced to a virtual phantom? “No,” he said hoarsely. “You imbecile machine, it can’t be so. Banga is immortal.”
“Banga succumbed to the same infectious agent as yourself and your fellow traveler. The medical staff deeply regrets our inability to save him. You may take comfort, though, that his death under our experimental treatment probably saved your own life.”
Banga…A wordless scream echoed down the corridors of his mind. That world with its vile contagion had consumed his own companion. For a moment Nibur wished he had not woken.
“You are free of infection now, so far as we can tell,” the sentient assured him. “You may transfer to Proteus now.”
“The sooner the better,” said Nibur, breathing heavily.
“Prokaryon is in quarantine, but your firm has obtained a special exemption…”
Nibur no longer listened. He would be off soon, and he would know what to do. That world with its cursed alien scenery would not long survive his dog.
In the laboratory, halfway across the satellite, little ’jum counted off the flashing lights from the microzoöids in her brain, while Sarai worked feverishly to assign their patterns names and symbols. Now that both the Elysian patients were out of danger, Khral renewed her effort to contact the microbial intelligence. She scanned her own database on the holostage, while Sarai clucked incessantly with her clickflies, whose webs now spanned half the lab, displaying statistics on the data stored in the clickflies’ DNA.
Together, they had worked out how the microzoöid sisterlings named the chemical parts of their cells. The microzoöids seemed to name their elements in the order of frequency. First came hydrogen, then carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, as in humans; but thereafter, instead of sulfur and phosphorus, came arsenic. That was one reason Prokaryan settlers had to be lifeshaped.
So methane, CH4, was 4 1, while ethanol, C2H6O was 6 2 1. But what to make of the bizarre cyclic amino acids in their proteins, like azetidine with its four-carbon ring? ’jum watched the model of azetidine hover over the holostage, a tight square of carbons with one nitrogen corner.
By now, playing the light pipes was second nature for ’jum. The sisterlings were her friends. If only she could figure out more of what they were telling her.
“Hypoglycin, and mimosin,” announced Khral. “Cyclic amino acids—you find them in some of our plant species, but never in humans.”
’jum reached above the holostage to place more numbers: 7 4 2 1 0 9 0 3.
“That’s azetidine,” said Sarai. “The first four digits count the atoms; the rest designates the heterocyclic square, and the carboxylic acid.”
“Azetidine acid—the square amino acid they use instead of proline, to make kinks in their proteins.” Khral patted ’jum on the back. “Those microzoöids are working pretty hard today. They’re telling you a lot.”
’jum nodded. “They ask me things, too. About everything around us, what it’s made of.”
“Tell them nothing,” boomed the ever-present voice of Station. “We must keep them under control.”
Sarai glared at the ceiling. “Wouldn’t you want to know what your habitat is made of?”
’jum had already told the sisterlings the simple polymers that her clothes were made of, and the mineral of the starstone at her neck. But Station had refused to let her tell them other things, like the composition of nanoplast, even the floor and walls that surrounded them.
“I knew we should never have come out to this dimwit satellite.” Sarai sighed. “We’ll get nowhere.”
“Khral,” Station announced, “you are needed immediately back at intensive care. New patients have arrived from Valedon and Bronze Sky.”
Astonished, Khral stared at the ceiling. “From where? What are they doing out here? We’ve sent all we know to Science Park. They’d get much better care.”
Station declined to reply.
“Innocent fool,” muttered Sarai. “The carriers are outcasts. Anybody with microzoöids is getting sent here, like a leper colony.”
“Because we can provide the latest treatment,” corrected Station.
“Believe that, and you might as well join the clerics.” Khral said quietly, “I wish I could. Station, how many carriers are there?”
“A dozen so far. Some have had recurring ‘visions’ for weeks, perhaps months. No one knows how far it’s spread—and whether whirrs have spread, too.” That was the key question. If whirrs had spread to other planets, there was no containing the epidemic.
“A dozen.” Khral sighed. “I can see my work cut out.”
“The orders are to try nothing fancy—just eliminate the silicates, like you did for Iras and Nibur.”
“That’s murder,” said Sarai. “Even the cultured ones are languishing.” For some reason, the microzoöids in the culture vessels had stopped growing, probably starving for an essential nutrient. “They need a live host. Keep them in the carriers.”
“Right,” said Khral. “It would make more sense to talk to them.”
Above the holostage, the medical sentient suddenly reared its limbs, spouting test results. “You see what bad shape these carriers are in? How can you talk to a pathogen?”
“All right, I’m coming,” called Khral. “Sarai, I’ll send you whatever communications the nanoservos pick up in the patients’ brains, and see what you can make of them.” Picking up her self-sterilizing suit for the clinic, she left.
“Talk to them, indeed,” muttered Sarai. “When Station won’t even let us answer what they ask of us! What’s the use?”
’jum agreed. If only Mother Sarai would take her back to the cavern. The sisterlings inside her head would be happier, too. Like her, they felt trapped—and they were doing something about it. 1 0 2 0 0 7 1, they said. This sequence she had first seen when Sarai had transferred sisterlings from one dish to another. It seemed to mean “moving” from one place to another, or “travel”?
Sarai rose and stretched. She clucked twice, in the language she used to call the clickflies. “What do the sisterlings want now?”
’jum closed her eyes and tried to count the numbers that the sisterlings were posting inside her eyes. “Everything,” ’jum clucked back. “What everything is made of.”
Station did not respond. Perhaps Station was not attu
ned to clickflies.
“They could help us,” muttered Sarai. “Those sisterlings could help our lifeshaping, more than anything—a thousand times more than Station’s brainless nanoservos.” She clucked again, and one of her clickflies sailed in the doorway. The splaylegged insect obligingly set to spinning a web in the corner. ’jum watched the web, trying to puzzle out the pattern of its sticky strands, woven straight and crosswise, with some squares pasted together. Then she realized what it was: a molecule. The molecule was a component of Station’s floor, some fancy kind of polycarbonate.
Now ’jum stared at her two light pipes, one in each hand, trying to translate the molecule as best she could into the sisterlings’ number code. She had number combinations for methyl groups, esters, simple cyclics, and so on, but the more advanced features remained a mystery.
“More, more,” the sisterlings flashed back.
“More molecules,” clicked ’jum.
Sarai clicked rapidly to the insects. Their long legs flitted across the web, weaving other molecules: components of the expandable door rims, the ceiling, the air vents.
Abruptly the holostage fell dead. A bright light filled the room, making ’jum squint.
“What do you think you’re doing?” boomed Station. “I told you not to tell those bugs what I’m made of. I could charge you with treason.” In the corners the webs were dissolving into the walls, while the clickflies had vanished out the door.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Sarai shot back. “Obstructing critical research. How do you expect us to learn anything if we don’t share information?”
’jum put her hands to her head and watched the blinking lights in her eyes. The sisterlings were talking again, about moving and travel.
“You foolish human!” cried Station. “The first deaths on Prokaryon were sentients—chewed up by microzoöids. Until we figured out how to build ourselves of stuff they couldn’t handle. Have you no sense?”
The instruments dissolved into the walls, and the room itself began to lose shape, its corners filling in, everything collapsing into formless gray. Even the light pipes in ’jum’s hands disintegrated. She was helpless inside Station, just as the poor sisterlings were helpless inside her.
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