Trail Mix: Amoeba

by Piers Anthony

  “Maybe, because it spans time as well as space, it can see the future,” Veee said. “So it knows when something goes wrong. All it can do is alert us.”

  Vanja transformed and flew silently ahead.

  “How did the Amoeba come about?” Tod asked. “I know programmers set up the Winnable program, but who set up the Amoeba?”

  “Are you religious?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then you won’t accept that God did it.”

  “I won’t,” Tod agreed.

  “Or that the Amoeba is God.”

  Tod whistled. “I rather doubt that God exists, but I’m pretty sure the Amoeba exists. I’m not sure I want to set it up as God, though.”

  “I think of it as an entity that evolved to fill a need, and the need is to keep some sort of order in an otherwise chaotic universe or complex of universes. It doesn’t have to be a deity.”

  The bat returned, becoming the woman. “I spy Bison,” Vanja said. “He is approaching the brink of a chasm. We are closer to the gulf than the top; I doubt we can reach him in time to stop him from jumping.”

  “Can you levitate him safely down if he jumps?” Veee asked Wizard.

  “Not from this distance. An with the scrying, I have to be close to my subject.”

  Tod took over. “Vanja, fly up there and try to tempt him into tarrying. Bem, get below him in the chasm and form a pneumatic mat to break his fall without harming him. Wizard, cast an illusion to make Bem’s location seem like the deepest, darkest depth of the chasm. That is, the best place to jump if you’re serious about suicide. Veee, you and I will be the decoy party hurrying toward him to remonstrate. Our approach may make him jump, but we’re ready for that.”

  “We hope,” Veee said.

  Vanja flew and Bem formed into a ball and rolled bouncingly into the chasm before them. Tod and Veee forged up the path Bison had taken. Tod wasn’t sure he had made the best plan, but speed was of the essence.

  They saw the bat glide down toward the standing man and become the woman. She would be telling him her nature, and asking him to tarry with her a while before making his decision. She would be showing her voluptuosity. She just might be able to satisfy him that life still had something to offer.

  She took a step toward him, arms widespread.

  Bison turned and leaped. He plunged down toward the depth of the chasm.

  “Damn!” Tod said. The delay had not been long enough to be sure Bem was in place.

  Then they saw the man sail back up out of the void. Bem had made it, and caught the man in a trampoline type net. Soon he would bounce to a safe landing. They had done it.

  Vanja flew down to rejoin the man, and the others hurried to join her. Before long they converged on a somewhat disconcerted would-be suicide.

  “Your vampire friend has explained it,” Bison called as they approached. “You folk want me alive. Why?”

  “We are a team summoned by the Amoeba,” Tod said. “Just as you were, before. We don’t know ourselves why you need to be alive, but it seems you do. Our mission is not complete until we relate to you. You know how the Amoeba is.” This was an educated guess.

  “I know,” Bison agreed. “But I have sinned against the Amoeba. I deserve to die.”

  Sinned? Tod kept his attitude carefully neutral, suspecting he knew the answer. “How so?”

  “I completed my mission. Then I—I fetched the android. The one you folk just had to deal with. But for you, it would have wiped out this semi-paradise the Amoeba has made along the trail. As it was, it was one hell of a siege, and many innocent people died. I can’t make it up to them or to you. I deserve to die. Now you know.”

  There it was, confirming Wizard’s scrying. “Why did you fetch the android?”

  “They were going to destroy the whole batch, there at the gunk works. I recognized it as a significant new kind of life. I wanted to give it its chance.” Bison shook his head. “I was an utter fool.”

  “Men often are,” Vanja said. “But usually about women, rather than androids.”

  Bison smiled briefly. Evidently she had made an impression on him, unsurprisingly. “It’s an ethical thing. I did not realize how vicious that creation was. I guess I was blinded by ideology. I wish I had listened to my wife.” He shook his head. “And that’s the rest of why I need to die. I don’t really want to live without her.”

  “Hellene,” Vanja said.

  Bison looked at her, startled. “What do you know of Hellene?”

  Vanja glanced at Todd, but he merely nodded, letting her take it, as Bison seemed receptive to her.

  “We checked your frame,” she said. “We learned that Hellene left you because she had to, when she saw you going wrong. She still loves you, Bison.” She was going beyond what they knew; it was what they needed the situation to be, to get the man to go home.

  Bison seemed to sink into pained nostalgia. “Ooh, Hellene!” he murmured. “You were so right.”

  “Go to her,” Vanja urged. “She needs you.”

  “Why would she believe I’ve changed?”

  “Because you have changed. Tell her that. Apologize, abase yourself, beg her to give you another chance. She’ll believe you because she wants to, and it’s true. Then you can make sure no other androids ever get loose from the gunk works. That’s how you will make up for what you have done.”

  Hope dawned. “You think?”

  “I know.”

  “I took the trail because I had no further reason to stay, without Hellene. Even before the android.”

  “We all came here for similar reasons,” Vanja said. “Now you no longer need the trail.”

  “Damn it, I’ll do it!”

  “We’ll escort you home,” Vanja said, blowing him a kiss.

  Tod nodded with admiration. Vanja was good. She was making sure Bison didn’t change his mind before leaving.

  They walked as a group back toward the village. “How did you stop it?” Bison asked.

  “We magically bombed it,” Wizard replied.

  Bison looked at him. “You’re a wizard!”

  “He does illusion, scrying, fire-starting, and telekinesis,” Vanja said. “As well as the magic bomb.”

  “I do,” Wizard said. “It seemed that my magic was required for this mission, so the Amoeba summoned me. It has been an experience.”

  “I know how that is. I’m a technical engineer, but it turned out my skills were required in a primitive manner. Not that the Amoeba cares if you’re overqualified, just that you can fill the slot it needs at the moment. Your other traits are peripheral. But I think you did it the hard way, if you can do electronic magic like fire starting.”

  Now Wizard was really interested. “There was an easier way?”

  “The android was designed to be readily nullified, just in case things went wrong. The pool communicates with its minions via an electronic signal that can be nulled simply by changing one bit. So all you had to do was reach out magically and change that bit, or even generate the illusion of change, so that the pool could no longer communicate with its minions. Then the crabs would drop dead, and the pool would slowly starve, no danger to any creature that did not carelessly fall into it.”

  “I could have done that,” Wizard agreed ruefully. “Instead we put all of us at risk invading the pool.”

  “How could you know? The Amoeba doesn’t tell you how, just what.”

  “We blocked the signal with my poncho,” Tod said.

  “It probably changed the signal just enough to make it unreadable,” Bison said. “As I said, this thing was designed to be easy to stop. My folly was in not realizing that in a non-technological setting without my signal modifier, there would be no stopping it. It became monstrous. Like an invasive predator that wipes out all the local rabbits, then goes on to other animals, like people. I had not thought to bring a signal modifier, so I could not stop what I had started. All I could do was pretend to ignore it, hoping it would crash on its own, the more fo
ol I.”

  Vanja patted his hand. “We all make mistakes.”

  Bison glanced at her. “If you were not so devastatingly beautiful, I would dismiss that as ignorant.”

  She smiled. “Maybe that’s why I was summoned. To make ignorance seem worthwhile.”

  “To think I thought vampires were cold blooded demons.”

  “There are different types. I’m not cold.”

  Tod exchanged a quick glance with Veee. The vampire had not refuted one part of the charge, probably deliberately.

  They reached the village, where they nighted. The team camped outside it, except for Vanja, who remained with Bison, doing her bit to cheer him and keep him on track and to remind him of the kind of welcome Hellene surely would give him.

  “She is becoming a good person,” Veee remarked as she hugged Tod. “She says she tried it at first as a role to get along with us, but is coming to like being a nice girl.”

  “Isn’t she?”

  “Nice? No, she’s utterly cynical. But the longer she plays the nice role, the better she gets at it. That can be useful, as we are seeing with Bison. I could never charm him like that.”

  “You are charming me well enough.”

  “Thank you.” She wrapped her legs about him and continued from there. But they kept talking.

  “You call Vanja cynical, and say her niceness is just an act,” Tod said as he squeezed her breasts. “I thought you were her friend.”

  “I am her friend. I accept her as she is, and she accepts me as I am. We each have qualities the other lacks, and those differences may be useful on occasion.” She smiled. “And we both accept you as you are.”

  “I think I’d better quit while I’m ahead.” He paused. “I am ahead?”

  “Ooh, yes. We both love you.” Then she kissed him and squeezed the part inside her, and evoked the culmination. She had evidently been learning things about sex from Vanja, too.

  In the morning they breakfasted with Bison, who had supplies to use up lest they be wasted. “Vanja is some creature,” he said admiringly. “I was depressed, but she distracted me. A once in a lifetime interaction.”

  “Once?” Vanja said. “By my count it was six interactions.”

  The others laughed as Bison colored.

  “We should have warned you,” Tod said. “She kisses and tells.”

  “I have not yet begun to tell,” Vanja said. “Kissing is the least of it.”

  “Details are unnecessary,” Wizard said sharply.

  Vanja glanced at him and was quiet. Tod realized that the old man might be jealous of a performance he could not hope to match. The vampire had misstepped, but probably would not do so again.

  They organized, then proceeded along the trail at a rapid pace to reach Bison’s terminus. He thanked them all and exited. They watched him enter his house. He would be videophoning Hellene. Would she be as accepting as Vanja had suggested?

  Abruptly the trail faded out. They were standing in untracked wilderness.

  “She was,” Vanja said with satisfaction.

  “The avenue for the androids has been closed,” Wizard said. “So why isn’t our mission over?”

  Surprised, Tod checked his internal awareness. The sense of mission remained incomplete. He saw the others reacting similarly.

  “What have we overlooked?” Veee asked somewhat plaintively.

  Then they saw the rat-sized orange crab. It spied them, saw they were too big to grab, and scuttled back into the brush.

  “It’s come back to life!” Vanja said, horrified.

  “Impossible,” Wizard said. “That pool is thoroughly dead.”

  “Why is the crab so small?” Veee asked.

  “A daughter pool!” Bem said.

  “It metastasized,” Tod said. “We thought we had beaten it, but it was only in remission.”

  “It what?” Veee asked.

  “It is a cancer analogy,” Tod said. “A person is seldom killed by the initial tumor. It grows, then metastasizes. That is, it flakes pieces off, which circulate in the blood stream until they find other places to take hold and grow, pretty much randomly. It is one of those daughter tumors that is apt to grow on a vital organ and finally kill the host. As a very general rule, once metastasis occurs, the patient is doomed. Sometimes the parent cell is removed, but it has already metastasized, so it is too late. That’s what occurred here: we took out the mother pool, but now there are daughter pools, and we don’t know where they are, or how many there are. There may be only one, which we can locate and handle, or hundreds, and the task is hopeless. So our job is not yet done.”

  “What is remission?”

  “Sometimes cancer goes away by itself. But sometimes it only seems to, while the metastasis is occurring. We were foolish not to think of that. Now we’re in trouble.”

  “Unless Wizard can change the communication signal and wipe them all out,” Vanja said. “That’s why we needed Bison alive: to give us that clue, that we did not value at the time.”

  “We value it now,” Tod said. “He told us how to do radiation treatment.”

  “Do what?” Veee asked.

  “That is when they subject the body to radiation that is bad for all cells, but worse for cancer cells. So the patient is sick, but improving, ironic as that seems. Wizard has to subject the Amoeba to radiation that it may not much like, but it will wipe out the androids. So it’s better for the long haul.”

  Veee turned to Wizard. “Can you do this?”

  “I should be able to do it, yes,” Wizard said. “But before I can, we must capture a live crab and keep it alive while I test different slants of magic on it. When it collapses, I will know the type of radiation to broadcast. Doing the broadcast will of course exhaust my energy.”

  “Bem and I will be there for you,” Vanja said.

  “Which leaves Veee and me to do the dirty work,” Tod said. “Catching a live crab.”

  “Make a net of your poncho,” Bem said. “They are small, because the new pool is as yet small.”

  “Great idea!” Tod took a breath. “Okay, get Wizard rested and ready, while we rustle up a crab.”

  “They rustle in the foliage?” Veee asked.

  “Figure of speech.” He thought of something. “Vanja, before you tend to Wizard—”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” She approached him, flung her arms about him, and kissed him ardently.

  “That wasn’t what I—”

  But she was already transforming and flying away. She had understood, merely done it her way.

  “We’ll need weapons,” Tod said. “Because once we catch one crab, and the pool realizes what’s up, others will attack. They may be small, but we could be overwhelmed by stabbing little horrors if we’re not prepared.”

  They got boots and gauntlets from the villagers, who also promised to set up a halloo if they spied any more crabs. They well understood the danger. Then, armed with knives and clubs they waited for the bat’s return.

  “I’m glad the mission is not over,” Veee said. “Because it means I don’t have to think about what happens after it is done.”

  “We’ll say together, one way or another.”

  “Yes. But Bison’s wife left him. That meant their relationship was not perfect despite the marriage. We don’t want that to happen to us.”

  “Good point. We need to iron out any differences we have before it ever comes to that stage.”

  “If we retire in a village, it will become dull.”

  “It will never be dull with—”

  But she stopped him. “Skip the gallantry. This is serious.”

  “Maybe Vanja’s participation will change it.”

  “She gets bored faster than we do. I want her with us, and we’ll give you all the attention and sex you ever desire. But there has to be something else.”

  “There has to be something else,” he agreed. “Veee, I’m cogitating on it. I admit I like the idea of the constant sexual attention of two women, and w
ant to make it possible. I’ll come up with something.”

  “Do that.” It was Vanja, who had come up on them silently from behind and transformed. “I found a pool, not far off. It’s little, comparatively, only about a yard across, but it’s fully functional. It must have a dozen or so crabs ranging out.”

  “Show us the way. Then take care of Wizard. He’ll need his strength.”

  “Follow me.” She transformed again and flew high enough so that they could see her over the trees.

  The pool turned out to be fairly close, nestled in a swale. Small, yes, but deadly enough. They gazed at it from a distance, assessing its accesses, then went to one of the forming trails.

  And there was an orange crab scuttling along. Tod pounced on it, wrapping it in his poncho. It was immediately inert. With luck it had not seen them at all, so the pool would not know what had happened to it. He stuffed the bundle into his knapsack. They walked swiftly down the trail, as it was the way to make the fastest progress.

  They were not in luck. Crabs blocked the trail ahead, and then more crabs came up from behind. The pool might be young, but its tactics were inherent in its nature. They would have to fight their way through.

  “There are too many of them,” Veee said. “They will swarm us and hurt us. They will scramble up your trousers to pierce your legs with their spikes, and up under my skirt. We can’t stomp them all.”

  “Maybe not,” Tod said. “The path is narrow here; they have to come at us single file. Of course you’ve never played golf.”

  “Golf?”

  “It consists of hitting a little ball with a narrow club.”

  “Tod, these are not balls! They are almost indestructible little monsters.”

  “Watch me.”

  Nervously, she watched him.

  The first crab charged his foot, its six spiked arms poised for action. It was fearless, being no more than a piece of its pool. Tod swung his club down sideways and caught it in the center, bashing it out of the path and into the brush.

  “But it will return,” Veee said.

  “It will take it a minute or so. Longer if I manage to hit it farther. We can clear them out, then run for it.”

  She nodded. “I will try your golf.”