“Faces us?” I retorted. “I don’t understand it or want any part of it. I said we wouldn’t get involved in a civil war. We won’t take sides. And there seems to be more than two sides. I want you to get us out of here. Now.”
Then the clamor broke through Overseer’s silence.
The entire herd of workers stampeded for the smaller tunnels at the opposite side of the chamber from where we had emerged.
Fur stood rooted to the spot.
Overseer spoke again.
I grabbed Fur’s arm again and pulled. “Come on.” I couldn’t budge him.
He stared at the even smaller tunnel entrances. “I can’t,” he moaned. “I can’t.”
His distress hit me like a blow.
He said, “You go,” as he unholstered his blaster.
It seemed that facing a ravening horde of giant spider-things was preferable to the unknowns of the cramped tunnels.
“I won’t leave you, Fur. If we’re going to die here, we do it together.” I pulled my blaster and clicked off the safety.
That brought him back to himself. He whirled to me and said, “No. I can’t let you...” He grabbed me by one arm and pelted for the tunnels.
“Ow. Let me go, you big oaf. You’re dislocating my arm.”
“Sorry,” he gasped.
As we reached the first tunnel, I looked back and saw the soldiers enter the cavern at the other side. That added to our urgency, and we sprinted through a downward-sloping tunnel with no end in sight.
It was a descent into madness. Tunnels filled with a seething mass of workers branched to the left and right. Some workers attacked us with mental cries of
Despite their size, they lacked significant mass. After collisions with us, the aliens careened into walls or others of their kind. We easily fended off the workers who did assault us. The major danger was a rip in our suits from their pincers, but the suits were tough, carbon nanofiber-reinforced fabric. We heard sounds of battle and screams behind us, giving further impetus to our flight.
We broke into another cavern. A different group of aliens huddled in the center surrounded by the workers. These were smaller, no more than shoulder tall. While their basic body and leg anatomy was similar, they had large, gray-white, bulbous protrusions from their rear.
I said, “Nurses?”
Fur shrugged.
After a few straggling workers rammed their way into the crowded cavern, rock doors again slammed down over the entrances. The shriek of thousands of voices in my head tore at my sanity. An almost palpable miasma of fear surged up from the huddled creatures in the center of the packed cavern. Then the workers waded into the mass of nurses and started to flail about with their pincers. The terrorized mental anguish dropped me to my knees. Fur scrunched down and grabbed my arm, whether in support of himself or me, I couldn’t say. What an ineffectual pair we made.
“Stop it,” I screamed. “Stop it!”
Again, my yell seemed to get through to these beings as nothing else. Perhaps I unconsciously transmitted through my empathic ability. Whatever, it stopped the slaughter.
The Overseer’s voice came through in the ensuing silence.
Rather than soothe the mass of spiders, the Overseer’s words seemed to provoke the throng to even greater violence. Fur and I worked our way over to a wall. When the nurses started to fight back, the bedlam accelerated.
“We have got to get out of here,” I yelled to Fur. “This is insane.”
Fur shuddered. I felt his internal battle for control, which he had won for the moment. “Look at the structure of this society,” he said. “What does it resemble?”
“Insects. Ants.”
“Right. Nursemaids, workers, soldiers, an overseer, like a queen, maybe.”
I nodded. “But they’re no longer working together. They’ve fragmented into separate hordes that are at war.”
“They’re a hive-mind consciousness. They communicate telepathically. And the Overseer is the hub of that consciousness.”
“But then why is this happening?” I asked. “The Overseer seems to be okay. At least it seems to be rational.”
Overseer interrupted our discussion.
“What’s the cause of your illness?” I asked. “Is it something we can treat? Do we need to reach you physically in order to help?”
My mouth hung open as I looked at Fur. “Good Lord. I think the damn thing has Multiple Personality Disorder.”
***
We stood alone in a chamber big enough for the two of us and the two aliens who brought us. These were smaller yet than any creatures we had seen, resembling little workers with tiny pincers. His servants, Overseer told us. There were no walls as such, just a pale gray, cottony substance that pulsed with an uncanny green light. The Overseer seemed to speak from all around us.
“Great,” I muttered. “Do we do a dance or pull a rabbit out of a hat?”
Fur looked more harried by the minute. His hands twitched, and his head jerked about, as if convinced something was always right behind him.
A deeper, gruff voice.
The other voices faded. I wondered if they responded to the Overseer’s command, or if it just blocked their transmissions, as it had done earlier.
I did not want to know what those were if they were worse than the soldiers.
Fur’s body twitched. Eyes closed, he mumbled something I had to lean close to hear.
“I don’t know how long...” His voice trailed off as his head bowed to his chest.
I probed the Overseer for ideas on what we might do. “When did this whole thing start? Was it sudden?”
“Did anything happen just before then? Some event or injury?”
“What about illness? Has there been any sickness in the colony?”
This was singularly unhelpful.
I tried to engage Fur. I poked his arm. “What do you think?”
He st
arted. “What? Uh, sorry. I wasn’t listening.”
“Come on, Fur. I need your help. There’s been no injury or illness that seemed to precede the breakdown,” I reiterated. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Ideas? No. No ideas. Um, do you think we can leave now?”
I had never seen Fur so forlorn. Not even when he injected me with Pronacian plague while trying to inject that lab lizard.
I shook his arm. “The tunnels are shut off because of the rampaging soldiers. We can’t get out until we solve whatever is affecting the Overseer, so it can take back control. Get a grip, man. You’re good at solving problems. Think.”
We stood silent for long minutes; my mind whirled with uncertainty. I spoke hoping to get Fur functioning again.
“The only things I know about psychiatric disorders come from old vids, and they aren’t known for medical accuracy. In humans, several distinct personalities can vie for control of the organic mind, the person switching from one to another. The submerged minds are not aware of what transpires between times.
“But this doesn’t seem to be the case here. The Overseer’s mind is aware of everything, but it’s not in control of the consciousness of the soldiers, workers, and nurses who are organically separate entities themselves. There’s paranoia in the separate castes. So the Multiple Personality Disorder analogy isn’t a perfect fit.”
I got no response. It did not look like Fur would be any help. The one vid that kept coming to mind was one where the characters were denizens of an insane asylum, a type of institution that disappeared a thousand years ago with medical advances dealing with mental illness. It had “Cuckoo’s Nest” or something like that in the title. What stuck with me was electrical shock used to cure patients. That barbaric image had burned itself into my memory, and I had researched it out of curiosity. Apparently, it could be a valid and effective treatment according to some medical sources.
I wondered about drugs. Would I have to give them to every one of the individual creatures in the Hive? Or, could I somehow treat the Overseer itself? That was useless speculation. Even if I knew, I had nothing that I could use with me. We were stuck here with no hope of getting out unless the Overseer could bring sanity to his minions.
“Overseer,” I said, “I have one idea, but don’t know if it will work. Or even if it won’t harm you in some way.”
Fur perked up and looked at me.
“Do you mean you, too?”
Fur woke up and asked, “If you die, can we get out of here?”
Fur turned to me. “Do something. Please, do something.”
***
I contacted the ship, passing messages via the Overseer’s telepathy since Ruthie couldn’t reach us. The Overseer passed on the incoherent, rage-filled rantings of Levi, as well as Ruthie’s responses.
I addressed the Overseer. “Can you block out Levi, the one you say is screaming hate-filled oaths? And still let us talk to the other member of our crew?” I wasn’t sure if I should reveal Ruthie’s nature, although why I felt that was unclear even to me.
So much for my caution. “Can Ruthie, the silicon mind, hear me, then?”
Fur remained silent, curled into a ball against one wall.
“Overseer, does any part of you go to the surface?”
I shook my head. “No. That’s not what I mean. Does any organic part of you, the central brain, extend out from this place? Like nerves, or conduits, or something?”
“And they bring in what? Light? Sound? Smell?”
“I guess it will have to be enough. Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Give Ruthie the detailed location of some of your surface sensors. Then give her these instructions.”
***
“Levi, you are going to have to go outside. There’s no other option.”
I pictured Levi outside the ship dragging heavy electrical cables and plugging them into the Overseer’s sensory inputs. He had panic attacks just landing on alien worlds, much less having to face inhabitants like giant spiders.
“I will not help you, Berger. Under any circumstances.”
“If we don’t get out of here, you don’t either,” I said. “If Fur and I don’t make it, you can’t control the ship. Ruthie, if we die, cut off the air scrubbers. Remember that lesson, Levi? If those fail, you suffocate. When Levi is dead, you can return to Sammara and give them a report on the unfortunate loss of all your humans.”
I suppose it did not reflect well on my nature that the thought of Levi’s face purpling from lack of air buoyed my spirits, but after what he told me about my parents’ torture, he deserved it. I wished I could be there to watch.
***
I supposed if this worked, I might be glad that He-Who-Eats-With-Gusto didn’t munch on the rebbe back on Dragonworld. I crossed fingers and toes and gave the word. “Okay. Pull the trigger.”
I could feel the puzzlement of the Overseer.
“Tell Ruthie to switch on the current.” I held my breath.
Nothing happened for long moments, and my heart plummeted. Stomach acid geysered into my throat. Would it end here, as we were close to the end of our voyage? Would I never see my folks or Roxanne again?
Then I felt a tremble, a minuscule tremor in the floor beneath my feet. It gained strength and I saw movement in the cotton wall fluff that composed the Overseer’s organic body.
Fur stood, and his head jerked about him. “What’s happening?” he croaked.
“I hope we are looking at our salvation. Ruthie is giving the Overseer electric shock therapy.”
His eyes gleamed for the first time in hours, replacing the dull, flat, hopeless gaze that had clouded the big man’s countenance.
A strident ululation battered my senses. It seemed to come from all around us. The intensity of the sound, coupled with a severe quaking of the floor, knocked me to the ground. I pressed my hands to my ears.
“Overseer, what’s happening?” I screamed.
No answer. Pieces of the body fluff broke off and dropped to the cavern floor. The sound became unbearable. I continued to scream wordlessly, adding to the rawness of my acid-bathed throat. Fur’s mouth formed a wide O, but I heard nothing.
Then there was silence, but it lasted no more than seconds before a cacophony of voices replaced it.
Then silence again.
“Did we do it?” Wonder tinged Fur’s voice. “Did you do it?”
The Overseer’s voice broke in, with an auspicious confidence it had lacked before.
“Thank God,” I breathed.
I grinned. “I suppose so, in a manner of speaking.” I could imagine Levi’s reaction to that little exchange.
<
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I said, “Yeah, but there’s one more thing. You might be able to help us with a problem of our own.”
“You can contact worlds at great distances, right? Could you reach our home world, Dovid’s World? Get messages there?”
There was a momentary silence, then the Overseer spoke.
“I want to get a message to my parents. See if they are okay.”
Fur broke in. “Cy. We need to find out the status of everything at home. I told you that the revolt was imminent. We must learn if that’s begun.”
I nodded. “Yeah. All of the above. Overseer, we need to contact Dovid’s World and Sammara to determine the status of the rebellion on Dovid’s World. We also need to contact a number of other worlds we visited. You said you had already done that, so it should not be a problem. I need to find out if those worlds will support our rebellion.”
Fur grinned and slapped me on the back. “Our rebellion, huh?”
I staggered at the blow but smiled back.
CHAPTER 21
The people around the table included me, Fur, Colonel Glazer, Lieutenants Clarrett and Ranu, General Finster—a severe-faced, grey-haired woman in a uniform with lots of stars—and two men introduced as top members of the Sons-of-David. Most importantly, Roxanne sat next to me.
Despite the number of people, I could not keep my eyes off Roxanne. Colonel Glazer cleared his throat, and I wrenched my gaze to his face.
“If we are ready to begin, Berger?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
Fur muffled a snort of mirth.
General Finster addressed us. “You know that Sammara has been the target of the expansionist plans of your home world, and we have no love for your governing party. It’s also clear that the people of Dovid’s World no longer want the Testamentary-Literalists to remain in power. They have rebelled against the government.”
I knew this, but the statement of it still gave me chills. The Overseer had made contact with the SOD and we learned that the rebellion had started. Fur was ecstatic. I was not as thrilled. We could get no information about where my parents were or how they fared. Levi’s torture threats had given me a new set of nightmares on the trip back to Sammara.
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