Asimov's SF, April-May 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Yes,” she said. “But what shall we find at the transmitter if we do return?”

  The platform on which they were descending came to a halt, and a crack of light opened in the wall behind them, widening into a doorway. It was the threshold of a circular chamber some twelve feet in diameter and ten high. There was a creature within, waiting for them; by virtue of its black and yellow coloring it resembled a wasp standing erect on the hindmost of its six limbs. The other four limbs were resting by its sides, and it was the antennae on its massive head that reached out to touch their helmets, inquiringly. It was not until the portal behind them had slid shut that Francis’ arms reached up, without any instruction from him, to unscrew his helmet.

  The air in the room seemed incredibly sweet at the first breath he took, although the second revealed odors that presumably emanated from the monstrous insect. The odors were subtly unsettling, but not actively unpleasant. Now the antennae palpated his face in the same inquiring manner. Francis bore the inspection stoically. By the time the antennae had withdrawn Patience Muffet had hesitantly unscrewed her own helmet to expose her face.

  “What are you?” buzzed the wasp. It had not spoken in English, or any language that Francis could have pronounced, but he had understood the words anyway. How could he reply, though?

  After a moment's hesitation, he said: “My name is Francis Bacon.” At least, that was what he intended to say. The sounds that came out of his mouth were very different from the English syllables—but the insect appeared to understand them as easily as he had understood what the insect had said, for it was quick to reply, in a manner that gave no hint of astonishment. “How did you come here?” it said.

  “By hyperetheric transmission from the nation of England on the world of Earth,” Francis said. “The human species, to which we belong, has been under observation for a thousand of our generations by a creature that appears to be a fragment of a fleshcore. It was intended that he would come with us, and two other companions, but the only other we were able to locate after our arrival seemed to have died from injuries sustained when the transmitter was attacked by creatures of your sort. Our world is under threat of invasion from its moon, where there is a substantial colony of insects, rebels against the True Civilization. They are ready to launch a fleet of ether-ships, but we have a fleet of our own, which will attempt to defend it.”

  “What are you doing?” whispered Patience Muffet, in English. Francis was only able to shake his head slightly by way of reply.

  “This is unexpected,” the insect said. “We must go to the fleshcore.”

  It seemed that this room too was merely a cage encased in a circular shaft, for it began to sink as the first platform had, rapidly accelerating to such a speed that Francis felt as if he might float up into the air. The journey was not a long one, though, and the deceleration was sufficiently gradual not to be painful.

  When the motion ceased, the walls were still smooth, but they were also soft and moist. Francis was instantly reminded of his brief vision of the golem's true self. They were, he realized, inside the fleshcore. This time, it was not antennae that reached out to investigate his face but improvised tentacles, and their palpation was more like a glutinous embrace. Had he been in control of his own body he would have been unable to resist the impulse to recoil, but he was not. Indeed, his mouth opened to let the questing slime come in, and he felt it flowing into his ears. He was terrified, but his body would not concede him any opportunity to express or reflect his terror. He reminded himself that Thomas Digges had endured a similar process, and come through it quite unscathed, although Digges had been unable to give him a description of the experience.

  “Be calm,” said a voice inside his head, apparently speaking in English. “No harm will come to you, and there is recompense.”

  In much the same way that he had earlier been permitted to see through the deception that normally concealed the golem's true nature from human eyes, he began to experience images in his mind, as if he were able to see into and through the living walls of the chamber into which he had descended. The imagery was very strange, but there was knowledge contained within it as well as mere appearance, and he was able to grasp the gist of it. The fleshcore was attempting to show itself, or its own image of itself, in order to demonstrate its nature and its essential benevolence. He had neither the sensory apparatus nor the conceptual equipment to comprehend it fully, but he did glimpse something of the complexity of the fleshcore, and something of its exotic self-awareness.

  The fleshcore, he understood, was both one individual and many, an entire society of disparate species united in a whole. On the basis of vague second-hand reports, he had previously imagined fleshcores to be analogous to gigantic brains, occupying planetary cores as if they were skulls, but he understood now that they were not mere thinking devices; they lived in their multifaceted flesh as human intelligences did, and did not feel in any way disembodied. He had also imagined, until now, that they might conceive of themselves as godlike entities, exercising near-omnipotent power from the thrones of the True Civilization, but that had been mistaken too.

  The fleshcore did not conceive of itself by analogy with the queen of a formicary, and certainly not by means of the analogy that had led human observers to think of the reproductive individual in a hive as its “queen.” It thought of itself as a natural consummation of a kind of creative process by which an initial capacity for reproduction gifted to primitive organisms too tiny to see had given rise by variation to millions upon millions of different and more complex organisms, which had refined many different kinds of sensory and alimentary apparatus and various patterns of growth and metamorphosis, feeding upon one another as well as the raw materials of air, earth, and water, while life burned within them like flickering flames, but also forming complex relationships of assistance and support.

  In time, Francis understood, these relationships of assistance and support were themselves refined, in order that intelligence might guide eclectic selections of apparatus, combining them in more complex bodies capable of more complex metamorphoses. Employing the fundamental model of the hive, this process of intelligent selection and organization had eventually produced the True Civilization: a harmonious association of millions of different fleshy forms, which were no longer distinct species, but which still retained the potential for division and contention.

  Francis understood, too—or, at least, imagined that he did—why certain kinds of organisms, including Arachnids, had been refused integration into the True Civilization, by virtue of an individualism too stubborn to be accommodated therein, and why intelligence in such species, in the very rare instances in which it arose, was considered dangerous. He understood, then, how it came about that endoskeletal intelligence—far rarer, it seemed, than Arachnid intelligence—posed an enigma to the True Civilization that was problematic in more than one way. He even gained a glimmer of understanding as to why the Selenites and their allies had decided to force a solution to the problem akin to Alexander's approach to the Gordian knot, even at the cost of rebelling against the ultimate arbiters of the cause they held so dear. He had an analogy of his own that he could bring to bear on that: John Field, the Puritan firebrand and master of the Church Militant, avid to force all souls into conformity with his own narrow conception of the necessities of their salvation, in frank defiance of the Church of Rome and all its echoes in the Church of England.

  Francis lost track of time while this process of painstaking exploration and attempted enlightenment continued, gladly falling into a merciful trance. When the fleshcore withdrew its pseudopods, he felt as if he were waking up from a light doze, wondrously refreshed in more ways than one. He felt a good deal better than he had before the communion began; he was convinced that the injuries he had suffered, whose pain had only been muffled before, were now completely healed, and that his reason was clearer than it had ever been.

  The wall reverted to being a mere wall for a few seconds, b
ut then it began to stir again. A humanoid figure formed, and stepped out of the fleshy mass. It was grey and smooth, like Francis’ vision of the golem, but he was disconcerted to see that it was very similar to him, in its height and form. After a few more moments, it came to resemble him even more as it assumed the kind of glamour that had long concealed Judah Low's golem from ordinary human sight. Anyone who did not know Anthony might have assumed that this was Francis’ brother.

  “I apologize for that,” the new golem said, in English. “This arrival was unexpected. We are doing everything possible to restore this planet's hyperetheric links, for our own benefit, and we shall be glad to focus our best attention on the link that you will require in order to return home. We shall recover your companion's body and make every attempt to resurrect him. We shall attempt to discover what happened to the others who were supposed to accompany you. We have begun to create suitable accommodation for you, but it will take a little time.”

  “What happened here?” Patience Muffet put in. “Have you been attacked?”

  “Yes, we have,” the golem said. “We are still at war here, although the first battle is over. An unlikely alliance has been contracted between insane machines, rebel insects, and other creatures. We do not know how the Shadows enter into the equation, but the fact that this world is so close to their cradle is obviously significant to our adversaries. The hyperetheric web has been utterly devastated in this region, but we are making progress in restoring links to the other heartworlds.”

  “What shall we call you?” Francis asked, slightly ashamed of intruding such a trivial question into such a portentous discussion, but feeling a need to have some better way of identifying his interlocutor than “the new golem” or “the fleshcore-fragment.”

  The creature hesitated momentarily, as if uncertain as to which name to choose, or how to make the selection. Eventually, it said: “Call me Solon.”

  Francis was curious to know why the creature had selected that particular name, but Patience Muffet evidently felt that he was wasting time. “Can the Earth still be defended?” she demanded. “Can you help us against the Selenite Armada, in spite of the Great Fleshcores being under attack themselves?”

  Solon looked at her with what, had it really been human, would have been an expression of suspicion and puzzlement. “Do you imagine that we do not know what you are,” it said, “and how the chain of events that resulted in the Selenite invasion plan was initiated?”

  It was obvious to Francis that Patience had no idea what he meant. She looked at Solon, then at Francis, then back at Solon. It seemed Solon was equally uncertain, but that some sort of realization was slowly forming in the simulacrum's mind. Francis was surprised, after what had just happened, that the fleshcore's fragmentary offspring still had any margin of ignorance that would leave room for surprise, but there had to be some crucial item of information that the fleshcore had not recovered in the course of its intimate inspection, and was only now deducing.

  In the meantime, Patience had jumped to a conclusion of her own. “I am entirely human,” she told Solon—perhaps intending to impress the force of the assertion on Francis too. “Earth has not been invaded by Arachnids; the Arachnids that helped my father were not the instigators of this conflict, and are numbered among its victims.”

  Francis wondered whether some or all of these assertions might be false. In spite of the enlightenment that the fleshcore had attempted to share with him, there was evidently something about the situation of Earth and humankind that he and Patience did not know, although the fleshcore had assumed that they did.

  “Is it possible,” Solon asked, assuming a wondering tone himself as he turned to stare at the man he resembled so closely, “that the particular intelligence that calls itself Francis Bacon, and the element of his companion that is now speaking, do not know that they are aspects of composite minds?”

  Francis’ first impulse was to deny it, but he realized that he was not in any position to do so. Had not his limbs worked of their own accord in contriving a way down from the surface? Had he not spoken to the insect in a language that he did not know, and understood the insect when the insect had addressed him in that same language? How was it possible, in fact, that he had not realized himself that he was carrying a passenger? Had he not been witness to Thomas Digges’ attempts to make sense of his own experience in the heart of the galaxy?

  “Please don't be afraid, Francis,” said a voice in his head. “I thought it best to be discreet, but I had no intention of deceiving you.”

  Francis could not help but be afraid—but he could not help remembering, too, that Thomas Digges had been offered soothing reassurances before being subjected to the cruelest deception of them all, in being made to believe for many years that he had only dreamed his experience.

  “Aristocles,” he said, silently. “You're the ethereal that calls itself Aristocles.”

  “In fact, I'm the other,” the silent voice informed him. “Call me Lumen.”

  Not another, Francis took note, but the other. That must surely mean that there really had been two parasitic ethereals involved in the first ether-ship's adventure, not one. And now, it seemed there were two involved in this adventure, for Patience Muffet must be similarly afflicted.

  “What's happening, Francis?” Patience asked, still apparently ignorant of her own condition.

  “I do not know how far this tangle of treason extends, Miss Muffet,” Francis said, “but I doubt that it was Faust who played us false, and we certainly have not reached the bottom of it yet. An ethereal used the rents that the insects inflicted on my suit and my flesh to infiltrate my body, as it did once before to Thomas Digges—and the same has been done to you. It was the ethereal that opened the way for our descent and talked to the giant wasp. The ethereals must have planned all along to join our expedition, and have contrived the insect attack to facilitate their invasion of our flesh.”

  “That's not the case, Francis,” the voice in his head told him, urgently—although the urgency made no impact on Francis's conviction that he ought not to trust anything it said. “The insect attack was utterly unexpected. I did what I could to save your lives and protect the transmission. It is not in my interest that the individual you call the golem was left behind, and my most fervent prayer is that he succeeds in realigning the transmitter so that he can follow you here. I need to return by that route, just as you do. Ethereals are not subject to all the limitations of matter, but we cannot move through the ether faster than light, and our privileged access to the other dimensions is strictly limited.”

  “I understand the mistake I made, Francis,” Solon put in, politely. “Our own state of symbiosis is not without its difficulties, and could not have been easily obtained at its inception. You will understand, I hope, when I say that it is your passengers rather than yourselves that are of primary interest to us. We have been trying hard to open efficient channels of communication with the Ethereals, as we have with the Shadows, but we have not succeeded—and that is why this unexpected arrival is so welcome. We are...”

  That was all that Francis was able to hear before the space in which he stood was abruptly plunged into darkness, and he felt once again as if he were being turned inside out.

  Again, he did not actually lose consciousness, but again, his consciousness was distorted in such a way as to make it direly difficult to take account of what was happening. He took it for granted that he was once again engaged in some form of extradimensional transit, but he had not the slightest idea how far he traveled, or in what direction, or even whether it made sense to raise such questions.

  When he was once again capable of coherent sensation and linear thought, however, his first impression was that he must be burning in Hell.

  * * * *

  9

  The sensation of being burned alive did not last long, objectively speaking, although it was too long for Francis’ liking. The following sensation, which was of being torn apart, was even
shorter in duration, and almost comfortable by comparison.

  When he was able to see again—in spite of being fairly certain that he had not opened his eyes—he perceived that he actually had, in some sense, been torn apart. There was an angel beside him, which had to be the entity that had invited him to call it “Lumen.” It was now, as its chosen name had been devised to suggest, a creature made of light, formed vaguely in the image of a winged humanoid with a nimbus about its head. Francis knew that could not be its native form; what he was seeing, or dreaming, was a depiction improvised from the substance of his own imagination—but improvised by what? What force had snatched him from the entrails of the fleshcore, and where had it taken him? Was the impression of separation dependable, or was this simply one more trick on the part of the inscrutable Ethereal?

  “This is not real,” he said—aloud, although he was addressing himself, not the angel. This was a desert in which the two of them appeared to be standing. He knew that it was not real because of the pyramids. He had never seen the actual pyramids of Egypt, although he had read about them, but he knew that he could not possibly be in Egypt, and that Egypt could not possibly look like this. The sands were sparkling, although it was the dead of night, and there was no moon in the sky. There were too many stars, seemingly so close at hand that they might fall like rain at any moment. Whatever had improvised that sky, it was not a creature that had ever dwelt on Earth. By comparison, the angel was almost convincing, although its brilliant wings were colored, like those of a phantom parrot, and far too small to lift a creature the size of a human being from the ground. Lumen was reduced to the size of a human being now, if only in appearance.

  “I suspect, Francis,” the Ethereal said, in response to his comment, in a voice that certainly seemed to be composed of ordinary sound, “that this is far nearer to the heart of reality than you or I have ever been before. It is not truly material, to be sure—and your appearance, as I perceive it, is as shabby an imitation of a human being as I am of a human's notion of an angel—but it is most certainly real. If my guess is right, we have been captured by a Shadow.”