"They're edible," Teri said, "but climbing up to get them is a pain. We could do it if we had to, but Hans Rebka says there are better things to eat within easy walking distance. Sit down and make yourself comfortable."
Ben didn't have an easy walking distance, and he was not sure he could ever be comfortable again. He moved to the place Teri had indicated and sat down on a pile of springy undergrowth that someone had cut and dragged in from outside.
"Not luxury, but a lot better than getting drenched," Teri said. "Hans Rebka claims that the really heavy rain will come at night, when the temperature drops a few degrees." She came to sit beside him. "We have food, we have shelter, and we certainly have water."
The others of the group had one by one entered, until now all stood or sat inside the cone-house. Julian Graves, coming in just in time to hear Teri's final words, added, "Probably more water than we'd like. We are safe enough here, but we have no idea how we might leave the planet unless some others of the expedition show up. I wish I understood how our two groups came to arrive in the same place, when we took such different paths. Fortunately we need be in no hurry to learn that, or to leave. We can take our time."
Ben saw the others nodding, until Darya Lang said abruptly, "Sorry to be the company killjoy, but that's just not true. Marglot might seem safe enough, and in one sense it is. But we can't stay here very long. If we do we'll be in deep trouble."
"From what?" Hans Rebka was staring all around him. "I'm usually the pessimist of the group, but I don't see anything to frighten us. No floods, no earthquakes, no volcanoes, no ravenous beasts looking to chomp on our rear ends."
"That's the whole point, Hans. No ravenous beasts—no beasts of any kind. While you were exploring, I dug in the wet soil and looked on and in the plants. I found plenty of animal life. It's everywhere. Small and big, everything from half-meter crawlers down to sizes I can only pick up using my suit magnifiers. But it's all like those." She pointed to the heap of shrunken corpses at the other side of the cone-house clearing. "Dead. I don't think there is a living animal anywhere on the surface of Marglot."
Torran Veck shrugged. "So what? I've never been to Fredholm, but I understand that it's the same way. It's a world with vegetable life and fungi, and a bunch of microorganisms that break down dead materials. But it supports a stable biosphere."
"It does. Everything is in balance on Fredholm because it evolved that way, over billions of years. The situation here is totally different. This planet had a balanced ecosphere—plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms all doing their bit. Then every animal suddenly died. Marglot is unstable from an ecological point of view. I don't know how long it will take, but the vegetation will start to die, too—plants all rely on some animal forms. Oxygen content will start to go down as photosynthesis stops. I don't know what the end point of the change will be, but long before the planet gets to that stage we'd better be gone. Nothing like humans will be able to live here. Think of it this way, Hans. We seem to be the only living animals on Marglot. It's rarely good to be an anomaly. We need to find a way to escape, and we need to do it fast."
"I don't think you should be so worried, Darya." But Hans Rebka went off to sit by himself with his back against the central trunk.
No one else was eager to continue the discussion. After a few minutes, Ben moved from a sitting position to lie flat on his back. He was actually less comfortable than in the walking car, but he had no desire to go back there. No matter how gloomy the conversation, here he at least was part of it. He was free to offer his opinions.
High up near the top of the tree-cone, the daylight slowly faded. A new sound began, of a gusting wind. The atmospheric circulation patterns on Marglot must follow the moving day-night boundary, even at the Hot Pole. Soon the pummeling of torrential rain began on the sturdy outside leaves.
Night on Marglot. A planet which, according to Darya Lang, was steadily but surely dying. Ben closed his eyes.
In your dreams you encountered situations like this, hopeless corners with no way out. Except that in your dreams, there always was an answer; and you were always the one who found it.
In your dreams. Ben opened his eyes. The interior of the cone-house was dark. He could not hear the others breathing above the sound of the rain.
This was not a dream. This was reality.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Together again.
If there was a heaven for embodied computers, which E.C. Tally most seriously doubted, then he was in it.
He sat at the center of a circle of a hundred and more beetlebacks, just as he had sat for the past three days. The silver beetlebacks neither moved nor slept; instead, they talked continuously. A complex syncopation of chatter of radio signals surrounded E.C.
So much for the Orion Arm theory of organic beings, that some sleep was essential for all forms of animal life! E.C. had delegated the rest functions of his own body to a tiny part of his brain. With all the rest of his intelligence, he listened, analyzed, and spoke.
This was going to be no easy task, as was the case with Builder constructs. All you needed with them was to keep talking for a while, and they would recall or invent the appropriate human speech patterns. The beetlebacks presented a very different problem. Tally was storing away every syllable of radio utterance within his capacious memory, and it was clear that this was not a monologue or dialogue. The beetleback data streams, all one hundred and thirty-seven of them, had to be considered simultaneously. They were aware of his presence, and of what he said. He knew this, because after every one of his own speeches or questions, the beetleback radio talk clamored more furiously than ever before returning to a calmer level. They were working as hard as he was, seeking some common ground of communication. He could not vouch for their analytic powers, separately or in combination, but his own search for patterns and correlations in the hundred-plus parallel data streams suggested an effort that might take days or weeks to complete, even with his prodigious computational powers.
This was the kind of task for which he had been designed. This was no trifling exercise, no piffling conversation with a slow-minded human, Cecropian, or Hymenopt.
He crouched on the ground, and while his suit took care of the material needs of his body, including warmth—for the outside temperature had dipped during the night far below freezing—he worked. At the same time as he analyzed data, he studied the physiology of the creatures that surrounded him.
He could not place them—of course not!—within the Orion Arm ensemble of life forms, but their appearance was generally insectoid. Their backs were shiny silver, their undersides jet black. Multi-legged, eyeless, and wingless, they appeared totally insensitive to cold. He could see no sign of suits, and the source of the radio signals was a mystery until it occurred to him that they must have evolved this way naturally. They spoke and heard at radio frequencies! The fuzzy antennas sprouting from their wedge-shaped scarlet heads supported that hypothesis. Perhaps they also saw using the same frequencies, although the long wavelengths of radio compared with optical signals would surely provide an image of inferior spatial detail. Maybe Tally himself was to them no more than a fuzzy and indistinct blob.
No matter. Communication could proceed through avenues other than the visual.
Tally talked and listened, and listened and talked, convinced that the growing data set of beetleback signals would eventually lead to a basis for understanding.
It was with a sense of irritation rather than anticipation that he finally received a strictly sonic signal beyond the sighing of the wind. He looked up. A pinnace, its lights bright against the night sky, was drifting in to make a landing on his ice-clad plateau.
Tally moved across to the craft as its hatch opened. It would probably do little good, but the point had to be made.
"May I speak? Just look at them!" He gestured toward the beetlebacks. "They are disconcerted and they are scattering. Your arrival has unfortunately much disturbed our work."
Th
at Louis Nenda—for it was he who first emerged from the pinnace—heard E.C. at all was debatable. He half turned toward Atvar H'sial, who was still inside the vehicle but whose suit was open enough to show the flash of bright yellow trumpet horns.
Nenda said, "Are you sure?" And then, after another few seconds, "I don't know what you think those things are that you're talkin' to, E.C., but Atvar H'sial assures me that they are not organic."
"How does she know?"
"From what she can see inside of them—or sometimes, what she can't see at all. Her ultrasonics are stopped by the carapace. Heavy-duty absorber. But she says the legs are sure as hell mechanical, with oil-driven hydraulic cylinders to move 'em along."
"Aha!" As always, E.C. Tally received new information gladly. "That explains one small mystery. All communication seems to be at radio frequencies, which I had never before encountered in an organic being."
"Never mind the small mystery. What about the big one. How the devil did you finish up here, on Marglot?"
"I am on Marglot? How fortuitous. I entered a transfer vortex, and at once found myself in orbit about this planet. My re-entry, of course, I directed to bring me as close as possible to the group of creatures that you now see around us."
"How did you become separated from the rest of the group?"
"Others? There are others, here on this planet?" E.C. Tally regarded Nenda with the innocent eyes of one in whom duplicity had never been programmed.
Sinara Bellstock had emerged from the pinnace and was standing next to Nenda. "Lots of them," she said. "Professor Lang and Captain Rebka and Councilor Graves, and all the other survival team members except Lara Quistner. Do you mean you didn't come here with them?"
"I did not. In fact, I wonder how they could have found each other. In my final communication with them, the councilor and two survival team members were still on board the Pride of Orion. The others were exploring the large planet in the dead system where we first arrived at the Sag Arm."
Nenda had been glaring at the beetlebacks, which had stopped retreating and were now approaching, little by little. "You say you've been talkin' to them?"
"Not exactly. I have been engaged in data collection, building a base for communication. For the past three days my stock of information has grown to be most extensive. I am confident that, given time for analysis, I will be able to analyze fully and comprehend all that has been said."
"That's good, because I don't like the look of your buggy friends at all. And we have to find out how Graves and the rest of 'em made it to Marglot. Come on, Tally. Into the pinnace, and we're off."
"Without conclusion of our interactions? Also, sufficient accommodation in the pinnace is lacking." Tally had seen the sprawled corkscrew body in the back seat. "It was designed for only two in the rear, and Claudius is already within."
"Sit on top of him." The buzz of radio sound from the beetlebacks was increasing. "Inside now, or I'll grab you and wipe your data banks."
"You would not!" But for E.C. Tally it was the ultimate threat. He scrambled inside as fast as any of the others. As the pinnace lifted he was sitting on Claudius's non-existent knee. The data stream emanating from the Chism Polypheme required no effort at all to analyze and comprehend.
* * *
On descent, or even in level flight, the pinnace could manage a four-passenger load with fair ease. Taking off with five on board was another matter. The engines throbbed and labored until they reached a cruising altitude that satisfied Nenda.
Tally visualized their path. If, as Louis Nenda had said, they were flying to a point near what Graves had termed the "Hot Pole," then their course must take them "westward" with respect to Marglot's axis of rotation. This was a direction away from the dawn, so when they arrived at the Hot Pole it would be the middle of the night there.
Another factor, however, might prove to be much more important. Tally listened to the engines. He knew the specifications of the pinnace, and also Marglot's gravity field. The calculation and conclusion were simple. The pinnace could fly with its present load, but it could not return to space any more than he could do so with the aid of his suit alone. Either a larger ship must descend to the surface and provide transportation, or the pinnace would be obliged to make multiple trips to orbit.
As to the question posed by Louis Nenda concerning the means by which other parties from the Pride of Orion had reached Marglot and the Hot Pole, Tally gave it not a microsecond's thought—for the simple reason that they would soon enough be in a position to ask the question directly of the people concerned.
To address all these minor issues he deployed only a tiny fraction of his computational resources. The cabin was quiet as it flew through the night sky, and Tally was free to work without distraction on the main problem: understanding what the silvery beetle creatures had said. He was undeterred by Atvar H'sial's revelation that they were inorganic forms. Was he not himself an inorganic form? The chances were excellent that their utterances when finally interpreted would prove to be logical, lucid, and rational, unencumbered by the glandular effusions that so often contaminated the speech of humans and other organic beings.
Although detailed understanding was far away, one point was already clear to E.C. Individual beetlebacks did not possess separate intelligence. They were more like social insects or Decantil Myrmecons, in which each unit was capable of movement and action, but only if those actions supported a decision somehow made by the whole group. More than that, in the case of the beetlebacks even the group that had met with Tally was not a complete mind. It formed one node of a distributed intelligence, whose parts included every cluster of beetlebacks on Marglot. There were many thousands of those; and, just as each individual beetleback was an expendable unit, the whole complex was itself expendable. It was on Marglot for a reason—the sense of purpose was overwhelming; but once that purpose was fulfilled, the future was undefined.
There was also an impression, and Tally could put it no more strongly than that, that the beetleback activity level was increasing rapidly. It seemed to lead to something with no physical meaning: a singularity. Although a singularity could not exist in the real universe, one might exist in the universe as perceived by the beetlebacks. Suppose, for example, that at some point they themselves ceased to function?
Tally looked around the cabin. He felt that he had achieved an important if imperfect breakthrough. But to whom could he express it? Sinara and Claudius were sound asleep. However, the pinnace was not flying on autopilot. Louis Nenda was—let us hope!—still conscious.
"May I speak?"
Nenda turned a fraction in his seat. "You know, normally when I hear you say that, I grit my teeth. But there's so much nothin' goin' on around here, I can use a change. What you got?"
"A partial understanding, perhaps, of beetleback nature and purpose."
Tally summarized his findings, collapsing the results of quadrillions of data sorts, merges, and compressions into a five-minute description. He expected skepticism. His conclusion was admittedly radical. But Nenda merely said, "Give me a second. I want to make sure this gets through loud and clear to Atvar H'sial."
The silence that followed was far more than a second. Tally assumed that some considerable pheromonal discussion was going on between human and Cecropian.
Finally, Nenda said, "At thinks you've nailed it on the button. Your buddies are one small piece of a much bigger operation, and when that's done they'll be history. At believes the Big Chill is on the way. The sun will go out and Marglot will become the ultimate icebox. Does that make sense in terms of what the bugs have been sayin' to each other?"
"I do not know." For the first time since his original embodiment, E.C. felt that the speed of his mental processes was inadequate. First he needed to frame Atvar H'sial's hypothesis in strictly logical terms, then he must evaluate its consistency in terms of the entire mass of beetleback recorded data. "The question is difficult. The necessary analysis may take hours."
"Well,
hours is what we've got. About three more of 'em, is my guess, before we touch down near the suit beacons. Go to it, E.C. Oh, an' Atvar H'sial says there's one thing we need to know in particular."
"Ask, and I will seek to determine it."
"It's a simple question: If there's goin' to be a big freeze, how long until the action starts? When is Showtime?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Help needed from the Have-It-All.
Hans Rebka had trained himself to sleep at almost any place and any time. That talent, however, was not an asset in times of danger. Then you normally slept little, if at all.
But when were you in danger? Sometimes common sense said one thing, while a part of your suspicious hindbrain declined to agree. Inside the cone-house everything was quiet. Outside, the rain had ended and the wind died away. With no animal life, large or small, night on Marglot should be both silent and safe.
That certainly seemed to be the opinion of the rest of the party. Hans, with the headlight of his suit reduced to the faintest glimmer, moved quietly from figure to still figure. Torran Veck—Julian Graves—Darya Lang—Teri Dahl—Ben Blesh—all were asleep, though now and again Ben would murmur something unintelligible.
So why was Hans awake? The sound when it came was at first no louder than the rustle of wind across tall grass. It seemed like imagination, until as it strengthened Hans heard a rhythmic undertone. That was the noise of the engine of a ground or air vehicle—and it was approaching.
Hans went to Darya and shook her.
"Best if we're awake, I think." And then, when she stared at him as though she had never seen him before, "Help me rouse the others. Visitors are on the way."
She blinked up at him. "Can't be. We're the only ones on the planet."
"Not anymore. Trust me." Hans moved on, to shake Julian Graves awake. By the time everyone was sitting up there could no longer be any doubt about the sound outside.
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