The D’neeran Factor (38 page)

Thy task,
Leader says,
thy watch.

Steersman sorrowing says:
Grim task,
and the hearts of Our companions, some waking, some asleep, answer Us:

Hope withers,
Leader thinks, looking round in dimness at the sturdy unfailing machines bright with winking lights.

(Unfailing…but…somewhere a failing craft drifts smoke-filled death-filled to deliberate oblivion. Bursts of dying hamper the tampering hands crazy-wiring wreckage into motion. Still she goes on. Not Ours! not Ours!)

Hope dies as days pass and We weaken long-absent from Home. The lattice of existence fades; its structure blurs. We move wraithlike through a ghostly ship, and the endless emptiness of outside weighs on Us through its walls.

he thinks, and seeks to turn the current of Our being. Leader truly, one of the great who appear in deep need; but it has been so long, so long, that even he can bend Us only to least-change, and Bladetree the Guard who was Questioner, answers:
The only hope,
and We are turned:

We acknowledge the truth of the equation, but Leader withdraws in sudden impatience. We let him go. For this too is the mark of the great, to retreat and consider and gather strength for Us all. And We have not strength to comfort one another's moods. And his sometimes might weaken not aid Us; for he is first-source of an experiment whose outcome will be hope, or not. It will work, or it will not.

And everything has been experiment since a long-placed telltale, a Watchsetter long-ago's shade, registered the Treecub transmission and stalking began. The less-than-People are coming, sailing toward Home, and their message comes before them, coruscating:
We are intelligent carbon-based oxygen-burning bipedal intelligent intelligent intelligent…

Steersman comes through the muraled corridors. We look at them through Steersman's eyes, and regard the
darkened command chamber along with Leader. The walls once showed Us comforts of Our Nearhomes; but their seeming life depends on shared belief; and now there is not energy enough among Us to make them real, and they are arbitrary and meaningless lines that sink and waver, and darkness slowly overcomes them.

All is quiet,
Leader says, and Steersman acknowledges, entering:
All is quiet,
and We echo in Our thoughts,

Leader gives over to Steersman the traditional sidearm of the one on watch, its weight cold and heavy in Our hands. It is a relic of Renders, the transfer a custom spontaneously risen at the start of Watchsetting. Not that the Treecubs are prey to such weapons, with all their means of killing from afar; but the ritual commands Us to vigilance.

Relieved of weight and duty, Leader paces through the ship. We feel Ourselves together a pale shadow of Home in boundlessness, dying caricature of a Nearhome.
We are doing well,
he thinks,
for so few so long in emptiness. But We have been out too long, We starve for Home, We are stretched thin and tenuous and Our functioning declines. How much longer should We wait?

He comes to the place of rushing water and strips off his clothing, thinking sadly of the waters of his Nearhome and Sunrise sporting there. Three other of Our living companions are bonded too, and find no comfort but in one another's pain. There is no comfort but memory. Only those who endured before Us teach Us how to bear assault on the unassailable, loss of that We cannot lose and live, disjunction that ends and reduces Us to ash.

For an instant he sees Sunrise in the stones that surround him. We take alarm and warn him, as We always do. But not immediately; We are not so quick as before; and will the day come when We cannot? He will not look at the glimmering stone. Blossoms and fireferns hang over him in damp thick air, and he floats in warm stillness. We miss the pleasant pooldarter, the little animal that lived in this place, but in a mutual excess of revulsion We killed it and threw its body
into vacuum; its timorous isolated animal thoughts reminded Us too vividly of Wildfire, who—

Is not what We wanted. Is not what We expected. Does not yield as she ought to yield. Forces Us to final measures and a new one, thus herself designing fate. Is something new—

The worry of it weakens Us, then and now. Weakens Home too perhaps, but no, he struggles to discriminate in thought between We and We. Five here alone so long however wrong We seem now must have been right, the consensus of the People: right in stalking, enticements, patience to wait for a few alone, plans changed by the differences perceived but not understood in Wildfire and later two others. Why was there no memory of Wildfire's kind? So We could not watch as closely as We planned, because her kind perceives an eye. But We said take one and torment her and quickly she will show all We need for a crippling blow, their skills not Ours but We have had time to make them Ours and so We will save Ourselves.

But even faced with certainty, Wildfire does not believe it.

The final choice to which she forces Us is right, We say. Perhaps it were better to chance the one world, Wildfire's Home…

Folly,
Leader thinks, repeating the arguments that swayed Us to consensus. Her homeworld is not what We seek. In the changing years the species is spread and increased. There is no longer one homeworld. Wildfire has hers; but there are those others shining half-sensed in her ill-shielded thought like the light of a mighty fire seen through water, blurred and trembling. All that power to fall upon Us…and she edged toward death, and what is to be done must be done before she thus escapes. And maybe she is dead anyway. Maybe the Treecubs cannot repair her, despite her faith.

Bladetree says implacably,
or they repaired her and the plan did not work,
and Flametender stabs Us with fear from his sleep:
and if it did not

work then.
Steersman says,

and Apprentice echoes:
what then?

Start again but

they are gone there is

only her Home which

is folly.
Leader says, and

Sudden shock takes Us, driving all else from Our thoughts:

He is coming! Now! At last!
Steersman cries, We sway waking and sleeping in his alarm, and the patterned lights that warn him are bright in Our eyes as lightning striking long-expected

Excitement sweeps through Us in storm waves, gathering momentum and rebounding one to another and gaining strength. Fear and apprehension not joy nor sureness; it takes too long to damp it; five are not enough, We are gone too long. Our rigorous training cannot hold—yet it does. Leader splashes from the pool and across mossy rocks, trembling, and the sleepers wake, trembling.

Identify. Identify. Identify!

He sees through Steersman's eyes the keyboard We use, hands wavering in shock. He says:
We will have no intelligible answer. There is no translation program. We must wait for the arbitrary code.

Steersman's embarrassment washes over Us.

I forgot…

Leader pulls on his scarlet uniform and runs through the First Watchsetter, shedding droplets of water. Bladetree comes eagerly, Flametender in alarm, Apprentice uncertainly. But Flametender thinks:
It worked!

Relief is a long-unknown softness. Steersman says:
I
was afraid. Wildfire was strong,
but Bladetree who was Questioner says:
Not at the end.

And it is true that at the end she is not strong; seems, even, to understand something of the essence of harvest, and properly yields her pain; but still she denies Us. She is a shapeless lump of flesh, intelligence suspended, docile, surrendering to Our claim; but also mad, nearly mindless, leaving unanswered questions We did not ask soon enough. She evades us though captive and helpless, and in the long distracting ecstasy of her dying, slips away.

Therefore a semblance of Leader has gone with her, and now returns.

*   *   *

Touch me,
begged pseudo-Leader, yearning for his People, and Hanna crouched in darkness and watched him, brooding.

He paid her no attention. For a while he had searched for her and then given up, wishing her silenced forever.

She was not silenced but hiding. She had had some practice in enduring isolated consciousness without mobility. Her long recovery on Earth had taught her something about it. Then she had clung to Dale Tharan's thoughts, inimical as they were, as to a lifeline. Now she was an observer of Leader-in-her-thoughts, though she hid from him.

Touch me,
he begged, and they did, and Hanna flickered and was blinded by his/their burst of joy, and then went on detaching herself, observant and purposeful.

Home, Home, nearly Home and no longer alone
—

Hanna was a mote, an atom, a spider death-still with its legs curled and balled, but they made a web of living threads intricately loomed and she sorted them out. The steersman, the apprentice, the flametender who was the engine master, the one who had been The Questioner. And Leader; but there were two Leaders. One of them was mad, a parody, a crippled thing. That was Leader-in-her-thoughts.

I
am Home, Home, I have returned,
he rejoiced, but the other said:
That is not I!
and all of them, true-Leader, pseudo-Leader, Hanna too, froze in consternation.

Ripples of confusion surged around her. There was a beacon now, however, and
Heartworld II
made for it. It was close, very close, and They were altogether present.

Hanna floated in her unworld and studied them. She heard their thoughts as speech, although they could not speak. The web was raveled and bedraggled with their discomfort. If she had been able to smile, she would have
smiled. The germ of an idea, born from her struggle with Leader-in-her-thoughts and fed by his memories, was practicable. One's fear or distress affected them all. To control it they needed time, and this handful of long-sundered wanderers was susceptible to disruption and slow in control, like those who had found the colonists, the Lost Ones.

She knew how to do much that pseudo-Leader had done to her. She knew perhaps how to do more: she knew how to be alone: her human brain made it a condition of existence. And she had a Render's single-minded savagery, and bound to it true-sight and all that implied and more than that implied for she was something new and knew it, and they did not; and all their suspicion, being vague and tenuous, fell short of the truth.

It could work.

She darted through their communion like a hidden fish, listening.

Stark fear; not of death but something more; an obliteration. Hanna did not understand it, and ignored it. She was not part of the web. She could ignore it.

Die, she thought with satisfaction. Into silence or not, you will die; not I.

True-Leader said suddenly:
Where is Wildfire? Where is she?

Hanna retreated in alarm into a deeper blankness. But Leader-in-her-thoughts said:
I
do not know. She is gone into silence.

There came a burst of triumph that battered them. Hanna watched with interest their reeling.

It was truth!
cried an ancient Celebrant,

truth!
echoed Bladetree

truth!
all of them said and Hanna sickly, savagely, closed out the memory of the Rite, the Rite that had claimed her, or nearly.

In the triumph and the glory of victory spanning eons pseudo-Leader said:
Open the docking bay that I may enter.

And true-Leader moiled the ebb and flow of radiance piercing it with fear:
That is I and not I!

She is gone into

silence you

said so
—

The Persona itself is changed!

She would have held her breath, if she controlled breath to hold, for she felt him near her.

They fell back, doubt swirling among them. But Steersman said:
Docking begins. I have opened the bay.

Heartworld II,
shining in red light, moved forward. They said:

On a level that was not hearing she heard them muttering, uneasy and straining. The Celebrant and Celebrants were gone. But they had really/not really been there and were there. True-Leader reached for her, stretching and pulling their strength to break free. Or break through.