You were a volunteer, she reminded herself.
And a fool, she answered.
Every few years, the ultimatum went out from Ol’t’ro: send us four of your best. To be chosen is an honor. To join the meld, for the few who prove capable and worthy, is a rapture.
All lies.
She looked sadly at the latest to answer the calclass="underline" you are sacrifices.
Having learned something of human myth, Cd’o had fancied herself as Theseus. She meant to slay the monster and end the demands of tribute. Only to be doomed by her aptitude for melding. Only to become the Minotaur …
We are equally the great King Minos, a ghostly remnant of the meld mocked. Part of the curse was never to be alone, even within her own thoughts. Should you think to escape on wings of wax and feathers, we are also as close as you will ever come to being Daedalus.
Cd’o brushed aside the intrusion, refocused on showing the newcomers the ways of the labyrinth. They had come to an auxiliary water lock, and she explained its sensors and redundant filtration systems. The habitat ringed the planetary drive: damage the planetary drive and a trillion Citizens died. Citizens were too smart and craven ever to risk a physical attack, but Ol’t’ro could not rule out some subtle toxicological or biological attack. If every Gw’o in the colony were to be incapacitated simultaneously, and Citizens were then to force their way in, and to locate and disable the self-destruct before the fail-safe timer set it off …
Cd’o explained the precautions in detail. Despite the endless clamor of remnant melds, she was not ready to die.
“What is it like?” a newcomer asked.
“A meld?”
“Yes, your Wisdom.”
On Jm’ho the newcomers had been a Gw’otesht-4. A computation unit, no more. They would know the mechanics of melding. They would have experienced the innocent sharing of mathematics. They could not begin to understand the majesty and misery and transcendence of a Gw’otesht-16 meld. No one could, until it had happened to them.
Until, as for her, it had been too late.
THE DAILY RESPITE ENDED all too soon.
Cd’o left the newcomers in the Commons and continued on her way. At the mouth of a long tunnel, her companion turned aside to loiter with other servants.
She swam down the long tunnel to the melding chamber. Friends/colleagues/alter egos waited inside, and more followed close behind her. They would be one soon enough and few bothered with greetings. The last to enter sealed the massive door.
Some eager, some dutiful, the sixteen sidled together. A tubacle, questing, engulfed one of Cd’o’s own. Within the maw of her tubacle, the eye and heat receptor went dark. The ear fell deaf to all but the beating of two hearts: one speeding up, one slowing down, seeking unison.
The tubacle tip probing deep within hers found its neural receptacle.
A shock like electricity raced up her limb and a great hunger jolted her mind. Unimaginable insights tantalized. Profound truths beckoned, just beyond her grasp.
More! She needed more! Switching to ventral respiration, she reached out with other tubacles. She felt all around and felt other limbs in return. Tubacle found tubacle, aligned, conjoined …
Ganglia meshing!
Feedback surging!
Heart pounding!
Electricity coursing!
We will begin.
The command echoed and reechoed in Cd’o’s mind. Her fears and doubts receded. Her thoughts — as fiercely as she fought to hold on to them — faded. Her sense of self all but vanished.
Ol’t’ro, the group mind, had emerged.
17
“That’s the way of it, Sigmund,” Donald Norquist-Ng concluded.
“I urge you to reconsider, Minister.” Sigmund held his voice flat, although the day had been a roller coaster (another metaphor that no one on New Terra would understand). Alice and Julia had done it! And fools like this would throw everything away.
Norquist-Ng frowned. “We are not going to rehash things. It was obvious in the situation room that you didn’t accept my decision. I invited you to stay for one reason: as a courtesy. In your time, in your way, you worked hard for this world. I chose not to berate you in a roomful of people.
“In private, in my office, I will speak as plainly as is necessary. I had hoped that being direct would suffice, but not even direct works with you. Very well, I will be blunt. Endurance is coming home. That is my order, Sigmund. It is not open for discussion.”
“But they’ve identified an ARM ship. It’s been the dream for so long.”
“Your dream, and I don’t understand even that. You’ve lived on New Terra for more than two hundred years. There’s nothing left on Earth for you.”
“Tanj it, I agree with you. In part, anyway. I have no interest in going back.” Sigmund suppressed a shudder. “I have no interest in off-world travel of any kind. But this isn’t about me, Minister. The people of this world — my children, and yours, too — deserve to know their history, to reconnect with their own kind. The independence generation would have given anything to — ”
Norquist-Ng slapped his desk. “How convenient for your argument that the founders are all gone. I suppose I should take your word for it how they felt.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered about your roots?”
“What part of ‘subject closed’ confuses you? I’ve said no. The governor, whom I’ve briefed, says no. That roomful of people we just left — and whom you failed to sway — said no.”
“Because they know you’ve made up your mind.”
“Because it is too dangerous.” Norquist-Ng sighed. “And in part I believe that for having listened to you. For years you warned about the Kzinti creatures. For years you said our scout ships had to be armed, lest we run into Kzinti or someone worse.
“Well, our people have found your Kzinti. You identified them as such. Kzinti and the Earth ships are blowing each other apart. I’ll risk nothing that might bring such madness to New Terra.”
“That’s not the only risk.” Could a ship be tracked through hyperspace? Not that Sigmund had ever heard. “The Ringworld drew all those warships practically into our backyard. However distant their home bases, three fleets are within fourteen light-years of us. If the Kzinti should spot New Terra, or those cone-ship people … then what? We need to contact the ARM, to ally with Earth, before that happens.”
Silence.
Sigmund dared to hope he was making his point. “Of course our people should be discreet as they reach out to the ARM. They should use short digital messages, hard to trace. They should relay everything through comm buoys, so that no one can backtrack the hyperwave beam. There needn’t be any contact but comm until we know more.”
Norquist-Ng tipped back his chair, seeming to consider, then shook his head. “No. Engagement with other worlds always makes matters worse. We have the proof of that from your era in this chair, one wretched crisis after the next. My orders stand, Sigmund. Endurance will not contact anyone. And it’s coming home as soon as they finish refueling.
“Challenge me again in public and that will be your last time inside this building.”
SIGMUND PACED THE DUSTY, cluttered, memory-clogged confines of his den.
Alice’s latest report had brought more than the news that low-level ARM encryption had been cracked. The crew had also spotted, on the far fringes of the scene, an Outsider ship departing. Not into hyperspace — although Outsiders had invented hyperdrive, they did not use it — but racing away at near-light speed.