“You had not time for reflection,” Ind’dni interposed. “Do not feel chagrin. From your last lunacy here in the Center, you went directly into narcotic examination.”
“And we told you what?”
“Nothing, doctor. You have no memory of those twelve hours. You were completely spaced out and timed out because apparently you were functioning entirely as somatic entities… naughty animals, prankish but not—Yes, madame?”
“I want to apologize, Subadar. I did underestimate you; not your intelligence, your instincts. I felt contemptuous because you seemed to brush off my analysis of the Golem100 too lightly. Now I know why you did. I’d ignored the soma factor, and your instinct told you that. Mine did not. I’m sorry. I do apologize.”
“Most courteous and generous, Miz Nunn, although I confess I do not yet understand.”
“Me neither,” Shima grunted.
“My gut understands. The trouble is, our bods are on speaking terms with our minds, but not the other way around. It’s a one-way street.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Gretch?”
“About my mistake, which the Subadar sensed. I was so obsessed with exploring the Phasmaworld concept that I ignored the reality of the human physical world. I’m a traitor to psychodynamics. But let’s drop the psytech jive and talk plain housekeeping, shall we?”
“A pleasure, lady.”
“We’ve got a mind and body. Are they separate?”
“No, they’re one.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“Both.”
“Can you have a living bod without a mind?”
“Yes, a vegetable.”
“Can you have a living mind without a bod?”
“No, unless you believe in ghosts.”
“So the mind, the psyche, has got to have a home, and the soma is the house for the psyche. The bod’s the lodging house; the pysche’s the tenant. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“And whatever the psyche produces—art, music, science, logic, ideas, love, hatred—is really a product of the whole house.”
“I’ll concede that.”
“You better concede it. The Golem is a quasi-living entity. It must be the product of a house.”
“You said it’s the product of the bee-ladies.”
“And their hive is its house. That’s my point. The hive is the hearth and home of the Golem.” Gretchen turned to Ind’dni. “Am I making sense, Subadar?”
Ind’dni smiled. “You omit the soul, madame.”
“No, I merely omit mention. The soul is the tonus of the soma. It’s metabolic music.”
“The hell it is,” Shima broke in. “Not that I buy the concept of a soul. But if there is one, it belongs to the mind… to the psyche. It’s the thinking part of us.”
“Not to me, Blaise. I believe it’s a resonance of the soma, the flowering of a million years of evolution, the cultural unconscious in all animals.”
“Animals! All animals?”
“All,” Gretchen said firmly. “Do you think a tiger has a soul?”
“A lot of religions say no.”
“Saint Francis of Assisi didn’t. The tiger has a soul. It can’t compute. It doesn’t pray. You never hear a tiger say, ‘What did the Polack do when he got lost in the jungle?’ His soma and psyche are purely reflexive, dedicated to survival and satisfaction, but I say the tiger has a soul, all the same, and I rest my case.”
“Yes, but what is your case, counselor?” Shima was in deadly earnest.
“That the ladies’ hive is the body and soul of the Golem, its house. Do you agree, Subadar?”
“Most unusual construct, as is your wont, Miz Nunn. But does not the Golem have a body of its own… a hundred bodies? Most unhappily I do not know whereabouts of its soul, if any. Shall I issue an A.P.B.?”
Gretchen laughed. “Using Code Nemo?”
“Perhaps a Code Credo would be more à propos.”
“Damn it! If you two are going to start clowning—!” Shima burst out.
“Cool it, baby. Just relieving the tension, is all,” Gretchen soothed. To Ind’dni, “It’s a quasi-body, Subadar; a projection, along with its primal drives, of the hive. That’s why it’s polymorphic. Think of water in free fall. Without gravity the water can be shaped into anything. The Golem has no real form of its own. The hive is its generator and shapes it ad lib.”
Shima demanded, “Then you mean destroy all the bee-ladies to zap the Golem? I can just see our good friend here standing by and permitting that.”
“Hardly likely,” Ind’dni murmured. “I permit no destruction whatever.”
“I don’t mean destroy the women,” Gretchen explained. “It’s a collective act, remember? Break up the colony and you destroy the Golem’s home.”
“Scatter them?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not sure whether the beehive parallel goes that far.”
“Let’s suppose it does.”
“Then it’s still iffy. The life of an insect colony can go on whether there’s a queen or not. Only the beehive must have a queen.”
“You mean what’s-her-name… Winifred Ashley?”
“And that’s the big ‘if.’ Is she really a queen in the bee sense, holding the colony together? Is she the prime factor in the generation of the Golem? Damn it, I don’t know, and I don’t know how to find out.”
“There’s an obvious solution, another Pm trip.”
“But I’m afraid of that, Blaise. We can’t trust our senses because they panic and short-circuit. And certainly we can’t trust our somas when the rest of us vacate.”
“If I may make a suggestion?” Ind’dni spoke from the cedar trunk.
“Please.”
“The next Promethium trip may be made under controlled environment. The bodies can be restrained.”
“That’s true, Subadar, but it doesn’t solve the problem of our unreliable senses.”
“Not Dr. Shima’s, perhaps, but yours alone, madame?”
“Mine? Alone?”
“I have begged not to be underestimated. Yes, I knew all about your seeing at second hand before your confession. You are a lusus naturae. You did sense this Hundred-Hander?”
“I think I did.”
“Appearance, please.”
“An unformed, man.”
“Actions?”
“None.”
“You perceived the beast with your own senses or through Dr. Shima’s?”
Gretchen was thunderstruck. “My God! I never thought—I honestly don’t know.”
“Do you know whether its behavior in your Phasmaworld might reveal its prime source?”
“It might. Maybe. Does this mean you believe me now?”
“Maybe. Your word. But does it not occur to you that your second-handery will enable you to visit the Phasmaworld with virgin senses and perceive what truly transpires?”
“By God!” Shima exclaimed.
“The expedition can come only after planning and careful preparation. Now you must go and rest. You both need it.” Ind’dni was firmly in control. “Next, doctor, you will test madame’s senses. We know about her sight, but sound must also be examined. That, too, may be crucial.”
“What about the other three; smell, taste, and touch?”
“But I already know from confession of true events. That was your unaware reason for my belief, madame, which I told you I would manifest later.”
“What did she confess that tells you so much?”
“Touch, doctor? Did she not feel sensation of cold when the creature invaded?”
“She did, by God!”
“Wait,” Gretchen said. “I might have gotten that secondhand from the Golem itself.”
“How, madame? Does the creature have senses in human terms? And would it be aware of the cold it exuded? No. That sense was your very own.”
“He’s right, Gretch. But smell and taste, Ind’dni? They’re linked, of course.”
“Ah! That was clincher, as Legal would say. Miz Nunn, of herself, with her own senses, smelled the typical odor the Hundred-Hander emits, the bouquet de malades, the aroma of the mad. I have smelled it myself and that was what convinced my belief. The Bombazine mind is most often enforced by subtleties.”