"When I originally found this, they had no interest in it at all," Rhodane told me. She smiled and gestured for us to move on down the lengthy hall. We walked in silence for a while, finally coming athwart a side cavern in which squatted something I could only assume to be some kind of cannon.
"They abandoned this place after the hilldiggers struck. When I asked about the weapons they used during the War, a Speaker directed me here. No attempt was made at concealment, and clearly no Brumallians had come here in a long while. I knew that to get things running again, to be able to right the terrible wrong done to the Brumallians, I needed them to feel the same way as I did and for that I needed to become more like them."
"They had sufficient expertise left to physically change you?"
"I found it in their records, but it took me some time to create the recombinant viruses. They watched my work with some interest, and sometimes they even helped."
I looked at her and tapped a finger either side of my face where the fibrous patches were positioned on hers. "Those are for the pheromones?"
"To emit them, yes. My sense of smell increased till I could read them just like any other Brumallian."
I studied the weapon and the other things surrounding me. The teardrop objects were evidently biofactured spaceships—warships—and though there seemed little activity here now, there had definitely been much recent activity.
"You persuaded them," I suggested.
"I became part of the Consensus, but a rogue part. I could influence it and yet not be influenced myself, or so I thought. I stated my opinions again and again. At first nothing much happened, then slowly one or two of them came to help me. After a year I had a thousand Brumallians working here, and the meme I had sown began to spread."
I guessed what was coming next. "But the language?"
"Yes…filling up my mind with its intricacies. Communication itself slowly becoming more important than what I was communicating. The Brumallians began to trickle away, lose interest, and their lack of interest began to affect me. Perhaps by changing myself I have overwritten basic codes implanted into my original DNA at the moment of my conception. One day I just walked out of this place and knew I was free."
As I studied her for a long moment, the spectre of the war she had tried to resurrect seemed to crouch in the shadows here. I shivered, now knowing the frightening efficacy of Rhodane, and by extension that of Yishna and Harald.
I asked, "Will you eventually grow mandibles?"
She did not reply, because just then came the racket of heavy feet descending on the stair far behind us. I glanced back to see many quofarl and other Brumallians charging down, armed, and looking none too happy.
Orduval—in the Desert
He counted thirty-two fits occurring since his first meeting with Tigger, each much weaker than the preceding one, the most recent causing a mere thirty-second stutter in his life. With the anticonvulsives no longer impeding him he felt healthier and much more alert than at any time since he had walked into the Ruberne Institute as a child. Sometimes he questioned his choice of remaining out here in the Komarl, but never for long. The information Tigger imparted to him each time it came here kept him hanging on eagerly for the drone's next visit. He also realised that a large proportion of his life had been a kind of aversion therapy and that, illogically, he felt a return to civilisation somehow related to a return to his previous mental and physical state. He stayed. And he loved the desert.
On his twentieth day he found a metallic sphere resting in the clearing outside the cave. Recognising it as being fashioned of the same metal as Tigger, he felt no fear as he stepped out to inspect it. However, he did jump when it addressed him.
"Let me introduce you to my other half," said Tigger's voice.
Orduval stared at the sphere and considered for a moment, quickly working out what the drone meant. It then occurred to him that this fast grasp of meaning was a complete conversation killer, so decided to ask the obvious question: "What do you mean 'your other half'?"
"I reckon you understand perfectly, Orduval, but I'll tell you anyway," Tigger replied. "Being a manufactured entity, it's not necessary for me to have a discrete body. I consist of two parts: the tiger part which I use for planetary environments and to chat with the likes of you, and this sphere which, on the whole, I use extra-planetary. It's the larger part of me, in that it contains the most memory and other resources—tools and the like."
"Weapons?" Orduval suggested.
"Those too. They're only a kind of tool."
"So why have you brought your other half here?"
"To use the more prosaic tools," Tigger replied. "Your accommodation here is merely one-star and I intend to correct that. Why don't you pack some supplies and take a walk for the rest of the day? I've got work to do here." Orduval returned to the cave, filled a backpack with a water container, some food and a small console—which also contained a direction finder—and then did as suggested. Under the pounding sun he chose the desert outpost as his vague destination, but did not expect to reach it. As he tramped across boiling sand, he considered all Tigger had told him about the Polity; he similarly considered his own world, and compared philosophies. At one point he sat on the ridge of a dune and gazed across the shimmering sea of sand before him. Those dunes, stacked up by the wind and driven across the landscape, were like waves, maybe ripples on a pool? Each wave of colonisation from the Sol system was just like such a ripple, the cast stone that formed them being human sentience centred on Earth. He made some notes in the console about this, and considered other analogies: humans like grains of sand; swirl patterns of dust storms compared to the turmoil of newly forming societies. It was a game, a game of analogy, and one he knew had been played many times before.
Surprisingly, he reached the outpost station before the morning was done and before consuming even half of his water. By this feat he realised just how unfit he had been when first setting out from this place. After wandering around the dusty buildings, he went to gaze at the maglev road—his link back to civilisation—and watched one train shoot past raising a dust cloud, before turning to head back towards what had begun to feel like home to him.
Only now he could not find it.
Climbing the mount to reach the place where he first saw Tigger, Orduval found no cave entrance behind the familiar clearing. For a moment he thought the drone had sealed up the cave with the intent of driving him out into the desert to die, but quickly rejected the idea.
"Tigger," he called.
A stone door hinged silently open and the drone sphere floated out.
"I think you'll like it once I'm done."
When Orduval entered the cave he wondered at the power and efficiency of the tools the drone employed. It had carved out branching rooms, with no sign of the stone debris removed, had smoothed walls and cut shelves, levelled the floor and installed lights. Everywhere protruded wiring and pipework, ready to be connected to familiar domestic appliances.
"Where will the power and water come from?" Orduval asked, as he inspected his newly fashioned abode.
"I have drilled down to ground water, and behind the rear wall I have installed a small fusion reactor—enough for your needs."
Over the ensuing months the drone brought in appliances, furniture, carpets, installed sanitary facilities, filled a food store and cooler. When it brought him a desk and a chair, Orduval sat down, opened his console and typed The Desert of the Mind: A History, and appended his own name to it. After a moment of consideration he deleted his name. Then, remembering stories of one of the early colonists, he appended the pseudonym Uskaron and began to write.