The composite being which was Ka was now large and powerful, with tentacles hanging many metres below his multi-hued body, but as yet his history had been no different from that of any of the untold billions of hydrozoans which for aeons had lived and died in the Earth’s oceans. It was not until he had survived the time of change that he entered the second and unique phase of his existence.
And the change came abruptly.
At one moment Ka was cruising—thoughtless, dreamless, mindless—on the surface of a calm, warm sea; and at the next he was at the centre of a maelstrom.
The currents which boiled and raged around him were so ferocious at this stage that sections of his body were torn away and dispersed into the surrounding water. Ka felt neither surprise nor fear. He was still without awareness of identity, merely an organic machine capable of a limited range of responses to his environment, and he reacted by contracting his body until he was carried into a zone of reduced turbulence.
As soon as the disruptive forces had abated he again began the search for food, and for other creatures to serve as replacements for the organs he had lost in the sudden turmoil. He was unperturbed by the fact that gravity no longer operated on him, that his tentacles now tended to spread uniformly in all directions instead of hanging in parallel clusters beneath the main portion of his body. He continued his primeval existence, oblivious to the more insidious and prolonged danger which now threatened him.
In the beginning the new world was small, containing only a few cubic kilometres of water, and solar and cosmic radiation sleeted through it with virtually no reduction of intensity. The bombardment of high-energy particles produced disease and death in many creatures, wrought freakish changes in the genes of others. Non-viable mutations were born and lived their truncated lives, and yet other mutations which might have been successful in a more favourable environment fell victim to the continuing assault of the universe. The hail of sub-atomic bullets found many targets in Ka’s body, but his colonial structure enabled him to survive by discarding units which were destroyed or irreparably damaged.
At this stage he was still without intelligence, reacting blindly and instinctively to his environment, but the composition of his body had begun to undergo a profound change. In the conditions of zero gravity and high radiation some of his units developed unnatural complexities, and began to create their own neural pathways which linked them to similar benign mutations. As the process accelerated the original purpose of the colony was forgotten, and instead of absorbing units for a narrow range of functions it learned the principle of random usage, cannibalising higher and higher life forms for their organic components.
All the while the new world was growing in size. As the radiation levels within the globe of water dropped to an acceptable level, Ka’s body slowed its rate of growth and began consolidating its gains. The nerve networks became even more complex and multi-connected, and gradually—over a period of centuries—there came awareness of identity, self-knowledge and … intelligence.
A human being who becomes part of Ka can react in only one way, Myrah discovered. She began to scream.
Her cries did not manifest themselves physically, because there was no air to be forced from her lungs and, in any case, the relevant muscle groups were no longer under her control. She hung in the blackness, her body limp and apparently without life, but a part of her being was screaming nonetheless. Even when she began to think and take notice of her incredible new circumstances, the screaming continued—as regular as the breathing which was no longer necessary—in the lower levels of her consciousness, pulsing out its message of fear and revulsion.
From earliest infancy, like all members of the Clan. Myrah had lived in constant pursuit of air, never daring to exhale in open water without first having located a fresh bubble and made certain it was within reach. Now, taking refuge from the overall enormity of the situation, her mind began to dwell on its separate aspects, and she found herself marvelling at her ability to go on living without air. She had been told there was enough oxygen in the bloodstream to sustain life for quite a long time provided one did not panic, but this was a different phenomenon altogether. It was as if she was being nourished by a cool placenta which could take care of her bodily requirements for an indefinite period, perhaps for ever. The sensation was both loathsome and luxurious, and did not bear thinking about.
Myrah’s next discovery was that, in spite of the darkness, she could see. It was not the normal clear vision she was accustomed to as a native of the euphotic zone, nor even the awareness of black upon black she had been developing near the end of the journey. Fragmentary images appeared and faded behind her eyes, like memories of dreams, sometimes superimposed on each other, sometimes reduced in size so that many could be presented at the same time. In some of them were the unmistakable shapes of the Horra. Others revealed meaningless slow movement of dark surfaces, and occasionally there were glimpses of human outlines, one of which appeared to be female.
Am I looking at myself? Myrah wondered, and the picture grew clearer momentarily. It was of a dead woman, with wasted limbs, and skeins of black, gelatinous threads issuing from her mouth, eyes and ears. The strands fanned away into a darkness which seemed to hide a multitude of similar horrors. No, Myrah pleaded, my mother can’t be here. She fought to move her arms and legs, but nothing happened. There was only a great passivity, a sense of primeval contentment.
She suddenly found she had a perspective of centuries, a timescale against which a human lifespan was very short, and in a dim way she realised that—as a part of Ka—she was thinking Ka’s thoughts, Ka’s blurred, protean, multi-faceted, wordless, alien thoughts….
First there was the Sun.
Then there was the Earth.
Then there was the sea.
Then there was life in the sea.
Then there was life outside the sea.
The sea is not one. In some places it is warm. In some places it is cold. At the cold cold places it ceases to be sea. It becomes white rock.
The Earth is not one. In some times it is warm. In some times it is cold.
In the cold times the white rock is more. In the warm times the white rock is less.
When the white rock is less the sea is more, and what is outside the sea is less. The life outside the sea did not want the sea to be more.
They put great shells in the sea. They were shells which make one place another place.
And the sea flowed into them, and then it was in another place.
When the Earth grew cold again the white rock began to be more and the sea began to be less. The shells turned, and the sea flowed from the second place to the first place.
This happened many times.
Then there was Ka.
The Earth grew warm again. The white rock began to grow less, and the sea began to grow more.
But the shells moved the sea from the first place to the second place.
Ka moved with the sea from the first place to the second place. And in the second place Ka was not one. Ka became more.
The Earth grows cold again, and the white rock is more. The shells in the sea have turned, and the sea flows from the second place to the first place.
Ka is more, but Ka cannot grow less. Ka will be nothing.