"I take it," the Proprietor asked the Eldest, "that you approve of what my species has accomplished?"
Empleado shuddered. If the nautiloids were right in what they believed, then how could he go on living with all the things he'd done over a lifetime's service to the KGB?
"I wouldn't wish to embarrass you, Mister Thoggosh," the Eldest replied, "nor myself. But I confess that I find your people rather stuffy. There are," he conceded, "certain adventurous individuals among them who represent a significant step toward perfection of evolution's highest possible level, the fully autonomous individual."
"But what about the Predecessors?" someone else wanted to know.
The Eldest dismissed the question with contempt. "In their own way, those poor bugs," he told the group, "are as silly and hysterical as the dinosauroids. Even now, I shudder at the thought that I was once Aelbraugh Pritsch. I shall have nightmares about that bird-costume I have now so gratefully discarded. I'm afraid neither the trilobites nor the avians are much of an improvement."
"Who do you approve of, then?"
"Well, from my admittedly limited point of view, I must say I rather like sea-scorpionoids and humans. All of the arachnoid species are very bright and attractive. Now that I've seen one, I entertain certain hopes for dogs. The fact is, with the possible exception of those termite-minded trilobites, I regard every one of my Successors as superior beings, vastly more admirable and successful than myself. Evolution has created, in each of their species, a greater number of complete individuals, in a shorter time, and in much smaller, more efficient packages.
"I also admire them personally. It is relatively easy to remain an individualist when you are the only one around. However, to accomplish it in companyin a crowdrequires concentration."
Empleado hardly heard the talk going on around him. More and more, he realized, each day he awoke, he felt he had less to live for. He caressed the smooth, hard bulge of the H&K P9S in his coverall pocket. Perhaps, the thought came, he would use the pistol after all.
And one round of the ammunition.
Together, they swam toward the light.
Increasingly, it was like swimming through a mist that had caught fire. Eichra Oren tired after the first few kilometers and, at her invitation, climbed on the tireless Model 17's broad, armored back. Even so, each hundred meters they gained was more difficult as the amount of algae suspended in the oxygenated liquid fluorocarbon multiplied until it made breathing impossible.
"Hey, Boss," Sam's voice cut through the Antarctican's clouded mind like a knife. "Better break out the filmsuit, don't you think? Your lungs weren't made for straining vegetables."
"Hunh? Oh. Yes, Sam, I think you're right. Do you mind stopping for a moment, Model 17?"
"Not at all. I shall use the time to clear the intakes of my jets, which are becoming clogged with the same material." She paused. "Eichra Oren, I do not believe that things here are as the Predecessors intended."
The man pulled the suit from the rucksack he carried. It made a bundle little bigger than his palm. Unfolding it, he slipped both legs and both arms inside, sealed the midseam from crotch to throat, and pulled the hood and flexible mask over his head. In a few moments, he could breathe again and his head began to clear.
"What do you mean, not as the Predecessors intended?"
"This algae," she replied. "If it bothers meinterfering with my propulsion system in this instancethen like you, they would have found it most unpleasant indeed."
"It's like every aquarium Eichra Oren ever tried to keep," Sam told her. "You're the trilobite expert, what do you think it means?"
"I'm not certain. Perhaps only that they ought to have had someone like me to maintainwhat's that?"
Dark forms loomed out of the dazzling fog, headed straight for them. As they came nearer, Eichra Oren could see that they were like Model 17, only smaller. He counted half a dozen of them before he noticed that their claws were extended.
"It is the Predecessors!" Model 17 shouted. "My Creators have returned!"
"Yeah," Sam told her, "and they're pissed!"
Rosalind shook her head. "How can you be sure that's true for every different sapient species?"
Being careful not to disturb the othersthey were all raptly paying attention to the Eldest, anywayEmpleado arose and quietly left the living room by the front door, descending the balcony stairs and going around the house into the woods behind it. Laid over a random pattern of small impact craters, the ground here was far from level. On a rise well back of the house, he sat down cross-legged, took several breaths, and pulled the big black pistol from his pocket.
"The combinations and permutations which make for mere physical appearance," explained the Eldest, "are virtually limitless, determined by genetic chance and by the selective exigencies of differing environments. Through more of my `spy' cells, for example, I've been following the interstellar progress of the Predecessors, and they've yet to encounter anything that looks at all like organisms evolved on Earth. Evolution simply is not that convergent.
"On the other hand or claw or tentacle or pseudopod, intelligence is a specific quality bounded in its needs and capabilities by natural law. Each of you has already encountered, in each other, not to mention myself, minds fully as alienand not very alien at all, as it turns outas any they will ever meet among the stars."
Empleado could still hear the giant amoeba through a large open window. Its voice had amazing carrying power, possibly because its entire surface vibrated to produce words. What he didn't hear was the stealthy approach of a human being behind him.
"If you would care for a concrete example, simply consider what I sincerely believe is the finest invention of all the Successor races: the crossword puzzle."
"What?" That from at least half a dozen voices.
Empleado put the cool steel circle of the H&K's cavernous muzzle to his forehead.
The manipulator that slashed its way toward Eichra Oren's face met the edge of his assessor's sword, instead, and sheared away. The claw-end sank rapidly out of sight. It had been made of metal, rather than the armored flesh of a living trilobite.
Astride the larger, more powerful machine that was Model 17, he followed the defensive stroke of his blade with a thrust, probing the insides of his attacker, tearing wires and tubes, showering them all in short-lived sparks. The device, whatever it was, began to swim in wider and wider circles until it disappeared into the haze.
"Behind you!" How Sam could have seen their next assailantafter all, he could only see things from the Antarctican's viewpointwas a mystery Eichra Oren didn't stop to ponder. Instead, he aimed with the pistol he held in his left hand, which he couldn't remember drawing, and delivered a bolide of plasma straight into its face. Unfortunately, the blob of energy cooled before it reached the machine and he had to shoot again as it drew closer.
This time, the pistol worked. The front end of the artificial trilobite vanishedhe felt the heat of it wash over himleaving exposed parts dangling.
It sank without another twitch.
Meanwhile, Model 17 had seized a third machine, taken the edges of its carapace in several dozen of her claws, and heaved with all her strength, ripping the luckless device straight down the middle. The remaining three dithered for a moment, hovering several meters away in the hazy liquid, then turned tail and vanished.
Man and robot hung silently in the mist for several minutes, catching their literal and figurative breath, respectively. Sam, too, was speechless for a surprisingly long time.
Then: "I hate this, being helpless this way! I wanted to sink my teeth right into those"
"Had you done so, Sam," Model 17 observed, "you would no longer have had any teeth."
"He doesn't have any now," countered Eichra Oren. "Besides, those robots were only doing their job. I suspect I know why this area hasn't evolved over the past billion years."
"I believe I agree," Model 17 told him, "I think those things were mutant-hunters."
"You mean they're designed to attack anything that doesn't meet the local building code?"
"That's exactly what I mean, Sam," declared Eichra Oren. "If it isn't on their list of approved life-forms somewhere, they're supposed to kill it, preserving the Midcambrian ecology. Model 17, those things must be controlled by a computer. Do you think you might be able to communicate with it and ask it to back off?"
"I don't know, Eichra Oren, but it may not be necessary. During the fight we drifted upward, being somewhat buoyant. If you look ahead, I think you'll see an island."
The man stifled a retort at this absurdity. Through the haze he could just make out something solid, floating in the midst of all this liquid, under the apparent sun. Not only did it seem solid, but if he looked hard enough, he thought he could see trees growing on it.
"I thought that `Committee for the Preservation of Antiquities' had a KGB stink to it!"
Empleado twisted around painfully to see Colonel Chuck Tai pointing an enormous nickel-plated revolver at his face. His own pistol suddenly seemed very small and redundant somehow, so he let the hand that held it fall to his lap. "Planning to assassinate someone in the house, Mr. KGB, like the Proprietor or the Eldest?"
"Oh dear," came the voice of the latter from inside. "And just as everyone was basking in a self-congratulatory glow. But I stand by what I said. I greatly enjoy crossword puzzles and have even added to the art, if I may say so, creating cubed and n-dimensional specimens. The point is that all of youthose who do the proper sort of writinginvented them because you all think alike. You must. If you did anything else, it couldn't be called thinking."
Empleado shook his head. "You don't understand . . . I wasn't planning to hurt anybody but"
Before he could finish, a bizarre figure hurtled from the woods, charging straight for the back of the house. Both men recognized the half human, half trilobite immediately and lifted their guns. Tai fired his long-barreled weapon first, each of his six shots, inexpressibly loud, paced evenly, almost in rhythm. The heavy slugs splashed off the Banker's carapace without seeming to do any harm.
By the time Empleado began shooting, Deshovich had almost reached the big window. His first seven shots and the eight that followed had even less effect.
Tai was on his feet immediately, and somewhere Empleado found the strength to follow and keep up. The Chinese officer hurled himself at the nightmare form just as it crashed through the window. The thing which had been Earth's dictator seized the man by a thigh and tossed him back outside where he fetched up against a tree with a hideous dull thump. He fell to the ground, motionless.
Abruptly, Empleado found himself back in Eichra Oren's living room, facing the Banker with an empty pistol in his hand. Before he or anybody else could move, Deshovich raised a clawed mechanical manipulator and punched it through the KGB man's body.
Empleado's last conscious act was twisting around to see the clawed arm, syrupy with bright red blood, protruding from his back.