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SIXTY-EIGHT The Eldest

"That being the Predecessors called the Eldest," Eneri Relda gave them all one of her world-destroying smiles, "is a solitary collective entity, a single sapience evolved—and not very different—from common, ordinary slime mold."

Like the inside of an old shower curtain. Eichra Oren was the only one of them with the faculty, a subsidiary discipline of p'Na, of shutting off his emotions. There would be a price to pay, but hearing what his mother had just said, it was his only chance for survival.

"A solitary collective entity." He gulped his feelings and managed a coherent reply while others around him were still stunned. "Isn't that a contradiction . . . Mother?"

"No more than for any multicelled organism, dear." The beautiful Antarctican matron laid a gentle hand on his arm. "One difference is the need for mechanical proximity. The Eldest is comprised of countless man-sized amoebalike `cells' capable of operating at great distances from one another. Some have been disguised and placed among the younger races as . . . well, observers, the same way the Elders employed what Americans call `Unidentified Flying Objects' to observe their system."

Model 17 was as outraged as a mechanical device could be. "This confirms what I am now convinced the Injured One thought merely a clever lie—there are spies among us!"

Eichra Oren hadn't taken his eyes from his mother's. How could Eneri Relda be nothing more than an amoeba, part of a giant slime mold? Couldn't he remember when she read him bedtime stories? He couldn't remember nursing at her breast, but Antarctican women were not shy, and he'd watched several little brothers and sisters at it. Couldn't he remember her kissing him better when he fell and hurt his knee? Was he a giant amoeba, too, who simply never knew the truth about himself until now?

"Despite its multicellular nature," she continued, "the Eldest is a single, vast organism, just as each of you are. But another difference, one that may seem like another contradiction until you see it working, is that each of those cells operates more autonomously than yours, while at the same time, I . . . the Eldest exercises more conscious control over them than you do over yours."

"Mother, I don't understand. . . ."

Eichra Oren had meant the statement more generally than Eneri Relda took it. "Very well, dear, let's attend to a bit of overdue business we all seem to have forgotten, then we'll take a look at one of those cells. . . ." As if she were someone's fairy godmother, she raised a hand and gestured. Eichra Oren felt something brush, then seize, his ankle. He looked down to see a human hand protruding from the metal block he stood beside. It was a familiar hand, golden brown, slender-fingered, with the shiny look that comes from being washed too often.

"Rosalind!" He knelt down beside the block and grabbed her hand. It was cold to his touch and closed hard on his fingers. He pulled, and the hand was followed by a wrist, a forearm, an elbow, an upper arm and shoulder. Eichra Oren reached through the apparent surface of the block, got both hands under Rosalind's armpits, and lifted her out into the light. Her lips were blue and her teeth chattered, but she blinked up at him, taking in Owen, Toya, and Eneri Relda, as well.

"I never thought I'd see any of you again," she croaked. "Is this your mother? Nice to meet you. Anyone feel like calling out for a pizza—and maybe ten or twelve dozen cheeseburgers?" She slumped back and closed her eyes. Toya pulled a blanket from her bag and wrapped it about the physician's shoulders, not knowing how much good it would do in the liquid fluorocarbon that surrounded them. She began to feed Rosalind from the bagged emergency rations she'd brought along.

Eneri Relda made another gesture. In the square formed by two pairs of nearby blocks, a glowing, fuzzy patch of vapor began to form. Before they were entirely aware of it, the patch had grown to man-height, solidified, and assumed a shape they all knew.

"Well, it's about time, isn't it?" declared Mister Thoggosh's dinosauroid assistant, Aelbraugh Pritsch. "Let me tell you, I've been looking forward to this for centuries!"

With that, the creature began to shed what he explained had been a form of hot, uncomfortable camouflage—although he seemed to retain many of his nervous mannerisms. What was left, once its scaly feathers were on the floor or drifting through the fluorocarbon around them, resembled something usually seen under a microscope. Standing before them was a glistening, transparent, pear-shaped object two meters tall. Through its surface, Eichra Oren could see organelles, he supposed, busy with functions similar to those performed in other beings by mitochondria and such subcellular objects. The entity's boundary seemed to pulse as it talked, and the whole thing jiggled like a gelatin dessert.

"It's a welcome relief," it informed them, still using the voice of Aelbraugh Pritsch, "to have all of my mind back. Now I can relax and freely communicate my thoughts as the Eldest—rather than that silly bird-thing which never knew what it really was—to all the sapient beings aboard the wonderful 5023 Eris!"

"How did you—I mean Aelbraugh Pritsch—get down here so quickly?" Owen demanded.

"Yes," added Model 17 suspiciously, "and please explain why you've been spying on us!"

The amoeba-thing that had once been Aelbraugh Pritsch twisted itself around to the American. "Owen, comma, Roger, corporal, Aerospace Force, one each: I believe, sir, that you have too many secrets of your own to be as anxious as you seem to disclose the secrets of others too quickly. As a single example among many, I'm tempted to fetch that distillery of yours down here and sample what you're brewing. At least three minds among you tell me it would be an interesting experiment."

Owen grinned and spread his hands. "Be my guest, Eldest."

"Another time, perhaps. In one way, you disappoint me. Transferring Aelbraugh Pritsch from the surface was a much less impressive accomplishment than another you all seem to take for granted. I suppose you'd prefer to hear, given your scientific prejudices, that Eneri Relda appeared suddenly aboard 5023 Eris, whisked across space, time, and probability, courtesy of some variation of the Virtual Drive."

"Somebody," replied Owen, "said something about happy thoughts and pixie dust, as I recall."

"That sounds like Sam." The giant amoeba gleamed and jiggled. "He was closer to the truth than you might believe. Try this with me: concentrate on your smallest left toe. That's it, place all your attention there, all your consciousness. Be in that toe. Now, employing the same concentration, switch the locus of your consciousness to your right ear. That's how Aelbraugh Pritsch and Eneri Relda got here."

At mention of his canine friend, Eichra Oren called to Sam through his implant, but received no answer. The upper third of the Eldest turned again, its surface showing twist marks until the rest flowed around and caught up. "You're a fine thing of your sort, Model 17, you've nothing to be ashamed of. Any error you may feel you've made was that of your Creators, programmed into you.

"For myself, I'd protest that I was content for many eons to be alone, without external irritants. But I realized that, sooner or later, evolution would provide me with company whether I wanted it or not. Thus I stationed `spies'—small portions of myself—among the more promising species, to be certain I had sufficient warning of their impending sapience. Otherwise, I did not interfere with them, and I most carefully refrained from doing them harm."

"They all say that," Toya declared, but without feeling. Eichra Oren suspected she was beginning to like the Eldest and knew why. The ancient being reminded him of Mister Thoggosh, too.

"Indeed they do, my dear Sergeant—Toya, if I may—but I had a good, selfish reason to be circumspect. You see, I found I had grown lonely." The moral debt assessor nodded to himself. He'd also suspected that the Eldest felt that way and had actually been looking forward to what he called "company." "I must say that the trilobites, once they arose to sapience, were rather a disappointment. In the first place, they seemed to possess no sense of humor, whatever."

Eneri Relda caught her son's eye and laughed. "Above all, a sapient needs a sense of humor!"

"In the second," the Eldest went on, "when they invented interdimensional translocation—and discovered that the first alternative world they explored was already inhabited by an organism vastly older and (it is profoundly to be hoped) wiser than themselves—the poor darlings were struck absolutely numb with terror."

"You are speaking," stated Model 17, who shared the Predecessors' disability, "of yourself."

"I suppose it might have been that way with whatever sapience they ran across first. Among their other somewhat odd reactions, they began to feel a protective, almost motherly urge toward their own presumed Successors. It never seems to have occurred to them that this was a contradictory and rather destructive attitude. All the pitiable things being of one mind—quite literally, I'm afraid—they had no one to disagree with them and point out their error."

"That, of course," added Eichra Oren's mother, "is the ultimate problem with any form of collectivism."

Toya shook her head, unable to decide whether to address Eneri Relda or the thing that had been Aelbraugh Pritsch. "But you're a collective organism yourself, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Owen asked, "what makes you immune to error?"

The Eldest laughed. "Oh, I'm not immune to error, not at all, dear me. Nor am I a collective organism in the same sense as the trilobites. To be sure, the distinction is subtle. I spent a million years pondering it until I arrived at my present opinion."

"Opinion?" Wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, Rosalind struggled to her feet. It must have been warming her; she sounded angry. "The oldest, wisest being in the System spends a million years pondering a problem and all he has to offer us in the end is an opinion?"

"I'm glad you've sufficiently recovered to feel belligerent, Doctor—may I call you Rosalind?—but isn't that all any of us offers? Each of us may feel certain that he or she possesses answers which are absolutely true. Perhaps some of us do. To others, they can never be more than opinions, which is why it's important that no one ever be given authority to impose his or her opinions on others by force. As long as they all agree on that principle—and the right to defend it using any means that come to hand that do not contradict it—then sapients of all opinions can live together and cooperate freely to their mutual benefit, in peace."

Eichra Oren laughed. "That's p'Nan philosophy! Nautiloid civilization didn't really begin until they discovered that principle and put it to work. It took them fifty million years!"

"More like a hundred and fifty million," replied the Eldest. "That's one reason I've been so lonely, don't you see? And highly interested in any sapient species that came after me? It's why I took a purely metaphorical hand in their development—so that perhaps I wouldn't always be lonely."

Eichra Oren nodded, understanding. "`And God divided himself into a myriad of parts, that He might have friends.'" The quotation was from one of pre-Soviet America's most important—and viciously suppressed—philosophers.

"And enemies," the Eldest added. "They're every bit as necessary as friends, you know. In terms of one's physiology, I suppose they're good for the circulation."

Owen remained suspicious. "What do you mean, `a metaphorical hand in their development'?"

"Yes," Rosalind agreed, "I thought you said you didn't interfere with other sapient species."

"He said he never harmed them," Toya offered quietly, "but that's only an opinion, isn't it?"

"And speaking of enemies," Model 17 demanded, "who else do you have spying on us?"

"Dear me," sighed the Eldest, enjoying himself thoroughly, "whatever have I gotten myself into now?"

Eneri Relda gestured. In answer to Model 17, Aerospace Force Major Jesus Ortiz, former captain of the Geronimo, materialized between two metal blocks, shed his human skin, and melted into the shimmering entity that had been Aelbraugh Pritsch. This performance was duplicated by the appearance—and disappearance—of Andre Valerian, the expedition's Russian agricultural specialist. The large amoeba was now even larger, about three meters tall.

Pushing the thought away from himself as quickly as it came, Eichra Oren kept expecting his mother, the exquisite Eneri Relda, esteemed and legendary survivor of the Lost Continent, to perform the same vanishing act. Instead, the Eldest extended a pseudopod for a gesture much like Mister Thoggosh might have made.

"I believe that pair of demonstrations will be more than sufficient, at least for the present. And I solemnly promise you all that I will answer the remainder of your many questions later. In the meantime, a certain matter has come to my attention which—"

"How about answering one more question, right now?"

"Sam!" Eichra Oren shouted the name out loud.

He heard a canine chuckle. "None other than. I've been topside, Boss, with the World's Foremost Authority, watching this clambake as it happened, courtesy of your implant, among others. I thought I'd better get down here right away, because—"

"You're quite right, Sam," the Eldest acknowledged. "I apologize for not thinking of it sooner. Sam anticipates that you, Eichra Oren, have been wondering exactly what the hell (his words, I fear) all of this makes you. That fact is," the entity declared proudly, "you—or, more properly, your lovely mother here—were an experiment, and a very successful one, I might add, in something akin to—"

"Where the flaming fuck is Deshovich?" Owen's shouted question caused them all to look around the chamber anxiously. None of them saw any trace of the Banker.

The Eldest sighed. "I suppose he took our preoccupation with one another as an opportunity to escape. Not to worry—I don't believe he can get far in his regrettable condition."

"There isn't any place he can go that I can't find him," Model 17 vowed grimly.

"In any case, Nikola Deshovich has an appointment to keep with destiny," Eneri Relda told them, looking from Eichra Oren to Rosalind and back again, "in the form of my son."

"And may God," added Sam, only partially sarcastically, "have mercy on his soul."

 

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