The Best of AE van Vogt Part 16

Of course, he knew nothing of the kind. But it was the technique. By stating the generalization, he would evoke from the Glis's perception and memory network, first, the truth. Then, like all living things, the Glis would immedi-ately have the automatic impulse to give forth the informa-tion as it actually was.

Yet before it could do so, it would exercise the restraint of secrecy. And that would be an exact pattern, a reafirmationof similar precise restraints in its long, long past. His prob-lem was to utilize it before it destimulated, because as long as it held, it was the equivalent of a logic-of-levels gestalt.

Having, according to the theory, mobilized it, Cemp transmitted the triggering signal.

A startled thought came from the Glis: "What have you done?"

It was Cemp's turn to be sly, covert, scheming. He said, "I had to call to your attention that you had better deal with me."

It was too late for the Glis to help itself, but the pretense-if successful-might save many lives.

"I wish to point out," said the Glis, "that I have not yet damaged anything of value."

Cemp was profoundly relieved to hear the statement. But he had no regrets. With such a creature as this, he could not hope to repeat what he was doing against it. Once the process was started, it was all or nothing.

"What was it you said before about bargaining?" the Glis asked urgently.

Cemp steeled himself against sympathy.

The Glis continued, "I'll give you all my secrets in ex-change for your telling me what you're doing to me. I'm experiencing severe internal disturbance, and I don't know why."

Cemp hesitated. It was a tremendous offer. But he divined that once he made such a promise, he would have to keep it.

What had happened was this: As he had hoped, his final signal had triggered the equivalent of a colony gestalt, in this instance the process by which life forms slowly over the millennia adjusted to exterior change.

And the cycle-completing control centers, the growth-change mechanisms in the great being, were stimulated.

Silkies understood the nature of growth, and of change they knew much from their own bodies. But Silkies were late indeed in the scheme of life. In terms of evolution, their cells were as old as the rocks and the planets. The entire history of life's progression was in every cell of a Silkie.

That could not be true of the Glis. It was from an ancient eon, and it had stopped time within itself. Or at least, it had not pa.s.sed on its seed, which was the way of change through time. In itself, it manifested old, primitive forms. Great forms they were, but the memory in each cell would be limited to what had gone before. Therefore, it couldn't know what, in holding back as it had, it was holding back from.

"I promise not to go on to the Nijjan system," said the Glis. "Observe-I'm already stopping."

Cemp sensed a cessation of the motion of the planetoid, but it seemed a minor act, not meaningful.

He merely noted, in pa.s.sing, the ident.i.ty of the star the Glis had named, observing that since it knew the name, ithad been there before. This seemed to imply that the Glis had a purpose in going there.

It didn't matter; they were turning away from it, would never reach it. If there was a threat there for Cemp or for Silkies, it was now diverted and had been useful only in that it had forced him to action regardless of the consequences.

The Glis's willingness to make amends when it no longer had any choice was merely a sad commentary on its charac-ter, but much too late. Many planets too late, Cemp thought.

How many? he wondered. And because he was in the strange emotional condition of someone whose whole thought and effort are concentrated on a single intensely felt purpose, he asked the question aloud automatically, as it came into his mind.

"I don't think I should tell you; you might hold it against me," the Glis replied.

It must have sensed Cemp's adamant state, for it said quickly, "Eighteen hundred and twenty-three."

So many!

The total of them did not shock Cemp-it hurt him. For one of that countless number of unnecessary dead on those planets was Joanne. Another was Charley Baxter.

"Why have you done all this?" Cemp asked. "Why destroy all those planets?"

"They were so beautiful."

True. Cemp had a sudden mental vision of a great planet hanging in s.p.a.ce, its atmosphere ballooning up above the oceans and mountains and plains. He had seen that sight often, yet found it always a thing of splendor beyond all the visual delights of the universe.

The feeling pa.s.sed, for a planet was beautiful when it wasbrooded over by its parent sun and not as a shrunken museum piece.

The Glis with its planets was like a head hunter of old. Skillfully, he had murdered each victim. Patiently, he had reduced the head to its small size. Lovingly, he had placed it in his collection.

For the head hunter, each perfect miniature head was a symbol of his manhood. For the Glis, the planets were ... what?

Cemp couldn't imagine.

But he had delayed long enough. He sensed incipient violence on the communication band. He said hastily, "All right, I agree-as soon as you do what I want, I'll tell you exactly how I'm attacking you."

"What do you want?"

Cemp said, "First, let the other Silkies go outside."

"But you'll do as I've asked?"

"Yes. When you've released them, put me and the Earth outside, safely."

"Then you'll tell me?"

"Yes."

The Glis threatened, "If you don't, I'll smash your little planet. I will not let you or it escape, if you don't tell me."

"I'lltellyou."

14.

The method that was used was, the entire section of the planetoid surrounding Cemp simply lifted up and shot off into the sky. Cemp found himself floating in black, empty s.p.a.ce, surrounded by meteorite debris.

The Glis's thought came to him, "I have done my part. Now tell me!"

Even as Cemp complied, he began to wonder if he really understood what was happening.

Uneasiness came. In setting in motion a cycle-completion process, he had taken it for granted that Nature would strikea balance. An old life form had somehow been preserved here, and in its body, evolution was now proceeding at lightning speed. Millions of years of change had already been compressed into minutes of time. Since none other of its kind remained alive, he had a.s.sumed that the species had long since evolved to ... what?

What was this creature? A chrysalis? An egg? Would it become a b.u.t.terfly of s.p.a.ce, a great worm, a gigantic bird?

Such possibilities had not occurred to him before. He had thought only of the possibility of extinction.

But-it struck him keenly-he hadn't considered seriously enough what extinction might consist of in its end product.

Indeed, he hadn't thought about the existence of an end product.

Unhappily, Cemp remembered what the computer had reported-that the atomic structure of this giant being reflected a younger state of matter.

Could it be that, as the particles "adjusted" and changed to current norm, energy would be released on a hitherto unknown scale?

Below, a t.i.tanic thing happened.

Part of the planetoid lifted, and a solid ball of red-hot matter, at least a mile thick, lifted slowly out of it.

As Cemp drew aside to let the improbable thing past him, he saw that an even more unlikely phenomenon was taking place. The "up" speed of the chunk of now white-hot rock and dirt was increasing-and the ma.s.s was growing.

It was well past him, and it was at least a hundred miles in diameter. A minute later, it was five hundred miles thick, and it was still expanding, still increasing in speed.

It expanded to a burning, incredible ma.s.s.

Suddenly, it was ten thousand miles in diameter and was still going away, still growing.

Cemp sent out a general alarm: "Get away-as fast as you can. Away!"

As he himself fled, using a reversal of the gravity of themonstrous body behind him, he saw that in those few minutes it had grown more than 100,000 miles in diameter.

It was quite pink at this point-strangely, beautifully pink.

The color altered even as he watched, turning faintly yellow. And the body that emitted the beautiful ocher light was now more than 1,000,000 miles in diameter.

As big as Earth's sun.

In minutes more, it grew to the size of a giant blue sun, ten times the diameter of Sol.

It began to turn pink again, and it grewone hundred times in ten minutes. Brighter thanMirathe Wonderful, bigger than gloriousRas Algethi.

But pink, not red. A deeper pink than before; not red, so definitely not a variable.

All around was the starry universe, bright with unfamiliar objects that glowed near and far-hundreds of them, strung out like a long line of jack-o'-lanterns.

Below was Earth.

Cemp looked at that scene in the heavens and then at the near, familiar planet, and an awful excitement seized him.

Hethought,Is it possible that everything had to grow, that the Glis's change altered this entire area of s.p.a.ce-time?

Old forms could not keep their suppressed state once thesupercolossalpink giant completed the growth that had somehow been arrested from time's beginning.

And so the Glis was now a sun in its prime, but with eighteen hundred and twenty-three planets strung out like so many starry brilliants over the whole near sky.

Everywhere he looked were planets so close to him that they looked like moons. He made a quick, anxious calcula-tion and realized with great relief that all those planets were still within the warming area of the monstrous sun that hung out there, half a light-year away.

As Cemp descended, at the top speed his Silkie body couldwithstand, into the huge atmosphere blanket that surroun-ded Earth, everything seemed the same-the land, the sea, the cities. ...

He swooped low over one highway and observed cars going along it.

He headed for the Silkie Authority in a haze of wonder and saw the shattered window from which he had leaped so dramatically-not yet repaired!

When, moments later, he landed among the same group of men who had been there at his departure, he realized there had been some kind of a time stasis, related to size.

For Earth and its people, that eighty days had been ... eighty seconds.

Afterwards, he would hear how people had experienced what seemed like an earthquake, tension in their bodies, momentary sensory blackout, a brief feeling that it was dark. ...

Now, as he entered, Cemp transformed to human form and said in a piercing voice, "Gentlemen, prepare for the most remarkable piece of information in the history of the universe. That pink sun out there is not the result of an atmospheric distortion.

"And, gentlemen, Earth now has eighteen hundred in-habited sister planets. Let's begin to organize for a fantastic future!"

Later, comfortably back in his Florida home, Cemp said to Joanne, "Now we can see why the Silkie problem didn't have a solution as things stood. For Earth, two thousand of us was saturation. But in this new sun system. ..."

It was no longer a question of what to do with the 6,000 members of the Silkie nation but of how they could get a hundred such groups to cope with the work to be done.

Quickly!

THE PROXY.

INTELLIGENCE.

1.

Take a sentient being-.

Even Steve Hanardy could fit that description. He was a short, stocky man, with the look about him of someone who had lived too close to the animal stage. His eyes were perpetually narrowed, as if he were peering against a bright light. His face was broad and fleshy. But he was human. He could think and act, and he was a giver and not a taker.

-Put this sentient person in a solar system surrounded by a two billion light-year ocean of virtual nothingness beyond which, apparently, is more nothingness- Hanardy, a product of the Earth's migration to the moon and to the planets of the solar system, was born onEuropa,one of the moons of Jupiter, before the educational system caught up to the colonists. He grew up an incoherent roustabout and a s.p.a.cehand on the freighters and pa.s.senger liners that sped about among the immense amount of debris-from moons to habitable meteorites-that surrounded the ma.s.sive Jupiter. It was a rich and ever-growing trade area, and so presently even the stolid, unimaginative Hanardy had a freighter of his own. Almost from the beginning, his most fruitful journeys were occasional trips to the meteorite where a scientist, ProfessorUngarn,lived with his daughter, Patricia. For years, it was a lucrative, routine voyage, without incident.

-Confront this sentient individual with this enigma of being- The last voyage had been different.

To begin with, he accepted a pa.s.senger-a reporter named William Leigh, who ostensibly wanted to write up the lonely route for his news syndicate. But almost as soon as the freighter reached theUngarn meteorite and entered the air-lock, the meteorite was attacked bystranges.p.a.ce vessels, which were capable of far greater speeds than anything Hanardy had ever seen. And William Leigh was not who he seemed.