Continuum 1, page 11
part #1 of Continuum Series
(Disgusting. Yet he seemed completely unaffected by such savagery. There’s no question about his complete withdrawal from reality.)
Reality? What is reality? What do you know of reality? You presume that you cannot know the world except through your senses and you admit that your senses are limited. Even in the visible spectrum in which your eyes work, your perception is statistical rather than detailed. Your optic nerves do not even report their statistical data directly but operate as a somatic sensor on a part of your brain that generates random visual images. You can only perceive in terms of the impulses your own brain generates. Yet you fall into the trap of believing that you perceive reality.
(Nonsense, of course. A systematic delusion. I suppose extended contact with such alien minds would affect any human that way.)
You even assume that I am human.
(Again the pattern of systematic delusion. Can we trust any data we get from him? How do we separate fantasy and fact? We have to know. The other ships still exist and we have to know the degree of menace from them. God, to have these things descend upon the earth and turn it into Their feeding ground.)
It was not as horrible as all that. There was a kind of oneness in being a part of the Group, the sort of thing that humans have been seeking all of their lives. Your philosophers talk of individuality and the concept of man himself as the measure of all things. Yet you spend all of your lives trying to find an identity in a great group of men. Your whole present society is directed to that end. You preach freedom and submit to a monolithic state that leaves you in constant terror that you may deviate. Didn’t I hear you speak fearfully earlier of an inquisitor? What are you afraid of? That you may stray from the narrow prescribed paths of thinking? Yet all of you have given your freedom of action and decision to this system. What are you afraid of? That you may find the kind of identity that I found?
(My God, now we’re in for it. They’ll monitor this examination room within the next twenty-four hours, perhaps sooner since they know we have him here. What will happen? They certainly can’t allow him to live and contaminate others. They’ll have to do something about us. Contamination of ideas, that’s a sure ticket to the inquisitor.)
It was truly easy to fit into the life of the ship. They took me from the hold and we went through narrow passages that glowed with a soft ruby fire in their depths. Although They were very tall, They were extremely thin and the passages were narrow for my body. I had grown in the crysalis so that my shoulders and my chest filled the passage and in several turns I came close to being wedged tightly. Somehow I managed, for this was my clear duty to follow Them and take my place in the vast masses of Kreel that fed in the depths of the ship and generated the sustenance for Them.
The quarters were extensive and complex like the branching alveoli of a mammalian lung. There were thousands of us, each filling his small compartment. We exercised daily so that our muscles would not atrophy, going through complex muscle-flexing motions in place as the Keepers directed us. The Keepers were a special part of Their social organization and They made sure of the health of the herds. We were fed a complex mixture high in partly-hydrolyzed cellulose and containing the nitrogen sources and the unsaturated sources we need for our health. We could manufacture all of the essential amino acids in our own body, a vast improvement over basic human biochemistry. Vitamins too we could manufacture and the only limitation was that we needed a source of unsaturated carbon chains. Our bodies could, only under limited circumstances, produce an unsaturated oil.
There were seven of us who survived the colony and we now became a part of the complex food chain of the group. We ate and we slept, and more than this, we thought. We extended our consciousness and we merged with Them. During certain regular period the Keepers came among us and tended to us. This was the most remarkable period of rapport. The Keepers were gentle and concerned and when they stroked us with their minds and touched us physically we gave up the exudate that sustained them. There was no bulk to our diet other than the bulk of the excreted pentoses and certain subsidiary material developed by bacteria we harbored in our bodies. We became for them superior manufacturers of food — highly efficient. The only waste products in the cycle were those substances that went to sustain our own bodies and the carbon dioxide and water we expelled from our own metabolism.
(I think I’m going to be ill. Like ants milking aphids. Yet he seems pleased at the idea. Contented, even exalted at the concept.)
Exalted? Why not? You’re struggling with an earlier concept. The substances your body discards are corrupt, useless — mere waste materials. Our bodies had become ordered to a different existence. Even the wastes of our bodies had a purpose. The water replenished the sores of the ship. The carbon-dioxide nourished the complex plants that provided the cellulose of our fodder. It was a true and lasting symbiosis.
The symbiosis of self, the emotional content of mind-to-mind contact was deeply satisfying. It was during this period that we seven discovered that there was, however, a difference. For Them the contact was one of emotional empathy; for us it was deeper with a clearer semantic content. I suppose this was only natural when we consider why our parents took us from human society and brought us to the colony in the north.
(Now it comes out. The older records aren’t clear. After all it was a hundred years ago that they left human society. Perhaps his alienness is not strictly the product of the creatures. Is it possible… ?)
It’s possible that this is why we left, that we differed so much in the function of our minds from our fellow humans. I remember that the contact and the emotional feeling I had for Mother and Father was one-sided. I could receive and send but they could only send. Still they knew that this was the way it should be and all the children that my father had gathered together knew that this was the way it should be. I suppose it was this special difference that allowed us to learn from Them and eventually to surpass Them.
This idyllic existence continued for what may have been months or even years. All the while Their ships marshalled outside the earth for the next great jump to another system. They knew that They could acquire more Kreels on earth but Their morality would not let Them subject an alien race to Their domination, benevolent as it might have been. That was a remarkable thing about Them: They respected the right of the separate races to work out their own destinies even though They might recruit individual members of the race. They had a concept of racial unity but no real understanding of individuality. Anymore than do you and the race of men as it has become.
(More treason. We’ll never survive this session. They’ll take us and remove the contamination and reintegrate us. You know what reintegration can mean?)
Among us evolved a new concept. It was my mind that first verbalized it but it was a product of our group thinking. We recognized that we had derived a special insight from Them that They Themselves were not aware of. They could see the universe on a pragmatic statistical level and more deeply They could see the fine structure of the universe, the detailed interactions that made up the statistical structure of Their senses. In a limited way this allowed Them to manipulate discrete sections of the universe in a manner that humans cannot. It’s very much like the difference between humans who perceive the coming of the seasons and try to manipulate the phenomena with crude methods of cloud seeding and those humans who have learned to feed heat into the upper air streams and modify the climate of a whole subcontinent. It was that way with us. Through Them we saw the mechanism. We learned through our own differences to see and feel and move the factors that They saw. It came to me and the others that we were superior to Them.
It became a logical consequence of this that we could not share our existence further with Them. We would contaminate Them and destroy Their perfect society that had remained in dynamic stasis for eons. We had to leave.
Imagine cows taking over the farm? We became just that. In one period of ten hours we became the masters of the ship.
The effect was subtle. We could not invade and control Their minds. Indeed this would have been against our sensitivities. To sense, to participate in Their existence, to feel as They felt and see as They saw — this was permissible. To reach and control Them — this was as repugnant to us as it is natural to you. The difference is that our control would have been far more complete than your puny masters have ever achieved.
Rather we altered the operation of the ship. Here the inductance of an electrical circuit changed as we reached out and altered the conductivity of a coil or deepened the penetration of a magnetic field. There the mean-free-path of the electrons in a beam changed, enlarged as we interfered with the statistical randomness of the particals. Ion exchange rates in the depths of the chemical reservoirs speeded, in some cases even changed chemical order. The ship foundered, lost power and had to land.
It left the others and directed itself into the planetary atmosphere. It came down in a low sweeping approach while we perceived the radar beams scanning it and altered the information that they sent back. There must have been a great deal of panic since anything unknown in your culture is automatically a menace. You have lived so long in fear and the repression of the discipline that is supposed to meet that fear. Would you be surprised if I told you that there is no enemy? Unless Their survivors now see us as an enemy.
(Damn it. I’d sooner destroy the tape and take the punishment for that than face the Inquisitor after this. Kill him and destroy the tapes and take our chances. Surely you see that’s the answer?… What kind of nonsense is this — this thing a godsend? An answer to our problems? What problems? We have a perfect society, well ordered. We have no problems. Do we?)
The ship landed somewhere on the east coast of your continent. Amid mountains lightly frosted with the first snows of winter. They had once been beautiful if the memories of my father were correct but the pines and the soft scattering of underbrush had been stripped, leaving them bare and cold and the mountain streams diverted to concrete reservoirs. The only area that remained remotely like the natural condition of the land was that around the last stronghold of the aborigines. It was a place they called Cherokee and in the final battle with the intrusive conquerors they had somehow managed to stand fast and preserve the integrity of their land. Since you could not control them, you at least respected their treaty.
The ship landed in the smoky morning that crouched over the mountains and we waited for the reaction. Throughout the ship there was confusion as They realized that something had happened, that They no longer controlled the workings of Their machines. Then we left our chambers and moved painfully through the ship, passing Them as They stood. It was only just that we spare Them the horror of our going. We did certain things that freed unbound electrons in Their nervous systems and gave Them a pleasant passive sleep. Nothing was lost in the Group and though many weaker ones died in that physical existence, They continued to live in the broader consciousness of the Group, such is the unity of Their group mind. So you see it did not violate our morality or Theirs or even yours as you pretend it to be. It did not occur to me at the time that there was a simpler way.
(I’m getting a signal. Interrogation! Answer it, answer it before they check down here. The tape will be monitored soon enough. They report an inquiry. Our methods are the ones prescribed. A deviation? My sanity is as complete as any member of the staff. How can they say that it is not, how can my anointed superiors even think of sending me to the Fields? They’ll come now. Perhaps we can complete the task and they’ll be lenient. After all such complete devotion to duty to the sacrifice of self. Isn’t that what they want? Activate the lock. Let them try to come in. We’ll finish yet.)
It was only a matter of time before you found us. We knew that and we had decided that this was what we wanted. We spread among the community and we became a part of them, sharing in their consciousness and directing them in their total integration. It became obvious at that point that we had a mission and that it had certain evolutionary stages. This was the first and I admit that it was largely experimental. There was a special in-group empathy among them. After all, they had their tribal traditions and, through years of menace and social attack, they had integrated their group personality on a level that we could perceive and understand. This is the natural evolution of men and truly their one salvation in the total hostile universe.
(Of course, he would choose the village. We banished all of the Indians to that area long ago. What else could we do with them when their racial biochemistry prevents them from adjusting?)
(We should have destroyed them. Why should the Holy State allow them to exist unconditioned? They remain always a menace, just as long as their systems reject the Mettler serum that has brought peace and prosperity to our world.)
(But he and the other children did something to the villagers. We know that. It was like a mass schizophrenia, almost as if he had freed two personalities in every villager. What did they do… and why?)
In the end we were one and we learned. The ship lay in the valley, canted where it had landed and They dreamed, at least the ones who had not died. We knew that They would not awake until we decided They would. It became apparent that we could not allow this, as much as we loved Them. We hated Them too but that was a different emotion, one derived from our memory of what They had done to our parents. That we learned to live with. The conflict was not as great as you might suppose.
Where They had changed us, we now changed ourselves. Where we now changed ourselves, we changed the people of the village. Again it was an experiment because we were still learning. There were failures, of course, and we were sorry for that. Still we learned in the weeks before you finally found us. We perfected our skills and when we perceived that you had located us and were coming in all the primitive vitality of your force, we were ready.
It was remarkable to see the primitive joy with which your people attacked Them. The ship could have defended itself, of course, but They were not aware that you were attacking. We did certain things to make it appear that They were in control. Your weapons blasted whole masses of the mountain down on Them. Your beams traced fiery lines through the rock that ran molten. It was a thrilling and primitive sight. Then when it appeared to you that the ship was inactivated, your teams blasted a hole in it and entered it and found Them and the Kreels. All of the Kreels were alien to your sight, and They filled you with loathing and disgust — poor creatures — and you killed Them.
We hated to see that but we had agreed by this time that certain sacrifices were necessary so that we might easily enter your society. Our hosts quite unconsciously helped us. When you came into the village you found us, apparently helpless and being cared for by the people. They seemed normal and concerned and they invoked the treaty so that you could not interrogate them. In the end you decided to take us away and care for us. Only we knew that you would do more, that you would try to find out about Them and how we had come to be with Them.
(Open the door!)
(No, we haven’t finished yet. There’s still much to learn.)
(This is the staff inquisitor. You are in open violation of the prime security directive. Open the door or suffer the consequences.)
Open the door. It makes no matter. At this point I will pass from the room and you will have no further need of me. You have learned all that I can give you at the moment.
(What do you mean? We have a great deal to learn yet, don’t we?)
(Who’s in there? Who are you talking to?)
(Shall we open the door? Of course, it’s the only sensible thing.)
I’m sorry but this was the next step in learning. I had to learn from you while you learned from me. Out of that I can perceive the nature of my need.
(Need, what need?)
We all have a need and I have a need now that I am whole. I will go now and begin the work that you have shown me. Out of this will come something quite different. A natural part of human evolution when you stop and think about it.
(Open the door. I am the Inquisitor Jarvis. What are you doing with the subject, Citizen Interrogator? There at last. You were wise not to block the door further.)
(We were trying to carry out our assignment. We were interrogating the patient under deep narcohypnosis.)
It doesn’t matter. We will all leave now and go about our task. Forgive me for deceiving you. I have left you with one gift. A unity with yourself, an ability to commune with that part of you that is forever submerged in human beings, the very gift we gave the villagers.
(There is no one here, citizen. What have you been up to?)
(We have been interrogating the patient, Inquisitor Jarvis.)
(We? We? What are you talking about? The door register shows only one occupancy. What are you trying to conceal from the Holy State? You are the only one here. You’ve been the only one here for the past three hours.)
(We’re both here. Can’t you see us. Please, can’t you see us? Can’t you see us? Can’t you see us?)
Anne McCaffrey
Prelude to a Crystal Song
Killashandra listened, the words like cold bombs dropping with leaden fatality into her frozen guts. She stared at the Maestro’s famous profile as his lips opened and shut around the words that meant the death of all her hopes and ambitions, and rendered wasted ten years of hard work and study.
The Maestro finally turned to face her. The genuine regret in his expressive eyes made him look older as the heavy singer’s muscles in his jaw relaxed sorrowfully into jowls.
One day Killashandra might remember those details. Now she was too crushed by this overwhelming defeat to be aware of more than her terrible personal failure.
“But… but… how could you?”
