Drake confirmed that the orbiting ship had registered the arrival of the lifter and was ready to upload him and Milton. He made a final check of the biotanks. Everything was proceeding on schedule. In another couple of hours, the biological growth operations within the tanks would be complete. Before the tanks opened, Drake and Milton would leave the planet. Each- copy of Carp would awaken in a biotank that was already dissolving around it. Each copy contained genetic information that would guide it to Carp’s location, together with general data about Graybill. After Drake and Merlin had been transferred to headquarters, the mother vessel would remain high above the surface to monitor activity on the planet below for the indefinite future.
Drake heard a sound at the open door of the station. If Milton were finished already, there was no reason they should not leave at once. He knew that his own wish, to stay long enough to make sure that the copies were delivered safely from the tanks, was unnecessary and even dangerous. As soon as they could go, they must leave.
He stood up. As he did so, Carp entered. Drake had no sense of rapid movement, but suddenly he was back in his chair and Carp was leaning over him. A bristly forearm across his throat held him in position, barely allowing him to breathe.
Dark eyes stared into his. They were all pupil, round and black and infinitely deep. Drake saw in them his own folly and stupidity, level after level of it. He had been crazy to think he could play God, devising a superior warrior that would help to battle the Shiva. If he failed, he failed, and the attempt was simply futile. But success was far worse. Why would such a being wait to fight the Shiva, when humans were so close to hand? What madness had led Drake to believe that such a creature, once brought into existence, could be controlled and confined?
A hundred stories, as old as history, told what happened when a man summoned forces he could not master.
And, the final folly. Why had he allowed Milton to go alone to retrieve the flier? If anyone went alone, it should have been Drake himself. He did not know what Carp had done to persuade or trick Milton, or even if Milton still existed. It did not matter.
“I’m sorry.” The pressure on his throat was great, and he could barely utter the words. Carp’s hands changed their position on his neck and began to twist.
Drake knew that he was going to die, and it would not be of strangulation.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, as the turning force increased. Sorry that I did this to you, bringing you into such a life, with such a purpose.
There was a different look in Carp’s eyes. Surprise, that a being who was about to be killed did not resist? Surprise at Drake’s words, which surely Carp did not understand? Or a puzzled wonderment, as Carp, like Drake, stared into another’s eyes and recognized part of himself?
But another presence lay within Carp; a cold, remorseless agent that could admit neither reason nor mercy. Like the Snarks, Carp killed because he had no choice. He killed because he had to kill.
Sorry. No words could come from Drake’s throat. His neck was wrenched around to a point where the cervical vertebrae were ready to splinter and snap. Sorry for what I did to you. And for what I must now do to you.
Drake had been foolish, but he had not been finally and terminally foolish. The orbiting spacecraft was monitoring everything that happened to him. Certain safeguards were still in position.
Drake felt the bones of his neck breaking. His last moment of darkened vision showed Carp’s face, puzzled and alert. Carp was aware that something new was happening, something beyond his control. Drake’s final sensation was the onset of dissolution. The hands that gripped his throat, like Drake himself, seemed to weaken and crumble.
Drake’s death provided the signal. Within him, within Carp’s body, within the station, within all the biotanks, within the fliers, within every human presence or artifact on Graybill, the changes began. Molecular bonds lost their hold.
In the final moments, Carp released Drake’s broken body and dropped it to the ground. He stood upright and motionless, feeling within himself the chaos of death. His final howl, the first sound that he had ever uttered, was a cry of anger. As he fell, he raged at the injustice of a universe that created a perfect fighting machine, then destroyed it before it had a chance to fulfill its destiny.
Chapter 21
“Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death.”
Drake hung in open space, six light-hours from the nearest star. Mel Bradley was at his side. While Drake would have been quite willing to receive a report and a display in the War Room, Mel insisted that he see this at firsthand.
Drake knew exactly where he was: out on the far side of the Galaxy, a safe distance from the spreading Silent Zone controlled (or destroyed) by the Shiva. The nearest star of the Zone was about sixty light-years away.
He was less sure of what he was. He had been transmitted here at superluminal speed, but not to any recognizable form of embodiment. He could maneuver in space and look in any direction, but he was unaware of the nature of his body.
“You’d have to ask Cass Leemu about that,” Mel said. He seemed unconcerned, his attention elsewhere. “It’s something she dreamed up.”
“Are we made of plasma?” Drake turned his own attention inward and saw nothing.
“Not the usual sort. We’re an assembly of Bose-Einstein Condensates. Cass says a BEC assembly has two great advantages. When we’re done we’ll be transmitted back without modification.”
“What’s the second advantage?”
Mel had no way to grin, but he radiated a wolfish sense of glee. “If something goes wrong, Cass assured me that dissolution from a BEC form is painless. Of course, she’s never tried it. Makes you think of the old preachers, talking about the delights of heaven or the torments of hell after you die. I always wanted to ask them, Did you die? How do you know what happens if you haven’t tried it for yourself?”
Drake was listening, but with only half an ear. He was looking outward again. Mel had said that something was ready to begin. Drake had very little idea as to what would happen next.
Partly that was Mel’s doing. He was perfect as the person to develop new offensive weapons, but he was also as awkward and cross-minded and independent as ever, wanting to do things in his own way. And partly it was Drake’s doing. He had been learning over the millennia that either you learned to delegate or you drowned in details. Worse than that, if you were involved in the process, you lost the power to be objective about the outcome. It was Drake’s job to review what Mel had done, then either approve or veto the next step.
But it was hard. The urge to meddle was deep-rooted in humans.
The nearby star was a white FO type, like the blazing giant Canopus that had troubled Drake so many aeons ago. From this distance it showed a definite disk, slightly smaller and whiter than the Sun as seen from Earth. Drake could see a slight asymmetry. A straight line had been ruled across the left-hand limb. Beyond that line, but within the star’s imagined circle, he could detect faint and scattered points of light. They were other stars.
“The caesura?”
Mel said, “You’re looking at it. It’s started.” Even he seemed subdued. The star they were watching might seem small from this distance, but it was thirty million miles across.
And it was being eaten. The dividing line was moving steadily to the right. Drake stared hard at the remaining portion of the star. It seemed unaffected, untouched.
“Are you sure it’s really happening, Mel? If the caesura is sending part of the star to another universe, why isn’t the rest of it in turmoil? Unless somehow the gravitational effect is left behind…”