“You say that you’re in my debt. I agree. So do something for me. Return me to electronic storage and let me remain dormant. Keep looking for new ways in which Ana might be restored to me. And wake me again only when you make progress.”

Drake anticipated no problem with his request. But again, he saw hesitation and embarrassment in the other’s eyes.

“What’s wrong this time? Come on, Tom, spit it out.”

“There is one more difficulty. You have always refused to become part of any composite.”

“I still do. You know why. I didn’t survive for eight billion years, just to lose focus now. I can’t afford to become part of a shared consciousness. I want to stay me. Think what shape you would be in if I’d chosen differently.”

“We appreciate that. We know that we cannot change your obsession. But what you ask is impossible. You already exist in multiple forms. As the spread of the Shiva is halted, many of those forms will survive. Someday, they will return.”

And of course, Tom was right. Drake had become accustomed to the idea that billion after billion copies of his personality had been created and sent as S-wave signals across the Galaxy. He knew that they had been embodied in native forms on a hundred million planets, and set to watch and listen on a billion ships along the Shiva frontier. Those innumerable versions of himself would be changing, absorbing new experiences, becoming quite different from the Drake Merlin who remained at headquarters.

He had learned to live with the idea that he was dying, daily, in endless different ways. What he had never considered was the time when an understanding of the Shiva was reached, and all the scattered copies were no longer doomed. As ways were discovered to deal with the Shiva, they would survive in increasing numbers.

“I get it. You can’t handle one of me. How do you hope to deal with a billion?”

“We fear that we cannot. We want to ask your help — again. Many of the returning minds will be changed, many will be seriously damaged. You are the only being in the whole universe who can understand and help them. We will promise you unlimited resources from us, anything that we have, in performing your task. We ask only that you should avoid contact with our composites.”

“You mean you want to lock me up, me and every version of me?”

“No. There would be no restriction of your freedom. You would travel as you choose, and act as you choose. The only condition that we ask is that there be a separation between us and you. You may find this ridiculous, but we fear your intensity — what is, quite literally, your single-mindedness in our universe of composites. If you agree, we promise in return continued research on the subject that most interests you: the return of Ana.”

“Has there been progress?” Drake had hardly thought to ask that question in a hundred million years.

“Nothing of immediate value. It should be possible to re-create Ana at the eschaton, when the universe approaches

final convergence. But that is far off. We promise to continue working on other possibilities, if you in turn will help us. What is your answer? Will you deal with the copies of Drake Merlin, returning in their broken billions from the Shiva frontier?”

What option was there? How could a man turn his back on his own self — especially on a damaged and troubled self?

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tos’t to me.”

He spoke more to himself than to the others, and their baffled faces showed that again they didn’t understand. Drake turned away. The composites were digging into the historical data banks, seeking a reference, wondering what he had just said.

He knew, even if they did not. He had agreed to do what they asked. The war with the Shiva might soon be ending, but his own most difficult task lay ahead.

Chapter 24

E pluribus unum

Trillions of bits, billions of pages; now it was all unnecessary. Drake surveyed the mass of storage that represented his private journal and reflected on a curious irony: The prospect of victory rendered his work irrelevant, as danger and defeat could not.

He had no cause to complain. He had known what was coming, the moment he said yes to Tom and the others in the War Room.

For all the years since first resurrection, he had kept strictly to himself. Originally it was because no one else understood his need or shared his quest for Ana. His solitude had seemed even more crucial when the Shiva appeared on the scene. His was the only consciousness in the Galaxy left over from humanity’s early days, and he dared not become close to any composite — certainly, he could not consider a merger with the webs. He had even refused to share the contents of their data banks.

His obstinacy had caused trouble, a billion times over, but he had felt that he had no choice. Inefficient as it was to rely on others for most of his information, he must do it that way. He had to remain aloof. Someone must make the hard decisions. Someone had to be willing to sacrifice humans and composites and whole planets. No one but Drake would do that, and he dared not risk any dilution of his own will.

Drake glanced again over the long record of events. The composites must think that he had no heart and no soul; certainly, they believed he had no imagination. They could not see how else he was able to send out countless versions of himself, to face an uncertain end on the dark borders of the Galaxy.

They knew nothing of the effort that it had taken. And why should they? He had not said anything to them. He had done it, and that was the important thing.

When the Shiva were ascendant, it had been a oneway process. Copies of him had gone out and never come back. But no longer. One week ago, the first copy had returned. He had returned.

The composites urged him to study that copy well before he attempted contact with it. They were worried because his returning self had been through what they felt was a “traumatic experience.” There were also, they warned, a hundred billion more like it on the way.

A traumatic experience? You might say so.

Drake had checked the background, and this case was probably typical. Downloaded and shipped out eight hundred thousand years ago, as a superluminal signal to a ship in permanent orbit about a planet of a faint star on the other side of the Galaxy. Taken down to the surface of that world and embodied in an enhanced alien life-form of increased

life expectancy. Left there to survive, endure, observe, and await the arrival of the Shiva.

Except that this one had been retrieved, without warning. The Shiva seeds were to land soon on its world. The composites were making special preparations there, as on a hundred million other planets, and they did not want an uncontrolled element disturbing their plans. They feared that this being, like the others that would be retrieved, might have “major instabilities.”

“Traumatic experience,” “study it well,” “major instabilities.” Bland, aseptic words.

Didn’t they understand that anyone left alone for a million years must have instabilities? Didn’t they realize that Drake had no need to study the returning copy, that he understood it perfectly already? That whatever came back from the other side of the Galaxy was not it. What came back was him, Drake Merlin.

A different him, certainly. That must be so, because the revenant had unique experiences. But it was Drake, nonetheless. And the composites were right about one thing: the returning Drake needed help.

He had stood apart from all others for so long, it was an ingrained habit. But how could he hold apart from himself?