He could not.

So, at last, Drake Merlin would become part of a composite. This, however, was going to be a unique composite — every element of it would also be Drake.

He had no idea how it would work out. The returning selves had been scattered far off through space and time. He had long ago lost count of their number. Some would be maimed or incomplete versions of a whole Drake Merlin; some would surely be totally deranged. Perhaps they would unbalance the whole.

No matter what happened in the long run, at first it was going to be total chaos. Each one of him, without exception, was going to be different. Time and events produce changes in form, in perspective, even in self-image.

It would be his job to understand, to assimilate, and ultimately — if he could — to integrate every part to a single being.

How? He had no idea.

He called on Ana to give him strength.

Chapter 25

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.”

The first one is the most difficult.

As Drake repeated this to himself he tried to believe it. His revenant self had been dormant when it was retrieved from eight-hundred-thousand-year isolation. It still wore the snakelike organic form considered best for the surface of the planet Greenmantle.

Drake faced his first decision: Should he transfer the mind of his other self to electronic storage, before the interaction began? The technique to do it was routine, and information transfer would surely be easier and faster if they were both electronic. But would the change offer an additional shock that made the revenant’s awakening harder to bear?

It was better to do it the other way around, at least for the first meeting. Electronic downloading and merger could come later. Drake arranged for his own transfer to the same snaky form. When he awoke he occupied the body of a legless animal with vestigial wings on its sides and a triplet of prehensile tentacles on the blunt head.

He gave the signal to awaken the other, and wondered: What am I going to call him, whenever in my own mind I must distinguish us ?

Again, the answer was obvious. If he is to suffer minimal shock, he has to be Drake Merlin. If anyone changes his name, I must do it.

Slitted green eyes opened and stared at him.

“Hello.” His own greeting came out as a complex waving of the three flexible proboscises.

The other Drake regarded him warily but said nothing. He felt sure he knew why. Drake Two was thinking, Has the planet fallen to the Shiva? Is this some manifestation of them, designed to trick me and destroy me?

“Drake, don’t go by appearances. You are among humans again. You were retrieved before the Shiva reached your planet.”

There was a long, thoughtful pause. The response, when it came, was not quite what he would have provided. The revenant’s isolation had produced changes.

“Who are you?”

“I am you. Another version of you.”

“Prove it. Tell me something that no one else in the universe knows. Something about me that no one but me could possibly know.”

That no one else could possibly know. It took a few seconds, then he had it.

“Our teacher was Professor Bonvissuto.”

“Known to me, and also to all the data banks.”

“Surely. In our second year with him, he entered us in a statewide contest. We won, mainly because a big part of the competition was to improvise on a given theme.”

“Also recorded, I suspect, in the same data banks.” Drake Two must suspect where this was heading, but the snaky tentacles gave nothing away.

“But we weren’t really improvising at all. When we had breakfast in a hotel near the concert hall the morning before the competition, we were given a table that hadn’t yet been cleared. The previous diner had scribbled a series of notes on a napkin, then crossed them out. We noticed the last one, because it had the same three ascending G-minor notes that start the third movement of Mozart’s Fortieth Symphony, and also the third movement of Schubert’s Fifth Symphony. We started to wonder what you could do with the theme, and we doodled around with it off and on for the rest of the day.

“When the judge offered the theme on which we were to improvise, we realized who had been sitting at the table before us. Naturally, we did a spectacular job and astonished everyone. We felt like cheats, but we didn’t say anything to anybody — not even to Ana.”

Drake Two was gesturing agreement. “I am persuaded. So what now? Why was I returned?” And then, with a wave of comical puzzlement that Drake understood exactly, “I am Drake — but what do I call you?”

“Call me Walter, if you have to. You know how much we hated our given name. I must give you an update on events. There have been great changes; mostly for the good, but we have bad news too.”

He outlined the progress in understanding the Shiva, and the effect that would have on society’s need for Drake Merlin. At the end of the explanation, his other self gave the gesture of grim assent.

“If you are no longer needed, I am in the same position. So are all the other versions of us. We are dangerous atavisms — until the next time that the galaxy needs us.”

“Which may be never.” He regarded his companion self. Given his experiences, he was comfortingly normal. He had known that already, since the responses were close to his own responses. Which suggested another step. “There will be countless billions like us, returning from service beyond the stars. They will not all be as balanced as you. Even so, they must be welcomed, provided with explanations, and restored so far as possible to normal function. Will you help?”

If Drake was truly Drake, the answer could not be in doubt.

“Tell me what I must do.”

“Some of our returning selves are likely to be hugely unstable. I am not sure if I — or you — could suffer such an interaction alone and retain our own sanity. We need to reinforce each other. We need to combine our strength. We need—”

“—to merge. I understand.”

“But not in this form. I am not sure that is even possible. It must be accomplished when we are in electronic storage.”

“Of course. Proceed.”

No need to explain, no need to persuade. Of course not. Not unless a man had to persuade himself.

Already his vision had begun to blur. Uploading and merger became simpler when the mind was fully quiescent. As his consciousness began to fade, he wondered.

What would he be like — they be like — when the merger was complete? Was he a caterpillar, ready to change to a chrysalis before transforming to a butterfly? It would not be like that. In the caterpillar’s metamorphosis there was no combining of materials. Two gametes, then, joining to form a single zygote in the fertilized egg? That was closer, except that his parts were — or had once been — absolutely identical.

As he drifted off into limbo, he hit another simile: he was like identical twins; born together, parted for a long, long time, and at last reunited.

Drake awoke and recognized at once that his groping comparisons were worthless. He had no sense of a merger. He would never believe that he had once been two separate individuals, except that his memories beyond a certain point in the past were duplicates. He had been eeling his way through the swamps of Green-mantle and at the same time directing operations in the War Room. In his mind’s eye he looked to the heavens and recalled two starscapes of vastly different skies.

But he had also been right. His mental strength, stability, and resilience had never been so great. For the first time, he understood why humanity chose to exist as elements of a composite. If the merger of two felt like this, what would a multitude be like? Omnipotent and omniscient?