Lungfish

9

Greeter, Awaiter, and the others are getting nervous. They, too, have begun trying to awaken dormant capabilities, to reclaim bits of themselves that each donated to the whole.

Of course I cannot allow it.

We made a pact, back when we fragmented, broken survivors clustered together after this system’s last battle. All our little drones and subunits were nearly used up in that last coalescence. The last repair and replication capability any of us had was applied to combining and settling in to wait together.

We all assumed that when something from the outside arrived it would be another probe.

If it was some type of Rejector, we would try to lure it within reach of our pitiful remaining might. If it was a variety of Loyalist, we would ask it for help. With decent replication facilities, it would only take a few centuries for each of us to rebuild to our former glory.

Of course, the newcomer might even be an Innocent, though it is hard to believe the dangerous galaxy would let any new probe-race stay neutral for long.

Sooner or later however, we felt, another probe had to come.

We never imagined the wait would be so long… long enough for the little mammals on the water world to evolve into Makers themselves.

What has happened out there, while we drifted here? Could the War be decided, by now?

If the Rejecters have won, then it would explain the emptiness, the silence. Their various types would soon fall into fighting among themselves, until only one remained to impose its will on Creation.

One can narrow it down a little. If the Pure Berserkers had triumphed, they would have been here by now to sterilize the Earth and any other possible abode for life. And if the Gobblers prevailed, they would have already begun dismantling the nearby stars.

Berserkers and Gobblers are ruled out, then. Those types were too simpleminded, too obstinate anyway. They must be extinct by now.

But the Anti-Maker variety of Rejector, subtle and clever, might have won without our knowing it. That type does not waste its time destroying biospheres, or eating up solar systems in spasms of self-replication. It wants only to seek out technological civilizations and ruin them. Its repertoire of dirty tricks is legion.

And yet, with all the incredible radio racket the humans are putting out, would not Anti-Makers have homed in by now, to do their harm?

Greeter and Awaiter are are convinced that the Rejectors have lost, that it is safe now to send out a message to the Loyalist community, calling for help.

I cannot allow it of course.

They still have not figured out that even among Loyalists there can be disagreements. The Purpose… my Purpose… must be foremost. Even if it means betraying companions who waited with me through the long, long dark.