Orphan's Triumph

SEVENTY-SIX

AS HISTORIC STANDOFFS GO, this didn’t look like much. For the next ten hours I sat, pistol holstered, arms clasped around my armored knees, in the center of a mass of motionless Slug Warriors, which were no more separate from the organism I sat on than white corpuscles.

Meantime, as the timer counted down toward Slug Armageddon, Jeeb’s circuits chittered back and forth with the Pseudocephalopod as Jeeb deciphered the communication he monitored.

Above, the captive Red Moon orbited around the planet’s equator, south of us. The Red Moon had set when syllables began to trickle from Jeeb’s audio, then words. Finally, I heard the Pseudocephalopod, its voice a flat, mechanical simulation.

“Man. You have come to harm me.”

A Slug of few words. After another few hundred thousand exchanges, the translation would be smooth and idiomatic. For the moment, the meaning was plain enough. The Big Slug was on to us, more or less.

“You already harmed us. Many of us.”

“I have not harmed man.”

“There is more than one man. You have not harmed all of man. But you have harmed man.” By the millions. Without remorse.

“I have learned this. Man has many…” Jeeb’s translator stumbled. “Identities.”

The Spooks had always thought that this unitary intelligence couldn’t understand the concept of mankind, or any other kind, as multiple individuals.

The adrenaline of rage surged through me. “My mother. My lover. My friends. Infants. Old people. You harmed them all.” I kicked the vast skin beneath my feet as though the thing could feel it. “Have you learned that I-this identity of man-can kill you now? I’m bringing the rain on you.” The green numbers of my helmet display timer winked down to nine minutes. “And you can’t stop me. Then I’ll beat feet out of here.” The last was bravado. This was a one-way journey for me. But at least it was ending at a worthwhile destination.

“I have learned this. But I have the…” Jeeb’s translator stumbled. “Cavorite.”

I frowned and glanced again at the timer as it spun down. “You’ve had Cavorite for a long time before this. What’s changed?”

“As I am immersed deeper in this universe I suddenly understand more.”

I snorted. “You and Archimedes.”

“What is Archimedes, man?”

“Not what, who. Archimedes was the name of a separate identity of man. He immersed himself in a water tub and then suddenly understood a great truth about the universe. Each separate identity of man has a name, so we can communicate.”

Pause.

“I wish to communicate, man. Say your name.”

“Lieutenant General Jason Wander, retired” would require explanation of socioeconomic designators, surnames, and given names, which was pushing the envelope with a hermit. “Jason.”

“Jason, you will call me Archimedes.”

“I’ll call you whatever I want to. Murderer. Dead Slug walking. Archimedes already took that name.”

“Then bring Archimedes.”

“I can’t. He’s dead.”

“What is dead?”

I snorted again. “Harmed. No longer able to immerse. Returned to dust. Like what you did to sixty million of man’s identities. And now like you, Archie.”

“Man can still immerse. Therefore Man is not dead. Archie can still immerse. Therefore Archie is not dead.”

My jaw dropped so far that I blipped my helmet’s chin control. This thing really didn’t get it. One day a half-million years ago, Archie had realized that he existed. Over the half-million years since that day, he had never seen any other of his kind die, because there were no others of his kind. So he couldn’t understand the difference between dead and alive. As far as he was concerned, he had done no more than trim mankind’s fingernails.

What if he wasn’t going to use the Red Moon to exterminate mankind?

“Archie, why did you take the Red Moon?”

“Archie is fully immersed in this universe. Archie wishes to immerse in another universe. Only the Red Moon will allow Archie to beat feet.”

I nodded to myself. After a half-million years alone, in one place, even a big, interesting place, I might yearn for new challenges. In fact, I did, in a lot shorter time.

Archie wanted a change of scene. But Archie had no feet, no wheels, no cruise liner. He was like a curious infant who had grown up on a desert island. The only life raft he possessed was what he had stumbled onto in his youth, Cavorite. And because Archie had developed a serious weight problem in middle age, he needed lots of it in order to travel.

I said, “You’ve rebuilt the Red Moon to transport you to the edge of this universe.”

“No. To transport Archie to the adjacent universe.”

I rocked back on Archie’s skin, surrounded by his white corpuscles. The scourge of mankind was telling me that he wanted to cede the field of battle to us after thirty thousand years. Blow town? Catch the 3:10 to Yuma? I shifted my weight and felt the abort remote in the cover-all pocket beneath my armor. Then, inside my helmet, I shook my head. “How dumb do you think I am?”

“Archie does not understand.”

“You’re lying.”

“What is lying, Jason?”

I smirked at the speaker on Jeeb’s carapace. “Okay. I’ll play. Not telling the truth.”

“What is truth?”

“Come off it. You’ve enslaved a galaxy. But you don’t understand truth?”

Archie didn’t answer.

Inside my helmet, I cocked my head. What would Howard Hibble say about this?

Logically, it takes a minimum of two separate identities to lie, the liar and the lie-ee. So Archie didn’t know truth, at least as opposite to untruth. He shouldn’t have developed the capacity to lie. Howard had always said, and it was true, that the Slugs, that this simple-talking monster, didn’t deceive us. The Slugs approached us head-on. Push, they pushed back, harder. Deceive, they bought our deceptions. A liar would have learned.

I said, “Archie, truth is saying what is, instead of what isn’t.”

“There is only what is, Jason.”

Archie had seven minutes to live. I had seven minutes to decide whether to kill the sworn enemy that had consumed my life, or to risk the future of mankind on a conversation so bizarre that it could be a figment of my imagination.

“Come with Archie, Jason.”

“What?”

“Beat feet also. Archie and Jason will immerse together.”

It doesn’t take an orphan long to learn that he wants to be part of a family.

“You don’t understand, Archie. How long is the journey?”

“If Archie knew all of the journey, Archie would not wish to go.”

Ha-ha. I think.

Archie said, “Approximately two hundred thousand jumps.”

“No, Archie.”

“No?” Jeeb’s translator lacked ability to impart inflection, beyond a question, but I heard a sob in the word.

“Archie, I can’t. I’m too fragile. My identity will die long before two hundred thousand jumps.” Then more words tumbled from my lips. “But it sounds great. Really.” If Archie couldn’t tell a lie, he certainly couldn’t recognize a white one when he heard it.

“Jason would die?”

I nodded as if Archie could see me. “Jason would die. Jason does not want to die.”

The timer winked down to three minutes.

“Then Archie must go alone. Jason, Archie also does not want to die.”