The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

THE TWERLIK Jack Sharkey

It lay like a blanket over the cool gray sands, its fibrous substance extended to ultimate length in all directions, like a multispoked umbrella shorn of its fabric.

From each of its radiated arms—or legs; the Twerlik could employ them as it chose—innumerable wirelike filaments stretched outward at right angles to these limbs, flat upon the gray sands. And from them in turn jutted hairlike cilia, so that the entire body—had it been suitably stained and raised against a contrasting backdrop—resembled nothing so much as an enormous multiplumed fan, open to a full circle and laid over an area of ten square miles. Yet weighed upon Earth scales, its entire mass would have been found to tilt the needle barely beyond the one-pound mark. And its arms and filaments and cilia clung so tightly to the sand, and were so pallid of hue, that even were a man to lie face down upon it and stare with all his might, he would not be certain he saw anything but sand beneath him.

It could not break apart, of course. In its substance lay strengths beyond its own comprehension. For the planet upon which it had been born was too distant from its star to have developed cellular life; the Twerlik was a single, indestructible molecule, formed of an uncountable number of interlinked atoms. But—like the radar-grid it resembled —it could see, by the process of subtraction. Mild waves of light from the cold, distant star bathed it eternally. And so, objects that thrust in between the Twerlik and its source of life were recorded as negations upon its sensitive cilia, and the composite blotting-out of the light was sorted and filed and classified in its elongated brain in a fractional instant, so that it knew what went on in its vicinity.

It could see. And it could think. And it could do.

What it did, over endless ages, was convert some of the energy absorbed from the distant star into power. It used the power to work upon the atoms of the gray sand upon which it lay, and at a peripheral rate of about half an inch per Earth year, it turned the sand into its own substance and thus grew. The larger it became, after all, the more its surface could catch the faint light from the star. And the more light it could catch, on its planet whose rotation was equal to its period of revolution, the more sand it could transmute; and the more sand it transmuted, the larger it became.

That was its entire cycle of life. The Twerlik was content with it. Absorb, transmute, grow. Absorb, transmute, grow. So long as it could do these things, the Twerlik would be happy.

Then, part way through its hundred billionth trip around the dim, distant star, the men of Earth came.

Its first awareness of their arrival was a sort of bloating sensation, not unlike a mild twinge of nausea, as the cilia far beneath the gleaming fires of the rocket-thrust began hungrily to overabsorb.

The Twerlik did not know what was occurring, exactly, but it soon got itself under control, and would not let those cilia nearest the descending fires partake overly of the unexpected banquet. It made them take a share proportionate to their relationship in size to the rest of the enormous body, and it urged the rest of itself to partake similarly. By the time the slim metal rocket had come down, midway between the outermost fringes of the Twerlik and its splayed-out central brain, the creature had been able to feed more than in the previous three periods of the planetary revolution.

“This thing which has come,” it told itself; “is therefore a good thing.”

It was pleased at this new concept. Until the ship had come, the Twerlik had simply assumed that life was being lived to its peak. Now it knew there were better things. And this necessity to parcel out absorbable energy to its limbs was new, also. It gave the Twerlik a greater awareness of its own brain as the key motivator of this farflung empire which was itself. “I am a me,” it realized, “and the rest of my extensions are but my parts!” It almost glowed with delight—not to mention an overload of absorbed energy —at the thought of all it had learned in a few moments. And then it realized what “moments” were, too; until the arrival of the ship, everything had been the same, and so the vast eons it had been there registered as no longer than an eyeblink would to a man, because it had had no shorter events for comparison of time. “So quickly!” the Twerlik mused. “I know what goodness and betterment are; I know that I am a me; I know the difference between a moment and an eon.”

The Twerlik was abruptly aware, then, of yet another new sensation: gratitude. “This tall thing,” it said, and at the same time filed away its first knowledge of differentiation in heights for later reference, “has done the me a service, in a moment, and the me is bettered, and grateful!”

And then it knew its first pain, as this rush of new concepts attempted to file themselves in subatomic synaptic structures incapable of coping with such a swift influx.

The Twerlik’s brain throbbed with this cramming. To ease the pain, it used a fraction of the energy it had absorbed from the fires of the rocket, and enlarged the surface of the thinking section. Wisely—for it was growing wiser by the moment—it overenlarged it, that it might not again know pain should more concepts try to engrave themselves upon its consciousness. And just in time, too. For it suddenly needed room for concepts of foresight, prudence, headache, remedy and alertness.

Being lost in its own introspections, it turned its mind once more to the New Thing on the planet as it felt another increase in the absorption of its cilia. It did some rapid subtraction from the shifts in light from its star, and then it “saw” that there were things like unto itself emerging from the tall thing.

Its brain instantly added the concept of pity to the collection.

For these like-creatures were stunted travesties of the Twerlik. Only four limbs, and a limb stub on top. And these four fairly developed limbs had but five filaments to each, and no apparent cilia, save upon the useless limb stub. And the five filaments upon each of the two limbs nearest the me were bound up in layers of something that was not part of the creatures at all.

“These magnificent creatures,” mourned the Twerlik, “having so little of their own, have yet shared their largesse with me!” For the creatures were bearing bulky objects out of the tall thing, and setting them upon the gray sand and upon the Twerlik itself. And from these objects there flared a great deal of brightness and warmth, and the creatures were standing amid this brightness and warmth, and doing incomprehensible things with four-limbed objects that had no life at all . . . and the cilia of the Twerlik were absorbing all they could of this unexpected feast.

“I can grow now!” it told itself. “I can grow in a short period as I have never in my life grown before. I can spread out until I cover the entire—planet.” The Twerlik puzzled over the latest addition to its increasing concepts. From where had this strange idea come, this idea of a gigantic ball of solid material swinging about a star? And it suddenly knew that those other four-limbed nonliving creatures were called “chairs” and “tables,” and that the poorly developed things were named “men.”

The Twerlik tried to solve this puzzle. How were these concepts reaching it? It checked its subtractions, but there was nothing new blocking the starlight. It checked its absorptions, but its rate of drainage upon the spilled-over warmth and light from the “electric heaters” and the “lamps”—and it realized, again enlarging its brain to store these concepts—was just as it had been. Yet these new ideas were reaching it somehow. The ideas came from the “men,” but in what manner the Twerlik could not determine.

Then it checked into yet another one of its newfound concepts, “pressure,” and found that there was something incomprehensible occurring.

Its first awareness of this concept had been when the “spaceship” (“Larger, brain, larger!”) had pressed down upon the limbs and filaments and cilia of the me. Then secondary awarenesses that told the Twerlik of differentiations in “pressure” came when the “men” had trodden upon it, and again when the “chairs” and “tables” and “electric heaters” and “lamps” had been “set up.” (“More room, brain, more room!”) But there was a new kind of “pressure” upon the me. It came and went. And it was sometimes very heavy, sometimes very faint, and it struck only near the “men” at its fullest, being felt elsewhere along the cilia in a “circle” (“Grow!”) about them, but less powerfully, and in a larger “circle” about that one, but much less powerfully.

What was it, this thing that came and went, and rammed and fondled and stabbed and caressed, so swiftly, so differently—and all the time kept filling its increasing brain with new concepts?

The Twerlik narrowed its field of concentration, starting at the outermost “circle,” moving inward to the next, and drawing closer and closer to the “men,” seeking the source of this strange alternating pressure. And then it found it.

It came from the “mouths” of the men. They were “talking.” The Twerlik was receiving “sound.”

Its brain began to hurt terribly, and once again it made use of its newly absorbed energies and grew more brain-part for the me. Then it “listened” (“More! More!”) to the “talking,” and began to “learn.”

These men were only the first. There would be others, now that they knew that the “air” and “gravitation” and “climate” were “okay.” There would be “houses” and “streets” and “children” and “colonization” and “expansion.” And—the Twerlik almost shuddered with joy—light!

These men-things needed light constantly. They could not “see” without light. There would be more heaters, more lamps, campfires, chandeliers, matches, flares, movies, candles, sparklers, flashlights— (“Grow! Grow! GROW!”)

Right here! On this spot they would begin! And all that spilled over from their wanton use of energy would belong to the me!

“Gratitude” was a poor word to express the intensity of the Twerlik’s emotions toward these men-things now. It had to help them, had to repay them, had to show them how much their coming meant.

But how? The greatest thing in creation, so far as the Twerlik was concerned, was energy. And they had energy to spare, energy aplenty. It could not give them that as a gift. It had to find out what they valued most, and then somehow give this valued thing to them, if it could.

Desperately, it “listened,” drawing in concept upon concept, seeking and prying and gleaning and wondering. . ..

It took all that they said, and filed it, cross-indexed it, sorted it, seeking the thing which meant more than anything to these men-things. And slowly, by winnowing away the oddments that cluttered the mainstream of the men-things’ ambitions and hopes, the Twerlik learned the answer.

And it was within its power to grant!

But it involved motion, and the Twerlik was not certain it knew how motion might be accomplished. In all the eons of adding to its feathery perimeter, it had never had occasion to shift any of its limbs from where they lay upon the sand. It was not quite certain it could do such a thing. Still, it told the me, if there were a way, then it was obligated to use this way, no matter what the difficulties thus entailed. Repayment of the men-things was a legitimate debt of honor. It had to be done no matter what the cost.

So it attempted various methods of locomotion.

It tried, first, to flex and wriggle its filaments as the men-things did, but nothing happened. Bewildered, it checked through its file of new concepts and discovered “leverage.” On this principle did the men-things move. They had “muscle” which “contracted” and caused a “tendon” to shift the angle of a “bone.” The Twerlik had none of these necessary things.

So it tried “propulsion,” the force which had moved the spaceship, and discovered that it lacked “combustible fuel” and hollow channels for the energy called “firing tubes” and some built-in condition of these tubes called the “Venturi principle.”

It pondered for a long time then, not even bothering with things the men knew as “pistons” and “cylinders” and “wheels”—since the use of these involved a free moving segment and the Twerlik could not operate save as a whole.

Finally, after thousands of those intervals which it had come to think of as “moments,” it came upon the concept of “magnetism.” The forces involved came well within its scope.

By subtle control of the electron flow along the underside of one of its five-mile limbs, and the creation of an electronic “differential” flow along the top, it found that the consequent repulsion-attempts of its upper and lower surfaces resulted in the tip of the limb describing a “curl.” Once this basic motion had been achieved, the rest was simple, for the Twerlik learned swiftly. In a few short moments, it had evolved a thing called “coordination” and found to its delight that it could raise, lower or otherwise manipulate limbs, filaments and cilia with ease, in a pleasant, rippling whip-motion.

This new power being tested swiftly and found quite enough for its purposes, it set to work repaying the men for their great kindness to it.

The men, it noted as it worked, were undergoing a strange somnolence called “sleep,” inside the spaceship. The Twerlik realized with joy that it could indulge in what men-things called a “surprise” if it worked with sufficient rapidity.

Draining its energies with uncaring profligacy, it coiled and swirled and contracted itself until its cilia and filaments and limbs lay all about the spaceship and everywhere within it save upon the men-things. The Twerlik found that it was greatly weakened by this unwonted output, but it was a dedicated Twerlik now, and did not stop its continuation to the task at hand. It worked, and molded, and rearranged. It grew dizzy with the effort, until a stray groping strand of cilium found the energy-crammed metal housed in the tank near the firing-tubes of the spaceship. Into this metal the cilium burrowed, and then began drawing upon the energies therein like an electronic siphon, feeding out the particles of raw power to the rest of the Twerlik, that the entirety of the creature might perform this labor of love.

It took many thousands of moments for its task to be done, but it was a contented—if desperately weary— Twerlik which finally uncoiled its incredible barely-greater-than-a-pound enormous size from the spaceship.

Once again it retreated in all directions, to lie weakly in the dim light of the distant star and await the awakening of the men-things.

It noted, disinterestedly, that the shape of the spaceship was slightly altered. It was widening slowly near the base, and bulging about the middle, and losing height. The Twerlik did not care. It had shown its gratitude, and that was all that mattered.

Abruptly, men-things were leaping from the doorway of the ship, shouting empty sounds which the Twerlik could only interpret as songs of “fear,” though no “words” were used. They were—ah, that was the term—”screaming.”

It could make no sense of it. Were the men-things mad? Had it not given them what they desired most? Had it not even worked upon the “food” and “water” for them, so that every item they possessed would be vastly improved?

The Twerlik could not understand why the men were acting so strangely. It waited peacefully for them to use the now-improved heaters and lamps, that it might restore some of its deeply sapped strengths. But they made no move to do so. They were using words, now, having gotten over their “screaming.” Words like “trapped” and “impossible” and “doomed.”

They were, sensed the Twerlik, terribly unhappy, but it could not comprehend why.

It seemed to have to do with its gesture of repayment. But along this line of reasoning the Twerlik could not proceed without bafflement. It thought momentarily of removing the gift, and restoring things to what they had been, but then realized that it no longer possessed the necessary energies.

So it sat and pondered the ways of men, who seemed to desire nothing so much in life as the acquisition of an element called “gold,” and yet acted so oddly when they were given a spaceship made of it.

The Twerlik sadly filed “screwy” in close juxtaposition to the men-concept in its brain, and when at last the men-things had lain upon the gray sand and moved no more, it transmuted their elements into that substance they loved so well with its last burst of waning strength.

Then it lay there upon the cool gray sand, sucking life from the dim, distant star of its planet, and thought and thought about men-things, and wondered if it would ever be satisfied to be nothing but a Twerlik forever, with no more creatures to be good to.

It knew one thing, however: it must not give men gold again. The next spaceship to land upon its planet, after two revolutions about the sun, was filled with men-things, too.

But these men-things had had an accident to the thing called their “reclamation tanks.” They were all thick-tongued and weak, and a quick analysis of their conversation showed the Twerlik that these men were different from the others. They desired nothing so much as a comparatively simple molecule known to them as water.

The Twerlik was only too eager to help.

And, when the transmutation of this second spaceship had been completed, right over the thirsty gray sands, the Twerlik proudly added “permeability” to its vocabulary.