“Where’s the river?” Seth Morley said, looking around.
The river had vanished.
Or maybe we’re somewhere else, Seth Morley thought. Maybe the tench moved. And then he saw it–not far away. It had managed to blend itself almost perfectly with its local environment. Like a desert toad, he thought. Screwing itself backward into the sand.
Rapidly, on a small piece of paper, Babble wrote. He handed it, when finished, to Seth Morley. For confirmation.
WHAT IS PERSUS 9?
“That’ll do.” Seth Morley handed the slip around; all of them soberly nodded. “Okay,” he said, as briskly as he could manage. “Put it in front of the tench.” The great globular mass of protoplasmic slush undulated slightly, as if aware of him. Then, as the question was placed before it, the tench began to shudder. . . as if, Morley thought, to get away from us. It swayed back and forth, evidently in distress. Part of it began to liquify.
_Something’s wrong_, Seth Morley realized. It did not act like this before.
“Stand back!” Babble said warningly; he took hold of Seth Morley by his good shoulder and propelled him bodily away.
“My God,” Mary said, “it’s coming apart.” Turning swiftly, she ran; she hurried away from the tench and climbed back into the squib.
“She’s right,” Wade Frazer said. He, too, retreated.
Babble said, “I think it’s going to–” A loud whine from the tench sounded, shutting out his voice. The tench swayed, changed color; liquid oozed out from beneath it and formed a gray, disturbed pool on all sides of it. And then, as they stared fixedly in dismay, the tench ruptured. It split into two pieces, and, a moment later, into four; it had split again.
“Maybe it’s giving birth,” Seth Morley said, above the eerie whine. By degrees, the whine had become more and more intense. And more and more urgent.
“It’s not giving birth to anything,” Seth Morley said. “It’s breaking apart. We’ve killed it with our question; it isn’t able to answer. And instead it’s being destroyed. Forever.”
“I’ll retrieve the question,” Babble knelt, whisked the slip of paper back from its spot close to the tench.
The tench exploded.
They stood for a time, not speaking, gazing at the ruin that had been the tench. Gelatin everywhere . . . a circle of it, on all sides of the central remains. Seth Morley took a few steps forward, in its direction; Mary and the others who had run away came slipping cautiously back, to stand with him and view it. View what they had done.
“Why?” Mary demanded in agitation. “What could there have been about that question that–”
“It’s a computer,” Seth Morley said. He could distinguish electronic components under the gelatin, exposed by the tench’s explosion, the hidden core–and electronic computer–lay visible. Wiring, transistors, printed circuits, tape storage drums, Thurston gate-response crystals, basic irmadium valves by the thousand, lying scattered everywhere on the ground like minute Chinese firecrackers . . . lady crackers, they’re called, Seth Morley said to himself. Pieces of it flung in all directions. Not enough left to repair; the tench, as he had intuited, was gone for good.
“So all the time it was inorganic,” Babble said, apparently dazed. “You didn’t know that, did you Morley?”
“I had an intuition,” Seth Morley said, “but it was the wrong one. I thought it would answer–be the only living thing that could answer–the question.” How wrong he had been.
Wade Frazer said, “You were right about one thing, Morley. That question is the key question, evidently. But where do we go from here?”
The ground surrounding the tench smoked, now, as if the gelatinous material and computer parts were starting into some kind of thermal chain reaction. The smoke had an ominous quality about it. Seth Morley, for reasons not understood, felt, sensed, the seriousness of their situation. Yes, he thought; a chain reaction which we have started but which we can’t stop. How far will it go? he wondered somberly. Already, large cracks had begun to appear in the ground adjacent to the tench. The liquid squirted from the dying, agonized tench, spilling now into the cracks . . . he heard, from far down, a low drumming noise, as if something immense and sickly-vile had been disturbed by the surface explosion.
The sky turned dark.
Incredulous, Wade Frazer said, “Good God, Morley; what have you done with your–question?” He gestured in a seizure of motor-spasms. “This place is breaking up!”
The man was correct. Fissions had appeared everywhere now; in a few moments there would be no safe spot to stand on. _The squib_, Seth Morley realized. We’ve got to get back to it. “Babble,” he said hoarsely, “get us all into the squib.” But Babble had gone. Looking around in the turbulent gloom, Seth Morley saw no sign of him–nor of the others.
They’re in the squib already, he told himself. As best he could he made his way in that direction. Even Mary, he realized. The bastards. He falteringly reached the hatch of the squib; it hung open.
A fast-widening crack in the ground, almost six feet wide, appeared crashingly beside him; it burgeoned as he stood there. Now he found himself looking into the orifice. At the bottom something undulated. A slimy thing, very large, without eyes; it swam in a dark, stinking liquid and ignored him.
“Babble,” he croaked, and managed to make the first step that led up into the squib. Now he could see in; he clambered clumsily up, using only his good arm.
No one was in the squib.
I’m Christ-awful alone, he said to himself. Now the squib shuddered and bucked as the ground beneath it heaved. Rain had begun; he felt hot, dark drops on him, acrid rain, as if it was not water but some other, less-pleasant substance. The drops seared his skin; he scrambled into the squib, stood wheezing and choking, wondering frantically where the others had gone. No sign of them. He hobbled to the squib’s viewscreen . . . the squib heaved; its hull shuddered and became unstable. It’s being pulled under, he said to himself. I’ve got to take off; I can’t spend any more time searching for them. He jabbed at a button and turned on the squib’s engine. Tugging on the control ball he sent the squib–with himself inside, alone–up into the dark and ugly sky. . . a sky obviously ominous to all life. He could hear the rain beating against the hull; the rain of what? he wondered. Like an acid. Maybe, he thought, it will eat its way through the hull and destroy both the squib and me.
Seating himself, he clicked on the viewscreen to greatest magnification; he rotated it, simultaneously sending the squib into a rotating orbit.
On the viewscreen appeared the Building. The river, swollen and mud-colored, angrily lapped at it. The Building, faced with its last danger, had thrown a temporary bridge across the river and, Seth Morley saw, men and women were crossing the bridge, crossing thereby the river, and going on into the Building.
_They were all old_. Gray and fragile, like wounded mice, they huddled together and advanced step by step in the direction of the Building. They’re not going to make it, he realized. Who are they?
Peering into the viewscreen he recognized his wife. But old, like the others. Hunched over, tottering, afraid. . . and then he made out Susie Smart. And Dr. Babble. Now he could distinquish them all. Russell, Ben Tallchief, Glen Belsnor, Wade Frazer, Betty Jo Berm, Tony Dunkelwelt, Babble, Ignatz Thugg, Maggie Walsh, old Bert Kosler–he had not changed, he had already been old–and Roberta Rockingham, and, at the end, Mary.
The Form Destroyer has seized them, Seth Morley realized. And done this to them. And now they are on their way back to where they came from. Forever. To die there.
The squib, around him, vibrated. Its hull clanged, again and again. Something hard and metallic was pinging off the hull. He sent the squib higher and the noise abated. What had done it? he wondered, again inspecting the viewscreen.
And then he saw.
The Building had begun to disintegrate. Parts of it, chunks of plastic and alloy bonded together, hurled as if in a giant wind up into the sky. The delicate bridge across the river broke, and as it fell it carried those crossing it to their death: they fell with the fragments of the bridge into the snarling, muddy water and vanished. But it made no difference; the Building was dying, too. They would not have been safe in it anyhow.
I’m the only one who survived, he said to himself. Moaning with grief he revolved the control ball and the ship puttputted out of its orbit and on a tangent leading back to the settlement.
The engine of the squib died into silence.
He heard nothing, now, but the slap-slap of rain against its hull. The squib sailed in a great arc, dropping lower each moment.