“And so?” asked Elphinstone with keen interest.
“So, my lady, we’ve proven that it doesn’t and cannot exist.”
This was greeted with wry grins, groans and expressions of polite disgust.
“Or!” continued the monk with a grin on his cherubic face, “it is intentional. A symbiotic life-form. It’s alive, and intentionally adapting to us, just as we adapt to it. The reason why it’s exactly what we need is because that is what we need. A sentient life-form is trying to provide, to the best of its ability, just what we could have wished for.”
“Now that really does defy imagination!” interjected Mr. Barlet with a raised eyebrow and a friendly grin on his ebon face.
“Does it, my worthy Master Gunner?” replied the monk, returning the smile. “Does it indeed? We live, we’ve found it. It lives, and it has found us. That’s what life does. It finds what it requires for existence. Furthermore this theory explains one other mystery. Why is the Ship sentient? Perhaps it’s a colony, a vast colony of life- forms, working together to give us what we need. When the captain or the carpenter ‘talks’ to the Ship, he isn’t talking to a creature, he’s talking to a whole vast nation. Or, perhaps, to the elected representatives of that vast nation.”
“Aye,” said their carpenter. This was his area of expertise, and he warmed to it. “It has been proposed before. That would explain why the larger the amount of moss the more intelligent it is . . . and the slower it is. The little bit on a rifle or pistol’s Keel barely musters a purr, like a tribble. While the cannon is like a dog. The cutters are like children and the Ship, why the Ship is every bit as intelligent as us, yet slow and ponderous in her thinking.”
“Could that ‘life-form’ be what caused the Crash?” asked Crater.
“That’s the dominant theory,” the monk replied. “The reason why the Elder King’s Gift was able to destroy Earth’s Info-Net was because the ‘virus’ was two dimensional. Inside the computer world it could exist, even thrive, in three-space—as a living body makes it possible for a virus to survive and thrive. It got into the computer brought into two-space by the first explorers. They brought it home and it reproduced exponentially, destroying everything in its reach. Brought into three-space, this two-space life-form became a parasite or a virus when it found a suitable environment. Like any deadly virus, as it destroyed its host, it also destroyed its habitat. In the end, both the virus and the host no longer exist.”
“But,” said Melville, intrigued by the direction the conversation was taking, “in nature a virus continues to exist because it can move on to other hosts. It’s communicable.”
“Yes, sir, but who says this virus isn’t communicable? Most other civilizations that have entered two-space report having similar experiences. ‘Spores’ of the virus appear to be out in two-space. If you’re foolish enough to bring a computer into two-space, and then bring it back home and connect it to a network, it will do what any virus does. Reproduce, live, thrive in one great blaze of glory, and then die, pulling its host down with it.”
“Okay,” said Melville, “back to the Elbereth Moss. What could be the purpose of the ‘symbiosis’ with us? What do we give to it?”
“Perhaps travel?” interjected Elphinstone. “As a cocklebur would attach itself to a dog, to be transported and planted miles away?”
With a grin Melville added, “Or a flea, or . . . maybe a bedbug. An anonymous ditty comes to mind:
“The June bug hath a gaudy wing,
The lightning bug a flame,
The bed bug hath no wings at all
But he gets there just the same.”
There were appreciative grins and chuckles all around, then Elphinstone continued. “So, it could get transportation. Or, like a flea, or bedbug, it might get sustenance from us. Perhaps it gets companionship, as thou wouldst get from a dog or a cat. Maybe it gets shared information and knowledge, like a fellow sentient species might give to us. There are four viable options. Mindless transport, sustenance, friendly companionship, and equal partnership. Or possibly some combination thereof. Or something completely different.”
“Indeed,” said Petreckski. “On Old Earth there is something called a slime mold. It exists as individual cells when it’s in a favorable environment. Yet when things start to go bad, some of them put out a chemical signal, which is picked up by the others. They group together and form a multicellular animal, a worm of sorts, which crawls out of the drying slime, up to the highest point around. It grows a stalk on top, which forms a bulb of spores that launch themselves into the wind, in search of a better home. Our ‘moss’ might have a similar lifestyle, traveling from planet to planet in two-space. Given enough time, it seems to have developed into an intelligent creature.”
“Aye,” said Melville as he handed a tidbit up to his monkey. “An intelligent creature that has become our friend and companion. If some superior alien species should ever judge us, perhaps we have this to our credit, that we could become friends with something so very strange. The bottle stands by you, Mr. Crater.”
As the wine bottle came round to Melville, he made a formal cough and said, “Mr. Fielder, the Queen.”
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Fielder, “the Queen of Westerness,” and they all drank deeply.
Valandil added, “Sisters, brothers, the King of Osgil,” and they drank again.
“Aye,” added Melville, “God bless them both. And may I propose a toast to our fallen comrades, and to the good Ship Kestrel, which although gone, still lives on.
“Bind her, grind her, burn her with fire,
Cast her ashes into the sea, —
She shall escape, she shall aspire,
She shall arise to make men free;
She shall arise in a sacred scorn,
Lighting lives that are yet unborn.”
“Well said, sir,” replied Lady Elphinstone, turning to Melville when she’d done her loyal duty to both rulers and Kestrel. “That was a delightful dinner, but before we go, wouldst thou permit me to give a toast? To the dear Fang, and may she long continue to bite the queen’s enemies.”
“Hear her, hear her,” said one and all, as they drank. Then, led by Melville’s spontaneous act, they all splashed a dollop of wine onto the deck of their ship. To their amazement it quickly disappeared, like blood soaked up by the Elbereth Moss.
Chapter the 9th
Forging a Weapon:
Beat Out the Iron, Edge It Keen
O dreadful Forge! if torn and bruised
The heart, more urgent comes our cry
Not to be spared but to be used,
Brain, sinew, and spirit, before we die,
Beat out the iron, edge it keen,
And shape us to the end we mean!
“The Anvil”
Laurence Binyon
Her Majesty, the Queen of Westerness’ 24-Pounder Frigate, Fang, sailed westward into a “pleasant illusion of eternity.” The days flowed by with quiet sailing under a perfect, unchanging sky. They sailed constantly toward a golden horizon that blended into a band of purple twilight. A horizon that remained perpetually ahead, never nearer. Above them the starry galaxies hung.
Below them the plane of Flatland flowed past. Flatland was a deep, dark blue, except when they passed a star or planet. Then, beside them or beneath them would flow the vast brilliant yellow, white, red or blue glow of a star, the huge expanse of an orange gas giant, or the reds, browns, whites, blues and blacks of uninhabited planets. Rarest of all was the swirling blue, green and white that indicated a world which might support human life. In this region of the galaxy there were many stars and many planets, but none of them were known to be inhabited. The first inhabited planet would be Pearl, a Stolsh colony that was their destination.
The great twenty-volume biography of Captain Jack Aubrey, one of the most famous mariners of Old Earth, was preserved on one of the military data nets that survived the Crash. Like the volumes of the magnificent Hornblower biography, only the raw text was loaded in, and even the names of those great writers were lost. They were lost to the ages even more surely than Homer or Shakespeare, ever to be a source of controversy and academic discussion. But that great, nameless writer of the Aubrey biography had gained immortality like few men among the sailors of Westerness, and he wrote well and true when he spoke of this illusion of eternity.
“The immemorial sequence of cleaning the upper decks in earliest morning . . . piping up hammocks, piping hands to breakfast, cleaning the maindeck, piping to various morning exercises, the solemn observation at noon, hands piped to dinner, grog piped up [or, in this case, Guldur beer], the officers drummed to the gunroom dinner, the afternoon occupations, hands piped to supper, more grog [or beer!], then quarters, with the thunderous roar of the great guns flashing and roaring in the twilight.” This timeless ritual, “punctuated by bells,” was indeed “so quickly and firmly restored that it might never have been broken.”