Yes. . Then: hold out your hands to me.
What is happening? I'm frightened.
Don't be, little one. I am passing over control to you. The world is yours, to do with as you please. You are to be the God at last.
At last?
To the end. Good-bye, Demogorgon. Take care of yourself.
Good-bye, Brendan. I love you.
The scene evolved out of nowhere, filling itself with the necessary denizens of life. In the highest spire of the Jeweled City on the Mountain an instrumentation chamber sprang full-blown into existence, already filled with the principal actors of the play it was about to perform. Demogorgon en Arhos , King, Lord of all he surveyed, Irrefutable Commander of the Universe, sat in a chair before his subjects, surveying them with satisfaction.
People sat before their instrument boards, reading information from archaic screens, all the people of Arhos and the world that surrounded it. Chisuat Raabo read the data for him, the beauty of Piruat Nahuaa by his side. Floating off to one side of the great chamber, as if supported by some viscous, invisible fluid, were Cooloil and her eternal companion, Seven Red Anchorelles. They might have been as they always had been, but they were changed. On the conic frustum of each hard-tentacled body lay a pair of slanted, glowing red eyes, that they might see at last by the light of the outer world. They waited together, overjoyed to live again, to be together, and to have each other for all time. The adventure for them was begun again.
In one dim corner of the room, lurking before the console of a mighty computer, squatted a great, lizardlike biped called Over Three Hills, one truly dead, reborn from the contents of a mere recollection. Demogorgon let his throne spin slowly about. Standing behind his shoulder, hands clasped behind his back, feet planted slightly apart, Brendan Sealock, GAM-and-Redux, gazed calmly out across the scene, proud of the role he had played in making it come true.
Demogorgon looked around, smiling at his handiwork. It was done. 'This is it,' he called out. 'Begin Systems Survey.'
The two Seedees—the People, they called themselves now —swung into action. They swept to their work station, jetting through the very air, and plugged into an Action Panel, anchorelles foremost. Comnet-like, information flowed into their bodies, whirling meaningfully through their oil. Pheromones arced outward, forming audible words for the rest. 'The repair work is complete,' they said in unison. 'All is in readiness.'
The King nodded. It was good. Should I let it take them by surprise? What a surprise that would be!
The expression on Brendan's face would be worth the cost of his immortal soul, for such it now was. No, that would be petty of me. The effect of a warning might save their lives, at no cost to the drama of the thing.
He turned to face the GAM replica. 'Contact the humans on Ocypete ,' he said. 'Tell them that starship
'At once,' said the GAM. It tilted its head back to stare into the sky. Pearlescent oceans sprang forth, penetrating the crystal dome that topped the spire, and burst outward to the very ends of creation. Klaxons hooted and the footfalls of hurried men thudded on through endless corridors. Technicians sweated over their minute task. Computers thought and the various enslaved functions that survived from the construct of Centrum worked at keeping up their end of the charade. Energy sources were concentrated and great ducts opened in the hull of Mother Ship, drinking in the lower atmosphere of the enfolding planet that had trapped them all in its womb for so long.
Imagination played its part, circuits working on overdrive, and the reality that it was derived from hurried to catch up with the commands that drove it. Deep in its matrices of data, the reborn mind of a child spun forth the web of its dreams, and the dream stuff caught fire and burned with a terrifying flame.
Beth sat in the common room, brooding before a deopaqued wall, staring out across the flat vistas of Ocypete and the vast expanses of the ice ocellus they had so long ago named Mare Nostrum. Who called it that? Demogorgon? She tried to call up a memory of that first thrilling orbit about their new world but failed. I can't remember. She thought about the little Arab, now, she supposed, dead within the electrochemical depths of Iris and Centrum. She looked up at the planet, still hanging in the sky. It was unchanged, still blue and semiclear, its rings undisturbed. A strange thing, that. She knew that Brendan and Tem were up to something but didn't know what. They never explain anything to me. Reasonable, I guess. I really wouldn't understand anyway. The man was dead and his body lived on, powered by fragments of Jana. How much of him is still alive in that body? Axie talked a little about it. Most of him is in there. Only the 'I' part thinks of itself as Jana.
The events of the recent past warred powerfully against five hundred years of humanism. She knew that each human being was a unique, powerfully ensouled entity, an unpredictable absolute. Every moment of her consciousness proved it as surely as if it were etched in stone. There is a me that goes beyond my leaden flesh, and, even though I will die one day and it will stop, that doesn't mean anything. Why shouldn't it be so? My love of existence and other people, all the things that go into making me an individual? She had an image of herself as a machine, all the things that she truly was recorded on an old-fashioned reel of tape, able to be transferred at will to another machine, another muddy hulk. The idea was repellent. Things that lack meaning aren't things.
She passed on to gentler yet still more troublesome ideas. She had become united with the others during the battle in Bright Illimit. They had fought together and, she knew, facing the adversity and triumphing over it had made them close. What would the future bring to them? Undoubtedly they would return to Earth, and she had no
