from the frantic pace, overheating and tumbling to the carpet, which began waving toward the commotion, showing unnerving signs of animate hunger. Atoms were rare in E Space, and did not last long. Many simple meme creatures found bits of matter useful as trace nutrients, lending a bit of reality to living abstractions.
“Thirty duras until arrival of the newcomers,” confirmed pilot mode.
Though its work was unfinished, the caterpillar-machine decided there was no more time to spare, and began hurrying away next to the glowing Avenue.
I wonder why it doesn’t try a dive back into normal space by jumping into the Avenue. Sure, it might emerge almost anywhere, and need centuries to find its way to a decent hyperspatial shunt, but don’t machines have plenty of time?
He could think of several possibilities.
Perhaps it’s too badly damaged to survive reentry.
Or maybe its organic cargo can’t afford to spend centuries drifting through space.
The awkward machine suffered dire problems. Metal-hinged legs began freezing in place, or snapping and falling off. Harry pictured a wounded animal, struggling on with its last strength.
He turned to watch for the pursuers. A burst of light heralded their emergence, shining from the tunnel. Carpet strands quailed in response. Then the first creature appeared.
Harry’s impression was of an armored earthworm, with a glistening head consisting of shiny plates. A beast of dark holes and airless depths. But this quickly changed. In a speedy metamorphosis, the entity adjusted to this different realm. Eyelike organs sprouted above, while pseudopods erupted below, until it stood gracefully atop myriad delicate tendrils, like a millipede.
Or megapede, Harry decided.
Only one kind of creature could adjust so quickly in E Space. One that was native to it. A sophisticated meme-carnivore. An idea — perhaps the very idea — of predation.
As the first one transmuted to fit the ad hoc rules of a gigantic parlor room, several more crowded from behind, members of a hunting pack, eager for a final dash after their helpless prey.
It’s none of my business, Harry thought, pulling anxiously on both thumbs. My first duty is to collect Wer’Q’quinn’s instruments. My second is to track and deter interlopers … but the memes will take care of this one by themselves.
But Harry’s indecision was stoked by a sudden memory of the last time he had listened to the Skiano missionary preach its strange creed from a makeshift pulpit, beneath a slowly turning hologram of crucified Earth. With both light and sound, the evangelist sermonized that each sapient individual should look to the deliverance of his or her own soul.
“Although our sect has burst only recently upon the boulevards and byways of the Five Galaxies, we are already seen as a threat by the old faiths. They try to limit our message through regulations and legal harassment, using unscrupulous means to undermine our emissaries. Above all, they claim that we teach selfishness.
“If the Abdicators, Awaiters, Transcenders, and other traditions agree on one thing, it is that salvation must be achieved by species and clans, perfecting themselves to follow our blessed Progenitors into the Embrace of Tides. Each generation should work selflessly to help their heirs move farther, step by step. How terrible, then, if individuals, in their trillions and quadrillions, start thinking of themselves! What if redemption could be achieved by each thinking being, through faith in a God who is above and beyond all known levels of universal reality?
“What if the Embrace of Tides might be bypassed, by achieving a heavenly afterlife, described in the sacred works of Terra? Would everyone then cease trying for racial progress? Abandoning posterity in favor of spiritual rewards now?”
The Skiano’s lower set of eyes had flashed. “There is an answer. The answer of Buddo, Moshe, Jesu, and other great prophets who taught during Earth’s era of glorious loneliness. Their answer — our answer — is that salvation’s greatest tool has always been compassion.”
Even days later, Harry’s thoughts still roiled around the incredible, many-sided incongruity of the Skiano’s message.
Chewing his lip, he turned to address the floating P symbol.
“How many hunters are there?”
“The memoids number five,” answered pilot mode. “Two are now fully transformed and have resumed pursuing the mech interloper. Two are still shifting. One remains inside the tunnel, awaiting its turn.”
He saw a pair of meme-carnivores accelerating across the pseudocarpet, each propelled by a million rippling tendrils, rapidly overtaking the decrepit machine. Two more finished transforming while Harry paced, wishing he had never attended the Skiano’s revival meeting.
In fact, he could not be sure what motivated his decision to act. Compassion might have been part of it. But Harry preferred blaming it on something else.
Curiosity.
I’ll never find out what the clumsy-fool machine is carrying, if it gets gobbled up by a bunch of ravenous opinions.
The fifth memoid emerged and began its metamorphosis.
Harry let out a cry of resolution and punched a button, releasing the reality anchor, causing the station to plummet straight down with all eight legs deployed like claws.
His first opponent fell easiest.
A memoid is defenseless during transition, while reformatting its conceptual framework for a new environment. “Paraphrasing itself into another idiom,” as Wer’Q’quinn had explained during Harry’s training. During that time, its self-assured cohesion wavered, making it vulnerable to external points of view.
This one reacted quickly when the plummeting station pierced its spine in several places, injecting some critical notions.
INTERRUPTION
HESITATION
DOUBT
In E Space, an idea can hold together without a brain to think it. But only if the proposition is strong enough to believe in itself. To such a self-sustaining concept, uncertainty was worse than a toxin, especially if inserted at the right place and time. Unable to cope, this complex meme faltered and quickly dissolved, allowing its component propositions to be gobbled up by the surrounding carpet. That left Harry free to amble quickly after its peers.
Be like a spider, he thought, preparing the weapon console for action. His advantages were now stealth and speed … plus the fact that this entire subdomain of E Space must have coalesced a while ago around some seed- image from his own mind — probably a childhood memory of somebody’s Brobdingnagian parlor.
Approaching the next two memes rapidly from behind, he chose to snare them with an entanglement ray. It seemed ideal for attack in E Space, shooting finely woven arrays of syllogisms — logical arguments collected from digests of the Great Galactic Library going back over a billion years.
Well, here goes nothing.
Harry aimed and fired.
The weapon was contingent, meaning that its appearance and form varied depending on local conditions. In other zones of E Space, he had seen it lash out beams of caustic light, or discharge glowing disproofs like fiery cannonballs. Here, streams of distilled argument seemed to spiral out from the station like webs of sticky silk, flying over and beyond the next pair of memic carnivores.
One of them stumbled instantly, snarling its abundant legs in viscous cords of ancient persuasion, tangling its torso amid strands of quarrelsome reasoning, rolling to a jumbled ball, then rapidly dissipating into vapor.
Its partner was luckier. While cornered by surrounding webs, the predator managed to stop just in time. Wherever a line of caustic contention did make contact, burning its flanks, rebuttals flowed from the wound like fervent antibodies.
The creature turned its metaphorical gaze, and proceeded to spit poison. Gobbets flew toward the station — presumably cogent explanations meant to convince Harry’s vessel not to exist anymore. He might have tried shooting them down, or swatting them, or even enduring the assault. But Harry had already chosen another tactic. Taking advantage of his knowledge about the local zone, he made the station flex all eight legs, then leap, soaring above the acrid missiles and beyond, over the pair of trapped allaphors.
