I dipped into the mass of minds that lived within me. Over time I learned to survive the storm of the multitude, to take what I needed and go on. Jicklet was often there with me. And an engineer named Hadra 232. And a Z-space theorist named Nu. And a hundred other scientists, technicians, theorists, builders, designers, innovators.
And biologists as well. Lackofa was with me. Others, many others, from other races.
The work changed shape, mutated, grew like a living thing and in fact became a living thing. For although I was building a ship, I was building so much more. I was building a new race. A race of one. A race of millions.
I was singular and plural all at once. I was alive and I was a machine. Engines were a part of me. Computers linked directly with my brain and soon the link was forgotten and the line disappeared. Sensors were my senses. I was vast. Vast enough to release the multitude.
Thirty years, and at last I was ready. I had passed most of a century on the blue moon. It was dying. The air worsened slowly, but that was all right; I no longer needed air. The waters reeked of decay, but I no longer needed to drink. The fish had long since become extinct. But I had saved the dead. And now I opened wide the gate to my multitude, never to close it again.
All my Ketrans, all my Generationals, my Daankins, my Hayati, my 333’s, my Wurbs and Breets and Gofinickiliasts, my Multitudinals, my Chan Wath, my Skrit Na and Illamans and Capasins and my one Unemite and so many others. Race after race. I emptied each dead mind into my extended brain, my biological-mechanical-synthetic construct, all free again.
So much knowledge, so much. And yet, when the flood was calmed, only I was truly alive. It was all me. I was still alone.
I lit my engines and rose from the surface of the dying moon.
From space I looked back on it. What was fitting? Some races burned their dead, some ate them, some buried them in the ground. Some finality was called for so that the floating bones and exoskeletons and shells of all those honored dead could cease to be grotesque.
I called on my weapons and I blasted the moon till it broke apart, till the atmosphere was ripped away, till the sea boiled up into the vacuum, till the molten remains spiraled slowly down in the gravity well of the planet and were incinerated on reentry.
Then I entered Z-space and put a billion miles between myself and that foul place.
Now what was I to do? I was unique. As alone as only a unique creature can be. I was part of no species. I was part of many species, but there was no hope of companionship there. Who would welcome me into their system? I had become a physical embodiment of the inter-species uninet I used to dream of. I was a library of information from many races. And with my extended body/ship I was powerful beyond reckoning.
Now what?
Now what?
Now what? What is your game now, Ellimist?
I thought of returning to Ket. But that would only cause me pain. Return to what? To empty skies where my people once lived?
I flew. In and out of Z-space, in and out of orbits. Time meant nothing to me, I was in no hurry. But the loneliness was another matter. I took refuge in creating subroutines, simulations of people. I tried to talk to them, tried to … But how can you really talk to your own creation? How can you talk to a machine you’ve programmed? It’s an exercise in narcissism. It’s the beginning of madness.
I knew now why Father had kept me alive. He had long since learned the emptiness of communication without hope of surprise. A Ketran — any sentient species — is only his free will. Freedom and sentience are inseparable. The captive, programmed mind is no mind at all.
I flew for a long time. Years. Looking. For what? I didn’t know.
And then, I dropped from Z-space and entered a system where two planets were at war.
They were technologically advanced, though not capable of Z-space travel yet. They communicated by microwave and laser emissions. They moved across the lands and seas and through the skies of their respective planets. They had suppressed most diseases.
Two planets in strangely close proximity, no more than a quarter million miles separating them at their closest points. One was called Jall, the other the Inner World. The Inner World was actually in the more distant orbit, but then “inner” may have been a reference to some other factor. Neither Jallians nor Inners were part of my multitude, though the 333’s had knowledge of their existence. I was in a far reach of the galaxy.
I arrived, invisible to either side. I arrived in the midst of a ship-to-ship battle. In fact, I dropped out of Z-space within twenty miles of being struck by a terrifically powerful Jallian beam that missed its intended target, missed me, and finally, diffused and harmless, slightly warmed the nickel-and-iron surface of a passing asteroid.
“Well, well,” I said. (I’d long since lost any reluctance to converse with myself.) “I seem to have stumbled into a war.”
The Jallian ship, a fantastically painted behemoth half a mile long, fired again. This time the beam found its victim. A small, swift Inner ship that looked, with its smooth, swept lines as if it had been designed to move through water, blew apart.
The Jallian jubilation was short-lived. A swarm of Inner craft emerged from the primitive stealth-state that allowed them to hide from Jallian sensors.
The Jallian ship fired again and again and annihilated five of the attackers, nearly a third of the total. But then the Inners fired. Their weapons were weaker. The Jallian ship did not blow apart. But the outer skin
