'At once,' said Communications, proudly.
Rrowl-Captain hunched forward in his command chair, mastering his hidden fears. Honor would be his, and this victory would slay his inner demons.
'Navigator,' he rasped, 'begin evasive maneuvers, inward toward the monkeyship. Attempt to draw their fire. Strategist, aid him with your knowledge.' Rrowl-Captains torn claw began to bleed, unnoticed, onto the spotless arm of the command chair.
'At once, Dominant One,' the two other kzin shouted with one Hero's voice.
The entire command bridge seemed to blur and tremble as the gravitic polarizer's mutter grew to a low roar. A scorching odor began to emanate from the ventilators as the polarizer was pushed beyond basic design limits. The command bridge filled with the snarling of the agitated crew and the pheromonal scent of their fury.
The deadly white blaze of the alien contra-matter reaction drive stretched across the thinplate viewscreen. It grew swiftly larger and began to move to one side. But slowly.
Rrowl-Captain made the slashing gesture of fealty to the One Fanged God, and watched his fate rushing toward him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Linkage was godhead.
Bruno felt the hail of relativistic particles slowly eroding the hull of Sun-Tzu like an invigorating breeze on bare skin. The lethal blaze of radiation sleeting through the sensors was like desert sunshine, warm and friendly.
But he knew that there was so much more than what lay immediately outside the spacecraft to perceive and cherish, to make part of himselves! Everything about Sun-Tzu was now part of Bruno: the raw power of the antimatter drive, the patient, lethal tensions of the weapons systems, the exquisite fineness of his growing sensorium.
Linked, he could do many things besides wear a spaceship like a slick and sensitive skin. Bruno's mind had become more than simply human.
It had become Mind.
From its tiny human kernel, loci of subminds with special interests quickly formed and grew, each with full independent consciousness as well as being part of the developing interconnective Whole. He had become a clamoring community, a society of minds, each subunit far greater than their woefully limited biological ancestor.
Bruno sent his enhanced consciousness ranging restlessly through the sensory and computational net of Sun- Tzu, gazing outward and inward simultaneously. He could at once encompass the All, the depth and range of the universe, from quanta to quasars. A portion of Bruno was still staggered by the whirlwind of knowledge within his thoughts, but with every full Linkage, he became better able to access the vast vault of data surrounding him. It was as if his myriad selves were dissolving in a warm ocean of knowledge and certitude.
But that did not concern him overmuch, even the part of himselves that was still Bruno.
For Bruno knew that he was changing, improving, with every Linkage. His times not in communion with the computer network became less and less important, like faint memories almost forgotten over many decades of time.
Linkage also gave Bruno mastery of self. He was learning how to expand or contract his duration-sense at the slightest whim. Soon, he would be able to stretch a microsecond into eternity, or the reverse. A tiny, flawed part of Bruno – his limited biological component – wanted to shout with exhilaration, but he was far beyond mere human emotion.
Bruno, once again in full Linkage, was Transcended.
His awareness surrounded and permeated Sun-Tzu, at one with the All. A portion of his Mind watched one of the kzin warships slide helplessly into his antimatter drive wash. Without specifically desiring to do so, Bruno's new sensorium analyzed and reported the spectral characteristics of the vaporized alien craft: Flayed atoms of carbon and iron, silicon and indium, shattered and broken.
Whirling motes, once part of a mighty warship and alien flesh, blasted now and scarred.
A billowing cloud of humbled ions, now a slight contaminant of the incandescent torrent of plasma and gamma radiation sweeping behind him for millions of kilometers.
Bruno relished his control. The drive was its lowest setting; he could pivot and swing the exhaust like the weapon it was while still maintaining proper attitude control. So graceful, so clean, so true.
Bruno looked beyond the drive wash, past the sweeping fields of force and glitter of ions, into the vast and varied face of infinity. An emotion much like awe filled his circuits and neurons.
He permitted part of his Mind to appreciate and cherish the subtle wonders surrounding his myriad selves, while another fragment of that expanded consciousness dealt with the growing threat to Sun-Tzu.
A tiny bit of his consciousness noted that Carol was speaking to his human component. He felt the urge to reply, to speak in human terms, much as his un-Linked self felt the dull pangs of hunger or the first stirrings of lust. While fully Linked, merely human concerns seemed akin to instinct, lacking the crystalline certainty and broad range of Transcendence. He sent a tendril of his greater Mind into his minor and insignificant biological portion, increasing his consciousness and processing capacity in that location.
His pale perception of the navigation deck sharpened suddenly to razor-edged clarity.
'Yes, Carol. I am with you. I have been so all along.' The words, mere modulated sound waves, seemed frustratingly imprecise and limited.
Insufficient.
Bruno called up the realtime image of Carol's face from the navigation-deck cameras, then finally used his biological vision-sense organs on the captain of Sun-Tzu. The image didn't seem more accurate than the camera images to Bruno's sensorium; quite the reverse, in fact. Still, he knew that Carol felt more comfortable when he turned his biological eyes on her.
It was a human quirk, one Bruno didn't mind indulging. Even if it wasted some small amount of processing capacity.
Carol's face was lined with worry and other fitful emotions that were difficult to quantify. He focused on her words.
'Thank you for turning your head. Tacky, I just saw one of the ratcat ships vaporize.”
'Indeed. The kzin ship attempted to maneuver around the drive wash, lost maneuvering power, and… was consumed.”
Bruno accessed biotelemetry and voice-stress-analysis datalinks. Calculating, calculating… Clearly, Carol was as worried by his condition as by the alien craft. Bruno felt the electronic analog of amusement at her colorless concerns.
They were sweet, cute; as touching as a dog trying to understand an aircar.
'What about the other two ships, Pilot? Can your magnificent intellect find them, or are you drunk again on godhood?' Her tone sounded angry, like the annoying buzz of an insect.
'Allow me a moment,' he replied, trying to force reassuring patterns of emotional context into his vocalizations, to soothe Carol while he considered the situation. Bruno was intrigued. Mere human or not, she had said something to hold the attention of his greater Mind. He wanted to ponder and savor the words, but first had to evaluate their status and implications.
Bruno directed his full Attention outward for a moment, and perceived the two kzin ships at a relatively safe distance. Nothing threatened, to a first approximation of risk. He could spare a few seconds for improving his internal functioning, surely.
A human-analytical portion of his Mind continued to consider Carol's statement. 'Drunk' was clearly pejorative, and implied suboptimal performance.
Perhaps some subminds were functioning at less than ideal efficiencies. Clearly, the weak link in his Mind must
