Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

“Look into it later.” Chan was impatient to move on to the meeting with the land aliens. “What next, Danny, after the group reached the shelter of the vegetation?”

“We would like to have removed our suits, for comfort, but there were too many unfamiliar critters around. And we didn’t want to go crawling through the jungle for the same reason. A few of the Tinker components had already gone winging off over the top of the plants, and they all vanished. So we took the gadget that Bony made, and we gave it to Vow-of-Silence, and—”

Danny wanted to describe what the Pipe-Rilla had seen through the periscope, but Gressel was in first. The Angel clapped top fronds together loudly to gain attention, and interrupted. “Exactly how many Tinker components flew away?”

Another off-the-wall question. Danny was exhausted, he still didn’t have his drink, and he found it hard enough to provide a clear version of events without stupid interruptions. “How many components? I’m not sure. There were bits and pieces of Tinker coming and going all the time. What difference does it make?”

“Perhaps none. Perhaps the number will prove of great significance.” The Angel sank down into silence.

Danny waited, but apparently no more explanation was forthcoming.

“The periscope,” Chan prompted.

“It wasn’t long enough for anyone else to see over the ridge,” Danny went on. “But Vow-of-Silence was so tall, she could do it. Here’s what she saw — or said she saw. Remember now, none of the rest of us had anything to go on except what was told to us.”

He summarized what he and the others hidden in the scrub had heard about the encampment, and the aliens, and the form wandering around free that looked like a human.

“Looked to a Pipe-Rilla like a human,” Dag Korin said. “But damn it, do you think some gooky misfit lengths of animated drainpipe could look through a shaky handheld periscope, and be sure she was looking at a person a kilometer or more away?”

The Angel stirred, but Danny could recognize a rhetorical question when he heard one.

“We wanted to confirm what Vow-of-Silence had seen,” he said, “so we decided — after a bit of argument — that Chrissie and the Tarb should go take a closer look-see.”

“What argument?” Dag Korin said. “I want to hear about that, too. Don’t decide for yourself that something isn’t important, and leave it out. Let’s hear the lot.”

Danny sighed. Did they really want to know about the dark-red wriggly thing that he had found on the purple fern? Did they want to hear about Scruffy, and the hassle Deb had given Tarbush about taking the ferret with him? At some point he knew what they were going to say. Other than bugs and plants and soil, he hadn’t seen a single blessed thing. Everything that he knew about the encampment, about Friday Indigo, and about the mowing down of Chrissie and Tarbush had come to him secondhand as a report from either Deb or the Pipe-Rilla. They had seen and spoken, he had listened. He was a mere conveyor of hearsay.

It was easiest to make no judgment, reorganize no facts, and simply offer a stream-of-consciousness version of events. Let the listener decide what was important.

He described, through Vow-of-Silence’s eyes, the appearance of something that looked like a human which had apparently persuaded Chrissie and the Tarb to move forward when they ought to have retreated. The approach as far as the encampment’s guarding fence. The emergence of three dark-shelled and fast-moving shapes. The run for cover — the raised black canes — the fall, to lie motionless on the bare ground.

And now, at last, something to which he could personally attest: the high-pitched, eerie moan that had emerged from Vow-of-Silence’s narrow head. The final dispersal of Eager Seeker into a great cloud of components, circling Danny and the rigid Pipe-Rilla like a tornado before flying off in all directions. And, five seconds later, Vow-of-Silence’s collapse forward at Danny’s side, into a fit or trance from which neither he nor Deb had been able to wake her.

“I ask again.” the Angel interrupted Danny’s reliving of the moment. “How many components had Eager Seeker lost, in total, prior to this dispersal? Lost from every cause?”

“Does it matter?” Dag Korin made no attempt to hide his irritation with Gressel. “What difference does it make if a hundred or a thousand Tinker components flew away?”

Danny was glad to see somebody else fencing with the Angel. He no longer had the strength — he was so tired he could barely follow Gressel’s questions, never mind answer them.

“It’s because of Tinker size and Tinker structure,” Chan said suddenly. “I remember it from twenty years ago, when I was working with a Tinker Composite on Travancore. I never saw the effect myself, but isn’t there some kind of Tinker stress/stability relation?”

“There is indeed.” The Angel produced from its speech synthesizer a sigh very like a human’s. “As a Tinker Composite grows in size, it also grows in intelligence. That is well-known. What is less commonly known is that with increased intelligence comes greater sophistication in handling threats to a Tinker’s own safety. Unfortunately, the converse holds true. Reduce the number of components and the Composite decreases in stability. Now, as I understand it, Eager Seeker was originally an unusually large Composite. But soon after arrival on Limbo, a substantial fraction was detached to form Blessed Union, and went ashore.”

“That’s what I was told,” Bony said, then felt embarrassed because he had butted in. He muttered, “But it never came back.”

“And Eager Seeker went at that point from being a large to a somewhat small Composite. Yet more components were lost when the shore party was exploring. A reduced Composite, subjected to unexpected stresses at such a time, seeks safety using a mechanism ingrained through all of Tinker evolution: solitation .”

“It flies apart,” Chan said softly. “Disperses.”

“Worse than that. A Tinker can normally disperse at any time, and then reassemble. But a Tinker who suffers solitation will never come together again as an ensemble without assistance. The components eat, and they can still breed. But they form an uncoupled host of mindless and solitary components.” The Angel stirred, as though the sentient crystalline Singer within the vegetable of the Chassel-Rose imagined its own irrevocable separation of parts.

“It’s death for the Composite,” Liddy said. She clutched Bony’s hand. “It may not sound like it, but it is.”

“Which means that Deb is alone on shore.” Chan looked at Dag Korin. “She was waiting for Eager Seeker to come back, but it’s not going to happen. And while she waits there she’s a sitting target for whatever got Chrissie and Tarbush.”

“No.” The General shook his head. “I know where you’re heading with your thinking, Dalton, but I won’t allow it.”

“I could go solo. Danny’s back, and the ship is safe.”

“Not a chance. It would be crazy for you to try, at night and in unexplored terrain. Deb Bisson is a smart woman, too smart to do anything stupid. She won’t risk anything at night. She’ll lie low until morning. Then like as not she’ll decide that she can’t wait any longer for Eager Seeker, and head back here.”

“I think I ought to go.”

“And I’m pulling rank and telling you, for the last time, you’re not going. Get a grip, man.” Korin stood up, went to the metal bureau in the corner of the room, and opened the doors. “Casement wants a drink, and you should have one, too. We all should. Come on, Dalton, relax. We’re all here, and Deb Bisson is safe ashore. Not a damn thing is going to happen, here or there, until morning.”