Tin Woodman

  Not actually realizing what she was doing, she coursed a warm flow of empathic love over all of them. They smiled at her, and she felt their feelings—good feelings—as well. Div had improved her Talent. Sharpened it.

  As Mora turned toward the lift shaft, Coffer’s words broke the silence Mora left in her wake. “No time to waste,” Coffer said. “We’ve got the directions from Div. We’ve got to maneuver the ship to prepare to re-enter the rift. There’s much to do. There’s a long journey ahead of us.”

  Another voice objected, “But if we return, might we not be arrested as mutineers? Perhaps we should find some nearby Earth-type planet and colonize it. We have the necessary equipment.”

  Coffer’s response was sharp and full of emotion. Mora turned, saw she was pointing at her. “I could give you a hundred reasons. But right there is the only reason that counts.”

  Mora smiled to herself. Such a strange thing to be loved. Such a strange experience to be a prophet, a bearer of a new message. A dull pain of memory touched her deep inside. If only Ston were here to share this with her.

  But no. No more looking back to a past so fraught with pain and self-hate. For the first time in her life, she felt happy with herself—felt fulfillment. The future would by no means be easy. But each day would be a solid stairstep now to her heart’s desire.

  She stepped onto the platform, and lifted up to the observation deck to look at the stars, for the first time knowing her place beneath them.

  EPILOGUE

  In a spherical pattern, the nexus-link ship at the center, the twenty Gomtuu traveled through the mass of extradimensional energies that was Null-R space as one. The brilliant and blazing colors that boiled about them fell on inactive sensor receptors. All inner force was now focused on the nexus-ship, bridging the twenty various mind combinations, meshing the consciousnesses into a semblance of one. This communication exchange centered upon the recent experiential matrices built through their contact with the human ship. Empirical and metaphysical permutations were constructed to augment the stored group memory, so as to place it in the proper emotional/ situational context—so that it would be as much the truth to them in the future as it was then and would not suffer damage in transference to the mass memory system of the collective, so far away.

  The entity named Tin Woodman by the humans hung at the very lowest point of the hierarchal levels. Even in size, it was not so large as its fellows. Once the separate vantage points on the experience were harvested, weighed, considered, and combined, the whole of the group-mind directed a specific, selective question to their fellow, who had been their spokesman, through the focus point of the nexus-link.

  Brother, they said. It is complete. We have humored your desires because of your difference, which we must accept—and the acknowledged curiosity on our parts as to the progress of the human race, a onetime member of which now forms part of you. All is well, and we are well pleased with the new knowledge we may add to the collective. We rejoice as you must in our destination, after our separate journeys about this galaxy, surveying present conditions. We rejoice that you returned through the rift in time to make the journey with us. We anticipate the company of our fellows. Yet there is one aspect of this unusual contact which you instigated and controlled entirely, with only the aid of channeled energy from the rest of us, which puzzles us. What you told the humans, specifically the one you singled out—the one you have been so preoccupied with during the time-periods we have spent waiting for the metal ship—what you let her experience: it is an untruth. We cannot comprehend—untruths have long since become almost alien to us. We are sure your human part must have been responsible. We have not obtained such an idyllic state, although it is what, as a race, we hope to obtain over the next few eons. Indeed, philosophers among us argue over it constantly, some claiming that such perfection is impossible. There can be no perfect combination of minds maintaining the separate identities of each cell member, they say. If we are totally one another, then we cannot maintain individualities. Wars have been fought—power struggles engaged in with the more powerful of our number who have attempted to suck us all into themselves. Ours is by no means the perfect and splendiferous existence you painted for the human. The extent and power of these imagined fantasies you showed her of ourselves impress us all, perhaps even inspires us to further investigation of the ideal. But why, brother, did you present it to the humans not as ideal, but as fact? This is needed for proper explanation to add to the rest of the memory matrix-and to satisfy our own interest.

  The being that was Tin Woodman and Div Harlthor acknowledged reception of the query. It responded: The human race is decaying. There was a need to instill in them a hope and goal for the future. My symbiote-half has much interest in his former race. Much feeling. Integration is not yet complete between us; this has helped that.

  But why, said the others, was the human woman picked out alone for the transference of these untruthful visions?

  There was a long silence from Tin Woodman. And then: Because she bears the power that will effect a renewal in the progress of the human race. She has the power to contact minds, and can relate the vision I instilled her with to others of her kind.

  It was obviously an incomplete answer, but the others let it suffice and proceeded to let their thoughts travel over other matters. Their new brother was a problem that would take a time to become accustomed to. He was welcomed, but he was different. They did not understand him. They did not comprehend this fierce emotion they now detected in him, and did not care to contemplate it now. It would slack off and die, surely. Until then, to touch it was like nothing they had experienced before. And so they avoided it, ignoring it and its source as best they could.

  Keeping its place within the formation, Tin Woodman journeyed on through distance meaninglessly far from where it had orbited the double-star system, bereft of a companion, for so many ages. Within, its fleshy chambers fairly glowed with life. It was discovering itself again, and delighted in the exploration of every cell. The new part of it was especially fascinating, but very strange. But then, as soon as their consciousnesses were truly one, that would pass away. Now it reveled in itself, running through its chambers with its mind like a delighted little boy.

  It was in its symbiote chamber now, the section that held the physical body of its new mind-half. Lit by the mottled, colored glows of the crystalloids embedded in room-flesh, the human was a wonder. This is a part of me now, it thought. I think now with its mind wrapped up within my ship-body. I am it. It is me. How marvelous!

  It did not totally understand the reason it had kept its companions waiting by the space rift. Nor why it had said what it said to the humans. But somehow, it made it happy.

  And yet all was not right. When it would journey to certain parts of its new mind, there were cold and lonely places, emptier than empty space. It had not been this way at first.

  And that throbbing emotion that would boom out piteously, as though from a lost soul.

  It avoided these chilling places of its new mind, for now. They would warm up and fade away. Soon. Very soon.

  He is almost fully covered now.

  An arm pokes out. The tip of a foot, long since de-shod by the slow flow of connecting flesh. This new skin is translucent; the previous form of the human is just evident below it. Denuded, the boy’s flesh is now punctured with the curling lengths of wire-like nerves and veins which will keep its functions continuous for many millennia.

  And yet it is still recognizably Div Harlthor.

  The head is covered by a cap of harder flesh, with vine-like tendrils piercing the skull. Part of this descends over the face, obscuring half of the features. But the left side is uncovered. The mouth holds itself in a relaxed state, the perfect moue of a content, sleeping baby.

  But the eye—large, pink—is half open. There is a haunted, bitter-sweet look to that eye, frozen forever. And down the cheek below
it there is a tear track, which is slowly drying.

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