his ghostly companion.
“Rogue machines are not always easily identifiable,” Lumen said, “and machines distrust ethereals as ethereals distrust machines. Insubstantial as we may seem to be, we are organic creatures, who can only operate in organic hosts. We cannot unite with machines.”
It was not really an answer, but Thomas was already being hurried along again.
“Trust me,” Lumen said, just as he came in sight of his companions, who seemed very glad to see him alive. “The machine was mad, more dangerous to humankind than the True Civilization. Were your kind ever to enter into any kind of alliance with entities like that, you certainly would not lack for enemies.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The descent into the heart of the world was completed without further incident. Thomas had hoped to find something more spectacular at the bottom of the shaft than corridors crowded with the same kinds of creatures he had seen on the moon, but that was all there was. The tunnels seemed a little more crowded, significantly more odorous and much slimier, but the differences were of degree, not of kind.
Unity, Thomas thought, obviously implied a degree of uniformity. This world’s shell was a great deal gaudier and more elaborately-carved than the moon’s rough-hewn surface, but the same swarms filled its interior. There was no egg-laying arena here, though; instead, the five visitors from Earth were conducted to the end of a blind corridor, whose end-wall seemed featureless at first, but did not remain so for long.
While the humans stood before it, lined up alongside one another with their insectile and mechanical companions standing discreetly behind them, the “wall” began to flow.
Thomas took a reflexive step back, but the liquid flow was far too fast for him. The “wall” surged forward like a flood, deluging him and his companions. It enveloped his limbs and his head, moving into his nostrils and between his parted lips with even greater alacrity than the opportunistic ethereal.
Thomas felt certain that he would be drowned, but he was not. Although his lungs were flooded with warm fluid, he did not lose consciousness—indeed, his senses seemed to become sharper. His ears were full of fluid too, and he could feel it pressing tremulously on his eardrums, the palpation sounding a strangely plaintive musical note, lower than he had ever heard from any panpipe.
“Do not be afraid,” said a strange voice, singing rather than speaking in English. “We mean you no harm. We merely want to know you, as intimately as we can.”
Thomas could not reply; his vocal cords were impotent, and he did not suppose that the fleshcore could hear his subvocalizations as Lumen could, given that its intimacy did not seem to extend to the interior of the brain.
The intimate examination did not last long; the liquid flesh retreated as quickly as it had arrived.
The wall seemed solid again, but it was still pliable; it rapidly took on the image of a face: a human face.
At first, Thomas thought that the face was merely generic, but then Drake whispered: “It’s a portrait of you, Tom.”
“They clearly have no eye for handsomeness,” de Vere muttered—but he shut up with a gulp when the wall opened its eyes. The image was some ten feet tall, from the top of its forehead to the tip of its bearded chin: a giant, whose stare seemed very intimidating. The lips parted slightly, but they did not speak. There was, it seemed, no throat or lungs within the mass of flesh behind the face—and if there was a brain of sorts behind the stare, it was no human brain. The expression on the face was not overtly hostile, but Thomas hoped that it was not an expression he would ever have cause to wear.
Thomas glanced sideways at his companions, glad to see that even Field had suffered the experience without falling down; then he turned to look at the English-speaking machine. “It will understand me if I address it like this, I suppose?” he asked.
“Of course,” said the machine. “Earth’s observers have been reporting to it for centuries. I shall reply on its behalf—there should be no delay.”
“Let me do this,” Lumen said, silently.
“No,” Thomas said. “I will do it.” he was not entirely certain that he could successfully fight the invader for control of his own lips, but the ethereal did not try to insist, It merely said: “Be careful, Thomas!”
Thomas looked at the giant face again, resisting its intimidatory effect. “Since you have introduced yourself in your way,” he said, “I shall introduce us in ours. My name is Thomas Digges, in the service of Queen Jane of England. My companions are Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and John Field, representing the Church of England. We do not speak for our entire species, let alone for all of vertebrate-kind, but we are willing to answer any questions you might care put to us, in a spirit of amity.”
The machine had been right; there was no delay in obtaining an answer. “The fleshcore understands everything that you have said,” the inorganic entity pronounced, flatly, “and thanks you for your generosity. It would like each of you to state, in turn, if you will, what your hopes for the future are.”
Thomas was momentarily confused, wondering whether his interrogator was referring to his future as an individual man, or the political future of England, or the future of the entire human race. While he hesitated, John Field—who must have given some forethought to the question of what he would say if he ever found himself face-to-face with the Devil—said: “To do God’s will, and spread His word.”
“Aye,” said Drake, assuming his customary pose of negligent bravado. “That—and to beat the Spaniards, so that England might rule the waves and take possession of the Americas.”
“To be merry in good company,” de Vere supplied, after a brief silence “with the aid of wine, women and the theatre—and to do God’s will, of course.”
“To discover glory,” Raleigh said, after a similar pause, “with all that implies, in the eyes of England and God alike.”
Thomas was still confused, wondering how much of a deficit in what his friends had said that needed to be made good immediately, and where to start. He felt the pressure of everyone’s expectation—including Lumen’s—and yet he continued to hesitate. Finally, before his passenger could offer to intervene, and feeling that he had at least to begin speaking even if he had not yet finished thinking, he said: “First of all,” he said, “to bring my ship and my crew safely home, so that I might report to Master John Dee and the Queen of England what we have discovered beyond the upper limit of the Earth’s atmosphere. Secondly, that we may profit from what we have learned, in terms of human understanding of the shape and plan of Creation, and our place within it. Thirdly, to maintain the communication we began with our new friend Aristocles, whose death I regret bitterly—and to extend that communication further, with the great community that extends between the stars. Fourthly, that the knowledge of what we have found might enable human beings to see and comprehend that their differences from one another are much slighter than they have ever contrived to believe, and that there is much greater virtue in collaboration than in conflict.” He stopped then, lest he say too much.
“Trust a mathematician to display his skill in counting,” de Vere murmured, before Raleigh silenced him with an elbow in the ribs.
“Well said, Tom,” Drake whispered. “There’s not a diplomat in the court who could have done better.”
One of their moth-like attendants clicked its wing-cases,
