Drake asked. “What on Earth are you doing?”
“We’re not on Earth,” Tom retorted, abandoning the internal dialogue to speak aloud, “and it isn’t me who’s doing what I’m doing. It’s the ether-creature that wormed its way into me when the ship leaked. Somehow, it knows how to communicate with this creature. Perhaps it has traveled extensively in the minds of other creatures.”
“Good guess, mine host,” said the creature within him, silently. “You’re an exceptional creature, Thomas Digges, to have such trust in your own sanity. It often requires months or years to establish a rapport—but yours is a dreaming species, I suppose. That makes a difference—few species have that particular gift, or curse.”
Drake had fallen silent, direly puzzled. The insects, however, were frenetically busy in communication among themselves. Touch was only one of the senses they employed; they could not talk as human talked but they clicked and chittered, warbled and hummed. They spoke with their limbs and their wings, and various other kinds of apparatus that Thomas could not discern.
“I think that I have made the situation clear,” Thomas’ internal informant said. “I have asked to be taken to one of the queens’ chambers, since this world has no fleshcore, where we might converse with philosophers closer to the heart of the True Civilization. They will understand your nature, having mechanical analogues of your kind, even if they have not been studying you carefully from afar.”
“I have no idea what you are trying to tell me,” Thomas replied, silently. “All this is meaningless to me.”
“Be patient,” the silent voice said. “I will try to explain when I have the opportunity.
“If you and I are made in God’s image, Tom,” Drake said, softly “What manner of creator made creatures like these?”
It was not like Drake to speculate in such a fashion, but Thomas could understand his confusion very well. Preoccupied with his internal dialogue, however, and disturbed the incessant actions of his unbidden hands, he did not reply.
Drake did not seem to be offended by his rudeness. “Perhaps de Vere was right,” the crewman continued, “but if these are merely insects like those of Earth, what giants the men of the moon must be!”
Thomas knew that there was nothing mere about these insects. They had been investigating him with manifest intelligence—and still were, aided now by the voice of his invader...his guest. Like humans, they were sapient; like humans, they were curious. The ether-creature called theirs the True Civilization—and why should it not, given that they could fly through the ether between the worlds, to capture stray etherships and interrogate their crews?
When the insects crowding around his bed began to deploy the bulkier objects they were carrying he flinched and shied away, but they still did not appear to mean him any harm. He could not tell what was happening when the objects were pointed in his direction, but none of the monsters was touching him any longer, directly or indirectly. His own hands had been withdrawn from the face they had been fondling so strangely.
Thomas found time to say aloud: “All’s well, Francis. I don’t understand what’s happening yet, but they don’t mean to do us any injury.”
Drake was touching his face and inspecting the back of his hands. “That confounded itching’s stopped,” he observed. “Have they administered some antidote?”
“Yes,” Thomas told him. “They did not realize that we had been stung. The ether-creature seems to know a great deal more about what is happening here, and what is relevant to our welfare, than we do. If it has not visited the surface of the Earth, it must know others of its kind that have.
Drake actually struck a pose, then, and bowed gracefully to the four attentive monsters. “On behalf of Queen Jane of England,” he said, “I greet you, noble sirs. Shall we be friends, then? You don’t have the look of Spaniards about you, and God forbid that you might be Elizabethans....or the spirits of the dead, come to that. Was it Plutarch, Thomas, who first declared the moon to be a world akin to the Earth, where the souls of the dead reside?”
“Plutarch it was,” Thomas confirmed, “but I don’t think his soul is here before us, gathering material for more Lives.”
“Nor I,” Drake agreed. “Can you believe that Raleigh and de Vere could be as brave as we are being, under similar inspection? Not that it matters—by the time they tell the tale to the queen, they’ll have fought and vanquished whole Selenite armies, if Field can’t keep them honest—and we’ll never convince them that we had the bravado to act as we are while subject to such scrutiny. Please assure me that they’re not merely deciding the best way to cook and season us.”
The ether-creature seemed to know that Drake was joking, and did not trouble to reassure Thomas against this ominous possibility. Nor, however, did it forewarn Thomas that he was about to be seized in the upper arms of one of the unburdened creatures, and very thoroughly palpated, although it did say “Patience, Thomas!” once the assault began. Thomas felt his hands making some sort of reply, although he had no idea what it was—but he had a strange impression, as the creature withdrew again, that it was even more repulsed by the texture of his flesh than he was by the horror of the grip and the probing feelers.
“The neo-Platonists and Aristotelian diehards have a saying,” Drake muttered. “As above, so below—but this seems to me to be a very different world from the one we know. Men of that sort are mostly monists, though, who think that the moon is a mere lamp planted in the skies by providence to ameliorate the darkness of night in suitably teasing fashion, and that the stars are candles disposed to foretell our futures. Master Dee is no monist, is he—despite that he wrote a book called Monas Hieroglyphica?”
“He was converted to pluralism thereafter,” Thomas said. “Propadeumata Aphorisitica is his definitive statement. He is committed to the infinity of space and of worlds—and when I tell him of our adventure, he will also be committed to the infinite variety of form and virtue. These are intelligent beings, Francis—including the thing inside me—and I’m praying hard that they might be more virtuous in their treatment of fellow intelligent beings than the great majority of men. Take care!”
It was not he that had pronounced the final words, although they had been spoken aloud. Thomas was abruptly snatched from his bed, and Drake was seized.
“Have no fear!” said Thomas’ inner voice, silent again but still voluble. “They are doing as I have asked, and taking us to a visitor from the galactic core. With luck, he will order your release.”
Thomas and Sir Francis Drake were dragged from the room then, but they were both being held quite gently. They were no worse than lightly bruised as they were hustled along one winding corridor after another, through an interminable labyrinth. Thomas’ impression was that they were going deeper into the bowels of the moon, but he could not be sure.
“Where are they taking us?” Drake shouted back to him, his tall but slender captor having drawn some twelve or fifteen yards ahead of Thomas’ stouter guardian.
“To a queen’s chamber, I believe,” Thomas replied, retaking control of his own vocal cords.
“I have heard that ants have queens,” Drake said. “None as pretty as my darling Jane, though.”
“Is she your darling?” Thomas called back, although he could fee the ether-creature’s impatience to revert to silent conversation.
“She will be,” Drake said, “if I
