Still lower in the scale are domesticized bacteria, carefully tailored to perform one or two functions. Some of these bacteria (there is no way to connect their type with any he knows by human names) are small factories, flooding the blood with the molecules necessary to the noocytes.

And at the bottom of the scale, but by no means negligible in importance, are tailored phage viruses. Some of the virus particles act as high-speed transports for crucial information, towed by flagellate bacteria or slimmed-down lymphocytes; others wander freely through the blood, surrounding the larger cells like dust clouds. If somatic cells, servants or even mature noocytes have abandoned the hierarchy—rebelled or malfunctioned drastically—the virus particles move in and inject their package of disruptive RNA. The offending cells soon explode, casting out a cloud of more tailored virus, and the debris is cleaned away by various noocyte and servant scavengers.

Every type of cell originally in his body—friend or foe– has been studied and put to use by the noocytes.

Dislodge and follow the trail of the command cluster. You will be interviewed.

Bernard feels his cluster move back into the capillary. The walls of the capillary narrow until he is strung out in a long line, his intercellular communications reduced until he feels the noocyte equivalent of suffocation. Then he passes through the capillary wall and is bathed in interstitial fluid. The trail is very distinct. He can “taste” the presence of mature noocytes, a great many of them.

It comes to him suddenly that he is, in fact, still near his brain, possibly still in his brain, and that he is about to meet one of the researchers responsible for breaking through to the macro-scale world.

He passes through crowds of servant cells, information-bearing flagellates, noocytes waiting for instructions.

I am about to be introduced to the Grand Lunar, he tells himself. The thought and accompanying mental chuckle is passed into his experience data almost immediately, extruded and hastily retrieved by a servant cell, and carried away to the command cluster. Even more rapidly, a response comes to him.

BERNARD compares us with a MONSTER.

–Not at all. I’m the monster here. Either that, or the situation itself is monstrous.

We are nowhere near to understanding the subtleties of your thought. Have you found the *downloading* informative?

–So far, very informative. And I admit I feel humble here.

Not like a supreme command cluster?

–No. I am not a god.

We do not understand GOD.

The command cluster was much larger than a normal noocyte cluster. Bernard estimated it held at least ten thousand cells, with a commensurately greater thinking capacity, he felt like a mental midget, even with the difficulty of making judgments in the noocyte realm.

–Do you have access to my memories of H.G. Wells?

Pause. Then, Yes. They are quite vivid for not being pure experience memories.

–Yes, well they come from a book, an encoding of an unreal experience.

We are familiar with *fiction*.

–I feel like Cavour in The First Men in the Moon. Speaking with the Grand Lunar.

The comparison may be appropriate, but we do not comprehend it. We are very different, BERNARD, far more different than your comparison with the unreal experience would suggest.

–Yes, but like Cavour, I have thousands of questions. Perhaps you don’t wish to answer all of them.

To keep your fellow macro-scale HUMANS from knowing all we might do, and trying to stop us.

The message was just unclear enough to show Bernard that the command cluster was still unable to completely encompass the reality of the macro-scale.

–Are you in touch with the noocytes in North America?

We are aware there are other, far more *powerful* concentrations, in much better circumstances.

–And…? No response.

Then, Are you aware that your *enclosing space* is in jeopardy?

–No. What sort of jeopardy? You mean the lab?

*The lab* is surrounded by your fellows in *uncertain hierarchy relationship*.

–I don’t understand.

They wish to destroy *the lab*, and presumably all of us.

–How do you know this?

We are able to receive RADIO FREQUENCY TRANSMISSIONS in several LANGUAGES *encodings*. Can you stop these attempts? Are you in a position of hierarchy INFLUENCE?

Bernard puzzles over the request.

We have memory of the TRANSMISSIONS.

–Then let me hear them.

He can taste the passage of a flagellate, intersecting the messenger of the command cluster, returning with a packet of data. Bernard’s cluster absorbs the data.

He “listens” to the transmissions now in memory. They are not of the best quality, and most of them are in German, which he poorly understands. But he can understand enough to realize why Paulsen-Fuchs has been looking worse and worse of late.

The Pharmek facility is surrounded by camps of protesters. The countryside all the way out to the airport is dotted with them; the protesters number perhaps half a million, and more are arriving by bus, automobile or on foot every day. The army and police do not dare break them up; the mood throughout West Germany, and most of Europe, is very ugly.

–I have no power to stop them.

PERSUASION?

Another inner chuckle.—No; I’m what they want destroyed. And you.

You are far less influential in your realm than we are here.

–Oh, yes, of course.

For a long period, no messages issue from the command cluster.

There is even less time. We are transferring you now.

He feels a subtle shift in the voice as he is moved by flagellates away from the command cluster. Follow. He realizes that a group of clusters has broken away from the command cluster. They are communicating with him, and their voice seems oddly familiar, more direct and accessible.

–Who is guiding me?

The response is chemical. An identifying string is brought to him by a flagellate, and suddenly he knows he is being guided by four clusters of primary B-lymphocytes, the earliest versions of the noocytes. Primary B-lymphocytes are accorded a place in most command clusters, and treated with great respect; they are the precursors, even though their activities are limited. They are primitive in both meanings of the word; less sophisticated in design and function than recently created noocytes, and the ancestors of all.

You may enter THOUGHT UNIVERSE.

The voice fades in and out like a bad telephone connection. Choppy, incomplete.

The sensation of being in a noocyte cluster ended abruptly. Now Bernard was neither embodied nor shrunk to the noocyte scale. His thoughts simply were, and the place where they were was excruciatingly beautiful.

If there was any extension in space, it was illusory. Dimensions seemed to be denned by subject; information relevant to his current thinking was close at hand, other subjects were farther away. The overall impression was of a vast, many layered library, arranged in a sphere around him. He shared this center with another presence.

Humans, human form, the presence said. A scurry of information surrounded Bernard, giving him arms, legs, a body and face. Beside him, apparently sitting in a reclining chair, was a wispy image of Vergil Ulam. Ulam smiled without passion or conviction.

“I am your cellular Vergil. Welcome to the inner circle of the command clusters.”

“You’re dead,” Bernard said, his voice an imperfect approximation.

“So I understand.”

“Where are we?”

“Roughly translating the noocyte descriptive string, we are in a Thought Universe. I call it a noosphere. In here, all we experience is generated by thinking. We can be whatever we wish, or learn whatever we wish, or think about anything. We won’t be limited by lack of knowledge or experience; everything can be brought to us. When not used by the command clusters, I spend most of my time here.”