‘I don't blame you-’

‘You're humoring me, Uncle Siever.’

‘What should I do? Kick you? Let me humor you - if it pleases me. The mind, as you call it, picked up Aurinel's voice and his face from your mind, obviously. Those things must have been very clear in your mind. How close were you to Aurinel?’

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘What do you mean? How close?’

‘I don't mean anything terrible. Were you friendly?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Did you have a crush on him?’

Marlene paused and her lips pressed together. Then she said, ‘I suppose I did.’

‘You use the past tense. Don't you any more?’

‘Well, what's the use? He just thinks of me as - a little girl. A kid sister, maybe.’

‘Not entirely an unnatural thought, under the circumstances. But you still think of him - which is why you've conjured up his voice, and then his face.’

‘What do you mean “conjured up”? It was a real voice and a real face.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Have you told your mother any of this?’

‘No. Not a word.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, Uncle Siever. You know her. I couldn't stand all that - nervousness. I know. You're going to tell me it's all out of love, but that doesn't make it easier.’

‘You're willing to tell it to me, Marlene, and I'm certainly very fond of you.’

‘I know that, Uncle Siever, but you're not the excitable type. You just look at things logically.’

‘Shall I take that as a compliment?’

‘I mean it as one.’

‘In that case, let's look at what you have found out, and do it logically.’

‘All right, Uncle Siever.’

‘Good. To begin with, there is something alive on this planet.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it's not the planet itself.’

‘No, definitely not. He denied that.’

‘But it's one living thing, apparently.’

‘I get the impression that he's one living thing. The trouble is, Uncle Siever, that what I get is not like telepathy is supposed to be. It's not like reading a mind and just getting talk. It's also impressions that come over you all at once, like looking at a whole picture instead of at the little bits of light and darkness that make it up.’

‘And the impression is of one living thing.’

‘Yes.’

‘And intelligent.’

‘Very intelligent.’

‘But not technological. There is nothing technological that we've ever found on the planet. This living thing that is not visible, not apparent, merely broods over the planet - thinks - reasons - but doesn't do anything. Is that it?’

Marlene hesitated. ‘I can't quite tell, but maybe you're right.’

‘And then we came. When do you suppose that it became aware that we had come?’

Marlene shook her head. ‘I couldn't say.’

‘Well, dear, it was aware of you while you were still on Rotor. It must have become aware of intelligence invading the Nemesian System when we were still quite a way off. Did you get that impression?’

‘I don't think so, Uncle Siever. I think he didn't know about us until we landed on Erythro. That attracted his attention and then he looked around and found Rotor.’

‘Perhaps you're right. Then it experimented with these new minds that it sensed on Erythro. They were the first minds not its own that it may have ever sensed. How long has it lived, Marlene? Any idea?’

‘Not really, Uncle Siever, but the impression I got is that he has lived a long time, maybe nearly as long as the planet.’

‘Maybe. In any case, however long it has lived, this was the first time it ever found itself immersed in many other rninds, far different from its own. Does that sound right to you, Marlene?’

‘Yes.’

‘So it experimented with these new minds and because it knew so little about them, it damaged them. That was the Erythro Plague.’

‘Yes,’ said Marlene with sudden animation. ‘He didn't say anything about the Plague directly, but the impression was strong. That original experimentation was the cause.’

‘And when it realized that it was causing damage, it stopped.’

‘Yes, that's why we don't have Erythro Plague now.’

‘And from that it would seem that this mind is benevolent, that it has a sense of ethics we can approve of, that it doesn't wish to harm other minds.’

‘Yes!’ said Marlene with delight. ‘I'm sure of that.’

‘But what is this life-form? Is it a spirit? Something immaterial? Something beyond our senses?’

‘I can't say, Uncle Siever,’ sighed Marlene.

Genarr said, ‘Well, let me repeat what it told you. Stop me if I'm wrong. It said its pattern “stretches out”; that it is “simple in every spot and is complex only taken together”; that it is “not fragile”. Am I right?’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘And the only life we have ever found on Erythro are the prokaryotes, the tiny bacterialike cells. If I don't want something that's spiritual and immaterial, I'm stuck with those prokaryotes. Is it possible that those little cells, which seem separate, are actually part of one world-girdling organism? The mind pattern would then be stretched out. It would be simple in every spot and would be complex only when taken together. And it would not be fragile, for even if large sections of it were killed, the world organism would scarcely be touched as a whole.’

Marlene stared at Genarr. ‘You mean I've been talking to germs?’

‘I can't say certainly, Marlene. It's only a hypothesis, but it fits beautifully and I can't think of anything else that would explain it as well. Besides, Marlene, if we looked at the hundred billion cells that make up your brain, each one of them, taken by itself, isn't really very much. You are an organism in which all the brain cells are clumped together. If you talk to another in which all the brain cells are separate and linked, let us say, by tiny radio waves, is that so very different?’

‘I don't know,’ said Marlene, obviously disturbed. ‘But let's ask another question, one that is very important. What does this life-form - whatever it is - want with you?’

Marlene looked startled. ‘He can talk to me, Uncle Siever. He can transfer ideas to me.’

‘Your suggestion, then, is that it just wants someone to talk to? Do you suppose that once we humans came, it realized for the first time that it was lonely?’

‘I don't know.’

‘No impressions to that effect?’

‘No.’

‘It could destroy us.’ Genarr was talking to himself now. ‘It could destroy us without trouble if it grew tired of you, or bored with you.’

‘No , Uncle Siever.’

Genarr said, ‘But it definitely hurt me when I wished to get in the way of your connection with the mind of the planet. It hurt Dr D'Aubisson, your mother, and a guard.’

‘Yes, but he hurt you all with only just enough force to stop you from interfering with me. He did no further damage.’

‘It goes to all these lengths to have you outside on the surface just so that it can talk to you, and have companionship. Somehow that doesn't seem to be enough of a reason.’

Marlene said, ‘Perhaps the reason is something we can't understand. Perhaps he has so different a mind that he couldn't explain his reason, or, if he did, that it would make no sense to us.’

‘But its mind is not so different that it can't converse with you. It does receive ideas from you and transmit other ideas to you, doesn't it? You two do communicate.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it understands you well enough to try to make itself seem pleasant to you by taking on Aurinel's voice and face.’

Marlene's head bent and she fixed her eyes on the floor in front of her.

Genarr said softly, ‘So since it understands us, we may be able to understand it, and, if so, you must find out why it wants you so. It could be very important to find that out, for who knows what it is planning? We have no way of finding out except through you, Marlene.’

Marlene was trembling. ‘I don't know how to do that, Uncle Siever.’

‘Just do as you have been doing. The mind seems friendly to you, and it may explain.’

Marlene looked up and studied Genarr. She said, ‘You're afraid, Uncle Siever.’

‘Of course. We're dealing with a mind far more powerful than ours. It may, if it decides it doesn't want us, do away with us all.’

‘I don't mean that, Uncle Siever. You're afraid for me .’

Genarr hesitated. ‘Are you still sure that you're safe on Erythro, Marlene? Are you safe talking to this mind?’

Marlene rose to her feet and said, almost haughtily, ‘Of course I am. There is no risk. He will not hurt me.’

She sounded supremely confident, but Genarr's heart sank. What she thought scarcely counted, for her mind had been adjusted by the mind of Erythro. Could he trust her now? he wondered.

After all, why should this mind built up of prokaryotes in their trillion trillion not have an agenda of its own, as, for instance, Pitt had? And why shouldn't this mind in its anxiety to fulfill that agenda, show all the duplicity of Pitt?

In short, what if the mind were lying to Marlene for reasons of its own?

Was he right to send Marlene out to that mind under such conditions?

But did it matter whether he was right or not? Had he a choice?