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sixty centimeters deep on the floor. Immediately it flattened out on the surface until it was
about a meter in diameter. I remembered the whispering voice through my faceplate.
"It's too flexible to have a brain," Vladimir said.
"It doesn't have one," Andy Jack answered. "The brain functions are distributed throughout
the body. If it were cut in forty pieces, each piece would have enough memory and enough
mindfunction to continue to live. It's indestructible. And when several of them get together,
they set up a sympathetic field. They become very bright, then."
"Head of the class and everything, I'm sure," Vladimir said. He couldn't hide the loathing in
his voice. Me, I was trying not to be sick.
So this is the next stage of evolution, I thought. Man screws up the planet till it's fit for
nothing but microbes-- and then changes himself so that he can live on a diet of bacteria
and viruses.
"It's really the perfect step in evolution," Andy lack said. "This fellow can adapt to new
species of parasitic bacteria and viruses almost by reflex. Control the makeup of his own
DNA consciously. Manipulate the DNA of other organisms by absorbing them through the
semipermeable membranes of specialized cells, altering them, and setting them free
again."
"Somehow it doesn't make me want to feed it or change its diapers."
Andy lack laughed lightly. "Since they reproduce by fission, they're never infant. Oh, if the
piece were too small, it would take a while to get back to adult competence again. But
otherwise, in the normal run of things, it's always an adult."
Then Andy Jack reached down, let his son wrap itself around his arm, and then walked
back to where Richard Nixon Dixon stood watching. Andy Jack put the arm that held the
amoeba around Dixon's shoulder.
"By the way, sir," Andy Jack said. "With the Russians dead, the damned war is over, sir."
Dixon looked startled. "And?"
"We don't need a commander anymore."
Before Dixon could answer, the amoeba had eaten through his neck and he was quite
dead. Rather an abrupt coup, I thought, and looked at the other little people for a reaction.
No one seemed to mind. Apparently their superpatriotic militarism was only skin deep. I felt
vaguely relieved. Maybe they had something in common with me after all.
They decided to let us go, and we were glad enough to take them up on the offer. On the
way out, they showed us what had caused the explosion in the last "Russian" attack. The
mold that protected the steel surface of the installation had mutated slightly in one place,
allowing the steel-eating bacteria to enter into a symbiotic relationship. It just happened that
the mutation occurred at the place where the hydrogen storage tanks rested against the
wall. When a hole opened, one of the first amino-acid sets that came through with the pea
soup was one that combines radically with raw hydrogen. The effect was a three-second
population explosion. It knocked out a huge chunk of Post 004.
We were glad, when we got back to our skipship, that we had left dear old Pollywog
floating some forty meters off the ground. Even so, there had been some damage. One of
the airborne microbes had a penchant for lodging in hairline cracks and reproducing rapidly,
widening microscopic gaps in the structure of the ship. Nevertheless, Amauri judged us fit
for takeoff.
We didn't kiss anybody good-bye.
So now I've let you in on the true story of our visit to Mother Earth back in 2810. The parallel
with our current situation should be obvious. If we let Pennsylvania get soaked into this
spongy little war between Kiev and N£ncamais, we'll deserve what we get. Because those
damned antimatter convertors will do things that make germ warfare look as pleasant as
sniffing pinkweeds.
And if anythmg human survives the war, it sure as hell won't look like anything we call
human now.
And maybe that doesn't matter to anybody these days. But it matters to me. I don't like the
idea of amoebas for grandchildren, and having an antimatter great-nephew thrills me less.
I've been human all my life, and I like it.
So I say, turn on our repressors and sit out the damned war. Wait until they've disappeared
each other, and then go about the business of keeping humanity alive-- and human.
So much for the political tract. If you vote for war, though, I can promise you there'll be more
than one skipship heading for the wild black yonder. We've colonized before, and we can do
it again. In case no one gets the hint, that's a call for volunteers, if, as, and when. Over.
***
Not over. On the first printing of this program, I got a lot of inquiries as to why we didn't
report all this when we got back home. The answer's simple. On N£ncamais it's a capital
crime to alter a ship's log. But we had to.
As soon as we got into space from Mother Earth, Vladimir had the computer present all its
findings, all its data, and all its conclusions about recombinant DNA. And then he erased it
all.
I probably would have stopped him if I'd known what he was doing in advance. But once it
was done, Amauri and I realized that he was right. That kind of merda didn't belong in the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]