Part 30 (1/2)

Cub had become minimally communicative during the tour, and OX did not understand this. Had he been injured during the battle with Mach?

It is the mating urge, Ornet explained, delving again into his memory-experience of mams. Sight or smell of the mature female stimulates the male to interact with her.

Why? OX inquired, finding the concept obscure.

It is the way they reproduce their kind. My kind performs similarly; Dec's has a separate mechanism. The machines are distinct from us all.

Why should any kind of being require reproduction?

We originate, we age, we die, Ornet squawked. It is the way of physical species. If we do not reproduce ourselves, there will be nothing.

Still OX could not grasp it. I do not reproduce myself. I exist as long as my elements are charged and numerous.

You surely do reproduce yourself, Ornet squawked. I have not seen enough of your type to fathom the mechanism, but my memory indicates that it must be -- for all ent.i.ties. In some way you were conceived by your forebears, and in some way you will transmit your heritage to your successors. Perhaps if you encountered a female of your species --

There are no pattern-females, OX replied. I read that in my circuits. I have the potential to become anything that any pattern can be.

Ornet drooped his tail feathers. He never engaged in speculation; the past was his primary interest.

OX sent a shoot to question Dec. Why should spots die or reproduce themselves? it flashed.

The two are synonymous, Dec replied. To die is to reproduce.

This did not satisfy OX, either. A pattern needed neither to die nor to reproduce. Why should a spot?

Dec was emitting a complex array of signals. OX adjusted his circuitry to pick up the full spectrum. Dec was capable of far greater communication than either of the others, for he used light, the fastest of radiations. OX could perceive it by the effect of his elements: minute but definite. He had long since intensified his perceptions of such variations so that observations that had once been beyond his means were now routine. Now he activated a really intricate perception network, more comprehensive and sensitive and responsive than ever before.

Then Dec's whole mind was coming across on the transmission, as clearly as if it were a barrage of pattern-radiation shoots: [DEATH] [SPORES] [MERGING] [REPRODUCTION].

* * * * [cessation] [carriers of] [two sources] [growth of cells]

[animation] [genetic code] [crossover] *

* * [chain of habitats]

[philosophical] [female male]

[ramifications]

OX a.s.similated it and fed back his questions on the aspects of the concept. The dialogue was complex, with loops of subdefinitions and commentary opening out from the corners of the major topics, with both obvious and subtle feedbacks and interactions between concepts. It required maintenance of a circuit larger than the rest of his volume. OX stayed with it, devoting whatever attention was necessary. He refined his circuits, added to them, revised...

And found himself within the mind of Dec.

Now he felt the force of gravity, a vital component of Dec's motion; the pressure of atmosphere, another essential; the impact of physical light on his eye. He felt the musculature of the single foot, opposing the constant pull and unbalance.

These things had been mere concepts to him before, described but not really understood. It was one thing to know that a physical body had weight that held it to the ground; it was quite another to experience that ubiquitous force on every cell of the body. A factor that was of no importance to OX in his natural state was a matter of life and death to this physical being; a fall could actually terminate Dec's existence! Thus, gravity equated with survival. Yet gravity was only one of an entire complex of physical forces. No wonder the spots were different in their reactions from OX; their survival depended on it!

And he understood the synonymity of death and reproduction, how the primed body dissolved into its component cells that became floating spores that met and merged with the spores of another deceased fungus ent.i.ty and then grew into new ent.i.ties. Without death there was no replication, and without replication there would be no more ent.i.ties of this type. Yet this process was necessary to the evolution of the species, and without evolution it would also pa.s.s. Death equated with survival -- death of the individual, survival of the species -- because the demands of the physical environment were always s.h.i.+fting. OX now understood the essential nature of these things, and the lightness of them. Multiple physical imperatives set fantastic demands, requiring complex devices of survival unknown to pattern-ent.i.ties.

Then he was out of the physical, back in his own nature, fibrillating. He had never before experienced sensation and thinking of this type; there was a phenomenal amount of data to a.s.similate and circuits to modify. The physical was a whole separate existence, with its unique imperatives!

OX had learned more in this one encounter than in any prior one. He now realized all the way through his being that the intellectual systems of the spots were as complex and meaningful as his own. The spots were, indeed, complete ent.i.ties.