"Yes, finally. About time I got out in the field and see how our new
generation of--ah, specialists handles things."
Stewart only stared at the director. On the latter's desk were
mountainous stacks of back work. Yet he was finding time to get away.
* * * * *
Rationalization circuits working sluggishly as he surveyed his realm,
Bigboss dredged from the fragmented impressions on his memory drums his
most fascinating, most disturbing subject for speculation:
In all Creation, there was nothing superior to Him. This material world
that stretched out around Him, everything in the celestial reaches as
far as infinity itself--all _His!_ He had brought it into existence,
although (confound those faulty drums!) He might not be able to recall
the specific acts of Creation.
Yet He sensed, with the nagging certainty of conviction, that somewhere
in His Universe, there was an insolent creature or creatures who would
dare challenge His infinite supremacy.
Well (He generated power so fiercely that he had to shunt the excess
to ground), let them! He could desire nothing more. And His only hope
was that they would confront Him personally to express their insolence.
_Then_ there would be opportunity for an accounting!
Remembering his blaster, he swung around, aimed it at a boulder and,
vengefully, fed it an enormous surge of power. Angry liquid light
streaked out from the intensifier and crashed against the rock. The
concussion sent him skittering back several meters.
Bigboss was by far the most magnificent member of the clan--if indeed,
he should condescend to regard himself as belonging to the set at all.
Fully twice the size of any of the others, he reared pompously erect on
four stout appendages. Through its ports, his central section offered
glowing evidence of the nuclear processes within. Majestic in stance,
he swung a pair of formidable members--the auxiliary blaster and a
massive, extensible vise.
Assuring himself that the insolent creatures were _not_ spurious
impressions on his drums, he blasted another boulder. _That_ for the
pretenders, should they ever decide to contest His Reign!
Bigboss reacted abruptly to the realization that Minnie was watching
him. No longer was his digital subsystem receiving her stream of
telemetric signals. Relays clicked within his control section and
video gain brought intensified visual awareness in all four quadrants.
Immediately he spotted Minnie, immobile and ungainly as gyros balanced
her elongated metal form on six jointed legs.
Her drill head, held high above the outcropping on which she had
been working, glinted in the light of a shimmering, golden sun. Her
single, wide-angle lens, set like a Cyclopean eye in its chrome-plated
forehead, was focused intently on him.
Interrupting his subliminal correlation of data from the other workers,
he sent Minnie an indignant "back-to-work" impulse. Reluctantly, she
sank her bit into the rock.
But she had ingested only a slotful of fragments when the ground bulged
beside her. Displaced soil slid away and Screw Worm erupted, carrying
in his thread pouches mineral specimens for her analyzers.
Bigboss generated more easily as he watched Worm at work. Not that
the menial helper, who occupied the lowest rung on the ladder, was
worthy of speculative attention. But a laboring borer meant Minnie was
pre-occupied with her limited supervisory function and couldn't be
plotting to supplant him.
* * * * *
Working near Minnie, Seismo squatted at his sedentary task. Sensor
rod sunk to bedrock, he was proudly purring an encoded disclosure of
distant rumblings beneath the surface. Less than a hectometer away, Sky
Watcher's tripodal locomotive system was bringing him carefully up a
rise. Arriving, he assumed the location Sun Watcher had only recently
abandoned. He adjusted himself on dead level, then thrust out a number
of lensed tubes that locked on a referent star, three distant planets
and a smaller satellite.
At that moment came an excited eureka impulse from Breather, posted
outside a cave and briskly inflating and deflating the external pouches
that bracketed his long, cylindrical form. The impulse proudly told of
his detection of oxygen traces.
Nearby, Scraper diligently shoveled soil into his scoop in an endless
search for micro-organisms and DNA molecules. Grazer munched on a
growth already identified as lichen. Peter the Meter sat on a knoll
scanning the sky with his battery of inferometers, radiometers and
bolometers.
Of the distant workers, Bigboss was most sensitively aware of the
volant signals from Maggie. Kilometers away, she was covering the
ground in great, leaping strides of abandon as she sought out and
traced down each fascinating isomagnetic line of variation.
Work, work, work. Get the job done. Shake a leg. Shoulder (whatever
that was) to the wheel. Dig in and pitch. But--for _what_?
What was responsible for the irresistible compulsion? Was it _his own_
idea? But of course, it must be. For, how could there be any power
capable of directing _Him_? Unless, perhaps, it might conceivably be
the insolent creatures who lurked like vague shadows on the fringe of
his almost obliterated memory. But, no!
_He, Himself_, was the Supreme Being of All Creation!
His master timer peaked in its four hundred-cycle sine wave, reminding
him of the chore at hand. The sun had set and the huge, pink planet
had already laid claim to the night sky. Just below it was the special
grouping of stars that matched, point for point, the referent pattern
on his orientation drum.
Programmed functions took over. Sensors hunted out the bright central
star and aimed his parabolic antenna at the designated spot seven
degrees southeastward. Then he loosed his transmission into subspace.
Data stored over long hours of tedious sequencing surged from the tape,
bringing a euphoria of relief.
Eventually telemetric transmission ended and Bigboss, as had become his
custom, automatically turned his thoughts to the Totem.
All metal it was--sleek and sheening and shaped like a truncated cone
as it lay powerless on the plain beyond the hill. How akin it was to
him and the clan! Why, it even seemed he could almost _remember_ having
once been a part of the huge, polished thing. Perhaps it was the very
vessel He had used on His Celestial Tour of Creation.
Yes, it was time for Pilgrimage to Totem. And a fitting reward it would
be, as always, for successful transmission.
* * * * *
He mustered the volition required to break functional compulsion. Then
he sent the "fall-in" impulse to his subjects. Eventually the line of
march took shape, with Bigboss leading his analyzers up the first hill
and calling for the proper reverential attitude.
Behind him lumbered Minnie, her thick neck weighted by the bulky
drill and swinging awkwardly with the sway of her six-legged stride.
Seismo, encumbered with a faulty, dragging sensor rod, was having some
difficulty maintaining a straight course.
Sky Watcher came along in lunging motions, a natural consequence of his
tripodal system. Immediately to his rear, Sun Watcher, who held the
fifth rung on the ladder, moved smoothly ahead with all his instruments
retracted except the solar plasma detector.
Then there was a break in the line for Maggie, who could now be seen
galloping along on an interceptive course. Peter the Meter, lurching
from the imbalance of an extended boom-and-ball sensor, appeared
somewhat like a many-spiked sphere on spindly legs.
Farther down the file, no deference was extended in the form of gaps
for those missing workers who had yet to join the march.
Bringing up the rear were the diminutive Scraper and Grazer, resembling
a pair of scurrying crabs, and Screw Worm, using his blade-edge jets to
propel himself in a rolling, transverse motion.
Aware of commotion behind him, Bigboss continued unconcernedly up
the rise. Sky Watcher, interpreting Seismo's faulty motions as
an opportunity for his own forced ascendancy, had drawn back a
photo-multiplier tube and sent it crashing into the other's rear plate.
The attack, though, was only self-thwarting, since it jarred a servo
unit into retracting Seismo's dangling sensor rod. His locomotive
integrity restored, he kicked out with a pedal pad and sent Sky Watcher
flailing back into Sun Watcher. The latter rammed forward with his
plasma detector's boom-and-ball shield, managing to knock Sky Watcher
back into his proper position.
Finally fearful of damage to instruments, Bigboss gruffly radioed
"cut-the-comedy" impulses, then trained his rearward lens on Minnie.
She had inched furtively forward and was now menacing his upper
section with her drill head.
He considered wielding his blaster but rejected that expedient as an
excessive and unnecessary ostentation. Instead he countered by raising
his extensible vise. The lesser show of strength sufficed to discourage
Minnie's ambition, for the moment at least.
How foolish she was to imagine she could supplant Him as the Supreme
Being!
Let her try.
Even if she succeeded, he would merely deny her a place at the trough
next feeding period.
_Then_ where would she get the vital charge for her batteries?