And now the amoeba formed itself into a pentagon. Five very smooth sides, the creature sitting in a clump on the gaping wound that had once been a pelvis. Suddenly, with a brief convulsion, all the sides bisected, forming sharp angles, so that now there were ten sides to the creature. A hairline crack appeared down the middle. And then, like jelly sliced in the middle and finally deciding the split, the two halves slumped away on either side. They quickly formed into two, new pentagons, and then they relaxed into pseudopodia again, and continued devouring Harold.

  “Well,” Amauri said. “They do have an antipersonnel weapon.”

  When he spoke, the spell of stillness was broken, and the little people had us spread on tables with sharp-pointed objects pointed at us. If any one of those punctured a suit even for a moment, we would be dead. We held very still.

  Richard Nixon Dixon, the top halibut, interrogated us himself. It all started with a lot of questions about the Russians, when we had visited them, why we had decided to serve them instead of the Americans, etc. We kept insisting that they were full of crap.

  But when they threatened to open a window into Vladimir’s suit, I decided enough was enough.

  “Tell ’em!” I shouted into the monkey-mouth, and Vladimir said, “All right,” and the little people leaned back to listen.

  “There are no Russians,” Vladimir said.

  The little people got ready to carve holes.

  “No, wait, it’s true! After we got your homing signal, before we landed, we made seven orbital passes over the entire planet. There is absolutely no human life anywhere but here! Believe me!”

  “Commie lies,” Richard Nixon Dixon said.

  “God’s own truth!” I shouted. “Don’t touch him, man! He’s telling the truth! The only thing out there over this whole damn planet is that pea soup! It covers every inch of land and every inch of water, except a few holes at the poles.”

  Dixon began to feel a little confused, and the little people murmured. I guess I sounded sincere.

  “If there aren’t any people,” Dixon said, “where do the Russian attacks come from?”

  Vladimir answered that one. For a bunny, he was quick on the uptake. “Spontaneous recombination! You and the Russians got new strains of every microbe developing like crazy. All the people, all the animals, all the plants were killed. And only the microbes lived. But you’ve been introducing new strains constantly, tough competitors for all those beasts out there. The ones that couldn’t adapt, died. And now that’s all that’s left——the ones who adapt. Constantly.” Andrew Jackson Wallichinsky, the head researcher, nodded. “It sounds plausible.”

  “If there’s anything we’ve learned about commies in the last thousand years,” Richard Nixon Dixon said, “it’s that you can’t trust ’em any farther than you can spit.”

  “Well,” Andy Jack said, “it’s easy enough to test them.”

  Dixon nodded. “Go ahead.”

  So three of the little people went to the boxes and each came back with an amoeba. In a minute it was clear that they planned to set them on us. Amauri screamed. Vladimir turned whiter. I would have screamed but I was busy trying-to swallow my tongue.

  “Relax,” Andy Jack said. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “Acredito!” I shouted. “Like it didn’t hurt Harold!”

  “Harold was killing people. These won’t harm you. Unless you were lying.”

  Great, I thought. Like the ancient tests for witches. Throw them in the water, if they drown they’re innocent, if they float they’re guilty so kill ’em.

  But maybe Andy Jack was telling the truth and they wouldn’t hurt us. And if we refused to let them put those buggers on us they’d “know” we had been lying and punch holes in our monkey suits.

  So I told the little people to put one on me only. They didn’t need to test us all.

  And then I put my tongue between my teeth, ready to bite down hard and inhale the blood when the damn thing started eating me. Somehow I thought I’d feel better about going honeyduck if I helped myself along.

  They set the thing on my shoulder. It didn’t penetrate my monkey suit. Instead it just oozed up toward my head.

  It slid over my face plate and the world went dark.

  “Kane Kanea,” said a faint vibration in the face plate.

  “Meu deus,” I muttered.

  The amoeba could talk. But I didn’t have to speak to answer it. A question would come through the vibration of the face plate. And then I would lie there and—it knew my answer. Easy as pie. I was so scared I defecated and urinated twice during the interview. But my imperturbable monkey suit cleaned it all up and got it ready for breakfast, just like normal.

  And at last the interview was over. The amoeba slithered off my face plate and returned to the waiting arms of one of the little people, who carried it back to Andy Jack and Ricky Nick. The two men put their hands on the thing, and then looked at us in surprise.

  “You’re telling the truth. There are no Russians.”

  Vladimir shrugged. “Why would we lie?”

  Andy Jack started toward me, carrying the writhing monster that had interviewed me.

  “I’ll kill myself before I let that thing touch me again.”

  Andy Jack stopped in surprise. “You’re still afraid of that?”

  “It’s intelligent,” I said. “It read my mind.”

  Vladimir looked startled, and Amauri muttered something. But Andy Jack only smiled. “Nothing mysterious about that. It can read and interpret the electromagnetic fields of your brain, coupled with the amitron flux in your thyroid gland.”

  “What is it?” Vladimir asked. Andy Jack looked very proud. “This one is my son.”

  We waited for the punch line. It didn’t come. And suddenly we realized that we had found what we had been looking for—the result of the little people’s research into recombinant human DNA.

  “We’ve been working on these for years. Finally we got it right about four years ago,” Andy Jack said. “They were our last line of defense. But now that we know the Russians are dead—well, there’s no reason for them to stay in their nests.”

  And the man reached down and laid the amoeba into the pea soup that was now about 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 face plate.

  “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 mind function 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 vomit.

  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 Jack 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 Jack 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 Núncamais, we’ll deserve what we get. Because those damned antimatter conversors will do things that make germ warfare look as pleasant as sniffing pinkweeds.

  And if anything 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 Núncamais 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 universe. And then we systematically covered our tracks. We erased all reference to Post 004, eradicated any hint of a homing signal. All we left in the computer was the recording of our overflight, showing nothing but pea soup from sea to soupy sea.

  And then we recorded in the ship’s log, “Planet unfit for human occupancy. No human life found.”

  Hell. It wasn’t even a lie.

  [*] Though there were some difficulties in communication because of jargon and mild languages changes, the English of Pennsylvania and the English of 004 were very similar. This is because Post 004 was deliberately conservative—and with few changes in environment, there would have been few changes in language. And, of course, Pennsylvania only kept English artificially, for ethnic reasons, since lingua deporto was the native tongue for practically everyone on the three planets at that time. However, by treaty all international space crews had to know the “native” languages of all crew members—which, in the case of Hunter III skipship Pollywog, meant English, essentially unchanged since 2000, and lingua deporto.

  Lifeloop

  Extrapolation is a major facet of science fiction. Now, if you’ve ever watched daytime TV . . .

  Arran lay on her bed, weeping. The sound of the door slamming still rang through her flat. Finally she rolled over, looked at the ceiling, wiped tears away delicately with her fingers, and then said, “What the hell.”

  Dramatic pause. And then, at last (at long last) a loud buzzer sounded. “All clear, Arran,” said the voice from the concealed speaker, and Arran groaned, swung around to sit on the bed, unstrapped the loop recorder from her naked leg, and threw it tiredly against the wall. It smashed.

  “Do you have any idea how much that equipment costs!” Triuff asked, reproachfully.

  “I pay you to know,” Arran said, putting on a robe. Triuff found the tie and handed it to her. As Arran threaded it through the loops, Triuff exulted. “The best ever. A hundred billion Arran Handully fans are aching to pay their seven chops to get in to watch. And you gave it to them.”

  “Seventeen days,” Arran said, glaring at the other woman. “Seventeen stinking days. And three of them with that bastard Courtney.”

  “He’s paid to be a bastard. It’s his persona.”

  “He’s pretty damned convincing. If you get me even three minutes with him, next time, I’ll sack you.”

  Arran strode out of her flat, barefoot and clad only in the robe. Triuff followed, her high-heeled shoes making a clicking rhythm that, to Arran anyway, always seemed to be saying, “Money, money, money.” Except when it was saying, “Screw your mother, screw your mother.” Good manager. Billions in the bank.

  “Arran,” Triuff said. “I know you’re very tired.”

  “Ha,” Arran said.

  “But while you were recording I had time to do a little business—”

  “While I was recording you had time to manufacture a planet!” Arran snarled. “Seventeen days! I’m an actress, I’m not going for the Guiness. I’m the highest paid actress in history, I think you said in your latest press releases. So why do I work my tail off for seventeen days when I’m only awake for twenty-one? Four lousy days of peace, and then the marathon.”

  “A little business,” Triuff went on, unperturbed. “A little business that will let you retire.”

  “Retire?” And without thinking, Arran slowed down her pace.

  “Retire. Imagine—awake for three weeks, and only guest appearances in other poor slobs’ loops. Getting paid for having fun.”

  “Nights to myself?”

  “We’ll turn off the recorder.” Arran scowled. Triuff amended: “You can even take the thing off!”

  “And what do I have to do to earn so much? Have an affair with a gorilla?”

  “It’s been done,” Triuff said, “and it’s beneath you. No, this time we give them total reality. Total!”

  “What do we give them now?”

  “I’ve made arrangements,” Triuff said, “to have a loop recorder in the Sleeproom.”

  Arran Handully gasped and stared at her manager. “In the Sleeproom! Is nothing sacred!” And then Arran laughed. “You must have spent a fortune! An absolute fortune!”

  “Actually, only one bribe was necessary.”

  “Who’d you bribe, Mother?”

  “Very close. Better, in fact, since Mother hasn’t got the power to pick her nose without the consent of the Cabinet. It’s Farl Baak.”

  “Baak! And here I thought he was a decent man.”

  “It wasn’t a bribe. At least, not for money.”

  Arran squinted at Triuff. “Triuff,” she said, “I told you that I was willing to act out twenty-four-hour-a-day love affairs. But I choose my own lovers off-camera.”

  “You’ll be able to retire.”

  “I’m not a whore!”

  “And he said he wouldn’t even sleep with you, if you didn’t want. He just asked for twenty-four hours with you two wakings from now. To talk. To become friends.”

  Arran leaned against the wall of the corridor “It’ll really make that much money?”

  “You forget, Arran. All your fans are in love with you. But no one has ever done what you’re going to do. From a half-hour before waking to a half-hour after you’ve been put to sleep.”

  “Before waking and after the somec.” Arran smiled. “There’s nobody in the Empire who’s seen that, except the Sleeproom attendants.”

  “And we can advertise utter reality. No illusion: you’ll see everything that happens to Arran Handully for three weeks of waking!”

  Arran thoughtfully considered for a moment. “It’ll be hell,” she said.

  “You can retire afterward,” Triuff reminded her.

  “All right,” Arran agreed. “I’ll do it. But I warn you. No Courtneys. No bores. And no little boys!”

  Triuff looked hurt. “Arran—the little boy was five loops ago!”

  “I remember every moment of it,” Arran said. “He came without an instruction booklet. What the hell do I do with a seven-year-old boy?”

  “And it was your best acting up to then. Arran, I can’t help it—I have to spring surprises on you. That’s when you’re at your best—dealing with difficulty. That’s why you’re an artist. That’s why you’re a legend.”

  “That’s why you’re rich,” Arran pointed out, and then she walked quickly away, heading for the Sleeproom. Her eligibility began in a half-hour, and every waking moment beyond that was a moment less of life.

  Triuff followed her as far as she could, giving last-minute instructions on what to do when she woke, what to expect in the Sleeproom, how the instructions would be given to her in a way that she couldn’t miss, but that the audience watching the holos wouldn’t notice, and finally Arran made it through the door into the tape and tap, and Triuff had to stay behind.

  Gentle and deferent attendants led her to the plush chair where the sleep helmet waited. Arran sighed and sat down, let the helmet slip onto her head, and tried to think happy thoughts as the tapes took her brain pattern—all her memories, all her personality—and recorded it to restore her at waking. When it was done, she got up and lazily walked to the table, shedding her robe on the way. She lay down with a groan of relief, and leaned her head back, surprised that the table, which looked so hard, could be soft.