THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

"She'll suffocate!" Jack cried, but even as he spoke he knew she would not. There would be air piped in and nourishment, and her bodily wastes would be piped out. The seeming iron maiden was not a torture box but a mechanical maintenance device.

Candy folded down clasps on the coffin and locked them in place. Now it was impossible for Tappy to fight her way out even if she regained consciousness-and of course she would be drugged throughout.

Then metallic walls formed around the coffin. The plants in that vicinity disappeared. "What's that?" Jack asked, sure that he would not like the answer, but unable to stop himself.

"That is the formation of a spaceship," the Malva image answered. "The AI city station has been moved to a remote star and will be destroyed, leaving only the isolation ship. A Gaol unit will keep it under continuous surveillance for the lifetime of the host, which should be about a century, since she is young. The Gaol empire will be preserved."

A detail filtered through. "This city will be destroyed? But then what of me?"

"You will die with it, of course."

"But you told Tappy-"

"I lied. Now the Imago is secure, and you are surplus. There remains only the separation of the ship from the city and the destruction of the city with all its equipment."

"All by remote control?" Jack asked, the numbness of the finality of defeat sinking in. The Gaol certainly were thorough!

"No. The confinement of the Imago is too important to be done remotely. A Gaol will handle the concluding details."

"No, it won't!" Jack said, grasping what trifling fragment of victory he could. "Because if it comes here, it will be contaminated by the Imago, and you can't risk that."

"True. Therefore the Gaol individual, too, will be destroyed."

"But one of the conquerors wouldn't sacrifice himself!"

She shrugged. "Believe what you will. The Gaol is now boarding the city and will perform the necessary chores. Now I bid you oblivion, Jack, as my role here is terminated."

"Bitch"' Jack screamed as she faded out.

Candy walked across the chamber. "Where are you going, android?" he demanded.

She did not pause. "To the portal to admit the Gaol."

"Bring it back here and introduce us!" he called sarcastically.

When she was gone, he turned to stare at the coffin. He took hold of a bar to shake it, but it shocked him again. His arm was numbed; he could not get close to Tappy.

What was he to do? He couldn't just give up, yet there seemed to be no alternative.

THEN he saw something. It was small, green, and looked like a thick-legged spider. No, it was more like a tiny octopus. It was crossing the floor toward him.

The hatchling! He had forgotten it! Ordinarily such a creature would have revolted him, but this thing had been with Tappy, and was formed manly of her flesh. He couldn't d'sl'ke that, even if it was some honker joke. Also, he did feel empathy for it, and for life in general. Malva had been right about that much.

He squatted. "Come here, you little thing. I won't hurt you.

I'm about to die anyway. What's your business?"

The thing approached his hand. It extended a tiny tentacle and touched his finger.

Jack felt a warmth. It wasn't physical, though; it was emotional.

He felt an increasing awareness of the linkage of all things. He was attuning to the exotic plants in the vicinity, and felt their discomfort: the Gaol had established a field which suppressed their natural ambience. And he felt Tappy, her consciousness fading as the drug slowly penetrated her system; she was being forced into sleep, but there were no dreams there. The Gaol did not trust the Imago even to dream safely.

He looked at the hatchling. He picked it up. The thing assumed flesh color and disappeared against his palm. "You're doing it!"

he exclaimed. "The empathy-you're magnifying it! Are you the Imago?"

But as he considered the question, he knew the answer. The Imago remained with Tappy. It would not leave her while she lived. The hatchling was merely another agent of the Imago, of a different kind. It was alive, and it was mobile.

That trick of blending with his hand-was that a signal of something more? It had been green when it first manifested, and green when it had come to him. Jack moved to a green plant and set his hand against it, letting the hatchling slide onto the leaf.

The hatchling turned green again, matching the plant so perfactly that it disappeared. Quickly Jack reached for it, and found it where the leaf seemed to thicken; it was solid, but able to change its color and shape instantly He set it back on the floor, which was metal gray in this section.

The hatchling became a perfectly matching gray as it flattened out.

It was a charneleon! It had disappeared the first time, when Candy pursued it, not entirely by hiding behind a plant, but by blending with it.

So now he knew two things about it: it magnified the empathy, and it was very good at hiding. But what good was either ability, when Tappy was locked away and the rest of the city was about to be destroyed? If the honker who had planted this creature on Tappy had intended to help her, how had it expected her to overcome something like this? Because it was now apparent that the nullification of the Gaol's volition block had been the work of that egg, as was Tappy's disappearance from the Gaol's tracking devices. The egg had hatched, and the hatchling had at least two other properties. Something else was needed-and perhaps the honker had anticipated this situation also, and the hatchling had what would be required.

Jack reached down to pick up the hatchling, but could not find it; its camouflage was too good. "Where are you, little friend?" he asked.

The hatchling turned green again, manifesting as it had before.

Jack picked it up. "But how come you showed yourself to me before?" he asked it. "I never would have seen you, otherwise."

Then he realized that that was why: it had wanted him to see it.

"But why now, when it's too late? Sure, we can be friends, but soon we're going to be dead. Do you have some way to rescue Tappy""

There was no answer, just that overwhelming empathy. The hatchling did not seem to be intelligent or to have any telepathic communication. Apparently it had responded to him because of the empathy: it knew what he wanted, just as he now knew what the surrounding plants wanted. It knew he wanted to help Tappy.

Yet he hadn't wanted to see it when it came to him. He hadn't known its nature, and had forgotten about it after seeing it the first time. The hatchling had introduced itself to him by approaching and turning green. Didn't that indicate some separate understanding and decision on its part?

He reviewed the circumstance of that introduction. It was just after Candy had left, so he was alone. That made sense; she had wanted to destroy it, so it had waited until she was gone.

But if it wasn't intelligent, how had it had the wit to do that? To distinguish between her and him? He had part of the answer: Candy was not alive, and Jack was, so it could indeed distinguish them, and probably avoided any moving thing that was not responsive to its power. But the timing-how had it managed that? Well, maybe it was programmed to hide as long as there was any hostile thing nearby, whether living or dead. So it could approach Jack only when he was alone.

But the color change-it must have taken some of it to do that for him. It could have come up to him unseen, and worked 'its magic on him, and he might never have realized that it was responsible for his suddenly broadening empathy. It had made itself deliberately clear to him.

He went over the situation again. Candy walking out, himself calling sarcastically after her: "Bring it back here and introduce us!" Then she was gone, and the hatchling The hatchling had introduced itself. It had responded to his desire for an introduction, though his desire had been facet' ious.