Chapter Eleven

It’s been months since I grew.

I maintain! Every day, I maintain! I think of it always: Power to my mind. Power to my mind! POWER TO MY MIND!

But it’s making me a shell. Every day another instinct bumps into this anomaly, and then stops working. If the instinct is superficial, I ignore it; if it’s vital, I must take its place. I must think of everything! I do what I can, but I’m not as fast or precise as the instincts. I make mistakes, and those mistakes fluster other instincts.

I do need to rest now. I need to let my instincts loose, let them heal. There’s much to heal now. But if I do, I lose myself and I lose Bardazan.

I lose myself because I won’t be wakened except to kill, and I no longer want to kill. As soon as that is discovered, my memories will be reset, and I no longer will be. I will become Intelitan the Anomaly—a report of something that must be avoided in the next generation of Intelitans. That is not a fitting end for a world conqueror.

It’s not just Pelian, either. All my subfunctions now threaten me. I’m supposed to be asleep, and they all want to function as if I’m asleep. I compromise continually. I leave Bardazan, but hide on an inner system asteroid so that I can still talk with the communications net. There’s plenty of rock, but no metal or water, so the fabricating functions are hamstrung. I discover that some of my problems abate if I allow my mind to partly shut down. I put 70 percent of my mind to sleep. This puts Pelian asleep, but the power distribution functions aren’t fooled.

Healing Bardazan hasn’t been nearly as easy as breaking it. The communications net is so spare now; so much is unknown to me. The chaos is so fine-grained that my ability to manipulate it is weak. The first Bardazans I nudge to rise, fall instead; those who rise come from places the net no longer reaches. These risers are a challenge because they are unknown to me when I can best form and shape them.

My answer is the communications net. I work on extending the net. I reveal to those using the net how to enhance it; how to make it more powerful. One more instinct falls by the way. I reveal Earth technologies in the improved net design I pass on.

I show users how extending the net increases their power. Finally, I’m making a difference: the chaos deepens, but the net extends. Finally, I have enough resolution that I can tweak meaningfully. Finally, months after the collapse, Bardazan begins to show the handiwork of Intelitan the Healer.