Read 04. The Return of Nathan Brazil for Free Online Page A

unknown it all amounts to the same thing."
    "I'm not one for philosophy, Doc. What do you know?" the dragon shot back impatiently.
    Van Chu sighed. "Well, they are an entirely new form of intelligent life. You might call them an intelligent virus. They're rather amazing under the microscope. Come on over here."
    They walked through to a research cubicle, and Van Chu made a few adjustments. The large screen in front of them flickered into life.
    "That's the enemy, Marquoz," Van Chu said softly. "That's the Dreel."
    The screen showed a honeycomb-like structure.
    "Looks like every virus I've ever seen or been laid up with," the dragon commented.
    "There is some resemblance," Van Chu admitted, "but look at them under closer magnification." He made a few adjustments on his console and the view closed in, blowing up to where they could just see one of the comb-like structures. "Notice the striations, the pattern of construction of the stalk?"
    Marquoz just nodded.
    Van Chu shifted the view to the next distinct entity. "You see? A different pattern. If I blow them up and compare them all the way to the atomic level, it will show that no two of them are exactly alike in a given organism. At least we believe so."
    "You mean those things smaller than cells are all individuals?"
    "No, not individuals like you or me. I believe it's a collective organism somehow intricately interconnected in a host, even if not physically attached. The collective acts as a single organism, not as a group. We believe that each individual viruslike organism contains some specific information. There are key members and subordinate ones, together they make up the sum total of what the Dreel in each host knows, and limit its capabilities. We suspect that if an individual Dreel needs information on a particular thing it doesn't have to look it up, merely inject or simply meet up with another Dreel who has that specific information."
    Marquoz was fascinated. "You mean one knows all the math, another all the physics, and so forth?"
    "Vastly oversimplified, I think, but you have the general idea," Van Chu replied. "Think of each Dreel organism as a book. Put a number of them together, each having specific bits of information and you have the knowledge a specialist would have in the field. Put a lot of those together—design your own, in fact —and you have a library. When all of the basics are added for full functioning, then somehow a librarian —a consciousness—simply appears. Then they breed themselves new units as necessary."
    "Pretty nice. No education, no being born or growing up, just meet a host, duplicate the basics, get in, and there you are," the dragon noted. "Must eliminate a lot of hang-ups."
    Van Chu chuckled. "I suppose. It's very different from anything we have ever seen. One wonders how they could have evolved, let alone progressed to a high enough state to be invading other areas of space."
    "They wouldn't have to," Marquoz noted. "All they'd need would be, say, for one of our ships to land and get bit by a local animal. From what you say, within a few days they'd be the crew."
    The scientist nodded agreement. "Yes, exactly. That fellow you captured over there—he is a Dreel. He is also Har Bateen, with a personal history going back to the day of his birth, and, most importantly, he knows that history. He knows everything Har Bateen ever knew. That's the most frightening thing. Were you not able to smell them out, there would be absolutely no way to tell them from the original. None."
    "Tried talking to them?" the Chugach asked. "We had 'em so tightly wrapped on the way here that was impossible. We had no idea what we were dealing with, just that it had something to do with mixing blood. We couldn't afford to take chances."
    "Oh, yes, we've talked to them. I can play the tapes if you like—or you can use the intercom and talk to them."
    "Just a digest. I'm due back upstairs, remember. They'll have discovered that I'm missing by now and