She saw the standing zombies. “I—I lost, didn’t I?” she said, hesitantly. “I went under. All the hurt and terror were gone—but not quite all the way. I wasn’t quite a...” she paused, gesturing toward the others.

An incomplete takeover? He did not like the smell of it. Whose agent was she now?

She straightened, becoming rigid again. “I am—Chthon.”

Chthon—this time a title, not a place. The Myxo intellect.

It had learned moderation. The true zombies were useless to it, because it could not control their bodies effectively. But by leaving a part of the human will intact it was able to draw on the speech center, and perhaps much of the memory and mind. But what was it?

He asked it.

It did not know. But, in halting interchange, a gradual picture of sorts grew. The geologic forces in the subterranean Chthon-planet had carved caverns, hundreds and thousands of cubic miles of them: hot lava tubes, winding waterways, smooth wind tunnels. The subsequent whims of nature heaved and overturned the elaborate structure, crushing the passages, kneading them down, and beginning the process over. Lava flowed again, and again; water cut across the honeycombed strata, riverbeds melted, cool lakes were crushed between molten layers. Crystals formed in the interstices, all types, growing enormously, only to be reburied. New pressures on them generated restless currents, for some were semi-conductors, and diodes were formed and destroyed, while electrons ran along and through the metallic strands left as residue from prior furnaces, and discharged into the flowing waters, jumped across broken networks, and accelerated through natural coils. The sparks ignited accumulated gas, exploded the volatile bubbles. A perpetual recirculation formed, heating and cracking the cold rock and vaporizing the percolating waters as the fires settled, changing tolerances. The crystals continued to grow and change in the new environment, and some metamorphosed into forms that were scarcely natural, and the current in them developed circulations and feedback analogous to the fire cycle nearby. At last, in whatever indefinable manner the transition from slime to living slime is made, the transition from current to consciousness was also made, without the interposition of life, and the Chthon-intellect was created.

“What do you want with us,” Aton asked it, “with human beings? What good are we to you?”

The woman faltered, lapsed into zombie status, then back to human. “It wants me to explain to you that it has no—no moving parts. It is all—electronic, a computer. It can think, but it can’t do anything, unless it controls mobile units. The local animals aren’t very good. They can’t follow complex instructions, and Chthon can’t adapt readily to their animate nervous systems. It needs units with—intelligence.”

“It has two zombies,” Aton pointed out. “Three.”