Blegg rubbed his palms together. They felt gritty, just as they had felt when he climbed to the top of the monolith on Cull to find uncomfortable revelation. Similar revelation had occurred to him before. Captured and dragged into a Separatist base on a moonlet that was only a number on the star charts, he faced torture and interrogation. A ridiculous situation since he had not been on a mission then, merely checking out some fossils that should not have been there. The fast picket that dropped him off was not to return for some weeks, so no cover and no AI on hand to record his memories. They used psychoactive drugs on him, physical torture that left him minus three fingers—removed one joint at a time -minus the skin across his stomach, his testicles crushed and burnt. They could not believe their luck in having captured him. Their leader did not believe it, so the interrogation continued. At some point he became a mewling thing with only a passing resemblance to a human being. Awareness then returned to him with a thump and all the confusion suddenly receded. Clarity of mind became absolute, but what initiated it? They had discovered something very strange about his body, were working to keep him alive to take elsewhere for deeper study and a more meticulous investigation. They talked of the technology for probing minds and other things of a similar nature. Blegg remembered previous deaths, remembered what he was, and knew this could not be allowed. But what could he do? He no longer possessed workable limbs. He decided it was time for him to die. However, then came AI linkage to his mind as the attack ship Yellow Cloud entered the system looking for him. It uploaded his memories as far as and including the moment when the missiles hammered into the base and converted it into a glowing crater in the face of the moonlet. Blegg’s new body thereafter possessed no conscious recollection of this inconvenient episode. It did possess something else, though, should something like this occur again and no attack ship be on hand. It contained the seeds of destruction of itself and much else beside. It became a weapon, as well as a vessel for his consciousness. Of course to use that weapon Blegg had to remember he could die, that he had died many times.

Again Blegg felt that potential awaiting his conscious command. It had been used occasionally since that time on the moonlet, but he had no memories of the circumstances involved, since it was impossible for him to have them. Only after-the-event recordings were open to him: the gutted Prador destroyer he was held captive aboard, sludge smeared across a rocky plateau on a world seceded from the Polity—all that remained of a rebel army—and other less dramatic occasions when he lost contact with the AIs and was in danger of being forced to reveal too much.