Nothing happened.

"I can do better," said the dark.

Without even a hint of dislocation, Schilling suddenly blinked away the glare of blazing orange sunlight. He stood next to Thomassen in the clearing near the burning wreckage of the shuttle. Arrayed behind him were Ife's entire crew, except for the landing party resting in the shade of a purple-feathered tree.

"Small gods and smaller errands," said Bogdanov with a tiny smile. "What do you think, captain? Sounds like a sweetheart deal."

"It stinks," Thomassen said. "This is all nuts." He gestured with his pistol. "We can't do this!"

"What else?" someone shouted. "Commit seppuku?"

"Put away the gun before someone gets hurt," Schilling said. "It can't force us to do anything."

"Damned thing translocated us from the ship to the surface in an eye blink," Thomassen snapped, gun trembling in his hand. He was sweating now, looking as unnerved as Schilling felt. "It can do whatever it wants."

Bogdanov stood up from where he leaned on the tree. "I suggest you listen to the good lieutenant. He's right." Bogdanov's smile broadened at Thomassen. "For a change."

Schilling glared back and forth at Bogdanov and Thomassen. Crew drew around the three of them in a circle. "You seem remarkably well-informed," said Schilling. "Has that dark thing gotten to you?"

Bogdanov's smile turned into a grin. "Gotten to me? It's gotten to us all. It's the world, captain. It's everywhere around us. We can go into it, accept the offer, or we can die here. This thing could turn you inside out with a thought." He poked Schilling in the chest, then added, "Sir."

"No." Thomassen lowered his pistol, the barrel hovering toward Bogdanov. "Crew came to be leaders of this colony--now is the time for us to show leadership. We refuse, we take our chances, die like men if we must. If we say yes, this thing will own us. What if it uses us to get back to Earth?"

"How?" Bogdanov laughed. "The engines are gone, burned out in transit. We've no technology it can adapt, and there's no industrial base here for processing exotic matter. Hell, we couldn't even launch a comm satellite. I say we save our own skins."

"What will happen to us?" called someone from the crowd. An angry mutter ringed Schilling, Bogdanov and Thomassen. "We want to live," yelled another voice.

"Small gods and smaller errands," said Schilling, "or a messy death." He couldn't push the self-destruct again, not even metaphorically. Not that it would matter, now. It hadn't helped when he pushed it for real. "The Colonists will live their lives here, and we'll be...something at this world's behest. But alive."

"We'll be alive, sir," said Bogdanov. "Even better, we'll be powers in our new world."

"And if I say no?"

Bogdanov nodded his head, almost a bow. "It respects your authority, Captain, at least over Crew and Colonists. If the planet just...took...us, we would be little use to it. It prefers that we join it, as willing servants. You are our heart. You lead us all."

Schilling stared at his muttering crew, moments from mutiny. If he didn't speak for them all, they would each speak for themselves--a bloody prospect, at this point. The orange sunlight seemed to flood his thoughts. He didn't want to die any more than the crew did. He was tired of the hard decisions. "Wherever you are," Schilling shouted, "we accept. We have no other choice."

Thomassen drew his pistol into a firing stance, spinning on his heel to seek a target. Bogdanov moved too fast for Schilling to follow, striking the weapon out of Thomassen's hand with a bone-shattering blow before turning to face the captain. Blackness poured from Bogdanov's mouth and eyes as his skin flared bright as the orange sun. "I am here." His voice boomed like thunder. "And this thing is done."

Now:

"It's the world, Ladyman," Bogdanov says. "When we touched it, the world awoke and entered into one of us. It took First Crew for servants. When there has been a problem, it took one of you to replace one of us."

"You," states Ladyman flatly. "You are the one the world entered into and became."

"Or I became it," whispers Bogdanov from all his mouths. "And it made me something I never meant to be."

Ladyman shoulders the zap rifle so that the crackling tip centered on a point between Bogdanov's eyes. "And if one of you dies, one of us is taken up to your immortal company. A frightening temptation for a rash and ambitious young man, such a bargain with death. But what about you, Bogdanov? If you died, this power would die with you. It vested itself in you, right?"

"Truth's a bitch," whispers Bogdanov in a dozen voices. One of them sounds like Thomassen. Inside his mind, a glittering blackness writhes. "First Crew would die with me. All their lives are twined into my essence."

"Mountains and caves and human spiders that they are," says Ladyman. "Now I understand why you have all their faces. The spirit of the world took you into itself, and you took it into you. You are the world, and you are First Crew. Idiot. What did you think you had bought with your mortal lives? Witch burnings and generations of poverty under the purplefan trees?" He lets the rifle droop again. "Truth is, you deserve to live like this."

"All of us," Bogdanov says. "We'd all be dead."

Ladyman laughs, then shoulders his rifle and walks back to Port Weiland's Council Hall. "I could be wrong. What if I killed you, and the planet forced me to take your place? Better you suffer than any of my people. Either way, you deserve to live forever. That's what you get for playing god with our lives. Get out of my town, old man," he says from the door. "Don't come back."

The crowd slowly disperses, leaving Bogdanov standing alone in the dusty street. The soul of New Dahomey weeps, hollow isolation gleaming in dozens of glittering eyes, paired two by two in his faceted faces. "Please," he whispers.