Although he found it tiresome, Ixmal allotted one small part of his consciousness to the task of measuring time. At first there had been two major categories: before time began and after time began. The first took in the long blackness before Man had brought him into existence. Man—ha! How well he recalled the term! The second, of course, was all time since. But the first category had been so long ago that it shrank into insignificance, all but erased by the nearly seven hundred million times the earth since had whirled around its primary.
Ixmal periodically became bored, and for eons at a stretch existed in semi-consciousness lost in somnolence except for the minute time cell measuring out the lonely centuries. He wouldn't have bothered with that if Psychband hadn't insisted that orientation in time was necessary to mental stability—hence he measured it by the earth's rotation, its revolutions around the sun, the quick, fury-laden ages which spewed forth mountains; the millions of years of rains and winds and erosion before they subsided again to become bleak plains. Ah, the story was old, old....
There had been a time when he'd been intensely active—when he'd first learned to free his mind from the squat impervium-sheathed cube atop the batholith. Then he had fervently projected remote receptors over the earth exploring its seared continents and eerie-silent cities, exhuming the tragic and bloody history of his Makers. Ah, how short! His first memory of Man—he had been a biped, a frantic protoplasmic creature with a zero mind and furious ego—was that of the day of his birth. How clearly he remembered!
"Hello, boy."
First there was nothing—a void, a blackness without form or substance; then gray consciousness slowly resolving into a kaleidoscope of thought patterns, a curious mental imagery; a gradual awareness—birth.
"Hello, boy."
Strangely enough the sound pattern possessed meaning; he sensed a friendliness in it. He became conscious of an odd shape scrutinizing him—the intent look of a creator awed by the thing he had created. The shape took meaning and in it he sensed a quickened excitement. His awareness bloomed and within seconds he associated the shape with the strange word Man, and Man became his first reality. But he'd had no clear impression of himself. He was just thought, an intangible nothingness. But he'd quickly identified himself with the great mass of coils, levers, odd-shaped parts that all but filled the small room where the Man stood. He dimly remembered wondering what lay beyond the walls. It had been very strange, at first.
"We've won, we've won," the man whispered. He'd stepped closer, touching Ixmal wonderingly.