“Haven’t we all?” McKie asked.
“That’s it!” Tuluk said, stepping close to them. He glanced from Bildoon to McKie. “Forgive me, but we Wreaves have extremely acute hearing. I listened. But I must comment: The shock waves, or whatever we wish to call them, which accompanied the departure of the Calebans and left behind such death and insanity that we must buffer ourselves with angeret and other . . .”
“So our thought processes are mucked up,” Bildoon said.
“More than that,” Tuluk said. “These vast occurrences have left . . . reverberations. The news media will not laugh at McKie. All sentients grasp at answers to the strange unrest we sense. ‘Periodic sentient madness,’ it’s called, and explanations are being sought every . . .”
“We’re wasting time,” McKie said.
“What would you have us do?” Bildoon asked.
“Several things,” McKie said. “First, I want Steadyon quarantined, no access to the Beautybarbers of any kind, no movement on or off the planet.”
“That’s madness! What reason could we give?”
“When does BuSab have to give reasons?” McKie asked. “We have a duty to slow the processes of government.”
“You know what a delicate line we walk, McKie!”
“The second thing,” McKie said, unperturbed, “will be to invoke our emergency clause with the Taprisiots, get notification of every call made by every suspected friend or associate of Abnethe’s.”
“They’ll say we’re trying to take over,” Bildoon breathed. “If this gets out, there’ll be rebellion, physical violence. You know how jealously most sentients guard their privacy. Besides, the emergency clause wasn’t designed for this; it’s an identification and delay procedure within normal . . .”
“If we don’t do this, we’ll die, and the Taprisiots with us,” McKie said. “That should be made clear to them. We need their willing cooperation.”
“I don’t know if I can convince them,” Bildoon protested.
“You’ll have to try.”
“But what good will these actions do us?”
“Taprisiots and Beautybarbers both operate in some way similar to the Calebans, but without as much . . . power,” McKie said. “I’m convinced of that. They’re all tapping the same power source.”
“Then what happens when we shut down the Beautybarbers?”
“Abnethe won’t go very long without them.”
“She probably has her own platoons of Beautybarbers!”
“But Steadyon is their touchstone. Quarantine it, and I think Beautybarber activity will stop everywhere.”
Bildoon looked at Tuluk.
“Taprisiots understand more than they’ve indicated about connectives,” Tuluk said. “I think they will listen to you if you point out that our last remaining Caleban is about to enter ultimate discontinuity. I think they’ll realize the significance of this.”
“Explain the significance to me, if you don’t mind. If Taprisiots can use these . . . these . . . they must know how to avoid the disaster!”
“Has anybody asked them?” McKie asked.
“Beautybarbers . . . Taprisiots . . .” Bildoon muttered. Then, “What else do you have in mind?”
“I’m going back to the Beachball,” McKie said.
“We can’t protect you as well there.”
“I know.”
“That room’s too small. If the Caleban would come to . . .”
“She won’t move. I’ve asked.”
Bildoon sighed, a deeply human emotional gesture. The Pan Spechi had absorbed more than shape when they had decided to copy the human pattern. The differences, though, were profound, and McKie reminded himself of this. Humans could only see dimly into Pan Spechi thoughts. With crèche-reversion imminent for this proud sentient, what was he truly thinking? A crèche mate would come forth presently, a new personality with all the Bildoon crèche’s millennial accumulation of data, all the . . .
McKie pursed his lips, inhaled, blew out.
How did Pan Spechi transfer that data from one unit to another? They were always linked, they said, ego holder and crèche mates, dormant and active, slavering flesheater and thinking aesthete. Linked? How?
“Do you understand connectives?” McKie asked, staring into Bildoon’s faceted eyes.
Bildoon shrugged. “I see the way your thoughts wander,” he said.
“Well?”
“Perhaps we Pan Spechi share this power,” Bildoon said, “but if so, the sharing is entirely unconscious. I will say no more. You come close to invasion of crèche privacy.”
McKie nodded. Crèche privacy was the ultimate defensive citadel of Pan Spechi existence. They would kill to defend it. No logic or reason could prevent the automatic reaction once it was ignited. Bildoon had displayed great friendship in issuing his warning.
“We’re desperate,” McKie said.
“I agree,” Bildoon said, overtones of profound dignity in his voice. “You may proceed as you’ve indicated.”
“Thanks,” McKie said.
“It’s on your head, McKie,” Bildoon added.
“Provided I can keep my head,” McKie said. He opened the outer door onto a clamor of newspeople. They were being held back by a harried line of enforcers, and it occurred to McKie, grasping this scene in its first impact, that all those involved in this turmoil were vulnerable from this direction.
Delusions demand reflex reactions (as though they had autonomic roots) where doubts and questioning not only aren’t required, but are actively resisted.
—BuSab Manual
Crowds were already forming on the morning-lighted palisades above the Beachball when McKie arrived.
News travels fast, he thought.
Extra squads of enforcers, called in anticipation of this mob scene, held back sentients trying to get to the cliff’s edge, barred access to the lava shelf. Aircraft of many kinds were being blocked by a screen of BuSab fliers.
McKie, standing near the Beachball, looked up at the hectic activity. The morning wind carried a fine mist of sea spray against his cheek. He had taken a jumpdoor to Furuneo’s headquarters, left instructions there, and used a Bureau flier for the short trip to the lava shelf.
The Beachball’s port remained open, he noted. Mixed squads of enforcers milled about in a confused pattern around the Ball, alert to every quarter of their surroundings. Picked enforcers watched through the port where other enforcers shared this uneasy guardianship.
It was quite early in Cordiality’s day here, but real-time relationships confused such arbitrary time systems, McKie thought. It was night at Central’s headquarters, evening at the Taprisiot council building where Bildoon must still be arguing . . . and only Immutable Space knew what time it was wherever Abnethe had her base of operations.
Later than any of them think, no doubt, McKie told himself.
He shouldered his way through the enforcers, got a boost up through the port, and surveyed the familiar purple gloom inside the Beachball. It was noticeably warmer in here out of the wind and spray, but not as warm as McKie remembered the place.
“Has the Caleban been talking?” McKie asked a Laclac, one of the enforcers guarding the interior.
“I don’t call it talking, but the answer is not recently.”
“Fanny Mae,” McKie said.
Silence.
“You still there, Fanny Mae?” McKie asked.
“McKie? You invoke presence, McKie?”
McKie felt he had registered the words on his eyeballs and relayed them to his hearing centers. They definitely were weaker than he remembered.
“How many floggings has she undergone in the past day?” McKie asked the Laclac.
“Local day?” the Laclac asked.
“What difference does it make?”
“I presumed you were asking for accurate data.” The Laclac sounded offended.
“I’m trying to find out if she’s been under attack recently,” McKie said. “She sounds weaker than
when I was here before.” He stared toward the giant spoon where the Caleban maintained her unpresence.
“Attacks have been intermittent and sporadic but not very successful,” the Laclac said. “We’ve collected more whips and Palenki arms, although I understand they’re not being successfully transmitted to the lab.”
“McKie invokes presence of Caleban self called Fanny Mae?” the Caleban asked.
“I greet you, Fanny Mae,” McKie said.
“You possess new connective entanglements, McKie,” the Caleban said, “but the pattern of you retains recognition. I greet you, McKie.”
“Does your contract with Abnethe still lead us all toward ultimate discontinuity?” McKie asked.
“Intensity of nearness,” the Caleban said. “My employer wishes speech with you.”
“Abnethe? She wants to talk to me?”
“Correct.”
“She could’ve called me anytime,” McKie said.
“Abnethe conveys request through self of me,” the Caleban said. “She asks relay among anticipated connective. This connective you perceive under label of ‘now.’ You hang this, McKie?”
“I hang it,” McKie growled. “So let her talk.”
“Abnethe requires you send companions from presence.”
“Alone?” McKie demanded. “What makes her think I’d do such a thing?” It was getting hotter in the Beachball. He wiped perspiration from his upper lip.
“Abnethe speaks of sentient motive called curiosity.”
“I’ve my own conditions for such a conference,” McKie said. “Tell her I won’t agree unless I’m assured she’ll make no attack on you or on me during our talk.”
“I give such assurance.”
“You give it?”
“Probability in Abnethe assurance appears . . . incomplete. Approximate descriptive. Assurance by self runs intense . . . strong. Direct? Perhaps.”
“Why do you give this assurance?”
“Employer Abnethe indicates strong desire for talk. Contract covers such . . . catering? Very close term. Catering.”
“You guarantee our safety, is that it?”
“Intense assurance, no more.”
“No attack during our talk,” McKie insisted.
“Thus propels connective,” the Caleban said.
Behind McKie, the Laclac enforcer grunted, said, “Do you understand that gibberish?”
“Take your squad and get out of here,” McKie said.
“Ser, my orders . . .”
“Deface your orders! I’m acting under the cartouche of Saboteur Extraordinary with full discretion from the Bureau chief himself! Get out!”
“Ser,” the Laclac said, “during the most recent flogging nine enforcers went mad here despite ingestion of angeret and various other chemicals we’d believed would protect us. I cannot be responsible for . . .”
“You’ll be responsible for a tide station on the nearest desert planet if you don’t obey me at once,” McKie said. “I will see you packed off to boredom after an official trial by . . .”
“I will not heed your threats, ser,” the Laclac said. “However, I will consult Bildoon himself if you so order.”
“Consult, then, and hurry it! There’s a Taprisiot outside.”
“Very well.” The Laclac saluted, crawled out the port. His companions in the Beachball continued their restive watch, with occasional worried glances at McKie.
They were brave sentients, all of them, McKie thought, to continue this duty in the face of unknown peril. Even the Laclac demonstrated extraordinary courage—with his perversity. Only obeying orders though; no doubt of that.
Although it galled him, McKie waited.
An odd thought struck him: If all sentients died, all power stations of their universe would grind to a halt. It gave him a strange feeling, this contemplation of an end to mechanical things and commercial enterprise.
Green, growing things would take over—trees with golden light in their branches. And the dull sounds of nameless metal devices, things of plastic and glass, would grow muffled with no ears to hear them.
Chairdogs would die, unfed. Protein vats would fail, decompose.
He thought of his own flesh decomposing.
The whole fleshly universe decomposing.
It would be over in an instant, the way universe measured time.
A wild pulse lost on some breeze.
Presently the Laclac reappeared in the port, said, “Ser, I am instructed to obey your orders, but to remain outside in visual contact with you, returning to this place at the first sign of trouble.”
“If that’s the best we can do, that’s it,” McKie said. “Get moving.”
In a minute McKie found himself alone with the Caleban. The sense that every place in this room lay behind him persisted. His spine itched. He felt increasingly that he was taking too much of a risk.
But there was the desperation of their position.
“Where’s Abnethe?” McKie asked. “I thought she wanted to talk.”
A jumpdoor opened abruptly to the left of the Caleban’s spoon. Abnethe’s head and shoulders appeared in it, all slightly pink-hazed by the slowdown of all energy within that portal. The light was sufficient, though, that McKie could see subtle changes in Abnethe’s appearance. He was gratified to note a harried look to her. Wisps of hair escaped her tight coiffure. Bloodshot veins could be detected in her eyes. There were wrinkles in her forehead.
She needed her Beautybarbers.
“Are you ready to give yourself up?” McKie asked.
“That’s a stupid question,” she said. “You’re alone at my command.”
“Not quite alone,” McKie said. “There are . . .” He broke off at the sly smile which formed on Abnethe’s lips.
“You’ll note that Fanny Mae has closed the exterior port of her residence,” Abnethe said.
McKie shot a glance to his left, saw that the port was closed. Treachery?
“Fanny Mae!” he called. “You assured me . . .”
“No attack,” the Caleban said. “Privacy.”
McKie imagined the consternation in the enforcers outside right now. But they would never be able to break into the Beachball. He saved his protests, swallowed. The room remained utterly still.
“Privacy, then,” he agreed.
“That’s better,” Abnethe said. “We must reach agreement, McKie. You’re becoming somewhat of a nuisance.”
“Oh, more than a nuisance, certainly?”
“Perhaps.”
“Your Palenki, the one who was going to chop me up—I found him a nuisance, too. Maybe even more than a nuisance. Now that I think about it, I recall that I suffered.”
Abnethe shuddered.
“By the way,” McKie said, “we know where you are.”
“You lie!”
“Not really. You see, you’re not where you think you are, Mliss. You think you’ve gone back in time. You haven’t.”
“You lie, I say!”
“I have it pretty well figured out,” McKie said. “The place where you are was constructed from your connectives—your memories, dreams, wishes . . . perhaps even from things you expressly described.”
“What nonsense!” She sounded worried.
“You asked for a place that would be safe from the apocalypse,” McKie said. “Fanny Mae warned you about ultimate discontinuity, of course. She probably demonstrated some of her powers, showed you various places available to you along the connectives of you and your associates. That’s when you got your big idea.”
“You’re guessing,” Abnethe said. Her face was grim.
McKie smiled.
“You could stand a little session with your Beautybarbers,” he said. “You’re looking a bit seedy, Mliss.”
She scowled.
“Are they refusing to work for you?” McKie persisted.
“They’ll come around!” she snapped.
“When?”
“When they see they’ve no alternative!”
“Perhaps.”
“We’re wasting time, McKie.”
“That’s true. What was it you wanted to say to me?”
“We must make an agreement, McKie; just the two of us.”
“You’ll marry me, is that it?”
“That’s your price?” She was obviously surprised.
“I’m not sure,” McKie said. “What about Cheo?”
“Cheo begins to bore me.”
“That’s what worries me,” McKie said. “I ask myself how long it would be until I bored you?”
“I realize you’re not being sincere,” she said, “that you’re stalling. I think, however, we can reach agreement.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Fanny Mae suggested it,” she said.
McKie peered at the shimmering unpresence of the Caleban. “Fanny Mae suggested it?” he murmured.
And he thought, Fanny Mae determines her own brand of reality from what she sees of these mysterious connectives: a special perception tailored to her particular energy consumption.
Sweat dripped from his forehead. He rocked forward, sensing that he stood on the brink of a revelation.
“Do you still love me, Fanny Mae?” he asked.
Abnethe’s eyes went wide with surprise. “Whaaat?”
“Affinity awareness,” the Caleban said. “Love equates with this coherence I possess of you, McKie.”
“How do you savor my single-track existence?” McKie asked.
“Intense affinity,” the Caleban said. “Product of sincerity of attempts at communication. I-self-Caleban love you human-person, McKie.”
Abnethe glared at McKie. “I came here to discuss a mutual problem, McKie,” she flared. “I did not anticipate standing aside for a gibberish session between you and this stupid Caleban!”
“Self not in stupor,” the Caleban said.
“McKie,” Abnethe said, voice low, “I came to suggest a proposition of mutual benefit. Join me. I don’t care what capacity you choose, the rewards will be more than you could possibly . . .”
“You don’t even suspect what’s happened to you,” McKie said. “That’s the strange thing.”
“Damn you! I could make an emperor out of you!”
Whipping Star Page 16
