Aimlessly, Mister Thoggosh wandered through the garden of tactile sculpture he maintained in the forefront of his office, letting his tentacles trail across each piece without feeling the contours beneath them.
Filled with a quantity of metabolic carbon dioxide, the great color-striped shell which housed his body hovered a meter above the sandy floor. A less ponderous being than he appeared, he had always been lighter on his metaphorical feet than he let the Americans realize. Now he wondered if he should drop that pose for the benefit of his next visitors.
The truth, he thought bitterly, doesn't always set you free. He'd realized, following the conference in Dlee Raftan Saon's tent, that he'd soon find himself with an angry moral debt assessor on his metaphorical hands. He'd decided that when it happened, it would be his own fault, a price he had to pay to attain his ultimate objective. That it had taken Eichra Oren a week to make this appointmentostensibly because he must help his fellow humans rearrange their camp so the shuttles could be used to capture a moononly served as a measure of the man's annoyance.
Eichra Oren had every right to be annoyed. Security restrictions on the scale that Mister Thoggosh had initially imposed here were unheard of in the world of the nautiloids and their many associates. They'd long since proven more expensive (economically and in a sense that went beyond economic consideration, crossing into personal dignity and liberty) than anything preserved by them. Having imposed them nonetheless, he couldn't, in all justice, blame Eichra Oren for resenting their sudden and complete abandonment.
His implant chirped a message from Aelbraugh Pritsch. His guests had been processed through the air lockthey had filled their respiratory systems with the same oxygenated fluorocarbon liquid he swam inand were waiting outside his office. Sending an assent, he pivoted in midfluid, intending to return to the area that served him as a desk, then thought better of it and decided to break all precedent by greeting them at the door.
It wasn't the only broken precedent. When the pressure-panel slid aside, in addition to Eichra Oren, he saw Sam (whose furry coat usually made him hate plunging himself into the liquid that filled Mister Thoggosh's quarters) and Toya Pulaski. At his invitation they preceded him toward the back of the office and sat in chairsall but Samwhich lowered themselves from the ceiling while he arranged himself behind his "desk."
Behind him, against a starry background incongruous in the depths of his live-in aquarium, a wall-display set up for the benefit of his Soviet American visitors showed the progress of the mission in space from the vantage of Gutierrez's flagship, the Laika.
"It's good to see you here, my"
"Skip the amenities, Mister Thoggosh," Eichra Oren declared. "I came to hand in our resignations, mine and Sam's. We might work for an employer who lies to us. `Truth is a valuable commodity you don't automatically owe to everyone.' But we won't workI won't workfor someone who gives us a job and then undoes it himself without any warning."
"Me neither," Sam added.
"I see," replied the nautiloid. "What will you do instead?"
The Antarctican frowned. "We'd go home, but I understand your reluctance to use the interdimensional transporter too casually. My quarters are on your land and grew from a seed you provided. I suppose, until enough good reasons accumulate to use the transporter, I'll vacate them and throw in with Toya's people. Don't worry, it isn't your obligation any more."
Mister Thoggosh lifted tentacles in a sinuous shrug. "I believe you're mistaken. I promised I'd compensate you whether you worked or not, until I get you back to our continuum. Your quarters are a part of that compensation. I'll keep the rest of my promise if you'll permit me."
Eichra Oren opened his mouth to protest. Mister Thoggosh hurried on before he could utter a word. "I'd like to ask you a procedural question, however. You feel you have a grievance against me. I'll concede it for the sake of discussion. If I wished to make appropriate restitution, Eichra Oren, how would I go about it, since you're the only debt assessor on the asteroid?"
"Watch it," Sam warned, "he's soaping it up to stick it to you!"
The man leaned back and put a hand under his chin, "You could wait until this is over and we can settle the debt back home."
Not for the first time, Mister Thoggosh wished he could shake his head. "If we succeed here, I may not return. Besides, the Americans have a saying: `Justice delayed is justice denied.' You'll acknowledge that this applies to a moral debtor who wishes to rebalance the scales as much as to any creditor?"
"For the sake of discussion. What do you suggest?"
"That, in absence of another debt assessor, I rely on your faculties in an attempt to explain my actions. Possibly you'll feel afterward that I don't owe you a debt. If not, I'll accept any judgment you care to levy."
Eichra Oren raised his eyebrows, "Any judgment?"
"Did I speak too softly? Any judgment! I'll abandon this project and take everyone home if you insist. I'll have myself sliced up, breaded, and deep-fried, just the way the Americans like it. You have my solemn word of honor."
Eichra Oren was visibly taken aback. "I'll listen."
Mister Thoggosh laid one tentacle over another and began to relax for the first time in days. "Very well, you heard something of my concerns last week when I spoke with General Gutierrez about borrowing his spacecraft. Primarily I feared that a human government might get hold of Predecessor technology. That, you can appreciate, is something to be very much afraid of."
"Mister Gutierrez," Sam corrected. "His commission expired when he agreed to help you. The reason his people didn't replace him, or have him sliced up, breaded, and deep-fried, is that they're all as fed up with their government, most of them anyway, as he is, and agreed with him it was a good idea."
The nautiloid suppressed annoyance. "I was under an impression that military rank would be retained as an aid to efficient operation. But I was explaining myself." He turned to the Antarctican. "When I gave you your assignment, I did not wish to burden a valuable employee with my deepest fears. I worried that it might affect your, er, spontaneity, interfere with your all-important attempt to get to know the other humans on this asteroid better. Especially," he gave Toya what he hoped was a look of appreciation, "the increasingly knowledgeable and dangerous Sergeant Pulaski."
"That much," the man responded guardedly, "I understand."
"Also, there was the embarrassing matter of what I feltstill feelare the historic failures of my own species. Perhaps I fell short of candor, but I wasn't anxious for others to know just how dull-witted the `Elders' have been."
With what the humans might have called a sinking circulatory organ, the nautiloid suddenly realized that everything he was saying sounded perfectly idiotic. He hoped Eichra Oren would see through that to the real message he wanted to convey. He allowed the empty spaces in his shell to fill with air, gradually rising until he floated a few inches above the floor. To his right, at a signal from his implant, the door to his personal quarters slid aside.
"But comeI've something that should be of particular interest to the sergeant. We can continue our conversation under pleasanter auspices."
He encouraged them to follow him through the door and, with an enthusiasm he knew was transparently proprietary, welcomed them into his apartment. He'd adjusted the light to suit them. To him, descended from deep-sea creatures as he was, his familiar quarters were filled with glare, as if they were arc-lit, and his pupils had shrunk to fine vertical lines barely visible, he suspected, to the others. There was little any human being would have recognized as furniture. In one corner stood a high-sided bed of carefully cleaned and sifted sand where he slept. On a sort of night table he'd set his favorite piece of tactile sculpture. It bore no visual resemblance to anything real (this being an important part of the artistic effort), but was immediately recognizable to nautiloid tentacles as a particularly seductive female of his own species.
"I've brought you to see my collection of Predecessor artifacts."
Scattered about were the more mundane objects Mister Thoggosh had everyday use for, books in different media, writing implements of various kinds, portraits of his friends and relatives, personal weapons. Instruments for cleaning and grooming himself sat on a shelf below what humans might have recognized as a mirror, had they been capable of seeing in the same spectrum of frequencies nautiloids used. Even to Eichra Oren, who knew what it was, it looked like a dully polished sheet of metal. Their host invited them to sit on the floor, deeply covered with yet another grade of soft, fine sand.
"One reason," he continued as before, "I kept my search a secret for so long was out of simple consideration for others. The last thing I wanted was to get everyone unduly excited about the possibilities here."
Sam yawned pointedly and settled to the floor, "Gimme a break."
Mister Thoggosh ignored him. "It wasn't just a matter of the gamble I had persuaded Scutigera, Semlohcolresh, and the others to take with me. They were highly sophisticated investors, well aware of the risks involved in any such undertaking. It was a much more intangible matter of the morale of an entire civilizationI needn't add that the self-esteem of the nautiloid species is involved, as well." He lifted a tentacle. "Just look at the objects in this display case and you'll see what I mean."
"Excuse me, Mister Thoggosh," Toya asked, "but what display case?"
He laid a tentacle on what Eichra Oren had taken for another mirror. "What's transparent to one eye may not be to another." He opened the panel and removed a couple of small objects which he passed to the humans.
Eichra Oren nodded without comment as he accepted one of the objects and Toya examined another. Everything Mister Thoggosh handed them appeared delicate. Each appeared to have been formed randomly of some ceramic substance, yet, at the same time, seemed made for some specific purpose.
"That's a common sort we find everywhere on various versions of Earth, although this one's from here. A kind of wrench, I think," Mister Thoggosh told Toya. "The irregular taper within the crescent fits a knob seen on larger artifacts. We've never been able to turn those, with our own tools or even with tools like this, but such devices applied to simulations turn them without effort, as if there were a motor inside. I think it's a sort of lever to convert whatever force you apply to rotary motion. It's all of a piece and contains no separate or moving parts. It also makes musical noises when subjected to anything over six tonnes of torque."
"Six tonnes?" Seated on the floor with her legs crossed, Toya looked up at the Elder. "But it seems so fragile."
"Do anything you wish, my dear. Such remnants prove, under all but the most strenuous tests known to mechanics, completely indestructible."
Eichra Oren held his own object up, a disk four centimeters in diameter, transparent to the human eyehe wondered whether Mister Thoggosh knew thatwith extensions of the same material, shaped a bit like antennae. It looked as if it were made of laceglass lacetwo millimeters thick, yet he couldn't bend it, let alone break it. Deep within its illusionary center, there appeared to be vague movement and light.
"We don't know what that is," confided Mister Thoggosh, "except that it must be locked away. It interferes with certain radio frequencies and some chemical reactions refuse to occur in its presence. You'll appreciate that I don't look forward to sifting the soil of 5023 Eris a cubic meter at a time for any more such. Yet if we hadn't solved the drilling problem, that's exactly what we'd have had to do."
Drifting over the bed, Mister Thoggosh settled himself. "There are other objects in the cabinet if you care, but they're all trivial so far. What might yet be discovered is without precedent in the history of known civilization. Only the exploration of alternate worlds fails to pale by comparison. Had I disappointed everyone, I might have incurred a moral debt to them. I wasn't certain anyone knows how to pay such a unique debt, or that even a p'Nan debt assessor would be able to figure it out."
Having grown up in the same culture as Mister Thoggosh, Eichra Oren shared his ethical values, along with the uncertainties they sometimes produced. For that and other reasons he was beginning to see some sense in Mister Thoggosh's explanation. Such an attitude was easier to assume, of course, now that he knew his employer's secret anyway.
"We've known each other a long time," the mollusc told him. "All of your relatively short life, in fact. I've known your esteemed mother, Eneri Relda, even longer. We've been friends the majority of her remarkable fifteen-thousand-year lifespan. We were first introduced when she was a girl just snatched from disaster, and I little more than a freshly hatched egg."
The dog yawned. "Is all this ancient history headed somewhere?"
"Dealing with humans, I often ask myself what Eneri Relda would do. Since my secret would soon be outI'm relieved no longer to have the burden of protecting itand there was no way of getting it back, I thought it of paramount importance to reach some sort of agreement as quickly as possible with General Gutierrez which would preclude his government's interference."
"Hmm." The assessor looked at the paleontologist. "What you don't know, what I didn't see any reason to tell you since you were holding out on me, was that Toya and I came to a similar agreement. She's decided she prefers the society created by you Elders to the one she grew up in."
"Yes," the girl responded diffidently. "I remembered your offer, Mister Thoggosh. I found myself regretting that I didn't take it. I decided I'd tell them nothing which might endanger your project, whatever it was. Or your culture's ability to defend itself from the United World Soviet."
Eichra Oren grinned. "I thought Toya's attitude was sensible. I told her I'd do my best to find a place for her when this was over with. She believed we could trust Gutierrez. He seemed to be coming to the same conclusions she had and wouldn't pass on dangerous information to the KGB."
Mister Thoggosh grunted. "I can't say I blame you for failing to allay my fears. Our mutual trust of the general is borne out by his cooperation, and in the way he renamed his spacecraft and allowed the others to be renamed by their respective captains. Geronimo I've heard of, but you'll have to fill me in on the other, Toya. Who is John Galt?"
She shook her head. "Colonel Sebastiano won't tell anybody." She still hadn't lost the American habit of glancing around to see if anyone dangerous was listening. "I think it's from some TV series that was suppressed."
"I see. Well, it's time we came to an agreement ourselves, Eichra Oren. May we assume that something resembling peace exists between us once again?"
Eichra Oren nodded. "I think we can assume that, yes."
"Because, unlike Toya here, and General Gutierrez, some Americans have yet to reach a resolution to their problems. First and foremost, especially for individuals like Mr. Empleado, is the question of survival. I want you to make sure that, whatever solution he arrives at, it doesn't imperil our own."