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SEVENTY-FOUR The Jabberwock

"He left it dead, And with its head, He went galumphing back."

"Ogden Nash," guessed the Eldest.

"No, it's Robert Service," argued Sam. "Don't you know anything about American literature?"

"It's Lewis Carroll," the Proprietor corrected, "and Robert Service was Canadian, Sam. Only there's no `back' to galumph to in any event. We're still right here where the whole thing happened. Nevertheless, I shall be happy to say, `Come to my arms, my beamish boy,' if etiquette absolutely requires it of me."

"I don't think that will be necessary," Eichra Oren answered. Absently, he fingered a smooth, oddly shaped object in his trouser pocket. The old fellow was right about still being here, though. The carpet hadn't finished absorbing the blood.

"You have the arms for it, Your Molluscitude," Sam observed, "but I think that's Rosalind's line. Too bad she isn't here to say it. Maybe you'd better give this relationship some thought, Boss. A doctor's mate is in for a pretty rough ride—"

The Antarctican sipped his tall, cool drink and laid two cautious fingers on his forehead, feeling the patch of gauze taped there. Underneath it lay a minor cut, two stitches, a small amount of antiseptic, and a kiss. He'd just returned from the infirmary.

"No more so than any moral debt assessor's mate, I should think. I wish she were here, too, but for the moment, it'll be worth it if she and Raftan can cobble poor Arthur back together." He turned to Mister Thoggosh. "Tai—who didn't even have a cracked rib, it turns out, to show for his run-in with the Banker—tells me Arthur was working up his nerve to kill himself out there."

"Dear me," exclaimed the Eldest, "now that I understand the concept, I find the idea of death—"

"It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy! Listen, Eldest, since we're understanding concepts here, you want to tell me how come we—I mean Eichra Oren and Model 17—ended up on the surface of this dungball when they were headed for the core?"

Somewhere within the gallons of protoplasm comprising the Eldest lay the cerebro-cortical implant which had belonged to Aelbraugh Pritsch. He was perfectly capable of hearing the dog. "You mean," the giant amoeba replied, "you haven't asked her?"

"Model 17 hasn't been much of a conversationalist since you brainwashed her." As he spoke, the robot sat by herself in a corner of the room, for all purposes inert.

"Sam, you exaggerate again, simply to annoy me. Scutigera warned me. I take it as a compliment, since he also told me that you only do it to those you like."

"If you say so."

"I do. But I didn't brainwash the poor thing—or then again, perhaps I did. Basically a liquid entity, I `dissolved' myself into Model 17 and, becoming physically and mechanically at one with her, resolved her preprogrammed contradictions and repaired her. She has a few little things to sort out for herself yet, but she'll be her old self, or even more so, before you know it."

"Yeah, and in the meantime, I notice you didn't answer my question."

"About the center and the surface? I didn't know it was my place to answer you, Sam. In the first place, I'm not omniscient, and in the second, I didn't build this place."

"5023 Eris," declared the Proprietor, "isn't a sphere, Sam, although it looks that way from our limited point of view. It's a six-dimensional torus. I'm not sure why the Predecessors built it that way, nor is Model 17, but we'll find out eventually. It may have something to do with the Virtual Drive. Eichra Oren and Model 17—and you with them—simply took a turn around the rim."

For a moment, Sam was stunned into uncharacteristic silence. Then: "Oh yeah? Then how come nobody I know about has gone for a walk in the woods out there, where we popped up at the end of our swim, and stumbled across the Great Communal Sea?"

"I can answer that one," Eichra Oren told him. "For exactly the same reason people attach doors to their houses and put glass or plastic in their windows. It's a one-way trapdoor, so that air and fluorocarbon can't leak out but the Predecessors had easy access to the surface without traveling all the kilometers we did."

"So you can't get there from here?"

"That's right, although you can get here from there."

The assessor let go of the round metallic object in his pocket, gulped his drink, and ordered another.

"I have a question of my own, Eldest, and you'd better not dodge it like you just did Sam's. My mother told us that she's a part of you. In fact, she claimed she is you. You said that she and I were some kind of an experiment. I want to know what in the name of p'Na that makes me? She's helping Rosalind at the infirmary at the moment, and won't answer me in any case. She said I should discuss it with you. I feel completely human. I have for over five hundred years."

The Eldest chuckled. "Aelbraugh Pritsch felt avian. He never knew he wasn't until he did."

"That's helpful!" Again he felt for the palm-sized device he'd picked up from the floor after the Banker's body was removed from his living room. Its contours were irresistible.

"I'm sorry, my dear boy, I couldn't resist a final jest. You and your mother are part of an ongoing experiment in recombinant genetics. I wanted to see whether selected combinations of my own genes and those of younger, more vital species might not produce something superior. In a way—although the mix is actually more complicated than that, you might say I'm your maternal grandfather."

The man swallowed. "You mean I'm not a . . . a . . ."

"A slime mold? As if that weren't a perfectly fine thing to be." The Eldest chuckled, jiggling his jellylike substance. "Nor are you a giant amoeba about to shed your skin—and neither is your mother, the eternally beautiful Eneri Relda. You're both quite human, with just a little something extra added—me. You're an autonomous individual, but biologically immortal and virtually indestructible. These are traits I believe you can pass on to your own offspring."

"Interesting," declared a new voice. Rosalind entered the front door and joined them in the living room. Sitting down beside him, she gazed at Eichra Oren speculatively. "I can't stay. Arthur's in therapeutic stasis and we have to check on him from time to time. I just walked over here to tell Sam that we're ready for him now—and also to escort him back, figuratively speaking."

"Aw, Ma, do I hafta?" Eichra Oren passed the dog's remark on to the physician.

"You will," Eichra Oren advised, "if you don't want to remain as useless as those zinkies and ferns the Americans are fond of talking about." He began to explain to the Eldest that these were slang terms for baseless currency, but the parts of the being which had come to the asteroid with the ASSR expedition already knew.

"Before you all go," Mister Thoggosh told them, "there's a final item I wish to discuss briefly—but before that, what is that object you're fooling with, Eichra Oren? I've been watching you at it for half an hour and it's driving me mad!"

Eichra Oren laughed. "It's a plasma pistol, similar in function to mine, but of a design completely unknown to our civilization. And I have a pretty good idea who it belongs to."

"Well put it away, for pity's sake." Preoccupied, Mister Thoggosh lifted his ponderous shell and settled so that he faced the Eldest directly. "If Deshovich was telling the truth about chivvying Model 17 into contacting her Creators—"

"He was," replied the Eldest, nodding toward the robot. "That was the first thing I looked into."

"Then we find ourselves," Mister Thoggosh persisted, "confronting the possibility that thousands of hostile spacecraft, loaded with heavily armed, paranoid trilobites, are already on their way back to the Solar System. I'm willing to entreat you, sir, to intercede, if that's what it will take. Can you not call them off? You do, after all, have cellular spies among the trilobites, do you not?"

"Yes," the Eldest answered wryly, "but how can I do what you ask, Mister Thoggosh, without betraying my own cells, portions of my being, as agents of the Predecessors' ancient Enemy?"

"Whom the Predecessors won't believe in any event, once they find out who they are?"

"That's correct, Sam," observed the Eldest.

The giant cephalopod was indignant. "But—"

"And besides," the Eldest asked, "aren't you big enough by now to take care of yourselves?"

"I don't understand," responded Mister Thoggosh.

The Eldest sighed. "Isn't this something that will just have to be hammered out—on that Forge of Adversity you nautiloids are so fond of lecturing others about?"

 

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