"Molluscs, you say? I don't believe it! Would either of you care for more tea?"
"No thank you, Model 17," Dr*f*rst*v answered. Tl*m*nch*l had curled both pairs of long, graceful, jointed antennae in a silent but articulate grimace of negation with which he completely sympathized, himself. A little tea went a long, long way, he was discovering. Any sanitary relief their suits afforded was of limited capacity, and no other facilities seemed available at the moment to match their anatomy.
"I assure you that it's true, however. As far as anybody is aware, the Elderswho are nautiloids and therefore molluscsare the first Successor species to your own."
All three understood that Dr*f*rst*v was speaking figuratively. Model 17, as she had asked that they call her, no more typified those who had constructed 5023 Eris than the two sea-scorpionoid explorers did. Sheit appeared females had been even more dominant among her creators' species than was the case now among most arachnoidswas a trilobitic robot rather than a proper trilobitoid. The trilobitoid sapients in whose image she had been created had vanished utterly from the Solar System eons ago, leaving only her behind.
"Indeed," Tl*m*nch*l agreed, "sea-scorpionoids like our ancestors rose to sapience directly after the nautiloids, and only then, of course, on an entirely different set of time-lines. We've found that this is the way it usually works."
"It's absurd," objected Model 17, "and on top of one absurdity, you present me with yet another: you actually expect me to believe that some of the putatively sapient creatures you have brought with you are land animalsmammals!"
"And they call us giant bugs." Tl*m*nch*l's swimmerettes stirred in a resigned shrug. "If you live long enough, you discover that interspecies revulsion is relative."
"Speaking of relativity, Model 17," added Dr*f*rst*v, "as one bug to another, Trebla's Law of Relative Probability holds that, from the unique perspective of each individual universe of alternative probability, it will inevitably appear that that universe, and only that universe, represents the highest likelihood of having developed, and that all others are less probablemany absurdly so."
At the moment they occupied a small room ("parlor" was the word that came to Dr*f*rst*v's mind) just off the larger hemisphere where he had made his horrifying discovery.
Light and power had been restored here and the room refilled, Model 17 assured them, with clean, well-oxygenated fluorocarbon kept separate from the outer room by a transparent membrane they could walk through, if they wished, as easily as if it weren't there at all. This room, too, had a circular floorplan, its single enveloping wall composed of cabinets without conspicuous handles rising to the ceiling and of countertops no higher than the risers on a flight of stairs. For want of better furniture, they sat on the floor.
Model 17 had explained that this was one of several hundred such convenient sanctuaries scattered throughout the asteroid which she used as offices, workshops, storerooms, and to the degree she needed them, personal quarters. Several hundred million years ago, she had kept a few supplies here for the benefit of her creators, who had often come to consult her and check on her performance prior to their departure. Appearing eager now to impress the sea-scorpionoids as a hostess, she had offered them tea brewed in a sort of pressure cooker which they sipped from tubes, having taken the riskbeing no less eager to be decent guestsof peeling back the faces of their flexible helmets.
The liquid atmosphere had an ancient, musty flavor which began to fade almost as soon as it was noticed.
It had been a matter of sheer evolutionary good luck that Dr*f*rst*v and Tl*m*nch*l had possessed organs of speech extremely similar to those of the Predecessors. The language they were presently employing was a common sea-scorpionoid trade-speech which Model 17 or some subordinate device of hers had been recording and sorting through ever since they'd arrived on the asteroid.
It was good luck, too, that they had managed to establish contact with the trilobitoid robot before they met the same grim fate as the remainder of their party. The shocking sight of those half dozen bodies glistening in the lamplight, their distorted shadows dancing on the wall behind themand the way he'd felt about seeing them hanging therewould stay with Dr*f*rst*v for the rest of his life.
If he lived that long.
"Even so," Model 17 replied, "these nautiloids, these molluscs you speak of . . . they may be your metaphorical Elders, but they are most assuredly not mine. Nonetheless, my fine new friends, I am very grateful to have been awakened, whatever the nature of the beings who awakened me. You see, self-evolved organic sapience has always been something of a mystery and a marvel to me. I inevitably feel the most profound respect imaginable in its presencealthough, of course, I realize that that is precisely what I was programmed to feel."
"Respect," Dr*f*rst*v replied graciously, "is a learned attitude in all sapient entities, Model 17, be they living or cybernetic. In point of fact, you could even say that my parents programmed mealthough no doubt with considerably greater difficultyin exactly the same way your creators did you."
"How generous of you." Her armor-segmented dorsal area expanded and contracted in what appeared to be a sigh. "All the more reason, I fear, to regret my tragic error."
"Now, Model 17 . . ." Tl*m*nch*l waved a sympathetic feeler.
"I offer no excuse, gentlebeings, but simply explain that I am something more than the mere servomechanism you presently see before you, and at the same time, something less. I am not so much a self-contained device as I am an extension of this vessel's entire computer complex. Deeply preoccupied with bringing billions of systems back online for the first time in many ages, I was not yet operating at full efficiency. As a consequence, it was all over long before I realized that your friends were the representatives of various unanticipated Successor species, rather than the agents of our mutual enemy, the Eldest."
"Error, too," Dr*f*rst*v paraphrased himself gallantly, concealing his sincere relief that it would be Tl*m*nch*l's responsibility, rather than his own, to explain to the so-called Proprietor of this enterprise, Mister Thoggosh, what had happened to the others, "is characteristic of organic and mechanical entities. Except, of course, that unlike mutual respect, no one ever seems to have to learn it."
Model 17 had already implied that the sea-scorpionoids were the Successors her creators had really had in mind when they'd built 5023 Eris. Nor was this the first time she'd mentioned "the Eldest," whoever they were. They'd asked her about this earlier, and then backed off. Either she knew nothing more about the Eldest or would say nothing more. At this point, especially if she were indeed the key control-device for the asteroid, they were disinclined to press her.
"You are indeed kind, Draferstiv," Model 17 replied, proving no more capable of pronouncing his name correctly than any other being he'd ever known. "I was extremely worried that you might overestimate my capabilities and come to count on me too much. I am, after all, only a working prototype, the seventeenth in my line, to be precise, and the first to be deemed even marginally satisfactory by my makers. But they were hurried toward the end, by their preparations for departure, and may have been overly optimistic in their estimate, especially of my ability to survive all this time without significant deterioration.
"Are you sure you won't have more tea?"
Dr*f*rst*v cringed. "No thank you, Model 17, I think we've both had quite enough." He pointed toward the door they'd come though. "You might explain the machinery you were working with out there when we metthat is, if you don't mind."
"Not at all, Driferstav, that is the primary function I was originally programmed for, having been built to serve my creators' eventual Successorsmolluscs, you say? I still find that very hard to credit. The machinery in the chamber next door"
"It's a tachyon telescope."
The words were in English. Ortiz pushed through the membrane from the room outside, making scrubbing motions along his spacesuited arms and drawing his EAA Witness to make sure nothing interfered with its operation. Thumbing the catch at the root of the trigger guard, he slipped the magazine out to inspect the top cartridge, drew the slide back far enough to see the chambered round glittering back at him, moved the slide forward again, let the hammer down from its half-cocked position, reinserted the magazine with a slap of his palm, and holstered the weapon. He still wore his huge NASA helmet and they were hearing him over their implants. He put his hands on his hips and looked around.
"That's what our resident power engineer, Remgar d'Nod, has to say about it, anyway. Me, I'm just an old jet-fighter jockey who wouldn't know a tachyon from"
"Tachycardia," Remgar d'Nod supplied, having followed Ortiz through the membrane and into the smaller room. He still looked a bit unstable on his eight furry legs. "Which is what our mechanical friend here gave me a healthy dose of when she"
"There, Tleemeencheel, Droofoorstoov, you see?" Model 17 swiveled away from the newcomers just as Ortega y Pena joined them. "That releasing enzyme may work slowly after all these millennia, but it remains effective. If there were even the faintest trace left of the cyanoacrylate adhesive I used, so very regrettably, to attach these gentlebeings to the wall outside, I would be able to detect it instantly as a fluorocarbon pollutant on my life-support monitors."
She turned toward her erstwhile victims. "Major Ortiz, Engineer Remgar d'Nod, Doctor Ortega, I tendered my most profuse apologies to you while you were still, er, attached to the wall. Now I tender them again, with an equal sincerity. There is sufficient ambient oxygen in this chamber that you may safely remove your environmental coverings if you desire. May I offer you some tea?"
"Tea?" Ortiz repeated. "No, thanks. I'll keep my helmet on, too, if you don't mind." He hooked a gauntleted thumb toward the slim pack on his back, rather different in style and color from his bulky spacesuit. "This molecular recycler we got from the Elders works pretty damn well and so far I've avoided doing fluorocarbon with Mister Thoggosh. You wouldn't want me to spoil a perfect record, would you? I don't know about that releasing enzyme, either, Model 17. I still feel sticky all over."
Ortega nodded weary, wordless agreement, apparently still stunned by his recent experience. Unlike the major, the sea-scorpionoids knew, he was no rough-and-ready combat veteran by training or inclination, but a soil chemist. Despite the room's liquid buoyancy and the asteroid's almost nonexistent gravity, he sat down heavily on the floor and stared at his knees, staying out of the conversation.
"So do I," Remgar d'Nod agreed. "Model 17, you've brought a new meaning to the term `glue gun.' It's one of the more effective weapons I've encounteredcertainly enough to make any web-spinning arachnoid turn purple with envy. Hoist by my own petard, as it werealthough I must admit I've never understood that particular turn of phrase. Isn't `petard' French for `one who farts'?"
Ortega lifted his head, opened his mouth to explain, then, appearing too tired, closed his mouth and waved it all away. Ortiz grinned. "You people must have more efficient spacesuits than we do. The expression makes perfect sense to me." Ortiz had found this whole episode nothing but funny, lending credence to the theory that he'd inherited his sense of humor from his Yaqui ancestors.
The mock trilobite rippled one edge of her carapace to expose a modified limb ending in a small nozzle. "My `glue gun,' Remgar d'Nod, is strictly a utility meant for effecting emergency repairs. It hadn't occurred to me to employ it as a weapon until I felt compelled to improvise. The selectively permeable membrane you've passed through should have removed any lingering traces. Perhaps the residual stickiness you're experiencing is psychological in character."
"Perhaps," the spider told her. He, too, had his weapon out, a plasma pistol much like the one Eichra Oren carried, and was inspecting its heat-blackened blast orifice. "I'll risk breathing your fluorocarbon, and I'd appreciate a flask of teaand anything stronger you put in itafter what we've all been through.
"Where are the others?" Tl*m*nch*l asked.
"Oh, they'll be along," replied the spider, sliding his little gun into a holster slung from the underside of his thorax and methodically proceeding to groom each of his spacesuited legs in turn, using his gloved palps. "For some reason, it seems to be taking their glue a little longer to finish dissolving than it did ours."
"It had been polymerizing somewhat longer," Model 17 began to explain, "since I came across them in the companionways above, shortly after finding the other . . ."
She broke off suddenly, turned, and lumbered to a low counter, preparing tea for Remgar d'Nod. As they had with regard to the Eldest, both Tl*m*nch*l and Dr*f*rst*v noticed her peculiar behavior and filed it away for future consideration.
"Also," she said, going on as if she hadn't suddenly interrupted herself and changed the subject, "I had to take more care for the safety of your friends Valerian, Betal, and Jonesjust as I was with Major Ortiz and Doctor Ortega. The releasing enzyme threatened to attack the substance of their environmental coverings, which seem to be of somewhat lesser quality than your own."
She turned again, bringing a stoppered plastic flask of hot tea to the spider. "Remgar d'Nod, I've fortified this with a small amount of pure ethanol and trust you'll find it as much to your taste as my creators always did. While we are waiting for your friends outside, I'm pleased to inform you that the entire structure of this body you call 5023 Eris is capable of use as an antenna in your frequencies. Would you care to have communication with the surface restored?"
Ortiz laughed. "Does a chicken have lips?"
"A chicken?" Model 17 made a puzzled noise. Ortiz explained what a chicken was. "Then as I understand it," she replied, "chickens do not have lips. Does that mean"
"He means," Remgar d'Nod put in after a long sip of fortified tea, "do nautiloids squirt luminous ink?"
Dr*f*rst*v recognized the game from his study of Earth culture, a new hobby he shared with many of the nonhumans. "Yes, in other words, is a bear Catholic?"
"And," offered Tl*m*nch*l, "does the pope"
"Ah, it's the old jokes that are best," Ortega spoke at last, loosening the metal ring which held his helmet to the shoulders of his suit. Exhaling, he lifted the helmeta huge air bubble drifted to the ceiling like a silver balloonand took in a huge breath of fluorocarbon. "That's much better. I believe I'll try some tea nowjust like Remgar d'Nod'sif you don't mind, Model 17."
"And meanwhile," Dr*f*rst*v offered, "you might explain what you look at with a tachyon telescope."