Wall Around a Star

TWELVE

In spite of its shape the flexible helmet slipped onto Jen Babylon's head with great ease. It did not interfere with his breathing. It was not uncomfortable. It merely blanked out all sensation. He saw no light, heard no sound; it was as though he had poked his head into a pool of utter, silent blackness. He felt Redlaw, or someone, fiddling with the coppery metal at the top of the helmet— And then he was somewhere else! He was in a great, dark chamber, and his first sensation was of nearly lethal fatigue. He was carrying a device he had never seen before, and a huge creature, three great eyes blazing like emerald headlamps, was flapping long, feathered wings in slow time before him. Piercing the swol­len body was a sharp-tipped spear. An alien of a type he had seen before—a deltaform, a flying species shaped like the triangle of an ancient supersonic aircraft—shrieked over his head. The deltaform spun back toward him. Baby­lon felt a sharp stab of fear— And was something else.

All his senses shifted; they were blurred and broken and, though he tried to find his own person, he could detect nothing human. He wore the shape of a deltaform! He was slithering down a dark, twisting passage, like the gut inside some dinosaurian beast. Things were following him, things no more human than himself. He heard the clatter of their chitinous shells against the narrow walls and smelled their rancorous stink, and knew what they were. Watchers! Armed Watchers, a combat brigade of them; and under his command—

The wink of an eye; and he was in a different place. He was less fatigued this time, but still in terrible pain. Something serious had happened to his leg, and when he glanced down he saw that it was bleeding and suppurating through a hastily tied rag. He was operating a drill, cutting anchor holes in a body of rock under the distant glowing clouded sky of Cuckoo. His body seemed queerly out of focus—unfamiliar—and he realized with a shock that it was the body of a woman. He was terribly, numbingly cold, and though his hands wore thick gloves the rest of his body—of that female body that he now inhabited—was suffering damage ...

Gone again. And now he was in a lander, crushed in some catastrophe moments before. Through a broken win­dow he saw a landscape whipped under a howling wind, bathed in soft, rose-colored light—gone again!

He was leaping across a great green meadow studded with trees that glowed with a crimson radiance. Undulating and endless, the meadow stretched from forever to eternity before and after. He came down, in Cuckoo's slow, gentle pull, near one of the trees, flexed his legs to spring again— and became aware of a choking sweetness from the tree that paralyzed him for a moment. He sprang weakly, coughing and strangling—

And was gone again. A Scorpian robot and a Watcher were shouting to him in a language he didn't understand; the Watcher's evil beetle stink made his stomach twist. A cloud of bioluminescent midges obscured his vision by dashing themselves into his eyes—

Another place. He was sailing on a blood-colored waveless sea, smooth as oil. Babylon felt a gnawing pain in his lower limbs, and once again it was not merely the pain itself but the odd inability to locate it in his familiar body that made it terrifying. But he could not look down. He was holding the stock of an immense crossbow weapon, and his gaze was not allowed to deviate from the sights, or from the approaching sailing vessel that was his target. It was less than five hundred meters away, then less than four, swiftly cutting in toward his own ship. Its tall masts were oddly curved, and the smooth black sails seemed to grow from them, with no rope or yard. The hull swelled smoothly with only a narrow space that could be a deck; two greenish spots near the prow looked like luminous eyes—

It was alive!

At that moment his muscles were commanded to fire. The crossbow launched its quarrel, a wedge-shaped bit of metal that glowed and sprang into brilliant purplish flame as it left the weapon and exploded into the side of the black ship. In that moment the iron control over his body relaxed and he could look down. The curious imprecision of the pain explained itself—he was not in a human body! What­ever he was, it had a chitinous shell and a dozen furred, spidery legs; and, most terrible shock of all, the ship he was on was alive as well, and tiny mouths, opened on the deck, were gnawing at him—

Gone once more. Babylon had lost control completely now. He could not say at any moment where he was or out of whose—or what being's—eyes he saw. It became a flick­ering kaleidoscope, giant trees kilometers tall followed by red-lit thundering caverns, black balloons that trailed living ropes toward him, and tiny creatures like treefrogs under­foot, mewing piteously as he crushed them. For a moment he was on a plain with half a dozen other Purchased hu­man beings, cowering in a hailstorm, pellets as big as his head, under a thick snake of twisting cloud pulsing with scarlet lightning, and then he was in a chamber, a Scorpian holding a metallic mechanism of some sort from which a blob of green light grew and spun toward him. He had just time to realize that he was in a human body again, taller and healthier than his own, when the green blob struck.

In agony he wrenched the helmet away, and crumpled, half fainting, into Zara's arms. "I think that time I died," he gasped. "My God! What things I saw!"

Doc Chimp hopped over with a bulb of something to drink—something that made Babylon sputter and gasp. "Just my own home-made jungle juice, Dr. Babylon," the chimp apologized, "but I thought you'd need it."

Babylon breathed hoarsely, then nodded. "I saw—oh, what did I not see! Things I never dreamed of! Places I never knew existed!"

Zara gently freed herself and nodded. "That's the whole thing, Jen," she said. "When you put that helmet on, you're seeing through the eyes of Purchased People all over Cuckoo—some of them not human. And you're see­ing things that are not in the synoptics! Things that there is no record of anywhere!"

"But how can that be?"

"Treachery!" Redlaw boomed, his red beard waggling with indignation. "Somebody—some races—are up to pri­vate activities that they keep secret from the rest of us! They've got an unregistered tachyon communicator; they've employed Purchased People without recording them. When I put that helmet on I saw places and things that I had not even suspected—and I was born on Cuckoo, Babylon!" He snatched the dataglobe out of Doc Chimp's stereostage, added it to a pile of hexagons. "Here, Babylon! You've got the only equipment to play these things—study them! Try to find out what they mean! And, above all, don't let our enemies know what you're doing!"

Babylon accepted the objects, running his fingers over them as though in that way he could plumb their mysteries. "How do I know who the enemies are?" he asked.

There was silence in the chamber for a moment. Then Redlaw laughed harshly, a sound without amusement. "If only any of us knew the answer to that!" he boomed. "So tell no one! No one but the T'Worlie and the people in this room!"

The hardest part was convincing the T'Worlie that se­crecy was important. It was against all their age-old in­stincts. For more than a million of Earth's years the T'Worlie had thought their long, slow thoughts about the nature of the universe; had sent their slow probes around the Galaxy and outside it; had methodically measured and observed and assessed—and had shared every datum and every thought with all who would listen. Before Mimmie. could understand what Babylon wanted, he required pain­ful explanations; before he could agree to it, he had to con­sult with the wisest and oldest of the other T'Worlie on the orbiter. They filled the little chamber with their soft, winged bodies and the smell of their discourses with each other—singed hair, burnt sugar, wood violets, now and then an acrid sulfur reek of dissent. Babylon could recog­nize his colleague, Mimmie, by the pattern of dots on the filmy wings, but the others—all those others! They had names like Nleem and Mlim, Nlem, and Nloom, and they squeaked and whistled at each other far faster than the Pmal could translate.

Babylon left them to it, curling up in a corner of the chamber for an hour's sleep. When he woke up he and Mimmie were alone. He stretched, yawned, and asked, "What's the verdict?"

The T'Worlie whistled gently, "Concurrence. TWorlie have agreed to play this game of your devising, Jen Baby­lon."

"Thank you," said Babylon, although he was not entirely sure he was grateful. "Game?" Perhaps everything the younger, shorter-lived races of the Galaxy did seemed a game to the T'Worlie, though the games that were being played around Cuckoo seemed particularly nasty. And pointless! What possible advantage could any species get from damaging the cooperative effort?

But then, generations of human beings before Jen Baby­lon had asked that question of their own species, and never found an answer. He grinned and bestirred himself. The T'Worlie had not been idle while he slept. The stereostage was displaying some of the views Redlaw had brought back from the temple by the lake, and as he approached, the T'Worlie dexterously scanned through to find the one he was interested in, then rotated it so Babylon could see. "Query: Have you observed this star formation?"

It was the interior of the building, with the image of the galactic cluster glowing from above. "Yes, Mimmie. I don't know how old it is, but it's remarkable that it still has power enough to radiate now."

"Observations. First, concur; estimate age not less than one hundred thousand your years, upper limit much higher." And before Babylon could react to that: "Second, observations and analysis of stellar configurations and types indicate no match against known galactic configura­tions. Conclusion: representation of galaxy not our own."

One more puzzle! But there was not time to dwell on it, there was so much else to worry about. Babylon set aside the question of just who had made that model of a galaxy in favor of the puzzles that were nearer at hand. Why was there no response from that other Jen Babylon on Earth? Who were the beings who had furtively sent Purchased People all over Cuckoo—and why had they done it? Who were the "enemies"—and what were they up to?

And even those questions, which had no answer, drifted into the background of his thoughts as he and the T'Worlie began trying to decipher the new lot of hexagons from the temple.

It was not difficult to make them work. They were of the same design as the ones from the wrecked spaceship, fit as readily into the reader they had brought back into the orbiter. But when they were read, what did they mean? Some were star patterns. Some were what looked like wir­ing diagrams and structural sketches of a ship like the de­stroyed one. One whole series showed a sort of bestiary of galactic races, and some that were not galactic, or not recognizable as such—the T'Worlie cooed softly over these, and made copies for the other T'Worlie who specialized in the taxonomy of cultures.

And one hexagon was a total puzzle.

They slipped it into the reader over and over and watched the cube fade, become transparent, light up. What it showed was always the same. A bright disk with dark behind it. A sun, perhaps, as seen from a billion kilometers away. Or a white-hot dime at half a meter, for there was no key to its scale. Alone at first, but suddenly with a thin ring around it, blue and bright-shining, placed like a plan­et's orbit if it had been a star. A second ring, almost at right angles. A third, and suddenly many, weaving them­selves into a wickerwork ball with holes where the poles would be if it had been a planet. Something darker spread over the blue ball. Sections sliding together like pieces of peel replaced on an orange, forming larger sections— finally forming octants like those puzzling octants on the map of Cuckoo.

They played it over repeatedly, the T'Worlie dancing be­side it, swooping to study it from all angles, Babylon paus­ing to munch the dreary synthetic food that kept him alive and returning to study it again. "One thing's certain," he said at last. "It's a machine of some kind, and we've never seen anything like it." The TWorlie did not answer, but Babylon detected a faint wintergreen odor of polite doubt. "That object at the center. It looked like a star. Don't you agree?"

The TWorlie hesitated, then whistled diffidently: "De­murrer: scale not established. Hypothesis: possible repre­sentation of submicroscopic object that we do not recog­nize."

Babylon nodded. "If the thing in the center were a star—oh, but of course it couldn't be. Nothing could be that big! I guess it could even be an atomic particle. Maybe a theoretical diagram for the structure of a quark. But more likely it's larger. Some kind of construction. Could it be—"

He frowned at the fluttering T'Worlie.

"Could it be some kind of advanced spacecraft, with the sun-thing a power source? Look, those polar openings have raised hps around them. Nozzles, maybe, for some sort of plasma jet, if the object could really be a vessel."

Hesitant lemony smell of uncertainy from the T'Worlie. "Conjecture not excluded," it agreed. "Contraindication: no evident space for passengers or payload."

Babylon shrugged irritably. "How do we know it's sup­posed to carry anything? It could be just a—I don't know, a toy!" He shook his head moodily. "Hell with it. Let's take another look at the biological series—those human-looking bipeds still bother me!"

* ♦ »

They were not left alone. Doc Chimp looked in often, Org Rider and Zara from time to time. Even Ben Omega Pertin roused himself from his hiding place to skulk through the corridors once or twice, then quickly retreated to his privacy—and his vices. The worst interruptions were the peremptory visits from beings other than the humans or the T'Worlie. Three horse-headed Canopans spent an hour listening to the tapes from the wrecked ship and demand­ing letter-perfect translations—without getting them, of course, since they didn't exist. A Sirian came at unpredict­able hours, shaking the door with the spattering electric discharges that were his substitute for a knock, never stay­ing very long, never explaining. Each time there was the great nuisance of having to get the hexagons out of sight and all their notes and drawings under cover. At least they were spared the Scorpian robots, and, above all, the Watcher—

"Though we probably could use him now," Babylon told Doc Chimp. "There are whole new audio tracks we haven't played for him."

"You'll never find him, Dr. Babylon," the chimpanzee said. "As soon as he found out what that temple was, he was off. I don't know where. Maybe down on the surface to see for himself. Maybe still on the orbiter somewhere— you could hide a hundred Watchers for a hundred years in some of the E.T. zones!" He moodily spun the controls of the hexagon reader, looking at the cryptic hollow sphere. "Can't you just match up the words you know against the tapes?" he asked.

"Of course we can. Of course we do, Doc! That's the basics. But it's not enough. Similar words—even the same words—don't mean genetic relationships between lan­guages. There may be no interaction between the speakers, but a common source. Perhaps the people who built the temple and the people of the wrecked ship are not the same. They might still have occupied adjacent linguistic areas—were neighbors, say, or influenced each other by travel or commerce or conquest. Or were themselves lin­guistically 'adjacent' to some unidentified third race, from whom they borrowed words. You find loan-words in ter­restrial languages all the time. The Japanese use the French pain for bread; their words for baseball, and tele­vision, and chocolate are almost identical to the English. But the languages have almost nothing else in common."

The chimp stared at him with woeful shoe-button eyes. "What you're saying is we haven't learned anything at all?"

"Oh, no! We've learned a great deal! We can identify some of the graphics from the wrecked ship—that's how Redlaw was able to find the other hexagons. We can even make a shrewd guess about the history of Cuckoo!"

"Really? Come on, Dr. Babylon—"

"No, it's true," Babylon insisted. "Putting it all together, we can say that the races akin to the galactics arrived here some time around thirteen thousand years ago; anything before that was original. We can say that the Watchers seem to be original, and that the language they used in communicating with the unknown race they Svatched' for has cognates with the language of the ship. Now, when I get the data from Boston, and when I can feed it all into the farlink computer, then we'll know a very great deal."

"Will we know what's going on?" Doc Chimp asked, grinning.

"Well, we won't know why somebody's using Purchased People secretly, "Babylon confessed. "Or why some of the races seem to be sabotaging our work. Or why—"

Doc Chimp raised a leathery paw. "Or why we're here in the first place," he finished. "Ah, me. It is not an easy thing to bear, the Primate's Burden!" He sighed theatri­cally. "Everything has its price, doesn't it, Dr. Babylon? Simply because we primates are so marvelously well adapted to anything, anywhere, we are the most popular Purchased People in the Galaxy, as well as the envy of all other races for possessing the Galaxy's most distinguished linguist—"

Babylon shook his head, marveling at the little creature's abrupt swings of mood. But it was pleasant to have the atmosphere lightened. "The only reason," he said, "that the rest of the Galaxy considers us linguists is that we're so backward. Do you know what they call us? 'The only race that cannot communicate with itself—because of our twenty-five hundred separate languages!"

"You are too modest, Dr. Babylon!"

"And as to being the race that sells best for Purchased People," Babylon added, "I can't help think those aliens are making a mistake using humans. Chimpanzees are so much better! Stronger, more agile—oh, now what's the matter?"

The little creature's long lip was trembling. "There are some things, Dr. Babylon," he declared, "that it is wrong to joke about! Purchased People are criminals. Chimpanzees do not become criminals. You'll never hear a bunch of law­yers arguing about whether the civil rights of convicted chimps have been violated!"

A scent like singed hair reminded Babylon of the T'Worlie, dancing silently between them as it listened to the discussion—he could not decide whether the aroma meant curiosity or tact. "Query," it whistled. "Define 'civil rights.'"

Whether it was tact or not, Babylon was glad to change the subject. "Why, they're the right of every person—of every entity, I mean—to enjoy certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The creature was silent for a while, then whistled slowly, "Incomprehension. Query term 'inalienable' if rights can be 'alienated' as in case of 'criminals.'"

"Oh, that's easy to explain," Babylon said quickly. "You see, every human has these rights, but he must not, of course, violate the law. For example. Among the criminals who were being transmitted when I was were, I believe, a Polynesian who advocated revolution against his lawful government, a woman guilty of failing to pay taxes, and any number of people convicted of other crimes." The singed-hair aroma was stronger than ever, and the T'Worlie said:

"Request: Define term 'taxes.' Define term 'govern­ment.' Define term 'advocated revolution.' "

Babylon hesitated, and was saved by an interruption. Zara's voice called from outside the door, "May I come in?" Doc Chimp hastily opened the door for her and she entered, bearing a fiber bag of some lumpy objects.

If Babylon had had any desire to continue the conversa­tion, Doc Chimp's behavior put a stop to it. The little mon­key's nostrils were quivering, and so were his skinny arms and legs. "Oh, Zara!" he cried piteously. "Do I smell what I think I smell?"

The woman, smiling, said, "Why don't you see, Doc?" and held the bag out to him. Doc Chimp seized it greedily, poked his head into it, and emerged with an immense grin. "Oh, bless you, dear lady!" he cried, spilling the contents into the air. "You know how us monkeys like bananas!" And indeed what came out of the bag was two huge clus­ters of fingerlike yellow fruit.

"They're not true bananas," Zara said apologetically. "At least, they didn't come from Earth; Org Rider had them shipped up in a drone from his home hills, along with our regular grocery list. I think they probably came originally from the Earth, but a long, long time ago—just like Org Rider."

"Don't apologize, dear Zara!" Doc Chimp cried happily, his voice muffled as he peeled back the skin and thrust the first of the fruit into his mouth. "They're good enough for me—and the best thing that's happened to me in a month of Sundays!"

"What I really came about," Zara said to Babylon, "was to see how you were coming along. According to Org Rider, time's getting short."

The T'Worlie danced nearer and peeped. "Query: Please state reason for opinion."

Zara's expression clouded. "I wish I could be sure," she said, with a troubled note to her voice. "Ben Pertin—that's Ben Omega Pertin, as he calls himself now—has been fill­ing Org Rider's ears with all sorts of rumors. Weapons test­ing in the outer chambers of the orbiter. Stories about the Watchers Unking up with the Scorpians and the Sheliaks. Even something about a human corpse turning up in the refuse for the plasma chamber—but it's all just rumors, and Ben won't talk to me himself."

Doc Chimp grinned over a mouthful of banana. "I'm not surprised at that, Zara," he remarked wickedly. Whatever the reference was, it escaped Babylon; but Zara did not elucidate, Doc Chimp did not pursue it, and in any event he was having trouble keeping his mind on the conversa­tion. His mouth was watering.

He cleared his throat. "Do you, uh, do you think I could have one of those, Doc?" he asked diffidently.

The chimp looked alarmed, then repentant. He started to offer one of the hands to Babylon, but Zara stopped him. "Jen," she said, looking at him closely, "you know what? You actually look hungry!"

He smiled, embarrassed. "Well, this synthetic food keeps you alive—but I really could use something better," he ad­mitted.

"Oh, Jen! I'm so sorry. I should have thought. Tell you what," she said, nodding. "Org Rider's cooking up some­thing right now out of the stuff we had sent up in the drone. Why don't you come have dinner with us tonight? It's nothing fancy—but a lot better than the synthetic stuff, and you look as if you could use a square meal!"

Zara and Org Rider's compartments were no more elabo­rate than Babylon's own, if a trifle larger—they had three separate rooms, while he had only one. But they had made them their own. On one wall was a replica of the great picture of Knife-in-the-Sky mountain that Babylon had seen before—in Pertin's room? Somewhere. On another a moving holo of the temple by the lake, with luminous clouds scudding overhead and gentle wavelets on the water. There were personal trophies fixed to every wall—a bow and a quiver of arrows, a great rough diamond Zara had found lying at the edge of a stream, a small holo of a winged creature, slim fishlike shape of bronze and silver. Strange thing to keep! Babylon thought, but only with the outer fringes of his mind, for most of his consciousness was terribly focused on the marvelous, rich, hot, savory smells that were coming from the corner where Org Rider was tending their meal. "Pity I have to use resistance heat," he said over his shoulder, turning the huge chunk of meat on its spit. "It's much better over an open fire! Puffballs and fire-tree wood, nothing better to give the meat a taste! But Zara won't let me." In a heap in the waste receptacle was the refuse of the meal; it had started as a sort of immense grub, and Org Rider had expertly split its shell and popped the round, raw meat out of it while Babylon watched, re­pelled and fascinated. They were going to offer him roast bug for dinner! But as soon as it began to cook all those thoughts were dispelled.

And the reality was even better than the expectation. The roast creature was delicious, and with it was a sort of puree of what had started out as leaves and roots but tasted like delicate fresh garden produce, and fruits and nuts of a dozen kinds for dessert. For the first time since he arrived on the Cuckoo orbiter, Jen Babylon felt as if he had not merely refueled but dined. Org Rider accepted his compli­ments complacently. "Just plain hunting fare," he pro­tested. "We ate this way all the time when I was a boy— when we ate at all," he added, laughing. "I don't want you to think it was heaven! But we did have freedom, and a chance to roam the world—that very huge world down there, which none of us could use up if we lived a thousand years. And then, when I got my org—" He looked sadly and affectionately at the holo of the winged creature. "You don't know what that meant in the life of a young man of my tribe, Jenbabylon."

"It does sound a little like heaven," Babylon commented. "And you obviously miss it."

"Oh, no! Not really! Or anyway," Org Rider qualified, "only when I've been too long on the orbiter, or in a lander, or spending time with those stinking Scorpians and She­liaks. But Zara understands! And I wouldn't trade her for a hundred orgs—well, for a dozen, anyway," he grinned, affectionately patting her slim shoulder. Then he roused himself. "I suppose you'd like some real coffee? I thought so—can't stand the stuff myself, but Zara likes it. I'll pass. I've got an errand to run."

Zara spoke up. "Tell him, Org Rider."

The stretched-out man shrugged, a sinuous movement that seemed to take twice as long as with a normal-sized human being. "It's not a secret—from you at least, Jenbab- ylon. I've got to see the Omega Pertin. He's been sneaking and spying around again, and he wants a meeting with me. I'm sure it's nothing. —Well, not as terrible as he seems to think, anyway," he amended. "But I'll find out. I don't think I'll be gone more than an hour or so—take your time with your coffee, and we'll see if I can find anything bet­ter to drink when I get back!"

Zara rose to kiss him as he left, then returned to Baby­lon. She listened politely but without any sign of close at­tention to his complimentary remarks about the meal and their home. Something was on her mind. When Babylon realized that, he occupied himself with a long, marvelous sip of his bulb of coffee to give her a chance to get it out.

She plucked at her tunic as if she were having difficulty finding the right words, and then said, "Jen?"

"Yes, Zara?"

She gave him a sudden smile. "I'm embarrassed," she confessed. She was a strange-looking human being, atten­uated so that she towered over him—but a beautiful one, Babylon thought. And most of all so when she smiled. "It's nothing, really," she said. "Or—that's not true, either. Oh, hell! Let me come right out with it. The other Zara back on Earth—didn't you say she had a child?"

"That's right, Zara. A little boy. Eight or ten years old, I should imagine—very nice little boy, allowing for the natu­ral tendency to get into mischief."

She nodded. "I assume it's Don Gentry's child?"

"Well, I didn't really know her, Zara, but, yes, I think that was her husband's name."

She grinned. "My husband's."

"Yours?" She had caught him unaware. "Oh, I see what you mean—you are, after all, the same person! Just as I'm the same person as the one back in Boston who won't an­swer my requests for help! It's a little confusing, keeping track of who is who."

She laughed out loud. "You think it's confusing? But there are only two of you! And of me—heaven knows how many. But Don and I did get married, back on Earth, and then the two of us came here together. But—he was killed. And then I met Org Rider. He's a wonderful person, Jen, so simple and strong. And, to tell the truth, Don and I weren't getting on that well together, even after we came here. So I'm a little surprised that we had a child together."

Babylon said diffidently, "Didn't I understand that you were also married to Ben Pertin?"

Her laugh was tinkling. "Not to any of the Ben Pertins you know, Jen. You see, the first time I was tachyon- transmitted, my duplicate went to Sun One. That's thou­sands of light-years away, in a completely different part of the Galaxy from Earth. I hadn't even met Don Gentry when I went there. So on Sun One I met that Ben Pertin, and we got engaged. After he was tachyon-transmitted here I married the one who stayed behind. And I—that I on Sun One, I mean—had a child, too. A little girl. I have a pic­ture of her," she said wistfully. She leaned forward and put her hand on Babylon's arm. "Come on, Jen! Tell me what I want to know. What's my son like?"

Touched, Babylon paused, trying to remember. One little kid was a lot like any other to a bachelor. "He was ... a young boy," he said lamely. "He seemed like a bright young man. I remember he got in trouble with his mother because, naturally, he was interested in everything that went on. So he wandered off when she wasn't looking. She gave him quite a talking-to when he turned up again, but I don't think she was really worried—he gave the impression of being unusually able to take care of himself." He paused, then asked directly, "Why don't you ask her—I mean ask you, that other you? I'm sure she'd send you a holo at least!"

Zara looked pensive. "Maybe I should," she said. "After all, why not? Although we've sort of lost touch . . . Well, I'll tell the truth. It's embarrassing, Jen! That's one of the confusions. When your husband dies you're a widow; that's simple enough. But what if in some other place he isn't dead, and you're still married to him? It's simply too com­plicated to handle, Jen." She stared unseeingly at the holo of the org for a moment, then nodded decisively. "Yes, you're right! I should ask her. It's nothing to do with Don and me. It's only a question of motherhood, and she'll un­derstand—I mean I'll understand!" She was laughing now. "Oh, Jen," she said warmly, "you don't know how grateful I am to you for this talk!"

She was very close to him, and suddenly the fact that she was sixty centimeters taller than he didn't seem to mat­ter. How long had he been at Cuckoo? He had lost count, but long enough—certainly long enough for him to be un­comfortably aware that she was a very attractive woman, and Sheryl was very distant and very far in the past.

There was, of course, always the question of Org Rider.

On the other hand, who was Org Rider that he should worry about him? Somebody who'd cooked him a dinner, period. Jen put his arm around her shoulder. Ambivalently. Because she was feeling emotional, and needed a fatherly, brotherly, soothing touch; or because, in quite a different way, the emotional feelings were his own. It was an all- purpose arm, to be defined by the way she reacted to it; but the reaction was never given a chance to develop. "Gentlefolks?" called Doc Chimp's high, giggling voice from the door. "Am I welcome? Do I smell more ba­nanas?"

Zara rose easily and let him in. "Of course you're wel­come, Doc," she said. "No bananas, I'm afraid. But there's other fruit, and Jen and I were just having coffee—you're certainly welcome to join us!"

"Coffee, oh, my, yes!" Doc cried, his eyes glittering at the net bag of fruit. "And aren't those pinkish things the ones that taste like plums? Yes, please! But just a few, and then we've got to go, because Org Rider wants us all down in the lander sector in half an hour."

Babylon cleared his throat, not yet quite adjusted to the sudden interruption of the tete-a-tete. "What for, Doc?" he demanded.

"Oh, some nonsense of Ben's, I believe," the chimp said airily, managing to squirt a swallow of coffee through one corner of his hps while cramming the soft-skinned pink fruit into the other—and to speak at the same time. "Did I interrupt something? What were you talking about?"

"Certainly notl" Babylon said virtuously. "I mean— nothing private, of course. We were discussing Zara's son, uh, the other Zara's son. Back on Earth. And I was just going to ask you something, Zara."

"Please do!"

"Well—I mean obviously you love children. Why don't you just go ahead and have some?"

Doc Chimp choked on his coffee and squirted a stream of brownish fluid into the wall. Zara stood as if frozen. Her face had absolutely no expression at all.

Obviously he had said something wrong! But what? Baby­lon had no clue. It seemed clear that he owed some sort of apology, but he didn't know where to begin. And then Zara spoke, her voice as neutral as her face.

"You did say half an hour, didn't you, Doc? Good heav­ens, what am I thinking of? It's a long trip to the lander area, and we mustn't be late. Please. Take your time. Fin­ish your coffee. I'll go on ahead—you bring Dr. Babylon with you." And without even looking at him, she was out of the door.

It was only a minute before Doc gulped the rest of his coffee, tucked a couple of fruits in his pouch, and led the way out, but Zara was already out of sight. "Oh, Dr. Baby­lon," the chimpanzee scolded as he dragged him through the corridors. "Whatever possessed you to say that?"

He caught an endless cable going toward the lander area with one long, skinny arm, the other flashing out to grasp Babylon's wrist. Babylon grunted with the sudden strain, then twisted to peer at the chimp. "What did I say, for heaven's sake?" he demanded.

"Telling her to have a child!"

"Oh, I see," Babylon said, nodding. "She and Org Rider— after thirteen thousand years of genetic separation—not cross-fertile anymore? I should have been more thoughtful!"

"You don't see! You don't see anything! Don't you re­member where you are? Cuckoo! The end of the Universe! The place where forgotten beings rot and decay! There's not a chance that any one of us can lead a normal life here."

"Oh," Babylon said remorsefully, "I didn't think."

"No, you didn't! 'Ooh, obviously, Zara, you love chil­dren,' " he mimicked savagely, his voice rising into a squeaky falsetto. "Obviously she does! That's why she can't have any! To have a child here you'd have to hate it!"

"I said I was sorry," Babylon snarled, and the chimp shook his head and was grimly silent, until they flashed to the end of the radial passage and emerged into one of the great lander chambers. Then Doc Chimp said forgivingly:

"I guess you just haven't been here long enough, Dr. Baby- Ion. There they are—just don't do it again, please?" And he sailed ahead to join the little group at the far end of the empty, echoing chamber.

There were at least a dozen of the chambers, each big enough to hold an entire shuttlecraft. Although this one was without an occupant at the moment, it was filled with the gear of shuttle maintenance—great flexible peristaltic tubes, to suck from the lander whatever odds and ends of matter it brought up to replenish the plasma chambers; re­pair units, now slung silent against the glassy walls of the room; the complex locking gear that could open a whole wall of the hangar to space so the lander could exit; fuel pumps; miscellaneous oddments that, to Babylon's eyes, had no recognizable purpose. To launch himself across that littered space took an act of courage—added to the fact that he was feeling somewhat disgruntled at himself, at Zara, and at the chimp for reproving him. So he took his time, handing himself along the walls instead of leaping straight across the space, and by the time he was nearly there he heard angry voices. No; one voice, and it was Ben Pertin's, shrill with vexation. He raised it to include BabyIon as he approached. "Take your time!" he sneered. "No hurry! The most important event in the last year—maybe ever—but there's no reason for you to give up dawdling over your dinner just because the war's started!"

The strange thing, Babylon thought, was that Pertin was really enjoying himself. Although he was talking to Baby­lon, his real target was obviously Zara, who said, with more patience than Babylon would have expected, "I already told you we didn't know there was any hurry, Ben." She gave her husband a cautionary glance. "And we mustn't argue among ourselves now! Come and see, Jen. It's true, I'm afraid!"

They were all clustered around a transparent port that showed the next lander chamber—but how different from the one they were in! The lander itself was there, a squat, mean-looking rocket vessel with the hatches open. Around it a zoo parade of aliens were readying it for takeoff. The lander itself took up so much of the space that most of what was going on was out of sight, but Babylon could see great chunks of equipment sliding in for stowage. He had a sudden shock of recognition. "Those machines that just went in! I know what they are! They're from the wrecked ship—"

"So you're waking up at last," Pertin crowed scornfully. "That's right—weapons!" And Doc Chimp added sorrow­fully:

"It's the Scorpians again, of course. See, there's one of them sealing the hatch—and another, with those Purchased People." He tugged at his long lower lip, his shoe-button eyes troubled. "Oh, what a terrible thing it is to see such treachery and wickedness!"

Zara reached out and patted his narrow shoulder. "I know how you feel, Doc, but the question is, what can we do?"

Ben Pertin laughed sharply. "I thought you'd get around to asking that question—now that it's too late! Pity you didn't think of it when you were playing cozy-up with Baby­lon!"

Babylon felt his anger flare, but managed to hold it back. There was something calculated and deliberate about Pertin's insulting manner, not explained by the whiskey on his breath or his unshaven, uncared-for appearance. This was personal for him, and the one he was aiming the fury at was Zara. Could he still be jealous? Under the circum­stances, preposterous! But something inside Babylon said, True all the same. "There!" Pertin called in sudden excite­ment. "That big hulking Purchased Person there—I could swear he was the same one whose body I saw going into the plasma converter!"

"But if he's dead—" Babylon faltered.

"Another copy, of course," Pertin said impatiently. "Look at him for yourself!"

Babylon leaned closer to the pane, crowding Doc Chimp out of his way. The lander's hatches were closed now, and almost the last of the queer lot of aliens had bobbed, flown, or floated aboard. A great blue Sirian eye hung overseeing the last of the loading, and in the tiny knot of remaining creatures one was human. Tall. Golden-skinned. Eyes downcast, arms obediently wrapped around a great black object shaped like a radar eye; but there was something about his bearing that suggested internal fires and readi­ness quite unlike the Purchased People.

Babylon drew a sudden breath. Of course! He had seen the man before; he was the one who had looked back at him with anger and intelligence, as he was herded out of the Tachyon Base on Earth.

They hung spellbound as the lander closed its ports and the great hatch to the outside infinite opened. The vessel slid out and away. Then Org Rider stirred. "They don't know everything, at least," he mused. "They didn't know I left a tachyon receiver down at the temple."

Pertin scoffed resentfully, "Score one for our side! And against that, what don't we know? We don't know what they're doing. We don't know why they're doing it. We don't even know where they're going!"

"I think we know that much at least," Org Rider boomed peacefully. "To the temple—otherwise why would the Watcher be going with them?" He shook his head. "No," he declared, "we know more than you think, Ben- pertin. They are going to see if they can find what is under the lake, and if they do I think it will be serious."

"It's serious now!" Pertin cried, swatting irritably at something that gleamed and danced by his head—a Boaty-Bit, Babylon realized. "Question is, what can we do about it? I think nothing. They've got all the weapons from the wrecked ship, and what have we got? Two scarecrows! A monkey! A bumpkin from Earth who doesn't even know when he's in trouble, and—" He hesitated, then finished miserably, "And an old drunk." He stared out the open ship hatch at the pale blue flame of the distant lander's thrusters.

There was a moment's silence. Then Org Rider boomed, "We have one other thing, Benpertin. We have a little time. They're going by lander, and it will take them time to get there."

"That's right!" Zara cried. "We can call an emergency council! Put it before every being on the orbiter—let the sensible ones decide what to do!"

"And who are the sensible ones?" Pertin demanded cut­tingly. "Which ones can you trust?"

"Why, the T'Worlie for one race!" Zara insisted. "And— well—" die hesitated, and the silence grew.

"And maybe not even the TWorlie," Pertin finished for her. "There's just one race on the orbiter we can rely on. The human race! —And, of course, other Earth primates," he added hastily, as he met Doc Chimp's injured gaze.

"I should think so," the chimpanzee declared with dig­nity. "I can do anything a human being can do that doesn't need just mass! Go anywhere. Hide where a human can't hide, live on what would make a human starve—" He stopped short as he caught sight of a swift change in Ben Pertin's expression. "Now, what are you thinking?" he de­manded. "You couldn't— Oh, no! Ben! You can't possibly want me to—"

Ben Pertin nodded with sudden glee. "You're absolutely right! You can go down there on the tachyon transporter and be waiting for them when they arrive."

The chimpanzee laid back its lips and screeched. "Me? You mean me?"

"You bet I do! You can play it by ear—hide and watch them if you have to. Even stroll right out and join them! Say Babylon sent you to, uh, I don't know—get some more hexagons. Anything!"

"Oh, no, Ben!" the chimpanzee howled. "Zara! Org Rider! Dr. Babylon! Make him say he's joking!" He stared around at them, then sobbed, "Oh, if you could see your faces— like I was a monkey in a zoo—"

Babylon offered, "It wouldn't really be you, Doc—just a tachyon duplicate—"

"It's me, all right! It's always me! It's always been me, dying a hundred times, maybe a thousand times—"

"Wait!" Org Rider said suddenly. "What's the lander doing?"

At almost the limit of vision they could see the vessel— strangely, better now than a few moments earlier. But it was not strange. The lander had suddenly become lumi­nous. It glowed with a greenish color that hurt the eyes, and as they watched the color swelled, clumped toward the nose of the craft, and launched itself at an unseen target. Moments passed.

Then it struck.

Whatever the lander had chosen to test its weapons, it was suddenly limned in green flame. Tiny asteroid, bit of space flotsam—it ceased to exist as the flame brightened and exploded and was gone.

The five watchers each cried out as the searing green stung their eyes, then turned and regarded each other.

Doc Chimp was the first to speak. "When you come right down to it," he said, "I don't really have much choice, do I? None of us do. With those weapons getting killed once or twice isn't going to matter—because they can do it to all of us, anytime they like."