Wall Around a Star

TWO

The stewardess woke him up in plenty of time for him to drink a cup of coffee, splash water on his face, and be ready to disembark, but the Kooks had other plans. They interfered. The main landing strips at Logan-over-the-Sea were blocked by a Kook demonstration. The plane had to circle nearly an hour, at a prodigious waste of hydrogen fuel, while the airport police struggled to get the religious procession off the runways. By the time the plane got to its dock, and Babylon had completed the customs formalities and reclaimed his bag, it was full morning, and he decided against going back to his apartment. It was time to find out what this was all about.

He had difficulty getting to a phone because the rem­nants of the Kook mob were still being rounded up in the main lounge. They were disagreeable-looking people. It was an article of faith with the Criers of Cuckoo to renounce everything of this world; they wore clothing till it fell off them, they ate barely enough to sustain life, they preached the imminent coming of Cuckoo the Savior and Destroyer at every hour of each day. All of this left them little time for any of the normal preoccupations of humanity—such as earning a living. Their fasting had the additional effect of making them terribly, scarecrow lean—very much like the only race of indigenous humans that had been found on the strange, extragalactic object itself.

That, and their other habits, had one more effect. They smelled bad. Babylon averted his face, and tried to avert his nose, as he called the university's code on the stereo- phone. "This is Jen Babylon," he told the message-taker.

"Please enter an appointment with Dean Kooseman for me in, let me see, half an hour."

The empty golden glow inside the stage stirred silently, and then a sweet mechanical voice said, "Thank you, Dr. Babylon. Your appointment is confirmed."

He tagged his suitcase for delivery directly to his apart­ment and hurried toward the Cambridge subtrain.

He stopped short, staring at a knot of the Kooks being herded toward the limits of the airport.

Because of Babylon's specialty, he had some familiarity with the languages, and thus with the appearance and life­styles, of a dozen or more of the major races of the Galaxy. And because the application of his algorithms required contextual clues, he had spent a good deal of time studying the collective societies of the creatures from Bootes, and the methane worlds that swung around the core stars, and the plantlike beings who swam in the seas of a planet in the Orion gas cloud. Like everyone who lived in a major city, he sometimes caught a glimpse of, sometimes even met, some T'Worlie or Arcturan as they limped around the hos­tile Earth streets.

But—here? For among the ragged human Kooks there were three who were not human at all, two doughy, soft Sheliaks and a creature who looked like a purple sea anem­one. That was hard to understand! As recently as the few weeks ago when he left for his field trip, the Kooks were scarce, unimportant, and, of course, always human. Barely human; they came from the cast-offs of society. But if they were now attracting the great old races of the Galaxy there had been some significant change . . «

Dean Margaret Kooseman, at whatever age she was past eighty, should have been retired decades ago to make room for younger people. But she was kept on, year to year, be­cause of her immense prestige in the field. It did not mat­ter to the academic decision-makers that most of that pres­tige was borrowed from the discoveries and innovations of her underlings, whose papers were always coauthored by M. Kooseman, Ph.D., D.H.L., Sc.D. She got the credit, be­cause she was the boss. "Jen, dear!" she cried, getting up to brush her leathery lips across his cheek. "Isn't it exciting? Did those crustaceans bother you on Moorea?"

At eighty-plus, she was still a surprising woman. "What crustaceans?"

"Why, giant crabs of some sort. It was on the news this morning. They swarmed ashore out of the sea."

"I don't know anything about giant crabs, Margaret." He sat down on the edge of the very soft, very deep armchair she kept so that she could put her visitors at the disadvan­tage of being trapped in it. "I was laid over in Greater Los Angeles for almost ten hours, so it's been some time since I left Moorea, and that must have happened after I left. Any­way, that's not what I want to talk about."

"Of course not, Jen dear! You'll do the school great credit. When the call came in from Tachyon Transmission Base requesting your services I was simply thrilled."

Tachyon transmission! But he was not surprised; the summons, and the warning, had certainly come from off Earth, and there was no other real way to travel in space. All physical objects were bound by Einstein's immutable speed law; it was only when coded as tachyon bursts that one could travel a light-year in less than one year. "What I don't know," he said, "outside of why I'm supposed to do this in the first place, is where I am supposed to go."

"Why, Cuckoo, dear. I thought I told you. Didn't you get my message?"

"I got your message and you didn't tell me. For God's sake, Margaret, why am I supposed to go to Cuckoo?"

"Because you are the world's greatest expert in quantum-dynamic linguistics, of course."

"But why?"

"Oh, well, Jen," she said vaguely, "they didn't exactly state, but of course it doesn't matter. It's not just your own career that's at stake, or even the school's honor. It's quite a feather in the cap of the human race! There's not a lot of respect for humanity in most of the Galaxy, you know. To have those stuck-up creatures send for a human being to solve a problem that they can't handle is—well, it makes me proud! And there's no use asking me what the task is because I don't know, but of course it doesn't make any difference." She was looking faintly annoyed. "It will only take a minute of your time," she pointed out.

He scowled at her. "That's not true."

"Yes, it is, Jen dear. Oh, not for the you that goes to Cuckoo, no. That might take days, I don't know, perhaps even weeks. But the you that's here in this chair will be right back in it this afternoon. You just walk into a box, and then a minute later you walk out of it again, and that's all there is to it. The scanners read out the total data on every atom of your body, and then they transmit your blue­prints over the faster-than-light tachyon beam to— wherever. Wherever in the Universe you want to go. In this case, Cuckoo. And when the blueprints get there, they're read and used to form high-energy plasma into an instant, exact, living duplicate of yourself. He is you in a sense, Jen, that's true. But the other you—the real you that's sit­ting in my chair right now—that you will be sitting there again when the other one's a zillion light-years away."

"But—Cuckoo! Why, that's clear out of the Galaxyt And besides, I've heard of foul-ups. Transmissions that got garbled. People coming out of the other end in the form of messes that you wouldn't believe."

"No, Jen, not anymore. The signals are self-regenerating now, and that just doesn't happen—well, not often, any­way. Unless they've decided to edit the transmitted person in some way, to make it possible for him to survive in the new environment—but why are we talking about this, Jen? It's all the other you, isn't it?"

"I don't want to go to Cuckoo!"

The dean leaned back and looked at him thoughtfully.

"Jen, dear," she began, sweetly enough, "I've always said my department is about as loyal to the university as any faculty we have. Of course," she added meditatively, "I certainly would not want to put any pressure on you. You know that. It's not the way I do things. Never fear, if you chicken out there'll be plenty of other volunteers! So, in a sense, it doesn't matter. But on the other hand—"

Here it comes, Jen thought, as she reached across the desk to pat his hand. "On the other hand," she said, "there's your own future to consider. I'm not getting any younger." She smiled the shark's smile that had been in the dreams of generations of students and junior faculty mem­bers. You never knew when Margaret Kooseman was going to open those jaws and eat you up. "When I retire, Jen, I'll of course nominate a successor, but the final decision is up to the faculty senate. And then this would look very good on your record. I mean, if you had any interest in becom­ing dean yourself."

"Margaret! That's blackmail!"

"No, Jen, just the facts of life. You're due over at the Tachyon Transmission Base in three hours."

"Three hours! I can't be ready that fast."

"There's nothing to get ready, Jen. I've had two of your graduate students pack up your Pmals and your microfiche library already. It'll be there when you are."

"But— But—clothes! Personal possessions!"

"You won't have any need for personal possessions on Cuckoo, Jen. They'll give you everything you need. So that's settled." She beamed at him fondly. "And listen, Jen. If you and that pretty graduate student of yours are free tonight, two of the trustees are coming to my place for dinner. I'd be honored to have you come and be intro­duced, as the university's first volunteer for Cuckoo!"

For all of his life Jen Babylon, like most of the human race since the beginning of time, had been one, single per­son, with a single past and a single future and no complica­tions about which "he" was "him." There was something terribly troubling about facing up to the knowledge that in just a few hours he was going to be split in two. Two of him! Two Jen Babylons! One here, living the cherished fa­miliar life; the other in some unimaginably distant place, doing heaven knew what. It was not even comprehensible, in an intellectual sense. But there was something heavy and quivering at the pit of his stomach that comprehended it fully, and was in shock.

The mechanical voice of his cab sang sweetly, "You have arrived at your destination, sir. Please insert your credit tab under the flashing orange light and then exit on the curb side of the taxi."

He was at his home. "Oh," he said. "All right." In spite of having slept three separate times in no more than thirty- six hours, he felt no more than half awake as he stumbled into the lift shaft and up to his small fiftieth-floor apart­ment. It wasn't until he had tried the electrokey three times without getting the door open that he realized it was locked from inside.

Someone was in his apartment. He knocked, frowning. Perhaps it was Sheryl, the graduate student who had sup­plied as close as he came to a relationship. But it was not like her to be in his apartment when he wasn't there, espe­cially since she probably had no idea he was nearer than Bora-Bora or New Guinea.

When the door opened it wasn't Sheryl. "Good God!" Babylon said, startled. It was his mysterious caller of the night before, Ben Pertin.

But it was not the Ben Pertin he had known in the un­dergraduate days. This one looked far older and more worn than the dozen years between could explain. "Jen! It's good to see you," Pertin exclaimed, and then responded to the expression on Jen Babylon's face. "Sorry about the way I look," he said wryly. "Tilings are pretty rugged on Cuckoo."

Babylon shook his hand absently and then, realizing that it was after all his own threshold that he was standing at, entered his tiny apartment. Pertin had been there for some time, it appeared, and had made free use of it. Glasses were stacked at the utilitarian kitchen area, and the neck of an empty bottle protruded from a trash basket. The sleeping couch was in its daytime mode, but the dangling edges of bedclothes showed that it had been used. "Your friend Sheryl let me in," Pertin explained apologetically. "I meant to clean up before you got home, but—"

"It doesn't matter," Babylon said automatically, and then realized it was true. In comparison with Pertin's pres­ence here—from Cuckoo!—it mattered not at all.

"I'm sorry if I've been rude," he said, "but you're quite a surprise! The thing is, I've just been told I'm going to Cuckoo myself."

"You are! God, Jen, that's marvelous! I hardly dared hope you'd do it."

"Actually," Babylon said, "I don't seem to have much choice."

Pertin's face fell. "Well, I'm sorry about that," he said, with embarrassment. "But we really need you! You see, we just-—"

"Wait a minute, Ben. What do you mean 'we'?"

"I mean us, all of us on Cuckoo—all the people, and the other races, too. That's why I came here to get you—and, of course, I'm still there, too," he added, in a tone that seemed packed with both pain and rage.

"Because you were tachyon-transmitted here?"

Pertin nodded, and sat down in one of Jen's chairs, reaching for a half-finished drink. "The Sheliaks'll be fu­rious," he said. "They forbade me to do it, but you're needed, Jen. A few weeks ago we sent out a probe and it found something. A ship. Or perhaps a fleet of ships; or a city—it's hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. It's immense, and it's terribly old. And we can't get close to it." He finished his drink moodily, started to get up to make another, and then, remembering, looked guilt- stricken. "I hope you don't mind my helping myself, Jen? Would you like one?"

"Go ahead, fix your drink. What about this ship?"

"It transmitted a message—aural, received by the exter­nal microphones on the probe, and visual, received on a dozen instruments at once. We can't understand it. I'm convinced that it's the key to entering the ship, but without it—well, it repeated the message three times. And then the lander probe stopped sending.. It was destroyed."

"You must have Pmal translators—"

"Oh, hell, Jen, of course we do. They don't work. The language of the message is so different from anything in the Galaxy, anything else we've encountered even on Cuckoo, that there are no analogs to work from. So we need the best linguistics person there is—and that's you, Jen. So I came here, and I pulled a few strings with the tachyon- transit people, and they pulled a few at the university . . ."

"Thanks," Babylon said, with an edge to his voice.

Ben Pertin seemed to shrivel suddenly, as if expecting a blow. And then he laughed. "Oh, I don't blame you, Jen. Cuckoo's the garbage heap of the Galaxy, and all of us on it are stepchildren. They transmitted us out there, and most of us die, and no one cares about that. And the ones that are left are trying to do a job—or some of them are, any­way—and no one cares about that, either. Cuckoo is big, Jen! You'd think all the races would get together to study it! But we can't even get supplies. And most of the time it seems that half the beings there are principally concerned with trying to keep the other half from getting the job done. It's rotten, Jen." He grinned without humor. "And so you say, how do I have the nerve to make you come out there? Well, I do have the nerve, Jen. You're needed. That's all."

He finished his latest drink and stood up. He frowned abruptly and caught at the arm of the chair for support. "Sorry," he said. "I've been celebrating being home. Now I'll just run along—"

"You might as well stay and have dinner," said Babylon grudgingly.

Pertin thought that was funny. "What dinner?" he gig­gled. "I've been staying right here waiting for you—and, of course, I had to eat. There's not much left, I'm afraid."

Babylon said, "You leave a lot to be desired as a guest, Ben, but—" He shrugged. Obviously his old school friend had been under more pressure than he could handle. "We can go out and eat, you know."

"Not tonight. There are a couple of people I need to see. One's a girl I've been thinking of for a long time. The oth­er's . . . myself."

"Yourself? But Ben—" Babylon clamped his lips shut on what he had been about to say; it was far better for Pertin to look for that other self and not find it than to be told, just now, why it could not be found. "I understand," he finished. "Good luck."

"I do want to see you, Jen," said Pertin, already halfway out the door. "Tell you what. I'll come back tomorrow and take you out for a drink, all right?"

"All right," said Jen Babylon. But as the door closed he was wondering which Jen Babylon would keep the date.