Whipping Star Page 6

  “Under natural honor of sentient connectives.”

  “Abnethe doesn’t know what honor means.”

  “I understand honor.”

  McKie sighed. “Were there witnesses, signatures, that sort of thing?”

  “All my fellow Calebans witness connectives. Signatures not understood. Explain.”

  McKie decided not to explore the concept of signatures. Instead he asked, “Under what circumstances could you refuse to honor your contract with Abnethe?”

  After a prolonged pause the Caleban said, “Changing circumstances convey variable relationships. Should Abnethe fail in her connectives or attempt redefinition of essences, this could produce linearities open for my disentanglement.”

  “Sure,” McKie said. “That figures.”

  He shook his head, studied the empty air above the giant spoon. Calebans! You couldn’t see them, couldn’t hear them, couldn’t understand them.

  “Is the use of your S’eye system available to me?” McKie asked.

  “You function as my teacher.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Affirmative answer.”

  “Affirmative answer,” McKie echoed. “Fine. Can you also transport objects to me, sending them where I direct?”

  “While connectives remain apparent.”

  “I hope that means what I think it does,” McKie said. “Are you aware of the Palenki arm and whip over there on your floor?”

  “Aware.”

  “I want them sent to a particular office at Central. Can you do that?”

  “Think of office,” the Caleban said.

  McKie obeyed.

  “Connectives available,” the Caleban said. “You desire sending to place of examination.”

  “That’s right!”

  “Send now?”

  “At once.”

  “Once, yes. Multiple sending remains outside our capabilities.”

  “Huh?”

  “Objects going.”

  As McKie blinked, the arm and whip snapped out of his view accompanied by a sharp crack of exploding air.

  “Do the Taprisiots work in any way similar to what you do transporting things?” McKie asked.

  “Message transportation minor energy level,” the Caleban said. “Beautybarbers even more minor.”

  “I guess so,” McKie said. “Well, never mind. There’s the little matter of my friend, Alichino Furuneo, though. You sent him home, I believe?”

  “Correct.”

  “You sent him to the wrong home.”

  “Creatures possess only one home.”

  “We sentients have more than one home.”

  “But I view connectives!”

  McKie felt the wash of radiant objection from the Caleban, steadied himself. “No doubt,” he said. “But he has another home right here on Cordiality.”

  “Astonishment fills me.”

  “Probably. The question remains, can you correct this situation?”

  “Explain situation.”

  “Can you send him to his home on Cordiality?”

  Pause, then, “That place not his home.”

  “But can you send him there?”

  “You wish this?”

  “I wish it.”

  “Your friend converses through a Taprisiot.”

  “Ahhh,” McKie said. “You can listen in on his conversation, then?”

  “Message content not available. Connectives visible. I possess awareness that your friend exchanges communication with sentient of other species.”

  “What species?”

  “One you label Pan Spechi.”

  “What’d happen if you sent Furuneo to . . . his home here on Cordiality right now?”

  “Shattering of connectives. But message exchange concludes in this linearity. I send him. There.”

  “You sent him?”

  “But connectives you convey.”

  “He’s here on Cordiality right now?”

  “He occupies place not his home.”

  “I hope we’re together on that.”

  “Your friend,” the Caleban said, “desires presence with you.”

  “He wants to come here?”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, why not? All right, bring him.”

  “What purpose arises from friend’s presence in my home?”

  “I want him to stay with you and watch for Abnethe while I attend to other business.”

  “McKie?”

  “Yes.”

  “You possess awareness that presence of yourself or other of your kind prolongs impingement of myself upon your wave?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Your presence foreshortens flogging.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “Suspected?”

  “I understand!”

  “Understanding probable. Connectives indicative.”

  “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” McKie said.

  “You wish friend brought?”

  “What’s Furuneo doing?”

  “Furuneo exchanges communication with . . . assistant.”

  “I can imagine.”

  McKie shook his head from side to side. He could sense the morass of misunderstanding around every attempt at communication here. No way to steer clear of it. No way at all. At the very moment when they thought they had achieved closest communication, right then they could be widest of the mark.

  “When Furuneo concludes his conversation, bring him,” McKie said. He hunched back against the wall. Gods of the underworld! The heat was almost unbearable. Why did Calebans require such heat? Maybe the heat represented something else to a Caleban, a visible wave form, perhaps, serving some function other sentients couldn’t begin to understand.

  McKie felt then that he was engaged in an exchange of worthless noises here—shadow sounds. Reason had gone, swinging from planet to planet. He and the Caleban were striking false bargains, trying to climb out of chaos. If they failed, death would take away all the innocent and the sinful, the good and the guilty. Boats would drift on countless oceans, towers would fall, balconies crumble, and suns would move alone across unmarked skies.

  A wave of relatively cold air told McKie that Furuneo had arrived. McKie turned, saw the planetary agent sprawled beside him and just beginning to sit up.

  “For the love of reason!” Furuneo shouted. “What’re you doing to me?”

  “I needed the fresh air,” McKie said.

  Furuneo peered at him. “What?”

  “Glad to see you,” McKie said.

  “Yeah?” Furuneo brought himself to a squatting position beside McKie. “You have any idea what’s just happened to me?”

  “You’ve been to Landy-B,” McKie said.

  “How’d you know? Was that your doing?”

  “Slight misunderstanding,” McKie said. “Landy-B’s your home.”

  “It is not!”

  “I’ll leave you to argue that with Fanny Mae,” McKie said. “Have you started the search on Cordiality?”

  “I barely got it going before you . . .”

  “Yes, but you’ve started it?”

  “I’ve started it.”

  “Good. Fanny Mae will keep you posted on various things and bring your people here for reports and such as you need them. Won’t you, Fanny Mae?”

  “Connectives remain available. Contract permits.”

  “Good girl.”

  “I’d almost forgotten how hot it was in here,” Furuneo said, mopping his forehead. “So I can summon people. What else?”

  “You watch for Abnethe.”

  “And?”

  “The instant she and one of her Palenki floggers make an appearance, you get a holoscan record of everything that happens. You do have your toolkit?”

  “Of course.”

  “Fine. While you’re scanning, get your instruments as close to the jumpdoor as you can.”

  “She’ll probably close the door as soon as she sees what I’m doing.”
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  “Don’t count on it. Oh, one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re my teaching assistant.”

  “Your what?”

  McKie explained about the Caleban’s agreement.

  “So she can’t get rid of us without violating the terms of her contract with Fanny Mae,” Furuneo said. “Cute.” He pursed his lips. “That all?”

  “No. I want you and Fanny Mae to discuss connectives.”

  “Connectives?”

  “Connectives. I want you to try finding out what in ten billion devils a Caleban means by connectives.”

  “Connectives,” Furuneo said. “Is there any way to turn down the furnace in here?”

  “You might take that as another subject: Try to discover the reason for all this heat.”

  “If I don’t melt first. Where’ll you be?”

  “Hunting—provided Fanny Mae and I can agree on the connectives.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “Right. But I’ll try to make tracks—if Fanny Mae’ll send me where the game is.”

  “Ahhh,” Furuneo said. “You could walk into a trap.”

  “Maybe. Fanny Mae, have you been listening?”

  “Explain listening.”

  “Never mind!”

  “But mind possesses ever!”

  McKie closed his eyes, swallowed, then, “Fanny Mae, are you aware of the information exchange just concluded between my friend and myself here?”

  “Explain conclu . . .”

  “Are you aware?” McKie bellowed.

  “Amplification contributes little to communication,” the Caleban said. “I possess desired awareness—presumably.”

  “Presumably,” McKie muttered, then, “Can you send me to a place near Abnethe where she will not be aware of me, but where I can be aware of her?”

  “Negative.”

  “Why not?”

  “Specific injunction of contract.”

  “Oh.” McKie bent his head in thought, then, “Well, can you send me to a place where I might become aware of Abnethe through my own efforts?”

  “Possibility. Permit examination of connectives.”

  McKie waited. The heat was a tangible thing inside the Beachball, a solid intrusion on his senses. He saw it was already beginning to wilt Furuneo.

  “I saw my mother,” Furuneo said, noting McKie’s attention.

  “That’s great,” McKie said.

  “She was swimming with friends when the Caleban dumped me right in the pool with them. The water was wonderful.”

  “They were surprised, no doubt.”

  “They thought it was a great joke. I wish I knew how that S’eye system works.”

  “You and a billion others. The energy requirement gives me the chills.”

  “I could use a chill right now. You know, that’s one weird sensation—standing one minute talking to old friends, the next instant yakking at empty air here on Cordiality. What do you suppose they think?”

  “They think it’s magic.”

  “McKie,” the Caleban said, “I love you.”

  “You what?” McKie exploded.

  “Love you,” the Caleban repeated. “Affinity of one person for another person. Such affinity transcends species.”

  “I guess so, but . . .”

  “Since I possess this universal affinity for your person, connectives open, permitting accomplishment of your request.”

  “You can send me to a place near Abnethe?”

  “Affirmative. Accord with desire. Yes.”

  “Where is this place?” McKie asked.

  He found, with a chill wash of air and a sprawling lurch onto dusty ground, that he was addressing his question to a moss-capped rock. For a moment he stared at the rock, regaining his balance. The rock was about a meter tall and contained small veins of yellow-white quartz with flecks of reflective brilliance scattered through them. It stood in an open meadow beneath a distant yellow sun. The sun’s position told McKie he’d arrived either at midmorning or midafternoon local.

  Beyond the rock, the meadow, and a ring of straggly yellow brushes stretched a flat horizon broken by the tall white spires of a city.

  “Loves me?” he asked the rock.

  Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking to filter what the eyes see and what the ears hear.

  —The Abnethe Case, BuSab Private Files

  Whip and severed Palenki arm arrived at the proper BuSab laboratory while it was temporarily unoccupied. The lab chief, a Bureau veteran named Treej Tuluk, a back-bowing Wreave, was away at the time, attending the conference which McKie’s report had precipitated.

  As with most back-bowers, Tuluk was an odor-id Wreave. He had an average-appearing Wreave body, two and a half meters tall, tubular, pedal bifurcation, vertical face slit with manipulative extensors dangling from the lower corner. From long association with humans and humanoids he had developed a brisk, slouching gait, a predilection for clothing with pockets, and un-Wreavish speech mannerisms of a cynical tone. The four eye tubes protruding from the top of his facial slit were green and mild.

  Returning from the conference, he recognized the objects on his lab floor immediately. They matched Siker’s description. Tuluk complained to himself briefly about the careless manner of delivery and was soon lost in the intricacies of examination. He and the assistants he summoned made initial holoscans before separating whip and arm.

  As they had expected, the Palenki gene structure offered no comparatives. The arm had not come from one of the few Palenkis on record in the ConSentient Register. Tuluk filed the DNA chart and message sequence, however. These could be used to identify the arm’s original owner, if that became necessary.

  At the same time study of the whip went ahead. The artifact report came out of the computers as “Bullwhip, copy of ancient Earth type.” It was made of steerhide, a fact which gave Tuluk and his vegetarian aides a few brief moments of disgust, since they had assumed it was a synthetic.

  “A sick archaism,” one of Tuluk’s Chither assistants called the whip. The others agreed with this judgment, even a Pan Spechi for whom periodic reversion to carnivorous type in his crèche cycle was necessary to survival.

  A curious alignment in some of the cell molecules attracted their attention then. Study of whip and arm continued at their respective paces.

  There is no such thing as pure objectivity.

  —Gowachin Aphorism

  McKie took the long-distance call while standing beside a dirt road about three kilometers from the rock. He had come this far on foot, increasingly annoyed by the strange surroundings. The city, he had soon discovered, was a mirage hanging over a dusty plain of tall grass and scrubby thornbushes.

  It was almost as hot on the plain as it had been in the Caleban’s Beachball.

  Thus far the only living things he had seen were some distant tawny animals and countless insects—leapers, crawlers, fliers, hoppers. The road contained two parallel indentations and was the rusty red color of abandoned iron. It seemed to originate in a faraway line of blue hills on his right, plunging straight across the plain to the heat-muddled horizon on his left. The road contained no occupant except himself, not even a dust cloud to mark some hidden passage.

  McKie was almost glad to feel the sniggertrance grip him.

  “This is Tuluk,” his caller said. “I was told to contact you as soon as I had anything to report. Hopefully, I intrude at an opportune moment.”

  McKie, who had a journeyman’s respect for Tuluk’s competence, said, “Let’s have it.”

  “Not much on the arm,” Tuluk said. “Palenki, of course. We can identify the original owner, if we ever get him. There’d been at least one previous regrowth of this member. Sword cut on the forearm, by the look of it.”

  “What about the phylum markings?”

  “We’re still checking that.”

  “The whip?”

  “That’s something else. It’s real steerhide.”

 
“Real?”

  “No doubt of it. We could identify the original owner of the skin, although I doubt it’s walking around anywhere.”

  “You’ve a gruesome sense of humor. What else?”

  “The whip’s an archaism, too. Bullwhip, ancient Earth style. We got an original ID by computer and brought in a museum expert for confirmation. He thought the construction was a bit on the crude side, but close enough to leave little doubt it was a copy of a real original. Fairly recent manufacture, too.”

  “Where could they get an original to copy?”

  “We’re checking that, and it may provide a lead. These things aren’t too common.”

  “Recent manufacture,” McKie said. “You sure?”

  “The animal from which that hide was removed has been dead about two standard years. Intracellular structure was still reactive to catalyzing.”

  “Two years. Where would they get a real steer?”

  “That narrows it down. There are some around for story props in the various entertainment media, that sort of thing. A few of the outback planets where they haven’t the technology for pseudoflesh still raise cattle for food.”

  “This thing gets more confusing the deeper we go into it,” McKie said.

  “That’s what we think. Oh, there’s chalf dust on the whip.”

  “Chalf! That’s where I got the yeast smell!”

  “Yes, it’s still quite strong.”

  “What would they be doing with that much quickscribe powder?” McKie asked. “There was no sign of a chalf-memory stick—but that means little, of course.”

  “It’s just a suggestion,” Tuluk said, “but they could’ve chalf-scribed that design on the Palenki.”

  “Why?”

  “Give it a false phylum, maybe?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “If you smelled chalf after the whip came through, there’d have to be quite a bit of it around. You thought of that?”

  “The room wasn’t all that big, and it was hot.”

  “The heat would explain it, all right. Sorry we didn’t have more for you.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Well, it might not be any use, but the whip had been stored in a hanging position supported by a thin length of steel.”

  “Steel? Are you positive?”

  “Positive.”

  “Who still uses steel?”