The play of words can lead to certain expectations which life is unable to match. This is a source of much insanity and other forms of unhappiness.
-Wreave Saying
For a reflexive time which he found himself unable to measure, McKie considered his exchange with the Caleban. He felt cast adrift without any familiar reference points. How could false be the opposite of proper? If he could not measure meanings, how could he measure time?
McKie pa.s.sed a hand across his forehead, gathering perspiration which he tried to wipe off on his jacket. The jacket was damp.
No matter how much time had pa.s.sed, he felt that he still knew where he was in this universe. The Beachball"s interior walls remained around him. The unseeable presence of the Caleban had not become less mysterious, but he could look at the shimmering existence of the thing and take a certain satisfaction from the fact that it spoke to him.
The thought that every sentient who had used a jumpdoor would die if this Caleban succ.u.mbed sat on McKie"s awareness. It was muscle-numbing. His skin was slick with perspiration, and not all of it from the heat. There were voices of death in this air. He thought of himself as a being surrounded by all those pleading sentients -- quadrillions upon quadrillions of them. Help us!
Everyone who"d used a jumpdoor.
d.a.m.nation of all devils! Had he interpreted the Caleban correctly? It was the logical a.s.sumption. Deaths and insanity around the Caleban disappearances said he must exclude any other interpretation. "
Link by link, this trap had been forged. It would crowd the universe with dead flesh.
The shimmering oval above the giant spoon abruptly waved outward, contracted, flowed up, down, left. McKie received a definite impression of distress. The oval vanished, but his eyes still tracked the Caleban"s unpresence.
"Is something wrong?" McKie asked.
For answer the round vortal tube of a S"eye jumpdoor opened behind the Caleban. Beyond the opening stood a woman, a figure dwarfed as though seen through the wrong end of a telescope. McKie recognized her from all the newsvisos and from the holoscans he had been fed as background briefing for this a.s.signment.
He was confronting Mliss Abnethe in a light somewhat reddened by its slowed pa.s.sage through the jumpdoor.
It was obvious that the Beautybarbers of Steadyon had been about their expensive work on her person. He made a mental note to have that checked. Her figure presented the youthful curves of a pleasurefem. The face beneath fairy-blue hair was focused around a red-petal mouth. Large summery green eyes and a sharply cleaving nose conveyed odd contrast -- dignity versus hoyden. She was a flawed queen, age mingled with youth. She must be at least eighty standard years, but the Beautybarbers had achieved this startling combination: available pleasurefem and remote, hungry power.
The expensive body wore a long gown of grey rainpearls which matched her, movement for movement, like a glittering skin. She moved nearer the vortal tube. As she approached, the edges of the tube blocked off first her feet, then her legs, thighs, waist.
McKie felt his knees age a thousand years in that brief pa.s.sage. He remained crouched near the place where he"d entered the Beachball.
"Ahhh, f.a.n.n.y Mae," Mliss Abnethe said. "You have a guest." Jumpdoor interference caused her voice to sound faintly hoa.r.s.e.
"I am Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinary," he said.
Was that a contraction in the pupils of her eyes? McKie wondered. She stopped with only her head and shoulders visible in the tube"s circle.
"And I am Mliss Abnethe, private citizen."
Private citizen! McKie thought. This b.i.t.c.h controlled the productive capacity of at least five hundred worlds. Slowly McKie got to his feet.
"The Bureau of Sabotage has official business with you," he said, putting her on notice to satisfy the legalities.
"I am a private citizen!" she barked. The voice was prideful, vain, marred by petulance.
McKie took heart at the revealed weakness. It was a particular kind of flaw that often went with wealth and power. He had had experience in dealing with such flaws.
"f.a.n.n.y Mae, am I your guest?" he asked.
"Indeed," the Caleban said. "I open my door to you."
"Am I your employer, f.a.n.n.y Mae?" Abnethe demanded.
"Indeed, you employ me."
A breathless, crouching look came over her face. Her eyes went to slits. "Very well. Then prepare to fulfill the obligations of . . ."
"One moment!" McKie said. He felt desperate. Why was she moving so fast? What was that faint whine in her voice?
"Guests do not interfere," Abnethe said.
"BuSab makes its own decisions about interference!" McKie said.
"Your jurisdiction has limits!" she countered.
McKie heard the beginnings of many actions in that statement: hired operatives, gigantic sums spent as bribes, doctored agreements, treaties, stories planted with the visos on how this good and proud lady had been mistreated by her government, a wide enlistment of personal concern to justify -- what? Violence against his person? He thought not. More likely to discredit him, to saddle him with onerous misdeeds.
Thought of all that power made McKie wonder suddenly why he made himself vulnerable to it. Why had he chosen BuSab? Because I"m difficult to please, he told himself. I"m a Saboteur by choice. There was no going back on that choice now. BuSab appeared to walk down the middle of everywhere and always wound up on the high road.
And this time BuSab appeared to be carrying most of the sentient universe on its shoulders. It was a fragile burden perched there. fearful and feared. It had sunk stark claws into him.
"Agreed, we have limits," McKie growled, but I doubt you"ll ever see them. Now, what"s going on here?"
"You"re not a police agent!" Abnethe barked.
"Perhaps I should summon police," McKie said.
"On what grounds?" She smiled. She had him there and knew it. Her legal staff had explained to her the open a.s.sociation clause in the ConSentient Articles of Federation: "When members of different species agree formally to an a.s.sociation from which they derive mutual benefits, the contracting parties shall be the sole judges of said benefits, providing their agreement breaks no law, covenant, or legative article binding upon said contracting parties; provided further that said formal agreement was achieved by voluntary means and involves no breach of the public peace."
"Your actions will bring about the death of this Caleban," McKie said. He didn"t hold out much hope for this argument, but it bought a bit more time.
"You"ll have to establish that the Caleban concept of discontinuity interprets precisely as death," Abnethe said. "You can"t do that, because it"s not true. Why do you interfere? This is just harmless play between consenting ad --"
"More than play," the Caleban said.
"f.a.n.n.y Mae!" Abnethe snapped. "You are not to interrupt! Remember our agreement."
McKie stared in the direction of the Caleban"s unpresence, tried to interpret the spectrum-flare that rejected his senses.
"Discern conflict between ideals and structure of government," the Caleban said.
"Precisely!" Abnethe said. "I"m a.s.sured that Calebans cannot suffer pain, that they don"t even have a term for it. If it"s my pleasure to stage an apparent flogging and observe the reactions of . . ."
"Are you sure she suffers no pain?" McKie asked.
Again a gloating smile came over Abnethe"s face. "I"ve never seen her suffer pain. Have you?"