"Theory," the T'Worlie whistled, "FARLINK proposes explication of tachyon interference."
"Really?" Ben Line was diverted from his internal pain. "What's that?"
"FARLINK identifies sourse of interference as exogenous to Cuckoo. Originates elsewhere. Trace-scanning, locates source as tight-beam signal generated in our own Galaxy. Vector closely equivalent to that of human sun, called Sol."
Pertin frowned blankly at the little bat-winged creature.
"I don't know about that," he muttered blankly. "It doesn't seem reasonable. After all, there is only one tachyon station on Earth capable of this distance and that's locked in to Sun One. Certainly it couldn't interfere with reception here—"
"FARLINK adds," shrilled the T'Worlie, fluttering up and down on its bright butterfly wings, "interfering signal can be identified as mating call of female of human species, beamed from your home world, called Earth, to self, here."
"Ridiculous!" Ben Line exploded. "Nammie, that's insane! Why—"
He paused as a strong ammonia scent made him sneeze. "Wait a minute," he said. "What does that smell mean?"
"Query: Smell, Ben Line?"
"The gaseous emission, which registers in my chemical-stimuli-detecting nerve sensors. I know you T'Worlie express emotions chemically."
"It is laughter," the T'Worlie shrilled triumphantly.
"Ah," said Ben Line, satisfied at last. "Then that was a joke."
"Confirmation," the T'Worlie cried. "Successful one, quietly?"
"Pretty good. Sorry. You caught me off guard, or I would have laughed, too."
A whiff of etherlike sweetness expressed the T'Worlie analog of hurt. "Regret joke unsuccessful," Nammie piped sadly. "Not all of communication falsified for purposes of humor. True that FARLINK locates source as near Earth in vector, distance not confirmed. Extreme attenuation of signal renders distance estimate undependable."
"Strange," the silvery girl chimed. "Perhaps we should instruct FARLINK to assemble conjectural explanations of this phenomenon."
"You two go ahead," Ben Line said. "I have to get some sleep."
"We will carry on while you are unconscious," the T'Worlie whistled. Neither he nor Venus slept themselves, and they were critical of human slumber. "Personal conjecture: Whatever explanations, they will complicate our mission."
And indeed they would, thought Ben Line Pertin as he headed toward his living quarters, out at the higher- gravity shell of the satellite. TTiere should be no random tachyonic transmissions coming in, especially from the Galaxy itself, where all known tachyon sources had been long since identified, located, and compensated for. It was one more irritation in a life that had become increasingly overweighted on the downbeat side.
"What I need," Ben Line murmured to himself, "is a meal, a bath, and bed. In that order."
There would not be much pleasure there either, to be sure. The meal would be out of a dry-pack and into a microwave oven, and it would taste like it. With only three human beings on the wheel, and a dozen other races with different diets* also aboard, there was not much space to waste on epicurean cookery. The bath would be not much better. The wheel was in freefall, so the only way to bathe was through a sort of hosedown from jets inside a thing like a huge bottle, and it was all business, even after you learned how to get clean without inhaling several gallons of water. And the bed, of course, would be solitary.
Ben Pertin hurled himself out of the communications room, in a savage mood. He was the first human being to reach this point in space, tens of thousands of light-years outside the galactic spiral.
He was a conqueror, by any standards the history books could measure.
What he felt like was a victim.
Pertin's "bed" was a cocoon. It felt like a prison. Fed and bathed, he floated in it but could not sleep.
There was a sore place in his mind to which his consciousness always returned, like something caught in a tooth that the tongue cannot resist probing.
That something was himself. Another self: the Ben Pertin from which he had been copied. That Ben Pertin was forty thousand light-years away, in the artificial satellite that hung in the Orion gas cloud and was called Sun One. To Ben Line Pertin, he seemed both farther, in the sense of being something unattainable, and closer than his own skin.
That other Ben Pertin—Ben Charles—would be enjoying the domestic pleasures of marriage, as well as an interesting and productive career with all the amenities Sun One offered its citizens. Lucky man, thought Ben Line, hating him.
Yet that man too was himself. Only a couple of months earlier they had been not only identical but coincident. That was before Ben Line had come here. He remembered perfectly well what had happened. He had got up that morning out of the arms of his new bride, kissed her good-bye, but only as any suburban commuter kisses his wife good-bye at the station, and entered into the tachyon-transmission chamber on Sun One.
There the tachyon beams had scanned his body, built up a pattern of atoms and molecules and transmitted that pattern on the super-speed waves of the tachyons, the particles whose lower limiting velocity is the speed of light. And that pattern had been received here, on the orbiting wheel that spun around the strange astronomical object called Cuckoo, forty thousand light- years away. And here it had been reconstructed, atom for atom and Jink for link.
So on Sun One, one Ben Pertin had walked out of the chamber, in no way different than he had gone in. He had done whatever he had had to do in the balance of that working day, and at the end of it returned again to Zara, his/their wife.
But on the wheel, another Ben Pertin had floated out of the receiving chamber and had felt the instant shock of knowing that he had lost the gamble. He was the one on the wheel, which he looked at with some curiosity but not much pleasure.
If you had put the two Ben Pertins side by side, no clue could have told you which was "original" and which "copy." Both were originals. Neither was a copy—except in some abstract, irrelevant sense that meant nothing when it was considered that each had a complete store of everything Ben Pertin had ever had, from DNA linkage to the last, most evanescent, half- gone memory of infancy.
There was only one real difference: one was there, the other was here. One was living a normal life on Sun One. The other was doing a necessary job, without joy, on the orbiter, which he would never leave.
That was the paradox of tachyon transmission: since it was only a pattern that was transmitted, the object being transmitted remained unchanged. No matter how often you left, you always stayed behind.
Ben Line Pertin tossed angrily against the restraining web of his cocoon. That was the damned unfair part of it! his mind cried. Why couldn't Zara join him?
It would cost her nothing! Like him, one of her would walk out of the tachyon chamber on Sun One, the other would be here. They would be together. He would be no longer alone . . .
He groaned resentfully, angrily, petulantly.
The worst part of his resentment was that, in the end, it was directed against himself. It was his own fault that Zara was not here now. It was he who had persuaded her not to come with him at first, not until the orbiter had been made more comfortable. She had wanted to come. But she had listened to him, finally agreed, promised to come later.
Lying deceitful promise! Now she not only had not come, she would not even answer his tachyon messages. Not for weeks! First he had suggested she might come—then asked outright—finally pleaded. No answer.
When Ben Line Pertin finally fell asleep, his dreams were harsh and punitive.
He woke in time for an all-hands review of the material gathered on Cuckoo.
In all, there were forty-one beings living on the orbiter at that moment, counting collective entities as a single creature. They fit nicely into a cylindrical chamber not much more than fifteen feet across, partly because most of them were rather smaller than human beings, mostly because in free-fall, placement was volumetric rather than planar. The sole T'Worlie acted as sort of general chairman for the meeting. Out of the bat's head perched on his butterflylike body he squeaked a short sentence, and all around the room the Pmal translators of the various beings rendered it into their own languages: