“Of course,” said Rod, “because they are dead.”
“No more dead than I” laughed the white calm bird of the underground. “I put them in cataleptic trances, with the help of my son the doctor E’ikasus, whom you first knew as the monkey-doctor A’gentur. On the ships they wake up. One of them can take you to Norstrilia in a single long fast jump. And my son can work on you right here. We have a good medical workshop in one of those rooms. After all, it was he who restored you under the supervision of Doctor Vomact on Mars. It will seem like a single night to you, though it will be several days in objective time. If you say goodbye to me now, and if you are ready to go, you will wake up in orbit just outside the Old North Australian subspace net. I have no wish for one of my underpeople to tear himself to pieces if he meets Mother Hitton’s dreadful little kittons, whatever they may be. Do you happen to know?”
“I don’t,” said Rod quickly, “and if I did, I couldn’t tell you. It’s the Queen’s secret.”
“The Queen?”
“The Absent Queen. We use it to mean the Commonwealth government. Anyhow, Mister bird, I can’t go now. I’ve got to go back up to the surface of Earth. I want to say goodbye to the Catmaster. And I’m not going to leave this planet and abandon Eleanor. And I want my stamp that the Catmaster gave me. And the books. And maybe I should report about the death of Tostig Amaral.”
“Do you trust me, Mister and Owner McBan?” The white giant rose to his feet; his eyes shone like fire.
The underpeople spontaneously chorused, “Put your trust in the joyful lawful, put your trust in the loyal-awful bright blank power of the under-bird!”
“I’ve trusted you with my life and my fortune, so far,” said Rod, a little sullenly, “but you’re not going to make me leave Eleanor. No matter how much I want to get home. And I have an old enemy at home that I want to help. Houghton Syme the Hon. Sec. There might be something on Old Earth which I could take back to him.”
“I think you can trust me a little further,” said the E’telekeli. “Would it solve the problem of the Hon. Sec. if you gave him a dreamshare with someone he loved, to make up his having a short life?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I can,” said the master of the underpeople, “have his prescription made up. It will have to be mixed with plasma from his blood before he takes it. It would be good for about three thousand years of subjective life. We have never let this out of our own undercity before, but you are the Friend of Earth, and you shall have it.”
Rod tried to stammer his thanks, but he mumbled something about Eleanor instead: he just couldn’t leave her.
The white giant took Rod by the arm and led him back to the visiphone, still oddly out of place in this forgotten room, so far underground.
“You know,” said the white giant, “that I will not trick you with false messages or anything like that?”
One look at the strong, calm, relaxed face — face so purposeful that it had no fretful or immediate purpose — convinced Rod that there was nothing to fear.
“Turn it on, then,” said the E’telekeli. “If Eleanor wants to go home we will arrange with the Instrumentality for her passage. As for you, my son E’ikasus will change you back as he changed you over. There is only one detail. Do you want the face you originially had or do you want it to reject the wisdom and experience I have seen you gain?”
“I’m not posh,” said Rod. “The same old face will do. If I am any wiser, my people will find it out soon enough.”
“Good. He will get ready. Meanwhile, turn on the visiphone. It is already set to search for your fellow-citizen.”
Rod flicked it on. There was a bewildering series of flashes and a kaleidoscopic dazzlement of scenes before the machine seemed to race along the beach at Meeya Meefla and searched out Eleanor. This was a very strange screen indeed: it had no visiphone at the other end. He could see Eleanor, looking exactly like his Norstrilian self, but she could not observe that she was being seen.
The machine focused on Eleanor/Rod McBan’s face. She/he was talking to a very pretty woman, oddly mixed Norstrilian and Earthlike in appearance.
“Ruth Not-from-here,” murmured the E’telekeli, “the daughter of the Lord William Not-from-here, a Chief of the Instrumentality. He wanted his daughter to marry ‘you’ so that they could return to Norstrilia. Look at the daughter. She is annoyed at ‘you’ right now.”
Ruth was sitting on the bench, twisting away at her fingers in nervousness and worry, but her fingers and face showed more anger than despair. She was speaking to Eleanor, the ‘Rod McBan.’
“My father just told me!” Ruth cried out “Why, oh why did you give all your money for a Foundation of some kind? The Instrumentality just told him. I just don’t understand. There’s no point in us getting married now—”
“Suits me,” said Eleanor/Rod McBan.
“Suits you, does it!” shrieked Ruth. “After the advantages you’ve taken of me!”
The false Rod McBan merely smiled at her friendlily and knowledgeably. The real Rod, watching the picture ten kilometers below, thought that Eleanor seemed to have learned a great deal about how to be a young rich man on Earth.
Ruth’s face changed suddenly. She broke from anger to laughter. She snowed her bewilderment. “I must admit,” she said honestly, “that I didn’t really want to go back to the old family home in Old North Australia. The simple, honest life, a little on the stupid side. No oceans. No cities. Just sick, giant sheep and worlds full of money with nothing to spend it on. I like Earth and I suppose I’m decadent…”
Rod/Eleanor smiled right back at her. “Maybe I’m decadent too. I’m not poor. I can’t help liking you. I don’t want to marry anybody. But I have big credits here, and I enjoy being a young man—”
“I should say you do!” said Ruth. “What an odd thing for you to say!”
The false ‘Rod McBan’ gave no sign that he/she noted the interruption. “I’ve just about decided to stay here and enjoy things. Everybody’s rich in Norstrilia, but what good does it do? It had gotten pretty dull for me, I can tell you, or I wouldn’t have taken the risk of coming here. Yes. I think I’ll stay. I know that Rod—” He/she gasped. “Rod MacArthur, I mean, a sort of relative of mine. Rod can get the tax taken off my personal fortune so that I can stay right here.”
(“I will, too,” said the real Rod McBan, far below the surface of the Earth.)
“You’re welcome here, my dear,” said the Ruth Not-from-here to the false Rod McBan.
Down below, the E’telekeli gestured at the screen. “Seen enough?” he said to Rod.
“Enough,” said Rod, “but make sure that she knows I am all right and that I am trying to take care of her. Can you get in touch with the Lord Jestocost or somebody and arrange for Eleanor to stay here and keep her fortune? Tell her to use the name of Roderick Henry McBan the first. I can’t let her have the name of the Owners of the Station of Doom, but I don’t think Earthpeople will notice the difference anyhow. She’ll know it’s all right with me, and that’s all that matters. If she really likes it here in a copy of my body, may the great sheep sit on her!”
“An odd blessing,” said the E’telekeli, “but it can all be arranged.”
Rod made no move to leave. He had turned off the screen but he just stood there.
“Something else?” said the E’telekeli.
“C’mell,” said Rod.
“She’s all right,” said the lord of the underworld. “She expects nothing from you. She’s a good underperson.”
“I want to do something for her.”
“There is nothing she wants. She is happy. You do not need to meddle.”
“She won’t be a girlygirl forever,” Rod insisted. “You underpeople get old. I don’t know how you manage without stroon.”
“Neither do I,” said the E’telekeli. “I just happen to have long life. But you’re right about her. She will age soon enough, by your kind of time.”