He caught the tail of C’mell’s urgent whisper to A’gentur: “…and don’t ask him. Tell Him. We’ll risk the people zone for a visit to the Catmaster! Tell Him.”
A’gentur was panting with a rapid, shallow breath. His eyes seemed to protrude from their sockets and yet he was looking at nothing. He groaned as though with some inward effort. At last he lost his grip on the wall and would have floated slowly downward if C’mell had not caught him and cuddled him like a baby. C’mell whispered, eagerly,
“You reached Him?”
“Him,” gasped the little monkey.
“Who?” asked Rod.
“Aitch Eye,” said C’mell. “I’ll tell you later.” Of A’gentur she asked, “If you got Him, what did He say?”
“He said, ‘E’ikasus, I do not say no. You are my son. Take the risk if you think it wise.’ And don’t ask me now, C’mell. Let me think a little. I have been all the way to Norstrilia and back. I’m still cramped in this little body. Do we have to do it now? Right now? Why can’t we go to Him—” and A’gentur nodded toward the depths below — “and find out what we want Rod for, anyhow? Rod is a means, not an end. Who really knows what to do with him?”
“What are you talking about?” said Rod.
Simultaneously C’mell snapped, “I know what we are going to do with him.”
“What?” said the little monkey, very tired again.
“We’re going to let this boy go free, and let him find happiness, and if he wants to give us his help, we will take it and be grateful. But we are not going to rob him. Not going to hurt him. That would be a mean, dirty way to start being better creatures than we are. If he knows who he is before he meets Him, they can make sense.” She turned to Rod and said with mysterious urgency,
“Don’t you want to know who you are?”
“I’m Rod McBan to the hundred and fifty-first,” said he promptly.
“Sh-h-h,” said she, “no names here. I’m not talking about names. I’m talking about the deep insides of you. Life itself, as it flows through you. Do you have any idea who you are?”
“You’re playing games,” he said. “I know perfectly well who I am, and where I live, and what I have. I even know that right now I am supposed to be a cat-man named C’roderick. What else is there to know?”
“You men!” she sobbed at him, “You men! Even when you’re people, you’re so dense that you can’t understand a simple question. I’m not asking you your name or your address or your label or your great-grandfather’s property. I’m asking about you, Rod, the only one that will ever live, no matter how many numbers your grandsons may put after their names. You’re not in the world just to own a piece of property or to handle a surname with a number after it. You’re you. There’s never been another you. There will never be another one, after you. What does this ‘you’ want?”
Rod glanced down at the walls of the tunnel, which seemed to turn — oh, so far below — very gently to the North. He looked up at the little rhomboids of light cast on the tunnel walls by the landing doors into the various levels of Earthport. He felt his own weight tugging gently at his hand as he held to the rough surface of the vertical shaft, supported by his belt. The belt itself felt uncomfortable about his middle; after all, it was supporting most of his weight, and it squeezed him. What do I want? thought he. Who am I that I should have a right to want anything? I am Rod McBan CLI, the Mister and Owner of the Station of Doom. But I’m also a poor freak with bad telepathy who can’t even spiek or hier rightly.
C’mell was watching him as clinically as a surgeon, but he could tell from her expression that she was not trying to peep his mind.
He found himself speaking almost as wearily as had A’gentur, who was also called something like “Yeekasoose,” and who had strange powers for a little monkey:
“I don’t suppose I want anything much, C’mell, except that I should like to spiek and hier correctly, like other people on my native world.”
She looked at him, her expression showing intense sympathy and the effort to make a decision.
A’gentur interrupted with his high clear monkey voice, “Say that to me, Sir and Master.”
Rod repeated: “I don’t really want anything. I would like to spiek and hier because other people are fussing at me about it. And I would like to get a Cape of Good Hope twopenny triangular blue stamp while I am still on Earth. But that’s about all. I guess there’s nothing I really want.”
The monkey closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep again: Rod suspected it was some kind of telepathic trance.
C’mell hooked A’gentur on an old rod which protruded from the surface of the shaft. Since he weighed only a few grams, there was no noticeable pull on the belt. She seized Rod’s shoulder and pulled him over to her.
“Rod, listen! Do you want to know who you are?”
“I don’t know,” said he. “I might be miserable.”
“Not if you know who you are!” she insisted.
“I might not like me,” said Rod. “Other people don’t and my parents died together when their ship went milky out in space. I’m not normal.”
“For God’s sake, Rod!” she cried.
“Who?” said he.
“Forgive me, father,” said she, speaking to no one in sight.
“I’ve heard that name, before, somewhere,” said Rod. “But let’s get going. I want to get to this mysterious place you are taking me and then I want to find out about Eleanor.”
“Who’s that?”
“My servant. She’s disguised as me, taking risks for me, along with eight robots. It’s up to me to do what I can for her. Always.”
“But she’s your servant,” said C’mell. “She serves you. Almost like being an underperson, like me.”
“She’s a person,” said Rod, stubbornly. “We have no underpeople in Norstrilia, except for a few in government jobs. But she’s my friend.”
“Do you want to marry her?”
“Great sick sheep, girl! Are you barmy? No!”
“Do you want to marry anybody?”
“At sixteen?” he cried. “Anyhow, my family will arrange it.” The thought of plain honest devoted Lavinia crossed his mind, and he could not help comparing her to this wild voluptuous creature who floated beside him in the tunnel as the traffic passed them going up and down. With near weightlessness, C’mell’s hair floated like a magic flower around her head. She had been brushing it out of her eyes from time to time. He snorted, “Not Eleanor.”
When he said this, another idea crossed the mind of the beautiful cat-girl.
“You know what I am, Rod,” said she, very seriously.
“A cat-girl from the planet Earth. You’re supposed to be my wife.”