"Why here?"
"Because I've been thinking about it a lot." She gestured. "The matter of the eight Alfs."
"Learn anything new?"
"No. You think of anything you'd care to tell me?"
"No."
She took hold of my arm, turning me gently back in the direction from which I had come.
"I guess that makes us even then." Her hip brushed lightly against my own.
I found myself growing distracted again, but before it took hold of me completely I said, "I checked outside the front door for you first. Met an interesting old bum named Urtch."
"That's impossible," she said.
"Nevertheless, he was there. Showed me a photon smear. Stopped me from becoming one."
"You must have been hallucinating, Alf. There couldn't be anything outside."
"He was in the entranceway, on the stoop. So was I for a time, watching the fog. So I know it's possible."
"Still..."
I turned her as we emerged from the Hellhole, heading back to the front door.
"I've thought of more questions I want to ask him. C'mon."
There was nobody there. Some fog had even crept into the entranceway. And it was too dense now to distinguish the dark flow.
"It can't be. He was here—just minutes ago."
"Urtch. Strange name."
"I also saw the back of the Ouroboros Serpent."
She placed the fingertips of her right hand between her eyes and made a downward spiraling gesture with them.
"Great ancestor," she muttered then. "Did he say—anything—else?"
"No," I replied. "Just mooched a bottle of wine and told me you hadn't been by that way."
"Might he have entered, I wonder?" she asked, suddenly surveying the room behind us.
"I don't think so. I invited him inside to enjoy his drink, and he said he preferred it out there, on his street."
She shook her head and hissed. She went back and closed the front door. Then she commenced searching the premises and I helped her—everywhere but the very depths of the Hellhole.
"Urtch, Urtch," she muttered, from time to time.
"You have seen him about."
"No, it's not that. It's—nothing."
We checked the final closets and storerooms, even venturing into Adam's surprisingly neat—almost monastic— quarters. But Urtch did not turn up.
Finally, we repaired to her room, where we distracted each other no end. So, when it finally ended I was too far gone to notice.
"You're awake?" she said softly, slithering slowly along my right side.
"Yes. You're good for me, you know?"
She chuckled and stroked my hair.
"It's mutual," she whispered. "Shall we throw the Switch and go back?"
"No way. We stay. I don't know whether I'm ready for more of the yoni-lingam business, but we can always talk while my body figures that one out."
"Talk. Surely. Say on."
"I hardly know where to begin. This is such a place of mysteries."
"So it must seem. But they're only the sweepings of small puzzlements from across the years."
"Then let's start with years. This place has actually been around at least since Etruscan times?"
"Yes."
"Adam went back there from the future and set up shop in this place?"
"It's as he told you."
"And you've been living forward since then, doing deals throughout history?"
"Yes."
"And Adam is being evaluated by his creators on the basis of how he runs this show?"
"Yes."
"Because he has a super-high IQ and all sorts of unclassified talents as well?"
"That, too." She glided slowly across me.
"So you are centuries—millennia—old?"
"As we told you."
"You are originally from the twenty-fifth century. You went back in time and opened the shop, and now you are headed home via the slow, scenic route."
"We are not originally from the twenty-fifth century."
"Adam said that you came here—or, rather, went to old Etruria—from there."
"This is true. We stopped there on the way back for repairs. This unit where we live and do business was damaged in flight. The twenty-fifth century was the earliest point in time at which repairs might still be made."
"Oh. Well, where—or rather, when—did you originally come from?"
"I can't say."
"Why not?"
"I promised Adam that I wouldn't, when you came here."
"Why?"
"The clones. If you were the clone-master this could be important information to you."
"In what way?"
She slithered against me again.
"That, too, dear Alf, I may not disclose."
"I guess I understand."
"No, you don't."
"Then tell me about your genetic origins."
"Surely. I am snake. Adam is cat. That's all."
"It would seem that a lot of gene-splicing would be involved to bring both species to the level of human appearance and equivalent intelligence."
"The old projects weren't aimed at giving us minds like yours, but rather at developing our own, with our own styles of thinking, to high potential."
"Obviously, they succeeded."
"Yesss."
"And you breed true? You are your own races now?"
"Oh, yes."
"Then why all the test-tube business with Adam? He made it sound very experimental."
"He was. Is. He was actually the result of an ongoing experiment to push each of the species to its fullest potential, to see how far each would go, to see which would produce a special being—by means of that 'cloned quadratic crap.' The proper term sounds something like 'Kaleideion' in your tongue—if indeed it is truly your tongue."
"Of course it is. Why shouldn't it be?"
She was all over me for a moment, then still and hugging.
"You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Alf?" she said. "You're not plotting against us?"
"I wouldn't even know how, or what to plot for. Lay off, will you?" Then I was hugging her, too. "If I am, I've gotten myself fooled as well. So Adam is a Kaleideion?"
She shook her head.
"Not a Kaleideion. The Kaleideion. It is the only time in the long history of the program that the work succeeded and produced such a one."
"Okay. The Kaleideion," I said. "Gives me something else to call him. I already knew he was bright and ingenious."
"It's more than just that," she began, then stopped abruptly.
"But you can't discuss it?"
She nodded.
"I'd already figured that. Don't feel badly." I gave her another squeeze. "How do they watch him to evaluate his performance?"
"We think they watch the wave of disruption that we cause on our way through time and its history," she said, "since they don't seem able to watch him directly. Unless, of course, you and your clones are a special evaluation team."
"You never let up, do you?" I asked, shaking my head. "Isn't it dangerous to let him go around rearranging history? When it catches up with your century you may all turn into pumpkins."
She laughed.
"It doesn't work that way," she said. "The universe is sufficiently big that it contains, dampens down, and absorbs. Your history is actually a very minor event in its existence. It could never spread to the point of importance. From focusing on it, though, someone in a later age might be able to make guesses as to the Kaleideion's development."
"Very poor guesses, I would say, since the nature of this business is so random."
"Yes, there might be something to that, mightn't there?" she said, smiling.
"Are you saying I'm right?"
"I shouldn't say."
"You don't have to. Makes me wonder why, though."
"Think about it."
"You want to fool them."
"Perhaps."
"You want them to underestimate—or to misestimate—the Kaleideion, as he is contemplating some action for which he wishes them to be totally unprepared, tricky devil that he is."