"It's a machine!" snapped Angalo. "You can't blackmail a machine!"
One small red light lit up on the Thing's black surface.
"I know you can tell what other machines are thinking," said Masklin.
"But can you tell what nomes are thinking? Read my mind, Thing, if youdon't think I'm serious. You want nomes to act intelligently. Well, I amacting intelligently. I'm intelligent enough to know when I need help. Ineed help now. And you can help. I know you can. If you don't help usnow, we'll leave right now and forget you ever existed."
A second light came on, very faintly.
Masklin stood up, and nodded to the other.
"All right," he said. "Let's go."
The Thing made a little electronic noise, which was the machine'sequivalent of a nome clearing his throat.
"How can I be of assistance?" it said.
Angalo grinned at Gurder.
Masklin sat down again.
"Find Grandson Richard Arnold, 39," he said.
"This will take a long time, " said the Thing.
"Oh."
A few lights moved on the Thing's surface. Then it said, "I have locateda Richard Arnold, aged 39. He has just gone into the departure lounge forFlight 205 to Miami, Florida."
"That didn't take a very long time," said Masklin.
"It was three hundred microseconds," said the Thing. "That's long."
"I don't think I understood all of it too," Masklin added.
"Which parts didn 't you understand?"
"Nearly all of them," said Masklin. "All the bits after 'gone into.'"
"Someone with the right name is here and waiting in a special room to get on a big silver bird that flies in the sky to go to a place called Florida," said the Thing.
"What big silver bird?" said Angalo.
"It means jet plane. It's being sarcastic," said Masklin.
"Yeah? How does it know all this stuff?" said Angalo, suspiciously.
"This building is full of computers," said the Thing.
"What, like you?"
The Thing managed to look offended. "They are very, very primitive," it said. "But I can understand them. If I think slowly enough. Their job is to know where humans are going."
"That's more than most humans do," said Angalo.
"Can you find out how we can get to him?" said Gurder, his face alight.
"Hold on, hold on," said Angalo, quickly. "Let's not rush into things here."
"We came here to find him, didn't we?" said Gurder.
"Yes! But what do we actually do?"
"Well, of course, we ... we ... that is, we'll ..."
"We don't even know what a departure lounge is."
"The Thing said it's a room where humans wait to get on an airplane," said Masklin.
Gurder prodded Angalo with an accusing finger.
"You're frightened, aren't you?" he said. "You're frightened that if we see Grandson Richard, 39, it'll mean there really is an Arnold Bros. andyou'll have been wrong! You're just like your father. He could neverstand being wrong, either!"
"I'm frightened about you," said Angalo. "Because you'll see thatGrandson Richard, 39, is just a human. Arnold Bros. was just a human too.
Or two humans. They just built the Store for humans. They didn't even know about nomes! And you can leave my father out of this too."
The Thing opened a small hatch on its top. It did that sometimes. Whenthe hatches were shut you couldn't see where they were, but whenever theThing was really interested in something it opened up and extended asmall silver dish on a pole, or a complicated arrangement of pipes.
This time it was a piece of wire mesh on a metal rod. It started to turn, slowly.
Masklin picked it up.
While the other two argued he said, quietly, "Do you know where thislounge thing is?"
"Yes, " said the Thing.
"Let's go, then."
Angalo looked around.
"Hey, what are you doing?" he said.
Masklin ignored him. He said to the Thing, "And do you know how much timewe have before he starts going to Florida?"
"About half an hour."
Nomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than ahigh-speed mouse.
That's one reason why most humans hardly ever see them.
The other is that humans are very good at not seeing things they knowaren't there. And since sensible humans know that there are no such things as four-inch-high people, a nome who doesn't want to be seenprobably won't be seen.
So no one noticed three tiny blurs darting across the floor of theairport building. They dodged the rumbling wheels of luggage carts. Theyshot between the legs of slow-moving humans. They skidded aroundchairs. They became nearly invisible as they crossed a huge, echoingcorridor.
And they disappeared behind a potted plant.
It has been said that everything everywhere affects everything else.
This may be true.
Or perhaps the world is just full of patterns.
For example, in a tree nine thousand miles away from Masklin, high on acloudy mountainside, was a plant that looked like one large flower. Itgrew wedged in a fork of trees, its roots dangling in the air to trapwhat nourishment they could from the mists. Technically, it was anepiphytic bromeliad, although not knowing this made very little difference to the plant.
Water condensed into a tiny pool in the center of the bloom.
And there were frogs living in it.
Very, very small frogs.
They had such a tiny life cycle, it still had training wheels on it.
They hunted insects among the petals. They laid their eggs in the central pool. Tadpoles grew up and became more frogs. And they made more tadpoles. And each eventually died, and sank down and joined the compost at the base of the leaves, which, in fact, helped nourish the plant.
And this had been the way things were for as far back as the frogs could remember*.
[* About three seconds. Frogs don't have good memories.]
Except that on this day, while it hunted for flies, one frog lost its way and crawled around the side of one of the outermost petals, or possibly leaves, and saw something it had never seen before.
It saw the universe.
More precisely, it saw the branch stretching away into the mists.
And several yards away, glistening with droplets of moisture in a solitary shaft of sunlight, was another flower.
The frog sat and stared.
"Hngh! Hngh! Hngh!"
Gurder leaned against the wall and panted like a hot dog on a sunny day.
Angalo was almost as badly out of breath, but was going red in the face trying not to show it.
"Why didn't you tell us!" he demanded.
"You were too busy arguing," said Masklin. "So I knew the only way to get you running was to start moving."
"Thank ... you ... very much," Gurder heaved.
"Why aren't you puffed out?" said Angalo.
"I'm used to running fast," said Masklin, peering around the plant.
"Okay, Thing. Now what?"
"Along this corridor," said the Thing.
"It's full of humans!" squeaked Gurder.
"Everywhere's full of humans. That's why we're doing this," said Masklin.
He paused, and then added, "Look, Thing, isn't there any other way we can go? Gurder nearly got squashed just now."
Colored lights moved in complicated patterns across the Thing. Then it said, "What is it you want to achieve?"
"We must find Grandson Richard, 39," panted Gurder.
"No. Going to the Florida place is the important thing," said Masklin.
"It isn't!" said Gurder. "I don't want to go to any Florida!"
Masklin hesitated. Then he said, "This probably isn't the right time to say this, but I haven't been totally honest with you."
He told them about the Thing, and space, and the Ship in the sky. Around them there was the endless thundering noise of a building full of busy humans.
Eventually Gurder said, "You're not trying to find Grandson Richard, 39, at all?"
"I think he's probably very important," said Masklin hurriedly. "Butyou're right. At Florida there's a place where they have a sort of jetplane that goes straight up, to put kind of bleeping radio things in thesky."