“The tiger,” said Ghost. “A bio-mech, you said. I thought, naturally, you were with Bio-mech.”
“I see,” said Carol. “ Vienna or New York.”
“There is a center also,” said Ghost, “somewhere in Asia. Ulan Bator, if my memory is. correct.”
“You’ve been there?”
“No,” said Ghost. “I only heard of it.”
“But he could,” said Oop. “He can go anywhere. In the blinking of an eyelash. That’s why the folks at Supernatural continue to put up with him. They hope that someday they can come up with whatever he has got. But Old Ghost is cagey. He’s not telling them.”
“The real reason for his silence,” said Maxwell, “is that he’s on Transport’s payroll. It’s worth their while to keep him quiet. If he revealed his traveling techniques, Transport would go broke. No more need of them. People could just up and go anywhere they wished, on their own-a mile or a million light-years.”
“And he’s the soul of tact,” said Oop. “What he was getting at back there was that unless you are in Bio-mech and can cook up something for yourself, it costs money to have something like that saber-toother.”
“Oh, I see,” said Carol. “I guess there’s truth in that. They do cost a lot of money. But I haven’t got that kind of money. My father, before he retired, was in Bio-mech. New York. Sylvester was a joint project of a seminar he headed. The students gave him to my dad.”
“I still don’t believe,” said Oop, “that cat’s a bio-mech. He’s got that dirty glitter in his eyes when he looks at me.”
“As a matter of fact,” Carol told him, “there is a lot more bio than mech in all of them today. The name originated when what amounted to a highly sophisticated electronic brain and nervous system was housed in specific protoplasms. But today about the only mechanical things about them are those organs that are likely to wear out if they were made of tissue-the heart, the kidneys, the lungs, things like that. What is being done at Bio-mech today is the actual creations of specific life forms-but you all know that, of course.”
“There are some strange stories,” Maxwell said. “A group of supermen, kept under lock and key. You have heard of that?”
“Yes, heard of it,” she said. “There are always rumors.”
“The best one that I’ve heard in recent days,” said Oop, “really is a lulu. Someone told me Supernatural has made contact with the Devil. How about that, Pete?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Maxwell. “I suppose someone has tried. I’m almost sure someone must have tried. It’s such an obvious thing for one to have a go at.”
“You mean,” asked Carol, “that there might really be a Devil?”
“Two centuries ago,” said Maxwell, “people asked, in exactly the same tone of voice you are using now, if there actually were such things as trolls and goblins.”
“And ghosts,” said Ghost.
“You’re serious!” Carol cried.
“Not serious,” said Maxwell. “Just not ready to foreclose even on the Devil.”
“This is a marvelous age,” declared Oop, “as I am sure you’ve heard me indicate before. You’ve done away with superstition and the old wives’ tales. You search in them for truth. But my people knew there were trolls and goblins and all the rest of them. The stories of them, you understand, were always based on fact. Except that later on, when he outgrew his savage simplicity, if you can call it that, man denied the fact; could not allow himself to believe these things that he knew were true. So he varnished them over and hid them safe away in the legend and the myth and when the human population kept on increasing, these creatures went into deep hiding. As well they might have, for there was a time when they were not the engaging creatures you seem to think they are today.”
Ghost asked: “And the Devil?”
“I’m not sure,” said Oop. “Maybe. But I can’t be sure. There were all these things you have lured out and rediscovered and sent to live on their reservations. But there were many more. Some of them fearful, all of them a nuisance.”
“You don’t seem to have liked them very well,” Carol observed.
“Miss,” said Qop, “I didn’t.”
“It would seem to me,” said Ghost, “that this would be a fertile field for some Time investigation. Apparently there were many different kinds of these-would you call them primates?”
“I think you might,” said Maxwell.
“Primates of a different stripe than the apes and man.”
“Of a very different stripe,” said Oop. “Vicious little stinkers.”
“Someday, I’m sure,” said Carol, “Time will get around to it. They know it, of course?”
“They should,” said Oop. “I’ve told them often enough, with appropriate description.”
“Time has too much to do,” Maxwell reminded them. “Too many areas of interest. And the entire past to cover.”
“And no money to do it with,” said Carol.
“There,” declared Maxwell, “speaks a loyal Time staff member.”
“But it’s true,” she cried. “The other disciplines could learn so much by Time investigation. You can’t rely on written history. It turns out, in many cases, to be different than it actually was. A matter of emphasis or bias or of just poor interpretation, embalmed forever in the written form. But do these other departments provide any funds for Time investigation? I’ll answer that. They don’t. A few of them, of course. The College of Law has cooperated splendidly, but not many of the others. They’re afraid. They don’t want their comfortable little worlds upset. Take this matter of Shakespeare, for example. You’d think English Lit would be grateful to find that Oxford wrote the plays. After all, it had been a question that had been talked about for many years-who really wrote the plays? But, after all of that, they resented it when Time found out who really wrote the plays.”
“And now,” said Maxwell, “Time is bringing Shakespeare forward to lecture about how he didn’t write the plays. Don’t you think that’s rubbing it in just a bit too much?”
“That’s not the point of it, at all,” said Carol. “The point is that Time is forced to make a sideshow out of history to earn a little money. That’s the way it is all the time. All sorts of schemes for raising money. Earning a lousy reputation as a bunch of clowns. You can’t believe Dean Sharp enjoys-”
“I know Harlow Sharp,” said Maxwell. “Believe me, he enjoys every minute of it.”
“That is blasphemy,” Oop said in mock horror. “Don’t you know that you can be crucified for blabbing off like that?”
“You’re making fun of me,” said Carol. “You make fun of everyone, of everything. You, too, Peter Maxwell.”
“I apologize for them,” said Ghost, “since neither one of them could summon up the grace to apologize, themselves. You have to live with them for ten or fifteen years to understand they really mean no harm.”
“But the day will come,” said Carol, “when Time will have the funds to do whatever it may want. All their pet projects and to heck with all the other colleges. When the deal goes-”
She stopped abruptly. She sat frozen, not moving. One could sense that she wanted to put her hand up to her mouth and was refraining from it only by iron will.
“What deal?” asked Maxwell.
“I think I know,” said Oop. “I heard a rumor, just a tiny little rumor, and I paid no attention to it. Although, come to think of it, these dirty little rumors are the ones that turn out to be true. The great big, ugly, noisy ones-”
“Oop, not a speech,” said Ghost. “Just tell us what you heard.”
“It’s incredible,” said Oop. “You never would believe it. Not in all your born days.”
“Oh, stop it!” Carol exclaimed.
They all looked at her and waited.
“I made a slip,” she said. “I got all worked up and made a slip. Can I ask the three of you just please to forget it. I’m not even sure it’s true.”