Odeen called out, “But wait, Dua. Surely you want to see your new baby-mid.”
She did not answer.
He cried out. “When will you come home?”
She did not answer.
And he followed no more, but looked after her in deepest misery as she dwindled.
He did not tell Tritt he had seen Dua. What was the use? Nor did he see her again. He began haunting the favored sunning-sites of the Emotionals in the region; doing so even though occasional Parentals emerged to watch him in stupid suspicion (Tritt was a mental giant compared to most Parentals).
The lack of her hurt more with each passing day. And with each passing day, he realized that there was a gathering fright inside himself over her absence. He didn’t know why.
He came back to home-cavern one day to find Losten waiting for him. Losten was standing there, grave and polite while Tritt was showing him the new baby and striving to keep the handful of mist from touching the Hard One.
Losten said, “It is indeed a beauty, Tritt. Derala is its name?”
“Derola,” corrected Tritt. “I don’t know when Odeen will be back. He wanders about a lot—”
“Here I am, Losten,” said Odeen, hastily. “Tritt, take the baby away; there’s a good fellow.”
Tritt did so, and Losten turned to Odeen with quite obvious relief, saying, “You must be very happy to have completed the triad.”
Odeen tried to answer with some polite inconsequence, but could maintain only a miserable silence. He had recently been developing a kind of comradeship, a vague sense of equality with the Hard Ones, that enabled them to talk together on a level. Somehow Dua’s madness had spoiled it. Odeen knew she was wrong and yet he approached Losten once more as stiffly as in the long-gone days when he thought of himself as a far inferior creature to them, as a—machine?
Losten said, “Have you seen Dua?” This was a real question, and not politeness. Odeen could tell easily.
“Only once, H—” (He almost said “Hard-sir” as though he were a child again, or a Parental.) “Only once, Losten. She won’t come home.”
“She must come home,” said Losten, softly.
“I don’t know how to arrange that.”
Losten regarded him somberly. “Do you know what she is doing?”
Odeen dared not look at the other. Had he discovered Dua’s wild theories? What would be done about that?
He made a negative sign without speaking.
Losten said, “She is a most unusual Emotional, Odeen. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” sighed Odeen.
“So are you in your way, and Tritt in his. I doubt that any Parental in the world would have had either the courage or the initiative to steal an energy-battery or the perverse ingenuity to put it to use as he did. The three of you make up the most unusual triad of which we have any record.”
“Thank you.”
“But there are uncomfortable aspects to the triad, too; things we didn’t count on. We wanted you to teach Dua as the mildest and best possible way in which to cajole her into performing her function voluntarily. We did not count on Tritt’s quixotic action at just that moment. Nor, to tell you the truth, did we count on her wild reaction to the fact that the world in the other Universe must be destroyed.”
“I ought to have been careful how I answered her questions,” said Odeen miserably.
“It wouldn’t have helped. She was finding out for herself. We didn’t count on that either. Odeen, I am sorry, but I must tell you this—Dua has become a deadly danger; she is trying to stop the Positron Pump.”
“But how can she? She can’t reach it, and even if she could, she lacks the knowledge to do anything about it.”
“Oh, but she can reach it.” Losten hesitated, then said, “She remains infused in the rock of the world where she is safe from us.”
It took awhile for Odeen to grasp the clear meaning of the words. He said, “No grown Emotional would— Dua would never—”
“She would. She does. Don’t waste time arguing the point.... She can penetrate anywhere in the caverns. Nothing is hidden from her. She has studied those communications we have received from the other Universe. We don’t know that of certain knowledge, but there is no other way of explaining what is happening.”
“Oh, oh, oh.” Odeen rocked back and forth, his surface opaque with shame and grief. “Does Estwald know of all this?”
Losten said, grimly, “Not yet; though he must know someday.”
“But what will she do with those communications?”
“She is using them to work out a method for sending some of her own in the other direction.”
“But she cannot know how to translate or transmit.”
“She is learning both. She knows more about those communications than Estwald himself. She is a frightening phenomenon, an Emotional who can reason and who is out of control.”
Odeen shivered. Out of control? How machine-like a reference!
He said, “It can’t be that bad.”
“It can. She has communicated already and I fear she is advising the other creatures to stop their half of the Positron Pump. If they do that before their Sun explodes, we will be helpless at this end.”
“But then—”
“She must be stopped, Odeen.”
“B—But, how? Are you going to blast—” His voice failed. Dimly, he knew that the Hard One had devices for digging caverns out of the world’s rock; devices scarcely used since the world’s population had begun declining ages ago. Would they locate Dua in the rock and blast it and her?
“No,” said Losten, forcefully. “We cannot harm Dua.”
“Estwald might—”
“Estwald cannot harm her, either.”
“Then what’s to be done?”
“It’s you, Odeen. Only you. We’re helpless, so we must depend on you.”
“On me? But what can I do?”
“Think about it,” said Losten, urgently. “Think about it.”
“Think about what?”
“I can’t say more than that,” said Losten, in apparent agony. “Think! There is so little time.”
He turned and left, moving rapidly for a Hard One, moving as though he did not trust himself to stay and perhaps say too much.
And Odeen could only look after him, dismayed, confused—lost.
5c
There was a great deal for Tritt to do. Babies required much care, but even two young-lefts and two young-rights together did not make up the sum of a single baby-mid— particularly not a mid as perfect as Derola. She had to be exercised and soothed, protected from percolating into whatever she touched, cajoled into condensing and resting.
It was a long time before he saw Odeen again and, actually, he didn’t care. Derola took up all his time. But then he came across Odeen in the corner of his own alcove, iridescent with thought.
Tritt remembered, suddenly. He said, “Was Losten angry about Dua?”
Odeen came to himself with a start. “Losten?—Yes, he was angry. Dua is doing great harm.”
“She should come home, shouldn’t she?”
Odeen was staring at Tritt. “Tritt,” he said, “we’re going to have to persuade Dua to come home. We must find her first. You can do it. With a new baby, your Parental sensitivity is very high. You can use it to find Dua.”
“No,” said Tritt, shocked. “It’s used for Derola. It would be wrong to use it for Dua. Besides, if she wants to stay away so long when a baby-mid is longing for her— and she was once a baby-mid herself—maybe we might just learn to do without her.”
“But, Tritt, don’t you ever want to melt again?”