Sometimes they all spoke at once. Short(arm) was best at such races and tended to dominate the role of talker. When short(arm) was asleep, Long-Reach was less glib.
In this world beyond the trees, there were many new images, many new words.
“Leaves,” said short(arm). “Leaves, leaves,” repeated skinny(arm) because there weren't any.
“Ah, you're hungry.” Mellow-Yellow left the cave through… an elevator? Door, door, corrected short(arm). When Long-Reach tried to follow there was no door. Anxiety.
But Mellow-Yellow came back with leaves in a container of grass. Big(arm) thought about the right words for the sight and made suggestions while feeling the weave of the grass blades that were entwined in a very regular way. His eye had never seen anything like it. “Leaves sit on grass-floor,” said short(arm) while communicating the thought that flat-"floor" could not be a good word for hollow-container.
“It's a basket, not a floor. I got it from the slave quarters. Say 'basket.'”
“Basket, basket. Basket of grass. Grass basket.”
“And don't take it apart! Don't you ever stop being curious?”
Long-Reach picked up the basket with two arms and dumped the leaves on the floor. He sat on them, elbows in the air, and began to masticate. “Good,” exclaimed all the arms in unison.
“My ears ripple when I watch you sitting down to eat.”
“My ears ripple when I watch you sitting down to excrete. One-mouth better than two.”
“Long-Reach, your ears don't ripple. Your ears are in your wrists.”
“Ripple? Ripple?” Big(arm) rose so that its eye could look at the resonance cups on its wrist which analyzed sound.
Trainer-of-Slaves rippled his ears to demonstrate. He was genuinely amused. “That's what I do when I tell a joke. How do I know when you are telling a joke?”
“Joke?”
“Some other day!”
Trainer-of-Slaves needed to sleep so Long-Reach hooked himself to a wall rack and slept himself, with only freckled(arm) awake and watching the door. Freckled(arm) had things to mull over but that was difficult with sleep-silence on four channels.
Thinking did not go rapidly without question answers from other-arms. But questions were themselves interesting. What had happened to the forest? Why did the absence of trees make floors flat? What was glass? How could something invisible resist the push of a hand? How was R'hshssira attached to its ceiling? Did all worlds have different colored lamps?
There were more questions in the morning when Mellow-Yellow led Long-Reach to a cavern full of weird shapes and vines that swallowed eyes and arms. The giant carnivore was there with the smell of leafeater flesh on his breath. Frightening.
“You won't be able to put him in the machine—they panic when their arms are constrained—and his vocabulary isn't big enough so that an explanation will register. We'll have to shoot him up with trazine. First, we'll let him watch a Jotok come out of the trainer unharmed.”
Long-Reach stayed as near his yellow companion as he could get. They put him too close to a big leafeater like himself who was suspended in mid-air, his arms in thick sleeves, with vines coming out of the caps over his eyes. His limbs convulsed as if he were running and flying among the trees but he wasn't going anywhere. Terrifying.
The big kzin unhooked the eyes. The sleeves came off. While the beast was being liberated, three of Long-Reach's brains came to the simultaneous conclusion that he was going to become the replacement. Three arms started to back off and couldn't move.
“The trazine won't harm you. Be gone within heartbeats.” They were putting him into the sleeves and he couldn't resist. His eyes had retracted to their armored state in a reflex at the shock of paralysis, but he could not keep them closed while the giant popped out each eye in turn and stuck them into caps. He was blind and paralyzed. Was this the death he had been avoiding all his life?
All of his minds went into escape mode. But before he could even think of escape… suddenly… he was transported to a forest. There was a precision smoothness to each detail and no smell. He had not passed through any walls or doors. Did one die and go to an odorless forest? He still couldn't move, but his thumbs were wrapped around branches and he wasn't falling. He saw no kzinti. When the paralysis wore off, he took the chance and ran; he zipped through the trees like flying, barely touching a branch before he was reaching for another.
The landmarks were unfamiliar and there were no odor clues. The trees were too tall. When he climbed as high as he could go there were no ceiling lamps. White moss floated overhead where the roof should have been. Nothing he did seemed to orient him, even his acceleration senses were subtly contradicting his eyes and the feel of his skin. He couldn't backtrack because the world changed behind him as it passed out of sight what was behind was as unknown as what was in front. It was wrong.
A lake appeared through the trees, larger than any lake he had ever seen, larger than it had any right to be. He skittered among broad branches that had been able to reach outward along the shoreline, afraid to let the lake out of sight lest it disappear. High above the beach he paused.
His tree developed a lung-slit and spoke. “I am a tree.”
Startled, he leaped into another tree, nearly missing it. “Nice leap,” said a bird who had been watching hunt.
He was gaping at the tree (with three eyes) and the bird (with two eyes). How many different kinds of worlds were there? asked freckled(arm) frantically. After a while Long-Reach got used to it. The world patiently gave him lessons in speech with the same image-sound codes as Mellow-Yellow had used. Stones talked. Stumps talked. Animals talked. It was very disconcerting.
The predicable’s had shifted. And not to be able to predict meant danger. Hide and meditate upon the consequences. Idly fast(arm) plucked some berries in their leaf-cones and shoved them up into the undermouth to placate hunger. But there was nothing for Long-Reach to chew on. Shock. In this world food was going to be a problem. Too many problems.
“Eat me,” said a leaf.
He tried. It was only a strong taste, still nothing to chew on.
“Bitter,” said the leaf which had miraculously regrown. “Eat me again.”
He did so. It tasted like the caps of marsh-reed, or even seed-berries, but again there was nothing to chew on.
“Sweet,” said the everlasting leaf. “Eat me again.”
Right now he wanted Mellow-Yellow. “Trainer-of-Slaves!” he bellowed.
His call produced an immediate twilight, fading into a night darker than the deepest cavern.
Beside him, Mellow-Yellow appeared slowly, like a ceiling lamp at dawn, without casting any light into the darkness. The carnivore's image was too sharp, too orange, and flickered a little. A furry hand reached out and touched the eye of big(arm). Then weirdly with only one eye he was back where he had started; Mellow-Yellow was the right color, the giant kzin was beside him and so was all the machinery in the cavern. His selves jumped to look through big(arm)'s eye.
Long-Reach could now feel his arms in their tight trap. Panic. Death… he began to struggle.
The giant kzin backed off but Mellow-Yellow efficiently freed the capped eyes and removed the constraints. Long-Reach walked away, miffed, with only freckled(arm) watching the big yellow trickster curiously.
“Joke,” said Trainer-of-Slaves.
“You have brains where your intestines should bet” sulked Long-Reach, who had begun to assimilate his anatomy lessons. “Joke,” he added, having no intention of insulting a carnivore.