Sork didn't doubt that. Even the man's clothes seemed queerly old-fashioned, like something Sork's grandfather might have worn. He asked the man a logical question. "Why didn't you bring your friends down here for treatment?"
Krake looked either embarrassed or resentful, Sork could not tell which. "It's not the first time they've been hurt," he said stiffly. "They were picked up by the Turtles at the same time I was, but they were in a lot worse shape—almost dead, in fact." He thought for a moment, then corrected himself. "I guess you'd have to say they were really dead, until the Turtles took care of them. You see, they'd crashed in the Andes. Their limbs were broken, they were suffering from frostbite. The Turtles fixed them up, gave them a lot of prostheses—"
He stopped there. After a moment, he added, "Anyway, the way things arc with them now, they do better with Turtle medicine than human."
"Sue-ling's a very good doctor!"
"I'm sure she is! I didn't mean to hurt her feelings." The man looked over at her sadly. "I'm just not very good with girls any more," he confessed. "With people at all, I guess."
Sue-ling looked up from the message on her communicator. "Well," she said, "they say your people are doing fine, Captain Krake. And IVe asked the orbit crew to keep me informed if there's any change."
Krake nodded. "That's good. I'll call in from time to time, if you don't mind." He hesitated, then confided, "I thought I'd check out my old home. It'll be changed in a lot of ways, but still I'd like to visit it. And is it all right if I leave some of my gear with you until I get back?"
"Of course. Call in whenever you like, and I'll tell you what I hear from the orbit station. And I hope you have a good trip, Captain Krake," Sue-ling said, smiling up at him.
"Thank you." Krake stood up to go, then stopped, staring at the back of Sork Quintero's head. He seemed embarrassed again, but in a different way. "Excuse me," he said, his eyes on Sork's skull, "but you're a memmie, aren't you?"
"Of course I'm a memmie," Sork said, surprised. His hand went up to touch the rubbery lips of the implant socket at the back of his skull. "So's Sue-ling. We almost all are here. Naturally. We can't do any real work for the Turtles without a memo disk implant, how else could we handle their technology? It would be impossible."
The stranger shook his head. "Not impossible," he said, and touched his own, unmarked skull. "Thanks for helping me, Doctor," he said to Sue-ling, and turned away.
When Krake had gone Sue-ling gazed absently after him, biting her lip. Sork felt a quick twinge. The last thing he needed was another interesting man to show up in Sue-ling's life. He asked jealously, "Who was that fellow?"
She shook her head. "He's a space pilot, Sork. Can you imagine that? He flies Turtle ships."
"Human beings don't fly Turtle ships!" Sork objected. "He isn't even a memmie!"
"I know, but that's what he says. He has his own interstellar wave-drive ship. The Turtles gave it to him. It has small chemical rocket ships attached—scout ships—so he can land where there isn't any ladder, can you imagine that?"
"Why would they let him do that?"
"For their convenience, of course, what else? He goes to the kinds of planets the Turtles don't like—you know, the warm, wet kind, with oceans. Like the Earth, really."
"And you believe all that?" Sork asked indignantly.
The woman he loved gave him an affectionately understanding look. She was a beautiful woman—eyes almond-shaped but intensely blue, skin fair, hair gleaming coppery red —and the look she gave him was fondly tolerant. "Why would he lie to me? He's really interesting, Sork, and I do hope his shipmates are all right." Then, remembering, "And do you know what else he says? He told me he is the oldest human being in the universe."
He stared at her, not comprehending. "He doesn't look any older than I am," he objected, but Sue-ling was shaking her head.
"He's been in space," she explained. "On a wave-drive ship, traveling at almost the speed of light."
"Oh," said Sork, comprehending at last. The Turtle interstellar wave-drive spacecraft moved at a velocity so close to c that the time of their decades-long travel was shrunk to a matter of a few days for those aboard. "It's time dilation! Just as it says on those tapes!"
"That's right." She nodded, then gave him an inquiring look. "Did you come here because you wanted something?" she asked.
"To see you, of course," he said promptly.
She smiled at him, sweetly enough. "Of course. Still, I thought maybe you had another reason—like running out of the astronomy lectures?" And when he confessed that he had, she reached down into her desk for a fresh supply.
Sork gazed fondly at the back of her bent head, where a neat circle of her lustrous, coppery hair had been depilated for her memo disk implant socket. It might have looked ugly to most human beings. Not to Sork Quintero. There was a socket in his own skull, but that wasn't the point; the point was that since the first moment he had seen Sue-ling Quong, just arriving at the Turtle compound when the university she had worked at had closed down, nothing about her had seemed ugly to Sork Quintero.
Sork turned the little box of chip recordings over in his hands wistfully. "I wish I understood what they're talking about in these lectures," he sighed. "Do you think I could ask one of the Turtles to help me make out this quantum mechanical stuff?"
She looked at him with shock. "Are you insane? Have you forgotten what happened last time?"
"Of course not," he said resentfully. "Litlun threw a fit. Said it was a sign of my essential instability to listen to those blasphemous 'songs,' and threatened to report me if I kept on. Why do you suppose they call them 'songs'? And why blasphemous?"
"What difference does that make? Do you want to be thrown out of the reservation?"
"No, but—"
"But that's exactly what would happen. You know that! The Turtles hate that sort of talk! I'm pretty sure that was one of the reasons why they closed my school down, because some of the physics professors were still teaching what they called quantum mechanics. That's blasphemy from their point of view—there's nothing about quantum mechanics in the divine revelations of the First Mother! That kind of heresy upsets them, Sork. I think they'd destroy these tapes if they could think of a legitimate way of getting their hands on them."
"Don't let them do that, Sue-ling!"
"Well, of course I won't," she promised. "But you have to be careful! You know what would happen if you offended their religion. You'd be out of here in a minute! You couldn't be a memmie any more—"
"What's wrong with that?"
She paused, biting her lip. This man was so infuriating sometimes! Then, controlling herself, "Be reasonable. What else can you do? Do you think there are any high-tech jobs for humans outside the Turtle compounds? You'd make a rotten farmer, Sork." She shook her head maternally. "No, stay here, keep your mouth shut, don't get tossed out of civilization just because of silly curiosity."
He gave her a challenging look. "If I did get thrown out, would you miss me?"
"Of course I would," she said, summoning up all the patience she had.
"A lot?" he persisted.
"Just as much as I would miss Kiri," she promised.
He left it at that. It was not the answer he wanted, but it was the answer she always gave. Sork Quintero loved his brother, Kiri, in spite of the fact that they were so different. But there were times when he could have wished Kiri Quintero a few oceans away. And those times had started when Sue-ling Quong appeared on the scene.
She was watching him. "Oh, Sork," she sighed, "I'm sorry. I know I'm making trouble between you and Kiri."