Kiri's face showed compassion. "Well," he said, trying to sympathize with his brother's drives, "what now? Some new theory of how the universe began?"
Sork complained, "It's all so confusing! They keep talking about people IVe never heard of and things I can't even imagine, Kiri! Other universes! Black holes, white holes, worm-holes—none of it makes any sense to me. Maybe it doesn't make any sense at all," he conceded unhappily. "The Turtles say they don't believe it. Because the First Mother didn't say it. They call it just human superstition—you know, like alchemy, and phlogiston, and the—what did they call it?—the 'luminiferous ether.'"
Kiri shook his head again, seriously this time. "Not the same," he said briefly.
"Well, I know that. This fellow Hawking must've been pretty bright, from everything they say about him, and so was this other fellow Planck. See, Planck said that at certain levels —very small distances, very high temperatures, all sorts of unusual conditions—the regular laws of physics just didn't apply any more. And then others came along and they said that even time wasn't something that could never be changed. Sometimes cause and effect didn't mean anything, because 'effects' could happen before their 'causes' and—"
Kiri's expression clouded. He was looking over Sork's shoulder, into the Turtles' sunning chamber. "Careful," he whispered. "Did you forget they can hear us, inside there?"
The reminder came too late.
Inside the chamber the Turtles were squawking among themselves, some of them rising, stirring, gazing out indig-nandy at the human brothers.
The largest of the Turtles, the one whose title was Legate-on-Earth, rose and stalked toward the door, followed by Lidun. "You memmies!" Legate-on-Earth barked through his transposes "One dislikes such foolish human talk! One wonders if you wish to continue in memmie service!"
"Sorry," Sork muttered rebelliously. "I was just talking with my brother—"
"Do not talk of evil things!" the Turtle hissed, and stalked away.
Lidun remained, drawn up to his full height beside the open door to the basking chamber. Sork retreated, not anxious to expose himself even to the splash of radiation that would come through the opened doorway. He waited for the explosion that would come from his boss for talking "heresy" in the presence of the other Turtles.
Strangely, it was muted. Litlun said only, "Why do you waste your time with such songs?"
"They're not really songs," Sork said.
The Turtle glared at him. It was hard to read Turtle expressions at best; Turtle faces were stiff-tissued, darkly rigid, their armored eyes set wide apart and moving independently in a way that still disconcerted Sork.
"They are songs," Litlun insisted, "and wicked ones. They are a Taur disease! A hallucination that affects mature males, rendering them unfit for useful labor and dangerous to their handlers! They are not proper for you—especially because of the circumstances of yourself and your egg mate, which leave you vulnerable to disturbances."
"My egg mate? Do you mean Kiri?" Sork challenged the Turtle: "Are you saying that there is something special about us?"
The Turtle hissed thoughtfully to itself, glaring at him. There was no doubt, Sork thought, that Litlun did know something, almost certainly knew as much as the twins themselves did about the circumstances of their birth.
But if so he was not willing to discuss it. "Forget these songs," he ordered. "Leave them to the Taurs. Now come with me to draw your chips. It is time to begin your work." And then he turned and waddled away, fluffing the radiation-absorbing webs attached to his limbs in satisfaction, like any human patting his belly after a feast.
In the "office" of the Turtle, Sork went to work under his memo disk.
The disk fit easily into the slot in the back of his skull. Memo disks were gold and plastic, and not really disks; the objects were almost egg-shaped in plan section. As with everything the Turtles did, there was a practical reason for that: the shape made sure that there was only one way that the disks would fit into the receptor that had been surgically implanted in his skull.
Sork Quintero was at work instantly, as soon as the memo disk slipped into its slot. The memories and data it recorded were now more a part of him than his own recollections; all the thoughts and worries that had troubled him away from the disk were wiped away.
The work that Sork did for the Turtles was a little bit like bookkeeping, keeping track of all the Turtle exports. It was an important job. Sork's work was quite essential to the mercantile Turtles.
In a sense, this job was a promotion. As a memmie, Sork Quintero's work had been sometimes fascinating, usually exhausting, sometimes physically repulsive. In his nine years in Turtle service Sork had done almost every kind of job, from piloting Turtle aircraft to working in the slaughterhouse detail, slicing up Taur carcasses for the kitchens of the compound. It didn't matter what assignment was given to him. Under the disk, Sork was an expert at them all. Any memmie was, because with the appropriate memo disk in place in his skull, he could do any job the Turtles didn't care to do themselves. Which was almost every job they considered boring, or physically stressful for them in the hot, damp planet of Earth.
So what made Sork a particularly promotable memmie wasn't his skill. The Turtles supplied the skills. What they prized most in a memmie was dependability. So many humans were lazy, or drank when they were off duty, or got involved in personal affairs and came late or sick to work. Not Sork Quintero—
Well, Sork would have had to admit to himself out of fairness, not often Sork Quintero. It was true that there had been a time when he had done a good deal more drinking than his brother liked—or that the Turtles ever found out about. But that had stopped when Sue-ling came into his life, because Sue-ling didn't like it either. And it was a fact that Sork was always on time and never complained about his assignments—at least, not out loud where the Turtles might hear. His Turtle masters liked those traits in their servants. That was why they had "promoted" him (of course, it wasn't the kind of promotion that brought him any more money, and certainly not any more power) to helping to keep their accounts, because that was an area very important to the Tur-des.
They didn't want any problems there. It never occurred to the Turtles to suspect that Sork Quintero did not want to be a memmie any more.
When the day's shift was through, Sork and Kiri left the Turtle work area. Without discussing it, they did what both knew they had been going to do: They headed for Sue-ling Quong's rooms in the hospital area.
Sue-ling had known they were coming, too; so by the time they arrived she was awake, showered, dressed, ready to spend time with the two men she loved. Hand in hand with both of them, she led the way to the hospital refectory. It was breakfast for her, perhaps supper for the two men, but all three had the same thing—Taur steaks, with fried potatoes and huge glasses of fruit juice and, when they were through, cups of hot black coffee.
As the Taur servant filled their cups it mooed politely. Sue-ling said, "Yes, thank you, it was very good."
Kiri chuckled, but it was Sork who put the thought into words. "How do you know what the thing was saying?" he demanded.
"She isn't a thing," Sue-ling said defensively. "Taurs are really quite intelligent, and of course she was saying she hoped we enjoyed our meal."
"Doesn't that strike you as strange?" Sork pursued. "I mean, what is it she hoped we enjoyed eating? Taur!"
Sue-ling shrugged, annoyed. "The fact that they're meat animals doesn't mean we have to treat them like, well, brutes! Kseen has been working here in the refectory for two years, and she is really quite sweet. Just watch her—oh, heaven! What do you suppose is the matter with her?"