The therapist laughed at this stern command, and reached for Codlugarthia with half a dozen tentacles. Codlugarthia gestured curtly. The tentacles snapped and crackled, and recoiled as if from fire. The therapist screamed with rage.
‘Now,’ said Codlugarthia. ‘Release your prisoners. Or I will have to do you some serious harm.’
The therapist knew when it was beaten. It promptly lowered Chegory and Pokrov to the ground. And released them. Both tried to get up — and immediately fainted. Olivia rushed forward, and, in moments, was cradling her dearest Chegory in her arms and trying to revive him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. This strategy soon brought him round, and shortly he was smiling weakly in her embrace.
‘Very well,’ said Justina crisply. ‘Now kill this thing.’ ‘Why?’ said Codlugarthia.
‘The thing is a menace,’ said Justina. ‘It lives to kill and torture.’
‘Very well,’ said Codlugarthia, ‘I will destroy it.’
‘But you mustn’t!’ shrieked the therapist. ‘You mustn’t destroy me!’
‘Why not?’ asked Codlugarthia coolly.
‘Because, if you kill me you’ll — you’ll never know. The secrets! The secrets! I have the secrets!’
Ivan Pokrov, though he had not had the benefits of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, managed to raise his head and say:
‘Kill it.’
‘Yes,’ said Juliet Idaho, who had long been of the opinion that far too few people were getting killed these days. ‘Kill it. It’s high time we saw something killed.’
‘No!’ screeched the therapist. ‘You mustn’t! Because I can tell you, I can tell you all about it, worlds upon worlds, that’s the secret. Gates to another cosmos. Not one, a series. From universe to universe. The chasm gates. The secrets, I have them, I know, I know. How to get there, how to go, how to travel. Worlds upon worlds. All yours.’
‘It’s lying,’ said Pokrov.
Codlugarthia hesitated.
‘Listen,’ said the therapist. ‘You’re a Power. I know that. I’ve never felt your match, and I’ve felt much in my time. I guess you immortal. If you’re not, we can soon fix that. Given immortality combined with power…’
The therapist paused to see how the Ashdan warrior was taking this.
‘Speak on,’ said Codlugarthia.
‘Kill the thing,’ said Justina impatiently.
‘When I have sufficient data,’ said Codlugarthia. ‘Stranger,’ said
Ivan Pokrov, ‘you must kill this thing. You must! You don’t know what it is. What it can do.’ ‘Ah,’ said Codlugarthia, ‘but I will learn. S peak, thing. Have you a name?’
‘I have,’ said the therapist with dignity. ‘Schoptomov, that’s my name. But that is the least important thing I have to tell you. I can tell you the secret of the chasm gates. How to build them, how to use them. That way, you can get from one cosmos to another. Otherwise, you’re stuck here. Stuck in this one grubby universe, for ever.’
‘What possible advantage could there be,’ said Codlugarthia, ‘in going from one universe to another?’
‘The Nexus, that’s what,’ said the therapist, gabbling its words as panic began to get the better of composure. Then it steadied itself and said: ‘The Nexus. A coalition of empires. People by the million billion. Things you’ve never dreamed of. Suns, cities, seas of green and crimson, women smoother than silk, wines brighter than silver. Music to set dead bones to weeping, to set the very rocks to dancing.’
‘It’s bluffing,’ said Pokrov. ‘It doesn’t know how to rebuild the chasm gates.’
‘All right,’ said the therapist. ‘So I don’t know. But you know!’
‘I don’t,’ said Pokrov. ‘It would take me a million years.’
‘You admit it!’
‘A million years, that’s what I said.’
‘A million years,’ said Codlugarthia slowly. ‘Well. I have a million years.’
‘But you can’t be serious!’ said Pokrov. ‘You may have a million years, but I don’t.’
‘You are an immortal, are you not?’ sid Codlugarthia. ‘Who told you that?’ said Pokrov accusingly.
‘Friend, I know you better than you think,’ said Codlugarthia. ‘Long have I sat on Jod, for I am the one you have known till now as the Hermit Crab. I have seen you passing yourself off as a mortal man to one generation after another. I know your potential.’
‘I see,’ said Pokrov. The designer of the Analytical Engine paused, then said: ‘But whether I’m immortal or not, I’m not staying here to help you build chasm gates, or anything else for that matter.’
‘I don’t think you have any choice in the matter,’ said Codlugarthia.
‘We’d starve!’ said Pokrov. ‘Or thirst to death. Unless your powers extend to the creation of three-course meals thrice a day.’
‘That,’ admitted Codlugarthia, ‘might be a little difficult. Not impossible, but…’
‘Nutrition is no problem,’ said the therapist. ‘I can make all you need on the spot. Why, sometimes I’ve kept prisoners alive for decades.’
‘Yes,’ said Chegory, sitting up. ‘The therapist thing’s been telling us about some of those therapists. It’s evil! You can’t trust it! It’ll get you, that’s what, when you sleep, it’ll take you and kill you, it’ll make you a prisoner and torture you for ever.’
Codlugarthia paused in thought.
Then spread his arms.
Then Spoke.
The therapist screamed in agony.
Doors and panels ruptured.
Arms flailed and snapped.
Sparks crackled.
White fire ran along pipes and tubes.
Deep in the workings of the hideous device, something broke. And out from a secret storeroom there slithered a great gushing outpouring of bloody eyes, ears, noses, tongues and testicles — the souvenirs of centuries of calculated torture and bloody murder. Olivia screamed. And Codlugarthia again Spoke. And the on-rushing onslaught blistered into so much fuming smoke.
Then there was silence, but for the hiss of escaping steam, the quick crackle of a bright fire consuming a wildly jumbled heap of green wire which had been cascaded out from the guts of the therapist, and the moans of the therapist itself.
‘I think,’ said Codlugarthia, ‘that our friend here will not be torturing or imprisoning anyone for quite some centuries to come.’
‘I’m blind,’ sobbed the therapist. ‘I’m blind!’
‘Never mind,’ said Codlugarthia. ‘We can repair the damage, given time. Well. That is all for the moment. Pokrov, you must stay. It seems I have need of you. As for the others… for you, my friends, it is time to go.’ ‘You don’t want to stay here,’ said Justina earnestly. ‘You can’t be serious! A million years? Here?’
‘What I need is here,’ said Codlugarthia. ‘Knowledge. Knowledge to amplify power. This is the source. There is no other.’
In vain did Chegory and Olivia plead with Codlugarthia. In vain did the Empress Justina offer him control of the island of Untunchilamon, of the city of Injiltaprajura and all its treasures. In vain did Juliet Idaho threaten him with the combined wrath of the Yudonic Knights of Galsh Ebrek. Codlugarthia was given to thinking in terms of years by the thousands and millions. While incarnated as the Crab, Codlugarthia had grown accustomed to taking the long view. And, in the long term, the mastery of the secrets of many a cosmos was far more tempting than the wearisome task of sorting out the squabbles of Injiltaprajura.
‘But you could do it,’ persisted Justina. ‘You could really do it. Peace and good will and all that. You could make Injiltaprajura a very paradise.’
‘Shabble has told me all about making paradises for human beings,’ said Codlugarthia. ‘It’s no good. The human beings start hitting each other on the second day and killing each other on the third.’
‘You exaggerate,’ said Justina.
‘Read your history books,’ retorted Codlugarthia. And, after just a little more debate, the humanized Crab sternly ordered all unwanted humans from its presence. And they then had no option but to say goodbyes to Ivan Pokrov and then to depart from that place and face whatever doom awaited them in the world above.