He paused. Rob looked at the screen expectantly. “Is that all?” he said after a few more seconds.
“All.” Anson glared pop-eyed at the screen. “Do you have any idea how much work went into finding out what I just told you? We screened over four hundred thousand reports, everything from the crazy columns of the news to the records of mental hospitals. You may not think it’s much, but you ought to see what we started with.”
“I’m not putting you down, Howard. But you said at the beginning that there were three things I should look at. So far, you’ve only given me two.”
“I was getting there, if you’d give me time. The other thing isn’t about the Goblins themselves, it’s my feeling about the quality of the information. I always try and tie an index to it. In one word, dreadful. I already told you what my data sources were like when we interviewed them. I didn’t tell you how old those reports were. One of them came from seventeen years ago, the other from five years ago. The only reason I’m willing to give them any credibility at all is because they are consistent with each other. There’s no way the two sets of people involved could have known anything about each other. Both sets of Goblins showed up on Earth, but on different continents. One set appeared in a medical supply house, the other in an old book warehouse.”
“Was either place anywhere close to a spaceport?”
“I had that thought, too. If it’s tied to Morel, and if Morel has been away on Atlantis all these years, then the Goblins ought to have come from off-Earth. It doesn’t help. The places were near enough to spaceports, but we couldn’t draw any correlation. We couldn’t track them back past the point where they were actually found, in either case.”
Rob was sitting, shoulders hunched, studying the sheet that Howard Anson had transmitted to him. “I was hoping you might have found something on the cause of death. Something must have killed them.”
“Nothing new. You heard what Senta said about lack of air in the supply capsule. It could have been lack of oxygen in all cases. I assume there was no obvious sign of violence, or we’d probably have heard at least one report on that.”
“I still can’t get past my basic question, Howard. Are we dealing with something that’s human? I have a strange thought running around in the back of my head.”
“They certainly looked more human than anything else, if you believe the reports we dug up. What are you getting at? Do you think they are some kind of animals?”
“Not quite that, either. I don’t know about your background, Howard, but where I grew up there are no bearded people forty centimeters high. I haven’t run across anything like that since my aunt told me fairy stories. But I can’t help thinking of some of the things you told me about Morel, back when he was in college. Even before he had Caliban, he was working on the big cephalopods, right?”
“He was studying their brain structure, that’s true enough. He was interested in the fact that they have an optic chiasma, the same as the higher vertebrates. No other mollusk has anything like that. It’s supposed to be one of the signs that they are smart. It means that each eye is coupled into both brain hemispheres, so the brain itself must have a more complicated structure.”
“I don’t remember you telling me that. What I remember is Morel’s experimental work. Didn’t you tell me that he was trying to make them smarter by playing games with genetic crosses?”
“That’s right.” Anson leaned back in his chair, plucking absently at a loose thread on the lapel of the dressing-gown. “I see where you’re going, Rob, and I don’t like the sound of it. Morel was doing coupling experiments with vertebrate and invertebrate DNA, until he was stopped because the university decided it was too expensive. You think he started again, doing more crosses? That would make the Goblins some sort of cross-species breed.” He shook his head. “I will bet you some fairly big money that what you suggest is genetically impossible.”
Rob’s face was perplexed, and he rubbed at his eyes. “Then to hell with it. I was afraid you’d say that. I don’t think it’s possible, either. But I must find some way of understanding what the Goblins are. Did you find out more about their other names, the ones that Senta used?”
“No progress there. No mention of `Expies’ or `Minnies’ — no names at all, in fact. I’ll keep looking, Rob, but I’m at the end of the rope. I need more inputs, or some other kind of break. Do you think there’s anything to help us out on Atlantis?”
“I’m sure of it.” Rob was silent for a moment, recalling the interior structure of the asteroid. “There’s a locked part of the labs, a piece of the central living sphere. I told you how edgy Morel got when I went near it. I’ll see if I can find an opportunity to look there on this trip, and I’ll send it to you as soon as I’m back here. I daren’t risk sensitive messages from there, though, not even scrambled ones.”
“How long before you’ll be able to call me again?”
“That depends what Regulo has come up with out there. It may be as long as a couple of weeks. While I’m gone, would you look at a couple of other things? Find some background on Sala Keino. I know he’s Regulo’s expert on space structures, but I’d like to find out what his personality is like.”
“I’ll try. Any special questions you want answered?”
“Just one. I’d like to know how much interest he has in money.”
“Hm. You don’t bother with the easy ones, do you, Rob?” Anson rubbed again at his chin. “I don’t know if I could answer that question about myself, still less for Keino. Are you thinking of trying to bribe him?”
“No. I want to know how much Regulo controls his actions. I’ve never met the man.” Rob leaned towards the screen. “Howard, I’m running out of time. One other thing. Did you make any progress finding out how Senta got hooked on taliza?”
“Not yet. She has no idea of it herself. I’m beginning to think she has been an addict for a very long time — much longer than the twelve years that she remembers. I suspect somebody was playing games with her memory on this, blocking it the way they have for the Goblins.”
“Morel?” Rob saw Anson’s look. “I know we don’t have any evidence. But she’s scared of him — and I don’t like him, either.”
“That sounds like the sort of arguments I use. Come on, Rob, you’ll never make it onto Darius Regulo’s top ten of the engineering world unless you operate on pure logic.” Anson lifted a hand in farewell. “I’ll keep digging. Remember me to the fair Cornelia. Have you ever noticed that the only person who calls her Cornelia instead of Corrie seems to be her mother?”
“Not quite,” said Rob, as he reached out to cut the connection. “That’s what Regulo calls her, too. With him it’s Cornelia, never Corrie.”
And that’s something I should have noticed for myself, a long time ago, he thought, staring at the blank screen. He had put things off for too long. Much as he disliked the idea, he’d have to bring that subject up with Corrie. But he would wait for the right moment. Private conversation would be difficult on the cramped yacht that would rush the two of them out to Atlantis. It never occurred to Rob that his final thought provided him with one more excuse to delay an awkward confrontation.
CHAPTER 12: “…at the quiet limit of the world, a white-haired shadow roaming like a dream…”