"I don't want to go to Cuckoo!"
The dean leaned back and looked at him thoughtfully.
"Jen, dear," she began, sweetly enough, "I've always said my department is about as loyal to the university as any faculty we have. Of course," she added meditatively, "I certainly would not want to put any pressure on you. You know that. It's not the way I do things. Never fear, if you chicken out there'll be plenty of other volunteers! So, in a sense, it doesn't matter. But on the other hand—"
Here it comes, Jen thought, as she reached across the desk to pat his hand. "On the other hand," she said, "there's your own future to consider. I'm not getting any younger." She smiled the shark's smile that had been in the dreams of generations of students and junior faculty members. You never knew when Margaret Kooseman was going to open those jaws and eat you up. "When I retire, Jen, I'll of course nominate a successor, but the final decision is up to the faculty senate. And then this would look very good on your record. I mean, if you had any interest in becoming dean yourself."
"Margaret! That's blackmail!"
"No, Jen, just the facts of life. You're due over at the Tachyon Transmission Base in three hours."
"Three hours! I can't be ready that fast."
"There's nothing to get ready, Jen. I've had two of your graduate students pack up your Pmals and your microfiche library already. It'll be there when you are."
"But— But—clothes! Personal possessions!"
"You won't have any need for personal possessions on Cuckoo, Jen. They'll give you everything you need. So that's settled." She beamed at him fondly. "And listen, Jen. If you and that pretty graduate student of yours are free tonight, two of the trustees are coming to my place for dinner. I'd be honored to have you come and be introduced, as the university's first volunteer for Cuckoo!"
For all of his life Jen Babylon, like most of the human race since the beginning of time, had been one, single person, with a single past and a single future and no complications about which "he" was "him." There was something terribly troubling about facing up to the knowledge that in just a few hours he was going to be split in two. Two of him! Two Jen Babylons! One here, living the cherished familiar life; the other in some unimaginably distant place, doing heaven knew what. It was not even comprehensible, in an intellectual sense. But there was something heavy and quivering at the pit of his stomach that comprehended it fully, and was in shock.
The mechanical voice of his cab sang sweetly, "You have arrived at your destination, sir. Please insert your credit tab under the flashing orange light and then exit on the curb side of the taxi."
He was at his home. "Oh," he said. "All right." In spite of having slept three separate times in no more than thirty- six hours, he felt no more than half awake as he stumbled into the lift shaft and up to his small fiftieth-floor apartment. It wasn't until he had tried the electrokey three times without getting the door open that he realized it was locked from inside.
Someone was in his apartment. He knocked, frowning. Perhaps it was Sheryl, the graduate student who had supplied as close as he came to a relationship. But it was not like her to be in his apartment when he wasn't there, especially since she probably had no idea he was nearer than Bora-Bora or New Guinea.
When the door opened it wasn't Sheryl. "Good God!" Babylon said, startled. It was his mysterious caller of the night before, Ben Pertin.
But it was not the Ben Pertin he had known in the undergraduate days. This one looked far older and more worn than the dozen years between could explain. "Jen! It's good to see you," Pertin exclaimed, and then responded to the expression on Jen Babylon's face. "Sorry about the way I look," he said wryly. "Tilings are pretty rugged on Cuckoo."
Babylon shook his hand absently and then, realizing that it was after all his own threshold that he was standing at, entered his tiny apartment. Pertin had been there for some time, it appeared, and had made free use of it. Glasses were stacked at the utilitarian kitchen area, and the neck of an empty bottle protruded from a trash basket. The sleeping couch was in its daytime mode, but the dangling edges of bedclothes showed that it had been used. "Your friend Sheryl let me in," Pertin explained apologetically. "I meant to clean up before you got home, but—"
"It doesn't matter," Babylon said automatically, and then realized it was true. In comparison with Pertin's presence here—from Cuckoo!—it mattered not at all.
"I'm sorry if I've been rude," he said, "but you're quite a surprise! The thing is, I've just been told I'm going to Cuckoo myself."
"You are! God, Jen, that's marvelous! I hardly dared hope you'd do it."
"Actually," Babylon said, "I don't seem to have much choice."
Pertin's face fell. "Well, I'm sorry about that," he said, with embarrassment. "But we really need you! You see, we just-—"
"Wait a minute, Ben. What do you mean 'we'?"
"I mean us, all of us on Cuckoo—all the people, and the other races, too. That's why I came here to get you—and, of course, I'm still there, too," he added, in a tone that seemed packed with both pain and rage.
"Because you were tachyon-transmitted here?"
Pertin nodded, and sat down in one of Jen's chairs, reaching for a half-finished drink. "The Sheliaks'll be furious," he said. "They forbade me to do it, but you're needed, Jen. A few weeks ago we sent out a probe and it found something. A ship. Or perhaps a fleet of ships; or a city—it's hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. It's immense, and it's terribly old. And we can't get close to it." He finished his drink moodily, started to get up to make another, and then, remembering, looked guilt- stricken. "I hope you don't mind my helping myself, Jen? Would you like one?"
"Go ahead, fix your drink. What about this ship?"
"It transmitted a message—aural, received by the external microphones on the probe, and visual, received on a dozen instruments at once. We can't understand it. I'm convinced that it's the key to entering the ship, but without it—well, it repeated the message three times. And then the lander probe stopped sending.. It was destroyed."
"You must have Pmal translators—"
"Oh, hell, Jen, of course we do. They don't work. The language of the message is so different from anything in the Galaxy, anything else we've encountered even on Cuckoo, that there are no analogs to work from. So we need the best linguistics person there is—and that's you, Jen. So I came here, and I pulled a few strings with the tachyon- transit people, and they pulled a few at the university . . ."
"Thanks," Babylon said, with an edge to his voice.
Ben Pertin seemed to shrivel suddenly, as if expecting a blow. And then he laughed. "Oh, I don't blame you, Jen. Cuckoo's the garbage heap of the Galaxy, and all of us on it are stepchildren. They transmitted us out there, and most of us die, and no one cares about that. And the ones that are left are trying to do a job—or some of them are, anyway—and no one cares about that, either. Cuckoo is big, Jen! You'd think all the races would get together to study it! But we can't even get supplies. And most of the time it seems that half the beings there are principally concerned with trying to keep the other half from getting the job done. It's rotten, Jen." He grinned without humor. "And so you say, how do I have the nerve to make you come out there? Well, I do have the nerve, Jen. You're needed. That's all."
He finished his latest drink and stood up. He frowned abruptly and caught at the arm of the chair for support. "Sorry," he said. "I've been celebrating being home. Now I'll just run along—"
"You might as well stay and have dinner," said Babylon grudgingly.
Pertin thought that was funny. "What dinner?" he giggled. "I've been staying right here waiting for you—and, of course, I had to eat. There's not much left, I'm afraid."