"You, Pertin! What's the secret now? Where are Zara and Org Rider?"
Pertin snapped back, "Close the door, you idiot! Do you want the whole orbiter to hear you?" And then, when the room was secure again, he smiled with a look of silky self- satisfaction. "I got ahead of them for once," he boasted.
"How? Who are 'them' ?"
Pertin said gravely, "Everybody who is not in this room, I think." He nodded toward his companions—the T'Worlie, the silvery girl, and Doris. "We can talk in front of these three, so I can tell you that Zara and Org Rider are on their way home!"
"Home?"
Pertin smiled indulgently. "Oh, not the Earth. Org Rider's home." He gestured at the mural above his head of the huge mountain, and added in a superior tone, "If you'd studied the maps you would know that Knife-in-the-Sky is not much more than a thousand kilometers from that temple by the lake—right next door, by Cuckoo standards!"
Babylon controlled his irritation as best he could, but there was an edge on his voice as he said: "Ben, I really do advise you to give me a straight answer. Why?"
Pertin seemed to shrink before his friend's anger. In a much more subdued way, he said quickly: "They're getting orgs, Jen. If you remember what those tunnels looked like, they're a long, slow hike on foot—but they're mostly pretty high and wide. An org can fly them at least ten times as fast as the party did with the Purchased People walking every step." He hesitated, then offered, "I, uh, I thought we ought to follow them, Jen."
There was a squeak from Doc Chimp but Babylon didn't even look at him. "Follow them?"
"Well, somebody has to, don't they? Org Rider and Zara went by lander—I wanted them to use tachyon transport, but Org Rider has some silly superstitious objections to it— and they'll meet us at the temple. With extra orgs, enough for all of us. Then we can just get on the orgs and—oh, dammit, Doc, what is it?"
The chimpanzee had been trying hesitantly to attract his attention. "Ben, who's 'us'? Do you mean me, too? And if you do, did you forget that that terrible beast has already killed me once down there?"
Pertin shrugged irritably. "We'll go armed," he said impatiently. "We'll go by tachyon transport, so we'll be there before Org Rider and Zara—"
"Oh, no, we won't," Doc Chimp declared, pulling his leathery lips back in a scowl that bared his long yellow teeth. "Org Rider's not the only primate that has objections to tachyon transport, and with me it isn't superstition! I've been killed often enough! I don't want to be killed anymore."
"Then we'll go without you!" Pertin snapped. "Well, Jen? What about it?"
Babylon temporized. "What about the others?" he demanded, and the Purchased Person, Doris, spoke in her slow, unearthly voice:
"This one has already concurred."
Babylon looked at the winged silvery girl, who met his gaze out of her calm, bright eyes. Her voice was like the sound of chimes as she answered: "I wish to go. I do not require an org to fly."
Which left only the T'Worlie.
The little bat-butterfly of a creature had been floating silently over Pertin's head, listening without saying a word. Now it spoke, and the Pmal gave its answer.
"Statement. Concur in desirability of proposal, express willingness to participate. Query: Is amplification or explanation desired?"
"My God, yes!" Babylon exploded.
The T'Worlie exuded its sour-lemon smell of amusement. "Following is a synoptic series of statements and conclusions. Probability estimates vary, but in general exceed point-nine. First statement. At some time t certain species, primarily the so-called Boaty-Bits, but with the assistance of individuals of eight other races of beings—"
Babylon groaned internally; you should never ask a T'Worlie to explain or amplify! But once started, the little being moved on implacably through the entire history of the events on, in, and around Cuckoo: the private tachyon transporter that the rebels smuggled aboard and used without authorization; the private control mechanism they seemed to have developed for Purchased People, perhaps a hidden power of the Boaty-Bits; the expedition; the damage to the interior of Cuckoo; the fighting far under the surface of Cuckoo; the revelation that Cuckoo itself was an artifact ... It went on endlessly; or so nearly endlessly that Babylon was astonished when at last the T'Worlie fell silent. "Well," he said quickly, "thank you for—"
But the T'Worlie had merely paused, it appeared, for dramatic effect. It squeaked on, and the Pmal drowned out Babylon's attempt to intervene:
"In consideration of foregoing evidence, in conjunction with other data not now specified, certain hypotheses may be offered for testing. These have been received or deduced by me as part of my necessary regimen of rational self-therapy. In this process I was aided by certain other beings, including many TWorlie and the Purchased Person known as Doris—"
"Doris? You?" Babylon interrupted, staring at the girl. Something not human stared back at him out of her eyes, but she only said: "It is necessary that you receive the data the TWorlie is now offering you."
"Continuation," the T'Worlie said sharply, with a burnt- sugar scent for emphasis. "Also assistance from farlink and from the hexagons secured from the wrecked orbital vessel. Central conclusion: Entire ring system, and therefore existence of object Cuckoo itself, is vulnerable."
"Vulnerable to what?" Babylon demanded, and the Purchased Person reached out to touch him.
With a voice like the tolling of a bell she said, "To destruction. And all of us with it"
In all the long weeks Babylon had worked with the TWorlie he had never heard so long a monologue—and perhaps not one with such importance for him. For the T'Worlie was saying that he had reasoned out the entire story of Cuckoo! The gentle chirping went on and on, and his Pmal rattled out the translation: "Hexagon record encoded by ancient historians of early Watcher race purports to summarize their history. Statement of historians: Race ancestral to Watchers was brought to Cuckoo by, quote—"
The translation from the Pmal stopped short: the T'Worlie's shrill bird song continued, but without translation. Obviously there was no equivalent store in the Pinal's datafile. "Don't play tricks, Mimmie," Babylon begged. "What does that mean?"
"Original ambiguous. Analogy with known terms suggests tentative translation as 'eternal master,' 'supreme creator,' or possibly 'God.' To continue summary, the original Watcher race was brought aboard before the intergalactic voyage began, to defend Cuckoo. Evolved on a low-G world, they were gigantic winged warriors. The hexagon record seems to imply that the 'supreme creator' and most of his slave races were to sleep through a voyage lasting—" Again, all he heard was the T'Worlie's chittering. "Term appears to indicate a time period of extreme duration, certainly tens of millions of years. While others slept, the Watchers were stationed in the orbital forts and at points near the surface of Cuckoo to guard it at least during the first stages of the long voyage. If Cuckoo was created as vehicle of flight from anticipated galactic catastrophe, other beings may have sought to get aboard or even to seize the whole craft in hope of saving themselves.
"The successful emergence of Cuckoo from the endangered galaxy into intergalactic space made it safe from any such attacks. During the long ages of flight between galaxies, no further military service from the Watchers was required. They appear to have been neglected, if not forgotten. In the beginning, as the historians imply, no life had existed on the external surface, which was then a bare and sterile metal shell. The water and soil and atmosphere there now seem to have been accumulated through the ages of the flight, partly from collected cosmic dust but largely from waste products discharged to the surface from the internal mechanism of Cuckoo. Plants developed there, perhaps from spores and seed in the vented waste. Animals followed, brought perhaps by the Watcher garrisons or perhaps by escaping slaves of other races. These in turn were followed by degenerate dwarfish Watchers such as those we have encountered, which became predators upon the animals and finally enemies of all they had been intended to defend.