The PanSpechi equivalent of a chuckle, a rumbling grunt, shook him. Fat lot of good that search would do them! No friend or acquaintance from the old days would be likely to recognize his face, now that the medics had changed it. Oh, the bridge of the nose and the set of the eyes were similar, but . . .
Cheo shook his head. Why was he worrying? No one - absolutely no one - was going to stop him from destroying the Caleban! And after that, all these conjectures would be academic.
He sighed heavily. His hands were gripping the length of rope so tightly that his muscles ached. It took him several heartbeats of effort to release them. He climbed to his feet, threw the severed rope at a wall. A flailing end of it lashed a chairdog, which whimpered sibilantly through its atrophied vocal structure.
Cheo nodded to himself. They had to get the guards away from the Caleban or the Caleban away from the guards. He rubbed the scars on his forehead, hesitated. Was that a sound behind him? Slowly he turned, lowered his hand.
Miss Abnethe stood in the doorway to the outer hall. The orange light created embers in the pearl sheathing of her gown. Her face held back anger, fear, and the grievous murmurings of her psyche.
"How long have you been there?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
"Why?" She stepped into the room, closed the door. "What've you been doing?"
"Fishing," he said.
She swept the room with her insolent gaze, saw the pile of whips in a corner. They were thrown over something vaguely round and hairy. A wet red stain crept onto the floor from beneath the pile. She paled, whispered, "What's that?"
"Get out of here, Mliss," he said.
"What've you been doing?" she shrieked, whirling on him.
I should tell her, he thought. I should really tell her.
"I've been working to save our lives," he said.
"You've killed someone, haven't you?" she rasped.
"He didn't suffer," Cheo said, his voice tired.
"But you . . ."
"What's one more death among the quadrillions we're planning?" he asked. By all the devils of Gowachin, she was a tiresome bitch!
"Cheo, I'm afraid."
Why did she have to whimper like that?
"Calm yourself," he said. "I've a plan to separate the Caleban from her guardians. When we achieve that, we can proceed with her destruction, and the thing's done."
She swallowed, said, "She suffers. I know she does."
"That's nonsense! You've heard her deny it. She doesn't even know what pain means. No referents!"
"But what if we're wrong? What if it's just a misunderstanding?"
He advanced on her, stood glaring over her. "Mliss, do you have any idea how much we'll suffer if we fail?"
She shuddered. Presently, her voice almost normal, she asked, "What's your plan?"
***
One species can, all by itself, produce infinite varieties of experiences. The interaction between many species creates the illusion that infinity has been enlarged by several orders of magnitude.
McKie felt danger signals from every nerve ending. He stood with Tuluk in the Wreave's lab. The place should have been comfortingly familiar, but McKie felt as though the walls had been removed, opening the lab onto boundless space from which attack could come. No matter which way he turned, his back was exposed to menace. Abnethe and her friends were getting desperate. The fact of desperation said she was vulnerable. If only he could understand her vulnerability. Where was she vulnerable? What was her weakness?
And where had she hidden herself?
"This is very strange material," Tuluk said, straightening from the bench where he had been examining the silvery rope. "Very strange."
"What's strange about it?"
"It cannot exist."
"But it's right there." McKie pointed.
"I can see that, my friend."
Tuluk extruded a single mandible, scratched thoughtfully at the right lip of his face slit. One orange eye became visible as he turned, glanced at McKie.
"Well?" McKie said.
"The only planet where this material could have been grown ceased to exist several millennia ago," Tuluk said. "There was only one place - a peculiar combination of chemistry and solar energy . . ."
"You've got to be mistaken! The stuff's right there."
"The Archer's Eye," Tuluk said. "You recall the story of the nova there?"
McKie cocked his head to one side, thought for a moment, then, "I've read about it, yes,"
"The planet was called Rap," Tuluk said. "This is a length of Rapvine."
"Rapvine."
"You've heard of it?"
"I don't believe so."
"Yes, well . . . it's strange stuff. Has a relatively short life span, among its other peculiar characteristics. Another thing: the ends don't fray, even when it's cut. See?" Tuluk plucked several strands from the cut end, released them. They slapped back into position. "It was called intrinsic attraction. There's been considerable speculation about it. I'm now in a position to . . ."
"Short life," McKie interrupted. "How short?"
"No more than fifteen or twenty standard years under the most ideal conditions."
"But the planet . . ."
"Millennia ago, yes."
McKie shook his head to clear it. His eyes scanned the length of silvery rope suspiciously. "Obviously, somebody found how to grow the stuff someplace other than Rap."
"Perhaps. But they've managed to keep it a secret all this time."
"I don't like what I think you're thinking," McKie said.
"That's the most convoluted statement I've ever heard you make," Tuluk said. "Its meaning is clear enough, however. You believe I'm considering the possibility of time travel or . . ."
"Impossible!" McKie snapped.
"I've been engaged in a most interesting mathematical analysis of this problem," Tuluk said.
"Number games aren't going to help us."
"Your behavior is most un-McKie," Tuluk said. "Irrational. Therefore, I'll try not to burden your mind with too much of my symbolic construction. It is, however, more than a game for . . ."
"Time travel," McKie said. "Nonsense!"
"Our habitual forms of perception tend to interfere with the thinking process required for analysis of this problem," Tuluk said. "Thus, I discard these modes of thought."
"Such as?"
"If we examine the series relationships, what do we have? We have a number of point-dimensions in space. Abnethe occupies a position on a specific planet, as does the Caleban. We are given the actuality of contact between the two points, a series of events."
"So?"
"We must assume a pattern to these point-contacts."
"Why? They could be random examp -"
"Two specific planets whose movements describe coherent patterns in space. A pattern, a rhythm. Otherwise, Abnethe and her crew would be attacking with more frequency. We are confronted by a system which defies conventional analysis. It had temporal rhythm translatable into point-series rhythm. It is spatial and temporal."
McKie felt the attraction of Tuluk's argument as a force lifting his mind out of a cloud. "Some form of reflection, maybe?" he asked. "It doesn't have to be time trav -"
"This is not a fugue!" Tuluk objected. "A simple quadratic equation achieves no elliptical functions here. Ergo we are dealing with linear relationships."
"Lines," McKie whispered. "Connectives."
"Eh? Oh, yes. Linear relationships which describe moving surfaces across some form or forms of dimension. We cannot be sure of the Caleban's dimensional outlook, but our own is another matter."
McKie pursed his lips. Tuluk had moved into an extremely thin air of abstractions, but there was an inescapable elegance to the Wreave's argument.