Later than any of them think, no doubt, McKie told himself.
He shouldered his way through the enforcers, got a boost up through the port, and surveyed the familiar purple gloom inside the Beachball. It was noticeably warmer in here out of the wind and spray, but not as warm as McKie remembered the place.
"Has the Caleban been talking?" McKie asked a Laclac, one of the enforcers guarding the interior.
"I don't call it talking, but the answer is not recently."
"Fanny Mae," McKie said.
Silence.
"You still there, Fanny Mae?" McKie asked.
"McKie? You invoke presence, McKie?"
McKie felt he had registered the words on his eyeballs and relayed them to his hearing centers. They definitely were weaker than he remembered.
"How many floggings has she undergone in the past day?" McKie asked the Laclac.
"Local day?" the Laclac asked.
"What difference does it make?"
"I presumed you were asking for accurate data." The Laclac sounded offended.
"I'm trying to find out if she's been under attack recently," McKie said. "She sounds weaker than when I was here before." He stared toward the giant spoon where the Caleban maintained her unpresence.
"Attacks have been intermittent and sporadic but not very successful," the Laclac said. "We've collected more whips and Palenki arms, although I understand they're not being successfully transmitted to the lab."
"McKie invokes presence of Caleban self called Fanny Mae?" the Caleban asked.
"I greet you, Fanny Mae," McKie said.
"You possess new connective entanglements, McKie," the Caleban said, "but the pattern of you retains recognition. I greet you, McKie."
"Does your contract with Abnethe still lead us all toward ultimate discontinuity?" McKie asked.
"Intensity of nearness," the Caleban said. "My employer wishes speech with you."
"Abnethe? She wants to talk to me?"
"Correct."
"She could've called me anytime," McKie said.
"Abnethe conveys request through self of me," the Caleban said. "She asks relay among anticipated connective. This connective you perceive under label of 'now.' You hang this, McKie?"
"I hang it," McKie growled. "So let her talk."
"Abnethe requires you send companions from presence."
"Alone?" McKie demanded. "What makes her think I'd do such a thing?" It was getting hotter in the Beachball. He wiped perspiration from his upper lip.
"Abnethe speaks of sentient motive called curiosity."
"I've my own conditions for such a conference," McKie said. "Tell her I won't agree unless I'm assured she'll make no attack on you or on me during our talk."
"I give such assurance."
"You give it?"
"Probability in Abnethe assurance appears . . . incomplete. Approximate descriptive. Assurance by self runs intense . . . strong. Direct? Perhaps."
"Why do you give this assurance?"
"Employer Abnethe indicates strong desire for talk. Contract covers such . . . catering? Very close term. Catering."
"You guarantee our safety, is that it?"
"Intense assurance, no more."
"No attack during our talk," McKie insisted.
"Thus propels connective," the Caleban said.
Behind McKie, the Laclac enforcer grunted, said, "Do you understand that gibberish?"
"Take your squad and get out of here," McKie said.
"Ser, my orders . . ."
"Deface your orders! I'm acting under the cartouche of Saboteur Extraordinary with full discretion from the Bureau Chief himself! Get out!"
"Ser," the Laclac said, "during the most recent flogging nine enforcers went mad here despite ingestion of angeret and various other chemicals we'd believed would protect us. I cannot be responsible for . . ."
"You'll be responsible for a tide station on the nearest desert planet if you don't obey me at once," McKie said. "I will see you packed off to boredom after an official trial by . . ."
"I will not heed your threats, ser," the Laclac said. "However, I will consult Bildoon himself if you so order."
"Consult, then, and hurry it! There's a Taprisiot outside."
"Very well." The Laclac saluted, crawled out the port. His companions in the Beachball continued their restive watch, with occasional worried glances at McKie.
They were brave sentients, all of them, McKie thought, to continue this duty in the face of unknown peril. Even the Laclac demonstrated extraordinary courage - with his perversity. Only obeying orders though; no doubt of that.
Although it galled him, McKie waited.
An odd thought struck him: If all sentients died, all power stations of their universe would grind to a halt. It gave him a strange feeling, this contemplation of an end to mechanical things and commercial enterprise.
Green, growing things would take over - trees with golden light in their branches. And the dull sounds of nameless metal devices, things of plastic and glass, would grow muffled with no ears to hear them.
Chairdogs would die, unfed. Protein vats would fail, decompose.
He thought of his own flesh decomposing.
The whole fleshly universe decomposing.
It would be over in an instant, the way universe measured time.
A wild pulse lost on some breeze.
Presently the Laclac reappeared in the port, said, "Ser, I am instructed to obey your orders, but to remain outside in visual contact with you, returning to this place at the first sign of trouble."
"If that's the best we can do, that's it," McKie said. "Get moving."
In a minute McKie found himself alone with the Caleban. The sense that every place in this room lay behind him persisted. His spine itched. He felt increasingly that he was taking too much of a risk.
But there was the desperation of their position.
"Where's Abnethe?" McKie asked. "I thought she wanted to talk."
A jumpdoor opened abruptly to the left of the Caleban's spoon. Abnethe's head and shoulders appeared in it, all slightly pink-hazed by the slowdown of all energy within that portal. The light was sufficient, though, that McKie could see subtle changes in Abnethe's appearance. He was gratified to note a harried look to her. Wisps of hair escaped her tight coiffure. Bloodshot veins could be detected in her eyes. There were wrinkles in her forehead.
She needed her Beautybarbers.
"Are you ready to give yourself up?" McKie asked.
"That's a stupid question," she said. "You're alone at my command."
"Not quite alone," McKie said, "There are . . ." He broke off at the sly smile which formed on Abnethe's lips.
"You'll note that Fanny Mae has closed the exterior port of her residence," Abnethe said.
McKie shot a glance to his left, saw that the port was closed. Treachery?
"Fanny Mae!" he called. "You assured me . . ."
"No attack," the Caleban said. "Privacy."
McKie imagined the consternation in the enforcers outside right now. But they would never be able to break into the Beachball. He saved his protests, swallowed. The room remained utterly still.
"Privacy, then," he agreed.
"That's better," Abnethe said. "We must reach agreement, McKie. You're becoming somewhat of a nuisance."
"Oh, more than a nuisance, certainly?"
"Perhaps."
"Your Palenki, the one who was going to chop me up - I found him a nuisance, too. Maybe even more than a nuisance. Now that I think about it, I recall that I suffered."
Abnethe shuddered.
"By the way," McKie said, "we know where you are."
"You lie!"
"Not really. You see, you're not where you think you are, Mliss. You think you've gone back in time. You haven't."