Shower of . . . of . . . SPARKS!
Louder this time, he called, "Fanny Mae?"
A peculiar silence rippled through the Beachball. It was an emotionless silence, something shut off, removed. It made McKie's skin prickle.
"Answer me, Fanny Mae," he said.
"S'eye absents itself," the Caleban said.
McKie felt shame, a deep and possessive sense of guilt. It flowed over him and through him, filled every cell. Dirty, muddy, sinful, shameful . . .
He shook his head. Why should he feel guilt?
Ahhh. Realization came over him. The emotion came from outside him. It was Fanny Mae!
"Fanny Mae," he said, "I understand you could not prevent that attack. I don't blame you. I understand."
"Surprise connectives," the Caleban said. "You overstand."
"I understand."
"Overstand? Term for intensity of knowledge? Realization!"
"Realization, yes."
Calmness returned to McKie, but it was the calmness of something being withdrawn.
Again he reminded himself that he had a vital message for Tuluk. Shower of sparks. But first he had to be certain that that mad PanSpechi wasn't going to return momentarily.
"Fanny Mae, " he said, "can you prevent them from using the S'eye?"
"Obstructive, not preventive," the Caleban said.
"You mean you can slow them down?"
"Explain slow."
"Oh, no," McKie moaned. He cast around in his mind for a Caleban way to phrase his question. How would Fanny Mae say it?
"Will there be . . ." He shook his head. "The next attack, will it be on a short connective or long one?"
"Attack series breaks here," the Caleban said. "You inquire of duration by your time sense. I overstand this. Long line across attack nodes, this equates with more intense duration for your time sense."
"Intense duration," McKie muttered. "Yeah."
Shower of sparks, he reminded himself. Shower of sparks.
"You signify employment of S'eye by Cheo," the Caleban said. "Spacing extends at this place. Cheo goes farther down your track. I overstand intensely for McKie: Yes?"
Farther down my track, McKie thought. He gulped as realization hit him. What had Fanny Mae said earlier? "See us to the door! I am S'eye!"
He breathed softly, lest sudden motion dislodge this brutal clarity of understanding.
Overstanding!
He thought of energy requirements. Enormous! "I am S'eye!" And "Self-energy - by being stellar mass!" To do what they did in this dimension, Calebans required the energy of a stellar mass. She inhaled the whip! She'd said it herself: they sought energy here. The Calebans fed in this dimension! In other dimensions, too, no doubt.
McKie considered the refined discrimination Fanny Mae must possess even to attempt communication with him. It would be as though he immersed his mouth in water and tried to talk to a single microorganism there!
I should have understood, he thought, when Tuluk said something about realizing where he lived.
"We have to go right back to the beginning," he said.
"Many beginnings exist for each entity," the Caleban said.
McKie sighed.
Sighing, he was seized by a Taprisiot contact. It was Bildoon.
"I'm glad you waited," McKie said, cutting off Bildoon's first anxious inquiries. "Here's what I want you to . . ."
"McKie, what's going on there?" Bildoon insisted. "There are dead enforcers all around you, madmen, a riot . . ."
"I seem to be immune," McKie said, "or else Fanny Mae is protecting me some way. Now, listen to me. We don't have much time. Get Tuluk. He has a device for identifying the patterns which originate in the stress of creation. He's to bring that device here - right here to the Beachball. And fast."
***
Taken in isolated tandem, Government and Justice are mutually exclusive. There must be a third force at work for any society to achieve both government and justice. This is why the Bureau of Sabotage sometimes is called "The Third Force."
In the hushed stillness within the Beachball, McKie leaned against a curved wall, sipped ice water from a thermocup. He kept his eyes active, though, watching Tuluk set up the needed instruments.
"What's to prevent our being attacked while we work?" Tuluk asked. He rolled a glowing loop on a squat stand into position near the Caleban's unpresence. "You should've let Bildoon send in some guards."
"Like those ones who were foaming at the mouth outside?"
"There's a fresh crew outside there now!"
Tuluk did something which made the glowing loop double its diameter.
"They'd only get in the way," McKie said. "Besides, Fanny Mae says the spacing isn't right for Abnethe." He sipped ice water. The room had achieved something approaching sauna temperature, but without the humidity.
"Spacing," Tuluk said. "Is that why Abnethe keeps missing you?" He produced a black wand from his instrument case. The wand was about a meter long. He adjusted a knob on the wand's handle, and the glowing loop contracted. The squat stand beneath the glowing loop began to hum - an itch-producing middle C.
"They miss me because I have a loving protector," McKie said. "It isn't every sentient who can say a Caleban loves him."
"What is that you're drinking?" Tuluk asked. "Is that one of your mind disrupters?"
"You're very funny," McKie said. "How much longer are you going to be fiddling with that gear?"
"I am not fiddling. Don't you realize this isn't portable equipment? It must be adjusted."
"So adjust."
"The high temperature in here complicates my readings." Tuluk complained. "Why can't we have the port open?"
"For the same reason I didn't let any guards in here. I'll take my chances without having them complicated by a mob of insane sentients getting in my way."
"But must it be this hot?"
"Can't be helped," McKie said. "Fanny Mae and I have been talking, working things out."
"Talking?"
"Hot air," McKie said.
"Ahhh, you make a joke."
"It can happen to anyone," McKie said. "I keep asking myself if what we see as a star is all of a Caleban or just part of one. I opt for part." He drank deeply of the ice water, discovered there was no more ice in it. Tuluk was right. It was damnably hot in here.
"That's a strange theory," Tuluk said. He silenced the humming of his instrument case. In the abrupt stillness something else in the case could be heard ticking. It was not a peaceful sound. It had the feeling of a timing device affixed to a bomb. It counted moments in a deadly race.
McKie felt each counted moment accumulate like a congealing bubble. It expanded . . . expanded - and broke! Each instant was death lashing at him. Tuluk with his strange wand was a magician, but he had reversed the ancient process. He was turning golden instants into deadly lead. His shape was wrong, too. He had no haunches. The tubular Wreave shape annoyed McKie. Wreaves moved too slowly.
The damnable ticking!
The Caleban's Beachball might be the last house in the universe, the last container for sentient life. And it contained no bed where a sentient might die decently.
Wreaves didn't sleep in beds, of course. They took their rest in slanted supports and were buried upright.
Tuluk had gray skin.
Lead.
If all things ended now, McKie wondered, which of them would be the last to go? Whose breath would be the final one?
McKie breathed the echoes of all his fears. There was too much hanging on each counted instant here.
No more melodies, no more laughter, no more children racing in play. . . .
"There," Tuluk said.