"Maybe this jumpdoor's different."
"I doubt it."
"After I've reported in, what then?"
"Sit tight outside there until I call you - unless they give you a message for me. Oh, and start a general search on Cordiality . . . just in case."
"Of course." Furuneo hesitated. "One thing - who do I contact at the Bureau? Bildoon?"
McKie glanced up. Why should Furuneo question whom to call? What was he trying to say?
It dawned on McKie then that Furuneo had hit on a logical concern. BuSab director Napoleon Bildoon was a PanSpechi, a pentarchal sentient, human only in appearance. Since McKie, a human, held nominal charge of this case, that might appear to confine control of it, excluding other members of the ConSentiency. Interspecies political infighting could take odd turns in a time of stress. It would be best to involve a broad directorate here.
"Thanks," McKie said. "I wasn't thinking much beyond the immediate problem."
"This is the immediate problem."
"I understand. All right, I was tapped for this chore by our Director of Discretion."
"Gitchel Siker?"
"Yes."
"That's one Laclac and Bildoon, a PanSpechi. Who else?"
"Get somebody out of the Legal Department."
"Bound to be a human."
"The minute you stretch it that far, they'll all get the message," McKie said. "They'll bring in the others before making any official decision."
Furuneo nodded. "One other thing."
"What?"
"How do I get out of here?"
McKie faced the giant spoon. "Good question. Fanny Mae, how does my companion leave here?"
"He wishes to journey where?"
"To his home."
"Connectives apparent," the Caleban said.
McKie felt a gush of air. His ears popped to a change in pressure. There was a sound like the pulling of a cork from a bottle. He whirled. Furuneo was gone.
"You . . . sent him home?" McKie asked.
"Correct," the Caleban said. "Desired destination visible. Sent swiftness. Prevent temperature drop below proper level. "
McKie, feeling perspiration roll down his cheeks, said, "I wish I knew how you did that. Can you actually see our thoughts?"
"See only strong connectives," the Caleban said.
Discontinuity of meaning, McKie thought.
The Caleban's remark about temperature came back to him. What was a proper temperature level? Damn! It was boiling in here! His skin itched with perspiration. His throat was dry. Proper temperature level?
"What's the opposite of proper?" he asked.
"False," the Caleban said.
***
The play of words can lead to certain expectations which life is unable to match. This is a source of much insanity and other forms of unhappiness.
For a reflexive time which he found himself unable to measure, McKie considered his exchange with the Caleban. He felt cast adrift without any familiar reference points. How could false be the opposite of proper? If he could not measure meanings, how could he measure time?
McKie passed a hand across his forehead, gathering perspiration which he tried to wipe off on his jacket. The jacket was damp.
No matter how much time had passed, he felt that he still knew where he was in this universe. The Beachball's interior walls remained around him. The unseeable presence of the Caleban had not become less mysterious, but he could look at the shimmering existence of the thing and take a certain satisfaction from the fact that it spoke to him.
The thought that every sentient who had used a jumpdoor would die if this Caleban succumbed sat on McKie's awareness. It was muscle-numbing. His skin was slick with perspiration, and not all of it from the heat. There were voices of death in this air. He thought of himself as a being surrounded by all those pleading sentients - quadrillions upon quadrillions of them. Help us!
Everyone who'd used a jumpdoor.
Damnation of all devils! Had he interpreted the Caleban correctly? It was the logical assumption. Deaths and insanity around the Caleban disappearances said he must exclude any other interpretation. '
Link by link, this trap had been forged. It would crowd the universe with dead flesh.
The shimmering oval above the giant spoon abruptly waved outward, contracted, flowed up, down, left. McKie received a definite impression of distress. The oval vanished, but his eyes still tracked the Caleban's unpresence.
"Is something wrong?" McKie asked.
For answer the round vortal tube of a S'eye jumpdoor opened behind the Caleban. Beyond the opening stood a woman, a figure dwarfed as though seen through the wrong end of a telescope. McKie recognized her from all the newsvisos and from the holoscans he had been fed as background briefing for this assignment.
He was confronting Mliss Abnethe in a light somewhat reddened by its slowed passage through the jumpdoor.
It was obvious that the Beautybarbers of Steadyon had been about their expensive work on her person. He made a mental note to have that checked. Her figure presented the youthful curves of a pleasurefem. The face beneath fairy-blue hair was focused around a red-petal mouth. Large summery green eyes and a sharply cleaving nose conveyed odd contrast - dignity versus hoyden. She was a flawed queen, age mingled with youth. She must be at least eighty standard years, but the Beautybarbers had achieved this startling combination: available pleasurefem and remote, hungry power.
The expensive body wore a long gown of grey rainpearls which matched her, movement for movement, like a glittering skin. She moved nearer the vortal tube. As she approached, the edges of the tube blocked off first her feet, then her legs, thighs, waist.
McKie felt his knees age a thousand years in that brief passage. He remained crouched near the place where he'd entered the Beachball.
"Ahhh, Fanny Mae," Mliss Abnethe said. "You have a guest." Jumpdoor interference caused her voice to sound faintly hoarse.
"I am Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinary," he said.
Was that a contraction in the pupils of her eyes? McKie wondered. She stopped with only her head and shoulders visible in the tube's circle.
"And I am Mliss Abnethe, private citizen."
Private citizen! McKie thought. This bitch controlled the productive capacity of at least five hundred worlds. Slowly McKie got to his feet.
"The Bureau of Sabotage has official business with you," he said, putting her on notice to satisfy the legalities.
"I am a private citizen!" she barked. The voice was prideful, vain, marred by petulance.
McKie took heart at the revealed weakness. It was a particular kind of flaw that often went with wealth and power. He had had experience in dealing with such flaws.
"Fanny Mae, am I your guest?" he asked.
"Indeed," the Caleban said. "I open my door to you."
"Am I your employer, Fanny Mae?" Abnethe demanded.
"Indeed, you employ me."
A breathless, crouching look came over her face. Her eyes went to slits. "Very well. Then prepare to fulfill the obligations of . . ."
"One moment!" McKie said. He felt desperate. Why was she moving so fast? What was that faint whine in her voice?
"Guests do not interfere," Abnethe said.
"BuSab makes its own decisions about interference!" McKie said.
"Your jurisdiction has limits!" she countered.
McKie heard the beginnings of many actions in that statement: hired operatives, gigantic sums spent as bribes, doctored agreements, treaties, stories planted with the visos on how this good and proud lady had been mistreated by her government, a wide enlistment of personal concern to justify - what? Violence against his person? He thought not. More likely to discredit him, to saddle him with onerous misdeeds.
Thought of all that power made McKie wonder suddenly why he made himself vulnerable to it. Why had he chosen BuSab? Because I'm difficult to please, he told himself. I'm a Saboteur by choice. There was no going back on that choice now. BuSab appeared to walk down the middle of everywhere and always wound up on the high road.