“Why is he off by himself?” asked Alicia Lo.
“He’s in high-speed mode so he can be interviewed. They thrash around so, you know? If he were in with the others in high mode, he’d mess up their living quarters.”
Albert said professorially, “I observe we are not viewing them by visible light.”
“No, right. It’s tomography, because you couldn’t see in visible light in that slush they live in. Want to hear what he’s singing?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but cut in an audio feed. It wasn’t the Sluggard we heard, but a machine translator. It declaimed:
Great blinding blistering brutes
Thrashed and harmed with much cavitation
And many deaths and highly painful injuries—“That’s just the latest stanza,” Cassata explained. “He’s only been going for about an hour this time. We have to let them rest up between sessions. They can’t stand high mode very long, and we can’t deal with them at all when they’re in normal. Want to keep on watching them for a while?”
I said, “What I want, General Cassata, is to talk to somebody in authority around here. How the hell much longer do we have to stall around?”
But Essie put her soft, sweet hand on my lips. “General will let us know soonest possible, is that not so, Julio? So have nothing better to do.”—also to females the Sluggard’s translation finished, and I began to think of causing some death and highly painful injuries myself.
See, there we were again, caught in the disparity between gigabit time and meat.
I don’t think that I am basically a very patient man, but, oh, how much patience this machine-stored analog of me has had to learn! Especially in dealing with meat people. Not to mention with that particularly infuriating and exceptionally immovable section of the meat population, the military.
I stated my views on this matter for Julio Cassata’s benefit. He only grinned some more. He was enjoying it. Of course, from his point of view, the longer we waited here, the longer he had left to “live”—that is to say, the longer his doppel had, and his doppel was obviously reluctant to get itself terminated. I was a little surprised that he didn’t suggest that he take pretty Alicia Lo off for another little private sightseeing trip-I could well imagine what sights he had in mind-and perhaps he would have if Albert hadn’t come up with an idea.
He coughed politely and said, “I believe, General Cassata, that the Sluggards are not the only aliens of whom specimens are present here.”
Cassata raised his eyebrows. “You don’t mean the Voodoo Pigs?”
“The Voodoo Pigs, yes. Also the Quancies. The Institute has provided colonies of both for study. Might we see them as well?”
If there is anything less interesting to look at than the Quancies, it is the Voodoo Pigs, but of course you don’t know that until you try. “Oh, Julio,” cried Alicia Lo, “could we?” And then of course it was certain that we would.
Cassata shrugged and changed the scene. We were looking at a rocky pool of gray-green water, where half a dozen fishy-looking creatures were basking under a pale orange light. We got sound, too, the honking of Quancies chatting among themselves.
Since I had seen all the Quancies I ever wanted to see, I turned to the table of snacks. It wasn’t that I was hungry-or even “hungry.” I just wished we would get on with it.
I called on all my long training in patience. I didn’t like it, but I had no alternative that I could see. Real-Cassata was still in his meeting, and doppel-Cassata was just being a good host to us-if, I thought, mostly to his new girl. But the sky was falling, and it was no time for a trip to the zoo!
While the white-jacketed waiterthing was handing me a sandwich of chopped chicken liver and onion-all, of course, as simulated as the waiterthing itself-Albert wandered over to join me. “A good German bock, please,” he said to the waiter, and smiled at me. “You don’t care to hear what the Quancies are saying to each other, Rob?”
“Quancies never have anything to say.” I took a sullen bite of my sandwich. It was delicious, but it wasn’t what I wanted.
“It is probably futile to interview them,” Albert agreed, accepting the stein of dark beer. You have to admit that Quancies are intelligent, more or less, because at least they have language. What they don’t have is hands. They live in the sea, and their tiny flippers are no more use than a seal’s. If they weren’t air-breathing we probably never would have known they existed, because they don’t have cities, or tools, or, what is most important, writing. Therefore they have no written history. Neither do the Sluggards; but their life span is so long (if so slow) that their bards remember eddas that are as trustworthy, at least, as Homer’s songs. “I do have some news that may interest you,” said Albert when he had finished his first deep swallow of the beer.
Good old Albert! “Finish that up and I’ll buy you another,” I cried. “And tell me!”
“It is nothing much,” he said, “but of course I still have access to the datastore facilities on the True Love. There were a number of ifies that I thought might have some bearing on the present situation. It took quite a while to access them all, and there was very little useful data in the first few thousand. Then I checked out the immigration records for the past few months.”
“You found something,” I said to help him along. It isn’t only meat people who have taught me patience.
“I did, yes,” he said. “Most of the children who were evacuated from the Watch Wheel, you remember, were relocated on Earth. According to the immigration records, at least seven of them are presently in the area served by the western-Pacific communications net. Of course, it is from that net that the communication to the kugelblitz originated.”
I gave him a shocked and unbelieving stare. “Why would human children work for the Assassins?” I demanded.
“I don’t think they did,” said Albert, thoughtfully accepting his second stein, “although the possibility cannot be ruled Out. But we do know that they were present on the Wheel when the Watchers suspected they had detected something, and are now on Earth; it is at least possible that the Assassins have traveled with them.”
I felt myself shiver. “We have to tell JAWS!”
“Yes, of course.” Albert nodded. “I have already done so. I fear, though, that this will have the result of prolonging the meeting the original General Cassata has been conducting.”
I said, “Shit.”
“However—” Albert smiled “—I do not think it will be by very much, as I had already summed the data and presented it to Commandant Havandhi for transmittal to the meeting.”
“So what am I supposed to do now? Gape at the Quancies some more?”
“I think,” said Albert, “that the others are also losing interest in the Quancies and ready to go on to the Voodoo Pigs.”
“I’ve seen Voodoo Pigs!”
“There is nothing better to do, is there?” He hesitated and then added, “Also, I would like you to observe the carvings of the Voodoo Pigs. They are, I think, of some special interest.”
I could not tell, looking at the Voodoo Pigs, just what it was about them that Albert thought might be of interest. All I felt was disgust-I mean, not counting the impatience I worked so hard to quell. The Voodoo Pigs lived in slop. I had never understood why they didn’t drown in their own filth, but they didn’t seem to mind it.
That was the piggishness of the Voodoo Pigs. They didn’t really look porcine. More than anything else, they looked like blue-skinned anteaters; they tapered to a point, fore and aft. They really were piggy, though. What they lived in couldn’t be called a cage. It was a sty.
They lived in their own waste. The mud was not merely mud plus pigshit. It was stuck full of little garnishes, like raisins in a pudding of rotten fruit and excrement, and the garnishes were the carvings Albert had mentioned.