"That's wonderful," said Heller. "I was born in Atalanta province. In the capital, you know: Tapour." And they got into one of these "Did you know Jem Vis?" and "Do you remember the old lady Blice?" and "Is the courthouse still there?" interspersed with "You do?" and "What do you knows?" and "It's a small universe" that went on and on. They were fellow denizens of Manco, all right! Old Manco Reunion Week! It went on and on.
Finally they ran out of that, at least for the moment, and Heller got back to his picture cards. He held up one that said on the back, Old Man, Polynesian Blito-P3 (Earth, Oceania).
"One of the boat people from the harbor of Dar?" she said.
"Now this one," said Heller. The back said, Film Star, Female American, Blito-P3 (Earth, Americas).
"That isn't your sister," said the Countess. Heller showed her another. The back said, Male, Caucasian Blito-P3 (Earth).
"Is this some member of your family? It looks dimly like an uncle I had." She pretended, only pretended, to be severe. "What is this, Jettero Heller? Are you trying to tell me you've just been to Manco? But those pictures are not three-dimensional and their color is poor. Oh, I place them now. They're anthropology recognition cards. Give them to me!" She playfully snatched them out of his hand and looked at their backs.
She examined them a bit, turning them back and forth. "Blito-P3?"
"You remember an old fable?" said Heller. And with no prompting, he rattled off Folk Legend 894M, word for word in its entirety.
"Wait," said the Countess. She was thinking hard. Then she picked up her canister and began to swing it back and forth to get a rhythm time. Then she started singing in a rather throaty but pleasant voice. But she did manage to give it a childish pronunciation: If ever from life you need fly, Or a king has said loved ones must die, Take a trip In a ship That will bob, dive and dip, And find a new home in the sky.
Heller joined in: Bold Prince Caucalsia, There you are on high.
We see you wink, And we see you blink, Far, far, far above the Mo-o-o-o-n!
They both laughed, pleased with their duet of the nursery song. They must have learned it as children.
The Countess Krak said, "What star really was it that we used to point to and call 'Prince Caucalsia'?"
"Blito," said Heller.
"You mean he really got there?" said the Countess, delighted.
Now, in my opinion, an engineer trying to get into historical anthropology, a subject far out of his line, can be awfully wide of the mark.
Heller turned to me. "Why do they call this race type Caucasian?" and he threw down the card. "You know the planet. Is there some continent called Caucasian?"
"I think it's just a general race type," I said. I thought. Then I remembered. Heller does not have a monopoly on memory and I had had to really grind about Blito-P3. "There's a Caucasusdistrict in southern Russia. That's just north of Turkey. It's a sort of border between the two continents, Asia and Europe. But I don't think that's what type the name means. Maybe the people came from there and maybe not, but there is a Caucasoid race that migrated around and spread out pretty far. You find them all over the place now. The type has minimal skin pigmentation, straight or curly hair, high bridged, narrow noses. They have a high frequency of what they call Rh-negative blood type and the presence of a special blood element: I think you must have been looking at it today."
"All right," said Heller. "Is there an 'Atalanta'? A country or something?" I thought about it. I had to go over and get a reference book out of the pile, a thing they call an "encyclopedia." I read it aloud.
"Atlantis, also called Atalantis and Atalantica, legendary island in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. Its civilization was thought to be very advanced. It was supposed to have been overwhelmed by the seas."
"Aha," said Heller. "Whatever Prince Caucalsia founded got destroyed and the people had to migrate elsewhere."
"Heller," I said patiently, "an engineer is notan anthropologist!"
"Oh, but they are!" said the Countess. "They work out the whole geological cycle of a planet and to do that they have to know fossils and bones!" She was very prim about it. I realized that a certain person had been studying like mad!
"Well, maybe so," I said. And it might be true. "But a couple of names don't make a historical fact. Just coincidence! There are humanoids all over the place. There is no reason to believe that your Prince Caucalsia, or whatever his name was, put some races down on Blito-P3. I can show you fifteen planets where there are inhabitants that look like you or her or me."
"The poles shifted," said Heller, "probably got relocated in sea areas, the ice caps melted and it drowned the colony out. Poor Prince Caucalsia."
"The poor fellow," said the Countess.
"So that's what must have happened," said Heller. "Well!We better make awful sure it doesn't happen again and drown his descendants, too!"
"That would be a shame," said the Countess.
I should have had my wits examined. Here they were agreeing on the mission! And such was my dogged devotion to fact – except where it concerns affairs of the Apparatus, of course – that I just couldn't stand this much stupid sentimentality based on total illogics. "But Heller, we don't have any data, not real solid data, that Prince Caucalsia of Atalanta, Manco, colonized an island on Earth and called it Atlantis! Countrymen of yours weren't part of that migration!" Heller was looking at me with his eyes slightly closed. "It's more poetic that way," he said.
Oh, my Gods! Was this an engineer? A hard-minded, rock and metal and explosives engineer?
"Besides," said Heller, piling illogic upon illogic, "she likes it." The Countess Krak nodded very emphatically.
Conversation had ceased. I thought at first it was because I had put my foot wrong with them. They were just sitting there looking at me. Gradually I got the feeling that I was an unnecessary part of the scenery.
"Are there any empty cubicles along the passageway where you could sleep?" Heller said to me.
A shock ran through my head. If one of the sporadic guard patrols did a room check tonight, three heads would roll, including mine.
There weren't any other rooms cleaned or made up, though almost all of them were empty.
They continued to stare at me. In fact, they almost pushed me out with their eyeballs. I closed the door behind me and stood in the dim passageway.
The two guards were sitting to the right and left of the entrance, hunkered down against the floor, smoking puffsticks. I could tell by the smell they were an expensive brand. Money had been passed out and I wondered if Snelz would remember my cut.
I leaned against the wall and after a while absent-mindedly sat down. There was no moral indignation involved in my reaction: as you know, it is customary with many of the Voltarian Confederacy races for a male and female to live together two or three years before they get married. No, it was the danger of the thing. They say there is a very narrow line between a brave man and a fool. In my estimation, their daring had entered the world of (bleep) foolishness.
It was at that moment I realized that I had had them both agreeing in principle that the mission should be done and I recognized I had taken no advantage of it. Was it the pink sparklewater?