The T'Worlie flew past them, chattering angrily. "Mimmie's a bit annoyed with you, I'm afraid," Doc Chimp chuckled. "We're all at sixes and sevens here, right now, because of the large shipment coming in and all the complications."
"You mean those prisoners who were being sent?"
The chimpanzee nodded disdainfully. "The Purchased People, yes. And the legal problems. They should have been out of the tachyon-transporter long ago, but we've had orders to keep their codes stored for a while . . . And, of course, there's worse than that." He sighed, then brightened. "Well, just go through that door, Dr. Babylon. There's somebody waiting for you. I'll go back and soothe Mimmie a bit." And he turned and was gone, launching himself back down the corridor with an amazing thrust of his skinny arms.
Babylon pulled himself carefully through the doorway, and looked around.
"Jen! Jen Babylon! Is it really you?" And Ben Pertin came off the wall toward him, arm outstretched.
Babylon hardly heard what Pertin was saying to him, hardly knew what he was responding. This person was not the Ben Pertin he had gone to school with, wasn't even the copy who had visited him in his apartment only days earlier. The pleasant face was lined and bloated; the grip was flabby, the breath a clear sign of heavy and recent drinking. Pertin was not only unkempt, he was hardly even clean. His hair had not been cut in many months, and had not even been washed in a good long time. It swung behind him in two snarled tails as he moved. When the copy arrived on Earth, it had no doubt taken time to wash and dress and get a haircut before Babylon saw it; but this was the real Ben Pertin.
But the flabby face was split in a grin of incredulous joy. "You made it! I didn't really hope you'd be in time. Did anyone see you?"
"In time for what?" Babylon demanded.
"Going down to the surface! It's all fixed. There's a robot ship going to pick up mass for the tachyon plasma tanks, and we'll be on it—but what about it? Were you seen?"
"A T'Worlie, I guess," Babylon said.
"Old Mimmie! That's all right. He's on our side ... or I think he is," Pertin mused. "It's the Sheliaks you have to worry about, and Valeria, and the damn Sirians—and worst of all the Scorpians. Well! I'll be ready in an hour, and the ship boosts ten minutes after that. So all we have to do is hide you until then."
"What am I hiding from?" Babylon demanded. "Look, Pertin—what have you got me into?"
The smile faded, and the worn, bloated face sagged into lines of misery. "I guess I played a pretty shabby trick on you, Jen," Pertin admitted. "But it's important. Look, let me show you." He dived back to the console where he had been loosely lashed to the wall, and struck a series of buttons. The blank wall—or floor, or ceiling—toward Babylon's left hand dissolved in a silvery mist, shrinking abruptly into the sharp image of a steel-colored ball hanging in emptiness. "That's it, Jen," said Pertin. "That's Cuckoo. Wait while I wipe off the cloud cover—there." The silvery shine disappeared from the globe as Pertin made adjustments. "That's it, Jen. The whole big damn balloon. Bigger than a billion Earths. Oceans. Continents. Jen, there are rivers that are a thousand kilometers wide!"
"I don't see any rivers," Babylon objected.
"Because they're too small to show at this magnification. Look closely. Do you see those little dots, here and there— that one in the lower-right-hand quadrant? Those are the parts we've explored. The biggest of them is about the size of Australia—and all together, we've mapped less than a millionth of the surface. It's as if we'd explored the Boston Common, and that was all we knew of Earth."
"And you've been doing this how long?"
Pertin shrugged morosely. "Ten years and a bit," lie said. He shook his head angrily. "Not much progress, right? But it's not our fault! If we had the support— If we could get our requisitions filled for high-velocity scanners— If we could launch ten thousand satellites, with all the instrumentation we need— If anybody just cared! But we get nothing. Not even from Earth. Not even replacements. We're all worn out here, Jen. The ones of us who still care are tired. We've all died a dozen times—and there're plenty of beings here who don't believe we ought to do even as much as we're doing!"
"Hey, slow down!" Babylon said, rubbing his head. "You're giving me more than I can handle. What do you mean about dying a dozen times?"
"Oh, you know. Transmitter copies." Pertin was staring angrily at the great sphere. "There's dead Ben Pertins there"—he flashed a red arrow at one of the dots—"and there, and there. And a couple that aren't dead, quite, but might as well be for all the purpose their lives have—if we don't solve this thing." He made some adjustments and all the red arrows winked out but one. "Anyway," he said, continuing to stare at the wall, "Doc Chimp's going to come back for you in a minute, so we can hide you until the ship's ready. I'll explain all the rest of it as we go."
"No, wait," Babylon objected. "Where are we going— and why?"
"To check out that abandoned spaceship, naturally," Pertin said impatiently. "Why do you think I got you here—so you could make a chess partner? You're here because I think you're the only one who can help out." He glanced sharply at the door, as there was a distant sound of chatter. "That's Doc now," he said.
"You didn't tell me where!"
"Oh, that part's easy enough," said Ben Pertin, pointing to the globe on the wall. "That red arrow there, where one of the dead Ben Pertins is. That's where we're going."
The place where Jen Babylon found himself was an enormous hollow polyhedron, orbiting around the great bubble that was called Cuckoo. Doc Chimp whispered to him as they skulked through the corridors, stopping in sudden fright at every noise, and Babylon gleaned that each face of the figure was designed for beings of a different race. "There's hundreds of them here, Dr. Babylon," he hissed, towing Babylon with one long, skinny arm as he guided them through the passages with the other. "And most of 'em crazy! But I guess Ben Line's told you all about that."
"Ben who?"
"Sssh! Not so loud. Oh, that's your old friend Ben Pertin. This Ben Pertin, that is. He gives himself a different middle name each time he replicates—me, I'm just old Doc Chimp, no matter how many of me there are. And there're plenty now, believe me. Here we are!"
The enormous strength in those skinny limbs stopped them without a jar, and he hurled Babylon into a small chamber. "Got here without being spotted!" the chimpanzee crowed as he followed. "Hope this place is all right," he added anxiously. "It's only a little hole in the wall. Used to belong to the T'Worlies, they used it mostly for nesting, I think. Smells like it, too. But it's not so bad, and anyway it'll only be for a little while. Let me close the door," he added nervously, pushing himself back to the entrance. "There. Now, let's see if you've got the names straight. That's Ben Lincoln Pertin you just saw. There's another one around somewhere, Ben Yale, but I don't get along with him so well. Neither does Ben Line."
"It must be pretty confusing."
"Oh," the chimp said, considering, "not really. You can always tell Ben Line by—" The bright monkey eyes narrowed evasively.
"By what?"
"Oh, well, Dr. Babylon, I guess it's no secret. He drinks."
Babylon burst out in laughter. "No, that's no secret."
Doc Chimp looked aggrieved. "He's my friend, Dr. Babylon. He's got a lot on his mind, and I'm really glad you're here, for his sake."
"Well," said Babylon, considering, "I'm glad to be here—I think."
"That," giggled the chimpanzee, "I doubt. I'd be a liar if I said that myself. I've been here eleven years, two months, and a week, and that's a bunch of days and nights, Dr. Babylon, especially as I've never been able to get them to tachtran a pretty little girl chimp out here for company."