"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.
"You ready?" McKie asked.
"I will be ready presently. Why does the Caleban not speak?"
"Because I asked her to save her strength."
"What does she say of your theory?"
"She thinks I have achieved truth. "
Tuluk took a small helix from his instrument case, inserted it into a receptacle at the base of the glowing ring.
"Come one, come on," McKie jittered.
"Your urgings will not reduce the necessary time for this task," Tuluk said. "For example, I am hungry. I came without stopping to break my daily fast. This does not press me to speed which might produce errors, nor does it arouse me to complain."
"Aren't you complaining?" McKie asked. "You want some of my water?"
"I had water two days ago," Tuluk said.
"And we wouldn't want to rush you into another drink."
"I do not understand what pattern you hope to identify," Tuluk said. "We have no records of artisans for a proper comparison of . . ."
"This is something God made," McKie said.
"You should not jest about deities," Tuluk said.
"Are you a believer or just playing safe?" McKie asked.
"I was chiding you for an act which might offend some sentients," Tuluk said. "We have a hard enough time bridging the sentient barriers without raising religious issues."
"Well, we've been spying on God - or whatever - for a long time," McKie said. "That's why we're going to get a spectroscopic record of this. How much longer you going to be at this fiddling?"
"Patience, patience," Tuluk muttered. He reactivated the wand, waved it near the glowing ring. Again the instrument began humming, a higher note this time. It grated on McKie's nerves. He felt it in his teeth and along the skin of his shoulders. It itched inside him where he couldn't scratch.
"Damn this heat!" Tuluk said. "Why will you not have the Caleban open a door to the outside?"
"I told you why."
"Well, it doesn't make this task any easier!"
"You know," McKie said, "when you called me and saved my skin from that Palenki chopper - the first time, remember? Right afterward you said you'd been tangled with Fanny Mae, and you said a very odd thing."
"Oh?" Tuluk had extended a small mandible and was making delicate adjustments to a knob on the case below the glowing ring.
"You said something about not knowing that was where you lived. Remember that?"
"I will never forget it." Tuluk bent his tubular body across the glowing ring, stared back through it while passing the wand back and forth in front of the ring's opening.
"Where was that?" McKie asked.
"Where was what?"
"Where you lived!"
"That? There are no words to describe it."
"Try."
Tuluk straightened, glanced at McKie. "It was a bit like being a mote in a vast sea . . . and experiencing the warmth, the friendship of a benign giant. "
"That giant - the Caleban?"
"Of course."
"That's what I thought."
"I will not answer for inaccuracies in this device," Tuluk said. "But I don't believe I can adjust it any closer. Given a few days, some shielding - there's an odd radiation pattern from that wall behind you - and projection dampers, I might, I just might achieve a fair degree of accuracy. Now? I cannot be responsible."
"And you'll be able to get a spectroscopic record?"
"Oh, yes."
"Then maybe we're in time," McKie said.
"For what?"
"For the right spacing."
"Ahhh, you mean the flogging and the subsequent shower of sparks?"
"That's what I mean."
"You could not . . . flog her yourself, gently?"
"Fanny Mae says that wouldn't work. It has to be done with violence . . . and the intent to create intensity of anti-love . . . or it won't work."
"Oh. How odd. You know, McKie, I believe I could use some of your water, after all. It's the heat in here."
***
Any conversation is a unique jazz performance. Some are more pleasing to the ears, but that is not necessarily a measure of their importance.
There was a popping sound, a stopper being pulled from a bottle. Air pressure dropped slightly in the Beachball, and McKie experienced the panic notion that Abnethe had somehow opened them onto a vacuum which would rain away their air and kill them. The physicists said this couldn't be done, that the gas flow, impeded by the adjustment barrier within the jumpdoor, would block the opening with its own collision breakdown. McKie suspected they pretended to know about S'eye phenomena.
He missed the jumpdoor's vortal tube at first. Its plane was horizontal and directly above the Caleban's spoon bowl.
A Palenki arm and whip shot through the opening, delivered a lashing blow to the area occupied by the Caleban's unpresence. Green sparks showered the air.
Tuluk, bending over his instruments, muttered excitedly.
The Palenki arm drew back, hesitated.
"Again! Again!"
The voice through the jumpdoor was unmistakably that of Cheo.
The Palenki delivered another blow and another.
McKie lifted his raygen, dividing his attention between Tuluk and that punishing whip. Did Tuluk have his readings? No telling how much more of this the Caleban could survive.
Again the whip lashed. Green sparks glimmered and fell.
"Tuluk, do you have enough data?" McKie demanded.
Arm and whip jerked back through the jumpdoor.
A curious silence settled over the room.
"Tuluk?" McKie hissed.
"I believe I have it," Tuluk said. "It's a good recording. I will not vouch for comparison and identification, however."
McKie grew aware that the room was not really silent. The thrumming of Tuluk's instruments formed a background for a murmur of voices coming through the jumpdoor.
"Abnethe?" McKie called.
The opening tipped, gave him a three-quarter view of Abnethe's face. There was a purple bruise from her left temple down across her cheek. A silver noose held her throat, its end firmly in the grip of a PanSpechi hand.
Abnethe, McKie saw, was trying to control a rage which threatened to burst her veins. Her face was alternately pale and flushed. She held her mouth tight, lips in a thin line. Compressed violence radiated from every pore.