He would have liked to lose himself in memories, but something held him back. One barrier was that he knew he would nevermore see Thrintun the homeworld, nor Kzathit where he was born, nor Racarliwun, the world he had found and named. He would never look at the world through his own eye; he would see himself only from outside, if ever. This was his own body, his fleshly tomb, now and forever.
There was another barrier, a seemingly trivial matter. Several times Kzanol/Greenberg had closed his eyes and deliberately tried to visualize the happy past; and always what came to mind were whitefoods.
He believed Garner, believed him implicitly. Those films could not have been faked. Copying an ancient tnuctip inscription would not have been enough to perpetrate such a fraud. Garner would have had to compose in tnuctip!
Then the bandersnatchi were intelligent; and the bandersnatchi were undeniably whitefoods. Whitefoods were intelligent, and always had been.
It was as if some basic belief had been shattered. The whitefoods were in all his memories. Whitefoods drifting like sixty-ton white clouds over the estates of Kzathit Stage Logs, and over the green-and-silver fields of other estates when little Kzanol was taken visiting. Whitefood meat in a dozen different forms, on the family table and in every restaurant waiter's memorized menu. A whitefood skeleton over every landowner's guest gate, a great archway of clean polished white bone. Why, the thrint hadn't been born who didn't dream of his own whitefood herd! The whitefood gate meant «landowner» as surely as the sunflower border.
Kzanol/Greenberg cocked his head; his lips pursed slightly, and the skin puckered between his eyebrows. Judy would have recognized the gesture. He had suddenly realized what made the intelligent whitefood so terrible.
A thiint was master over every intelligent beast. This was the Powergiver's primal decree, made before he made the stars. So said all of the twelve Thrintun religions, though they fought insanely over other matters. But if the whitefood was intelligent, then it was immune to the Power. The tnuctipun had done what the Power-giver had forbade!
If the tnuctipun were stronger than the Powergiver, and the Thrintun were stronger than the tnuctipun, and the Powergiver were stronger than the Thrintun-
Then all priests were charlatans, and the Powergiver was a folk myth.
A sentient whitefood was blasphemy.
It was also very damned peculiar.
Why would the tnuctipun have made an intelligent food animal? The phrase had an innocuous sound, like «overkill» or "euthanasia," but if you thought about it-
Thrintun were not a squeamish race. Power, no! But-
An intelligent food animal! Hitler would have fled, retching.
The tnuctipun had never been squeamish, either. The lovely simplicity of their mutated racing viprin was typical of the way they worked. Already the natural animal had been the fastest alive; there was little the tnuctipun could do in the way of redesigning. They had narrowed the animal's head and brought the nose to a point, leaving the nostril like a single jet nacelle, and they had made the skin almost microscopically smooth against wind resistance, but this had not satisfied them. So they had removed several pounds of excess weight and replaced it with extra muscle and extra lung tissue. The weight removed had been all of the digestive organs. A mutated racing viprin had a streamlined sucker of a mouth which opened directly into the bloodstream to admit predigested pap.
The tnuctipun were always efficient, but never cruel.
Why make the whitefood intelligent? To increase the size of the brain, as ordered? But why make it immune to the Power?
And he had eaten whitefood meat.
Kzanol/Greenberg shook his head hard. Masney needed attention, and he had planning to do. Didn't he?
Planning, or mere worrying?
Would the amplifier work on a human brain? Could he find the suit in time?
"'Find him, " Garner quoted. "That could fit. He's looking for something he believes he needs badly."
"But you already knew that. It doesn't help."
"Mrs. Greenberg, what I really came for is to find out everything you can tell me about your husband."
"Then you'd better talk to Dale Snyder. He got here this morning. Want his number?"
"Thanks, I've got it. He called me too. You know him well?"
"Very."
"I'll also want a chance to talk to Charley, the dolphin anthropologist. But let's start with you."
Judy looked unhappy. "I don't know where to start."
"Anywhere."
"Okay. He's got three testicles."
"I'll be damned. That's fairly rare, isn't it?"
"And sometimes troublesome, medically, but Larry never had any problems. We used to call it 'that little extra something about him. Is this the kind of thing you're after?"
"Sure." Luke didn't know. He remembered that the better he knew the man he was chasing, the more likely he was to catch him. It had worked when he was a cop, decades ago. It ought to work now. He let her talk, interrupting very rarely.
"I never noticed what a practical joker he was until after he began working with dolphins, but he's told me some of the things he pulled at college. He must have been a real terror. He was terrible at team athletics, but he plays fair squash and demon tennis…" She needed no prompting now. Her life came out in a stream of words. Her life with Larry Greenberg.
"… must have known a lot of women before he met me. And vice versa, I might add. Neither of us has ever tried adultery. I mean, we have an arrangement that we can, but we've never used it."
"You're sure?"
"Absolutely." Luke saw that she was. She was amused that he should have to ask.
"… It shocks him when I can make a prediction that accurate. I don't think he really believes in prescience, so it scares him when I get a flash. He thinks it's some sort of magic. I remember one day, we'd been married less than a year, and I'd gone out on a shopping spree. He saw me come in with a load of packages, and when I dumped them and went out and came back with the second load he said, 'Honest to God, beautiful, you're spending blue chips like the Last War was starting tomorrow! I didn't say anything. I just gave him this brave little smile. He went absolutely white…"
Relevant or irrelevant, it was all coming out. Judy talked faster and faster. She was doing just what he'd told her to, but with an urgency that was puzzling.
"… Most of the couples we know never got married until someone was pregnant. When you pass the Fertility Board you hate to risk throwing it away by marrying a sterile partner, right? It's too big a thing. But we decided to take the chance." Judy rubbed her throat. She went on hoarsely. "Besides, the 'doc had okayed us both for parenthood. Then there was Jinx. We had to be sure neither of us got left behind."
"By me that was good thinking, Mrs. Greenberg. I'll quit now, while you've still got a voice. Thanks for the help."
"I hope it did help."
The speed at which she'd talked the detail. Luke sent the elevator straight to the top. He knew now why she'd painted so complete a portrait of Larry Greenberg. Whether she knew it or not, she didn't expect to see him again. She'd been trying to make him immortal in her memory.
The Jayhawk Hotel was the third tallest building in Topeka, and the rooftop bar had a magnificent view. As he left the elevator Luke met the usual continuous roar. He waited ten seconds while his ears «learned» to ignore it: an essential defense mechanism, learned by most children before they were three. The hostess was a tall redhead, nude but for double-spike shoes, her hair piled into a swirling, swooping confection which brought her height to an even eight feet. She led him to a tiny table against a window.