The Whipping Star (22 page)

She gestured at the noose around her throat.

"WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?"

"Cheo!" McKie called.  "What'd she do?"

Cheo's voice came from a point beyond the arm gripping the noose.  "Tell him, Mliss."

Tuluk, who had been ignoring the exchange, busying himself with his instruments, turned to McKie.  "Remarkable," he said.  "Truly remarkable."

"Tell him!" Cheo roared as Abnethe held a stubborn silence.

Both Abnethe and Tuluk began talking at once.  It came through to McKie as a mixed jumble of noises:  "Youinterstellferederhydrowithgenlawnmassfulexecufrom . . ."

"Shut up!" McKie shouted.

Abnethe jerked back, shocked to silence, but Tuluk went right on:  ". . . and that makes it quite certain there's no mistaking the spectral absorption pattern.  It's a star, all right.  Nothing else would give us the same picture."

"But which star?" McKie asked.

"Ahhh, that is the question," Tuluk said.

Cheo pushed Abnethe aside, took her place in the jumpdoor.  He glanced at Tuluk, at the instruments.  "What's all this, McKie?  Another way to interfere with our Palenkis?  Or did you come back for a new game of ring-around-your-neck?"

"We've discovered something you might like to know," McKie said.

"What could you discover that would possibly interest me?"

"Tell him, Tuluk," McKie said.

"Fanny Mae exists somehow in intimate association with a stellar mass," Tuluk said.  "She may even be a stellar mass -- at least as far as our dimension is concerned."

"Not dimension," the Caleban said.  "Wave."

Her voice barely reached McKie's awareness, but the words were accompanied by a rolling wave of misery that rocked him and set Tuluk to shuddering.

"Wha-wha-what w-w-was th-th-that?" Tuluk managed.

"Easy, easy," McKie cautioned.  He saw that Cheo had not been touched by that wave of emotion.  At least, the PanSpechi remained impassive.

"We'll have Fanny Mae identified shortly," McKie said.

"Identity," the Caleban said, her communication coming through with more strength but with an icy withdrawal of emotion.  "Identity refers to unique self-understanding quality as it deals with self-label, self-abode and self-manifestations.  You not me hang yet, McKie.  You hang term yet?  Self-I overstand your time node."

"Hang?" Cheo asked, jerking the noose around Abnethe's neck.

"A simple old-fashioned idiom," McKie said.  "I imagine Mliss gets the hang of it."

"What're you talking about?" Cheo asked.

Tuluk took the question as having been directed to him.  "In some way," he said, "Calebans manifest themselves in our universe as stars.  Every star has a pulse, a certain unique rhythm, a never-duplicated identity.  We have Fanny Mae's pattern recorded now.  We're going to run a tracer on that pattern and try to identify her as a star."

"A stupid theory like that is supposed to interest me?" Cheo demanded.

"It had better interest you," McKie said.  "It's more than a theory now.  You think you're sitting in a safe hidey-hole.  All you have to do is eliminate Fanny Mae, that's supposed to eliminate our universe and leave you out there the only sentients left at all?  Is that it?  Ohhh, are you ever wrong."

"Calebans don't lie!" Cheo snarled.

"But I think they can make mistakes," McKie said.

"Proliferation of single-tracks," the Caleban said.

McKie shuddered at the icy wave which accompanied the words.  "If we discontinue, will Abnethe and her friends still exist?" he asked.

"Different patterns with short limit on extended connectives," the Caleban said.

McKie felt the icy wave invade his stomach.  He saw that Tuluk was trembling, facial slit opening and closing.

"That was plain enough, wasn't it?" McKie asked.  "You'll change somehow, and you won't live very long after us."

"No branchings," the Caleban said.

"No offspring," McKie translated.

"This is a trick!"  Cheo snarled.  "She's lying!"

"Calebans don't lie," McKie reminded him.

"But they can make mistakes!"

"The right kind of mistake could ruin everything for you," McKie said.

"I'll take my chances," Cheo said.  "And you can take . . ."

The jumpdoor winked out of existence.

"S'eye alignment difficult," the Caleban said.  "You hang difficult?  More intense energy requirement reference.  You hang?"

"I understand," McKie said.  "I hang."  He mopped his forehead with a sleeve.

Tuluk extended his long mandible, waved it agitatedly.  "Cold," he said.  "Cold-cold-cold-cold."

"I think she's holding on by a thin thread," McKie said.

Tuluk's torso rippled as he inhaled a deep breath into his outer trio of lungs.  "Shall we take our records back to the lab?" he asked.

"A stellar mass," McKie muttered.  "Imagine it.  And all we see here is this . . . this bit of nothing."

"Not put something here," the Caleban said.  "Self-I put something here and uncreate you.  McKie discontinues in presence of I-self."

"Do you hang that, Tuluk?" McKie asked.

"Hang?  Oh, yes.  She seems to be saying that she can't make herself visible to us because that'd kill us."

"That's the way I read it," McKie said.  "Let's get back and start that comparison search."

"You expend substance without purpose," the Caleban said.

"What now?" McKie asked.

"Flogging approaches, and I-self discontinue," the Caleban said.

McKie put down a fit of trembling.  "How far away, Fanny Mae?"

"Time reference by single-track difficult, McKie.  Your term:  soon."

"Right away?"  McKie asked and he held his breath.

"Ask you of intensity immediate?" the Caleban inquired.

"Probably," McKie whispered.

"Probability," the Caleban said.  "Energy necessity of self-I extends alignment.  Flogging not . . . immediate."

"Soon, but not right away," Tuluk said.

"She's telling us she can take one more flogging and that's the last one," McKie said.  "Let's move.  Fanny Mae, is there a jumpdoor available to us?"

"Available, McKie.  Go with love."

One more flogging, McKie thought as he helped Tuluk gather up the instruments.  But why was a flogging so deadly to the Caleban?  Why a flogging, when other energy forms apparently didn't touch them?

The most common use of abstraction is to conceal contradictions.  It must be noted that the abstracting process has been demonstrated to be infinite.

-Culture Lag, an unpublished work by Jorj X. McKie

At some indeterminate moment, and that soon, the Caleban was going to be lashed by a whip, and it would die.  The half-mad possibility was about to become apocalyptic reality, and their sentient universe would end.

McKie stood disconsolately in Tuluk's personal lab, intensely aware of the mob of enforcer guards around, them.

"Go with love."

The computer console above Tuluk's position at the bench flickered and chittered.

Even if they identified Fanny Mae's star, what could they do with that new knowledge? McKie asked himself.  Cheo was going to win.  They couldn't stop him.

"Is it possible," Tuluk asked, "that the Calebans created this universe?  Is this their 'garden patch'?  I keep remembering Fanny Mae saying it would uncreate us to be in her presence."

He leaned against his bench, mandibles withdrawn, face slit open just enough to permit him to speak.

"Why's the damn computer taking so long?" McKie demanded.

"The pulse problem's very complicated, McKie.  The comparison required special programming.  You haven't answered my question."

"I don't have an answer!  I hope those numbies we left in the Beachball know what to do."

"They'll do what you told them to do," Tuluk chided.  "You're a strange sentient, McKie.  I'm told you've been married more than fifty times.  Is it a breach of good manners to discuss this?"

"I never found a woman who could put up with a Saboteur Extraordinary," McKie muttered.  "We're hard creatures to love."

"Yet the Caleban loves you."

"She doesn't know what we mean by love!"  He shook his head.  "I should've stayed at the Beachball."

"Our people will interpose their own bodies between the Caleban and any attacks," Tuluk said.  "Would you call that love?"

"That's self-preservation," McKie snarled.

"It's a Wreave belief that all love is a form of self-preservation," Tuluk said.  "Perhaps this is what our Caleban understands."

"Hah!"

"It's a probability, McKie, that you've never been overly concerned about self-preservation, thus have never really loved."

"Look!  Would you stop trying to distract me with your babbling nonsense?"

"Patience, McKie.  Patience."

"Patience, he says!"

McKie jerked himself into motion, paced the length of the lab, the guardian enforcers dodging out of his way.  He returned to Tuluk, stooped.  "What do stars feed on?"

"Stars?  Stars don't feed."

"She inhales something here, and she feeds here," McKie muttered.  He nodded.  "Hydrogen."

"What's this?"

"Hydrogen," McKie repeated.  "If we opened a big enough jumpdoor. . . .  Where's Bildoon?"

"He's conferring with the Consent representative over our high-handed actions in quarantining the Beautybarbers.  It's also a distinct possibility that our dealings with the Taprisiots have leaked out.  Governments do not like this sort of action, McKie.  Bildoon is trying to save your skin and his own."

"But there's plenty of hydrogen," McKie said.

"What is this of jumpdoors and hydrogen?"

"Feed a cold and starve a fever," McKie said.

"You are not making sense, McKie!  Did you take your angeret and normalizers?"

"I took 'em!"

The computer's readout chamber made a chewing sound, spewed forth a quadruple line of glowing characters which danced in the chamber and resolved themselves into legible arrangements.  McKie read the message.

"Thyone," Tuluk said, reading over his shoulder.

"A star in the Pleiades," McKie said.

"We call it Drnlle," Tuluk said.  "See the Wreave characters in the third row?  Drnlle."

"Any doubt of this identification?"

"You joke."

"Bildoon!" McKie hissed.  "We have to try it!"

He spun around, pounded out of the lab, dodged through Tuluk's assistants in the outer area.  Tuluk darted in his wake, drawing their enforcer guardians into a thin line close behind.

"McKie!"  Tuluk called.  "Where are you going?"

"To Bildoon . . . then back to Fanny Mae."

The value of self government at an individual level cannot be overestimated.

-BuSab Manual

Nothing could stop him now, Cheo told himself.

Mliss could die in a few, minutes, deprived of air in the Beautybarber tank where he'd confined her.  The others on their refuge world would have to follow him, then.  He would control the S'eye and the threads of power.

Cheo stood in his quarters with the S'eye controls near at hand.  It was night outside, but all things remained relative, he reminded himself.  Dawn would be breaking soon where the Caleban's Beachball rested above the surf on Cordiality.

The Caleban's ultimate dawn . . . the dawn of ultimate discontinuity.  That dawn would slip into eternal night on all the planets which shared a universe with the doomed Caleban.

In just a few minutes, this planet-of-the-past where he stood would reach its point of proper connectives with Cordiality.  And the Palenki waiting across the room there would do what it had been commanded to do.

Cheo rubbed the scars on his forehead.

There'd be no more PanSpechi then to point accusing fingers at him, to call him with ghostly voices.  Never again would there be a threat to the ego which he had secured to himself.

No one could stop him.

Mliss could never come back from death to stop him.  She must be gasping in the sealed tank by now, straining for the oxygen which did not exist there.

And that stupid McKie!  The Saboteur Extraordinary had proved to be elusive and annoying, but no way remained for him to stop the apocalypse.

Just a few more minutes now.

Cheo looked at the reference dials on the S'eye controls.  They moved so slowly it was difficult to detect any change while you kept your eyes on them.  But they moved.

He crossed to the open doors onto the balcony, drew a questioning stare from the Palenki, and stepped outside.  There was no moon, but many stars shone in patterns alien to a PanSpechi.  Mliss had ordered a strange world here with its bits of ancient history from her Terran past, its odds and ends of esoterica culled from the ages.

Those stars, now.  The Caleban had assured them no other planets existed here . . . yet there were stars.  If those were stars.  Perhaps they were only bits of glowing gas arranged in the patterns Mliss had requested.

It would be a lonely place here after the other universe was gone, Cheo realized.  And there would be no escaping those starry patterns, reminders of Mliss.

But it would be safe here.  No pursuit, because there would be no pursuers.

He glanced back into the lighted room.

How patiently the Palenki waited, eyes lidded, motionless.  The whip dangled limply from its single hand.  Crazy anachronism of a weapon!  But it worked.  Without that wild conjunction of Mliss and her kinky desires, they would never have discovered the thing about the weapon, never have found this world and the way to isolate it forever.

Cheo savored the thought of forever.  That was a very tong time.  Too long, perhaps.  The thought disturbed him.  Loneliness . . . forever.

He cut off these thoughts, looked once more at the S'eye dials.  The pointers had moved a hair closer to the curtained moment.  They would coincide presently.

Not looking at the pointers, not looking anywhere, really, Cheo waited.  Night on the balcony was full of the odors Mliss had gathered-exotic blooms, scents and mucks of rare life forms, exhalations of a myriad species she had brought to share her Ark.

Ark.  That was an odd name she'd given this place.  Perhaps he'd change that . . . later.  Creche?  No!  That carried painful reminders.