The Unteleported Man

" — 'a top-drawer killer of male spores,' " Gloch murmured, " 'but it also blasts the tear-ducts out of existence. Too bad, fella.' " End brochure, he thought. End monolog. End sex. End of Zoobko, or zoob of Endko. Is this an ad or a contemplation of a squandered life? Check one. I know this discourse, he thought. By heart. Why? How? It's as if, he thought, I said it; as if it's happening inside my brain — not coming to me from the outside. What does this mean? I have to know.

"Always bear in mind," the inexorable din con­tinued, "that male spores have an almost appalling capacity to progress under their own power. If, ladies, you constantly ponder that — "

"Appalling, yes," Gloch said. "But FIVE MILES?" I said all that, he realized. A long time ago. When I was a child. But no, he thought; I didn't say all that — I thought it, worked it out in my mind, a prank, a lam­poon, when I was a kid in school. What's being piped to me now here in this goddam chamber, what's supposed to be rephased sensory-data from the outside world — it's my own goddam former thoughts returning to me, a loop from my brain to my brain, with a ten-year lag.

"Splub gnog furb SQUAZ," the aud input circuit rattled away, into his passive ears. Relentlessly.

My counter-weapon, Gloch thought. They've blocked my counter-weapon with a counter-weapon, their own. Who —

"Yes sir, gnog furb," the aud input circuit declared in a hearty but garbled voice, "this is good ol' Charley Falks' little boy Martha signing off for now, but I'll be back with you soon and with me a few more chuckles to lighten the day and make things SQUAZ! cheery and bright. Toodeloo!" The voice, then, ceased. There was only distant background static, not even a carrier wave.

I don't know any little boy named Martha, Gloch thought. And, he realized, there's more wrong; the a-ending is out of the first Latin declension, so "Martha" can't be a boy's name. Logically, it would have to be Marthus. Or maybe they didn't know that; Charley Falks didn't know that. Probably not well-read. As I recall, from what I saw of Charley he was one of those self-educated simps ignorant as hell on the inside but lathered over on the outside with a thin layer of bits of cultural, scientific, odd, dubious half-facts which he always liked to drone out for hours on end to whoever was listening or if not listening then anyhow in the vicinity and so at least potentially within earshot. And then when he got older you could practically walk off and he'd still be talking, to no one. But then of course I didn't have my chamber in those days, so my own time-sense was so faulty that what actually lasted only min­utes seemed like years; at least that's what they told me, those 'wash psychiatrists, back in the early days, when they were testing me and setting me up so I could func­tion, getting this chamber designed and built.

I wish for chrissake's, he thought mournfully, I could remember the concept for the counter-weapon I had in mind or almost had in mind or anyhow think I almost had in mind, before that garbage started coming in over the conduit.

It would have been one hell of a counter-weapon to use against Horst Bertold and the UN. He was sure of that.

Maybe it'll come back to me later, he reflected. Anyhow strictly speaking it was merely the nucleus of the counter-tactic idea; hardly had begun to grow. Takes time. If I'm not interrupted any further... if that dratted rubbish doesn't start up again promptly the second I begin to really fatten up the original notion into something Herr von Einem can put to use function­ally, right out into the field to see action in the overall struggle we're bogged so darn down in at Whale's Mouth and wherever else they're all tangling... prob­ably all over the universe by now; I'm probably six weeks behind, with data stored up ready to be fed to me from for instance last Thursday if not last year.

Martha, he thought. Let's see: "The Last Rose of Summer" is from that. Who wrote it? Flotow? Lehár? One of those light opera composers.

"Hummel," the aud input circuit suddenly stated, startling him; it was a familiar, dry, aged male voice. "Joha

"You're a goldmine of misinformation," Gloch said irritably, in response, automatically, to one more of garrulous ol' Charley Falks' typical tidbits of wrong knowledge. He was so used to it, so darn, wearily resigned out of long experience. All the way back to his childhood, back throughout the dreary procession of years.

It's enough to make you wish you were a carpenter, Gloch mused grimly. And didn't have to think, just measure boards, saw and pound, all that purely physical activity. Then it wouldn't matter what ol' Charley Falks blabbled out, or what his pest of a kid Martha chimed in with in addition, for that matter; it didn't matter who said anything, or what.

Damn nice, he thought, if you could go back and live your life over again from the start. Only this time making it different; getting on the right track for once. A second chance, and with what I know now —

But exactly what did he know now?

For the life of him he couldn't remember.

"Pun, there," the voice from the aud circuit com­mented. "Life of you, life lived over... see?" It chuckled.

13

Within its bow-shaped mouth the half-chewed eyes lay, rolling on the surface of its greedy, licking tongue. Those not completely eaten, those which still shone with luster, regarded him as they rolled slightly; they continued to function, although no longer fixed to the bulbed, oozing exterior surface of the head. New eyes, like tiny pale eggs, had already begun to form, he perceived. They clung in clusters.

He was seeing it. Not a deformed, half-hallucinated, pseudo-image, but the actual presence of the underlying substrate-entity which inhabited or somehow managed to lodge itself in this paraworld for long periods of time — possibly forever, he realized with a shudder. Possibly for the total, absolute duration of its existence.

That might be a time-span of such magnitude as to smother any rational insight; he intuited that. The thing was old. And it had learned to feed on itself. He won­dered how many centuries had passed before it had en­countered that method of survival. He wondered what else it had tried first — and what it still resorted to, when necessary.

There were undoubtedly a number of techniques which it could make use of, when pressed. This act of consuming its own sensory-apparatus... it appeared to be a reflex act, not even consciously done. By now a mere habit; the creature chewed monotonously, and the luster within the still-watching half-consumed eyes was extinguished. But already the new ones expanding in clusters against the outer surface of the head had begun to acquire animation; several, more advanced in devel­opment than the others, had in a dim way discovered him and were with each passing second becoming more alert. Their initial interchange with reality involved him, and the realization of this made him sick with disgust. To be the first object sighted by such semi-autonomous entities —

Hoarsely, its voice thickened by the mouthful which it still continued to chew, the creature said, "Good morn­ing. I have your book for you. Sign here." One of its pseudopodia convulsed and its tip lathered in a spasm which, after an interval, fumbled forth a bulky old-style bound-in-boards volume which it placed on a small plastic table before Rachmael.

"What — book is this?" he demanded, presently. His mind, numbed, refused to interfere as his fingers poked haphazardly at the handsome gold-stamped book which the creature had presented him.

"The fundamental reference source in this survey in­struction," the cephalopodic organism answered as it laboriously filled out a long printed form; it made use of two pseudopodia and two writing instruments simul­taneously, enormously speeding up the intricate task. "Dr. Bloode's great primary work, in the seventeenth edition." It swiveled the book, to show him the ornate spine. "The True and Complete Economic and Political History of Newcolonizedland,"it informed him, in a severe, dignified tone of voice, as if reproving him for his unfamiliarity with the volume. Or rather, he realized suddenly, as if it assumed that the title would have over­powering influence alone, without additional aid.