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"Okay. Silence here. What can I do to help?"
"Think. You've been known to have an original idea every now and then. Come up with one."
"All right," he said. "I have been thinking about it. Everything seems to go back to the star-stone facsimile. What is it about the thing that makes it so important?"
"I give up. Tell me."
"I don't know. But let's consider everything that is known about it."
"Okay. The original came to us on loan as part of that cultural exchange deal we've joined. It was described as a relic, a specimen of unknown utility-but most likely decorative-found among the ruins of a dead civilization. Seems to be synthetic. If so, it may be the oldest intelligently fashioned object in the galaxy."
"Which makes it priceless."
"Naturally."
"If it were lost or destroyed here, we could be kicked out of the exchange program."
"I suppose that is possible ... "
" ‘Suppose,' hell! We can. I looked it up. The library now has a full translation of the agreement, and I got curious enough to see what it said. A hearing would be held, and the other members would vote on the matter of our expulsion."
"Good thing it hasn't been lost or destroyed."
"Yeah. Great."
"How could Byler have gotten access to it?"
"My guess is still the UN itself-that they approached him to create a duplicate for display purposes, he did it and then there was a mixup."
"I can't see the mixup on something that important."
"Then suppose it was intentional."
"How so?"
"Say they loaned it to him, and instead of returning the original and a copy he returned two copies. I can see him as wanting to hang onto it and study it for as long as he could. He could have given it back when he was finished or caught, whichever came first, and claimed he had made a simple error. No fuss could be raised, with the entire enterprise that clandestine. Or perhaps I am being too devious. Maybe he'd had it on a legitimate loan all the while, studying it at their request. Whichever, let us suppose that he'd had the original up until a while back."
"All right, say that."
"Then it vanished. Either it got mixed in and thrown out with some of the inferior replicas, or it was the one given to us in error ... "
"To you, to you," I said, "and not in error."
"Paul arrived at this conclusion, too," he continued, ignoring the assignment of guilt. "He panicked, went looking and roughed us up in the process."
"What precipitated his wising up?"
"Someone spotted the ringer and asked him for the real one. When he looked it wasn't there."
"And he got dead."
"You said the two men who questioned you in Australia as much as admitted having done him in as a by-product of questioning him."
"Zeemeister and Buckler. Yes."
"The undercover wombat told you they were hoodlums."
"Doodlehums, but go ahead."
"The UN informed the member nations-which is where the State Department comes into the picture in our case. Somewhere there was a tear in the beanbag, though, and Zeemeister decided to locate the stone first in order to claim a large ransom. Pardon me, a reward."
"It does make a kind of surrealistic sense. Continue."
"So we might have had it and everybody knows it. We don't know where it is, but nobody believes us."
"Who is everybody?"
"UN officials, the Foggy Bottom boys, the doodlehums and the aliens."
"Well, granting that the aliens have been informed and are actually assisting in the investigation, Charv and Ragma become a little more understandable-with their thing about security and all. But then, something else bothers me. They seemed awfully sure that I knew more than I thought I did concerning the stone's whereabouts. They even felt that a telepathic analyst might turn up some useful leads in my subconscious. I wonder what gave them that idea?"
"You've got me there. Perhaps they have eliminated almost everything else. And maybe they are right. It did seem to vanish rather strangely. I wonder ... ?"
"What?"
"If you do know something useful, something you may have suppressed for some reason? Perhaps a good non-telepathic analyst could drag it out, too. Hypnosis, drugs ... Who knows? What about that Doctor Marko you used to go to?"
"It's a thought, but it would take a long while to convince him as to the reality of all the preliminaries he'd need to know before he could go to work. Might even think I've lost touch, trank me up and give me the wrong therapy. No. I'll hold off on that angle for now."
"Where does that leave us?"
"Drunk," I said. "My higher cerebral centers all just moved off center."
"Want me make some coffee?"
"No. Consciousness is losing six to nothing and I'd like to retire gracefully. Mind if I sleep on the couch?"
"Go ahead. I'll get you a blanket and a pillow."
"Thanks."
"Maybe we'll have some fresh ideas in the morning," he said, rising.
"Thinking them will be painful, whatever they are," I said, going over to the couch and kicking off my shoes. "Let there be an end to thought. Thus do I refute Descartes."
I sprawled, not a cogito or a sum to my name.
Oblivion.
There was a teletype machine in a room at the back of my mind. It had never been used. Within the uncreation where the not-I didn't exist for a peaceful interval of non-time, however, it stuttered and spewed, synthesizing some recipient who resembled myself for purposes of pestering him ...
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DO YOU HEAR ME. FRED?
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DO YOU HEAR ME. FRED?
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YES
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GOOD
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WHO ARE YOU?
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I AMXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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DO YOU HEAR ME, FRED?
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YES. WHO ARE YOU?
I AMXXXXXX IXXXXXXXX ARTICLE 7224 SECTION C. I BROUGHT IT TO YOUR ATTENTION
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ALL RIGHT
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CAN YOU OBTAIN AN N-AXIAL INVERSION UNIT?
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NO
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IT IS IMPORTANT
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IT IS ALSO UNDEFINED
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NECESSARY
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WHAT THE HELL IS AN N-AXIAL INVERSION UNIT?
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TIME NAMES CORRESPONDENCESXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX THE RHENNIUS MACHINE. THAT MECHANISM
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I KNOW WHERE IT IS. YES
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GO TO THE RHENNIUS MACHINE. TEST ITS INVERSION PROGRAM
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HOW?
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OBSERVE THE PROGRESSIVE TRANSFORMATIONS OF AN OBJECT PASSED THROUGH ITS MOBILATOR
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WHAT IS A MOBILATOR?
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THE CENTRAL UNIT THROUGH WHICH ITS BELT MOVES
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IMPOSSIBLE TO GET THAT CLOSE TO THE THING. IT IS UNDER GUARD
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VITAL
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WHY?
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TO REFORMULATEXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TO REFORMXXXXXXXXXXXXX TOXXXXXXXX
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DO YOU HEAR ME. FRED?
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YES
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GO TO THE RHENNIUS MACHINE AND TEST ITS INVERSION PROGRAM
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SUPPOSING I CAN DO IT. WHAT THEN?
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THEN GO AND GET DRUNK
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PLEASE REPEAT
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TEST THE INVERSION PROGRAM AND GO INTOXICATE YOURSELF
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ANYTHING ELSE?
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SUBSEQUENT ACTIONS CONTINGENT UPON UNDETERMINED EVENTS
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