Whipping Star

"They think it's magic."

"McKie," the Caleban said, "I love you."

"You what?" McKie exploded.

"Love you," the Caleban repeated. "Affinity of one person for another person. Such affinity transcends species."

"I guess so, but . . ."

"Since I possess this universal affinity for your person, co

"You can send me to a place near Abnethe?"

"Affirmative. Accord with desire. Yes."

"Where is this place?" McKie asked.

He found, with a chill wash of air and a sprawling lurch onto dusty ground, that he was addressing his question to a moss-capped rock. For a moment he stared at the rock, regaining his balance. The rock was about a meter tall and contained small veins of yellow-white quartz with flecks of reflective brilliance scattered through them. It stood in an open meadow beneath a distant yellow sun. The sun's position told McKie he'd arrived either at midmorning or midafternoon local.

Beyond the rock, the meadow, and a ring of straggly yellow brushes stretched a flat horizon broken by the tall white spires of a city.

"Loves me?" he asked the rock.

***

Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking to filter what the eyes see and what the ears hear.

Whip and severed Palenki arm arrived at the proper BuSab laboratory while it was temporarily unoccupied. The lab chief, a Bureau veteran named Treej Tuluk, a back-bowing Wreave, was away at the time, attending the conference which McKie's report had precipitated.

As with most back-bowers, Tuluk was an odor-id Wreave. He had an average-appearing Wreave body, two and a half meters tall, tubular, pedal bifurcation, vertical face slit with manipulative extensors dangling from the lower corner. From long association with humans and humanoids he had developed a brisk, slouching gait, a predilection for clothing with pockets, and un-Wreavish speech ma

Returning from the conference, he recognized the objects on his lab floor immediately. They matched Siker's description. Tuluk complained to himself briefly about the careless ma

As they had expected, the Palenki gene structure offered no comparatives. The arm had not come from one of the few Palenkis on record in the ConSentient Register. Tuluk filed the DNA chart and message sequence, however. These could be used to identify the arm's original owner, if that became necessary.

At the same time study of the whip went ahead. The artifact report came out of the computers as "Bullwhip, copy of ancient earth type." It was made of steerhide, a fact which gave Tuluk and his vegetarian aides a few brief moments of disgust, since they had assumed it was a synthetic.

"A sick archaism," one of Tuluk's Chither assistants called the whip. The others agreed with this judgment, even a PanSpechi for whom periodic reversion to carnivorous type in his creche cycle was necessary to survival.

A curious alignment in some of the cell molecules attracted their attention then. Study of whip and arm continued at their respective paces.

***

There is no such thing as pure objectivity.

McKie took the long-distance call while standing beside a dirt road about three kilometers from the rock. He had come this far on foot, increasingly a

It was almost as hot on the plain as it had been in the Caleban's Beachball.

Thus far the only living things he had seen were some distant tawny animals and countless insects-leapers, crawlers, fliers, hoppers. The road contained two parallel indentations and was the rusty red color of abandoned iron. It seemed to originate in a faraway line of blue hills on his right, plunging straight across the plain to the heat-muddled horizon on his left. The road contained no occupant except himself, not even a dust cloud to mark some hidden passage.

McKie was almost glad to feel the sniggertrance grip him.

"This is Tuluk, " his caller said. "I was told to contact you as soon as I had anything to report. Hopefully, I intrude at an opportune moment. "

McKie, who had a journeyman's respect for Tuluk's competence, said, "Let's have it."

"Not much on the arm," Tuluk said. "Palenki, of course. We can identify the original owner, if we ever get him. There'd been at least one previous regrowth of this member. Sword cut on the forearm, by the look of it."

"What about the phylum markings?"

"We're still checking that."

"The whip?"

"That's something else. It's real steerhide."

"Real?"

"No doubt of it. We could identify the original owner of the skin, although I doubt it's walking around anywhere."

"You've a gruesome sense of humor. What else?"

"The whip's an archaism, too. Bullwhip, ancient earth style. We got an original ID by computer and brought in a museum expert for confirmation. He thought the construction was a bit on the crude side, but close enough to leave little doubt it was a copy of a real original. Fairly recent manufacture, too."

"Where could they get an original to copy?"

"We're checking that, and it may provide a lead. These things aren't too common."

"Recent manufacture," McKie said. "You sure?"

"The animal from which that hide was removed has been dead about two standard years. Intracellular structure was still reactive to catalyzing."

"Two years. Where would they get a real steer?"

"That narrows it down. There are some around for story props in the various entertainment media, that sort of thing. A few of the outback planets where they haven't the technology for pseudoflesh still raise cattle for food."

"This thing gets more confusing the deeper we go into it," McKie said.

"That's what we think. Oh, there's chalf dust on the whip. "

"Chaff! That's where I got the yeast smell!"

"Yes, it's still quite strong."

"What would they be doing with that much quick-scribe powder?" McKie asked. "There was no sign of a chalfmemory stick - but that means little, of course."

"It's just a suggestion," Tuluk said, "but they couldn've chaff-scribed that design on the Palenki."

"Why?"

"Give it a false phylum, maybe?"

"Perhaps."

"If you smelled chalf after the whip came through, there'd have to be quite a bit of it around. You thought of that?"

"The room wasn't all that big, and it was hot."

"The heat would explain it, all right. Sorry we didn't have more for you."

"That's all?"

"Well, it might not be any use, but the whip had been stored in a hanging position supported by a thin length of steel. "

"Steel? Are you positive?"

"Positive."

"Who still uses steel?"

"It's not all that uncommon on some of the newer planets. R&R has even turned up some where they build with it."

"Wild!"

"Isn't it, though?"

"You know," McKie said, "We're looking for an outback planet, and that's where I seem to be."

"Where are you?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

McKie explained his predicament.

"You field agents take awful chances sometimes," Tuluk said.

"Don't we just."

"You wear a monitor. I could ask this Taprisiot to identify your location. Want to invoke the monitor clause?"