Pohl, Frederik - The Far Shore of Time

That was not at all what I wanted to hear. I think I’m more or less brave, but I’m not stupid. A one-man suicide venture against impossible odds didn’t sound attractive-at least, unless there was nothing better on offer. I took a chance. “I don’t suppose you could interest your Greatmother in, well, in launching such an attack?”

Kofeeshtetch laughed in my face, little raucous puffs of bad breath. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His laughter made it quite clear that the Horch were not going to launch a major battle to please a lower organism like me, especially over a pissant little planet like Earth.

What he did say was, “Your plan is not worth pursuing. Perhaps you should return to the Eight Plus Threes. I will leave you now to prepare for the feast the Greatmother is providing for Djabeertapritch.”

He looked like he was getting ready to do it, too. I could feel my dreams collapsing around me, but one faint hope of an idea was percolating through my mind.

“Wait a minute,” I begged. “Can I see the planet Earth again?”

I had nearly lost him. He was just a child, after all. If I wasn’t about to pursue the feats of derring-do that fired up his kid imagination, he had no further use for me. He hung indecisively from his cable for a moment, then said petulantly, “Oh, very well, but do it quickly.”

Quickly was how the robot did it. The planet had revolved a little more. Now we were looking at the Atlantic Ocean, South America bulging out into it and the East Coast of the United States just visible on the periphery. I peered at that unfamiliar scattering of red spots, clustered mostly along the shorelines. I pointed. “What are those?”

Kofeeshtetch gestured, and then the robot answered me. “We have no definite identification. They appear to be satellite installations, but we do not know their purpose.”

“But they’re smaller, and they’re right on the surface of the Earth.”

“That is not precisely accurate,” the machine corrected me. “If you will observe, they are all in the water regions of the planet, close to the land masses but not on them.”

“But still-“ I began to argue.

I didn’t finish. Kofeeshtetch waved me to silence. He was beginning to catch the spirit. “That might be a workable plan,” he said thoughtfully. “A smaller installation. Only one transit machine each. Perhaps only operated by machines, certainly with a much smaller complement than the ship in space-yes! This may be worth considering. I will think on this, and perhaps seek advice from the Greatmother.”

When I got back to my room, as jubilant as I dared be, Pirraghiz was waiting for me. She listened, but didn’t comment, as I told her what had happened. “Where’s Beert?” I asked. “I must tell him!”

“Djabeertapritch is sleeping, Dannerman. This has been exhausting for him.”

She didn’t sound excited at all, and she was bringing me down with her. “But he will want to hear all this!” I insisted.

She gave me one of those six-limbed shrugs. “You can speak to him when he wakes, Dannerman,” she said firmly. “He has some important decisions to make, and he has ordered me to let him rest. It is better if you rest, also. Would you like to eat first?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Been after his sleep. I didn’t get much sleep for myself, either, because Pirraghiz woke me up to tell me that the Greatmother’s banquet was just about to happen and we’d better get a move on.

I could have wished for a little more warning. I really needed to talk to Beert, but when I tried to grab him he simply waggled his neck at me. “Later, Dan,” he said, sounding distracted and not really all that interested. “We can’t keep this Greatmother waiting.” I was also conscious of really beginning to need a bath, and there wasn’t anything of that sort in the chambers they’d given us. So, unwashed, I followed Beert and the Christmas tree along the roped passages, hoping that the Horch sense of smell was not acute. Because I was sure I was a lot less than fragrant just then.

I could hear the noise from the feast long before the banquet hall was in sight.

The hall was shaped like a pyramid-well, like a tetrahedron, with four triangular sides, none of which was either a floor or a ceiling-and it was big. It had to be. There were at least forty Horch present. They weren’t sitting. They weren’t even doing what Horch do instead of sitting down like a human being. They just hung there, clipped to one or another of the brightly glowing cords that were stretched across the volume of space, like strands of a 3-D spiderweb. And they were very loudly singing.

It is hard to say what a Horch group sing sounded like. It was a little like the howling of a pack of constipated wolves, a little like hogs grunting ferociously as they battled for tidbits in a pen. The big difference was that the Horch were doing all that in unison, and that there were lyrics to the tune they sang. They sang of the Greatest of Greatmothers, and of the undying delights-or of the later-on undying delights, that is, after they’d finished whatever other dying they had to get there-of living forever, cherished in the Greatest of Greatmother’s love. Does that sound awful? Sure it does. It was.

They hadn’t waited for us to arrive. They were eating as they sang. A squad of the glassy robots were busily slithering along the cords, hand over hand-well, branch over twig-to serve the diners with great gobs of something that looked like pink mashed potatoes, only gluey enough to hold together in a ball; clusters of figlike fruits that probably weren’t fruits at all, because they were squirming; hinged food dishes containing stuff that I couldn’t see, but could smell when the nearest Horch opened theirs; mesh bags of what might have been nuts or vegetables or-well, anything at all. All I could see through the mesh was varicolored lumps of God knew what. The other thing the Horch were doing was drinking, out of bagpipe-looking bladders with spouts on one end. The Horch took the spouts in their triangular little mouths when they wanted a drink, and then some of them pointed the spouts at friends nearby and squeezed. For fun, I guess. The thin streams of yellowish liquid, looking unpleasantly like urine, splashed when they hit another Horch and kept on going when they missed. It didn’t matter which they did, though. The Christmas trees were diligently sucking the spilled liquid out of the air as they passed. These masters of the universe were having their fun at a kind of college fraternity brawl. I guess the overworked robots weren’t enjoying it, but probably they weren’t programmed to enjoy anything anyway.

Our personal robot first escorted Beert to the heart of the web. The Greatmother was there and eating industriously, pausing in her own consumption only, now and then, to stuff some particular delicacy into the mouth of her least grandson, Kofeeshtetch. Having their mouths full didn’t keep them from singing along, welcomingly waving Beert to join in.

Pirraghiz and I weren’t included in the invitation. We weren’t given the good seats, either. A pair of serving robots dropped their waitering duties long enough to tug us to webs at one vertex of the tetrahedron. Then they scuttled away to fetch fresh delicacies for the Horch.

We weren’t alone there. There were three or four Horch nearby, singing along lustily with the others though they couldn’t have been very high ranking-our place was the exact equivalent of a table by the kitchen door in a human restaurant, even to the procession of serving robots that streamed back and forth past us. Our neighbors didn’t stop singing. They darted their heads to glance at us as we arrived-not cordially. I could almost hear them asking each other what cretin had invited these nasty-looking lower orders to the feast. Especially ones who smelled as strange as Pirraghiz and, no doubt, me.