“You were never a baby,” Seth Morley said to him.
“What an odd thing to say,” Mary said.
“I mean,” Seth Morley said, “that it isn’t possible to imagine him as a baby.”
“But that’s not what you said,” Mary said.
“What difference does it make what I said?” He felt violently irritable. “So we do have one common element—this annotation chiseled into our flesh. Probably those who are dead have it, too. Susie and the rest of them. Well, let’s face it; we all have a slot of amnesia dug somewhere in our brains. Otherwise, we’d know why we got this tattoo and what it means. We’d know what Persus 9 is—or was at the time the tattoo was made. I’m afraid this confirms the criminally insane theory; we were probably given these marks when we were prisoners in the Building. We don’t remember that, so we don’t remember this tattoo either.” He lapsed into brooding introversion, ignoring, for the time, the rest of the group. “Like Dachau,” he said. “I think,” he said, “that it’s very important to find out what these marks mean. It’s the first really solid indication we’ve found as to who we are and what this settlement is. Can any of you suggest how we find out what Persus 9 means?”
“Maybe the reference library on the squib,” Thugg said.
Seth Morley said, “Maybe. We can try that. But first I suggest we ask the tench. And I want to be there. Can you get me into the squib along with you?” Because, he said to himself, if you leave me here I will, like Belsnor, be murdered.
Dr. Babble said, “I’ll see that you’re gotten aboard—with this one proviso. First we ask the squib’s reference libraries. If it has nothing, then we’ll go searching out the tench. But if we can get it from the squib then we won’t be taking such a great—”
“Fine,” Morley said. But he knew that the ship’s reference service would be unable to tell them anything.
Under Ignatz Thugg’s direction they began the task of getting Seth Morley—and themselves—into the small squib.
Propped up at the controls of the squib once more, Seth Morley snapped on REFERENCE. “Yezzz sirr,” it squeaked.
“What is referred to by the designated Persus 9?” he asked. A whirr and then it spoke in its vodor voice. “I have no information on a Persussss 9,” REFERENCE said.
“If it were a planet, would you have a record of it?”
“Yezzz, if known to Interplan West or Interplan East authorities.”
“Thanks,” Seth Morley shut off the REFERENCE service. “I had a feeling it wouldn’t know. And I have an even stronger feeling that the tench does know.” That, in fact, the tench’s ultimate purpose would be served by asking it this question. Why he thought that he did not know.
“I’ll pilot the ship,” Thugg said. “You’re too injured; you lie down.”
“There’s no place to lie down because of all these people,” Seth Morley said.
They made room. And he stretched himself out gratefully. The squib, in the hands of Ignatz Thugg, zipped up into the sky. A murderer for a pilot, Seth Morley reflected. And a doctor who’s a murderer. And my wife. A murderess. He shut his eyes. The squib zoomed on, in search of the tench.
“There it is,” Wade Frazer said, studying the viewscreen. “Bring the ship down.”
“Okay,” Thugg said cheerfully. He moved the control ball; the ship at once began to descend.
“Will they pick up our presence?” Babble said nervously. “At the Building?”
“Probably,” Thugg said.
“We can’t turn back now,” Seth Morley said. “Sure we can,” Thugg said. “But nobody said anything about it.” He adjusted the controls; the ship glided to a long, smooth landing and came to rest, bumping noisily.
“Get me out,” Morley said, standing hesitantly; again his head rang. As if, he thought, a sixty cycle hum is being conducted through my brain. Fear, he thought; it’s fear that’s making me this way. Not my wound.
They gingerly stepped from the squib onto parched and highly arid land. A thin smell, again like something burning, reached their noses. Mary turned away from the smell, paused to blow her nose.
“Where’s the river?” Seth Morley said, looking around.
The river had vanished.
Or maybe we’re somewhere else, Seth Morley thought. Maybe the tench moved. And then he saw it—not far away. It had managed to blend itself almost perfectly with its local environment. Like a desert toad, he thought. Screwing itself backward into the sand.
Rapidly, on a small piece of paper, Babble wrote. He handed it, when finished, to Seth Morley. For confirmation.
WHAT IS PERSUS 9?
“That’ll do.” Seth Morley handed the slip around; all of them soberly nodded. “Okay,” he said, as briskly as he could manage. “Put it in front of the tench.” The great globular mass of protoplasmic slush undulated slightly, as if aware of him. Then, as the question was placed before it, the tench began to shudder… as if, Morley thought, to get away from us. It swayed back and forth, evidently in distress. Part of it began to liquify.
Something’s wrong, Seth Morley realized. It did not act like this before.
“Stand back!” Babble said warningly; he took hold of Seth Morley by his good shoulder and propelled him bodily away.
“My God,” Mary said, “it’s coming apart.” Turning swiftly, she ran; she hurried away from the tench and climbed back into the squib.
“She’s right,” Wade Frazer said. He, too, retreated.
Babble said, “I think it’s going to—” A loud whine from the tench sounded, shutting out his voice. The tench swayed, changed color; liquid oozed out from beneath it and formed a gray, disturbed pool on all sides of it. And then, as they stared fixedly in dismay, the tench ruptured. It split into two pieces, and, a moment later, into four; it had split again.
“Maybe it’s giving birth,” Seth Morley said, above the eerie whine. By degrees, the whine had become more and more intense. And more and more urgent.
“It’s not giving birth to anything,” Seth Morley said. “It’s breaking apart. We’ve killed it with our question; it isn’t able to answer. And instead it’s being destroyed. Forever.”
“I’ll retrieve the question,” Babble knelt, whisked the slip of paper back from its spot close to the tench.
The tench exploded.
They stood for a time, not speaking, gazing at the ruin that had been the tench. Gelatin everywhere… a circle of it, on all sides of the central remains. Seth Morley took a few steps forward, in its direction; Mary and the others who had run away came slipping cautiously back, to stand with him and view it. View what they had done.
“Why?” Mary demanded in agitation. “What could there have been about that question that—”
“It’s a computer,” Seth Morley said. He could distinguish electronic components under the gelatin, exposed by the tench’s explosion, the hidden core—and electronic computer—lay visible. Wiring, transistors, printed circuits, tape storage drums, Thurston gate-response crystals, basic irmadium valves by the thousand, lying scattered everywhere on the ground like minute Chinese firecrackers… lady crackers, they’re called, Seth Morley said to himself. Pieces of it flung in all directions. Not enough left to repair; the tench, as he had intuited, was gone for good.
“So all the time it was inorganic,” Babble said, apparently dazed. “You didn’t know that, did you Morley?”
“I had an intuition,” Seth Morley said, “but it was the wrong one. I thought it would answer—be the only living thing that could answer—the question.” How wrong he had been.
Wade Frazer said, “You were right about one thing, Morley. That question is the key question, evidently. But where do we go from here?”
The ground surrounding the tench smoked, now, as if the gelatinous material and computer parts were starting into some kind of thermal chain reaction. The smoke had an ominous quality about it. Seth Morley, for reasons not understood, felt, sensed, the seriousness of their situation. Yes, he thought; a chain reaction which we have started but which we can’t stop. How far will it go? he wondered somberly. Already, large cracks had begun to appear in the ground adjacent to the tench. The liquid squirted from the dying, agonized tench, spilling now into the cracks… he heard, from far down, a low drumming noise, as if something immense and sickly-vile had been disturbed by the surface explosion.