“Right you are, Mark, square one. People are going to be killed up there. Are you going to do anything about it?”

“There is not much I can do physically. And everything

AJJI U·UY Unrbu

ZWI IWOi nWiiSWI political or philosophical is in my book. The citizens up there know as much about IM as I do.”

“So you are Just going to sit there and listen to the sizzle of your electrons and let them die.”

“People have died before for their beliefs.”

“Wonderful. Well I believe in living for mine. And I am going to do something—even if you do not.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“I don’t know yet. Do you have advice for me?”

“About what?”

“About saving lives, that’s.what. About ending the invasion and polishing offZennor…”

And then I had it. I didn’t need to swap political arguments with Mark—1 just had to use its intelligence. If it had memory banks thousands of years old it certainly had the knowledge I needed. And I still had the electronic spy bird!

“Well, Mark old machine, you could help me. Just a bit of information.”

“Certainly.”

“Do you know the spatial coordinates of this system and this planet?”

“Of course.”

“Then you give me a little printout of them, soonest! So I can send an FTL message to the League Navy for help.”

“I don’t see why I should do that.”

I lost my temper. “You don’t see …! Listen you moronic machine. I’m just asking for a bit of information that will save lives—and you don’t see…”

“Jim, my new oflworlder friend. Do not lose your tem-

per so quickly. Bad for the blood pressure. Let me finish my statement, if I might. I was going to add that this information would be redundant. You sent an FTL mes-

sage yourself, just after you retrieved the corvine-disguised transmitter.”

Chapter 29

“I sent an FTL message?” I said, my thoughts stumbling about in small circles. “You did.”

“But—but—but—” I stopped and seized myself by the mental neck and gave it a good shaking. Logic, Jim, time for logic. “The recorded message from Captain Varod said that I would need the coordinates to send an FTL message.”

“That was obviously a lie.”

“Saying it was a radio message was a lie too?”

“Of course. ”

I paced back and forth and the TV pickup followed me as I moved. What was going on? Why had Varod lied to me about the signal? And if he had received it where was he? If he had got the signal and hadn’t sent his fleet or whatever, then he was the one who must take the responsibility for the murders. The League did not go in for that sort of thing. But Mark might know what was happening. I spun about.

“Speak, ancient brain-in-box!! Has the League Navy arrived or is it on the way?”

“I’m sorry, Jim, I just don’t know. The last orbiting telescope ran out of power centuries ago. I know no more than you do about this. All I can surmise is that we are very distant from these rescuers you expect.”

I stopped pacing and was suddenly very tired. It was going to be another of these days. I looked around the room. “You don’t have an old box or something that I can sit on?”

“Oh dear, I do apologize. I’m not being a very good host, am I? Out of training.”

While he was talking a powered sofa came trundling in and stopped behind me. I dropped into it. It was hard to think of Mark as an it, not with the voice and all.

“Many thanks, very soft.” I smacked my lips and it got the hint. ”

“Please make yourself comfortable. Something to drink perhaps?”

“I wouldn’t say no. Just to stimulate thinking, you realize.

“I’m not too well stocked at the present moment. There is some wine, but it must be four hundred years old at least. Vintage with a vengeance, you might say.”

“We can only try!”

The table stopped at my elbow and I blew dust from the bottle, then activated the electronic corkscrew which managed to extract the truly ancient cork without breaking it. I poured and sniffed and gasped.

“Never—never smelled anything like that before!” And it tasted even better. All the sniffing and tasting did clear the mental air a bit. I felt better able to handle the problems of the day.

“I don’t know the time,” I said.

“Over sixteen hours to go before the promised executions.” Mark was anything but stupid. I sipped the wine and ran over the possibilities.

“I sent the message—so the Navy has to be on its way here. But we can’t count upon their arrival to save the day. The only grace note to all this is that at least I know I won’t be stranded on this planet forever. Now what can I do to save lives? Since obviously neither you nor your IMers are going to lift a finger.”

“I wouldn’t say that, Jim. There are a number of confer-

ences going on right now in the city. People are returning in large numbers.”

“Are they knuckling under? Going back to work?”

“Not at all. A protest is being organized, as to what shape it will take—that is still being discussed.”

“How do you know all this? Spies?”

“Not quite. I simply tap all the communication circuits and monitor all phone calls. I have subunits looking for keywords and making records for me.”

“Are you tapping the Nevenkebia circuits as well?”

“Yes. Very interesting.”

“You speak the language?”

“I speak every language. Fourteen thousand six hundred and twelve of them.”

“J’amen, 6n ting er i hvert fold siker. Du taller ikke dansk.”

“Og hvorfor sa ikke det? Dansk er da et smukt, melodisk sprog.”

Pretty good—1 thought that I was the only one who had ever heard of Danish. But there was one that I was sure Mark had never heard of. An ancient language called Latin. Spoken only by a secret society so secret I dare not say more about it.

“Nonne c’ognoscis linguam Latinam?”

“Loquarne linguam Latinam?” Mark answered in a decidedly snotty manner. “Quid referam in singutorum verborum delectu, in coniunctorum compositione, et structura, in casuum atque temporum discriminatione, in certarum concinnitate formularum, in indsorum membrorumque conformatione, in modulandis circumdictionibus, in elegantiarum cuiusque generis accurata, elaborataque frequentatione quantus turn sim et quam purus putus Ciceronianus? Ex qua Cicero mortuus est, meis verbis nihil latinius. Memoria vero libros omnium auctorum latinorum tarn veterum quam recentiorum et neotericorum continet. Voces peregrinae et barbarae quae latinis eloquiis inseruntur, omino mihi notae sunt. Nae tu es baro et balatro, nam ego studeo partes diffidles cognoscere quas scholastici doctores gestant, latebras singulas auxilio mei ipsius cerno. Doctissimi enimvero homines omnino univer-

sitatum modernarum me rogant sensus omnium talium verborum. “

I could only gape at this as it hummed in electronic joy, very proud of itself. “Did you catch all those nuances, Jim? About what a pure Ciceronian I am? Each word carefully chosen, the composition of sentence structure, the contrast of cases and tenses, phrases and clauses…” He, or rather it, went on for quite a while like that. Bragging. Chatting away with Mark I tended to anthropomorphize him. It. Her. Whatever. This wasn’t a human but an intelligent machine .with abilities far beyond anything I had ever imagined before. But how could I put them to work?

“Mark, tell me. Will you help me?”

“In any way I can.”

I sipped more wine and felt its healing and inspirational powers doing good things to me. Memory. Something that had happened earlier today.

“Mark—1 saw two soldiers desert today. Are there other newly arrived deserters in the city?”

“A goodly number of them. One hundred and twenty-

one in all, wait… sorry, one twenty-two. Another just arrived. ”

“Any of them armed?”

“You mean equipped with weapons? All of them. They have all deserted from patrols in the city.”