A tentacle-tip stabbed toward a wall.
Illumination sprang up in a sudden flood, making Gutierrez blink. Before him, across the diameters of eyes the proverbial size of dinner plates, vast pupils shrank to fine, black vertical lines.
"Forgive me for not having done that sooner. You're rather earlier than expected, General Gutierrez, doubtless at the urging of my overly punctilious assistant, and I'm afraid you startled me. I'm descended from abyssal species, you know, and in any event, like you, would enjoy my dark, quiet hour of contemplation."
"I startled you," Gutierrez gulped, "the Proprietor?"
" `If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?' " A respiratory organ two hundred centimeters long and forty in diameter seemed to generate a colossal, godlike chuckle, rattling the man's teeth. "I'm a simple tradesman, my boy, no distinguished military hero like yourself, with nerves of steel. The individual who refers to me as `the Proprietor' possesses an unfortunate predilection for the melodramatic. Also, I suspect he thinks it looks good on his résumé. Everybody else calls me Mister Thoggosh, for the excellent reason that it happens to be my name."
Nerves of steel. Now that the danger was past, another humiliating wave of panic swept through the man's body, this one worst of all. This, he thought, must be what Vivian's been feeling—maybe even what Art feels all the time. "I'm pleased," he lied, attempting to control his bodily functions, "to meet you."
"Do try to relax," the giant told him. "I realize I'm something of a spectacle for anyone who's never seen the like, but I assure you I'm quite an ethical being. I wouldn't dream of eating you."
Gutierrez found himself muttering an inane, "That's nice . . ."
"And before we start, my boy, the next time you come to see me, by all means wear your side arm. Everybody here carries personal weapons. You appear quite unclothed without yours."
Gutierrez suddenly wished for a chair, although most of his weight was supported by the liquid filling the room. Growing calmer, he glanced around. In one corner, suspended on light, decorative cords between floor and ceiling, hung a cage about the right size for a small parrot. Through the bars, he could see, "perched" in "midair," a brightly-striped, spiny fish, trilling an undistracting, if not exactly musical, song.
"I'll, er, try to remember."
If there is a next time, he thought. His recent, peremptory orders from Earth intruded themselves into the forefront of his mind, although it wasn't as if he'd forgotten them. He tried to breathe deeply. The floor directly in front of Mister Thoggosh, an area three meters wide by two across, was set aside as a desk, dappled with buttons and lights, handy to the giant being's sinuous manipulators. Behind the technicolor house-sized horror lay an unnaturally broad door (now he understood the infirmary's architecture) flanked by a pair of large, upright boxes resembling stereo speakers. Gutierrez realized he hadn't been listening to Mister Thoggosh, but to their output, balanced so the sound seemed to emanate from the great mollusc.
Mister Thoggosh noticed him noticing. "Your surmise is correct, my boy. My species is quite mute, incapable of uttering a sound, although our hearing's rather keen. For reasons peculiar to our evolutionary history, we communicate by what would no doubt strike you as telepathy, although, in point of plain fact, it's rather less romantic than that. You'd understand better if I told you that, had you worn your spacesuit to this meeting, I might be able to speak with you directly."
Gutierrez peered at the monster. "Natural radio?"
"I assure you, sir, your vocal ability to compress and rarify the medium about you at will is no less marvelous to me. We're all beings, are we not, of infinite wonderment?"
Mister Thoggosh chuckled, his many tentacles twining a complex pattern. Gutierrez couldn't estimate the number of those writhing limbs, but he remembered that a squid (which his host resembled) had ten, while a nautilus (which he also resembled) had more, he thought. One of them lashed across the "desk" and touched a colored light. A wave of pressure passed through the fluid. Gutierrez glanced toward the ceiling, where an object—a plastic-coated wire chair—sank to the floor beside him.
"Will you be seated, General?" Mister Thoggosh asked him. "I prefer eyes at a level. And, as I suspect this conversation will continue rather a long while, I'd be more comfortable if I felt you were."
"Thanks." Gutierrez sat.
"And so, my boy," Mister Thoggosh began, "contact has at long last occurred between humanity and another sapience, just as your species dreamed of for so many centuries. And on your first real deep-space voyage, at that. Yet none of you seems much prepared to celebrate it."
The general grunted. "Mister Thoggosh, before this goes any further, I have an important—an official—message to relay to you from my superiors. I haven't been looking forward to it."
"A moment, sir." Two of the mollusc's tentacles were longer than the others. Instead of tapering to slender ends, they possessed splayed tips. Mister Thoggosh laid one across his "desk," crossing the other over it. "Do you care for refreshment? I'm having beer. This liquid we steep ourselves in has its uses, but it will dehydrate the tissues."
"Beer?" Gutierrez felt his eyebrows rise. At the rate they were getting exercised here, he thought, they'd eventually take up residence at the back of his neck. Suddenly, to his even greater astonishment, one of his host's tentacles separated from his body with a plop, and began swimming like a snake toward a wall on the right.
"Surely, General, you can't imagine yours the only culture, in a universe far wider than you know, to have discovered fermentation."
Open-mouthed, the human watched the mollusc's disembodied limb wriggle through the handle of a round-cornered door (inside, a light came on), remove a pair of containers, and place them on a tray.
"Not," Mister Thoggosh told him, "by at least five hundred million years."
At the desk, the tentacle wound itself about a small gold-colored metal accessory, piercing the top of a container and bringing it, with a slender plastic tube trailing behind, to the general. Mister Thoggosh reached for his own beer and reclaimed his wandering limb.
"This, for example, and at the risk of sounding like your legendary Captain Nemo, is brewed from a variety of kelp native to the waters off the landmass you call New Mexico. Or is it Old Mexico?"
With another tentacle, Mister Thoggosh inserted the tube where Gutierrez knew his mouth must be.
"Or perhaps it was California. In any event," the mollusc sighed (no other word could describe it), "I find it very satisfactory. My only regret is that I can't invite you to smoke, a fascinating habit. This liquid carries heat away too quickly and won't support combustion."
The songfish warbled in its cage. Gutierrez sampled the exotic beverage, surprised to discover he agreed with that individual's evaluation of it. He admitted as much.
"I'm highly gratified to hear it," Mister Thoggosh replied. "And now, my boy, if I may help you: you've been instructed to inform me—that is, whoever's `in charge' among my party—that this asteroid, indeed every celestial body and the entire volume of space within the `Solar System,' is the property of Earth, under the authority of your United World Soviet, as `the common heritage of all mankind.' "
Gutierrez's jaw dropped. The beer-tube floated free. "How—?"
Tentacles lifted and spread in a shrug. "It must certainly have occurred to you by now that our command of English, Spanish, Russian, and quite a number of other human languages results from the fact that your planet, in certain frequencies, is quite the brightest—or, rather, the loudest—object in the Solar System."
"Yes, but—"
"Further reflection would make it clear that the computative sophistication requisite to sort this tangle of signals out from one another—and, in a word, `decode' those languages—empowers us, by necessary implication, to comprehend them whatever enciphering may have been imposed upon them. It isn't so much that we set out to break your rather childish codes, General, our apparatus simply removes interference, be it from solar radiation or our own machinery."
Gutierrez reached for his siphon. "Which is how you knew we were coming, the names of some of the people onboard the shuttles—and the rest of my message."
It was as if the mollusc sighed again. "Sir, you've my profoundest sympathies. The spectrographic signature of this little world signifies to any observer a concentration of resources highly desirable to the prospective colonist expected to support himself as soon as possible. Moreover, the planetoid describes an orbit which carries it near quite a variety of other such bodies. To your American Soviet Socialist Republic, as it is to us, 5023 Eris is perfectly conceived as a base for science and exploitation. Thus you're ordered to evict us, no allowance being made by those with the power to command you for the priority of our claim, or the fact that you possess no means whatever of carrying out that order."
Now that it had been mentioned, Gutierrez found himself wishing for a cigarette, although he'd given up the habit a quarter of a century earlier. "Well," he told the mollusc, "at least all my cards are on the table. I ought to thank you. I was dreading it."
Mister Thoggosh emitted a chuckle. "As I would in your place, my boy. Permit me to put my cards on the table, as well. Let us discuss what alternatives present themselves, before you try to carry out that preposterous command. First, we'll dispose of this `common heritage' nonsense: that a body lies within the same stellar system as your United World Soviet scarcely means that you own it. I gather that this pernicious doctrine was first promulgated to prevent the assertion of private property claims in space, in effect assuring a Marxist revolution there before your species had even arrived on a permanent basis."
Gutierrez raised his eyebrows significantly, but patriotically refrained from comment. The chuckle became Olympian before the great mollusc managed to get it back under control.
"Do forgive me, sir, I beg you. Where was I? Oh yes: those penalized most by this doctrine nevertheless felt compelled, for some reason, to accept it, to their eventual fatal disadvantage. Now, it's being used to assert a property claim—a collective one, your own—in the face of our having arrived here first. In short, those you call your superiors wish to retain their pie and consume it at the same time."
It was probable, the general realized, given government control of education and the media, that the Proprietor was better informed regarding Earth's recent history than any member of the expedition, with the possible exception of Piotr Kamanov. In his profession, Gutierrez couldn't help understanding how eventual American acceptance of United Nations treaties governing such unclaimed territories as Antarctica, the ocean floor, and outer space (after earlier periods of rejection) had deprived it of resources and defenses appropriate to the late twentieth century, and disproportionately influenced subsequent political events. It was one of the things that made him a dangerous liability to the ASSR.
"Cake," he corrected, "although I wouldn't want to go on record agreeing with you about that."
The mollusc waved a negligent limb. "For reasons that will become more and more obvious as you get to know us better, my boy, this isn't going onto any sort of record. However, I do sympathize with your dilemma. One grows accustomed to free speech, and the casual opinions I've just expressed would get you sentenced to Siberia, would they not?"
"Labrador." Gutierrez grinned. "We Americans take care of our own."
Great pupils widened in what the human believed was a smile. The mouth, probably a great parrot-jawed beak, wasn't visible, even if it were capable of expressing Mister Thoggosh's feelings.
"Labrador." That being shuddered. "I'm not overly fond of the cold, being a creature of tropical waters. In fact, General, I come equipped with a full complement of prejudices. I confess that I'm disposed to regard this Marxism of yours, indeed collectivism of any sort, as a manifestation of primitivity; a pitiable, aberrational phase in the otherwise progressive development of any culture which it nevertheless appears all intelligent species must go through. They do grow out of it eventually, provided they survive its immediate, disastrous economic and ethical consequences."
Mister Thoggosh stirred. "Which brings us to the nub of the situation, and to words I don't mind telling you I've dreaded saying quite as fully as you dreaded conveying your superiors' message to me.
"I, too, have principals, General, investors I must answer to. Not to mention employees who traveled here with me in good faith. I'm not a free agent. My policy will be to remain amiable as long as your superiors permit me, but we'll not be dispossessed, whatever consequences we're forced to bear. We pursue important business here, touching deeply upon our civilization's most ancient and fundamental values and beliefs."
"I wanted to ask—" Gutierrez began.
"I trust you'll not regard me as persisting with perverse mysteriousness if, for the nonce, our business here remains unspecified."
Believing he was being dismissed, the general rose.
"You've your imperatives, as well," his host conceded, "and we may soon confront each other in mortal conflict. Yet I'm reminded, in all courtesy, that, whereas I know exactly who and what you are—to the extent those things can be known about anyone—you've still many unanswered questions about me and my associates."
Gutierrez sat down again.
"Will you have another beer, while I anticipate some of those questions? Has anyone informed you, for example, that we aren't the extraterrestrials of your folklore?"
"Yes, thanks. Aelbraugh Pritsch told me you were from Earth—"
"But he didn't bother to elaborate upon what must seem to you a remarkable assertion." A snorting noise came from the speakers behind Mister Thoggosh. "How very like him. There are times I—but I suppose it's best to start at the beginning."
Gutierrez took a sip of his second beer, nodding agreement.
"We are, indeed, from Earth, sir," the mollusc told him, sampling his own beverage. "Not from the Earth you know, but from what you'd no doubt regard as another dimension."
"I'm familiar with the phrase," the human replied, "although I never understood what it means."
"You're refreshingly forthright, sir. Indeed, it's been truly said that `To know what you know, and to know what you don't know, is to know.' In this instance, it means an alternative branching of historical probability. I haven't the time or temperament, nor, I suspect, have you the patience at the moment, for a lecture on metaphysics. Let it stand, then, that my people discovered long ago that each choice which reality offers us, in a wider reality, is resolved in every possible way it can be."
Gutierrez resisted the urge to wrinkle his brow and scratch his head. "Would you like to try that again?"
"To be certain," Mister Thoggosh replied. "In this continuum, you accept my offer of kelp beer. In another, altogether separate from our particular consciousness yet somehow nearby, your counterpart refuses. In a third, my counterpart was niggardly and never made the offer."
He took a draw on his own beer.
"Farther out upon the bell curve of ultimate reality, you and I never had this meeting. Human beings never came to 5023 Eris. At the farthest extreme known or conceivable, the `Big Bang' never happened and a universe was stillborn. In this context, in addition to its other manifold attractions, 5023 Eris presents us with something of a conundrum. Its counterpart fails to appear in our version of reality."
"I—" Gutierrez tried to interrupt.
"But I digress." Mister Thoggosh ignored him. "You see, General, in my version of prehistory, exactly as in your own, during what your scientists term the late Cambrian Period, the dominant life-form on Earth was a small and unprepossessing ancestor of mine, called a `nautiloid.' This, you must understand, was five hundred million years before anything even remotely resembling human beings evolved."
Gutierrez nodded. "I think I follow you."
"I should hardly have expected otherwise, my boy. In your prehistory, with perhaps a single exception, none of the ocean animals developed high intelligence and, in due course, they were supplanted by other forms, culminating in your own."
He raised a tentacle-tip, "Ah, but in mine . . ."
In its cage, the striped fish trilled a mindless melody.