Whipping Star Part 5

"It's going to get hot," McKie said.

"What?"

"Hot. Remember the briefings? Calebans like their air hot and dry." He could already feel his damp clothing begin to turn clammy against his skin.

"That's right," Furuneo said. "What's going on?"

"We've been invited in," McKie said. "We didn't disturb him because he has no referent for disturb." He turned back to the spoon shape.

"Where is he?"

"In that spoon thing."

"Yeah . . . I, uh -- yeah. "

"You may address me as f.a.n.n.y Mae, "the Caleban said. "I can reproduce my kind and answer the equivalents for female. "

"f.a.n.n.y Mae," McKie said with what he knew to be stupid vacuity. How can you look at the d.a.m.n thing? Where is its face? "My companion is Alichino Furuneo, planetary agent on Cordiality for the Bureau of Sabotage." f.a.n.n.y Mae? d.a.m.n!

"I make your acquaintance," the Caleban said. "Permit an inquiry into the purpose for your visit."

Furuneo scratched his right ear. "How're we hearing it?" He shook his head. "I can understand it, but. . . ."

"Never mind!" McKie said. And he warned himself: Gently now. How do you question one of these things? The insubstantial Caleban presence, the twisting away his mind accepted the thing's words -- it all combined with the angeret in producing irritation.

"I . . . my orders," McKie said. "I seek a Caleban employed by Mliss Abnethe."

"I receive your questions," the Caleban said.

Receive my questions?

McKie tried tipping his head from side to side, wondered if it were possible to achieve an angle of vision where the something across from him would a.s.sume recognizable substance.

"What're you doing?" Furuneo asked.

"Trying to see it."

"You seek visible substance?" the Caleban asked.

"Uhhh, yes," McKie said.

f.a.n.n.y Mae? he thought. It would be like an original encounter with the Gowachin planets, the first Earth-human encountering the first froglike Gowachin, and the Gowachin introducing himself as William. Where in ninety thousand worlds did the Caleban dig up that name? And why?

"I produce mirror," the Caleban said, "which reflects outward from projection along plane of being."

"Are we going to see it?" Furuneo whispered. "n.o.body's ever seen a Caleban.'

"Shhh."

A half-meter oval something of green, blue, and pink without apparent connection to the empty-presence of the Caleban materialized above the giant spoon.

"Think of this as stage upon which I present my selfdom," the Caleban said.

"You see anything?" Furuneo asked.

McKie's visual centers conjured a borderline sensation, a feeling of distant life whose rhythms danced unfleshed within the colorful oval like the sea roaring in an empty sh.e.l.l. He recalled a one-eyed friend and the difficulty of focusing the attention on that lonely eye without being drawn to the vacant patch. Why couldn't the d.a.m.n fool just buy a new eye? Why couldn't. . . .

He swallowed.

"That's the oddest thing I ever saw," Furuneo whispered. "You see it?"

McKie described his visual sensation. "That what you see?"

"I guess so," Furuneo said.

"Visual attempt fails," the Caleban said. "Perhaps I employ insufficient contrast."

Wondering if he could be mistaken, McKie thought he detected a plaintive mood in the Caleban's words. Was it possible Calebans disliked not being seen?

"It's fine," McKie said. "Now, may we discuss the Caleban who . . ."

"Perhaps overlooking cannot be connected," the Caleban said, interrupting. "We enter state for which there exists no remedy. 'As well argue with the night,' as your poets tell us."

The sensation of an enormous sigh swept out from the Caleban and over McKie. It was sadness, a doom-fire gloom. He wondered if they had experienced an angeret failure. The emotional strength carried terror within it.

"You feel that?" Furuneo asked.

"Yes."

McKie felt his eyes burning. He blinked. Between blinks, he glimpsed a flower element hovering within the oval -- deep red against the room's purple, with black veins woven through it, Slowly it blossomed, closed, blossomed. He wanted to reach out, touch it with a handful of compa.s.sion.

"How beautiful," he whispered.

"What is it?" Furuneo whispered.

"I think we're seeing a Caleban."

"I want to cry," Furuneo said.

"Control yourself," McKie cautioned. He cleared his throat. Tw.a.n.ging bits of emotion tumbled through him. They were like pieces cut from the whole and loosed to seek their own patterns. The angeret effect was lost in the mixture.

Slowly the image in the oval faded. The emotional torrent subsided.

"Wheweee," Furuneo breathed.

"f.a.n.n.y Mae," McKie ventured. "What was . . ."

"I am one employed by Mliss Abnethe," the Caleban said. "Correct verb usage?"