Narabedla Ltd (17 page)

Ocarina or not, I liked the guy.

The first thing he did was ask me what on Narabedla I wanted to see. I couldn’t answer that. I didn’t know what that was. I only hoped I’d recognize it when I came across it, so I told him to shoot the works; and he did.

We started out by walking the streets of the local human community. There were a couple dozen of them, all interlocking, none of them more than a couple of hundred yards long. It wasn’t just houses. There was a library—“With a lot of your Earth newspapers and magazines, Mr. Stennis, although of course you can get them on your skry without going out of your house.” There was a sort of restaurant/bar/soda-shop; we peered into it, and Purry introduced me to a couple of people sitting there, but they were a man and a woman, busy on a conversation of their own, and they didn’t seem interested in talking to me. There were little parks and a pleasant (though oddly curved) pond. There were go-box stations at half a dozen of the intersections, so no one needed to walk very far except for the.fun of it; and when Purry shepherded me into one of them I found myself again on the lowest level—the one they called Lookout.

Although I’d already been there, it looked different. There was something big in that immensity of empty sky beneath our feet that hadn’t been there before, and Purry told me that it was that seventh planet that we were on the second moon of. It was a huge one. It looked a lot like pictures I’d seen of Jupiter, a great, bright, swirly, cloudy thing with no detectable surface. “And nobody lives there?” I asked, just checking.

Purry hesitated. “Well, Mr. Stennis,” he said playfully, “that depends on what you mean by a body, doesn’t it? None of the Fifteen Peoples do, certainly. They’d die; it’s all poison gases and very high pressure. Still, there are living things there of some sort, I believe. Quite primitive ones. There are in most places. We could check it out on the skry if you like?”

I shook my head, watching the big thing follow its star down under the side of our moonlet. When they had both set I said, “There’s an awful lot I need to check out on the skry. Maybe we should go back to my place.”

“Oh? But really, Mr. Stennis, we can find a skry almost anywhere.”

“We can’t find food just anywhere,” I pointed out. “I’m beginning to get hungry.”

“Oh?” He sounded puzzled as he looked up at me. “But there are places where food can be bought. If you remember, I showed you one. The refreshment place. But I thought you said you didn’t want anything.”

“It wasn’t so much I didn’t
want
anything as that I couldn’t
pay
for anything,” I explained. “I don’t have any money.”

“I see,” he said doubtfully. Then he made a sort of faint puffing sound out of several of his orifices, like the dying gasps of a pipe organ when the pump has been turned off. I took it to be a sigh. “No, I don’t see,” he confessed. “What is ‘money’?”

By the time we got that threshed out I was getting really ravenous. “Money” as a medium of exchange for normal goods and services meant nothing to Purry. You did what you were supposed to do, you used what commodities you needed, and that was that. Nobody kept books. When I mentioned Norah Platt’s fondness for imported kippers Purry saw the distinction at once. “Oh, yes, to be sure,” he agreed. “For off-planet things, yes, of course, there is a medium of exchange. That is basically determined by the Polyphase Index in transactions among the Fifteen Associated Peoples—that is to say, by what you would call ‘barter.’ But for you Earth artists there are special arrangements, as set out in your contract for services.”

“But I don’t have a contract for services, Purry!”

“Yes,” he conceded, “the situation is unusual in that way. It doesn’t affect food, drink, and lodging, however. Shall we go to the refreshment place?”

But I wasn’t ready for that. We wound up back at my place, where I discovered that the skry was flashing its gentle lavender attention signal again. Purry commanded, “Mr. Stennis’s messages, please.” There turned out to be three of them. A quick word from Sam Shipperton to say that Meretekabinnda was expected back in the morning, though why he was telling me that I wasn’t sure. The skry’s own sweet, sexless voice to tell me that the garments I had ordered were completed and already in my bedroom closet. And a message from Bartolomeo Canduccio to let me know that several of his recitals were in the skry’s data-stores, and if I would like to hear how he sang I had but to order them up.

“There,” I said, “is a man who doesn’t know that I’m unemployed.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Purry, looking uncertainly up at me.

“Never mind,” I said. “Let’s get to the food and drink. We can hear the man sing while we’re eating.”

So Purry did what was necessary to get the recordings going—actually, Canduccio wasn’t half bad, if you like Mozart—and I drifted into the kitchen to see what was in the refrigerator.

“But don’t you want something made for you?” asked Purry in surprise. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Kekkety folk, dinner for Mr. Stennis,” he ordered; and almost at once the little door that I’d thought was a broom closet opened and one of the silent little men came out. “And what would you like, Mr. Stennis?” asked Purry. “Something quick? There are premade meals in slow storage; I know that Mr. Shipperton always likes the what he calls macaroni and cheese casserole—”

“Fine,” I said. “Get something for yourself, too.”

“Oh, no,” Purry said, sounding surprised. I didn’t argue, because I wasn’t really listening. I had been watching when the little Kekkety came out, and what he had come out of was something that looked like a closet. No doors. No windows. It was a go-box.

When Purry had given the order to the servant, who disappeared into the box to get it, I said, “Isn’t that a go-box? Can’t I use that one, instead of going to the one on the corner?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Stennis. Human beings can’t operate the Kekkety things.”

“Why not?”

“Weil …” He hesitated. “They simply can’t. The controls are not set for them, you see.”

“But the Kekkety—” I did a slow double take. “Aren’t they human?”

Purry shrilled in surprise, “Certainly not, Mr. Stennis! They’re no more human than I am. They’re
made.
They’re what I believe you call ‘robots.’”

I did a double take. “
You
are a robot?”

“Certainly, Mr. Stennis. An organic robot. I thought you knew.”

“But you can talk!”

“Yes, Mr. Stennis. I’m din-Kekkety, you see. I have language capacities installed. The servant Kekkety simply have not been made with that capacity. Ah, your meal is arriving; would you care to wash up first?”

When I came out of the bathroom my dinner was all ready, and a table had been set in the larger room. Set for one.

Purry didn’t seem to mind. He chattered on while I was eating. “As to this question of ‘unemployment,’ as you call it. I’ve queried the skry about it, to see what might happen if you do not actually sign a performance contract.”

I sat down, sniffing the casserole appreciatively. “So what’s the word?”

“I’m not sure, in your case, what would be done. There have been human beings who weren’t artists; there still are, three or four of them. Mr. Shipperton, of course, and an associate of his who helps with bookings on other planets— he’s away now. Also there used to be a human man who worked on the farms—I don’t mean that he did the actual farming, of course. The ftan-Kekkety do that—oh, you’ve never seen ftan-Kekkety. Well, they don’t have language capacity either, but they aren’t made to look human. They’re purpose-designed, you see, like me. But anyway, this human man was employed to help choose the varieties of things to plant, and he tested all the protein sources to see if they were to human tastes.”

“I don’t think I’d make a good farmhand,” I grumbled, finishing off the macaroni casserole. There was a fresh fruit cup for dessert.

“Then there was another man who volunteered for one of the probes. I do hope you won’t want to do that, Mr. Stennis.”

“What probes?”

“The long-distance ones,” he explained. “Not a
really
long one. I don’t mean anything like the Andromeda probe, just a two-thousand-light-year one.”

I stared at the little thing. “And somebody volunteered for that? For God’s sake, why?”

Purry said, “I believe he was hoping that by the time he got back the human race would have been allowed to join the Fifteen Associated Peoples, Mr. Stennis.”

“Two thousand years! That’s a lot of patience. And is it likely that that will happen?”

“Oh, Mr. Stennis,” he said plaintively, “I know nothing of such things. Such matters are decided by the Associated Peoples, and they are quite careful. They’ve had some bad experiences, you know. In any case,” he finished, “you seem to be through with your meal. Shall we continue the tour? Or would you like to meet some of your human colleagues? There should be a number in one of the refreshment places.”

So we started a good old-fashioned pub crawl, me and my little pet ocarina.

No one asked for payment, just as Purry had promised. I started with a beer or two, and began to feel the effects fast. My jet lag, or I guess I should call it my go-box lag, was still hovering around, and by the time I had visited three “refreshment places” with Purry, and had a drink or two in each of them, it all began to blur on me.

I did get to meet a lot of my human colleagues, though. Purry introduced me to a dozen, and most of that dozen introduced me to others—even if I hadn’t had the drinks, I couldn’t possibly have retained them all. We stayed in the English-speaking area, but even there there were a couple of hundred people, and I met a large fraction of them. There was a middle-aged black woman who wanted to know how the Dodgers were doing, and a youngish, serious-faced man who wanted to know if I was right with God. There was a pair of xylophonists, male and female, who had just come back from a three-planet tour and were full of stories about the kinds of places that passed for hotels on the road. There was a trombone player who wanted to tell me all about the Andromeda probe, and probably did; but as I was talking to three other people at the same time I can’t say I followed what he was saying very closely.

I did see a couple of familiar faces. Tricia Madigan looked in on one of the places as I was listening to a long spiel about how the Aiurdi really liked break dancing but the Ossps couldn’t stand it; she was with a tall, skinny black man, and though she waved at me she didn’t come in. And Ephard Joyce was sitting sullenly at the bar in one of the places. He turned and looked me full in the face. He must have heard that I’d failed my audition, because he cut me dead.

Purry got me home.

I don’t think I could have made it by myself. He took me as far as the door, looked up at me anxiously, then excused himself.

I got my clothes off and myself into my neatly made bed, and closed my eyes. My head was full of strange people and strange things, but there were some familiar worries still bobbing about in my brain. Their names were Irene Madigan; and my good and faithful Marlene; and, a little bit, all of my other clients, any one of whom, lacking my good offices, might be even then strangling in the coils of a particularly savage I.R.S. audit.

There was one other thing I was thinking about as I fell asleep.

A dozen or more of the people I talked to in the bars were female, and I was quite aware that never once had any of those women come on to me.

I was pretty sure I knew the reason why. Sweet Tricia had not delayed in spreading the word that poor old Nolly Stennis had no balls at all.

W
hen I woke up the next morning I had some hard thinking to do. It wasn’t, or at least it wasn’t directly, about how I could get out of this place and back home.

What it basically was was curiosity. I wanted to
know
things, and as soon as Purry came through the door I said, “No grand tour today. What I’d like to do is just ask you some questions.”

He reared back on his little legs, gazing up at me. “Of course, Mr. Stennis,” he said, but sounding a little puzzled. “What kind of questions?”

I was ready. The little list was all in my head. “Well, to start out, the go-box. How does it work?”

“Certainly, Mr. Stennis,” the little ocarina said agreeably. “To begin with, the local go-boxes will take you into any permitted area of Narabedla. You simply enter, announce your destination—”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, what
makes
it work? What is the scientific principle behind it?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know that, Mr. Stennis,” he said in dismay. “My skills are merely linguistic and musical. I suppose we could find the kind of data you want on the skry—” 

“Do it,” I said. I watched with satisfaction while the little ocarina clambered up in front of the skry and began chirping out orders.

Hard thinking in the early morning had given me a plan, and it came in three parts. First, I wanted to go home. Second, in order to get home I had to find out where the weak parts were in Narabedla’s security system. (Whatever that was. I hadn’t seen any signs that anybody was worrying much about security.) Third, as long as I was going home, why not take something with me? Out of all this wonderful technology there had to be
something
that I could take back to Earth.