Читать книгу Alienist - Laurence M. Janifer - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

All right. The strain of my situation had been too much for me, and I was having hallucinations.

Well, what would you have thought? I took several deep breaths. Then I said, to the air around me: “What the Hell?”

“Human,” the same voice said. “Planet resident. Occupying three per cent of locations suitable for growth, within one galaxy only. Resident of three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. Visitor to one additional spatial dimension. Limited sensory equipment. Cognition unknown. This is a first cut.”

Obviously, my ship was acting up again. Something had got into the speaker system, and I was fascinated by what the Hell it might be. It didn’t sound like any interactive I had aboard, or had ever had aboard; it didn’t even sound a lot like any interactive I had ever so much as heard of.

Though it is hard to tell, it didn’t sound like random selections from any interactive I was at all likely to own, either. Sensory and cognition are not words I expect to find lying around among my amusements. Concepts, yes; vocabulary, no.

I punched for a sound check, and as I did that the voice said:

“Response inappropriate.”

“All right,” I muttered. “What would be appropriate, you damn fool? Appropriate for a voice coming out of the everywhere, into the here.”

“Identification and reply, of course,” the voice told me promptly.

I was staring at my sound check board. It had informed me, accurately, that I had just muttered something. (I got a db reading and a plot of overtones.)

It was now also informing me, with certainty, that no other sound had existed in the cabin over the previous eighty seconds.

Maybe my sound check had fallen ill. Maybe I was hallucinating.

And just maybe, I told myself, something brand-new was happening in my ship. Or in my head. Or both.

So I said: “Who am I replying to, and what kind of identification?” I have no idea whether I really expected an answer.

But I got one, though not an immediately helpful one. “Who. Does there exist specific individuation?”

“There exist individuals,” I said. “They have identities. I made a request regarding that identity.”

“Individuals,” the voice said. “Sound-coded individuation. Call me Mishmael. Mosh. Kabibble.” A slight pause. “Sound-coded as Folla. Sufficient. Call me Folla.”

I felt as if I’d fallen into somebody’s notion of Surrealism. I felt, in fact, thoroughly cuckoo, and the notion set off an association, somewhere in my collection of scrappy Classical Learning. “Oh cuckoo,” I said, “shall I call thee bird, or but a wand’ring voice?”

The wand’ring voice said: “Response inappropriate,” again, which I suppose it was. I said:

“Translation: who the Hell is Folla, and what are you doing on my ship?”

The voice said: “Reply in series. One: Folla is now an inhabitant of these spaces. Two: I am occupying no space in your ship.”

All right. “Where is your voice coming from?”

I got the answer I should have been expecting. “Out of the everywhere—” it said.

“Into the here. Yes. I said that myself, two minutes ago. Any particular kind of everywhere? And your voice is not affecting my instrumentation.”

“Reply in series,” the voice—Folla, I supposed—said. “One: a non-specific and other everywhere. Two: I will correct, within six seconds of time flow.”

Well, I was getting answers, but the answers did not, for some reason, seem to be helpful. I tried again. “Where is your ship?”

“These spaces are my ship,” Folla said. “Do you wish to change your location, and rejoin your friends and neighbors?” My sound check now told me that the voice was coming from inside my cabin, centered on a point five inches over my head. There was nothing visible five inches over my head.

Beware, the old saying goes, of geeks bearing grifts. Whether Folla was or was not a geek I was not prepared to say; but the offer did sound a lot like a grift. A con. What would happen if I said Yes, get me home?

“I am preparing to do that myself,” I said.

“It can be done without disturbance,” Folla said. “Fret not, and it will be arranged. No payment will be requested at this time.”

“A service of Path, Ltd.,” I said, to fill in time while I thought. Hard.

A slight pause. “What is the planet of your residence?”

“Ravenal,” I lied. “You probably won’t know the coordinates. But let’s discuss this for a—”

I stopped right there, because my boards were showing me that I had changed location. I thought I knew where I’d come to.

“Folla?” I said.

No reply.

“Folla, damn it?”

No reply.

I punched up my locator again, and queried it.

It told me I was in close orbit around Ravenal.

I didn’t believe it for a second. But I punched for Approach Control on-planet anyhow, made some adjustments, and got myself into an approach path.