“Where are they?”
Pointing at his head, he said, “In here.”
“Uh, well, anything dangerous around here?”
“There’s you.”
“We’re not dangerous! We wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I’ll have to ask the flies about that.”
“You know, I’d like to live here alone like you.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“If you come I’ll be here and you won’t be alone. Neither will I.”
“Well, I mean almost alone.”
“That’s like being almost pregnant.”
“You take everything so literally!”
“I don’t take everything at all. In fact I take almost nothing any longer.”
They would pass through with all the speed one could plausibly wish for but he was still far happier to see the back of them than the front. On Earth one of the prevailing clichés had been that all people are basically alike. To the extent that it was weakly true it was also useless because you never knew if they were alike in being vicious or kind or anything in between. In any case the variety was more interesting than the similarities. But then, he would think with a shrug, how could he ever lose faith in a species that had such an endearing trait? You could say whatever you liked to them and they would not take you seriously, not even take offense—as long as you told the strict truth. They never recognized it.
The bird came while he was resting.
“Do not think we are neglectful of you,” it warbled from a branch.
He watched its wings shimmer. Sometimes the light from beyond it came through and he could see how thin the illusion was. They manifested themselves this way to anchor his attention. He knew it was not necessary but appreciated the formal compliment of their taking the trouble.
“I need more time here.”
“There is none. You have lived long in this warpage.”
“I’m fair well warped myself.”
It never responded to wit, sarcasm, irony, or the rest of his habitual devices. He wondered if the seething band of particles really did speak for a high intelligence; wasn’t humor essential?
“Matters moved athwart our courses.”
Was this their idea of speaking to him in his own language? Maybe they had gotten hold of some Shakespeare.
“Was there any Elizabethan poetry in the Library?” Let it work its way through that chain of associations.
“No time for entertainments.”
“You mean idle conversation?”
“The mechanicals have the necessary genetic information.”
He felt a stab of sadness. He had watched the Family Bishop saga, and many others, from such time-swallowed foxholes as this, for millennia. “Are the carriers dead?”
“Certainly so. They were in a Lane which the mechanicals opened.”
“To get in?” That was routine. Expensive, against the defenses of the esty, but the mechanicals could exert their powers at the right points and bring it off. They had before.
“To rupture.”
“Bloody hell.”
“They unlocked the coordinate structure.”
“How?”
“A one-to-one mapping of quantum coordinates to a doubly infinite manifold.”
“I see.” It was talking down to him but he was used to that. “So they forced an identity of the coordinates to the first manifold—”
“And then switched to the second.”
“The esty unzipped.”
“Only in some few hundred Lanes.”
