The Lighter Side (23 page)

"Wrong button," UKR said. "That was the sixty-eighth row." 

"Why in the world did you do that?" Oob shrieked, jabbing frantically with all ten members at the panels surrounding him. "Hitting the Panic Button was the one move I didn't expect! I see it all now! I should have known when I first discovered that you were masquerading as two third-order beings that the disguise actually concealed a sixth-order intelligence!"

"Keep him talking," UKR urged. "I'm on to something!" 

Roger, teetering on the rod, grabbed for support, slammed a large lever down. At once panels sprang into position on all six sides, boxing the two contestants inside a twelve-foot cube. With a hoarse yell, Oob leaped from his perch, threw the switch back to the
off
position. Nothing changed.

"Now you've done it," he shrilled, radiating in the ultraviolet, an eerie effect in the featureless chamber. "But you've overreached yourself at last! True, you've cut me off from my control complex—but the fifth-order barrier also isolates this portion of your compound entity from the contact with the rest of you—and leaves you at my mercy!" He hurled himself at Roger, who leaped backward barely in time.

"Tyson!" UKR whispered urgently as Oob rebounded from the wall and gathered himself for a new charge. "I've shifted an Aperture into alignment with your present coordinates! Better use it! For the moment, I seem to be out of ideas!" 

Roger ducked the Rhox's rush, leaped for the glowing line.

"Hold it!" UKR ordered as the shimmering plane enfolded him. "You caught me off balance, resorting to the purely physical level. I'm having to improvise. But—I think I have an idea! Risky, but it's the best I can do under the limitations I've imposed. Rotate to the left. Too much! Back up! That's it! Go!" 

Roger bounded forward—

—and . . . was standing in knee-deep grass under a boundless blue sky. Luke Harwood stood on his right, his arm protectively about Odelia Withers' shoulders. Fly Beebody lay sprawled at his feet. A twelve-foot Kodiak-type bear faced them from ten feet away. It was, Roger saw, the same instant in which he had last seen them.

"Quick! This way!" he shouted, and thrust them through the portal. As he stepped forward to follow, a bulbous burgundy-red form burst through, skidded to a halt almost against the bear's chest. The grizzly rumbled and wrapped a vast pair of shaggy arms around its new acquaintance as Roger sprang for safety.

He halted within the gray-mist cylinder, breathing hard. "Nice work, UKR," he panted.

"Don't congratulate me yet!" the voice crackled in his head. "This Rhox is a much more complex being than you know." 

"The bear took care of him," Roger said. "Too bad, in a way; he wasn't such a bad sort, in his own peculiar fashion."

"It only took care of one of him! Of a small third-order manifestation of him, that is to say—and there are plenty of others." 

"There was a stir beside Roger; Oob stood there, intact, peering through the gloom.

"Three degrees right and take off!"
UKR advised. Roger pivoted, leaped—

He was splashing knee-deep in muddy water. A descending shriek filled the air. Overhead, the Very lights shed a baleful glare on cratered mud, crisscrossed by tangled wire.

" . . . zat
vass nicht ein
lady," a guttural voice stated loudly. "Zat
vass deine Frau!"
A vast explosion nearby showered Roger with muddy water. He stumbled to the opening of the dugout."

"Crikey, Ludwig," a thin voice was protesting. "It's not a bloody 'nuff we got to 'ave the same bloody weather and the same bloody shells every day, you 'ave to tell the same bloody joke!"

"Fellows!" Roger broke in hurriedly. "Do me a favor—no questions asked! Grab your rifles and fire a volley at the spot right behind me when I give the word!"

"Vass ist?"
the squat German inquired, gaping.

"Crikey! A bit 'o fluff!"

"Jeeze! A dame!"

"I'm not really a dame—I just look this way!" Roger explained hastily. "Never mind me—just do as I ask! Quick!"

"For you, luv, anyfing!"

"You bet, kid!"

"Ja,
vateffer!"

The card-playing trio scrambled for their weapons, worked the bolts, aimed—

"Now!" Roger yelled, and ducked. Three shots boomed deafeningly over his head. Oob, just emerging, cautiously this time, from the Aperture, flopped backward, riddled.

"Thanks," Roger called. "If you ever get back, remember what I said about nineteen twenty-nine!" He stepped into the portal and was at once directed onward by UKR.

"Wait a minute," he demurred. "What happened to Luke and Odelia? Where's Fly?"

"I shunted them into a holding niche," the voice said hurriedly. "Better get going. Here he comes again!" 

"I don't understand! How can there be more than one of him?"

"There isn't. In fact, there's only one Rhox in the entire cosmos; like most entities above fourth level, he is unique. When the process you know as evolution progresses beyond a certain point, the species-fragmentation characteristic of third order merges to form a higher, compound life-form. Such a being can insert a large number of third-order aspects into contiguous space." 

"Where will it all end?" Roger groaned, and followed instructions.

This time he was on a rugged mountainside amid a jumble of vast boulders.

"Get up above, fast!" UKR ordered.

"Is this your idea of winning by subtlety and guile?" Roger grunted, clambering upward as fast as failing wind would allow.

"How was I to know you'd introduce random factors into the probability equation?" UKR inquired calmly. "There—that's far enough. The big fellow on your left. Just a nudge, now . . . wait . . . he's coming! Push!" 

Roger put a shoulder to the rock and thrust. It shifted, teetered, then leaned out and crashed down thunderously.

"Got him!" UKR said cheerfully. You know, Tyson, I think he's slowing down." 

"Probably he's . . . just getting cautious," Roger panted.

"No—there's a definite diminution of energy. I think it's taking a great deal out of him, running an infinite-array scan every time you drop out of sight, then formulating a new extrusion and extending full sensory linkages to it—and the trauma associated with a series of violent third-order demises isn't helping his inner tranquility, either. I know how he feels! Ever since I've been attuned to your savage plane of existence, I've been thrilling to a shock a minute! How do you stand it?" 

"I don't," Roger wheezed. "Can I rest now?"

"Not yet. There's still some fight in him—and here he comes!" 

Before Roger could step through the Aperture, Oob appeared. He was a dull shade of dejected brown now, and his bulk was definitely less than it had been. He staggered as he cleared the portal. Roger stepped behind him and palmed the bulky body hard. With a mournful wail, Oob fell to his death.

Thereafter, Roger decoyed the Rhox into the jaws of a forty-foot crocodile, tripped him headfirst into the bubbling interior of a volcano, and finally held the head of a weakly struggling Oob, a mere shadow of his former self, under water until the bubbles stopped rising.

"That's it," he sobbed, falling flat on his face on the shore among the cattails. "I've had it! I couldn't commit another murder if my life depended on it."

At that moment a wraithlike Oob tottered from the glowing portal. He saw Roger, uttered a faint cry, took a faltering step toward him, and collapsed, stirring feebly.

"It's no use," he whispered. "We've utterly exhausted myself. You win, Tyson! I now perceive that you are a multi-ordinal genius of immeasurable subtlety." His integument had paled to a ghastly silver-white. "I confess, I engaged you in nonsense conversation just now for the purpose of analyzing your computer capacity through the agency of a battery of concealed probe rays; and for a moment, when the reports showed an almost complete blank, I was deluded into imagining you were at my mercy. But now the awful truth dawns. Each of your apparently idiotic moves was a piece of masterful indirection, designed to lead inexorably to this denouement!"

"You bet," Roger concurred. "So now if you're ready to give up and go back where you came from . . . "

"Still hoping to see me betray the location of HQ, eh?" the Rhox cut in, a steely glint appearing in his bleary eye. "You underestimate our moral fiber, Tyson! Before I'll play the traitor, we'll willingly sacrifice myself!"

"No need to do that," Roger said. "Just give up your plans and go quietly."

"And leave the prize to you? Never!"

"Why not? Don't be a spoilsport, just because I've bested you in a battle of wits."

"I thought," Oob said, a sad shade of violet now, "when I stumbled on this quaint little phenomenon, that it would be our great privilege to bring to the hypergalactic masses, for the first time in temporal stasis, a glimpse of life on a simpler, more meaningless, and therefore highly illuminating scale. I pictured the proud intellects of Ikanion Nine, the lofty abstract cerebra of Yoop Two, the swarm-awareness of Vr One-ninety-nine, passing through these displays at so many megaergs per ego-complex, gathering insights into their own early evolutionary history. I hoped to see the little ones, their innocent organ clusters aglow, watching with shining radiation sensors as primitive organisms split atoms with stone axes, invented the wheel and the betatron, set forth on their crude Cunarders to explore the second dimension . . . "

"You make Earth sound like a circus," Roger said. "I'll have you know—"

"Exactly," the Rhox said. "And before I'll allow a rival entrepreneur to add it to his midway, I'll chop the figurative guy ropes and allow the allegorical big top to collapse on us all!"

"What do you mean, rival operator? I'm not—"

"Don't taunt me with your superiority!" Oob was exclaiming. "Perhaps 'rival' was a poor choice of words, in view of the neat way in which you finessed me out of my ownership of the greatest little attraction to come along in half a dozen Big Bangs, but—"

"Look here—are you trying to say you're a circus operator? And you only want Earth so you can herd tourists through the Channel to gape at our entire history?"

"Naturally! What else is it good for?"

"B-but—I thought you wanted to invade it!"

"Why in nine pulsating universes would I want to do that? Who ever heard of invading the monkey house at a zoo?"

"But—what was all that about betraying headquarters, and D-day, and surprise bombardments!"

"I was referring to a promotional bombardment in the media," Oob said loftily. "And headquarters, of course, is the main office of the holding company which is backing me. D-day refers to the grand opening." Oob had struggled to a sitting position. "My grand opening will never occur now," he announced in a choked voice. "But neither will yours!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Tyson, that an experienced business being never leaves himself without a last-ditch weapon against interlopers like yourself! You've wrested the enterprise from my hands—but I can still deny you the fruits of your chicanery! The temporal access system through which I had planned to conduct my tours of Earth history is under automatic control. Unless I give the 'cancel' signal in the next twenty-eight seconds, the time locks will open. The denizens of each era will at once swarm forth into all the others! Diplodoci will graze in Central Park! Pekin Man will emerge behind the bamboo curtain! Roman legions will confront the UN peacekeeping forces amid the Wurm glaciation! Pharaoh and Nasser will meet in the streets of Cairo! Conestogas will clog Interstate One! Hordes of painted Sioux will gallop through the suburbs of Omaha and Duluth! Redcoats and freedom marchers will come face to face in the wilds of the Carboniferous Era! Early Christian martyrs will mingle unnoticed with pro-LSD groups in the depths of the Jurassic—"

"I get the idea!" Roger interrupted as Oob's oratory gathered force. "UKR! Stop him!"

"Tsk. Overt interference on my part is not in accordance with the rules of the game as we agreed upon them, Tyson. I'm surprised that you'd even suggest such a thing. No, it's up to you." 

"Twenty seconds," Oob said. "A pitiable end for the once-great race of Rhox. Cut off as I am from my control apex, my various surviving third-order aspects will wander aimlessly through the maze forever, the entity that was the end result of three billion years of evolution reduced in one swell foop to its primitive state of individualization. But you likewise will find yourself bisected! Never will you be relinked with your other segment, which will languish forever in fifth-order stasis, awaiting a reunion that never comes!"

"Q'nell!" Roger moaned. "Poor kid! Look here, Oob, can't we come to some agreement? You call off the lock opening, and I'll . . . I'll let you have part of the Earth's history for your circus."

"Too late," Oob said. "I'm afraid your own zeal has rendered rapprochement impossible. The chase has probably left me too exhausted to punch a signal through, even if you were willing to concede, say, a fifty-fifty split of spheres of influence."

"Robber!" Roger yelled. "I'll give you the first billion years and not a century more!"

"I'll have to have a portion of the Cenozoic, of course," Oob said crisply, steepling his upper tentacles. "What would you say to the whole of the Pre-Cambrian for you, plus, say the Roaring Twenties?"

"Nonsense," Roger retorted. "But just to show you my heart's in the right place, I'll let you have the first three billion years, plus a small slice of the Devonian."

"Surely you jest," the Rhox said blandly. "The human-occupied portion is the most amusing side-show attraction to come along in half a dozen hydrogen-hydrogen cycles. Suppose I take the Christian Era, minus the Late Middle Ages if you insist; and as a gesture of goodwill, I'll also give up the Silurian."

"Nothing doing! I get the whole Age of Mammals or no deal."

"Now, now, don't imagine I'll allow you to hog the entire Pleistocene! Still, I'm willing to be reasonable. I'll settle for the Nineteenth Century on, provided you give up everything up to and including the Paleolithic."