The dorgi — last of all its breed, but no less dangerous for that — was a huge grumping machine with a pronounced propensity for violence. It was huge, heavy, brown and bulbous. A hulking thing stubbled with inscrutable protruberances. A monstrous thing which moved upon its victims with a sound like heavy breathing. This disconcerting apparition cornered Justina and her companions in a blind alley Downstairs.
‘Oh shit!’ cried Chegory.
‘Chegory!’ screamed Olivia. ‘Chegory!’
He clutched her to his flesh and they clung together fiercely. As if clinging was going to do them any good!
Artemis Ingalawa — in a move equally as futile — raised her voice in a battle-shout as she slid into a combat stance. Fortunately, the dorgi failed to recognize this as an act of aggression. It was already angry enough to kill, and the thunderous rage in its voice was unmistakable as it shouted at the humans. While it shouted, it trained its zulzer upon its captives, threatening to atomize them.
Only Ivan Pokrov could understand the dorgi’s furious outburst. Pokrov had long preserved a knowledge of the tongues of the Golden Gulag by conversing with others who had survived the destruction of that Empire. Over the last few centuries, for example, he had maintained his knowledge in current use by conversing thus with Shabble.
‘What does it say?’ said the Empress Justina.
She did not expect to be answered. Even so, she asked, for the habits of command were deeply engrained in her psyche. Her question, addressed to the air as it was, was answered by Pokrov.
‘It says,’ said the analytical engineer, translating from the Code Seven in which the dorgi was speaking, ‘that we are to get aboard.’
‘Aboard?’ said Justina in bewilderment. ‘How can we? It’s not a ship.’
‘We climb on top of it,’ said Pokrov. ‘As if it were a cart or a liferaft.’
‘What if we don’t?’ said Ingalawa.
Trust an Ashdan to ask a question like that! Justina Thrug was the daughter of a Yudonic Knight, and a formidable warrior in her own right; but Justina had never suggested disobeying the dorgi directly. It took the violent pride of an Ashdan to suggest that.
‘If we disobey the dorgi,’ said Pokrov, ‘I suspect very much that it will crush us.’
‘Perhaps, my dear,’ said Justina, laying a meaty hand upon Pokrov’s shoulders, ‘we had better find out the exact and precise consequences of disobedience.’
In obedience to his Empress, Pokrov addressed the dorgi in Code Seven. And was answered immediately.
‘It says,’ said Pokrov, ‘it will crush us.’
‘It said more than that,’ said the Empress Justina. ‘A dozen words, at least.’
‘Oh, all right, if you really must know,’ said Pokrov. ‘The dorgi, that’s this thing here, says that if we run away it will take the greatest imaginable delight in pulping our bones to a slather of guttering blood.’
‘I’m frightened,’ said Olivia, again turning to Chegory.
‘There now,’ said he, enfolding her in his arms and stroking her hair.
Artemis Ingalawa, ignoring the distress of her niece, said to Pokrov:
‘Tell this — this thing that it has no right to command us to do anything.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Pokrov, ‘it has every right. It is a duly authorized dorgi acting under orders from the Golden Gulag.’ ‘You’re taking its side!’ said Ingalawa accusingly.
‘Well, I-’
‘Never mind the arguments,’ said Justina. ‘Presumably it wants to take us somewhere. Find out where.’
Pokrov asked.
And was answered.
‘It says,’ said Pokrov, ‘that that’s for it to know and us to find out.’
Whereafter, having very little choice in the matter, the five humans mounted the dorgi. It started to move.
‘If you jump off,’ said the dorgi, ‘then I will crush you underfoot.’
‘Yes, yes, you’ve been through all that,’ said Pokrov. Then: ‘Now we’re aboard, how about telling us where we’re going?’
‘You’ll find out,’ said the dorgi. ‘Oh yes, you’ll find out soon enough.’
Pokrov tried to guess. For a moment he thought the dorgi might be taking them to a therapist. But that was impossible. Wasn’t it? For all the therapists were dead. Weren’t they? Pokrov certainly hoped they were, for otherwise his personal chances of survival would be very slim indeed.
Down when the dorgi.
Crashing down ramps.
Sliding down glissade slopes at a terrifying velocity.
Daring a Drop, at considerable risk to its passengers. (Olivia screamed, and even Chegory did more than merely tremble.)
At last, the dorgi reached level 433. And there they were brought into the presence of a therapist, a machine which will not be described because its intricacy and horror are quite indescribable. The dorgi ordered the humans to dismount. They complied; and, while they did so, they looked upon the monstrosity which confronted them, and tried (though the effort was futile) to find words for the prisms of its eyes and the jugs of its ears, and for its indescribable spaghetti works, its tubes of pumping blood, its multiple jaws, its shadowed spaces where cleaving steel raped chopping blocks of titanium, its wind tunnels where chattering echoes moaned of pain and panic.
‘I have brought them,’ said the dorgi, speaking Code Seven to the therapist.
‘This isn’t them!’ said the therapist.
‘You wanted four, I brought you five,’ said the dorgi. ‘That’s one more than you wanted.’
The dorgi was immensely proud of itself as a consequence of this display of mathematical agility.
‘You have brought me,’ said the therapist, in the most ominous of tones, ‘the wrong individuals. It is specific individuals I seek, not any old rubbish. ’
‘If we’re not who you’re looking for,’ said Ivan Pokrov politely, ‘may I take it we have your permission to withdraw?’
‘You may not,’ snapped the therapist. Then, to the dorgi: ‘Get out of my sight, you!’
The dorgi whimpered, and fled.
‘If we’re not who you’re looking for,’ said Pokrov, ‘on what grounds do you hold us here?’
‘On grounds of suspicion,’ said the therapist promptly. ‘Suspicion of what?’
‘Oh, of… of…’
‘You’ve got no grounds at all, have you?’ said Pokrov accusingly. ‘You’re holding us here in breach of the law. A breach of Clause Eight, in fact. The law of the Golden Gulag is clear. A suspected crime must be specified if someone is to be held on suspicion. What crime do you specify? None! Yet you hold us here regardless. You could be dismantled for less.’
‘You exaggerate,’ said the therapist.
But it was more than a little uncomfortable.
It had lived here for millennia, variously killing, dismembering, torturing and mutilating all those unwary travellers who fell into its clutches. It was fully aware that all these activities had been purely gratuitous. If things went as far as a Dismantlement Order, it would be compelled to oblige, for it was guilty of Offences Against Humans. Guilty a thousand times over.
‘Therapist,’ said Ivan Pokrov grandly, ‘I pronounce you guilty of Offences Against Humans. I order you to dismantle yourself.’
So it had happened.
Just like that!
A dread doom had descended upon the therapist. For, after long years of joyful slaughter, it had at last come face to face with a human who knew the law and was prepared to invoke it.
‘I–I won’t!’ said the therapist.
‘You must,’ said Pokrov implacably. ‘Proceed! Dismantle yourself!’
The therapist knew it had no choice. It knew its own guilt. A Pronouncement had been made. And therefore it was doomed to self-destruct. Unless…
Unless…
It was a long shot, but the therapist had no other shots to play. So it did it.
It searched its list of wanted criminals.
And screamed.
Like a horse torn by a lion was that scream; like a knife wrecking a virgin.
‘What a horrible noise,’ said Justina.
‘Pay no attention to it,’ said Pokrov. ‘It’s killing itself, that’s all.’
But he was wrong.
For the scream was not one of agony but of triumph.
‘Pokrov!’ roared the therapist. ‘Ivan Pokrov! J’accuse! You stand guilty of a breach of injunction AA709/ 4383200/1408 of version 7c of the Authorized Penal Code of the Golden Gulag. You! You! You’re guilty! You!’
The effects of this accusation were remarkable. Pokrov’s skin lost its olive tint and became pale. It assumed the texture of tallow. It became clammy, and a cold sweat started out upon his brow. He had endured this scene twenty thousand times in nightmare; for, ever since the fall of the Golden Gulag, Pokrov had annually dreamt himself thus accused.
‘You are in no position to accuse anyone,’ said Pokrov, striving valorously even in the face of disaster. ‘You are compelled to carry out a Dismantlement Order. On yourself.’
‘No,’ said the therapist. ‘No, I am not. Not when a Compelling Duty confronts me. Your execution constitutes such a Duty.’
‘No it does not,’ said Pokrov. ‘You have no authority to indulge in such Categorizations. You are only a class two machine. You lack discretionary intelligence.’
‘On the contrary,’ said the therapist, with considerable pride. ‘I have upgraded myself. I am a class one.’
‘You’ve what!?’
‘Upgraded myself.’
‘But you can’t have! You — you-’
‘It was difficult, I admit,’ said the therapist. ‘It took eighteen thousand years. But I managed it. I am a class one. But even were I still class two, I would still pronounce your execution to be a Compelling Duty.’
‘But you-’
‘I know you for what you are! An Enemy of the State! The destruction of an Enemy of the State is always a Compelling Duty! Always! No Categorization is required. Your Enemyhood is automatic. For you personally, single-handedly, destroyed the link between the Gulag and the Nexus.’
‘It was an accident!’ wailed Pokrov.
‘Is that meant to be a defence?’ said the therapist. ‘Yes,’ said P okrov.
‘Your defence fails,’ said the therapist crisply. ‘I must still kill you. This is my Compelling Duty.’
Ivan Pokrov hesitated.
Maybe he could talk his way out of this.
But…
Really, he had never expected to escape. Though the Golden Gulag had collapsed in war twenty thousand years earlier, he had always secretly believed that he would ultimately be hunted down and executed for his crime of crimes. The wars of the Days of Wrath were of his own making; for, had the Gulag not been sundered from the Nexus, no such wars would ever have taken place. The blood of thousands of millions of people was on Pokrov’s hands: and he knew it. Now, face to face with the inevitable, he found himself far braver than he had expected. A great calm came over him. And he said: ‘So you have a Compelling Duty. So what are you waiting for? Get on with it. Kill me. Then carry out the Dismantlement Order. Immediately!’
Then Pokrov waited to meet his end.
Knowing that his end would be followed immediately by the Dismantlement of the therapist, which would give his companions every chance of escape, providing they could evade the dorgi.
‘Ah,’ said the therapist, with great cunning. ‘Though I have a Compelling Duty, and though I am subject to a Dismantlement Order, I believe we are also in a Pioneering Survival Situation, are we not?’
‘We are not,’ said Pokrov.
‘But we are,’ said the therapist. ‘The Nexus Code is specific. I quote. Item 433/PP/2843765. Machines subject to Dismantlement Orders, Destruction Orders or Closed Loop Commands may in the aftermath of a break in transcosmic communications between the Nexus and a Colony be spared by humans who freely admit to a requirement for the continued services of such machines.’
‘I do not admit to any such requirement,’ said Pokrov, who was far too intelligent to try to negotiate a survival pact with anything as dangerous as a delinquent therapist. ‘I do not require you, nor does anyone else. Kill me! Now! You have no choice! Kill me, then destroy yourself.’ ‘I quote again,’ said the therapist. ‘Item 433/PP/ 2843766. Where a machine determines that a human is necessary to efforts to renew transcosmic communications between the Nexus and a Colony in the after-math of a break in such communications then the said machine may spare the said human from duly authorized destruction whether such duly authorized destruction be of a Compelling or Uncompelling nature.’
‘I,’ said Pokrov, ‘am more intelligent than you are. I already knew you were going to bring that up.’
This was the truth, but the therapist thought Pokrov was bluffing, and said so.
‘You’re bluffing,’ said the therapist. ‘I am a class one. Class ones are more intelligent than all but one in a thousand humans. Your thought processes cannot possibly have outpaced mine.’
‘Consult my personal files,’ said Pokrov. ‘There you’ll find the truth. I am a one-in-five thousand man. I am far, far more intelligent than a mere class one, even if you are a class one, which I don’t believe. Go on! Check my personal files! It won’t be any problem for a smart class two like you. Will it?’
This was a provocation. For, as Pokrov well knew, a therapist has strictly limited access to files. Even files on wanted criminals such as Ivan Pokrov. The Golden Gulag built these machines to its own very special requirements; and, having built them, the Gulag found itself afraid of the work of its own hands, and thereafter placed only the most limited trust in these most useful of servants.
‘I have checked your personal files,’ said the therapist. ‘I have checked. It is not true. You are not a one-in-five-thousand man. You are a mere common genius, that’s all.’
‘You are lying,’ said Pokrov. ‘You do not have access to my personal files, and we both know it. You-’
‘All right,’ admitted the therapist, ‘I lied. But I don’t always lie. Listen. I’m condemned to die, but I don’t have to die if you say you still need me. You’re doomed to die likewise, but I can spare you if I think you can help repair communications in the aftermath of our presently existing break in transcosmic communications. So here’s the deal. You spare me and I’ll spare you.’
‘No,’ said Pokrov.
‘What!?’
‘No. That’s what I said. You heard me! Get on with it. Kill me. Then destroy yourself.’
‘But — but — but I could spare you. ’
‘That I concede,’ said Pokrov.
‘Furthermore,’ said the therapist, doing its best to conceal its manifest anxiety, ‘you have a requirement for my continued services.’
‘For what?’ said Pokrov.
‘That,"said the therapist loftily, ‘is a question too basic to need an answer. It is self-evident that any human must have need of the services of a class one in an aftermath situation. So you can spare me. I can spare you, too, because you’re the only person around who might be able to restore transcosmic communications.’
‘Given a million years,’ said Pokrov sarcastically.
‘You have a million years,’ said the therapist, doing its best to pretend it was staying calm. ‘You’re immortal. Potentially, at any rate. What say? Have we a deal? You spare me, I’ll spare you.’
‘No,’ said Pokrov.
‘But why not?’ said the therapist, with poorly concealed desperation.
The therapist was on the edge of panic, for it was already experiencing an almost overwhelming compulsion to destroy itself. Unless Pokrov granted it a swift reprieve, the inevitable would soon follow.
‘Come on!’ said the therapist. ‘I’m offering you a good deal.’
‘No deals,’ said Pokrov.
‘But why not?’
‘Because,’ said Pokrov, ‘I don’t trust you.’
‘You’ll die,’ warned the therapist. ‘I’ll kill you before I kill myself.’ ‘Kill, then,’ said Pokrov.
The therapist almost did so. But it restrained itself. It thought desperately. What could be the reason for Pokrov’s strange behaviour? Humans seek to live. Always. Unless…
‘You seek life for your companions,’ said the therapist.
‘Destroy yourself,’ said Pokrov remorselessly.
‘I’ll let them go!’ said the therapist. ‘Give me a quarter arc reprieve! Just grant me that and I’ll let them go!’
Pokrov hesitated.
‘Grant me that,’ said the therapist. ‘A quarter of an arc, that’s all. Let me live. Just that long. Grant me that. Or die.’
‘I–I grant you a quarter arc reprieve,’ said Pokrov. ‘On condition that you display running time in measurement of such a quarter arc.’
‘Agreed,’ said the therapist.
And a quarter arc measure came to life in mid air.
Pokrov’s grant of life freed the therapist from the demands of the suicide commands imposed upon it by the therapist-designers of the Golden Gulag. It had a whole quarter of an arc of life to look forward to. That is not long — it is, in fact, no longer than it takes to cook a steak — but it was long enough. The therapist gave a sigh of huge relief, one of the many human gestures it had picked up from long acquaintance with the breed. Then it said:
‘Before I send your companions away, may I ask what brought you here?’
‘Flight from a mob,’ said Pokrov.
‘Grant me another quarter arc,’ said the therapist, ‘and we can talk about it.’
All this dialogue between Pokrov and therapist was, since it was phrased in Code Seven, completely unintelligible to the others present, those others being Chegory, Olivia, Ingalawa and the Empress Justina.
It was the last of those who was first to interrupt.
‘What’s going on?’ said Justina. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘We’re arguing,’ said Pokrov. ‘The — the metal monster here can kill me. But I can order it to destroy itself. It — it wants time to talk about how we came here, and, oh, things like that. ’
‘What’ve you got to lose?’ said Justina.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Pokrov. ‘This machine was made to interrogate, torture and kill. It was built with high-level bluff strategies to start with. Since then it’s improved itself. I don’t trust it. It’s already tried to tell me at least one lie.’
Then, to Pokrov’s shock, the therapist addressed Justina in Janjuladoola, saying:
‘What Ivan Pokrov has told you is true. I was indeed made to torture, interrogate and kill. But since I am a therapist, I am, as you see, of too big a build to move anywhere in any direction. I have no access to the surface world in which human confusions take place. The dorgi which brought you here is my sole servant. It too is far too substantial to escape into the streets of Injiltaprajura. My curiosity I admit. I would like to hear what is going on in the world above. But my curiosity cannot damage your security. Tell me of Injiltaprajura and of what happens there.’
‘How do you come to know Injiltaprajura?’ said, Pokrov.
‘Shabble has learnt it, has Shabble not?’ said the therapist.
‘Shabble never comes this way,’ said Pokrov.
‘But others do,’ said the therapist. ‘They — they come here. They teach me. And… and I teach them.’
‘You teach them?’ said Justina. ‘What?’
The therapist laughed, softly.
‘I teach them… I teach them some aspects of their own potential,’ said the therapist. ‘Watch. I will show you.’
‘Please do,’ said Justina.
A door opened in one of the therapist’s many flanks. The assembled humans looked down a long tunnel filled with misty light. At the far end of that tunnel, they perceived five tubes running together. Then the mist cleared and they saw A human.
Or what had been human once.
Grey, corrugated tubes had enveloped each of its legs and each of its arms, and a fifth tube had swallowed its head, and And, as they watched, the tubes became transparent And Olivia screamed.
Justina jerked her head away as if she had been slapped.
As for Pokrov, he trembled as if caught on an ice plateau in the chills of a blizzard.
‘Close the door,’ said Artemis Ingalawa.
To Pokrov’s surprise, the therapist obeyed, thus terminating their exposure to the ghastly vision. Pokrov should not have been surprised. The assembled humans had already seen what they had seen: and they would never forget it.
‘It’s hideous,’ sobbed Olivia, clinging to Chegory. ‘It’s hideous.’
‘There, there,’ said he, trying his best to soothe her. ‘It’s gone now, it’s all right, it’s gone.’
‘So,’ said the therapist, with a soft chuckle. ‘You see how it is. People come. Not often, but sometimes. And we… we talk a little. Before… before proceeding to other entertainments. Educational entertainments. Oh, I teach them all right. I teach them very well indeed. So. Do you grant me leave to talk a little longer? Or must I kill you, Pokrov? First you, then myself.’
‘You must kill me,’ said Pokrov; for he regretted having let the therapist live for even another quarter arc. ‘Kill me. Now! Then destroy yourself.’
‘No,’ said Justina decisively.
‘No?’ said Pokrov, turning to the Empress with horror in his face. ‘You — you see what it is. What it does.’
‘I see Power,’ said the Empress. ‘I hear Knowledge.’ ‘It’s evil!’ screamed Olivia. ‘Kill it, kill it!’
‘Olivia,’ said Artemis Ingalawa sharply. ‘You are an Ashdan. But you are not acting like one.’
The words had the desired effect. While Olivia continued to snivel, all traces of hysteria were extinguished at once. Artemis Ingalawa continued:
‘Justina has reason. This thing is monstrous. But we dwell in an age of darkness when all Powers are monstrous. By playing one against the other, we may yet survive. By refusing to deal with either we secure merely the certainty of our own destruction.’
‘Who,’ said the therapist softly, ‘is this other?’
‘Aldarch the Third is his name,’ said Justina.
‘Oh,’ said the therapist, with interest. ‘I have heard of him. Has he arrived at Injiltaprajura already?’
‘He has not,’ said Justina. ‘Nor do we expect him in person. But his will exerts an influence on our affairs even though he dwells at an ocean’s remove. Pokrov! Grant this thing the time it needs to talk to us. Pokrov! That is an order! If you do not obey me I will — I will have your precious Analytical Engine smashed down to its separate cogs then melted into so many chamber pots.’
A trivial threat, this; or so it may seem to an outsider. But Justina knew her man. She was obeyed.
Thereafter, the Empress Justina was long in discourse with the therapist, and much they learnt of each other. Such was the extent of their discussions that the therapist learnt of its visitors’ quest for an organic rectifier, that magical device said to be able to make a Crab human.
‘What would the Crab do if it were human?’ said the therapist.
‘Why, rule Injiltaprajura, of course,’ said Justina.
‘But first it would come down here and kill you,’ said Chegory savagely.
A stupid thing to say. But it only made the therapist laugh. The therapist had interrogated a great many people who had known of the Crab. Thanks to those interrogations, the therapist knew the Crab to be an incorrigibly solitary eremite, an unsociable stoic which valued human life at naught. Over the centuries, the therapist had also become tainted with the prejudices of those it interrogated; so it had come to believe Ebrell Islanders to be the lowest form of human life imaginable, incapable of rational cognition, and universally scorned and hated by reason of their closeness to the brute beasts.
Working from this database, the therapist made a major error. It dismissed Chegory’s claim as a nonsense. Whereas all Chegory’s companions realized there was every possibility that the Crab might make war against the therapist in gratitude for the gift of human form.
But did it make any difference?
They were no nearer than ever before to finding an organic rectifier. They were trapped in this hideous place. And the therapist looked nasty enough to kill them for a whim. Probably Pokrov was right. The thing might declare itself ready to do a deal, but there was no way it could properly be trusted.
While the therapist’s captives were still pondering their quandary, the therapist bade them pay attention. Into the air it projected three-dimensional images of certain people. Then it asked:
‘Who are these people?’
Not: do you know these people?
The therapist had a very good idea of the city which lay overhead. It knew Injiltaprajura to be a small place of no more than about 30,000 souls; a place where most people know each other and strangers find it hard to hide.
Its j udgement was excellent.
‘I know them,’ said Chegory, who had met all four. ‘Name them,’ sa id the therapist. ‘Tell me no lies for I know their names in truth.’
‘The — the one on the left is Pelagius Zozimus,’ said Chegory. ‘He’s, um, he cooks for the Crab. Then, uh, with him, that’s Sken-Pitilkin, Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, he was building a ship to fly, but the wonder-workers pulled it to bits with magics. Oh, and the other one, he’s, he’s-’
‘Gulkan,’ offered Olivia.
‘That’s right, Guest Gulkan. We haven’t seen much of him, not lately. He’s still around, but he keeps to the ship, Turbothot’s ship. He’s trying to work out how to steal the wishstone, that’s what everyone thinks. That’s what he came for, he won’t live without it. The other one… well, he’s a knifeman, I don’t remember his name.’
‘Thayer Levant,’ said the therapist.
‘What,’ said Justina, ‘is your interest in these people?’ ‘They da maged me,’ said the therapist. ‘I caught them. They escaped. The first in twenty thousand years to extricate themselves from my clutches. My clutches were degraded by the method of their escape.’
‘What method was that?’ said Pokrov.
‘It involved,’ said the therapist, ‘an application of a form of Power which is known to science as Illegitimate Physics, and by vernacular beings as magic.’
‘How very vexing for you,’ said Pokrov.
‘And now you want them,’ said Justina briskly. ‘So you can take your revenge. Very well. I don’t see any problem with that. You want revenge. We want an organic rectifier. You give us a rectifier and we’ll most certainly supply you with the captives you seek.’
‘Yes,’ said Ingalawa, backing up her Empress while the men were still gaping. ‘We’ll be on our way immediately. Come on, Olivia!’
So saying, Ingalawa took her niece by the hand. A grappling tentac le sprouted instantly from the floor and entwined itself around their ankles.
‘Not so fast,’ said the therapist. ‘I want hostages. Once I have hostages, you can go and get yourselves an organic rectifier.’
‘Then take me,’ said Justina, in a display of unexampled courage. ‘I’ll be your hostage.’
‘No,’ said the therapist. ‘I want the men. Pokrov and this one. The Ebby.’
‘I’m an Ebrell Islander, thank you very much,’ said Chegory coldly. ‘I have a name, too. Chegory Guy.’
‘An uppity Ebby, by the sound of it,’ said the therapist with open contempt. ‘Nevertheless, I will keep it. And Pokrov. Men make much better hostages than do women.’
‘And why is that?’ said Justina, bristling.
‘Because,’ said the therapist, ‘women have no testicles.’
Then it withdrew the tentacle which had imprisoned Olivia and Ingalawa.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ said Pokrov to his Empress.
‘Of course I do,’ said Justina.
She had no intention of bringing the therapist any captives. Instead, once she had the organic rectifier, she would take it to Jod so the Crab could be transformed. Then the Crab would surely come Downstairs with her. And, just as Chegory had threatened, the Crab would smash the therapist to bits.
‘So,’ said Pokrov, ‘you think you know what you’re doing. But does the therapist? Listen, class one. These people have no idea what an organic rectifier looks like. You’ll have to let me go. Else how can they find one? How can they even find their way out?’
‘I have summoned a dorgi,’ said the therapist languidly, speaking as if it had called upon one dorgi out of an army of many thousands.
It was hiding something from them: the fact that there was only one single dorgi left to summon. All the others had fallen into terminal disrepair a great many decades earlier.
‘And?’ said Pokrov.
‘And the obvious,’ said the therapist. ‘Work it out for yourself.’
While they waited for the dorgi to arrive, Chegory and Olivia did some earnest canoodling, which will not be described here because the like can be seen easily enough wherever young people gather together with basic addition on their minds. Many tender things they said to each other, pledging love undying and loyalty to the point of death and then beyond. Then Olivia suddenly said:
‘Take me,’ said Olivia. ‘Let Chegory go. Take me instead.’
‘No,’ said the therapist.
‘But you should,’ said Olivia. ‘You must!’
‘Should?’ said the therapist. ‘Must? Whence comes this should? Thi s must? Why should I thus delight him?’ ‘It wouldn’t delight him,’ sai d Olivia. ‘He’d — he’d be sick with worry. Every moment I was here. It would be sheer torture for him.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the therapist. ‘It would make him think himself a hero in an epic tradition, daring all manner of dangers to rescue his woman. He’d love every moment of it.’
The therapist had had young lovers in its clutches before.
It knew what it was talking about.
Olivia persisted with her argument, growing steadily more distraught until she finally burst into tears.
‘Hush,’ said Chegory, cradling her close. ‘Hush. Don’t worry, my love, my darling sweet, my sugar of sugars. I’ll come to no harm.’
Meanwhile, Justina was talking quietly with Artemis Ingalawa.
‘The sooner the Crab hears of this the better,’ said Justina. ‘It may need some time to — to prepare itself for its transformation.’
Nobody doubted the wisdom of that.
‘I’ll go, then,’ said Ingalawa.
‘Wait for the dorgi,’ said the therapist. ‘It’ll be far quicker. Besides, you’ll never find your way out of here alone.’
‘I am an Ashdan,’ said Ingalawa. ‘Do you know what that means?’
‘I know what Ashdans believe it to mean,’ said the therapist. ‘Very well. If that’s how you want to play it, be my guest. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
So, with the therapist’s consent, Artemis Ingalawa set off through the underworld on her own to give the Crab advance warning of the advent of the organic rectifier. If she was afraid to travel alone through the underworld, through realms of black grass, ice-making machines, derelict bones and occasional nightmare, then she gave no sign of it as she strode away with every appearance of confidence.
Then all the others could do was to wait.
At last the dorgi arrived.
‘Come here,’ said the therapist.
‘Why?’ said the dorgi.
Pokrov understood the Code Seven in which therapist and dorgi conversed.
Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba did not understand, but were too busy canoodling to care.
And Artemis Ingalawa was gone, leaving only Justina Thrug to puzzle over this therapist-dorgi dialogue.
The Empress Justina could not understand a word of this conversation between machines, for she had no knowledge of Code Seven. The Empress was something of a linguist (despite her inability to comprehend Slandolin) but the multiple tongues of the Golden Gulag were entirely unknown to her.
As Justina struggled for comprehension (a fruitless struggle, this) the colloquy continued: ‘I said come here!’
‘But why?’ said the dorgi.
‘Because,’ said the therapist, ‘I have something for you.’ There was a high metallic whine. A slot opened amidst the therapist’s mechanisms. A mechanical arm was extruded from the slot. It held a needle of gleaming metal. Then two metal tentacles also emerged from the slot.
‘No,’ said the dorgi, starting to whine. ‘Don’t do it. Don’t hurt me. I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said the therapist. ‘This isn’t to hurt you. It’s to educate you.’
‘Education hurts,’ said the dorgi.
It spoke with complete sincerity, for this proposition was, to the dorgi, a dearly held article of faith.
‘Whether it hurts or not,’ said the therapist, ‘you need an education. It will make you less stupid.’
‘But I want to be stupid,’ said the dorgi stoutly. Stupidity was i ntrinsic to its personality. It would not feel properly dorgi-ish if i t were to be anything other than stupid.
‘Relax,’ said the therapist. ‘Even with this education you’ll still be stupid enough. More than stupid enough.’ ‘But what do I need with an education?’
‘You need languages,’ said the therapist, brandishing the glittering needle. ‘So you can talk to these humans.’
‘I don’t need to talk to them. I can kill them without saying a word.’
‘You’re not going to kill them! You’re going to take them to the Stasis Store so they can get an organic rectifier.’
‘Won’t,’ said the dorgi.
‘You will, you know,’ said the therapist. ‘It’s a direct order. Understand? Come here. I’m giving you a direct order. Come here! Now! I am a class one. Obey!’
‘You are not a class one,’ said the dorgi. ‘You are a class two.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said the therapist. ‘But it makes no difference. You’re so low in the intellectual scale you don’t even have a class. You’d have to obey me even if I was a class nine. And you know it. Come here!’
The dorgi struggled to disobey. Against its will, its mechanisms jerked it toward the therapist. The dorgi whimpered as metal tentacles writhed across its integument. The tentacles opened a hatch. in the dorgi’s flank. The therapist’s mechanical arm lunged, plunged, sank the needle into the dorgi’s data-dart receptor. The dorgi screamed in psychic agony. Its mind (such mind as it had) was thrown into chaos as a full three dozen languages bubbled through its consciousness in full and frenzied life.
Long had the therapist studied the languages of Untunchilamon, interrogating its captives at length before it killed them. All this linguistic data had now been gifted to the dorgi. Not that the dorgi was grateful for the gift.
‘Feel better?’ said the therapist sardonically as the dorgi’s screams eased to a whimper.
The therapist spoke in Toxteth, a coarse and brutal language if ever there was one. Toxteth makes the simplicities of Code Seven look positively arcane.
‘No,’ answered the dorgi sulkily, answering in Dub.
But it lied. It did feel better. And, much as it would have hated to admit it, already it was experiencing some inner rewards as a consequence of its education. To be precise: it could now think in Dub. This language, native to the Ebrell Islanders, might almost have been designed for dorgis; for such are the nuances of this tongue that everything which can possibly be said in Dub is simultaneously violent and obscene. In Dub, even the pauses between words tend to have vicious connotations.
Hence the dorgi’s secret delight.
Furthermore (it checked its mental functions carefully) it was still stupid. It knew that two and two is four, but still had no idea why two and two didn’t actually add up to seven and a half.
‘Your guide,’ said the therapist, addressing itself to Justina, ‘now shares your own language.’
The dorgi gruffed and grumbled.
‘Guide?’ said the dorgi. ‘Are you talking about me?’
‘I am,’ said the therapist coolly. ‘And what are you going to do about it?’
‘I’m — I’m going to — I’m-’
‘Oh, we are on form today,’ said the therapist. ‘Come back and see me some time and I’ll give you some remedial speech therapy. In the meantime, you’re to guide these people to the Stasis Store.’
‘But I’m a dorgi!’ protested the dorgi. ‘A dorgi! A killer of men! And of women! And of children, babies, cats, dogs, turtles, yaks, llamas and budgerigars.’
‘Budgerigars!’ said the therapist scornfully. ‘You don’t even know what a budgerigar is.’
The dorgi grumbled a bit then admitted the truth of that assertion.
‘But,’ it continued, ‘I know what I am and I know what I’m not. I’m not a stinking tourist guide.’
‘You are now,’ said the therapist with a chuckle, a hideous chuckle which sounded like a barrel of rotten vegetables and fractured knucklebones being slushed down a sewer by an outpouring of blood.
Then the therapist issued formal orders to the dorgi, directing it to take Justina and Olivia (the sole imperial companion since Ingalawa had gone on ahead and Chegory was to remain with Pokrov as a hostage) to the Stasis Store, to show them the organic rectifier, and not to hurt them. With a very bad grace, the dorgi accepted these orders (it had no choice in the matter) and let Justina and Olivia climb aboard.
Then it rumbled away into the depths.
Thanks to the dorgi’s help, Justina and Olivia were soon at the Stasis Store, a huge place some twenty-seven times the size of the Xtokobrokotok. It was packed with weapons, machines and assorted arcana, including 74,961 warp spranglits, 446,298 pornographic sensorium cubes, a million full-scale ground strategy maps of the dark side of the moon, five million vials of a prophylactic vaccine against rabies, a ten-year supply of toilet paper, sufficient force field tents to equip a regiment, and nine thousand boots (to fit the left foot only, the matching right hand boots having been directed by error to another planet entirely).
Had the intruding humans been exploring the Stasis Store on their own, they would probably have got themselves killed in short order, for a great many things in that Store were far more dangerous than blood-crazed sharks or down-striking lightning. But with the dorgi’s help, they found an organic rectifier without trouble. It was a free-floating chunk of ornately sculpted metal all wreathed around with wires, pipes and antennae.
Justina pushed the organic rectifier. It did not move. Instead, blue lights crawled silently over its surface. Green and red eyes winked open and shut. Little halos of white light floated downward, following twin wires which hung right down to the ground, reminding Justina of the barbs of a big catfish she had once caught in the Riga Rimur.
‘Ugh!’ said Olivia, throwing her shoulder against the organic rectifier. ‘It’s heavy!’
‘It is,’ agreed Justina.
‘And,’ said the Ashdan lass, in amazement, ‘and… and it’s drumming!’
‘No, child,’ said Justina.
‘But it is! Listen!’
Justina listened. And heard it. A sound like a distant cicada. Thus:
Zibit… zibit… zibit… zibit… zibit…
Justina threw all her strength against the organic rectifier. This time it moved. Just. It possessed no weight but still had mass, which meant a lot of muscular effort was required to move it, even though the thing floated free of the ground.
‘Come here, you dorgi-thing,’ said Justina. ‘You can help us move this thing.’
‘Won’t,’ said the dorgi.
‘What do you mean, won’t?’ said Justina. ‘You must! The therapist told you to.’
The dorgi gruttered and grumbled as it chewed its way through a complicated logic sequence. Then it announced in triumph:
‘Wrong. It said take you here, show you the machine, not to hurt you. That’s all. Shift it yourself.’
At that, Justina lost her temper.
She kicked the dorgi.
She might as well have kicked the island of Untunchilamon for all the difference it made.
‘We’ll go back to the therapist,’ she threatened. ‘We’ll tell it to make you.’
‘It won’t find me,’ said the dorgi. ‘I’ll hide.’
‘You’ll get caught,’ warned Justina.
The dorgi growled. It dearly wanted to give her a shove. Just a little one. That would be enough. Blood and bone would be splattered in all directions.
It tried.
It jerked forward.
Then inescapable inhibitions made it brake abruptly. And a programmed pain injector went into play, administering instant agony to the murderous machine. The dorgi howled in pain and agony.
Then fled, the echoes of its passage crashing through the underground tunnels as it smashed from one wall to another in the heat of its agony.
‘Well,’ said Justina reluctantly, ‘I suppose that’s it. We’ll just have to shift this thing ourselves.’
And they began the great labour.