"Do you understand what happened to you?"
"I think so. You know, I hadn't realized where I lived."
McKie stared at him, puzzled. "What?"
"Something's wrong here," Tuluk said. "Oh, yes: Furuneo."
"You said something about where you lived," McKie prodded.
"Space occupancy, yes," Tuluk said. "I live in a place with many . . . ahh, synonymous? yes, synonymous occupants."
"What're you talking about?" McKie asked.
"I was actually in contact with the Caleban during my call to you," Tuluk said. "Very odd, McKie. It was as though my call went through a pinhole in a black curtain, and the pinhole was the Caleban."
"So you contacted the Caleban," McKie prompted.
"Oh, yes. Indeed I did." Tuluk's mandibular extensors moved in a pattern indicative of emotional disturbance. "I saw! That's it. I saw . . . ahhh, many frames of parallel films. Of course, I didn't really see them. It was the eye."
"Eye? Whose eye?"
"That's the pinhole," Tuluk explained. "It's our eye, too, naturally."
"Do you understand any of this, McKie?" Bildoon asked.
"My impression is he's talking like a Caleban," McKie said. He shrugged. "Contaminated, perhaps. Entangled?"
"I suspect," Bildoon said, "that Caleban communication can be understood only by the certifiably insane."
McKie wiped perspiration from his lip. He felt he could almost understand what Tuluk had said. Meaning hovered right at the edge of awareness.
"Tuluk," Bildoon said, "try to tell us what happened to you. We don't understand you."
"I am trying."
"Keep at it," McKie said.
"You contacted the Caleban," Bildoon said. "How was that done? We've been told it's impossible."
"It was partly because the Caleban seemed to be handling my call to McKie," Tuluk said. "Then . . . McKie ordered me to call the Caleban. Perhaps it heard."
Tuluk closed his eyes, appeared lost in reverie.
"Go on," Bildoon said.
"I . . . it was. . . ." Tuluk shook his head, opened his eyes, stared pleadingly around the room. He met curious, probing eyes on all sides. "Imagine two spider-webs," he said. "Natural spiderwebs, now, not the kind they spin at our command . . . random products. Imagine that they must . . . contact each other . . . a certain congruity between them, an occlusion."
"Like a dental occlusion?" McKie asked.
"Perhaps. At any rate, this necessary congruity, this shape required for contact, presumes proper connectives."
McKie expelled a harsh breath. "What the devil are connectives?"
"I go now?" the first Taprisiot interrupted.
"Damn!" McKie said. "Somebody get rid of this thing!"
The Taprisiot was hustled from the room.
"Tuluk, what are connectives?" McKie demanded.
"Is this important?" Bildoon asked.
"Will you all take my word for it and let him answer?" McKie asked. "It's important. Tuluk?"
"Mmmmmm," Tuluk said. "You realize, of course, that artificiality can be refined to the point where it's virtually indistinguishable from original reality?"
"What's that have to do with connectives?"
"It's precisely at that point where the single distinguishing characteristic between original and artificial is the connective," Tuluk explained.
"Huh?" McKie said.
"Look at me," Tuluk said.
"I am looking at you!"
"Imagine that you take a food vat and produce in it an exact fleshly duplicate of my person," Tuluk said.
"An exact fleshly . . ."
"You could do it, couldn't you?" Tuluk demanded.
"Of course. But why?"
"Just imagine it. Don't question. An exact duplicate down to and including the cellular message units. This flesh would be imbued with all my memories and responses. Ask it a question you might ask me, and it would answer as I might answer. Even my mates wouldn't be able to distinguish between us."
"So?" McKie said.
"Would there be any difference between us?" Tuluk asked.
"But you said . . ."
"There'd be one difference, wouldn't there?"
"The time element, the . . ."