of star ident would mean that I was sitting somewhere not only outside the galaxy, but (at best) at the further edge of one of the local group. You never do know, but I hoped for better news than that, and I began to get it.
I was, as I’ve said, eleven thousand light-years (and change) from the furthest-out spot humanity had yet managed—a planet called Debrett, which I’d never visited. It didn’t take me two minutes to find that out; once the locator had begun feeding me star idents, it took three hours.
Few of the idents were tagged Absolutely Certain. At the distances involved, some fuzz had crept into the readings—and though a completely detailed spectrum is as individual as a fingerprint, I wasn’t getting complete details. The job was a long process of if-then: if that star over there was 1491 in my handbook, and that other one was 2200A, and the third little dot was Haven, then I was right here. If, on the other hand, 1491 and Haven were right, but 2200A was really 590B, I was, instead, over there. And if Haven and 2200A were right, but 1491 was really Cuchinar, then I was someplace else.
What I had to do was to cross-check a large pile of such triples against each other, tossing out contradictory results as they turned up, and hoping that, in the end, I’d be left with one and only one possible location. Even with a lot of help from the boards, this is not a fast and simple kind of job, and I punched for, and carefully brewed, and slowly emptied, two complete pots of Indigo Hill coffee—why not go with the best?—before I had a location I was satisfied with.
All right. I was at rest, and I knew where I was resting.
Next step: find my way back.
This was going to have to be done through space-four, whether I liked it or not: hopping eleven thousand light-years through normal space would take me something over eleven thousand years, no matter how hard I boosted for how long, and I didn’t feel I had that much time to spend.
Through space-four, it might take me twenty minutes (unlikely) or five days (just as unlikely). But a course plotted to anywhere, from where I had painfully found out I was, didn’t exist; instructing my ship was going to be a very interesting job. Space-four routes are usually figured by teams of theorists, sitting at ease in large, airy rooms, over a period of weeks. All your usual traveler has to know is where to feed in his trip card; his ship reads the bumps on it, and does the work.
I am not exactly your usual traveler, but I am not a space-four theorist either, and while my cabin is a little larger and airier than most, I didn’t have weeks to spend on the job. There had to be a quick-and-dirty emergency answer somewhere, and I dug out a Pilot’s Manual and an unreasonably thick book of space-four routings (limited edition, for official use only), and got myself some lox and cream cheese on thick rye bread, along with a jug of iced tea—any more coffee, and I’d be awake for five days, and jittering for seven.
An hour later, I had three possible routings, none of which looked especially helpful. I sighed deeply, finished the last of the tea, and decided to try for two more before arranging them in any sort of order. I flipped through the book of routings again, came to the section I wanted (headed, if you care, “Transductions in d, dx and e”), and began punching in numbers.
I had been doing this for about four minutes, varied by an occasional stare at my boards and a muttered hmm or two, when I was interrupted by a voice.
It was a fairly loud, medium-tenor voice, with no discernible accent (which means it had mine), and it said, and I swear it to you:
“Lonely? Ready for company? Punch 117-62-97, and rejoin your friends and neighbors at their preferred locations. This is a service of Path, Ltd.”
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