"What functions does mine perform?"
"We do not know. The second time that M'mrm'mirr entered your mind, he was braced for the encounter. The creature is itself mildly telepathic, you see. Enough to translate for you back aboard our ship, under ideal conditions. I am told that this can provide additional complications, and apparently it did. However, he succeeded in subduing it and learned sufficient of its nature in the process so that we have an idea as to how to deal with it. He then went on to explore some of your memories touching on the phenomenon, which helped us piece together our line of attack. He is now occupied in holding the creature in a form of mental stasis until things are ready."
"Things? Ready? What things? How?"
"We should be hearing shortly. It is all tied in, though, with the nature of the thing. In light of M'mrm'mirr's findings, Paul has worked out some ideas as to what happened and what can be done about it."
Paul took the pause that followed as a cue and said, "Yes. Picture it this way: You have a synthetic life form that can apparently be switched on and off by means of isometric reversals. Its 'on' condition, characterized by life functions, is a product of left-handedness. This, as you know, is the normal form amino acids take here on Earth, also; L-amino acids, as they are called. Turn them into their stereoisomer-D-amino acids-and in the case of our specimen, it goes into the 'off' position. Now, when I examined the star-stone, the optical effects indicated the dextral situation. 'Off.' All right. I was not thinking along these lines, but now we know a lot more. We know you were drinking the night you got blood on it. We know that grain alcohol has a symmetrical molecule and that if it could react with the specimen in one isometric state it might do it in the other also. Either it is a flaw in its design or an intentionally engineered capability. This we do not know. M'mrm'mirr learned that it did its best communicating with you, however, in the presence of this molecule-so it does seem to stimulate conversation. Whatever, you excited it sufficiently to enable it to partially activate itself and enter your system by way of the incision in your hand. After this exertion, it lay dormant for a long while, as you are not much of a drinker. Every now and then it gained a little stimulation, though, and tried to contact you via one sensory route or another. The medication Ragma administered to you after Australia revived it somewhat as it involved some ethyl alcohol. The night you were drinking with Hal, however, was the breakthrough. If it could persuade you to reverse yourself by means of the Rhennius machine, you would of course be backward, but it would be switched on. Which is what happened. So it is functioning normally at present, in you, but your health is suffering, according to Ragma. What we have to do now is get it out of you and rereverse you."
"Can you?"
"We think so."
"But you still have no idea what it does?"
"It is a very sophisticated living machine of unknown function that conned you into placing yourself in a dangerous situation. Also, it displays a predilection for mathematics."
"Some sort of computer, then?"
"M'mrm'mlrr does not think so. He believes it to be a secondary function."
"I wonder why it didn't get back in touch with me after it was switched on?"
"There was still the barrier."
"What barrier?"
"The matter of stereoisomers. Only this time it was you who were reversed. Then, too, it had gotten what it wanted."
"Give it its due," said Ragma. "It did do one thing for him."
"What was that?" I asked.
"I did not do anything for you back at the hospital," he said. "When I removed the dressing and performed a number of tests, I found that you were already completely healed. Your parasite apparently took care of it."
"Then it seems as if he is trying to be a benign little guy."
"Well, if anything should happen to you . . ."
"Granted, granted. But what about the side effects of the reversal on me?"
"I am not at all certain that he realizes what it could eventually lead to."
"It seems strange that if he is intelligent and he and M'mrm'mlrr were in contact he did not offer any explanation as to what has been going on."
"There was small time for amenities," Ragma said. "The doctor had to act quickly to freeze him."
"More of his assault philosophy? It hardly seems fair-"
The telephone rang. Paul answered it, and all of his responses were monosyllables. It lasted perhaps half a minute and then he hung up and turned to Ragma.
"Ready," he said.
"All right," Ragma replied.
"What is ready?" I asked.
"That was Ted," Paul told me. "He is across the street. He had to get authorization-and the key-to open up the place. We are all going over now."
"To rereverse me?"
"Right," said Ragma.
"Do you know how to do it?" I asked. "That machine has several settings. I tested its program once, and I have a great respect for the variations it can toss off."
"Charv will be meeting us there," he replied, "and he is bringing along a copy of the operator's manual."
Paul moved off into the bedroom, returned pushing a padded cart.
"Give me a hand with the leafy bloke, will you, Fred?" he said.
"Sure."
It was with very mixed feelings that I moved forward and did so, taking care the while not to get any more of the slop on me.
As we pushed Doctor M'mrm'mlrr through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk, the reflection of a neon sign seemed, in the after-image of a blinking, to read DO YOU SMELL ME DED?
"Yes," I muttered under my breath. "Tell me what to do."
"Our Snark is a Boojum," came a whisper as we were crossing the street.
When I looked around, of course, there was no one there.
I felt no real change with the disengagement that Ragma told me was taking place. I kept my eyes firmly fixed on Charv, who was going round and round, fiddling with the Rhennius machine, with frequent reference to a manual he carried in his pouch. It was not that I was squeamish. Well, maybe it was.
The incision in my left arm stung a bit but was not especially painful. Ragma had wanted to avoid the introduction of additional chemicals of unknown effect to the area, which was understandable, and I was partially successful in setting up a biofeedback block. So my bared left arm rested on a previously white hotel towel, which I was brightening and darkening here and there beneath the area where he had swabbed alcohol, slashed me and applied more alcohol. I was resting in a swivel chair belonging to one of the guards we had relieved, trying not to think about the eviction of the star-stone from my premises. It was taking place, all right. I could tell that from the expressions on Paul's and Nadler's faces.
Situated right beside the base of the Rhennius machine, M'mrm'mlrr swayed and concentrated-or whatever he did-to cause what was taking place to take place. A bit of moon showed through the skylight. The hall echoed the least sound and was cold as a tomb.
I was not really certain that what was being done was the right thing. On the other hand, I could not be sure that it was not. It was not the same thing as doublecrossing a friend or betraying a confidence, or anything like that, both because my guest had been of the uninvited variety and because I had given him what he was after-viz., namely & to wit, I had turned him on.
Still, though, echoing up from the chambers of my memory came the thought that he had given me the legal citation I had needed back when I was searching for something to keep them from spiriting me away. And he had put my chest together again. And he had promised to clarify everything, eventually.
But my metabolism meant a lot to me, and that spell on the bus and my experience of being controlled back in the hospital were also distressing. I had made my decision. Second thoughts were now a waste of time and emotion. I waited.
Our Snark is a Boojum!
There it was again, desperate-sounding this time, followed by the superimposition of massive teeth framed by upward curving lips on the far wall. Then fading, fading ... Gone.
"We have him!" said Ragma, slapping a pad of gauze onto my arm. "Hold that in place for a while."
"Right."
It was only then that I ventured a look.
The star-stone was there on the towel. Not quite as I remembered it, for its shape was somewhat altered and its colors seemed more vivid-near to pulsing.
Our Snark is a Boojum. Anything from a distorted appeal for reconsideration to a euphemistic warning to a wasp concerning certain flowers-distorted as it was by the handedness barrier. I would have given a lot just then to know, though.
"What are you going to do with it now?" I asked.
"Get it to a safe place," Ragma said, "after you've taken your little turnabout. Then it will be up to your United Nations for a time, since they are its current custodians. Still, a report on this new finding will have to be circulated among all our member worlds, and I would imagine your authorities will want to act under their advisement as to tests and observations that might now be in order."
"I'd imagine," I said, and he reached to pick it up.
"There's a good little fellow" came an all too familiar voice from across the hall. "Gingerly, gingerly now! Wrap it in the towel, please. I'd hate to have it chipped or scratched."
Zeemeister and Buckler had entered the hall, carrying guns, pointing them. Jamie, who was grinning, remained near the entrance, covering it. Morton, who looked pretty pleased himself, advanced on us.
"So that's how you hid it, Fred," he observed. "Neat trick."
I said nothing but rose slowly to my feet, nothing in mind but the fact that I could move faster from that position.
He shook his head.
"No need for trouble," he said. "This time you are safe, Fred. Everyone here is safe. So long as I get the stone."
I wondered, in a hopefully telepathic fashion, whether M'mrm'mlrr might reach out and burn his brain as a contribution to domestic tranquillity.
The suggestion was apparently accepted just as he came up beside me and hefted the stone. For he shrieked then and suffered a minor convulsion.
I grabbed for the gun with both hands. Jamie was far enough away to give me sporting odds on the attempt. I did not think he would take a chance on hitting his boss.
The pistol was fired twice before I tore it away from him. I did not get to keep it, however, as he jabbed me in the belly and caught me with an uppercut that knocked me to the floor. The weapon went spinning and skidding away to a place somewhere beneath the platform of the Rhennius machine.
Zeemeister kicked Ragma, who had chosen that moment to attack, away from him. Still clutching the stone, he produced a long, shiny blade from somewhere in the vicinity of his forearm. Then he shouted to Jamie but stopped in mid-cry.
I looked to see what had happened and decided that it must be another hallucination.
Jamie's weapon lay half a dozen paces behind him, and he stood rubbing his wrist, facing the man with the neat beard and the amused expression, the man who held one hand in his pocket and twirled a shillelagh with the other.
"I'll kill you," I heard Jamie say.
"No, Jamie! No!" Zeemeister cried. "Don't go near him, Jamie! Run!"
Zeemeister backed away, pausing only to slash one of M'mrm'mlrr's tentacles, as if knowing the source of his mental anguish.
"He's not much," Jamie called back.
"That's Captain Al!" Zeemeister shouted. "Run, you fool!"
But Jamie decided to swing instead.
It was instructive to almost behold. "Almost," I say, because the cudgel moved a bit too fast for me to trace its passage. So I was not certain exactly where or how many times it touched him. It seemed only an instant after Jamie began his swing that he was falling.
Then, still twirling the stick, casually, jauntily now, the hallucination moved past Jamie's crumpled form and headed on toward Zeemeister.
Not taking his eyes from the advancing figure, Zeemeister continued to retreat, holding the knife low before him, edge upward.
"I thought you were dead," he finally said.
"Obviously you were mistaken" came the reply.
"What interest have you in this thing, anyway?"
"You tried to kill Fred Cassidy," he said, "and I've invested a lot in that boy's education."
"I did not associate the name," Zeemeister replied. "But I never really intended to harm him."
"That is not the way that I heard it."
Zeemeister continued to back away, passing through the gate in the guardrail, moving until the rotating platform of the Rhennius machine brushed the backs of his pant legs. He spun then and slashed at Charv, who was passing by, brandishing a wrench. Charv bleated and fled the platform, dropping to the floor near M'mrm'mlrr and Nadler.
"What are you going to do, Al?" Zeemeister inquired, turning back to face the other.
But there was no reply, only a continued advance, a continued twirling of the club, a smile.
At the last instant, before he came into shillelagh range, Zeemeister bolted. Raising one foot to the platform, he sprang back on it, turning, and rushed forward all of two paces. Its rotation, however, had so positioned the apparatus that he collided with the central unit, which faintly resembled a wide hand cupped as in the act of scratching.
His momentum and angle of incidence were such that his stumbling rebound bore him down atop the belt. His knife and the towel-swathed star-stone flew from his hands as he tried to stay his fall. They bounced from the platform down onto the floor as he was borne on into the tunnel. His scream was cut short with an ominous abruptness and I looked away, but not in time.
It apparently turned him inside out.
Which of course delivered the contents of his circulatory and digestive systems to the floor.
Also, it seemed to have inverted all of the organs which were now exposed.
The contents of my own stomach sought egress, reinforced by the noises which had begun about me. Like I said, I looked away. But not in time.