The last voice rose to a scream and all the loudspeakers cut off abruptly. Valkol’s face, baffled but not yet worried, hovered over Simon’s, peering into his eyes.
‘We’re not going to get anything out of that,’ he told some invisible technician. ‘You must have gone too deep; those are the archetypes you’re getting, obviously.’
‘Nonsense.’ The voice was the Fomentor’s. ‘The archetypes sound nothing like that – for which you should be grateful. In any event we have barely gone beneath the surface of the cortex; see for yourself.’
Valkol’s face withdrew. ‘Hmm. Well, something’s wrong. Maybe your probe is too broad. Try it again.’
The spike drove home, and the loudspeakers resumed their mixed chorus.
‘Nausentampen. Eddettompic. Berobsilom. Aimkaksetchoc. Sanbetogmow—’
‘Dîtes-lui que nous lui ordonnons de revenir, en vertu de la Loi du Grand Tout.’
‘Perhaps he should swear by another country.’
‘Can’t Mommy ladder spaceship think for bye-bye-see-you two windy Daddy bottle seconds straight -‘
‘Nansima macamba yonso cakosilisia.’
‘Stars don’t have points. They’re round, like balls.’
The sound clicked off again. Valkol said fretfully: ‘He can’t be resisting. You’ve got to be doing something wrong, that’s all.’
Though the operative part of the statement was untrue, it was apparently also inarguable to the Fomentor. There was quite a long silence, broken only occasionally by small hums and clinks.
While he waited, Simon suddenly felt the beginnings of a slow sense of relief in his left earlobe, as though a tiny but unnatural pressure he had long learned to live with had decided to give way, precisely, in fact, like the opening of a cyst.