The breakfast conversation had degenerated into a monologue by Barbara about the necessity of leading a virtious life, of being careful and considerate of others, and never harming anyone, and so on. She went on and on about how she had never hurt anyone in her entire life. It was nothing that you could really object to, but it was getting damned boring, nonetheless. Thus, I welcomed the interruption when a maid came and announced that we had a visitor with an urgent message.
We got very few visitors at Camelot, and time travel being what it is, we never got unexpected guests.
Bemused, I said, “Well, send him in.”
He was a young man of proper size. That is to say, he was about six foot ten, about halfway between Ian and myself. He was well built and had those straight features that most women seem to find attractive. Clean shaven, and with short blond hair, he wore the same sort of hyperexpensive silk and vicuna outfit that Ian and I usually sported.
“I see that we have the same doctor,” Ian said.
“No, we don’t,” the stranger said. “But I can understand why you would think that, since my exterior form was patterned after you and your partners.”
I said, “You were ‘patterned’ after us. Great green gobs of greasy gopher shit. This might turn out to be an interesting day after all. Barb, call the office and tell them that Ian and I will be late for work. I expect that this conversation might be a long one.” Barb nodded but of course she didn’t have to leave and do it right now. “So, stranger, do you have a name?”
“From studying your people, I assumed that you would expect one. Would ‘Teacher’ be adequate? Or perhaps ‘Ambasador’?”
“Those are more like titles than proper names,” Ian said. “Unless you want to be ‘Mr. Teacher,’ of course.”
“I would be happy with any designation that you would care to use.”
“I’d be happier to know what your real name is,” I said.
“In reality, I don’t have a name. My people don’t use separate names for individuals, although we occasionally use job classifications. Any name I use will be strictly for your convenience.”
“Tom, assuming that this isn’t an elaborate practical joke, it looks like we’ve just come across our third cultural group. First the Smoothies, then the Killers, and now this bunch.”
“I’d like it to be a joke. It would mean that Hasenpfeffer is becoming human again. But I don’t think that it is,” I said. “Okay, Teacher, so what are your people called?”
“It might be best if you called us ‘The Travelers,’ since it is in that connection that I was made to contact you with a message.”
“Before we get to this message of yours, you say that you were ‘made’? Do you mean that you are some sort of machine, a robot?” Ian asked.
“Not in the sense of what you think of as a robot. I am a biological construct, not a thing of metal. If your biologists were to examine me, they would find hydrocarbons, proteins, and DNA that is not too different from what they are accustomed to seeing. They might find some differences in my gross anatomy that would suprise them, but then again they might not. The Travelers would not have been able to come to you themselves, being physically incapable of surviving on this planet, and being mentally incapable of having a meaningful conversation with you. You, of course, have the same incapacities with respect to them. An intermediary was therefore necessary. I am it, or he, if you prefer.”
“And just what are these physical incapabilities you are referring to?” I said.
“There are many. At the most basic level, your body chemistry is based primarily on carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen compounds surrounded by water. The Travelers use those elements, plus a lot of silicon and fluorine compounds all surrounded by ammonia. You are quite poisonous to each other.”
“And mentally?”
“You are individuals who exist in a diffuse cultural matrix and communicate in a serial fashion using modulated sound waves. The Travelers have a hive mind, and while they are physically individuals, they are mentally a single entity. They communicate in a broad-band, parallel fashion using modulations in an energy field that you have not yet discovered. In addition, your people live in three dimensions while traveling through a fourth, which you call time. The Travelers live in five dimensions, while traveling in two others. In addition, your people have a rather stodgy disposition, while the Travelers have an extensive sense of humor that I don’t think that you could ever comprehend.”
“Ian, that sounds like such a crock of shit that it is almost certain to be true.”
“Yeah. So you can somehow communicate with these seven-dimensional Aliens who built you?”
“That might be a fair statement. Or, it might be more accurate to say that I am a seven-dimensional Alien, as well as being a four-dimensional creature who strongly resembles you humans. In order to do my job properly, I had to be made with a dual nature. You might say that I am an interface.”
“I always wondered what it would be like when the Aliens finally landed. I never expected them to walk in for breakfast,” I said. “In any event, please sit down. Would you like some breakfast? You do eat, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. This part of me was made to be perfectly human, as nearly as possible.”
“Good. Make yourself at home.”
The maids quickly brought in another chair and a large tray of assorted breakfast foods.
“I hope to. After all, this part of me will be spending the rest of my life here.”
“No way of going back to the seven-dimensional world, I take it?” Ian said.
“Not with this body, and of course my other half can’t exist in this world. I exist, must exist, in both. It’s rather difficult to explain. These pancakes are absolutely delicious. I’ve never eaten anything before, you know.”
“Well then, you have a lot to learn, as well as teach, I suppose. There was some talk about a message that you had for us?”
“Oh, yes. Your activities here, your clumsy muddling with some of the aspects of the multi-dimensional universe have caused a certain degree of distress to the Travelers. I am instructed to inform you that you must cease and desist in these activities immediately, or the Travelers will destroy your entire Solar System. These sausage things are good, too.”
There was about thirty seconds of silence, and then I said, very quietly, after getting a nod from Ian, “Barb, put out the word to everybody on the island. Do it right now. Tell them that absolutely nothing of a temporal nature may be used in any way until further notice. Every device that does anything concerning other dimensions is to be collected up and locked away, or locked off, or something done to it to make sure that nobody makes a mistake.”
Barb left quickly.
* * *
Barb returned, saying that she had made the order retroactive to the moment that the Teacher had walked in the front door.
I was about to start shouting that that in itself was a use of time travel on her part, in direct contradiction to my orders, when the Teacher said, “Yes, that was quite wise of you. The Travelers really would have done it, of course. Having a hive mind, the lives of mere individuals don’t mean much to them.”
“If they had destroyed the Solar System, you would have been killed, too, wouldn’t you?” I said. “Why doesn’t this trouble you?”
“Because I would only be destroyed as an individual, and as I just said, we aren’t very concerned about the life or death of a single individual.”
“Okay,” Ian said. “I’m trying to absorb this. You say that these ‘Travelers’ can’t live here, and if they can make somebody like you, they obviously have a technology that is vastly superior to our own. Given that, there can’t be much that we have that they could want. So why are they threatening us?”
“You are quite right. You have nothing that they want, or could possibly use. All they want of you is to be left alone. They have threatened you because you have done them a great deal of damage. Among other things, you have caused the death of several million of their component parts. Their people, as it were.”
“We have killed millions of them?” I said.
“Quite so. You have been taking millions of tons of stone and other materials and dumping it into what you have been calling the ‘Fifth Dimension.’ The Travelers use that dimension, very regularily, for traveling in. The speeds involved are of course astronomic, so that even quite small particles can cause catastrophic damage to their vehicles and ‘people.’ “