Plop, plop, plop, went Plopper.
Haystack was asleep (or maybe only had his eyes shut) and Decker was not around. A lot of the time, Smoky grumbled to himself, Decker was not around. At times he could be an amusing and entertaining creature, and there was no question that he had an audacious imagination, and all in all he had been loyal enough, but there were times when one could not help but have certain doubts of his devotion to the central triad theme. Decker, Smoky admitted, was an opportunist, albeit a most engaging one. So long as no greater opportunity presented itself, Decker would stay and, Smoky told himself with some pride, there was at the moment no better opportunity than to be with him. There was no other Bubbly in all of Center that had more clout than he had, and that clout had been generated by the wisdom of Haystack and the audacity of Decker. In his triad, he knew, he had chosen well and wisely. How then, did it come that at times he felt irritation and downright disaffection for the two of them? Would it be possible, he asked himself, once the recreation of the two newly arrived humans had been completed, that he could add them to his triad and make of it a quintet? Would he dare? Could he get away with it? It ran counter to all tradition and right thinking and there would be fierce criticism, but he could withstand some criticism if that was all it was. Would it be wise? he wondered. Three Deckers would be a bit lopsided, but there was strength in these so-called humans. With the wisdom of one Haystack and the sharp opportunism of three humans. It was something, he decided, that he must think about, think very hard about.
Plop, plop, plop, went Plopper.
Why, Smoky asked himself, should he hesitate? He already was a tetrad, although no one was aware of it, or he hoped no one was aware of it. He had concealed it rather effectively (at least so far he had) by making out that Plopper was no more than a passing pet, when the fact of the matter was that if it came down to a pinch, he would let go the other two if necessary to keep Plopper with him. He had worked it very well, he thought – no one had suspicion.
Why was it he wondered, that he valued Plopper so? Plopper had no wisdom, like Haystack, and he had no audacity and imagination like Decker, but he did give him deep moral strength and a sustaining comfort, qualities that so far as he knew no other member of his race had ever had before.
Haystack was still sleeping and Decker still was absent and all the cones had drifted off, so he sat alone, almost alone – the only thing that showed any signs of life was the bouncing Plopper. The silly cubes that had come along with the two humans and the Duster (he had not seen the Duster, but Decker said he had) were out in the parking lot, roosting in a circle, yelling at one another with the flashing, skittering symbols they paraded across themselves.
The diversity of the galaxy, he thought, the utter unending diversity of its life forms and the diversity, too, of the concepts that they had developed, some of them making not a single bit of sense, others pregnant with awe-inspiring possibilities. Yet there was in them all a certain logic if it only could be found – and all of these, all the concepts and the logic, could be adapted to sure and certain use if they could be puzzled out. This Center was the place where they could be puzzled out – that was the purpose of it. But once they were puzzled out, there was yet another step, and that step was to put the logic to a proper use – to selfish use, perhaps, but selfish use, he told himself, was better than no use at all. Of all of them, of all the others of them here, he was the only one who had the wile and craft to put them to that use. With the aid of Haystack and Decker, and the close support of Plopper, who never failed to assure him that his course was right, he could put to proper (and to selfish) use all the concepts and the knowledge that had been harvested through millennia. The others, in their arrogance and pride, who in their self-deceit thought they were the ones who might accomplish it, were not the ones who would accomplish it. He was the one, the only one who could manage and turn to his own good the possibilities and the promises. He thought, hugging the thought against himself, of the expressions he would see upon their shocked and incredulous, their ridiculously surprised and beaten faces, once the knowledge of his actions finally burst upon them.
First, the galaxy, he thought, and then the universe. First the galaxy, then the universe.
Those others, sitting smug within their restricted orbits, secure in their associations with their triad fellows, had missed the one bet that he had not missed. They had missed because of their misplaced arrogance and their fatal smugness, their failure to recognize a simple truth – that they could be wrong.
Over the millennia, Center had come upon hundreds, perhaps thousands, of faith systems. Difficult as they might be to study, they had been studied and after being studied tested and in every instance had failed the tests; all of them, every one of them, had been judged meaningless. Not only was it concluded that all gods were false gods; the judgment had been carried one step further: There were no gods at all, either weak or strong, true or false. The faith systems had been pegged as no more than self-delusions, willing self-delusions sought after and propounded by weak people who felt compelled to erect shelters for themselves against the bitter truth of existence, against the overwhelming evidence that there was nothing within the universe that cared.
Plopper landed directly in front of him and now, instead of plopping off in a new direction, it jumped in place, straight up and down in front of him. Plop, plop, plop it went, going very fast.
Watching it, half hypnotized by the straight up and down, by the steady rhythm of the plopping, he felt the wonder, the never-ending wonder, enter him; he felt the piety, the passion, and the power, all welded together, the piety to the passion and both of them welded to the power. All of the three equally sanctified so that the power was no whit baser than the piety. And gripped by all of this, he thought, marginally, that all was as it should be, that the power was equally sanctified with the piety and passion. That pleased him for it was the power that he cared about. There were those who said that power was evil and the use of it was evil, but that was not so, for those who said it were in error. As they had been in error when they had said there were no gods. Wrong because he had found a god and it was his own – along with Haystack and Decker, it was his very own. In time, it would give the power he needed to carry out his plan. When the time came for him to move, he would hold the power.
Worship me, the god commanded.
So he worshipped it, for that was the bargain he had made with it.
Plop, plop, plop went Plopper.
Fifty-nine
Smoky sat on his dais. Looking at him closely, Tennyson saw that he was a rather splendid creature. Now that some of the unfamiliarity had fallen away, the outer beauty of him was revealed. He was egg-shaped rather than globular, and his outer shell, if it was a shell, had a pearl-like sheen with iridescent highlights. The dimple in the egg was cloudy, like a small area of gray woolen clouds, with the hint of clouds still remaining when they cleared away to some extent to reveal the face, which was a cartoon face, the sort of face that a human child, scribbling with crayons, might have drawn in its first attempt at art.
To one side of Smoky squatted Haystack, more like a haystack than a living creature, with the occasional twinkle of eyes glinting through the hay. Standing on the other side of Smoky was Decker II. Looking at him again, Tennyson sought some feature that would distinguish him from the authentic Decker. There was none; he was Decker come to life. In front of Smoky, Plopper was plopping all about, but covering not too great an area, simply plopping back and forth.
All about the room stood the cones, sinister in their stolid blackness. Functionaries of some sort, Tennyson wondered, or were they guards? That was foolish he thought, for against Jill and him there was no need of guards.