“What does Perseus stand for?” Evelyn asked.
Jenny shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just the name of a guy from Greek mythology who killed monsters and solved problems. We thought it was appropriate.”
Evelyn looked relieved. “I thought everything had to be an acronym.”
“I guess we got tired of them.” Jenny entered another code. “And here he is.” A caricature figure had appeared in the room, lightly clad in ancient-hero style, carrying a sheathed sword and wearing a helmet.
Jenny tapped a key, and an icon showing an ear appeared at the top of the screen. “Hello, Perseus. How’s it going?” she asked.
“I haven’t found a way through the Misty Room,” a voice replied from a speaker above the screen. It sounded quite human. This project evidently embodied some sophisticated language processing too. “It becomes pitch black, whichever way I go, and I lose direction. But the inscription on the wall in the cavern mentioned `rays that cut through the mists.’ It suggests that there might be a special kind of light, or lamp, somewhere.”
“This has got better since the last time I saw it,” Corrigan murmured.
The figure on the screen looked up and around. “Who else is speaking?” its voice asked.
Jenny touched a key and the icon vanished. “Watch for the ear,” she said. “He can hear us while it’s showing.” She brought the icon back again. “Just some friends. They don’t affect you. What’s new?”
“After some reflection on the matter, it occurred to me that the implement I found in the Burial Chamber was of just the correct shape and size for making holes in the ground. So I decided to dig around where the earth appeared to have been disturbed. And I found this.” Another screen showed a close-up of Perseus’s schematicized hands, holding an oil lamp of old, Oriental design.
Any five-year-old would have known what to do instantly. Perseus, however, seemed mystified, turning the lamp over and contemplating it. “There are no obvious buttons or switches. It seems built to contain liquid, but it is empty. Its use escapes me.”
Corrigan couldn’t bear to look, but turned his head away, muttering inaudibly, “Rub the lamp. Rub the lamp.” Jenny gave a thin smile and shrugged.
Evelyn motioned to herself, then at the screen, asking through gestures if it would be all right for her to speak. Jenny nodded and mouthed, “Sure.”
Evelyn stared with a strange, not-wanting-to-believe-this fascination for a few seconds at the figure on the screen, now returned to fumbling with the lamp.
“Perseus,” she said.
The figure stopped what it was doing. “Is this another friend?”
“Yes. . . . Can I ask you a question?”
“I assume so, since you just did.”
“I meant a different question.”
“Why should you be unable to ask a different one?”
Evelyn frowned, then saw the problem. “No, I didn’t mean `can’ in the sense of `able to.’ I meant would you mind?”
There was a pause, then, puzzled, “How should I mind?”
Jenny flipped the ear icon off for a moment. “His conceptual world is limited to exploring the physical environment. Implied permissions belong to a dimension of relationships that he can’t comprehend. Don’t project too much into the illusion.”
But that was the trouble. For Evelyn, the illusion was too convincing. She couldn’t avoid the conviction that she was listening to a real person speaking from a real place. Somehow, the sight of the visually simple, cartoonlike form, clashing as it did with the capacity for experience that she found herself perceiving, produced uncomfortable feelings that she didn’t want to think about. Yet some macabre curiosity compelled her to probe deeper.
“When we talk to you, who do you think we are?” she asked Perseus.
“Friends,” he replied.
“Are we the same as you?”
“Obviously not.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I can’t see you. You don’t appear, like all the other beings that I meet.”
“But we must exist somewhere. Isn’t that true?”
“Jenny and others have asked me this before. I assume that you must exist outside somewhere.”
Evelyn’s discomfort increased. This was now positively disturbing. “Outside of what?” she persisted.
“Here. The caves.” Perseus carried on into an explanation that must have gone back to some earlier occasion. “All things must end. Therefore, the place that I am in must end at a boundary. So beyond the boundary there must be an `outside.’ Perhaps my quest is to find the boundary and reach the outside. I do not know this for certain.”