At that moment a wraithlike Oob tottered from the glowing portal. He saw Roger, uttered a faint cry, took a faltering step toward him, and collapsed, stirring feebly.
“It’s no use,” he whispered. “We’ve utterly exhausted myself. You win, Tyson! I now perceive that you are a multi-ordinal genius of immeasurable subtlety.” His integument had paled to a ghastly silver-white. “I confess, I engaged you in nonsense conversation just now for the purpose of analyzing your computer capacity through the agency of a battery of concealed probe rays; and for a moment, when the reports showed an almost complete blank, I was deluded into imagining you were at my mercy. But now the awful truth dawns. Each of your apparently idiotic moves was a piece of masterful indirection, designed to lead inexorably to this denouement!”
“You bet,” Roger concurred. “So now if you’re ready to give up and go back where you came from . . . ”
“Still hoping to see me betray the location of HQ, eh?” the Rhox cut in, a steely glint appearing in his bleary eye. “You underestimate our moral fiber, Tyson! Before I’ll play the traitor, we’ll willingly sacrifice myself!”
“No need to do that,” Roger said. “Just give up your plans and go quietly.”
“And leave the prize to you? Never!”
“Why not? Don’t be a spoilsport, just because I’ve bested you in a battle of wits.”
“I thought,” Oob said, a sad shade of violet now, “when I stumbled on this quaint little phenomenon, that it would be our great privilege to bring to the hypergalactic masses, for the first time in temporal stasis, a glimpse of life on a simpler, more meaningless, and therefore highly illuminating scale. I pictured the proud intellects of Ikanion Nine, the lofty abstract cerebra of Yoop Two, the swarm-awareness of Vr One-ninety-nine, passing through these displays at so many megaergs per ego-complex, gathering insights into their own early evolutionary history. I hoped to see the little ones, their innocent organ clusters aglow, watching with shining radiation sensors as primitive organisms split atoms with stone axes, invented the wheel and the betatron, set forth on their crude Cunarders to explore the second dimension . . . ”
“You make Earth sound like a circus,” Roger said. “I’ll have you know—”
“Exactly,” the Rhox said. “And before I’ll allow a rival entrepreneur to add it to his midway, I’ll chop the figurative guy ropes and allow the allegorical big top to collapse on us all!”
“What do you mean, rival operator? I’m not—”
“Don’t taunt me with your superiority!” Oob was exclaiming. “Perhaps ‘rival’ was a poor choice of words, in view of the neat way in which you finessed me out of my ownership of the greatest little attraction to come along in half a dozen Big Bangs, but—”
“Look here—are you trying to say you’re a circus operator? And you only want Earth so you can herd tourists through the Channel to gape at our entire history?”
“Naturally! What else is it good for?”
“B-but—I thought you wanted to invade it!”
“Why in nine pulsating universes would I want to do that? Who ever heard of invading the monkey house at a zoo?”
“But—what was all that about betraying headquarters, and D-day, and surprise bombardments!”
“I was referring to a promotional bombardment in the media,” Oob said loftily. “And headquarters, of course, is the main office of the holding company which is backing me. D-day refers to the grand opening.” Oob had struggled to a sitting position. “My grand opening will never occur now,” he announced in a choked voice. “But neither will yours!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Tyson, that an experienced business being never leaves himself without a last-ditch weapon against interlopers like yourself! You’ve wrested the enterprise from my hands—but I can still deny you the fruits of your chicanery! The temporal access system through which I had planned to conduct my tours of Earth history is under automatic control. Unless I give the ‘cancel’ signal in the next twenty-eight seconds, the time locks will open. The denizens of each era will at once swarm forth into all the others! Diplodoci will graze in Central Park! Pekin Man will emerge behind the bamboo curtain! Roman legions will confront the UN peacekeeping forces amid the Wurm glaciation! Pharaoh and Nasser will meet in the streets of Cairo! Conestogas will clog Interstate One! Hordes of painted Sioux will gallop through the suburbs of Omaha and Duluth! Redcoats and freedom marchers will come face to face in the wilds of the Carboniferous Era! Early Christian martyrs will mingle unnoticed with pro-LSD groups in the depths of the Jurassic—”
“I get the idea!” Roger interrupted as Oob’s oratory gathered force. “UKR! Stop him!”
“Tsk. Overt interference on my part is not in accordance with the rules of the game as we agreed upon them, Tyson. I’m surprised that you’d even suggest such a thing. No, it’s up to you.”
“Twenty seconds,” Oob said. “A pitiable end for the once-great race of Rhox. Cut off as I am from my control apex, my various surviving third-order aspects will wander aimlessly through the maze forever, the entity that was the end result of three billion years of evolution reduced in one swell foop to its primitive state of individualization. But you likewise will find yourself bisected! Never will you be relinked with your other segment, which will languish forever in fifth-order stasis, awaiting a reunion that never comes!”
“Q’nell!” Roger moaned. “Poor kid! Look here, Oob, can’t we come to some agreement? You call off the lock opening, and I’ll . . . I’ll let you have part of the Earth’s history for your circus.”
“Too late,” Oob said. “I’m afraid your own zeal has rendered rapprochement impossible. The chase has probably left me too exhausted to punch a signal through, even if you were willing to concede, say, a fifty-fifty split of spheres of influence.”
“Robber!” Roger yelled. “I’ll give you the first billion years and not a century more!”
“I’ll have to have a portion of the Cenozoic, of course,” Oob said crisply, steepling his upper tentacles. “What would you say to the whole of the Pre-Cambrian for you, plus, say the Roaring Twenties?”
“Nonsense,” Roger retorted. “But just to show you my heart’s in the right place, I’ll let you have the first three billion years, plus a small slice of the Devonian.”
“Surely you jest,” the Rhox said blandly. “The human-occupied portion is the most amusing side-show attraction to come along in half a dozen hydrogen-hydrogen cycles. Suppose I take the Christian Era, minus the Late Middle Ages if you insist; and as a gesture of goodwill, I’ll also give up the Silurian.”
“Nothing doing! I get the whole Age of Mammals or no deal.”
“Now, now, don’t imagine I’ll allow you to hog the entire Pleistocene! Still, I’m willing to be reasonable. I’ll settle for the Nineteenth Century on, provided you give up everything up to and including the Paleolithic.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Roger said. “You can have it all, prior to two million B.C. How’s that for generosity?”
“You’re greedy,” Oob observed. “Can’t you at least let me have the Gay Nineties—and maybe a couple of odd decades out of the Renaissance?”
“I’ll give you the third century A.D., provided you stick to the vicinity of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,” Roger offered. “That’s my final word.”
“Throw in nineteen thirty-six and it’s a deal!”
“Shake!” Roger grasped a metallic member and give it a firm squeeze. “Now give that signal!”
“There’s no signal,” Oob said blandly. “I was bluffing.”
“So was I,” Roger said. “I’m not a sixth-level being, and I’m so pooped that if you’d made one more move you’d have had me.”
“Frankly,” Oob confided, “I’ve been trying to give up for the last three assassinations.”
“I didn’t think I had a chance. I just hit the Panic Button by accident.”
“Indeed? Well, for your information, the first time we met, I was ready to concede at least as much as we just agreed on.”
“Oh yeah? Listen, I was so scared that if you hadn’t dumped me down the garbage shaft when you did, I’d probably have died of fright in another few seconds!”
“I almost croaked when you first jumped out in the road when I was chasing you on the two-wheeler!”
“You think that’s something . . . ” Roger’s riposte died on his lips. “Hey! That reminds me! What about Q’nell?”
“She got away,” Oob said blandly.
“Oh. Well, in that case, so long, Oob. And don’t get any bright ideas about violating our agreement. I may be only a third-order intellect, but I have friends.”
“Really?” The Rhox had turned a shrewd shade of yellow. “I have a sneaking suspicion you’re bluffing again.”
“Watch this,” Roger said. “OK, UKR. Back to Culture One, direct routing.”
“Very well. And congratulations on your success. But this will be our last contact. It’s been jolly . . . “