The Broken Cycle - A. Bertram Chandler [28]
"Cor stone my Aunt Fanny up a gum tree!" exclaimed Grimes. "We're not from the Fringe, wherever that is. Or was. We don't belong here. We shall be greatly obliged if you will help us to get back to where we do belong. Where—and when."
"These are the words of Zephalon," quoted Panzen. " 'Let us save what and whom we may, before it is too late.' "
"But we don't belong in this space, in this time!"
"And these, too, are the words of Zephalon. 'The Sacred Cycle shall be maintained. Only that way do we ensure immortality for man and ourselves.' "
"In other words," said Una to Grimes, "on your bicycle, spaceman!"
Panzen seemed to be pondering over the strange word. At last his voice came, it seemed, from all around them.
"What is a bicycle?" he asked.
The question made sense, Grimes realized. Panzen had considered it odd that he and Una possessed only four limbs apiece. Presumably the men of this universe were of hexapedal ancestry. He could not imagine such beings developing bicycles. He just could not visualize a centaur mounted upon a velocipede.
"What is a bicycle?" asked Panzen again.
Before Grimes could answer Una started to talk.
She was, it seemed, an enthusiastic cyclist. She knew all about bicycles. The words tumbled from her lips in an uncheckable torrent. That question from their captor had been such a touch of blessed normalcy in a situation which was, to say the least, distressingly abnormal.
Chapter 15
She knew a lot about bicycles, and Panzen listened intently to every word of it. They knew, somehow, that he was listening. It was almost as though he were in the boat with them, as though he were not an artificial intelligence somewhere outside, hidden somewhere in that great, metallic latticework. He asked the occasional question—he seemed to find the principle of the three-speed gear especially fascinating—and prompted Una when, now and again, she faltered. Then he . . . withdrew. He said nothing more, refused to answer any questions. It was as though an actual physical presence had gone from them.
Una looked at Grimes. She murmured, "I still can't believe that it—he—is only a robot . . . ."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Such human curiosity . . . ."
"Human curiosity? Intelligence and curiosity go hand in hand. One is nurtured by the other."
"All right I grant you that. But this business of telepathy. The way in which he was able to pick our brains while we were sleeping."
Grimes said, "There are telepathic robots. Have you never come across any in the course of your police duties?"
"Yes, but not real telepathy. Quite a few robots can natter away to each other on HF radio."
"As you say, that's not telepathy. Real telepathy. But I did, once, not so long ago, come across a couple of really telepathic robots. They had been designed to make them that way." He chuckled. "And that's how I got my promotion from lieutenant to lieutenant commander."
"Don't talk in riddles, John."
"It was when I was captain of Adder, a Serpent Class courier. I had to carry one of the Commissioners of the Admiralty on an important mission. The robots—I hate to think what they must have cost!—were her personal servants."
"Her servants?"
"The Commissioner in question is a lady. She treated her tin henchmen rather shabbily, giving one of them as a parting gift to a petty prince who had—mphm—entertained her. Its cobber spilled the beans to me about certain details of her love life."
"You are rather a bastard, John. But . . . . Don't interrupt me. I'm thinking. I'm. All right, I have to admit that this Panzen is telepathic. Even so, it seems to be a very limited kind of telepathy."
"How so?"
"He was able to snoop around inside our minds while we were sleeping. But why didn't he do the same when I was telling him all about bicycles? The three-speed gear, for example. I could—I can—visualize its workings clearly, but