Part 1 (2/2)

A few seconds of silence followed while Taya thought to herself. ”What are you doing now?” she asked at last.

”There's a fault in the optical circuits of one of the machines. The service machines could fix it, but they'd need to have new parts made by other machines in another place. I can fix it more quickly, so I've told them not to bother. I'm almost done now.”

”Can I see?” Taya asked.

The screen above the b.u.t.tons came to life to show what Kort could see through his eyes. He was looking at a dense pattern of lines and shapes on a metal-framed plate of crystal that he had removed from a slot in one of many tiers of such plates. It could have been the inside of any machine. They all looked the much the same to Taya, and not especially interesting. The ones she liked best were the maintenance machines that fixed other machines, because they at least moved around and did something.

She had never seen how anyone could really understand how the machines worked. Kort had told her about electrons and currents and fields, and shown her how to find out more for herself from the screens . . . but she had never quite followed what all that had to do with building new parts of Merkon, changing old parts, finding out what the stars were made of, or all the other things that the machines did. Every time she learned something, she discovered two more things she didn't know, which she hadn't thought of before. Learning things was like trying to count the stars: there were always two more for every one she counted.

Then Kort's hands moved into the view on the screen. They were huge, silver-gray hands with fingers almost as thick as Taya's wrists, and joints that flexed by sliding metal surfaces over each other-not like her little ”bendy” hands at all. One of the hands was holding a piece of machine while the other hand tightened a fastening, using one of the tools that Kort took with him when he went away to fix something.

Taya watched, fascinated, as the hands restored other, larger connections, and then replaced a metal cover over the top. Then the view moved away and showed Kort's hands collecting other tools from a ledge and putting them into the box that he used to carry them.

”Do you think I'd ever be able to do things like that?” Taya asked in an awed voice.

”Well, there isn't any air here where I am, and the temperature would be too low for your jelly body,”

Kort told her. ”But apart from that, yes, maybe you could . . . in time.”

”But how do you know what to do?”

”By learning things.”

”But I'm not sure I could ever learn those things. I'm just not very good at learning 'machine things.' ”

”Perhaps it's only because I've been learning things longer than you have,” Kort suggested. ”You have to learn easy things before you can expect to understand harder things, and that takes time.” On the screen, a doorway enlarged as Kort moved toward it. Beyond it was a larger s.p.a.ce, crammed with machines, cabinets, cables, and ducting. It could have been anywhere in Merkon. Only the machines could live in most parts of it. Just the part that Taya lived in was different from the rest.

”But I've already been learning things for years and years,” she protested. ”And I still don't really know how pressing b.u.t.tons makes shapes appear on the screens, or how I can still talk to you when you're not here. Have you been learning things for longer than years and years?”

”Much longer,” Kort replied. ”And besides that, I talk to the machines faster.”

The ma.s.s of machinery moving by on the screen gave way to a dark tunnel, lined with banks of pipes and cables. The colors changed as Kort entered, which meant he had switched his vision to its infra-red range. Taya knew that Kort could see things by their heat. She had tried practicing it herself in the dark, but she'd never been able to make it work.

”How fast can you talk to the machines, Kort?” Taya asked.

”Very fast. Much faster than you can.”

”What, evenifItakeabigbreathandtalkasfastasthis?”

Kort laughed-that was something he had learned from Taya. ”Much faster, little asker-of-endless-questions. I'll show you. Tell me, what is the three hundred twenty-fifth word in the dictionary that starts with a B?”

”Is this a game?”

”If you like.”

Taya frowned and thought about the question. ”I don't know,” she said finally.

”Then you'll have to find out.” Kort emerged from the tunnel and crossed a dark s.p.a.ce between rows of machines that were moving round and round and up and down.

Taya pressed some b.u.t.tons to activate a second screen, and then entered a command to access the dictionary of the language that she and Kort had been inventing for as long as she could remember.

Whenever they made up a new word they added it to the dictionary, so Taya could always remind herself of words she forgot. She found the B section and composed a request for the 325thentry in it.

”Busy,” she announced as the screen returned its answer.

”Correct,” Kort confirmed. ”That took you eleven point two seconds. Now ask me one.”

”A word, just like you asked me?”

”Yes.”

Taya chewed her lip and looked back at the first screen while she thought. Kort had just pa.s.sed through an airlock and was emerging into the long corridor that led to where Taya lived. The walls flowed off the sides of the image as Kort's long, effortless strides ate up the distance. Taya had counted that it took more than two of her steps to match one of his . . . if she didn't cheat and jump a little bit. ”Tell me,” she said at last, ”. . . the two hundred first word beginning with Z.”

”There aren't that many that begin with Z,” Kort answered at once.

Taya sighed. ”Oh, that was supposed to be a trick. I didn't really think there were. All right then, E.”

”Empty,” Kort returned instantly. ”That took less than a thousandth of a second, not including the time it took me to say it.”

Taya gasped in amazement. ”Did you really talk to the machines in that time?”

”Of course. They keep the dictionary.”

Taya's stare changed to a puzzled frown. ”No you didn't!” she accused. ”You don't have to use the dictionary because you never forget anything. Now you're playing tricks. You only pretended to talk to the machines.”

”That's where you're wrong, little player-of-tricks,” Kort told her. ”I don't carry everything around inside me all the time. Whenever I need information that I don't have, I ask the machines for it, just as you do. But I can do it a lot faster because I don't need a screen and I don't have to press b.u.t.tons.”

”So, how do you do it?” Taya asked incredulously.

”Well, how do you and I talk to each other?”

Taya wrinkled up her face and shrugged. ”We just . . . talk. I'm not sure what you mean. . . . Oh, do you mean with sound waves?”

”Exactly. I use a different kind of wave, which talks much faster than sound waves can.”

”What kind of wave?” Taya asked.

”You tell me. What kind of wave can travel without air-even outside Merkon?”

”Outside!” Taya's eyes widened for a moment, then lit up with comprehension. ”Light!” she exclaimed.

”Light comes all the way from the stars.”

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