*
For several minutes, streams of silvery data branched and flowed and shifted, like mercury flowing over an uneven surface. The quarx dived into the datastream, carrying Bandicut faster than he could follow with his thoughts. He was grateful for the surge and tug of the neurolink, but Charlie was taking the data far too fast for him to follow. The quarx darted from stream to stream, dipping and sampling, siphoning information that left Bandicut dizzily bewildered.
Finally he asked, /Do you know what you’re looking for?/
The quarx hummed distractedly.
/// Not specifically.
I have an intuition that he might have
left something for me. ///
/Left something? Like what?/
/// I wish I knew.
If he knew he was dying,
he might have anticipated this situation. ///
/You think he left you some kind of instructions?/
/// I would have, in his place. ///
Bandicut watched the datastream blur. What could Charlie-One have left in the datanet that wouldn’t be incriminating? The quarx was now rummaging through Earth history files. A minute later he shifted to a summation of the mathematical proofs of the last two centuries. He riffled through them with blinding speed.
/// Nothing.
I find nothing.
You’re going to have to help me. ///
/Okay. How?/
/// Well . . . there’s a lot about him
that you know better than I.
What did he like?
What were his concerns?
What interested him? ///
/Well . . . the mission, of course./ Bandicut shrugged mentally. /Have you put the pieces of that together yet?/
/// We have to stop something from hitting Earth.
It’s quite urgent. ///
/Right. Was that from your memory or mine?/
/// A little of both.
And you have some essential data in your head
which we have to relay to the translator. ///
/Right./ That little detail had almost slipped his mind. /Can you—do you see the data okay? Is it still there?/
/// I haven’t actually found it yet,
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
What else—about Charlie, I mean?
Maybe not related to the mission. ///
Bandicut thought. /Well—he was a big TV nut. He loved the old-time stuff. Was always quoting stupid lines at me. Is that what you mean?/
/// Maybe . . . ///
/In fact, now that I think about it, he used an old TV show as camouflage when he fired that first bunch of data to the translator./
/// Ah.
That’s precisely the sort of thing
I was looking for. ///
The quarx shifted in a silent whirlwind to a whole new branch of the datastream, one bearing endless thousands of hours of TV and holo programming.
/If it helps, he said the program he used for cover was—/ Bandicut stopped, realizing he didn’t remember. The name had meant nothing to him.
/// “Father Knows Best.”
It’s right there in your memory.
I’ll check,
but I doubt he’d use the same cover
for instructions. ///
The scanning was a mottled brown blur, the mud of a trillion frames of imagery swirled together in a river of video history.
/// I didn’t think so. ///
/He liked westerns,/ Bandicut noted.
/// Westerns?
Okay, let’s check. ///
The river jumped and billowed, and for an instant, Bandicut thought he saw spinning images of cowboys riding and shooting and dying and rescuing, and then it closed together again—
/Well, I guess that didn’t—/
—and opened again to reveal a cowboy on horseback, gazing at a sunset from some unnamed mountain ridge. The cowboy turned, grinned toothily, and the viewpoint shifted to closeup, and in the dark pupils of the cowboy’s eyes Bandicut saw the exploding fire of a quarx in its native reality. And his heart skipped, because he felt the first Charlie’s presence in those fiery eyes. /Hi, pardner,/ murmured the cowboy, in obvious recognition. /I thought you might find your way to me. Let’s see if we can help each other out a little, shall we?/
/Uh—yeah—/
/I’m guessing that you have a new quarx-manifestation, and you need information. Well, that’s what I’m here for—to help you fill in the blanks. Let’s go for a little ride, shall we? Come along./
Bandicut felt himself riding beside the cowboy/quarx—along the ridge, and then suddenly pitching over the edge of a precipice into a bottomless canyon, its walls glittering with points of information. He was falling into darkness, and coruscating fire . . .
And voices began murmuring somewhere close to the center of his mind . . . babbling with information and greetings from one quarx to another . . .
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