"Not even in my bonnet," Ernest said.
"Then we'll get along. Just keep your nursery rhymes to yourself."
"Aye, aye, sir," said Ernest.
* * * * *
"Look," Ernest told the skipper, "I've studied their literature, if
that's what it is, until I'm saturated with it. Maybe it doesn't
make sense to you but I've worked out a sort of pattern. It's an
alien culture, sure, and there are gaps in it, but what there is fits
together."
"All right," the skipper said. "I'm not questioning your findings. I
just want to know why it has to be in that ridiculous rhyme."
"Because they were a poetic people, that's why. And it doesn't _have_
to be in rhyme. I could give you the literal translation, but it was
rhymed originally and when I make it rhyme in English too you get a
more exact idea of the kind of people they were."
"I suppose so," the skipper said. "As long as we don't have to report
to the Flagship in the sonnet form I guess I can put up with it. I just
don't want to become the laughing stock of the fleet."
"It's no laughing matter," Ernest said. "It's pretty tragic, in
any number of ways. In the first place, as Rosco suspected, they
communicated by radio. But they had no privacy and couldn't hide
anything from anybody. They were always listened in on by the big boys
in the palace."
"How do you know?"
"By the coil I worked from. It's a listening-storing device. These
aren't official records I've transcribed; they're the everyday
expressions of everyday people. And every one of them had been taken
down and stored away, presumably so it could be used against the person
who expressed it, if it ever became necessary.
"But they couldn't always get through to the person they wanted to
reach, even though they got through to the coil. Here's a sad little
lover's lament, for instance:
"_My plea to her is lost, as though
The other three command the flow._"
"Like a busy signal?" asked the skipper.
"Very much like one," Ernest said, pleased by the skipper's
comprehension. "On the other hand, they always got the messages from
the palace. These took priority over all other traffic and were apt
to come at any time of the day or night. The people were just one big
captive audience."
"What about the dust? That seems to be a recurring theme in those
jingles of yours."
"It is." Ernest quoted:
"_Dust is he and dust his brother;
They all follow one another._"
"They're all dust now," the skipper said. "Did they have a revolution,
finally, that killed everybody off?"
"Both sides--the rulers and the ruled, simultaneously? Maybe so."
Ernest sorted through his pieces of paper. "There's this one, with its
inference of the death of royalty along with that of the common man:
"_Comes the King! O hear him rustle;
Falter, step, and wither, muscle._"
The skipper was beginning to be exasperated again.
"I'll be in my cabin," he said. "You seem to accomplish more when I
keep out of your way. But if you want to join me in a little whiskey to
keep the falters and withers at bay, come along."
* * * * *
The lieutenant knocked at Ernest's door in the middle of the night.
"Mister Hotaling!" he called urgently.
Ernest fumbled into a pair of pants and opened the door.
"One of the men found this thing," the lieutenant said. "We were going
to keep it locked up till morning but it's driving me crazy. Figured
you'd better have a look at it."
The thing was a blue-green puppet of a creature wearing--or made of--a
kind of metallic sailcloth. It was about three feet tall, a caricature
of a human being. It hung limp by one arm from the lieutenant's grasp,
its head lolling on its shoulder.
"What is it?" Ernest asked sleepily, "a doll?"
"No; it's just playing dead now. It was doing a clog step in the cage
before." He gave the thing a shake. "The worst of it is, it hummed all
the time. And the humming seems to mean something."
"Bring it in here," Ernest said. He was fully awake now. "Put it in the
armchair and stick around in case I can't handle it."
The creature sat awkwardly where it was put. But then the eyes, which
a moment ago had seemed to be painted on the face, shifted and looked
squarely at Ernest. It hummed at him.
"I see what you mean," he told the lieutenant. "It seems to be trying
to communicate. It's the same language as on the coils." He stared at
it. "I wish it didn't remind me of Raggedy Andy. Where did you find it?"
"In the throneroom of the palace. One of the men on guard there grabbed
it as it came out of a panel in the wall. He grabbed it and it went
limp, like a doll."
"Listen," said Ernest.
"_Don't you cry, boys; don't you quiver,
Though all the sand is in your liver._"
"What's that?" the lieutenant said. "Do you feel all right, Mister
Hotaling?"
"Sure. That's what he said. Raggedy Andy here. I translated it--with a
little poetic license."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't think it's a direct message to us. More likely it's something
filed away inside his brain, or electronic storage chamber or whatever
he's got. The verse is in the pattern of the ones I translated the
other day. The question now is whether Andy has any original thoughts
in his head or whether he's just a walking record library."
"How can you tell?"
"By continuing to listen to him, I suppose. A parrot might fool you
into thinking it had intelligence of its own, if you didn't know
anything about parrots, but after a while you'd realize it was just a
mimic. Right, Andy?"
The puppet-like creature hummed again and Ernest listened, gesturing
the lieutenant to be quiet.
Finally Ernest said:
"_Down the valley, down the glen
Come the Mercials, ten by ten._"
"That makes as much sense as the one about the liver," the lieutenant
said.
"Takes it a bit further, I think. No, seriously. 'Mercials' is a set of
syllables I made up, as short for 'commercials'--or the sand in their
craw, the thumb in their soup--all the things they had to put up with
as the most captive of all audiences."
"That wasn't an original thought, then?"
"Probably not. Andy may be trying me out with a few simple couplets
before he throws a really hard one. I wonder if he knows he's got
through to me." He laughed as the lieutenant looked at him oddly. "I
don't mean _he_, personally. I know as well as you do he's some kind of
robot."
"I see. You mean, is somebody controlling him now, or is he just
reacting to a stimulus the way he was built to do?"
"Exactly." Ernest frowned at the doll-like creature. "I suppose the
scientific way would be to dissect him--it. Take it apart, I mean. I've
got to stop thinking of it as a him. We'd better get Doc Braddon in on
this."
He punched the 'com button to Doc's cabin. The sleepy voice that
answered became alert as Ernest explained. Doc arrived minutes later
with an instrument kit, looking eager.
"So this is your new toy," he said. The creature, which had been
slumped listlessly in the chair, seemed to look at Doc with distaste.
It hummed something. Doc looked inquiringly at Ernest. "Have you two
established communication?"
"It's a robot," Ernest said defensively. "The question is, could
we learn more by leaving it intact and pumping it for whatever
information is stored up inside it, or by taking it apart? For
instance, it just said:
"_Uninterred beyond the hills
Lie never weres and never wills._"