They had taken and would use everyone. But worst of all, they had taken a certain two: Tohm, the most handsome man in the village, the boy-man with dreams at the tips of his fingers and flashing lights in the words that he spoke; and Tarnilee, his love, his only, his sweetest. Tarnilee of the soft form. Tarnilee of the eyes like the velvet of the night and the hair like spun darkness. Tarnilee with the body of pleasure and the soul of the earth, of the flowers, of the moons…
And even worse than that, they took these two and separated them…
He had not seen his Tarnilee since. He was “frozen” and taken to a sunless chamber where he waited until one morning they put him to sleep and he died. For all purposes, he had died, for he woke without memory of having ever lived. He woke as Jumbo Ten, that weird metal entity that fought for the Romaghin cause after being educated (in a manner that was really propagandizement) and imbued with a hatred for Setessins.
But the Fates, those fickle ladies, will often change their minds and lend a hand to those they have so callously crushed before. His web of life had been spun by Clotho who immediately washed her hands of it and moved on to another loom. Lachesis, who measured the length of his strand, decided to fray it down slowly to whittle it to near nothingness. But now, just as Atropos was coming forth with her golden shears to snip it completely, Clotho had a change of heart. Perhaps, she was unemployed and restless that day, looking for something, anything to do. In any event, she stopped Atropos with a kind word and a cold stare, and began spinning again more thread, a tougher filament for the man named Tohm.
In a giant machine that killed, a vial of narcotics began to run dry before its time…
An imprisoned brain began to divest itself of drug claws that had latched firmly to it…
A slow reawakening…
He lay quiet a moment after he regained consciousness, straining his aching mind to think. Tohm was his name, but Jumbo Ten was his form. That didn't matter. Jumbo Ten was a small city in itself, a huge, complex structure with micro-miniature components that allowed him to machine, create, build anything. Including a new body. Below decks, chemical tanks rested in a small room, their contents sloshing ever so slightly in the vacuum, waiting for the right seed to be planted before the various elements could come together to form a human body. Next to that room, intricate robo-surgeons were concealed in the walls, ready to transplant a human brain into the tank-grown corpse if the Jumbo ever crashed in enemy territory and the operator needed to escape. Even if the machine were immovable, a man with a sound body could do damage behind the enemy lines. Without further thought, he set the tanks to heating, planted the necessary catalyst, and notified the inhuman surgeons to prepare themselves. He would have a body again, even if it were not his own.
Opening the exterior lens, he searched all portions of space, staring for minutes through each of the seven cameras mounted in the turret on top of the head block. Blackness was everywhere and through everything. The heart of God?
He had absolutely no idea where he was. He, of course, had been given no stellar maps by the Generals, for this was not intended to be a space operation, merely a defense against invading Setessin forces. Now he was lost in the confusing starlanes, more alone than he had ever been in his lifetime, drifting aimlessly, thinking constantly about Tarnilee. They were to have undergone ritual joining in another month, after they had loved and proven the goodness of themselves to each other. He would find her, he vowed to himself. He would rescue her. Was she too the brain of a fighting machine? Had they hacked away her physical, beautiful, graceful self and stuffed her gray matter into an electronic monster?
She would be confused, afraid. He remembered how, although laced with sedatives, he had been afraid as the Romaghins educated him prior to placing him in the robot. His primitive mind had been picked up and shaken violently by the facts that went against all he thought he knew, by the simple understanding that there were hundreds of worlds with billions of people throughout the galaxy. Tarnilee would be in need of comforting. As he slid through the slick emptiness, he decided he would most assuredly get his bearings and then his revenge. Somehow, in some way, he would find her and the men who had taken her.
He was still brooding about it when the radar screen flashed and spat out a tiny
Winking on and off as if in warning, the green pickup grew larger and closer.
Calmly, he fixed the laser cannon solidly on the center of the oncoming bulk, flicked the magnetic heating shields into readiness, and waited. He had seven armed missiles lying in his belly. He would wait one more minute until a few hundred miles of the gap between them had been closed. He wanted to be certain.
“Ho there!” a voice snapped through the radio receiver in his guts.
He started.
“Ho there, I say! This is Floating Library No. 7. Do you wish any information, reading materials, or news?”
He swallowed imaginary saliva and relaxed a bit. Lowering his defenses, he said, “Where am I?”
“You don't know where you are?” the voice said unbelievingly.
“No.”
“Dear friend, you must come aboard for that information, star charts and all. We can converse more easily in person.”
“I can't disembark. I'm a fighting machine — a brain encased in this hunk of metal.”
“Oh dear,” the library said. Silence for a moment.
“So could we talk by radio?”
“Look,” the library said, “I have an empty stock room. I'll open the portal and let you in.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, trying to imagine the dimensions of the library that could swallow a Jumbo so easily. He was slightly astounded.
“You are a runaway?”
“I—”
“Well, there are three radar blips approaching from your rear. Before they pick you up, I suggest you conceal yourself.”
He swallowed again — as figuratively as the first time— and jetted gently to the giant cube that sparkled like polished brass. The portals swung open like the jaws of a massive alligator, revealing a warm, blue-lighted interior. He cut all engines and coasted in on the built-up thrust, breaking now and then with chemical retro-rockets. He cleared the sill and sides of the door easily. When all of J-10 was in and had grated noisily against the floor plates of the storage room, the mouth he had entered closed, gobbling up the last traces of him.
“Romaghin, I see,” the library said.
“Not by birth!”
“Of course not. Oh goodness, no. They wouldn't use their own people for something like that. Tell me, how did you come to realize what you were — rather, who?”
“I found, since my discovery, an empty vial and a useless system of narcotic baths. From the looks of it, my vial ran out ahead of schedule.”
“I see. Oh, this is good. Very good!”
“Yeah, well, I just want to find Tarnilee.”
“Tarnilee?”
Visions of sugary fantasies…
“Yeah. My woman.”
“Oh my. Very grand. Heroic quest and all. Marvelous, marvelous.”
“So I thought you might tell me how to find her.”
“Well, I wouldn't know about this particular young lady. But you could study up on Romaghin culture, learn something of the truth about them. I imagine you come from a primitive world, for that's how they get most of their Jumbo brains — to the consternation of the Science League. You'll need a great deal of educating to understand what might have happened to this Tarnilou-”
“Tarnilee.”
