Tohm felt his pride sinking in a quagmire of shame. He had never seen a university, much less taught at one.
“The name is Triggy Gop.”
“Not really?”
“If you were a student, and if I had my old body, I'd flip you on your back and beat the tar out of you.”
“Sorry.”
“Forgiven. But you see, I do know something about modern concepts of life. I lived a full life of my own. My wife died in childbirth, and I was dying myself. In order to see my child as it grew, I volunteered my brain to the Federation, thus gaining near immortality. I've been a library now for twenty-two years.”
Tohm heaved another sigh. “I really have to go. I have star charts now. I know where my Tarnilee is, and I have calculated that she will appear on the slave market within a week,”
“Well, if you must go—”
“Perhaps we'll meet again,” Tohm said. He felt an odd kinship with the professor-machine-library.
“Huh?”
“Poetry. Mine. Not much to do after you read the papes and the new books. I never sleep, you know. Just like you. Weariness is electronically sucked off and the brain is rested a full eight hours in only ten seconds. So, I write my verse.”
“Hey! Hey, limericks,” Triggy said.
The doors opened behind, and the blackness of space glistened impossibly dark. “Goodbye, Triggy Gop,” Tohm called.
“Goodbye, Jason. May you find your fleece that is the maiden Tarnilee.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Just, good luck.”
“You too,” he answered, drifting out from the hulking cube. The portal closed behind.
III
He swathed himself in negative patterns to protect against every sort of radar and coasted in toward the bulbous fruit that was Basa II. He had researched to find why the “two” was hung after the name, but he found no reason. There never had been a Basa I.
Scoping the land masses through the cloud breakage, he found he was on the correct side of the giant lemon (the seas were yellow, and the clouds were an amber hue). The continent of Bromida Basa lay below. The capital city, Romaghin Cap Five, was on the edge of a peninsula that stretched into the great sea. Population: three million plus. Main business: trading of stolen merchandise, slave marketing, sin. He tried not to think about Tarnilee. He did not know how long it had been since they had parted or how long it would be until she was totally beyond his grasp. Stretching his mind and studying everything Triggy Gop had to offer, he thought, perhaps, the month long period between capture and sale of a slave would be up this week. He hoped he wasn't just being optimistic. If she did come onto the platform to be sold, he knew it wouldn't take long. Not for a girl like Tarnilee.
Breaking orbit, he plunged down through the denser and denser layers of atmosphere, hull heating, eyes out for any missiles from anyone who might have broken the radar-negative shield and picked him up. The shield had been known to fail.
The clouds appeared to rush at him, up and up and up, though it was actually himself dropping down and down and down. He hit the clouds expecting a jolt and was plunging through toward the earth below. He splashed out analyzer waves and discovered the land below was composed mostly of loose sand. There was desert at the back of the peninsula. The sand was a hundred and two feet deep before it gave way to solid rock. He braked for a short moment, cutting his speed in half, and smashed head first into the sand, sinking immediately out of sight like a pebble tossed in a pond. He left a momentary whirlpool in the sand which eventually settled itself and lay quiet. Eighty-three feet below the surface, he slid to a halt and lay very still indeed. Minutes passed without result. No missiles. No warheads. Nothing. He eased up on his nerves, allowed them to unbunch themselves, and sighed.
He was on the planet of Basa II—
He was only a dozen miles from the fringes of the city that held his Tarnilee. Tarnilee of the soft lips… Tarnilee of the sweet eyes… Tarnilee of the flower soul with the delicate laugh and the feet like crystal structures…
He searched into his bowels where the shock-proof chemical tanks and laboratories were working diligently. The body seemed perfect. It was tall, muscular, blond, and handsome. The process had been suspended until he was ready to have his brain deposited in the skull via cellular welding which would connect it to the nerves and life systems of the humanoid floating in the brackish fluid
He was ready.
Clipping the limited semi-brain of the computer into the controls, he set everything on automatic, ready to respond to his call for help but inert and unfunctioning unless needed. A mechanical brain could handle all functions minimally, but it took an organic brain to really operate a Jumbo.
The servo-robot trundled into the control center where his brain hung in a nutrient sack inside an energy net which was, in turn, sheltered within a shatter-proof, blast-proof alloy bowl. The brain was protected, for even if shot down, the Jumbo might provide a humanoid body for the brain — a body which would be in enemy territory and capable of doing more damage. Carefully, the robot lifted the bowl from the immovable pillar, where it had been latched, and carried it down through the decks into the operating theater. He directed it to hypo him to sleep, and he was obeyed.
Dreams flooded his mind…
Later, he woke with a clear mind, no traces of fogging drugs. The surgeon arms dangled above his head, all manner of instruments fitted to their metal fingers. Thin bladed knives, broad spatulas, hypos, every conceivable surgical tool hung in their nimble, steel fingers. He raised his own arm and looked at it. It was nothing like theirs. It was real, terribly muscular, and ended in five fingers with hair on the knuckles, fine, wiry blond hair. He shoved himself to a sitting position and surveyed his new body. Admirable. Quite admirable indeed. His feet were neither too tiny to provide a sound base nor too large, to be in his way when a situation demanded agility. His calves and thighs were exquisitely muscled, almost rippling with power even as he sat still. His waist was slim, his stomach flat. The barrel of his chest was matted with fine hairs that would, he knew, grow long and darker. His bull's neck was topped with a handsome face, the mirror showed him. There was no trace of the brain transplantation, not even a fine scar. A marvelous body. A fighter's body. He would need it.
Kicking onto the floor and flexing his arms and legs, he thought next about clothes. The auto-fact had been programmed with information on Basa II costume. He stepped from the blue chamber of the surgeons and into the bone-white chamber of the auto-fact delivery trough. It provided him, when he punched the delivery button, with a
