Mindswap

Chapter 11

Suddenly – time stopped! Marvin saw the ganzer's jaws arrested in midslaver, his bloodshot left eye fixed in midblink, and his entire great body gripped in a strange and unyielding rigidity.

Nearby, the ganzer egg was as motionless as a carven replica of itself.

The breeze was stopped in midcareer. Trees were caught in straining postures, and a meritheian hawk was fixated in midflight like a dummy attached to a wire.

The sun stopped its inexorable rolling flight!

And in this strange tableau, Marvin stared with tremulous sensations in the direction of a single movement in the air three feet above his head and slightly to his left.

It began as a whorl of dust, broadened, expanded, expatiated, thickening at the base and becoming convex at the apex. The rotation came faster, and the figure solidified.

'Detective Urdorf!' Marvin cried. For it was indeed the Martian detective with the streak of bad luck who had promised to solve Marvin's case and to return to him his rightful body.

'Terribly sorry to barge in like this,' Urdorf said, materializing fully and falling heavily to the ground.

'Thank God you have come!' Marvin said. 'You have saved me from an extremely unpleasant fate, and now if you will help me out from under this creature-'

For Marvin was still pinned to the ground by the ganzer's paw, which had taken on the rigidity of tempered steel, and from beneath which he was unable to wriggle.

'Sorry,' the detective said, getting up and dusting himself off. 'I'm afraid I can't do that.'

'Why not?'

'Because it's against the rules,' Detective Urdorf told him. 'You see, any displacement of bodies during an artificial induced temporal stoppage (which is what this is) could result in a Paradox, which is forbidden since it might result in a temporal implosion which might conceivably have the result of warping the structure-lines of our continuum and thus destroy the universe. Because of this, any displacement is punishable by a prison sentence of one year and a fine of one thousand credits.'

'Oh. I didn't know that,' Marvin said.

'Well, I'm afraid that's how it is,' the detective said.

'I see,' Marvin said.

'I rather hoped you would,' the detective said.

There was a long and uncomfortable silence. Then Marvin said, 'Well?'

'Beg pardon?'

'I said – I meant to say, why did you come here?'

'Oh,' the detective said. 'I wished to ask you several questions which had not occurred to me earlier, and which would assist me in the rigorous investigation and solution of this case.'

'Ask away,' Marvin said.

'Thank you. First and foremost, what is your favourite colour?'

'Blue.'

'But exactly what shade of blue? Please try to be exact.'

'Robin's-egg blue.'

'Hmmm.' The detective noted it down in his notebook. 'And now, tell me quickly and without thinking, what is the first number that comes into your mind?'

'87792.3,' Marvin replied without hesitation.

'Um hum. And now, without reflection, tell me the name of the first popular song you can think of.',

' 'Orang-Utan Rhapsody',' Marvin said.

'Ummmm. Fine,' Urdorf said, snapping his notebook shut. 'I think that covers everything.'

'What was the purpose of those questions?' Marvin asked.

'With this information, I will be able to test various suspects for corpus-vestigial responses. It is part of the Duulman self-identity quiz.'

'Oh,' Marvin said. 'Have you had any luck yet?'

'Luck hardly enters into it,' Urdorf replied. 'But I can say that the case is proceeding in a satisfactory manner. We traced the thief to Iorama II, where he smuggled himself into a cargoload of flash-frozen beef destined for Goera Major. On Goera he represented himself as a fugitive from Hage XI, which won him a good deal of popular favour. He managed to raise enough money for fare to Kvanthis, where he had cached his money. Staying no more than a day on Kvanthis, he boarded the local to the Fiftystars Autonomous Region.'

'And then?' Marvin asked.

'Then we lost track of him temporarily. Fiftystars Region contains no less than 432 planetary systems with a combined population of 300 billion. So as you can see, our work is cut out for us.'

'It sounds hopeless,' Marvin said.

'Quite the contrary, it is a very good break for us. Laymen always mistake complication for complexity. But our criminal will find no safety in mere multiplicity, which is always susceptible to statistical analysis.'

'So what happens now?' Marvin asked.

'We continue analysing, and then we make a projection based upon the probabilities, and then we send our projection across the galaxy and see if it goes nova … I am speaking figuratively, of course.'

'Of course,' Marvin said. 'Do you really think you'll catch him?'

'I am fully confident of the results,' Detective Urdorf said. 'But you must have patience. You must remember that intergalactic crime is still a relatively new field, and therefore intergalactic investigation is newer still. There have been many crimes in which even the existence of a criminal could not be proven, much less detected. So in some respects, we are ahead of the game.'

'I guess I'll have to take your word for it,' Marvin said.

'Just don't worry. In these cases, it is best for the victim to continue his life as normally as possible, to stay alive, and not to give way to despair. I hope you will remember this.'

'I'll try to,' Marvin said. 'But about this situation I'm in at present-'

'It is the very sort of situation I have told you to avoid,' the detective said severely. 'Please remember that in the future, if you should manage to come out of this alive. Good luck, my friend, and stay alive!'

Before Marvin's eyes, Detective Urdorf revolved, faster, faster, grew dimmer, and disappeared.

Time unfroze.

And Marvin gazed up again into the ganzer's slit black eyes and low armoured forehead, and saw the hideous gaping jaws descending, about to engulf his entire head …

Chapter 12

'Wait!' Marvin shouted.

'What for?' the ganzer asked.

Marvin hadn't thought that far. He heard the ganzer egg muttering, 'Turnabout's fair play; and yet, he was kind to me. Still, what business is it of mine? Stick your neck out, somebody cracks your shell. And yet …'

'I don't want to die,' Marvin said.

'I didn't suppose you did,' the rock ganzer said, in a not unfriendly voice. 'And, of course, you want to discuss it with me. Ethics, morals, the whole bit. But I'm afraid not. We were specifically warned, you see, never to allow a Melden to talk. We were told to just do the job and get it over with, not to personalize it. Just do it and get on to the next bit of work. Mental hygiene, really. Therefore, if you would close your eyes …'

The jaws moved closer. But Marvin, filled with wild surmise, cried out: 'Did you say job?'

'Of course, it's a job,' the ganzer said. 'There's nothing personal in it.' He frowned, apparently annoyed at himself for having spoken.