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all over each time as if this was a first meeting, before ending by licking at
his armor-plated hide. Porniarsk paid them no more attention than he did
Sunday or one of us humans when he was not exchanging specific information on
some point or other. He seemed not to need to eat Whenever he had no place in
particular to move to, he would fold up and drop into a lying position with a
clatter like that of a dumped load of bricks. But whether he ever slept in
this position, I had never been able to find out Certainly, I had never caught
him with his eyes closed.
So-Porniarsk was a conundrum. He usually left us no choice but to accept him
pretty much as he was. And now, with Bill having walked off, I found myself
about to do just that, one more time.
"All right, Pomiarsk," I said. "It's you and me then. Come on."
I climbed into the jeep beside which we had been standing as we talked.
Pomiarsk made one of the astounding leaps he seemed to be capable of with only
a slight flexing of his post-like legs, and crashed down into the seat beside
me, on his haunches. The jeep rocked sideways on its springs-I had estimated
before this that if Pomiarsk weighed an ounce, he must weigh well over three
hundred pounds-but recovered. I started the vehicle up and we drove off.
I did not go more than a few hundred yards, just enough to put us out of
earshot of the rest of the camp. Then I killed the motor and turned to
Pomiarsk. It was an odd feeling to find myself almost nose to nose with that
massive, bulldog-like head. For the first time I noticed his eyes were not
just brown in color, but so deep a brown as to be almost black. This dose, I
could see their pupils contract and expand in cat-fashion, while we talked.
"All right, Porniarsk,*' I said. "I need your help. You evidently know a lot
more about the time storm effects than we do. I want to stop this random
moving around just in hopes well run into a piece of country that's future
enough for us to be able to do something about the mistwalls and the rest of
it I need you to help me figure out where to head."
"No,** said Porniarsk.
"Nor I said.
"You do not need me to help you find a trigger area,*1 said Porniarsk.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I said. This, coming on top of his rejection
of Bill, was enough to stir my temper again.
"It's supposed to mean that my assistance is not required to set you on.the
road to the destination you wish. You've already set yourself on that road."
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I took rein on my emotions. I reminded myself that I had to stop
anthropomorphizing him. He was probably only trying to tell me something, and
the fact that he was not built to think like a human was getting in the way.
"Since when?" I asked, as calmly as I could.
"Since your temporary abstraction, and during your partial involvement with
the overall problem, ever since the moment in which my words caused you to
visualize the magnitude of it Am I making myself-" Pomiarsk broke off
uncharacteristically in mid-sentence. "Am I talking sense?"
"I don't know," I said. "How'd you know why I collapsed, or about how Fve been
since?'
Tve been watching you," he said, "and drawing conclusions from what you do.
The conclusions are those I just stated."
"Whafvc I been doing, then?"
"Going," he repeated, with no hint of impatience in his voice, "toward a
trigger area."
I felt a sort of delicate feeling-an instinct to caution.
There was no way be could have known what had been working in the back of my
mind with The Dream, these last few weeks; but he was talking one hell of a
lot as if he had read my mind.
"That could be, an accident," I said. "What makes you think if s anything more
than an accident?"
"You withdrew," he said. "But then you recovered enough to guide your party,
if not hi a straight line, hi a consistent direction by the most travellable
route, toward the location of an area I know to contain devices of assistance
at a technological level, which might achieve a first step of halting the
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