The countryside seemed to be gradually rebuilding itself.
The land began to repopulate with creatures of imagination and symbol, performing their obtuse and arcane roles in the chants of human existence. They passed a valley filled with gigantic tarot cards, shuffling themselves, then forming a quilt of fortune telling. They skirted a plain holding murky crystal balls like boulders; they crossed a field where anthropomorphized numbers were involved in mad numerologist capers and dances. The landscape had become an Alice in Wonderland collection of painting styles crammed in upon one another; fresco here, chiaroscuro there; a forest drawn with the brushstrokes of Impressionism bordering a Rococo river complete with trumpeting angels and giggling cherubs.
One area abounded with Greek and Roman temples, among which the creatures and gods of Mediterranean mythology cavorted, all in vivid Classical lines. Nearby was a colony of cartoon characters.
The closer they got to their destination, the odder the landscape, it seemed. The air seemed charged with electrical excitement as though something spectacular were about to occur. As he stalked along in his ghostly state, Todd idly wondered if Hurt had also programmed in some sort of Christian Second Coming scenario. The characters forged from the stuff of the Human Historical Unconscious seemed to be expectant of some sort of rapture.
Although it seemed like ages (for indeed they were traveling through the stuff of historical ages), only a few hours had passed since Todd’s emergence from the ground when he suddenly became solid again.
Which was uncomfortable, since he was floating along several feet in the air at the time.
“Ouch!” he cried as he plummeted almost headfirst into a fortunately soft bank. He was immediately aware of the strong smell of dandelions.
Angharad turned around, astonished.
“Are you all right?”
Todd picked himself up, rubbing the back of his neck. “I wish I’d had some kind of warning.”
“If there was something wrong with your Disbelief Suspender it’s apparently been corrected,” Angharad said.
Todd’s arm fell off.
“Ooops,” Angharad said. “Spoke too soon.”
Todd stared at the stump in horror. No bone, nor veins nor spurting blood. Just a fizzling of computer dots in the cross-section of the biceps. Todd reached down with his left hand, picked up the fallen arm and fitted it back into place.
Suddenly a dizziness came over him, like a buzz of flies and bees strafing his skull. The stuff of the landscape before him seemed to crinkle away like a matte painted on plastic wrap.
Replaced with:
An off-focus Veronica March.
“Charley, Charley, are you okay?” The soft tones were like cool, comforting water lapping at his face.
He tried to reach out and hold her. A voice that was not his emerged from his mouth. “I don’t know. I feel really strange.”
“We are in a pretty strange biosphere. But you just passed out for a minute, like you were back in the cabin.”
“I had the strangest dream,” the voice said. “I dreamed I was walking along with this ugly unicorn.”
Charley Haversham! The personality overlay that Cog had given him to get aboard the Star Fall. It had taken over his real body!
Suddenly the beautiful face of Veronica began to fade. Todd found himself swimming in darkness which began to strobe with a light that revealed his former habitat. Angharad was looking at him, aghast.
With his mind, he stretched out, reached to touch that other individuality matrix that lived in his brain:
“Charley! Oh, Charley ...”
—Who’s that?
“The owner of this body.”
—Come off it.
“No, really. I’m Todd Spigot, the real you. The part of our brain that the Disbelief Suspender is still hooked up to.”
There was no immediate response. Todd vaguely discerned another conversation. An excited conversation.
Then:
—Okay. Veronica says that I’m not going crazy.
“Veronica is with you?”
Todd listened as he heard their story—and their present situation.
“Incredible.” He then described the Fabrication, to Charley’s bemusement and amazement.
—No shit. Looks like Ronnie’s dead-on. This guy Hurt has got to be stopped!
“Hold the line. I’ve got to check with the companion I mentioned.”
He detached himself from his interior self and allowed his sight to flow back.
Angharad stood in front of him, perplexed.
“I’m in contact with my physical body!” Todd said jubilantly.
“What?” Angharad said. “How can that be?”
“I’ll explain later. But don’t you see,” Todd said, “we’ve got a free agent now in the physical universe of the Star Fall. We have a chance of getting some help.
“Somehow he’s got to free Cog.”
* * *
God is an amoeba.
The thought throbbed through Hurt’s mind, laced with pain.
The God of the human race is a gigantic mindless amoeba.
The image of the one-celled creature, swimming through Underspace, filling the interior of the vu-tank, bilious, gelatinous energy coursing against the glittering membrane returned to him.
Kilometers wide. Two thousand, by our measurements, at least, the instruments had said. Like cilia, countless streamers of energy radiated from its skin. Each connecting with a human life? The root of humanity, planted in Underspace, its psychic branches stretching to each individual?
His eyes fluttered open and he realized that one was gummed with clotted blood. Anxiety filled him. Was he dying? What had happened?
He made to rise, but a number of tiny hands held him down.
His maintenance robots—emergency division—hovered about him like mechanical elves, repairing the damage, ministering to his needs. He let himself relax while the machines completed their duties. Apparently he had cut himself in several places—including the head. He could feel delicate wire probes inserted through his forehead into the artificial webworking that maintained his deteriorating brain cells, performing adjustments. Managing to keep his patience despite the almost overwhelming urge to spring up and investigate the situation, he let his automated mechanisms put him back together, monitoring the progress via a computer screen extension with legs that squatted nearby for his convenience. Diagnostic computations appeared, showing that his neural-support units had been badly jogged, allowing a significant number of brain cells to die of oxygen starvation.
That much closer to senility.
At this point, however, it hardly mattered. Either he would obtain his goals or he would die. All or nothing.
When the screen revealed that the wires had been extracted, the proper chemicals injected, the permaheal stitching applied, the metal hands of the maintenance robot team removed themselves from his arms and he was allowed to stand.
He wobbled to the vu-tank, which was still on.
The holographic image no longer showed the crazy quilt of Underspace.
Something like an underwater scene showed beyond the protective force-field of the Star Fall, waving with fronds, streaming with bubbles. Peculiar currents swayed coruscating nodes strewn here and there through the endless depths.
God is an amoeba, and He’s swallowed the Star Fall, Earnest Evers Hurt thought with wonder and a helpless fear as he stared into the protoplasm-like material of the entity. Recovering from his brief, atypical reverie, he hobbled to the interpretive channel of the computer, keyed it on and demanded harshly, “Read out compositional properties of surroundings!”
Not waiting for a response, he strode to another computer interface, where he requested: “Attempt to open communication channels with possibly intelligent creature.”
&
nbsp; Then he sped to his operation bulb to survey the Fabricated Reality which had attracted the Star Fall to this astonishing discovery.
Switching off the automatic neural connectors, he dialed in STATUS REPORT, then switched on the representational two-dee screens. Immediately, scenes of radical change showed, gradually resolving from absolute chaos into a fractured semblance of its previous state. Hurt’s hands trembled as he ordered a complete survey. Had the Fabrication been destroyed or rattled enough that its primary purpose would be hindered? Had its internal harmony and equilibrium been thrown off-kilter? If so, then it would take days to repair. Days that Hurt and the Star Fall did not have.
Suddenly the status report materialized in a screen by Hurt’s elbow:
PORTAL OF REQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS PRESENTLY FORMING ON QUADRANT 3, SCENARIO 17 C. RESONANCE OF WAVELENGTHS INDICATES FULFILLMENT OF EXPECTANT CIRCUMSTANCES.
Awe filled Hurt.
He had been essentially correct. Out here in the mysterious dimension of Underspace was the ultimate product of human civilization: the next step for mankind, a growing organism destined for a destiny far beyond anyone’s imaginings.
How many nights had he lain awake, wondering the meaning of life, wondering how he could conquer his fear of death, continue to the very ends of human existence?
On the other side of the room, the interpretative console began to churn sheets of analysis concerning the thing in which the Star Fall was now embedded. Impatiently Hurt strode to the wrinkled paper. Fascinating. A jumble of old and new elements. A bizarre wedding of silicon- and carbon-based materials essentially serving as biophysical conductors of endless varieties of energy matrices: its nervous system. Yet no sign of a central nexus analogous to the brain, nor even anything similar to a spinal cord.
To his consternation, Hurt saw that the creature seemed to be feeding on the energies which constituted the Star Fall’s force-field. Alarmed, he directed computation inquiries. The results showed that the generators were indeed weakening from the strain. Approximately 32 hours remained before the forcefields would be neutralized.
What would happen then?
Quickly Hurt consulted the machines working on possible communications with the being. Results were negative on all radio channels: nothing even resembling a code or a language to be interpreted.
The choice was clear. Either use the Star Fall’s deteriorating power to ram out of the creature or continue the operation as previously planned, ignoring the dangers, hoping for immediate success.
Earnest Evers Hurt took just a moment to decide, then almost ran back to his bulb.
His head felt like it was going to explode.
* * *
Although he must have fallen for a long time, it was a dream-fall, a fantasy plunge, lacking linear dimensions. He did not lose consciousness, nor did he retain it.
Philip Amber, rather, was suddenly aware at a certain point in time later that instead of tumbling into the abyss (dammit, dammit, why had he made that stupid lunge for Spigot?) he was lying on a linoleum floor that had a bad case of yellow wax buildup. The lighting was dim, but sufficient to discern that a corridor, doors to either side, stretched endlessly away into the distances before him and behind him. The place smelled of chalk dust and mold, and had an uneasy damp quality.
Amber was no longer a lion. He wore his own frame, dressed in the robes he remembered wearing when the biobot had invaded his cell. However, as he raised his hand, there was something definitely strange about its movement—
Somebody groaned. Amber turned. Lying on the floor beside him was Galahad, chain mail and armor beginning to clank up toward movement. Something shimmied in the air above the man with his action. “God help me,” the man said. “I feel so stiff. Where is my sword?” With a jerky motion, the knight’s hands groped out, searching erratically before him, and slivers of light danced above his body.
Amber realized suddenly that these were strings.
Horrified, he lifted his arm. Connecting fingers, palm and forearm, an array of strong, thin threads supported the actions of his limb, which under close scrutiny was revealed to be of painted wood and ceramics. Digits and joints were segmented and could move in a vulgar parody of human patterns.
They were puppets.
Marionettes!
Amber gazed up to see where the strings led.
There was no ceiling. Instead, a soundless miniature thunderstorm seemed to be in progress, clouds swirling restlessly, grabbing at one another with lightning claws. At times they would part, revealing purple-black swaths of space, flecked with stars, diamond hard, crystal cold.
No visible hands tugged the hundreds of whisper-thin filaments from which Amber hung.
Galahad gained his feet. “What is this madness?” he cried. His mouth moved like a ventriloquist dummy’s. The features on his face were colored in with strokes of lacquered paint, giving him an almost clownish aspect. Amber wondered what the effect was on his own countenance. “Who are you?”
“I used to be the lion.”
“I recall your voice.” The knight gazed about him, batting his clicking eyes: a parody of astonishment. “Where are we? I remember the Earth moving, the crack splitting across the turf. I remember falling.” The eyes opened ludicrously wide. “Hell! We have fallen to Hell!”
The knight weaved about, stumbled. He collapsed to his knees, hands clasped in paralyzed imploration. A wisp of smoke curled from one of his ears, as though his cellulose brains were afire.
“Hey, Galahad, steady!” Amber said. “This is all just the guts of a computer! It doesn’t really exist.”
“Lord! Lord!” Galahad cried. “Why hast thou forsaken me?”
Suddenly the bolt of the nearest door shot open. The door slammed back against the wall. Bolts of eye-searing light shot forth, blinding Amber. He held up an arm to shield his eyes.
“Oh wimp of little faith,” bellowed a pipe-organ voice. “Thinkest thou that I would forget thee, thou little snot.”
Galahad rose slowly to his feet, arms outstretched. “Father, I have kept myself valiant and chaste, the greatest knight in the world, only for Thee!”
“Yeah, well, get in here before all the light gets out!”
Standing by the doorway were two angels in Old Testament robes. Amber watched as Galahad stumbled to them. They inserted strong hands under his armpits. Feathery wings unfurled, bearing the trio aloft with a pixilation effect against billowing clouds from which rose bejeweled spires. Optical enhancement bathed the shores of Heaven with kaleidoscopic rainbows.
Squinting against the brilliance, Amber stepped forward to get a closer look. The door shut abruptly, plunging the corridor back to a dimness that seemed like blackness.
“His Heaven, not yours,” a kindly voice intoned. “But then, back in the Brotherhood, you sought satori, nirvana, wholeness, not some medieval Heaven paved with gold.”
Standing before him, Amber gradually made out a figure dressed in a rumpled corduroy jacket. Smoke curled from a meerschaum pipe. A twisted tie dangled from around a frayed collar. Wrinkle-wreathed eyes seemed to smile wisely.
“I sought alleviation from my guilt. Penance if you will. Self-retribution. Am I still in the Fabrication?”
The man looked over the rims of half-frame glasses. “Oh, definitely.”
“Well, then. This may be Hell, and you may be Satan—”
“That’s possible. You are in a Creation of Symbols and Archetypes.”
“Whatever the case, I’m not just going to sit still, strings or no strings.” He ran a hand over the tight wires above him and they vibrated like a muted harp, “I might be able to throw a wrench in the works down here.”
“Hmm. Perhaps I can show you a few things that might be of help,” the man mused. He nodded down the corridor. “Come on.”
Amber shrugged and followed.
The man opened a door. Beyond the frame, a heap of bodies tottered uncertainly, then spilled out in a sprawl of limbs, blackened faces and coagulated blood. Amber recognized some of them. Guilt choked him. He turned away and was about to run back down the corridor in the direction they had come, when the man grabbed his shirtsleeve.
“Philip Amber,” he said in a stern voice. “You might be of help to your friends. But that lies beyond this place.”
Panic filled Amber’s voice. “You ... you expect me to climb over the bodies of ... of the people I murdered?”
“There’s no other way past them, Philip Amber.”
“I can’t.” He began to walk away. Halted. Stared back. Dead eyes stared at him accusingly. Open mouths screamed silently.
“No other way, Amber,” the man repeated.
Amber’s mouth seemed sawdust dry. “Past them ... I can help Spigot ... Shepherd?”
“Past them, you can help yourself. Not all the chants, nor all the incense, nor all the penance in the universe will save you, Amber.”
Amber dropped to his knees, weeping. “What will save me then? I’m a mass murderer.”
“Find out, Amber. The answer is past this hurdle, which you’ve never faced before.”
“I don’t deserve salvation,” Amber moaned.
“Very well. But think of your friends. Think of the human race, Amber. You were very near the correct state of mind when you crashed through to the Morapns. Reach a little further. Reach out to yourself.”
Philip Amber attempted a meditative state of mind, but found it fruitless. Wordlessly, he stepped to the pile of bodies and began to climb. A foot on the gory torso of Link Larfner of Orion Four, shot down in cold blood while vacationing with his family ... a hand on the half-severed leg of Alfred Zetterson, the President of the tiny confederation of Alphus. Durtwood’s decapitated body rolled sickeningly by him, trailing the stench of burnt flesh.
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