Slippery. Sickening. At the top of the gruesome pile, a heavy weight seemed to press down on him. He realized that the puppet strings had forsaken him. Three Gs of force mashed him down, into the face of a corpse. Limp blond hair trailed down from a bloodless face. Darkened eyes opened, and he knew who it was.
“Simone,” he gasped. Simone Neel, his love ...
She smiled, and her words squeaked up from the grave with deathly seduction. “Kiss me, Philip. Make love to me.”
With a hoarse scream, Amber ripped himself free of her grasp. He tumbled frantically down the other side of the pile of bodies, even as arms began to animate, clutch for him.
Landing hard, he scrambled up, looked behind him.
The bodies dissolved away. The man walked across the section of floor where they had lain.
“Come,” he said.
Confused, Amber followed. Somehow he felt lighter now.
The man stopped at a door. “Open this, Amber. It might help explain things.”
Wary of more bodies, Amber opened the door.
He peered into the room. Infinite walls of circuit board stretched out in a slit-scan corridor, glittering and glowing with channeled electricity, crystalline effulgence, layered spectra.
“The Fabrication’s heart, Amber,” said the man. “Call it Heaven, call it Hell. It is what you make it, just as is Life.”
“Why me?” Amber said, staring wonderingly at the shifting sight.
“You’ve slipped between the cracks because of your attitude, coupled with your training at the monastery. You have learned part of the ability to see things as they really are, even as your brain sits in its nutrient tank, plugged into the Fabrication. Cut yourself loose, now. See.”
Philip Amber directed his attention once more to the corridor, trying to remember the important aspects of the meditative process. “Cut yourself loose from your self, and you can see into your Self,” Brother Lucius had explained countless times. Amber concentrated on doing just that.
The wires abruptly began to wiggle. Snapshot images began to form, tearing themselves to pieces and forming bizarre collages in a kinestasis symbology.
“Ort Eath,” he whispered. “The Arachnid. Hurt. They’re ...”
“Yes,” said the man. “The Fabrication is a process in more ways than one.”
“Is there nothing I can do?” Amber asked him.
“Nothing,” the man said. “Nothing now.”
Amber turned back and glumly watched the proceedings work themselves toward completion.
* * *
“Watch out for sharks,” Charley Haversham said as they traipsed along the floor of the Waterless Ocean in grav-shoes, winding past pink coral and waving seaweed.
“Thanks for the warning,” Veronica said dryly, eyeing a large school of bass rippling in formation nearby. “I don’t know, Charley. You’d think there would be a better way.”
“Hey. It’s not my fault the tube-cars aren’t working and we have to cut through the biospheres. Anyway, like I told you, this is a shortcut. Hurry up. I want to get to the other side before I get another message from my alter ego off in Never-Never Land.”
“I’m going as fast as I can. Are you sure this is the way Todd told you to head?”
“Absolutely. We apparently have to liberate some supranormal leg from a prison beam.” Kicking up small clouds of sand below his feet, Charley blithely avoided the tentacles of a man-o’-war. “I remember that leg. I have a bone to pick with it.”
“Can we stop for a shower first? This humidity is killing the body in my hair.”
“Dry clothes are what we might stop for, my dear. Your hair can go hang”—he flashed her a smile—“limply.”
“Are you sure there’s no switch on you that will turn you back into the sweet, shy fellow you used to be?” Veronica shot him a killer look as a genetically adjusted flounder finned between them weightlessly.
“Sorry, babe, you’re stuck with the best lover in the Joisy Communes.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “Plumber extraordinaire! You’ll be glad I’m along, eventually.”
“God. I thought women strangled your type with their discarded bras centuries ago. But then cockroaches are still around too, aren’t they?”
“How come you don’t have one of these doodads riding your backbone, anyway?” Charley reached back and touched the exposed metal surface of his Disbelief Suspender. Its surface was slick with condensed moisture from the air.
“I was Hurt’s mistress. A privileged character.”
“Apparently he sent Mr. Charm to terminate the relationship. You seem to have terrific taste in men.”
“I don’t want to talk about Hurt, Charley. I just want to stop him from what he’s doing, any way I can. He’s not a sane individual. I can assure you, Charley Haversham, that if I knew then even part of what I know about Earnest Evers Hurt now, I would have had nothing whatsoever to do with him.”
“Oh yeah. That business with his being your pop and all that.”
Her mouth tightened. “I shouldn’t have confided in you.”
“Gee—sorry, lady! I mean, you know we’ve all got problems. How ’bout the fact that I don’t really exist! Can you match that one?” He strode quickly ahead through a colony of brightly colored anemones.
She ran to catch up with him, tripped over a bit of seaweed, knocking them both down.
“Come to apologize, huh?” He grabbed her, kissed her.
She pulled away from him and stood. “You take your apologies in big helpings, don’t you, you bastard!”
Charley grinned and got up. “I take whatever I can get.”
After a further march of twenty minutes through veils of warm mist, they found the transference lock that led to the level Todd had indicated to Charley as holding the imprisoned form of Cog in his omnicleaner. As the dry air hissed into the room, a voice began to chirp inside Charley’s head, as though from a long distance away.
“Veronica. I do believe I hear Todd coming back on the air. I might have to space out for a while.”
“Give him my love,” she said sardonically.
“Right.” Charley closed his eyes, opening himself to communication with the other inhabitant of his body.
“Haversham here, bucko. How’s tricks in the Karmatoon?”
Images flickered. Vague pictures of riffled illustrations, accompanied by fascinating musics and evocative sensations. Charley felt as though he were immersing himself in some magical museum filled to the brim with artifacts that somehow struck home, pushed his buttons. The very fabric of his being seemed to live here, resonating in harmony with all other human beings.
—Still looking for the Grail, Charley? Todd Spigot said. You know, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your cooperation in all this. I really do apologize for the situation.
“Hey! What else can a poor engram overlay do, pal?”
—It’s just damn fortunate it’s happened this way, Charley. You’re the wild card up our sleeves. You know, I really wonder if Cog didn’t plan it all this way. Foreseeing this eventuality, maybe he placed you inside me as kind of a fail-safe measure. He certainly chose the right person.
“Actually, I should be thanking you. This lady I’m traveling with is a real fox!”
A silence ensued.
“Spigot! You stopped up or something?”
—Don’t touch her!
“Spigot, don’t be a drip. We’re all liberated here. Besides, if the lady cares to get affectionate, it’ll be with your body.”
—Yes, but I won’t be inside it!
“I’m not sure I entirely trust her. I told you about her and Hurt, didn’t I?”
—Yes, but you also said that’s she’s turned on him. That the Arachnid tried to attack her. Seems to bear out her story.
“Yes, but the more I think abo
ut it, the more I figure it might just be a setup. From the story you and Shepherd and Amber gave me, this all sounds extremely convoluted, and Ms. Veronica March, pretty as she may be, I consider phylum variable, class dubious.”
—Nonetheless, she may come in handy. She knows exactly where to find Hurt. Once you free Cog, she can lead you straight to him.
“Speaking of which, O Seeker of the Truth, could you go over the exact directions on how to find the aforesaid Cog, hiding out in my omnicleaner?”
Quickly, Todd again supplied the specific sector, level and room number from which the Disbelief Suspenders had winged like bats from Hell, and in which Cog had been imprisoned.
“From the markings I made out in this airlock, we’re in the correct sector, all right. We’ll just have to find the fire stairs and make our way up. Like I told you, the tube-car system has been shut down. Also, I wanted to ask you: any aliens traipsing about in this Fabrication you’re traveling through? I haven’t seen any around here, and I’m worried.”
—I noticed from the beginning that there weren’t all that many on the Star Fall. Hurt apparently intended this to be a purely human endeavor. I suspect he’s got any aliens locked up in their particularly appropriate biospheres.
“Yeah. Which is why I asked. Maybe we can enlist their services.”
—If necessary. Right now we’re working on a limited amount of time. Something has happened. We’ve already reached Hurt’s destination. We have to move before he does.
“Right. Which means that I should sign off for now. Anyway, I can check in with you from time to time—correct?”
—That’s hard to say. Concentrating like this is difficult. The ability seems to come and go. Should I not be able to speak with you again, you should know this. When I changed to another set of clothing, I put on a set of gray coveralls.
“That’s what I’m wearing, all right.”
—Terrific. Now, there should be, in the right back pocket, a folded-up copy of a schematic for the Core system. There had been considerable difficulty with this area. It’s sort of a nerve center for the old Star Fall computers, and it’s been sealed away from any kind of access.
“So? What’s that got to do with Hurt?”
—Just possibly, a great deal. More specifically, it has to do with the Arachnid—and its source of power and personality.
“We may well have cooked its goose back in Ronnie’s cabin.”
—The biobot? Hardly. Its fleshly portions are regenerative. No, we two here have put our heads together and we’re pretty sure that the biobot’s controller is an emanation of the new form of Ort Eath.
“Wasn’t he the guy that ... I mean, the alien ...”
—Yes. Apparently, his seeming self-immolation after our thwarting of his plans to destroy Earth was a ruse to prevent our noticing the fact that his orgabox was slinking away. Apparently, Ort Eath had somehow surgically removed his own brain and placed it in the nutrient tank of the orgabox, along with a few other brains he had stolen from here and there for his private collection.
“Nice chap.”
—Yes. Apparently he had this option available to him all along. While we thought him dead, the orgabox bearing his brain escaped into the depths of the starship that split off from the Star Fall. Then, when that vessel was fitted back into its original place, he snuck back down to the Core of the ship’s computer, embedding himself into some kind of life-support system.
“If that happened, why didn’t Ort Eath continue with his plans to destroy Earth?”
—Our guess is that no one brain is in entire control. Perhaps a merging process is going on among the brains. That’s why we say that the Arachnid is only one aspect—an emanation, a persona—of Ort Eath, or rather what Eath has become.
“Clearly this new creature is operating in tandem with Hurt. But why?”
—For its own purposes no doubt. That’s why I’m calling your attention to that schematic. We may well find ourselves ultimately up against the coalesced brains of the orgabox, and there’s a chance that this faulty bit of plumbing is its weak point.
“Thanks for the tip. I’ll remember. Anything else before we try and get a leg up on the opposition?”
—That’s all. As I said, things are coming to a head. We’re on the verge of the Waste Land, which means that the Grail Castle of the Fisher King can’t be far away.
The voice faded away.
“Bye!” said Charley Haversham.
He shook his head. Opened his eyes.
Veronica waited patiently for him, head in her hands.
“Ever get the feeling,” he said, “that our cause is hanging from a limb?”
She groaned.
* * *
The hypothesized stairwells did not exist, so they had to resort to ladders and ventilation tubes.
Charley hauled Veronica over the lip of a shaft. She plumped to the metal flooring, breathing heavily.
“God. If I have to climb one more ladder,” she said wearily.
“All rung out, eh?” Charley said, eyeing the wall for identification markings. Ah! There they were. “No trouble. We have found the right level. All that remains is to locate the right room.”
As it happened, the aforesaid room was no more than a city block distant. Charley figured out how to open the door while Veronica slouched against the opposite wall, exhausted.
The door swooshed apart.
There stood the canister of plastique, the sackful of electronics. As described, a pillar of energy jammed forcefully between ceiling and floor.
However, there was no sign of an omnicleaner, nor its controlling robot leg.
“Something tells me,” said Charley Haversham, “things are not exactly going our way today.”
“YOU KNOW, once upon a time I could make sense of all this,” Merlin the Magician said, riffling through an arcane tome crammed with hieroglyphics, spells, alchemical formulae and symbology. With a sigh he heaved the tome over his shoulder. The book covers, as they spun, grew feathers, became wings; a sharp-beaked head sprouted. Talons ripped from a papery torso. The eagle, screeching raucously, flapped hard; then mounted the wind. Soon it was a mere speck against the clouds, like a fly caught in cotton candy.
Merlin harumphed. “Now, what do you suppose that means?” he asked the party, old hand tugging at his frayed vermilion robes. “I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense.” He tried to buttonhole Todd, but his hand went straight through ectoplasm, the substance Spigot had quickly turned back into after his initial contact with his Charley Haversham aspect. “Now, a sword in the stone makes sense. Dragons underneath the city of London make sense.” He strode to Angharad, arms upraised plaintively—“What is the world coming to?”
He was a strange old man with stringy ropes of hair and frantic confused eyes flecked with odd colors. In one hand he held a knotted oak walking stick; in the other, a chipped and cracked crystal ball. He smelled like the week-old remains of a bacchanalia in an ancient library.
“Don’t ask me,” Angharad said, sidestepping the issue. “This is more your territory than ours. For instance, this patch of blighted territory we’re standing on the edge of.” She pointed with a hoof. “I presume that this is the Waste Land and that if we travel through it, as our map demands, we’ll eventually come to the Castle of the Fisher King, or as he is sometimes called, the Maimed King.”
“Yes,” said Todd.
“The map calls it the Grail Castle. We have to ask the right question for the land to be healed and for the Grail to be revealed to us. The Grail has been any number of things. A cup, a dish, a stone. But the most popular Arthurian legend states it to be the cup that held Christ’s blood dripped from the crucifixion. Joseph of Arimathea was supposed to have carried the cup to Britain, and it was passed down to a descendant, who misused it and was therefore wounded by the wrath of God.”
> “And pray tell,” Merlin said, shrugging back his cowl and picking out a particularly large louse, “why are a misbegotten unicorn and a ghost seeking this thing?”
“Symbolically,” Todd explained, “we’re trying to contact the Ultimate—God, if you will. Actually, we know it’s the only way to get out of this crazy world.”
“Bah,” Merlin said, and spat. “Christian gobbledegook. The Romans were bad enough, but when folks started carting crosses over the Channel, that’s when things really got strange.” He shook his head wearily. “Give me the old Celtic and Druidic days of eating and drinking and human sacrifice. Times were simpler then. Magic was fun. You know, I learned sorcery just to impress women. And look what it’s gotten me! Look what’s happened! Chaos! Absolute chaos! I just want some peace for these old bones.”
“Sorcerer,” the unicorn said, “we have no idea what dangers await us in the travel ahead. We’re sure that the end of our quest will resolve your complaints. Perhaps you can aid us with your considerable talents.”
The magician pursed cracked lips, scratched an ear, considering. “Can’t say I’m doing a whole lot now. Sure. I’ll take the hike with you. This Grail business could turn out to be quite educational.”
“What do you see in your crystal ball concerning the future?” Todd asked, trying to peer into the murky, opaque depths of the thing.
Merlin brought the sphere up to eye level. His bushy eyebrows jerked higher as he squinted.
“I see,” he said, showing rotted teeth in a frown, “I see a man, a woman—and something like a giant spider. Just for an instant.” He looked up, confused. “What could they have to do with our search for this so-called Grail?”
“Quite a bit,” Todd said, looking out into the land of withered grass and twisted trees. “More than I’d like to think.”
* * *
They were about halfway up the side of the Nirlanian biosphere when the emotional impact began to sink in upon Charley Haversham.
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