by Adele Abbot
He stirred himself from his reverie. “You are right of course, Ponderos. However, while there is magic to be used, let us use it,” Calistrope grinned, uncharacteristically jolly. “Didn’t I say that I could smell magic, way back?”
“You did, back when you had fallen down that cleft…”
“And you thought me befuddled?” Calistrope chuckled.
“Befuddled? A good word,” Ponderos chuckled as well and admitted it. “I do… I did think that, yes.”
All three seemed to shine now, with excess energy. Their flesh was firm, muscles solid; their step was springy, paces long and assertive. Even their clothes were renewed: the many tears and catches were gone, the faded colors now brilliant and fresh. For Roli, the feeling was new, heady; his face shone with good health and the boundless energy of more than just youth.
Calistrope opened the door and stepped backward almost at once. Before the panel materialized, all had seen the figure of the curator standing outside.
Calistrope replied to Ponderos’ and Roli’s unspoken question. “We have a great deal of power to wield, far more than we should need or even use. Roli, you are inexperienced, you must stay behind us and observe—no more. Ponderos, we must synchronize our efforts.”
A few moments later, Calistrope deactivated the door panel and almost at once, two of the curator’s arms stretched out towards them, the hands flexing eagerly.
The two Mages flung a barrier field at the curator. The field lifted the being and swept it back into a diorama opposite the door. The curator’s limbs swung around wildly, dismembering the model of a mantis and destroying several small mountains in the background. Bits and pieces flew off the curator, an arm, chest plates, nuts, bolts… A steel-clawed hand came to rest at Calistrope’s feet.
When the thing came to rest, it moved feebly for a minute or two and then became still. Only the incongruously blue eyes swiveled this way and that until it focused on the three humans. “Now what have you done to me?”… A slow roll of kettle drums.
“We defended ourselves. That is all.”
“Go. Leave me. Leave my museum.”… Empty brass vessels falling down stairs. “Go.”
“We go.”
At the doorway out of the curator’s exhibition hall, Ponderos and Roli took cover while Calistrope readied his armament. He formed his will, a tall cylinder of energy hung before the door, Calistrope triggered it. The cylinder imploded into a narrow streak of incandescence and then exploded with a resounded concussion.
Several showcases to either side of the doorway disintegrated into matchwood, those further along were swept away. Stone and metalwork around the door was chipped or twisted.
“Care. Take care.” The stentorian roar somehow conveyed anguish, distress. “Oh no.” This was in a much quieter tone, almost resigned. “Not you, too?”
The door panel itself stood there unscathed, untouched, pristine. Calistrope took a pace forward and touched it. As firm, as immovable as before.
“I think,” he said after a moment or two, “this is an energy field and cannot be broken by projecting energy against it. Indeed, it may even be augmented by my attempt.”
“We should therefore think sideways.”
“Another insight, Roli?”
“Not me,” declared Roli, “I said nothing,” he looked around, “Well now, it is our friend Morph.”
Calistrope looked where Roli was pointing. “Morph? You got away from the curator?”
“As you see.”
Ponderos grinned. The creature’s apparent death had saddened them and its sudden reappearance delighted them all the more.
Ponderos, thought back to the plant which had swallowed Morph. He queried, “How did you get away?”
“From that overgrown dandelion?” the small figure asked—perhaps lifting the idea from Ponderos’ head.
“More to the point,” Roli interrupted. “How do we get out of here before the curator recovers himself?”
“We use the curator’s hand,” replied Morph, holding up the steel claw that had come loose when the two Mages attacked it.
“Well, thank you,” Calistrope took the metal claw and crossed to the doorway. He pressed it against the dark colored circle on the door and the door vanished. “Excellent, Morph! What made you bring it?”
“I had observed the comings and goings of the artificial creature earlier, while I waited for you. He merely had to touch the doors and they opened.” The doors reappeared behind them, sealing them out of the curator’s hall. They were in the same corridor as before or one which seemed identical.
“You were waiting for us? Here?”
“Oh yes. I made that carnivorous plant belch me out by kicking at the stomach walls until it was sick. Then I followed after you. I have been here quite a long time.”
“But you didn’t catch up to us before?”
Morph shook its head. “The river slowed my progress. I found I could not swim, and moving underwater was too slow. So I followed along the bank—I was just in time to see you embark from the village, but too slow to join you.”
“I think this may be a dead end,” said Ponderos, pointing. Ahead of them, the corridor led into a long low empty hall.
“We had better look at the place anyway,” Calistrope said. “There may well be doors opening from it. But go on, Morph. You were left behind at the town of Jesm when we were deported…”
“I reasoned that others would be going your way. I simply waited until your craft returned and slithered up the rope which tied it to the quay before it left the next time. I reached this mountain you had expressed interest in and made my way up it—not in this form, of course. I had abandoned that before I reached the village.”
“And you found a way in and waited for us?”
Morph nodded. “I could hear your thoughts faintly. It took you a long time to get up to this level. What were you doing?”
“That is a tale on its own, Morph. I’ll tell you when we stop to rest.”
“I could do with stopping to rest now,” said Roli.
“I’m hungry,” complained Ponderos. “Where are we going to find food up here?”
“Put the thought from your mind, Ponderos. There are far too many interesting things around to be bothered about food.”
They had come to a stop where the corridor opened out. Calistrope nodded towards the hall. “Look! It is changing—look!” The dim lighting was brightening. The walls, which had seemed to be rough rock or the grey artificial stone they had seen before were now paneled with golden colored timber, tapestries and pictures were hung at intervals. The ceiling was loftier, made of planks of the same golden colored wood supported on wide laminated trusses, the illumination was coming from clusters of globes at the corners of each roof beam. A polished wooden floor lay underfoot and timber furniture of simple design with soft cushions was scattered at random.
“It’s cold in here,” Roli shivered and hugged himself.
“It is a little. Perhaps we became too used to the warmth in the lower levels.”
They walked on. Everything looked new, gleaming, polished; as though it had been made only hours before and placed here for them. Ponderos wondered if it was all illusion and rested a hand on the surface of a low table. He felt a slight tingle in his fingertips but the table was solid, as was the glass candle sconce which it supported and the candle itself. The candle flame was hot but as Ponderos paused to watch it, he noticed that the wax was not consumed. He caught up with the others just as Calistrope halted.
“Have you noticed the furniture ahead of us is laid out as a mirror image of that behind us?” Calistrope asked.
“Perhaps it is a mirror,” replied Roli in a reasonable tone of voice.
“It is an odd mirror, then, since it does not show us ourselves.” Calistrope went forward to the dividing line and reached out a hand to the imaginary mirror. It was quite real, except that all their reflections were missing. “What do you say to that, Ponderos?”
Ponderos, on his knee
s, was conducting his own investigation. He was kneeling at the end of a low table, another table which bore a candle. Ponderos blew the candle out, an instant later it ignited again. He licked forefinger and thumb and pinched out the flame, a second after it was burning again. Ponderos flicked the dead ash from his finger and where it landed on the table top, it vanished with a tiny spark. In the mirror, the flame had disappeared and reappeared too. “I say that it is no ordinary mirror.” And he scratched his gleaming pate.
“In that, you are exactly right,” Calistrope sat down in a convenient chair and made himself comfortable, he closed his eyes. “Where do we go from here?” he asked, “We seem to have arrived—somewhere, at least. The location is right but apart from that crazed contraption we have just escaped from, no one is here.”
“Did you expect someone to meet you?”
“Well, no. I expected to find some place with lots of levers and wheels and switches and things but so far, there has been nothing to suggest a control room.”
“There’s the corridor that was blocked off,” suggested Roli. “That junction we came to before the exhibition…” the sound of Roli’s voice petered out and then returned. “Er, Calistrope, Ponderos. Um, Morph…”
The two older men looked up and followed Roli’s gesture. Morph, who was pacing around the walls examining the tapestries and paintings, looked as well. Reflected in the peculiar mirror, a person was visible. Disturbingly, it was seated in the same chair that, on this side of the mirror, Calistrope occupied; there was no basis in reality for the new reflection.
Chapter 21
The man in the mirror was tall; as tall as Calistrope and as spare, with dark hair and long, narrow bright green eyes. He appeared to be in the first flush of manhood, perhaps sixty or seventy years old.
“Greetings,” said the man, who frowned slightly when he saw he had secured their attention. “How did you come here?” his image in the mirror seemed to pause for the briefest of moments before continuing, perplexity was added to his expression. “Every door seems to have been opened to you—the reason escapes me for the present. Somehow, our security is compromised.”
Though his expression remained serious, the frown disappeared. “Well well, be that as it may. Now that you are here, I must say that I am pleased to meet you. My name is Gessen Fil Maroc, call me Gessen.”
Calistrope heaved a huge sigh of relief. “And greetings to you,” he said. “We were wondering what to do now that we had reached our goal. Finding someone here already is a relief, even though we were told to expect no less.”
“Your goal?” Gessen leaned back in his chair. “What then is this goal of yours?”
“Why, to see if the engines which drove the world away from the sun could be restarted. The sun is shrinking, before too long the Earth will freeze.”
“Aha.” Gessen laughed briefly. “You have come to send us back.”
“Just so.”
“Well, well, you have come to the right place, if a little late. Will you not introduce yourselves?”
“Of course. This is the Sorcerer Ponderos, this is my apprentice Roli, and this is Morph—a being of uncertain provenance. Myself, I am Calistrope the Mage.”
In the mirror, Gessen’s image paused a moment. He stared hard at Calistrope before continuing, “Excuse me, your appearance startled me.”
Calistrope looked down at himself. Since his renewal of magical energy, Calistrope thought he cut a figure of some excellence. “My appearance?”
“You bear a marked resemblance to a colleague of mine. Let me speak with him a moment.” And Gessen froze in place, every movement stilled in mid-action. After several seconds, he moved again in the same, all-at-once fashion. “He will be here directly. The computer suggests a close family relationship, clearly an impossibility in these circumstances, it has been far too long for bloodlines to persist.” Gessen half rose and then sat down again. “Please, our visitors are so few—in fact, there have been none—that I forget the niceties, please seat yourselves.”
This they did and after a moment’s awkward silence, Ponderos spoke. “We had some trouble with animals on the lowest level, did you encounter the lizards?” he raised his eyebrows in query. “Although you may have come by a different route.”
“Lizards?” Gessen’s eyes blinked slowly. “Ah, yes; the chameleons. There are a few but we tolerate them—they help to discourage the insects. Even so, some reach this far and make a nuisance of themselves; they seem to eat almost anything. However, it gives the janitor something to do.
“Ah. Now here is Calvin.”
A swirl of dark colors became visible, the colors coalesced into the shape of a human being and became distinct. As with Gessen, the reflection had no original.
“Gessen,” said the newcomer, nodding to his colleague. “And these are…” Calvin halted for several moments and his image became blurred; when it cleared, his face bore an expression of consternation.
For his part, Calistrope was no less astounded. Calistrope knew who Calvin was without a shadow of a doubt. Everyone has an image of themselves tucked away inside their brain. That image emphasizes those features which the possessor finds most attractive, and minimizes the characteristics which are least appealing. This picture of the self which only its owner sees ages slowly—it moves gracefully, its voice is harmonious, its speech compelling. Calistrope recognized all of these things in this tall, gentian-eyed man with features as sharp as an axe-blade. This, he knew beyond peradventure, was his own self-image made manifest. He could not fail to recognize his own idealized version of himself.
“You’re…” said Calistrope, and then he stopped for the words he had been about to utter seemed meaningless.
Calvin, for his part, was experiencing a similar déjà vu—although from his point of view, the relationship between them was less easily identifiable.
“We are the same person,” Calistrope stated at last. “Or you are my forgotten twin brother. Have you or I been cloned in the past?”
Ponderos queried, “Cloned? What is cloned?”
Calvin remained silent for the better part of a minute—a long time in terms of his existence within the computing machine. He looked up, having obviously reached a similar conclusion. “None of these is exactly the case,” he said, showing Calistrope’s habit of pedantry when unsure of himself. “My name,” he told them, “is Calvin Steinbeck Roper. Shorten this to Cal S. Roper and you will see the similarity between my name and yours—Calistrope.”
Calistrope nodded. “The name has some familiarity.”
“A very long time ago, Calistrope, you elected to leave stasis and to journey out into the world. I am a copy of that Calistrope, the person you used to be. My—your—personality is maintained in the computer systems, so I can deal with certain matters here if the necessity arises. Do you see?”
Calistrope reviewed the one or two phrases he thought he understood, but they were not enough. He shook his head. “This copy of me? It’s not a physical copy, such as the curator wished to make?”
“I don’t follow your reference, but no, it was a data copy. It is used in the computer as a pattern for my electronic existence.”
Calistrope struggled with the concept. “I infer that your existence is only within this computer? A machine?”
“Exactly so. We—that is, Gessen and I and the others—do not have physical bodies like yours. We are displayed here, at the interface, only so that we can communicate with corporeal creatures in a manner which they find acceptable.”
Ponderos grunted. “You never leave this place?”
“That is an impossibility,” Gessen answered him while the two versions of Calistrope sized each other up.
“Never to see the sun and the stars, never to feel the wind or the frost? I am sure I would lose my sanity,” Ponderos replied.
“I can assure you that all these things and more are available to us, sir. We can simulate whatever environment you can imagine.”
“Sim
ulate and imagine,” Ponderos shook his head. “This is life?”
Gessen smiled but did not reply.
“So who is the real Calistrope? You or me?”
“I knew that this would be one of your first questions. The answer is both of us. You are the original, of course, but now both of us are different people. Apparently you don’t remember being here before, but you have lived a long life since then. Your experiences will have changed you as mine have changed me—however your friend may view the quality of my experiences.”
“Excuse me,” Gessen interrupted. “Did you mention a curator?”
“Yes. He—or it—had ambitions to make a more durable version of me and drain my memories into a facsimile.”
Gessen frowned. “Where was this?”
Calistrope described his experiences and Gessen’s frown deepened.
“I have a feeling that the caretaker has ideas above its station. One moment.”
Gessen’s image froze. It remained still for several tens of seconds, during which time it began to lose definition. Its colors lost their brilliance, its edges became fuzzy, and the image faded until it was almost transparent. Then it regained its clarity, grinning a trifle grimly. Calistrope entertained the notion that the personality which controlled this image had temporarily shifted its attention elsewhere and was now back, looking out at him.
“You have our apologies in this matter. Our janitor has decided its talents lie elsewhere and converted the old assembly hall into a museum. It has been a long time since any of us have taken the time to examine the more tangible world and meanwhile, our caretaker has added to itself and changed its programming.” Gessen held out his hands. “The fault is ours. However, the fact that you were able to reach this interface without our being warned is now explained. All the automatic systems recognized Calistrope—he has as much right to be here as anyone,” he grinned. “He’s one of our own.”
Roli spoke for the first time. “This… caretaker. Is it a machine or a person?”
“Oh, a machine,” Calvin replied. “Not a very bright one at that—not originally, anyway. Just a few subroutines thrown together.”