The big valve, the one we'd gotten sucked up by, was open.
"Jake, would you get your truck out of there, please?" Arthur asked.
I did, backing it out carefully. By the time I had parked and powered the rig's engine down, something startling was happening to the ship.
It was shrinking like a balloon with a fast leak. It didn't hiss. It just got smaller.
And smaller. And…
When it had shrunk to a diameter of about two thirds of a meter, Arthur picked the damned thing up and held it in both arms. It looked like a model of itself. It was a model of itself.
"Arthur!" I screamed. "That's impossible!"
"Why?" Arthur asked.
I looked at Darla, Carl, and Lori. They were dumbfounded, staring at me as if I had the answer.
"Why?" I said. "Because you couldn't possibly pick it up. It's got to weigh-"
"Oh, no," Arthur said, "its mass isn't very much at all. Here."
He tossed the thing at me. I lurched and managed to balance it. It was heavy as hell, but it should have weighed at least a hundred tons. More, maybe.
He looked at Carl, Darla, and Lori, then back at me. "Satisfied?"
"Very," I said, stepping forward to give him his ship back.
"Oof," Arthur said, struggling with it, though he obviously had three times my strength. "Just don't ask me about the power source."
"Don't worry, I won't," I told him.
Arthur waddled over to the middle of the red circular platform, set the ship down and walked back. "When it's deflated it's kind of inert, and can't be detected at all."
"What now?" I said.
"Now I get in touch with Prime." He stared off into space for a moment. "Except he's not available, damn it. He never is, when I want him. Dearie me." He sighed. "We'll have to wait."
Bruce's voice came from the rig's exterior speaker. "Jake?"
"Yeah?"
"Jake, there is some sort of attempt being made to communicate with me. My guess is that it is a computer system indigenous to this structure."
"Oh, I forgot," Arthur said. "That's the… I guess you'd call it the plant foreman."
"I am making an attempt to establish contact. Is this permissible?"
"Go ahead, Bruce, do your best," I told him, then turned to Arthur. "Now, before anything else, what was it you were trying to tell me about Sam?"
"Oh, yes. Well, he's been… loaded into another machine."
"By whom, and for what reason?"
Arthur's tone was apologetic. "I'm afraid Prime is the culprit, Jake. And the reason, as far as I can understand it, was that Prime determined that Sam, as an Artificial Intelligence, was sufficiently advanced enough to warrant special consideration."
"You mean he's to be a Culmination candidate?"
"You got it."
I scowled, shaking my head. "Why is it that Prime's motives always seem to be as pure as the driven snow, no matter how underhanded his methods are?"
"Good public relations?" Arthur suggested.
"You ought to know."
"It's a living, dearie. The employment situation here is tight."
"Yeah. One other thing. You said that Sam looks like me. How could you know what he looks like?"
"From your memories of him, Jake. I have a pretty clear picture of Sam in my data files."
I nodded. Somehow Arthur's answer didn't satisfy me. "Jake?"
It was Bruce again. "Yeah?"
"Jake, I have managed to establish a rudimentary form of communication with the unknown A.I. It has put a number of questions to us. Do you wish to reply?"
"Well, what's it asking?"
"It would like to know the purpose of our visit."
"Jeez, I don't know."
Arthur said, "Tell it that we're on an inspection tour."
"Jake?"
"Huh? Yeah, go ahead."
A few moments later Bruce reported, "The Intelligence says it is happy to receive us and wishes to know what aspect of the plant's operations would be of greatest interest to us."
"Research and development," Arthur said.
After another pause, Bruce relayed, "Very well. Would you like to begin the inspection immediately?"
"Tell it no," I said. "Tell it… um, say that we have had a long journey and would like to rest first. We will begin the inspection in approximately eight hours."
"Very well."
"That ought to hold it," I said. "I don't plan to stay here for eight hours."
"I can't guarantee that I'll be able to contact Prime within that time," Arthur informed me.
"No? What's he doing?"
"I don't know. All I know is that he's not available and there's no telling when he will be."
I thought of something. "Then who's looking after the rest of my crew?"
"I activated another servant. They'll be fine."
"Another servant?"
"A multipurpose robot about half my size. Nice kid, but not much personality."
"Great." I yawned. "It's been an exciting day. Much too exciting."
"Yeah," Arthur said snidely, "chewing up vast stretches of parkland can take a lot out of you."
13
I slept. No dreams came.
But there was something out there, a sense of conflict, of opposing forces coming into contact, a tension. It was like picking up distant radio signals, listening in on field communications of a faraway battle-a burst of static, a word or phrase, an interruption, a few hazy images, waves of interference… jamming…
There came a sense of an overwhelming presence. A being vast and ineffable, a pervading Oneness whose dimensions bestrode the length and breadth of spacetime. But its Oneness was threatened. Something had gone wrong, and the root of the problem lay hidden in darkness. That which had been created to be One had split, polarized. The conflict raged up and down the corridors of time.
The road must be built.
No, it is folly.
We must tap the resources of time….
We cannot allow it.
We are not an elite, just the culmination of all that was….
That which is past is dead.
We cannot forget that our roots are in dust!
We must forget, else there is no hope….
I woke up suddenly.
I sat up on the bunk and swung my feet out onto the floor. Beside me, Darla lay in fitful, troubled sleep. She tossed and moaned, a fine film of sweat covering her forehead.
"Darla… Darla, wake up."
Her eyes flicked open, wide with fear. She sprang up into my arms and crushed her face into my chest, her breathing labored. She trembled.
I held her for a long time.
When she was okay again, she asked, "Did you dream it, too?"
"Bits and pieces. I don't know why. I told Prime that I didn't want the dream-teaching. I guess I was passed over, but I picked up some kind of leakage." I rubbed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. "Tell me about it."
Darla crossed her legs and pulled the ratty blanket up around her. "It was awful. It started like the first dream-like a documentary. There was more about the project-the creation of the new form of consciousness. Not much I could understand… but then, there was an interruption."
"The Goddess?"
"Yes, it was her, but she didn't appear in that form. I can't explain it. It was horrible. It was like being witness to the conflicts that went on in Heaven between God and Satan. I can't explain it, Jake. All I know is that I want no part of it."
"But we're caught in the middle."
She looked down. "Yes. We must get back… somehow. Back to the real world."
"The worlds, you mean. The worlds of the Skyway that the Culmination created."
"Caused to be created. The Roadbugs built it, and maintain it. They're a race that didn't contribute to the Culmination. They declined to participate, but thought the project was a good idea."
"What, the Skyway?"
"No, the Culmination itself. When the C
ulmination came to be, they became a servant race. Willingly, I think. They built the road at the Culmination's request."
"I caught a little bit of that. Why did the Culmination want the road built?"
She shook her head. "I'm not sure I understood. That's what part of the conflict is about. Do you remember the first dream? When the various races discussed the project? There were opposing factions, and somehow those conflicts were never resolved. This… this new form of consciousness was supposed to be uniform, monolithic, one thing only. A unity. But it didn't work out that way. Now there's this godlike being, this immortal, powerful thing loose in the universe… and it's partly insane. Schizophrenic! There's no telling what it will do. It transcends time and space. It can effect changes on the stream of time itself."
"Create paradoxes?"
She looked at me with a sudden new awareness. "Yes. Yes, it can do that. It can do anything. Oh, Jake!" She threw her arms around me. "We've been pawns! We've been manipulated! I don't know how or why or what the purpose is, but we're puppets, nothing more. All of this has been for no understandable reason. No reason we can fathom. We don't have a chance of comprehending these forces that insist on pushing us around. I'm tired of it! I want them to stop, Jake! I want to be left alone!"
She sobbed, and I held her.
Presently, I asked, "Are you going to be okay?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm fine."
She dried her eyes, swung her legs out, got up. I noticed that her abdomen bulged. I put my hand on it and pressed gently. She smiled and put her hand over mine.
"Over three months," she said.
"It's been that long? I guess it has. You've gained weight. You're tall enough so it doesn't show."
"It's going to be a boy."
"Why not?"
She laughed. I kissed her stomach, put my ear to it. "You can't hear the heartbeat like that," she said.
"No. He has the the radio on."
She laughed again.
I got up and kissed her mouth, then bent and kissed both breasts.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you," I told her. It was that simple. It had been that simple all along.
I got dressed and went out into the cab. It was empty. I fed a signal to the trailer and yelled for Lori and Carl.
"Jake, they went off with Arthur," Bruce informed me.
"What! Where?"
"They commenced the inspection. Carl couldn't sleep, and insisted on exploring the place. I am in constant touch with the foreman, and know exactly where they are. They are fine, and Carl is busy using the Product Ideation and Design Facility."
"The what? Never mind, just tell me how I get to where they are. Damn kids, running off. You should have got me up, Bruce."
"Jake, I did try. But you were apparently exhausted."
"What time is it? How long have they been gone?"
"About six hours, Jake."
"Good God."
Darla came into the cab, dressed in khakis and one of John's torn Militia surplus shirts. We were all getting short on clothes.
"An attendant is being summoned to conduct you to the Product Ideation and Design Facility."
"An attendant?"
"I think…"
And there it was, a shining multiarmed robot coasting toward us across the glossy blue floor.
We got out. The contraption pulled up to us and stopped. It was partly a conveyance of some sort, although the seats in the back hadn't been built for humans. Lacking wheels, the thing floated a few centimeters off the floor. It buzzed softly at us.
I said, "I guess that means `All aboard."'
We climbed into the back of it and perched ourselves on the impossible, mushroom-shaped seats. There weren't any backrests, but there was a crossbar to hang onto.
We were conducted on a very informative and educational tour of the plant. A long one, too, but I was politic enough not to complain. Everything was impressive, but we didn't know what the hell we were looking at. Our guide kept buzzing at us, we kept nodding and smiling pleasantly. Oh, my. Fifty million units produced in one year? How admirable.
But, by God, what a plant. A cool, quiet place of industrial and scientific sculpture. We could appreciate it on that level at least. We soared along high curving ramps looking down on silent gargantuan machines, labyrinths of pipeline, armies of tall bubble-topped cylinders, rack upon rack of instruments, giant antennalike assemblies, huge metal coils, and jungles of transparent tubing. Everything was silent, still. Color was everywhere-blue industrial light glinted off gold and silver spheres, orange and red conduits tangled with each other against overhead domes of bright pink and yellow, green rampways flew through the dry, still, blue-lit air.
Finally, we arrived. The Product Ideation and Design Facility was a large wedge-shaped room stuffed floor to ceiling with instrument panels throbbing with electric life, glittering with lights and luminous screens and flashing dials. Arthur sat on a bench near Carl, who was hunched over what appeared to be some sort of computerized drafting board-a wide flat screen crawling with moving diagrams and charts.
We got out of the robocart and walked over. Lori was lying on the soft carpeted floor, asleep, her head propped up with Carl's bunched jacket. Carl didn't even glance up. He was absorbed in whatever he was doing.
I looked at Arthur. "What gives?"
Arthur shrugged, grinning. "He's having a dandy time."
"How the hell did he figure out how to work the equipment?"
"Oh, it's not as hard as you might expect." Arthur rose, walked over, and peered over Carl's shoulder. "In this plant, in its day, engineers were looked upon as artists. They really didn't need to know much about engineering. Here, machine intelligences supply all the data, all the formulae, all the know-how. They do all the dirty work. The only thing that organic brains can supply is creativity. That's what Carl's doing. He's telling the machines what he wants and what he wants it to do, and the machines are helping him design it. And if the design is judged a worthy work of art, they just might build a prototype model."
"That's really something," I said. And it was, it was.
"No! Not that way," Carl said sharply. "It opens from the left. Yeah."
"Satisfactory?" a soft voice asked.
"Satisfactory."
I looked at Arthur, who said, "I think Bruce is responsible for the plant learning English."
I nodded.
"Now the engine is all yours, pal," Carl was saying, eyes still riveted to the drafting board. "I don't have a clue how that works."
"Very well. Requires advanced propulsion principle-high efficiency, low maintenance… "
"How about no maintenance? Can you do that? I'll never find someone to fix it."
"A challenge for time periods longer than quarter revolution of average galaxy."
"Huh? Quarter revolution of a- That's millions of years. Hey, I'm not going to live anywhere near that long."
"Then no maintenance is no challenge."
"All ri-i-ght!"
"Weapons systems?"
This went on for another hour. Carl eventually acknowledged our presence, then insisted that he had to finish. I didn't ask what he was doing. Lori woke out of a troubled sleep, and needed some attention. She had had the dream too. Afterward, we hung about and looked around. We were extremely hungry. At last, Carl was done.
"Very unusual, extremely idiosyncratic," the design chief pronounced. "But of surpassing elegance and simplicity. May we go ahead with fabrication of prototype?"
"Sure!" Carl said, getting up. He swayed slightly, and put a hand to his forehead. "Man, am I bushed. Terrific headache, too. But it was a hell of a lot of fun."
"Lunch time!" Arthur said.
"Lunch?" I was ready to gnaw on some lab equipment.
A detail of robots brought us lunch. The food was very good, not quite the haute cuisine of Emerald City, but far more than adequate. Bruce had done a good job feeding biochemica
l information to the plant's protein synthesizers. The flavorings were top-notch. Textures were a little off here and there, especially in the steak. A little too mushy. But the bread was terrific. You'd never know there wasn't one grain of wheat in it.
After lunch, the plant foreman spoke to us. "We have begun production of prototype. Would you like to observe?" He sounded a lot like the design chief, and I suspected that the latter was merely a subsystem of the former.
Would like to observe, yes.
We all boarded another robocart and swung out into the plant.
The place had come to life. We rode for an hour through the throbbing heart of technological wizardry. What had been hulks of dead machinery now flashed and sparked, whirred and hummed, chimed and beeped and thrummed and sang, while pink and violet electrical discharges leaped between giant coils, translucent tubing glowed and pulsed, luminescent motes swam inside huge transparent spheres, and veils of energy fluttered in the air overhead like aurora] displays. "Goddamn Frankenstein movie," was Carl's reaction.
At last we came to a large, quiet empty chamber. We got off and waited. Before long, the far wall retracted, and two robots hauled the prototype out onto the showroom floor.
It was Carl's 1957 Chevrolet Impala, chrome glinting in the track lighting, a lambent sheen soft upon its coat of candy-apple red, metal-flake paint.
"My car!" Carl shouted ecstatically, throwing open the driver's door and hopping in. He sniffed. "Hey, they got that new car smell just right!"
"Satisfactory?" the plant foreman asked hopefully.
"Satisfactory!" Carl enthused.
There was a note of pride in the foreman's voice. "May we then begin field testing and evaluation?"
"Uh-yeah. Well, maybe not. I know it's gonna work!"
"Intuitive evaluation? Perhaps empirical data are needed as well?"
"Huh? Um…
I was smiling at Carl. He noticed and returned a sheepish grin. "Hell, I couldn't resist."
"What're you going to do when they present you with the bill?"
"The bill. Oh."
I chuckled.
The foreman spoke delicately. "Remuneration can be forgone. We compliment designer on high esthetic factor of overall concept. Inspired, and truly beautiful in result. Congratulations. When may we begin production?"
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