"I'm helping the jinners to adjust the Anadem field."
It was true enough in general, even if it was a bit of an overstatement of his own role. If he had expected approval, he didn't get it. Lilah gave him another black look. "You're the ones messing about with the gravity, are you? I wish you'd quit it. I came out here to find Billy Jexter, and you're not making it any easier. Have you seen him?"
"He was with us a couple of hours ago. When I started talking to Hooglich and Russo, he wandered off. I thought you tried to avoid him."
"I do. But he has been going round all morning making a big deal out of some secret he says he's found in Confluence Center. When he saw me I was grounded, for—well, never mind for what—so he knew he couldn't show me whatever it was. But I promised Billy that he could show me later. He said he'd be out on Level Twenty-nine, Ninth Sector, Fifth Octant. So when I got free, I came to look for him. You see, I keep my promises."
If that was Lilah's idea of a subtle hint, Jeff was not impressed. He stifled his natural reaction, and said, "If you like I can show you where he was, last time I saw him."
"That would be a start."
"We need to go to the Anadem field control room. Which way is quicker, to keep going as I was, or turn around and head the way you were going?"
"I haven't the slightest idea." She was staring away from Jeff, toward the rim ports. "I don't know anything about the Anadem field."
Know, or care, said her tone. Jeff was still in Lilah's doghouse. He wanted to shoot back, "And I don't care anything about the stupid horse pictures you have plastered all over your walls." But he could not afford to get into a fight with her. The only other people he really knew at Confluence Center were Hooglich and Russo, and they were almost as much strangers as he was. He needed information about the ship coming from Sol, especially anything relevant to him. Billy Jexter couldn't be a source for that kind of information; but Lilah was Connie Cheever's daughter, and she could probably find out anything—if she was willing to try.
Instead of arguing, Jeff turned and started back the way he had come. He felt a bit sneaky, as though he had already taken advantage of Lilah's family connection. He eased his conscience by saying over his shoulder, "After you are done with Billy, why don't we go to your room."
That ought to have produced a favorable response. It led instead to a long silence, and then, at last, an uncomfortable and uncertain reply. "All right. I guess we can do that if you want to."
Jeff kept walking. He had been thinking, half an hour ago, that he was perhaps not a real jinner. He was too interested in the abstract principles that lay behind the machinery. But whether he turned out a jinner or whether he didn't, one thing was sure: You knew where you were with jinners. You didn't find yourself listening to what they said, then spend the next ten minutes wondering what they meant.
The gravity made another sudden up-and-down dip as they circled the Center perimeter, giving Jeff's stomach an uneasy lurch. He stopped and grabbed at the catwalk rail. The jinners were still playing games with the Anadem field. Lilah, forced to walk behind him on the narrow catwalk, had the grace not to complain, though he did hear a snort of annoyance.
The elevator leading up to the control room finally became visible from the curve of the catwalk. Jeff could see a few of the jinners, lounging around the control-room door. They were obviously still in session. He pointed to the place where he had left the interior with Hooglich and Russo. "Billy was through there when I last saw him, in a chamber full of cloudy green tanks with big blue duct pipes along the walls."
"Air generation and circulation plant. It's one of his favorite haunts; he says you can get anywhere in Confluence Center by following the ducts. We could have reached it in a quarter of the time if we'd come through the interior. Why didn't you tell me that in the first place?" Lilah pushed past him and headed for a branch off the catwalk.
Because I didn't know it, you dummy. Jeff hurried after her. His annoyance with Lilah was growing. He hadn't been at Confluence Center more than a couple of days, part of that time unconscious, but she seemed to expect him to know his way around. He'd like to take her to Earth, and see how she got on there.
Confluence Center, like a Space Navy ship, had a double hull. The region between the two hulls was normally air-filled, so there was access to the Anadem field rings and the controls without needing suits. The same space could be emptied of air, when vacuum operations were required. Lilah was now leading Jeff through a lock into the true interior of Confluence Center, where a breathable atmosphere was maintained at all times.
"Close the door behind you," she said. "Quick."
Jeff didn't need to be told. They were moving into a warm, steamy room where the walls dripped moisture and wisps of white fog curled around the edge of the lock. The lights were bright, and great tanks of cloudy green algae filled the interior. There was a stink in the air, ripe, rotting, and juicy.
"I don't know how Billy can stand it." Lilah had her hands in front of her nose and mouth and was hurrying toward a door at the far end. "He always goes this way."
Because no one wants to follow him, Jeff thought. He followed Lilah's lead, put his hands over his nose, and tried not to breathe until he was through the other door.
"Billy! Billy Jexter!" Lilah called.
Jeff peered around him. This was someone's living quarters—or had been. The new chamber was poorly lit, and his eyes had not yet adjusted from the previous brightness. Even so, there seemed to be a dinginess and an air of neglect in the room's walls and furnishings.
"Does Billy live here?"
"Nobody does." Lilah was staring around her in irritation. "Damn. I felt sure we'd find him here. This part of the Center isn't used at the moment, but Billy likes it because he can do what he likes."
She pointed at the once-white surrounds. On them someone had drawn and painted crude pictures of spaceships and dinosaurs and planets and people. One whole wall was a hideous human face, with a smaller face, equally distorted, forming the nose. Small red handprints walked up the opposite wall and continued all the way across the ceiling.
"Won't he get into trouble for this?" Jeff was feeling envious. It was exactly what he had wanted to do with his own rooms when he was six or seven years old, and never been allowed to.
"Why should he? If someone wants to use it again, the Logans will have it like new in a couple of days." Lilah was walking around the neglected chamber, running her hand along a chair back and inspecting the dust it brought away. "That wretched child. Well, he's had his chance. I've done my bit. Let's go. There's nothing here."
Jeff was not so sure. He felt that he had seen something, he was not sure what, and the sight sent a tremor running from his spine to his legs. He put a hand on Lilah's arm. "The face," he said softly. He gestured to one painted wall. "Look at the little face inside the big face, the one that forms the nose."
She swung around, turning him with her. "Billy Jexter!" she shouted at once. "You rotten little weasel. Come out of there."
The face on the wall seemed to split into two, moving aside to reveal Billy's grinning features. Jeff realized what had caused his odd discomfort. Those had been Billy's dark eyes, peering out at them through the empty sockets of the wall painting.
"Gotcha!" Billy said. "Wait a minute." His face disappeared, and after a few seconds the person himself came running into the room.
"You're lucky." Lilah didn't hide her irritation. "Lucky that Jeff saw you. Me, I'd have been out of here. And I wouldn't have come back."
"Nah." Billy was coated with dust, as dirty as anything in the room. "You wouldn't have got away. I've been trailing you two for ages. I saw you before you even came off the catwalk."
"You're pushing your luck, Billy." Lilah made a move to sit on one of the battered chairs. She changed her mind when she saw how filthy it was. Her all-white outfit wouldn't survive the first encounter. "I came here because I promised you that I would. Now you have five minutes to tell me. After th
at, I don't care what your wonderful secret is. I'm heading back to Level Two."
"I bet you don't. I'm not going to tell you, I'm going to show you. Do you have your locator on you? Otherwise, we can use mine."
Lilah unfastened a pocket of her jumpsuit and pulled out a grey oblong as long and as wide as a finger.
"What does it show?" Billy asked.
Lilah bent over and peered at the side of the oblong. "Exactly what you'd expect it to show. We are in the Ninth Sector, still in the Fifth Octant, but we've moved in a little and are now on Level Twenty-eight. To be completely precise, this is Habitation Chamber 106,788."
She was answering questions that Jeff had been wondering about but never got around to asking. Confluence Center contained thousands of kilometers of tunnels and corridors and shafts and ducts, serving hundreds of thousands of interior chambers. How did you specify a particular place?
The answer to that didn't seem too difficult: You divided the interior into regions—levels and sectors and octants—and used them as coordinates. You also gave each chamber a number. But there was a more difficult question: How did you know where you were?
The handheld locator, small enough to fit easily into a pocket, was the answer. It gave the coordinates of your current location. Presumably it worked anywhere in Confluence Center, and it was a fair guess that it could also serve as a route planner, providing an efficient path to anywhere you wanted to go.
"Don't put your locator away," Billy said. "Follow me, and keep an eye on it."
He went back through the same door he had come in. Lilah followed. Jeff, assuming he was included in the invitation and more curious than he wanted to admit, went after them.
They were in another chamber, not much different from the one that they had left. Billy headed for a small opening in the far wall, no more than three feet high. He crawled through, at the same time as Lilah said, "Habitation Chamber 106,787. No change in level, sector, or octant. Are we supposed to follow you in there?"
"Sure." Billy's voice came back, sounding hollow. "Once you are inside, keep your voices down."
Lilah pushed her head through the opening and pulled back. "It's filthy in there!"
"It is a bit. Not so loud!"
She bent lower, muttered, "One day I'm going to kill that kid," and eased her way in through the opening. Jeff went after her, crawling on his hands and knees. At first he thought there was no light at all. He moved forward, until his face came into contact with something that had to be Lilah's well-padded rear.
He heard a hiss from in front of him. "Do you mind! Slow down! I can't see a thing. Billy!"
"Shh! I'm here, right in front of you. Wait a minute, and you'll get used to it."
"This had better be good, Billy."
"It will be."
Jeff's eyes were finally adjusting. He realized that it was not nearly as dark as it seemed. Light bled in every few yards through rectangular grilles. The tunnel that they were crawling along must be part of the giant ventilation system that carried breathable air to every part of Confluence Center.
"Can you see your locator?" Billy whispered. His face was a pale oval, a couple of yards beyond Lilah.
"Yes."
"What does it say?"
"We're back to Level Twenty-nine, Ninth Sector, Fifth Octant. We're not in a habitation chamber—as if we didn't know. We're in Air Duct 93,469. Billy, this is ridiculous. I'm not crawling any farther. I've had it."
"Just a few meters more. Then you'll see."
Lilah did not answer, but Jeff saw the white pants moving away again in front of him. He could feel the dust and grit on his hands. She was right. This had better be good, or Billy was one dead brat.
The "few meters" turned out to be highly optimistic. Jeff crawled on forever, silently following the faint white beacon of Lilah's rear end. The duct was curving down. It was another stage in the descent of Jefferson Kopal, reduced from a uniformed officer in the proud Space Navy to a deserter following a girl's wriggling buttocks down a grubby tunnel. Was it possible to sink any lower? For some reason, his personal disgrace upset him more than Hooglich's warning that they might all be killed. He would risk death anytime for a chance to explain to his mother that what had been said about him was not true. Maybe there were things worse than death. Maybe people would die rather than be disgraced.
Lilah halted and put an end to his gloomy train of thought.
"Right," Billy whispered. He had stopped, too, and turned to face the others. "Now look at your locator."
There was a long silence. Jeff could not see what Lilah was doing. Then her voice came, low-pitched and puzzled. "This is impossible. There must be something wrong with it. It doesn't show anything at all."
"I know." Billy was triumphant. "But there's nothing wrong with it. I tried yesterday with three different locators. They all said the same thing."
"What does it mean?"
"It means that we are in a part of Confluence Center that the locator system doesn't know about."
"There's no such place. The locator knows everywhere, even new facilities that the Logans have only just finished. Are you saying there has been a malfunction?"
"I don't know what a malfunction is."
"It means that something isn't working."
"Then I'm not saying that. Come on."
"Where? I thought we'd finished."
"You think I'd call that a big secret? That there was a bug in the locator system?" Billy's face was invisible to Jeff, but he could hear the scorn in the voice. "I don't think there's been a malfunction. I think the locator doesn't work because it's been fixed not to work."
"Who would possibly do that?"
Billy did not answer. He said, "Come on," turned, and again began to crawl away along the tunnel.
The others followed. Jeff noticed that they were now moving slightly uphill, which meant they were heading toward the upper ring of the Anadem field. He wondered how Hooglich and the others were doing. It had been a while since he had noticed any variations in local gravity.
The tunnel was also growing in width and height. Soon Lilah paused, stood up, and walked upright. Jeff followed suit, but he had to keep his head bent. Billy, much shorter, had given up crawling ten meters back and was far ahead. He was standing on tiptoe with his face pressed to the tunnel wall. As Jeff and Lilah approached, he turned to place his finger to his lips and gestured to the wall.
The ventilator grille was big, about three feet wide and a foot deep. The three of them could stand side by side and peer through.
Jeff moved to a position between Billy and Lilah. He found himself eight to ten feet above the floor of a huge room, looking out upon it from a vantage point high on one wall. The room was packed with equipment, meters and pumps and monitors and generators. On the floor, right in front of Jeff, one thick plate of metal was poised above another, while a delicate device like a balance for measuring small weights stood between them. Nothing seemed to be supporting the upper plate. On the left was an isolated silver cylinder. It seemed to have no function and no part of it moved, but the air around it was filled with faint sparkles of light. Over to Jeff's right stood a machine of black metal with a double ring above and below, like a doll's-house version of the Anadem field generator encircling Confluence Center.
At first Jeff thought that the room was empty. Then a figure crouched by a featureless black cube in one corner rose upright and came wandering slowly back toward the middle of the room. It was a man, tall and slightly built, with narrow sloping shoulders and a head that craned forward like a bird's from a thin neck. He had long, wild hair, pushed casually back off a high, narrow forehead, and a full sandy beard so bushy that most of his face could not be seen. He advanced to a single chair in the middle of the mess of equipment, sat down, and stared into nothingness.
Billy nudged Jeff. He jerked his head to indicate that they should retreat. Jeff touched Lilah on the arm, passing the message on, and all three moved a few yards to stand on the
other side of the tunnel.
"I told you," Billy whispered. "I told you I had a real big secret. Look at your locator, Lilah."
"I did." She held it out toward the others. "This place doesn't exist. That man doesn't exist. This whole thing is impossible. Come on, Billy."
"Where are you going?"
She turned. There was black grime and grease in her hair, and dust all the way along the front of her white suit. At some point she must have touched her cheek, because there were smudges of dirt there also.
"Going?" She ran the back of her hand across her nose, adding another dark streak of filth. For the first time, Jeff saw another side of Lilah, one more like the daughter of the chief administrator of the Messina Dust Cloud. She seemed utterly unaware of her appearance. "Why, we're going to talk to that man," she said firmly. "It's our duty. We have to find out what he's doing, and why he's been messing around with the Confluence Center locator system. And he'd better have some good answers."
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