Tower of Glass

by Robert Silverberg

Yes. Look, there's another.

  A nightmare figure rollicks through the corridor. Like something that has been placed in an oven until its flesh began to flow and run: the basic outlines are human, but the contours are not. The nose is a trunk, the lips are saucers, the arms of unequal length, the fingers are tentacles. The genitals are monstrous: horse-penis, bull-balls.

  Better off dead, I say to Lilith.

  No. No. Our brother. Our pitiful brother whom we cherish.

  The monstrosity halts a dozen meters from us. Its ropy arms go through the movements of the one-two-three.

  Speaking perfectly clearly it says to us, The peace of Krug upon you, alphas. Go with Krug. Go with Krug. Go with Krug.

  Krug be with you, Lilith replies.

  The monstrosity shambles onward, murmuring happily.

  The peace of Krug? Go with Krug? Krug be with you? Lilith, what does all that mean?

  Common courtesy, she says. A friendly greeting.

  Krug?

  Krug made us all, did he not? she says.

  I remember things that were said when I was in the shunt room with my friends. You know all the androids are in love with your father? Yes. Sometimes I think it must be almost like a religion to them. The religion of Krug. Well it makes a sort of sense to worship your creator. Don't laugh.

  The peace of Krug. Go with Krug. Krug be with you.

  Lilith, do androids think my father is God?

  Lilith evades the question. We can talk about that some other time, she says. People have ears here. There are some things we can't discuss.

  But.

  Some other time!

  I drop it. The tunnel now widens into a considerable room, well-lit, crowded. A marketplace? Shops, booths, gammas everywhere. We are stared at. There are numerous rejects in the room, each a little more horrid than the last. It is hard to see how creatures so maimed and mismade can survive.

  Do they ever go to the surface?

  Never. They might be seen by humans.

  In Gamma Town?

  They take no chances. They'd all be obliterated if.

  In the crush of the crowded room, the androids jostle and shove, bicker, snap. Somehow they maintain an area of open space around the intrusive alphas, but not a very great one. Two knife-duels are going on; no one pays attention. There is much public lasciviousness. The smell of the place is rank and foul. A wild-eyed girl rushes up to me and whispers, Krug bless! Krug bless! She pushes something into my hand and runs off.

  A gift.

  A small cool cube with beveled edges, like the toy at the New Orleans shunt room. Does it send messages? Yes. I see words forming and flowing and vanishing in its milky core:

  A CLOT IN TIME SAVES THINE

  *

  HIS HIS HIS HIS HERS HIS HIS HIS

  *

  O SHALLOW IS THY BOWL, FILTHY GRIG

  *

  SLOBIE REIGNS, STACKERS PAINS

  *

  PLIT! PLIT! PLIT! PLIT! PLACK!

  *

  AND UNTO KRUG RENDER KRUG'S

  All nonsense. Lilith, can you figure this stuff?

  Some of it. The gammas have their own slang, you know. But look here, where it says—

  A male gamma with cratered purple skin slaps the cube from our hands. It skitters along the floor; he dives for it in a knot of feet. There is a general uproar. People tangle and twine. The thief breaks from the mass and speeds away into a corridor. The gammas still wrestle confusedly. A girl rises to the top of the heap; she has lost her few scraps of clothing in the melee, and there are bloody gouges on her breasts and thighs. In her hand she holds the cube. I recognize her as the girl who gave it to me in the first place. Now she makes a demonic face at me, baring her teeth. She brandishes the cube and clamps it between her legs. A burly reject pounces on her and hauls her away; he has only one arm, but it is as thick as a tree. Grig! she screams. Prot! Gliss! They vanish.

  The crowd is muttering in an ugly way.

  I picture them turning on us, ripping at our clothing, revealing the hairy human body beneath my false alpha costume. The social distances may not protect us then.

  Come, I say to Lilith. I think I've had enough.

  Wait.

  She turns to the gammas. She holds up her hands, palms facing, about half a meter apart, as though indicating the length of a fish she has caught. Then she wriggles in a peculiar sinuous maneuver, twisting her body so she describes a kind of spiraling curve. The gesture quiets the crowd instantly. The gammas step aside, heads bowed humbly, as we go past. All is well.

  Enough, I tell Lilith. It's getting late. How long have we been here, anyway?

  We can go now.

  We flee through a maze of interlocking passages. Gammas of a thousand hideous shapes pass us. We see slobies floating in their slow raptures. Rejects. Stackers and solidifiers, for all I can tell. Sounds, smells, colors, textures—I am dazzled and dazed. Voices in the darkness. Songs.

  The freedom day is coming

  The freedom day is coming

  Snip the slobies, grab the gliss—

  And ride up to freedom!

  Steps. Upward. Cold winds descending. Breathless, we race to the top and find ourselves in the winding cobbled streets of Gamma Town again, probably only a few meters from the place where we went down. It seems to me that the office of Alpha Poseidon Musketeer must be just around the corner.

  Night has come. The lights of Gamma Town crackle and flutter. Lilith wants to take me to a tavern. I refuse. Home. Home. Enough. My mind is stained by the sights of the android world. She yields; we hurry out. How far must we walk before we reach a transmat?

  We leap. Her flat seems so warm and bright to me now. We rid ourselves of our clothes. Under the doppler I cleanse myself of my red color and my thermal spray.

  Was it interesting?

  Overpowering, I say. And there's so much you have to explain, Lilith.

  Images swim in my brain. I burn. I sizzle.

  Of course you won't tell anyone I took you, she says. I could get into awful trouble.

  Of course. Strictly confidential.

  Come close, Alpha Leaper.

  Manuel.

  Manuel. Come close.

  First tell me what it means when they say Krug be—

  Later. I'm cold. Warm me, Manuel.

  I fold her in my arms. The heavy mounds of her breasts inflame me. I cover her mouth with mine. I thrust my tongue between her lips. We sink down together to the floor.

  Without hesitation I spear her. She trembles. She clasps me.

  When I close my eyes I see slobies and rejects and stackers.

  Lilith.

  Lilith.

  Lilith.

  Lilith I love you I love you I love you Lilith Lilith Lilith

  The great vat bubbles. The moist crimson creatures crawl forth. Laughter. Lightning. O shallow is thy bowl, filthy grig! My flesh crashes against hers. Plit! Plit! Plit! Plit! Plack! With humiliating swiftness the overwrought Leviticus Leaper pours a billion little boys and girls into his beloved's sterile womb.

  26

  January 9. 2219.

  The tower is at 940 meters and rising more swiftly than ever. Standing at the base, one cannot easily see the summit; it is lost against the white glare of the winter sky. At this time of year there are only a few hours of daylight at the site, and during those hours the sun's rays ride fiery tracks down the length of the shimmering shaft.

  Much of the interior structure now is complete throughout the building's lower half. Three of the high-capacity communications equipment modules have been hoisted into place: somber black metal containers fifty meters high, within which are the huge kickover units that will amplify the messages as they climb the tower. Viewed from afar, these modules seem to be giant seeds ripening in a great glossy transparent pod.

  The accident rate continues to be high. Mortality levels are causing concern. The losses among gammas have been particularly severe. Yet morale is said to be good; the androids are
cheerful and appear to be aware that they are playing an essential role in one of humanity's most ambitious projects. If their attitude remains so positive the tower will be finished well ahead of schedule.

  27

  After showing them the state of progress at the tower, Krug took his guests that day to dine at the Nemo Club, where a suite was perpetually held in readiness for him. The club was one of Krug's minor enterprises; he had built it a dozen years back, and for some time it had been Earth's most fashionable gathering-place, with reservations required at least six months in advance. Situated 10,000 meters under the western Pacific in the Challenger Deep, it consisted of fifteen pressurized bubbles through whose walls, fashioned of the same sturdy glass from which the tower was being constructed, it was possible to view the strange inhabitants of the dark abyss.

  Krug's companions were Senator Henry Fearon and his brother Lou, the lawyer, of Fearon & Doheny; Franz Giudice of European Transmat; Leon Spaulding; and Mordecai Salah al-Din, the Speaker of Congress. To reach the Nemo Club they had journeyed by transmat to the island of Yap in the Caroline group of Micronesia, where they boarded an immersion module of the kind used for the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. The density of the medium made transmat travel impossible under water. The pressures of the ocean's depths meant little to the immersion module, however, and at a calm and steady speed of 750 meters a minute it sank to the Pacific floor and entered the Nemo Club's transit hatch.

  Floodlights bathed the abyss. The dwellers of the deep paid no heed to the illumination, and came quite close to the club's glass walls: fragile, flimsy, unmuscular fishes, loose and flabby of body, their tissues pervaded by water under a compression of ten or twelve tons per square centimeter. Many of them were luminescent; cold pale glows glistened from photophores along their sides or between their eyes or on fleshy dangling lanterns jutting from their foreheads. The wavelength of the club's floodlights had been carefully chosen in order not to interfere with the luminescence of the fishes, and their little sparkling beacons were plainly visible even in the brightness; Justin Maledetto, the architect of the tower, had also designed the club, and Maledetto was clever in such details. Up to the walls the bizarre little monsters came, black and brown and scarlet and violet in hue. Many of them had jaws that unhinged, so that their mouths could gape down to their chests, ready to swallow enemies two or three times their own size. In the random encounters of the abyss pygmies devoured giants. Diners at the club were treated to visions of miniature gargoyles and horrors, sinister in their radiance, brandishing their savage teeth within their vast mouths, trailing strange appendages and protrusions, bearing eyes that bulged like globes, or eyes on stalked tubes, or no eyes at all. One did not need to travel to distant worlds to behold bizarre beasts; the nightmare creatures were here, on man's own planet, and one had only to look. Huge spines, curved teeth so long that mouths could never close, branching stems rising from snouts, things that were all jaws and no body, things that were all tail and no head, anglers with twitching rods that danced about, giving off yellow or blue or green pulsations, grotesqueries of a thousand kinds, and no fish as much as half a meter long: the show was extraordinary and altogether unique.

  Krug ordered a simple meal-krill cocktail, algae soup, steak, Australian claret. He was no gourmet. The club offered every sort of delicacy, but Krug never took advantage of its bounty. His companions had no such reluctance; cheerfully they called for Swedish oysters, benthic crabs, unborn squid, contrefilets of veal, snail mousse, breast of oryx, shirred euphorbia buds, manta tips, baked cycad hearts, and more, all washed down by the world's finest golden wines. The waiter looked delighted at their prowess with the menu cubes. All waiters here were alphas; it was unusual to employ alphas in what was essentially menial personal service, but this was an unusual place, and none of the staff at the Nemo Club appeared to be embittered at doing a job normally performed by betas or even gammas.

  Yet the waiters could not have been entirely content with their station in life. When the appetizers had been served, Senator Fearon said to Krug, “Did you notice the AEP emblem on our boy's lapel?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “A very small one. Sharp eyes are needed.”

  Krug glanced at Spaulding. “When we leave, speak to the captain about that. I don't want any politics here!”

  “Especially revolutionary politics,” said Franz Giudice, and laughed. The transmat executive, long and angular, was noted for his bland ironies. Though well past ninety, he had adopted the styles of dress of men half his age, mirror-plates and all, and retained astonishing vigor. “We'd better watch that waiter. With two members of Congress at the table, he's likely to slip propaganda into our dishes, and we'll all walk away converted.”

  “Do you really think the AEP is a threat?” Lou Fearon asked. “You know, I got a good dose of their Siegfried Fileclerk while I was handling the business of the alpha girl killed at the tower.” He nodded toward Spaulding, who scowled. “I got the impression that Fileclerk and the whole AEP bunch are completely ineffectual,” the attorney said.

  “A minority movement,” said Senator Fearon. “Not even commanding the support of the bulk of androids.”

  Leon Spaulding nodded. The ectogene said, “Thor Watchman had some stinging words for Fileclerk and his party. Watchman doesn't seem to feel there's any value in the AEP whatever.”

  “An unusually shrewd and capable android, Thor is,” said Krug.

  “I was quite serious, though,” Giudice declared. “You can laugh at the AEP all you like, but I feel its aims are genuinely revolutionary and that as it gains backing it will—”

  “Ssss,” Krug said.

  Their alpha waiter had returned, bearing a fresh bottle of wine. The men at the table sat tensely while the alpha poured. He went out, closing the hatch tightly behind him.

  Mordecai Salah al-Din, the Speaker of Congress, said gently, “I've received at least five million petitions from the AEP. I've granted three audiences to the party's leaders. And I must say that they're a sincere and orderly group, worth taking seriously. I also want to say, though I wouldn't care to be quoted, that I'm sympathetic to some of their goals.”

  “Would you explain that?” Spaulding said, his voice crisp.

  “Surely. I feel that the inclusion of a delegation of alphas in Congress is desirable and probably will come about within the next decade. I feel that the selling of alphas without their consent is improper and ought to be made illegal. I think that'll happen in fifteen to twenty years. I believe that we'll be extending full civil rights to alphas before 2250, to betas by the end of the century, and to gammas not long afterward.”

  “A revolutionary!” cried Franz Giudice in wonder. “The Speaker is a revolutionary!”

  “A visionary, rather,” said Senator Fearon. “A man of vaulting insight and splendid compassion. As always, somewhat ahead of his time.”

  Spaulding shook his head. “Alphas in Congress, maybe, yes. As a safety valve, to keep them from getting out of control. Toss them a bone, you know? But the rest of it? No. No. Never. Mr. Salah al-Din, we should not forget that androids are mere things, the product of chemogenetic research, created in a factory, manufactured by Krug Enterprises to serve mankind—”

  “Softly,” Krug murmured. “You're getting excited.”

  Lou Fearon said, “Possibly the Speaker's right, Leon. Regardless of how they came into existence, they're more human than you're willing to admit. And as we gradually relax all arbitrary barriers of law and custom, as the Witherer ideals gradually take over—as I think you'll agree is quite subtly happening already—I expect that we'll go easier on the androids. At least on the alphas. We don't need to keep them under.”

  “What do you say, Simeon?” Franz Giudice demanded of Krug. “After all, they're your babies. When you decided to produce the first androids, did you ever imagine that they'd be calling for the rights of citizenship, or did you think of them as—”

  “Leon put it in
the right words,” Krug said. “How was it? Things. Factory-made things. I was building a better kind of robot. I wasn't building men.”

  “The borderline between man and android is so vague,” Senator Fearon said. “Since the androids are genetically identical to us, the fact that they're synthetic—”

  Krug said, “In one of my plants I can make you the Mona Lisa in perfect replica, so that it takes six months of laboratory tests to prove it isn't the original. Yes? And so? Is it the original? The original came out of Leonardo's studio. The replica came out of Krug's factory. I'd pay a billion for the original. I wouldn't give a brass thumb for the replica.”

  “Yet you recognize that Thor Watchman, for example, is an unusually capable and gifted person,” said Lou Fearon, “and you give him wide responsibilities. I've heard it said that you trust him more than any man in your organization. Yet you wouldn't allow Thor to vote? You wouldn't give Thor a chance to protest if you decided to make him a waiter here? You agree that the law should give you the right to destroy Thor if the whim takes you?”

  “I made Thor,” Krug replied heavily. “He's the finest machine I have. I love and admire him the way I love and admire any superb machine. But I own Thor. Thor isn't a man, he's just a clever imitation of a man, a flawless imitation, and if I want to be so wasteful and foolish as to destroy Thor, why, I'll destroy him.” Krug's hand began to tremble. He glared at it as if willing it to be still, but the tremor intensified, and a full glass of wine spilled onto the table. Stonily Krug said, “Destroy him. I never had anything else in mind when I brought out the androids. Servants. Tools of man. Cunning machines.”

  Sensors in the Nemo Club's service core announced the spilling of the wine. The waiter entered and efficiently mopped it up. Outside the window, a cluster of giant translucent crustaceans wheeled and danced.

  When the alpha was gone again Senator Fearon said to Krug, “I didn't realize you felt this strongly about android equality. You've never spoken out.”