MacRoscope (65 page)

Maintenance: cleaners, repair machines, testing robots. She walked down the aisle, Schön following several paces behind. At the far end was a spherical dance of light, communicating in the galactic code. She studied it — and understood that it was warning all comers that the next compartment contained the destroyer programming mechanism.

The other chambers had not had warnings; why did this one?

She was sure she knew. Theoretically, any creature who was able to travel to this station had achieved the maturity to be immune to the destroyer concept. But there could be less mature associates, as in the case of the species that had actually emplaced this unit; the truly mature individuals were not capable of violence, however practical its application. Younger species would have to maintain the equipment and do the work.

Or — there could be children, recapitulating evolution, poking aggressively into dangerous nooks. So — a warning. There could be stray destroyer emanation here.

“This is the end of the line,” she said, showing him the warner. “We have to go back. Why don’t we stop this foolish contest and try to help each other?” And she wondered whether her distaste for him had dissipated with her fear.

He brightened. “We are prisoners of what we are. These symbolic animations are only projections of our two personalities. We are Neptune now, planet of obligation… and such. For you this is A HOUSE RAISING, helpfulness, cooperation, joy in common enterprise. That is why you have spoken as you have.”

“Then what is your symbol?”

“A MAN IN THE MIDST OF BRIGHTENING INFLUENCES.”

She saw that the game was not over, and that he had almost won. Beatryx was dead; Harold was gone; Ivo had been replaced by this stranger — and she was ready, in her overwhelming spirit of helpfulness, to give whatever she had to offer to the victor. Perhaps there had been a time when she would have felt otherwise; intellect told her so. But not at this moment.

“The score stands at 78 to 69, my favor,” he said. “If we stop here, and I agree we might as well—”

She tried to reach the Traveler again, but that wave of ability had subsided. She might never again achieve the peak of awareness and drive necessary to call it forth directly. No help there.

Without letting herself consciously realize what she was doing in her desperate effort to stave off defeat, Afra stepped backward into the destroyer-room.

“Hey!” Schön called, taken by surprise. He dived for her, astonishingly swift on his feet — but too late.

Ivo resumed control as the destroyer sequence hit. A rainbow of color/concept threatened to overwhelm his perception, building with merciless velocity toward oblivion — but he had had long experience diverting it. He deflected the impact and concentrated on Afra.

She was kneeling on the floor, trying to cover her face, but the emanations were everywhere. They leaked out in forms susceptible to reception by ears and skin as well as eyes. There was no physical way to block the destroyer off, this close.

He reached her and clamped both hands on her wrists, hauling her around and up and back through the doorway. Her eyes were fixed, her lips parted in the obsessive rapture of assimilation. As they passed from the chamber the barrage stopped, sealed off by some unseen shield.

Afra slumped into unconsciousness. He propped her up against an inactive scrubbing machine and peered anxiously into her face. Had he brought her out in time? If he revived her now, would she awaken to personality — or mindlessness?

She had won the game with Schön. Her daring had scored a clean sweep of Pluto, for she had survived where he could not. It was the one situation where lesser intelligence was an advantage. The extra minute she had withstood the destroyer was the same as a knockout victory.

Schön had had to have her help, if he were ever to leave the station, since only by burying his own personality could he have faced the destroyer. He could have fashioned an idiot personality for the purpose — but then the geis on him would have taken effect, keeping him bottled. Only if another person released him could he reemerge, in the absence of Ivo. A simple request would have been enough: “Schön — come out!” — but it had to be from someone who acted independently. Someone outside the bottle, for the seal could not be broken from within. Someone who knew him and knew what the request meant.

Certainly Schön would never have let Ivo resume control. Not when both knew that Afra was in love with that alternate personality. But an idiot — capable only of a directed reception of the Traveler — she would have had to banish that. Her temperament would have forced her to uncork the responding mind, even though she hated it. And of course she would have felt obligated to honor the terms of the agreement, having lost the game.

But she had won. Ivo was sure of this — because he had been the referee. Had it been otherwise — that is, had Schön not arranged to
make
it fair — the results would not have been binding. A legitimate win for Schön would have forced Ivo to return control to him, even after saving him from the destroyer. Ivo, too, was bound by the geis, having agreed to arbitrate the contest.

As it was, that intervention to save their mutual mind had cost Schön all ten points of the final round, putting Afra ahead 79 to 78, and it was over. She had won the right to choose her companion on the way home. She had made the nature of that choice plain during her dialogue with Schön.

Provided she retained, literally, the wit to make that decision. Otherwise, she too had lost, and rendered the round a tie that was meaningless. A mindless Afra could not serve Schön’s purpose.

Ivo contemplated her face, so lovely in its repose. He had longed for this from the moment he saw her the first time. He had traveled the galaxy only to please her.

The surface of the machine against which she leaned was reflective. He saw in that mirror the head of a man. It seemed to smile knowingly at him. He knew, as the gift of one of Schön’s conscious thoughts during the contest, that this was Afra’s symbol in Pluto — A MAN’S HEAD — just as the rainbow he had seen as he took over had been Schön’s. But whose head was it to be?

Had all his life been leading to this crisis, this empty vigil with an unconscious girl? If she were gone, what was left?

Ivo held her, afraid to wake her, and remembered.

There had been the project breakup, thrusting them all abruptly into the massive, confused, tormented world — yet most had greeted it as a release and a challenge. They had exploded across the planet, three hundred and thirty eager youngsters seeking experience… and had been absorbed by it without a ripple. Brad had gone to college; Ivo had followed the melody of the flute, searching out the obscure monuments of the life of Sidney Lanier. Quite a number of the others had married nonproject people. All had sworn to keep in touch forever, but they were young then, and somehow had forgotten. There had been some almost-random encounters, however — enough to circulate news of most. From time to time Ivo had dreamed of a grand convening, a project reunion — recognizing the very desire as a reflection of his inadequacy, his poor adjustment to the world of the ’70’s.

Then Groton, on a hot Georgia street, and adventure had been thrust upon him. Brad needed Schön! Afra, vision of love, bait of trap — would he have stepped into it had he not wanted to? The proboscoids of Sung, overrunning their world heedlessly, and mankind doing the same. Human organs, black-market. Plump Beatryx, wife of an engineer. Image of a school crisis: boy in classroom, cigarette, smirk. Senator Borland, man of ambition, power. Destroyer image: one dead, one ruined, one untouched? Sprouts, a winning configuration, S D P S, Kovonov, who had meant to go himself…

Joseph the rocket, accommodations for five. Learning to use the macroscope, that instrument of galactic civilization. Astrology: “The complex of your life and the complex of the universe may run in a parallel course.” UN pursuit. Image of a living cell. The handling — identity confirmation or sexual experience? The melting — skull canting, gray-white fluid coursing out eye-socket. Reconstitution — from cell to self in four hours.

Mighty Neptune, sea-storm world of methane. Triton, where Tryx found a bug. Schön, moon of a moon. There he had come to appreciate real people, to know the meaning of friendship, its prerogatives and its miseries. Terraforming: a joint effort. Poetry, prejudice, a chess analogy. Starfish. Afra’s horoscope, the chart that defined her. The flip of a bus token. Trial: another case of handling, really. Spacefold diagrams. Visual penetration of Neptune — dwarf with the breath of a giant, yet more ancient than Sol. Gravitational radius.

Tyre. Mattan, talking of superpowers. Baal Melqart, hungry for children. Swords and torches in the night. Aia: “We shall have joy in one another, while both being true to our memories.” Image of Astarte, milk spurting from her breasts. Stench of rotting shellfish, for purple robes. Gorolot, offered an imperious housemaid. Afra, volunteering in lieu of Aia, comfortable harbor for ships. All because Schön craved freedom.

Well, Schön had lost, whether Afra had mind or not.

Suddenly Ivo could stand the suspense no longer. He put his hands under Afra’s arms, drew her to her feet against him, and kissed her with all the passion he had suppressed for so long. Try
that
for handling!

She woke abruptly. She brought her arms up outside his, wedged her stiffened fingers against his cheeks, and shoved back his head. “Get away from me!” she exclaimed angrily.

Ivo released her with guilty haste.
She had not chosen him!

Then he realized with shivering relief that she thought he was Schön. She had no way to know about the contest result and changeover. He opened his mouth to explain.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ivo,” she snapped. “I can tell you two apart easily. Aside from that, I knew Schön couldn’t get me out of there. It had to be you — or nothing.”

His feeling of stupidity was back in full force. He tried to speak again.

“You thought if only Schön were gone, everything would be just fine. Boy gets girl, curtain lowers on happy sunset. Sorry — when I want a lapdog, I’ll whistle.”

What had happened?
Her dialogue with Schön had suggested that she was in love with Ivo, but now she was treating him with greater contempt than ever before.

“Schön was right about one thing,” she remarked, adjusting her clothing. “You certainly aren’t very bright — and I do dislike stupidity.”

Was she saying she wanted Schön back? That made no sense to him. But if she didn’t want Schön and didn’t want Ivo—

Afra faced about and began to walk away, back toward the chamber where the visions had started. Somehow he knew that if he let her go, he would never recover her — yet he could not act. He had lost her without ever speaking a word.

Jumps of thousands of light-years, until they stood outside the great disk of the galaxy itself, and returned — that he remembered clearly, yet he could not bridge the gap of a few paces between two people now. A history of the Solar System, billions of years strong — yet seconds were undoing him. Where had he gone wrong?

Approach to the destroyer complex: “It’s tracking us!” His foolish jealousy of Harold Groton, returning his concept of the man to the impersonal surname. Afra’s excitement at the element display. The final chamber. S′. Wheels on wheels, symbols meshing in “The Symphony.” Simultaneous yet chronological adventures of galactic history. Schön: “That means our daughters get dinked.” Beatryx: “You were
not
wrong, Dolora.” Harold: “I had thought it was an insult to serve under Drone command.” Where had he gone wrong?

Now Schön had been nullified, Beatryx was dead, Harold was seeking the Traveler, and Afra disliked stupidity. Yet he remained, and so did his responsibilities. Where had he heard that? Promises to keep, and miles to go before… He had to do something for the gallant Groton couple, sundered so unfairly; then—

But I love you!
he cried subvocally at Afra. Imperious she might be, problems she might have — but underneath that surface beauty was an extraordinary woman. She had fought Schön…

She continued walking, culottes shaping a trim derriere, bright hair flouncing loose.

Afra, whose Capricorn history segment had slipped somehow, throwing her instead into a savage personal conflict. Yet that program error had saved her — and him — from a dream-state that might have endured until their bodies disintegrated. The normal person did not emerge from that slumber, as Harold and Beatryx had shown. That, apparently, was the final test: only a mind that could survive and finally break the stasis was fit to go free again. The human mind lacked that capability. Even Schön had been trapped.

Strange, fortunate coincidence, that Afra should have been evicted from that clinging mold. And that she alone, subsequently, should establish a momentary rapport with the supercreature, the Traveler. The Traveler: nerve impulse between galactic cells, whose capabilities spanned from macrocosmic to microcosmic with equal finesse.

Coincidence? Perhaps the Traveler
had touched her intentionally!
This was easily within its compass. To nudge her just enough to break the trance, and then again to win a vital point from Schön… and it could not touch Schön himself — or Ivo! — because of the mind-block against the destroyer-concept Schön had so carefully arranged. Afra had been the only one available with an open yet sharp enough mind…