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Twenty-Nine

 

This time Frank saw it too, not stairs going down into a hole, but a small blockhouse, semi-transparent to him. It had a door like an elevator door, with a square outlined beside it.

"Go ahead," Vic said, and Diacono touched the square. Paul stared; to him it seemed that Frank had simply raised his hand and jabbed the air with his finger.

To Frank's and Vic's perception, a door slid open. Frank turned to Paul and grinned. "After you," he said, gesturing. The Indian stared at Frank, then at nothingness, then stepped forward and found himself in a large elevator. Vic and Frank followed. The door closed, and they could sense their slow descent.

Vic pulled off his heavy mittens and shoved them into the pockets of his mackinaw, which he unbuttoned, then raised the earlaps of his cap, and finally took off his snowshoes. The others did the same.

And still they descended.

"Well," Vic said, "we got here." He looked around as if talking to more than Frank and Paul. Watching him, both were suddenly struck by an intense electric rush that passed over their skin in a series of quick waves. Skin pebbled, hair alive, they too looked around, but failed to see what they had sensed psychically.

"It's okay not to see them with your eyes," Vic said.

"Are all three of them here?" Paul asked.

"Yup." And then, looking upward: "You-all want to give them a demonstration? Gently?"

Frank felt something ruffle his hair, saw Paul's move too, for several seconds. "How'd they do that without bodies?" Frank asked curiously.

"Intention. If your crew members have really formed a unit with you, like Carol's and Ole's and Jerry's have, you can exercise a certain amount of telekinesis when you don't have a body."

The elevator eased to a stop and the door opened. It seemed to Frank, as they got out, that they had come a long way down. A guide waited for them, tall and slender, Germanic-looking, dressed in a jump suit. His "follow me" was crisp but not unfriendly.

Their guide directed them a dozen yards down a corridor to an open door. Inside, the man who waited smiled but did not get up. Like Gandy, he appeared to be an Indian, but unlike Gandy, he was small, dapper.

"Well," he said briskly, "you made it. My name is Alfred; I already know yours." He sounded faintly English.

"You had me worried for a while, you know." He didn't sound to Frank as if he ever worried; he sounded polite, his interest professional, perhaps professorial. "I suppose you have some questions."

"We're looking for the surprise generator," Vic said.

The black eyes were steady and seemed slightly amused. "I see," said Alfred.

"We'd like directions to find it."

"Of course. You're free to go anywhere here that's open to you. I'm not allowed to direct you, but this is not one of the larger installations; the layout is simple. Feel free to look about and find it for yourselves. Walter here"—he indicated the man who'd met them—"will accompany you, to help you avoid disallowed activities. It's not as if I won't know, or can't take care of things like that from here, but Walter's presence will keep you aware as well as informed. You'll find that ignorance is not an allowable excuse, and penalties hardly subject to appeals. So heed him."

"The activity we've got in mind," Vic said, "is to disconnect the surprise generator."

"I am aware of that. Be my guests." He looked around more widely than necessary to view just the three of them. "Gandy told me about you. In fact, since we talked, he and I, I've had a degree of attention on you."

"I didn't realize you guardians were in communication like that," Vic said.

"Indeed we are. In fact, Gandy and I made a wager concerning you."

"Is that right! Who won?"

"As a matter of fact, the matter is not yet decided."

Frank Diacono wasn't sure he was happy about the bet. If it was over whether or not they'd succeed in the disconnection, he hoped that Alfred's bet was on them, but somehow he didn't think it was. Hopefully, the guardian was too ethical to sabotage them. "What do guardians put up as stakes?" Frank asked. "I wouldn't think you'd have any use for money in places like these."

"That's right, Mr. Diacono. We wager favors; they're more interesting, anyway. In time we'll recycle back into the other side of reality, into what is thought of as 'the everyday side.' And once there, we'll no doubt become reinvolved with games and wars and so forth, just as you are. As we have been repeatedly before. At appropriate moments there, we take the opportunity to pay off obligations and wagers—perhaps save the other from a death or imprisonment, or provide him with something desired.

"And no," he went on, answering Frank's new, unspoken question, "we very rarely 'remember,' on the other side, that we had served as guardians or that a wager was owed. But we pay them off, willy-nilly. The knowledge is there, of course; we simply cloak it from ourselves."

His eyes twinkled. "Actually, Gandy thought more highly of your chances than I did. But as I said, I wish you well; to the degree that I feel a preference, I wish you well."

"How long have you been the guardian here?" Paul asked.

"I left the other side in A. D. 1897; I'm rather near the end of my term."

Paul looked at him almost broodingly. "Do other people come in here sometimes? Maybe a hiker now and then who can see the door?"

"You are the second—actually the second, third, and fourth—who've come in while occupying bodies. Walter, of course, arrived in the routine manner, as a spirit, cycling here after dying in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. An old Chippewa trapper and fisherman arrived like yourself, in the flesh, several decades ago. Of course, he did not see the entrance as an elevator, nor did he experience quite as you do what he found here. Your psychic preparation and relative technological sophistication help you to perceive things here quite accurately, actually."

"If you guys came here as spirits," Paul said, "how come you have bodies? Or are those an illusion?"

"Bodies are furnished, but the resemblance to your own is superficial. We wear quasi-organic androids, so to speak, which require neither delivery men, beds, nor cooks, among other things."

"Then you're not really an Indian."

"Correct. But in the Americas, it has become tradition for guardians to wear an Amerind body." Alfred looked appraisingly at Paul. "I suppose though that, in a sense, I am as much an Indian as yourself; I won't tell you who or what you were in 1873, just prior to your last death but one."

Paul regarded all this thoughtfully, nodding. His sessions with Vic had prepared him for it.

"Ninety years and only one visitor till now," Frank said. "Don't you get bored?"

Alfred shook his head. "Boredom is a state of mind, an emotion, actually, and one to which we are not much susceptible. We have ready viewing access, visual and auditory, to anything we wish to watch on the other side. Cabinet meetings, cabals, battles—we can be privy to them all. The London Philharmonic is a favorite entertainment of mine, and so are space activities. And I confess to an enjoyment of watching cinema, both the viewing and the making.

"No, Mr. Diacono, it is not boring here, within the time frame involved. In fact, it is something of a rejuvenative vacation. But when I recycle, I will not be unready."

He shifted his attention to Vic. "Perhaps I'll contact you then, in the current or whatever matrix," said Alfred thoughtfully. "You've come up with enhancement procedures that are not only effective and legal, but in part new, to the best of my knowledge. And I'm sure you realize how extremely unusual that is in the Tikh Cheki Matrix."

"Thanks," said Vic. "But right now I feel like it's time to find the surprise generator and get that job taken care of." He looked at Paul and Frank. "Is it okay with you guys to go now?"

Frank stood bemused. "I'll contact you then," Alfred had said, "in the current or whatever matrix." And said it so matter-of-factly! That and the wager with Gandy reflected a point of view, a perspective, that... Alfred would be virtually beyond fear or threat. Frank had come a long way himself, but he stood well short of that.

Yet Alfred looked up to Vic. Was Vic the more powerful, then? Clearly not. But Alfred's power came, at least in large part, with the territory—the job of guardian. And that would be lost, forgotten, when he recycled, while Vic had attained his knowledge and ability on the everyday side, working under the restrictions there. That's what had impressed Alfred; that's why he looked up to Vic.

Vic's hand on his shoulder removed Frank from his momentary reverie, and with Paul, they walked together into the corridor, Walter bringing up the rear. Vic turned right with the certainty of someone who knew where he was going, and Frank decided he probably did. As a matter of fact, he thought, I suppose I do, too. In this universe I just don't always know what it is I know. Yet. 

Getting to the generator room was simple enough. There was no turn and no change in level, just a straight walk of about fifty yards. Without hesitating, Vic led them past several side doors to the corridor's end, which was a single door of corridor width. It opened at their approach, and they stepped through and stopped. They stood in a dome-roofed chamber about a hundred feet in diameter and perhaps twice as high, shaped like a bell jar. And somehow—somehow it was not underground, but seemed to stand free on a wintry plain like some clear, glass-walled edifice. Beyond its wall Diacono could see snow, and the night, and stars.

In the chamber where they stood were large geometrical objects—cubes, spheres, vertical helices, and others whose names Diacono did not know—all pulsing with soft light at different frequencies. They were arranged in six concentric circles around a hexagonal needle that reached almost or entirely to the chamber's highest point. Inside that towering needle, a continuous light seemed to move upward, a dual movement consisting of a rhythmical upward flickering through a slow even flow.

For a long moment they gazed about, especially at the needle. So this is a reality generator, thought Frank. An ordinary electric power station is a lot bigger and more complicated-looking than this. 

Vic Merlin's attention was captured by an object on the side away from the entry, an object standing outside the outer hexagon of objects as if a reject. He walked to it, followed by the other three.

Can that be it? Frank wondered. Something no bigger than that? But it was—different. Every other object in the chamber was symmetrical; the one they went to was wildly asymmetric, like some gigantic blood-red ruby cut by a weirdly whimsical gem cutter. Chest high to Vic, it was also the only strongly colored object in the chamber. And its light did not pulse; it flashed, fluttered, and flickered, randomly, in a way that made it distracting to watch. It was also the only component there which stood on a separate base—a pentagonal metal plate—and on its top was what appeared to be a separate module, black and opaque.

Vic walked around it, looking for something which he appeared not to find.

"What now?" asked Frank. "The thing on top looks like something I could lift off. Shall I, and see what happens?"

They both looked at Walter, who nodded his permission. Frank took hold of the module and raised it. The machine proper continued its irritating irregular flashing, but at a notably slower rate. Frank turned and put the module on the floor next to the wall.

Paul studied the flickering red crystal. "Maybe just sitting on the base connects it," he suggested, and looked at Frank. "Maybe you and I can move it."

Vic turned to Walter. "Okay to try?"

Again Walter nodded. "That will be quite all right," he said. But now, beneath Walter's exterior nonchalance, Frank discerned a repressed excitement, a pleasure not entirely concealed. This is the surprise generator, all right, Frank told himself, almost certainly. And these guys will be glad to see it go; or Walter will, anyhow. 

Paul and Frank moved to opposite sides of the object and lifted. Instantly the flashing stopped, leaving the object dull and lifeless. It was heavy enough that, being without good grasping angles, holding it was difficult. Briefly Frank considered dropping it deliberately, but decided against it. "By the wall," he said, "and let's lay it on its side." Together he and Paul shuffled to the wall and put it down on one of its larger facets, beside the black module. It remained dull, unlit.

Straightening, they looked at Vic, whose grin was back. "You think that did it?" Frank asked.

"Sure feels like it." Vic was positively beaming now. "How about it, Walt?"

"I'm not authorized to tell you that. It's the sort of thing you must decide for yourself."

Vic turned back to the others. "It's done," he said. "I'm sure of it."

Paul nodded. "It looks dead. And the place feels better."

"Maybe we ought to break it," Frank suggested. "So no one can put it back."

Walter interrupted. "Destruction is not allowed here. Not without special authorization, which neither Alfred nor I can give."

Frank ignored him, continuing to look at Vic. Vic shook his head. "We'd better leave well enough alone."

"That was easier than I thought it would be," Frank said. "What do we do next?"

"We go out, radio Lampi, and tell him to call the Michigan State Police and the F.B.I. Tell them we're out here, and there's a crew of armed hoods with a helicopter and automatic weapons trying to kill us. That ought to..."

Vic stopped in mid-sentence.

"That's right," said Frank. "The radio's back with my pack, where I dropped it, half a mile or more from here."

"Well," Vic said, "we'll just have to go out and see how things look."

Frank realized then that he didn't want to get killed when they went out. They'd won, and presumably the world was saved. He wanted to continue now with the life he had going; it wouldn't be fair to lose it after what he'd helped accomplish.

That's when it occurred to him that you couldn't rely on fairness in the Tikh Cheki Matrix. "Fair" seemed to carry no weight at all there, or at best not much.

 

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