The Catman nodded.
“But how?”
“You to the meeting, then him after you. Come home.”
“Dad, it isn't your onshift, you can get yourself in a bad way. Go now, before anyone sees you.” The single dead eye of the gnome stared up at the hidden roof of the cavern. Neil thought of metal surfaces. His palms were wet. The air sparkled with scintillance; he stopped it.
“You won't come back with me?”
“I can't. Please, Dad.”
“You've seen what this is like. You're my son. I can't let you do it.”
“Dad, go away. Please! I know what I'm doing.”
“Neil.”
“Please, Dad! I'm begging you. Go away.”
“And nothing up there matters more than this?”
“You're not turned away? It doesn't make you sick? Not even here, not even seeing this, not even here will you make a stand? My God, Dad, can't you see you're more destroyed than I'll ever be, no matter what I do?”
“Make a stand? I'm here, aren't I?”
“Go away!” Then, trying to hurt him because he did not want him hurt, he said, “Your wife is waiting for you.”
“Stop it, Neil. She was your mother once.”
“The once and never mother to the pervert thief. And you, her consort. Lovely. You want me to come back to that? I won't let my eyes see it again. Not ever.”
“How long have you been-”
“How long have I been like this?” He waved an arm at the great machine. “Three years.”
“But there was Joice, we thought, your mother and I thought.”
“It didn't work. It wasn't enough.”
“Neil, please, it's not for you. It's-”
“It's what, Dad, it's what? Perverted? Nauseating? Destructive? Pointless? I could apply them all to the way you live with her?”
“Will they come up here after us?” He nodded toward the ledges of cave dwellings and the people moving about them.
“I don't think so, I don't know, but I don't think so. Everything was arranged. I don't know why that one-” and he indicated the body of Mr. Robert Mossman below, “-I don't know why he came after me. But that doesn't matter. Go back. Get out of here. Your promotion, your job, it's almost time for the permutations, God knows that bitch won't give you a moment's peace if she doesn't get rejuvenated. You're offshift, Dad! You've never even bent a reg before…please get the hell out of here and leave me alone.”
“You don't understand her.”
“I don't want to understand her. I've lived with her for twenty-eight years.”
“You won't come back with me?”
“No.”
“Then let me stay.”
The cheetahs closed their eyes and dropped their heads onto their paws. The falcon shrugged and ruffled itself.
“You're out of your mind. Do you know what I'm here for…of course you know…go home!”
So they walked down past the still body of the little metal and flesh gnome, down the ledge, down to the floor of the great cavern, the thief, the policeman and the animals padding along behind. They paused at the body of Mr. Robert Mossman and Neil Leipzig, to make certain he knew what he was walking into, took the killer's communication phone from his ring finger, called Lady Effim, and told her what had happened. She said, “I apologize, Neil. My companions are, how can I put it meaningfully, devoted to me. Mr. Mossman was very much on his own. I regret his death, but I regret even more that this has caused you to doubt my word. You have my assurance everything was ordered correctly for your arrival. You won't be troubled again. And again, I ask your pardon.” He turned her off and he went with his father to the village of the computer.
“For the last time: will you leave now? I don't want you to see this.”
“I'll stay. I'll be right over here. Perhaps later…”
“No. Even if I go back, I'll only come here again. I know what I need.”
“I'll have to keep tracking you.”
“That's your job.”
The thief held a tiny inhalation tube filled with soft, feathery yellow dust. He had received it from the hand of the cyborg woman who ran the computer's village. It was called The Dust, and spoken of reverently. It was much finer and looked more potent than any Dust Neil Leipzig had ever used. He knew what was going to happen, and could only guess at the intensity of the experience.
The world aboveground was free, totally and utterly free. There were no boundaries, no taboos beyond causing other's harm. And even in such a world, this was forbidden. The last, the final, the ultimate sexual experience.
“I'll wait.”
He didn't answer. He removed his clothes, walked to the towering bulk of the computer and touched it.
The crackle-finish surface of its north flank was smooth and cool to his touch. He felt sensuality pulsing in the machine. They had exposed the leads for him, and he paused for a moment to consider what obligations they must owe Lady Effim for them to give him The Dust, to permit him Mekcoucher time with their love-partner. The dwellers in this subterranean hideaway. They were all like Fursday. Advanced stages of love commitment to this machine. Part metal, part human, totally the computer's property. Helpless to deny their passion. He grabbed the leads.
The blue lead went into the surgically implanted socket on the inside of his right thigh, the red input lead went into the socket on the inside of his left thigh. The “stim” electrodes found their proper areas through his hair and scalp. He merely placed the medusa cap on his head and they wriggled to their proper clips, sank their fangs, wire snakes. One lead hooked him into the plethysmograph and the Lissajous oscilloscope and the GSR galvanometer. The Velcro band containing a million black-dot photocells was ready and he wrapped it around his penis. Then he snorted The Dust, the yellow wonder from Barcelona.
He lay up against the metal body of the machine, arms out cruciform, legs spread, cheek flat to the waiting surface. He could feel the expectancy in the computer, hungry lover.
He thought of the first time he had made love to Joice, the feel of her flesh. It was not enough.
Then he contracted the muscles in his thighs and closed the circuits.
Instantly, the metal of the machine began to flow. He felt himself sinking into the north flank of the computer. His fingers penetrated the metal as easily as if it had been modeling clay. He began to get proprioceptive feedback from muscle activity…he could feel the whorls on his fingertips as sucking whirlpools, dark swirling waters that drew his blood and bones through the flesh and out into the machine, spinning the essence of his physical being away from its skin container…his chest began to harden, to vibrate with sound like a thunder sheet of aluminum…the soles of his feet melted and his arches flattened and his lower legs oozed into puddles of mercury…he sank into the machine, was enclosed, its arms around him, welcoming him…
The Dust blew in hurricane clouds through his body and puffed out through the great smooth apertures in his head and back and buttocks. The Dust mingled with lubricant and it was altered, even as he was altered.
He perceived with purest immediacy the sense of his positioning of arms and legs and ferrite cores and LSI circuits and bowels and conductors and limbs and body and plates and fissures and counterweights and glands and wiring in the immediate environment that he was the machine had begun to be him.
Then the auditory and visual feedback began, delayed responses, an instant later than they should have been. He spoke: Oh, good and it repeated from another mouth a moment later, ood. Echolalia.
He felt his penis engorging with blood and felt the density of light increasing in the capillaries as the plethysmograph measured his arousal in a new language the machine he was the machine interpreted…the density of light decreased… increased…decreased…increased…