“None that I know of,” she replied. “The Supreme Command of the Irregular Forces of the Liberation would probably thank you for contributing to the cause of bringing down the central government of the Dominion of Worlds. And then they would likely kill you to cover up any traces of their actions here.”
“Oh.”
“But you are free to take the gamble that they might just impress you into service. They do that, you know.”
“I’m not impressed,” Gene said. “But don’t worry, I’m not about to meddle in affairs I know nothing about. All I know is that you’re hurt, you’re in trouble, and you’re the shapeliest shuttle pilot I’ve ever seen. I just want to prevent further harm from befalling you.”
“You are a strange one. Where is your ship?”
“Don’t have one, sorry.”
“Then …” She fell silent as they neared the tall silo-shaped building, prickly with numerous antennae, that stood on the slope of the next hill. Behind it stood other functional structures. The silo was buff-colored with a yellow door at its base. The door’s only feature was a square shiny plate.
She slumped to the ground in front of the door, exhausted. Gene bent to inspect the plate.
“Some kind of electronic lock, I guess.”
When she caught her breath she said, “No doubt the security system has already scanned us and decided we’re unlikely candidates for admission.”
“How did you plan on getting in?”
She unzipped a pouch on her pressure suit and withdrew a small black box with dials and readouts on it. “This.” She fiddled with the settings, then handed it to him.
He took it and examined it. The markings were indecipherable, but somehow he tumbled to the thing’s function. There was an adhesive strip on the back.
“Timed charge?”
She nodded. “It’s powerful enough to take out the side of the building, so it must be set back a distance. Put it about …” She sized up the building. “Here.” She pointed.
He walked to the spot. “Right here?”
“Yes. But —”
“What?”
“There is one flaw to my plan,” she said glumly, “such as it is. They’ll readily detect any major energy discharge.”
“Now, that’s a problem.”
“Yes.” She crossed her legs and let out a breath. “I didn’t have much time to think this through. But I suppose the only thing to do is rush for the communications room and get off the transmission as quickly as possible. After that the only thing we can do is hide in one of the tunnels.”
“Where they’d have us neatly cornered.”
“True.” Her purplish-blue eyes rolled. “I suppose it’s useless.”
“Don’t give up yet.”
Gene approached the door and eyed it up and down.
“Do you have any ideas?” she asked.
“This security system you mentioned, the way you phrased it —” He ran a hand over the smooth yellow-painted metal of the door. “Is it controlled by an Artificial Intelligence?”
“Of course,” she said. “How else could a security system know friend from foe?”
“Right. If we did get in, we’d have to contend with it. True?”
“We’d have to take it out.”
“Hmm. First we have to get in. I’m going to try something.”
“What?”
“Little magic trick I know.”
Gene squared himself in front of the door and extended his right hand, bringing the palm up flush with the metal plate.
She watched with interest.
““Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie,”” he began.
She was very interested. One pale eyebrow rose.
““A fly can’t bird but a bird can fly,’”[4] he finished.
He repeated the couplet several times, keeping perfectly still, fixing his gaze straight ahead.
Presently the door emitted a high-pitched tone. It emitted several more in a complex harmonic sequence, then beeped dissonantly. After a few more seconds it slid aside with a hiss.
“Amazing,” she said.
“Nothing to it.”
“Whatever was that?”
“A little facilitation spell. I can’t do much in the way of hocus-pocus, but I can do a door-opener in worlds with manageable indigenous magic. Fortunately, this is such a world.”
She guffawed. “You’re a magician?”
“An inept one. Please, I’m very sensitive about it.”
She laughed.
“Don’t you have any compassion for the handicapped?”
“I have no idea who you are or what you’re up to,” she said, “but you do have style, that much I’ll say.”
“Style is the last refuge,” he replied as he helped her up, “of those who are short in the substance department.”
The strange building was dark inside. They entered cautiously.
Six
Plane
The horizon had lightened a bit, he thought. But he could not be sure. He had been walking for … how long? But there was no time, of course. Nothing, except …
Was it that he had a better conception of himself? Not a conception, exactly. It might best be said that he had a firmer grasp on his own reality. The situation had been touch and go for a while. (Timelike words again! No avoiding them, try as he might.) He had felt that he would dissolve, fade away. But now he was fairly sure that his existence, such as it was, would continue for an indefinite time into an indeterminate future. That was something. Not much, but something.
There was not much else, however. His name still eluded him. He had no memories to speak of. Only, now, a vague sense that much had gone on before.
Well, that was more than he had possessed on his arrival here.…
Again, the persistence of time. Perhaps time did have a meaning here. Things were changing, albeit imperceptibly. Conditions were … improving. No. That was exaggeration. It was enough that things were changing, and perhaps changing in an important way.
But on the other hand …
Did he have two hands? He looked at them. Yes.
But on the other hand, not much about this place had changed. It was barely a place at all. There was a nothingness about it that was disquieting, that defeated him. There was too much nothingness here. In fact, there was almost no “here” in which to contain a nothingness. There was absolutely nothing to distinguish any one point on this plane from any other …
Until now.
He stopped. Far ahead, something rose above the horizon. It wasn’t much of anything but a line, a spike, a rise of something that had no characteristics save that it was perpendicular to the line of the horizon. It seemed very far away.
A goal! He had a goal! He strode forward eagerly.
Unlike the horizon, this new feature of the universe got closer the more one walked toward it. As he neared, it got bigger, and he began to notice that it was thicker at its base. It was a tall, thin pyramid — an obelisk, and there was something at the top, an irregular shape, but he still could not distinguish it.
He hurried toward it.
He arrived at the column’s base and found that he could barely see the top. It was almost lost in the darkness. Yet he could make out a shape.
It looked like a man up there. Yes, very definitely, though the features were indiscernible. The man seemed to be sitting atop the obelisk, seated in a wing chair. The chair rested on a capital that crowned the shaft.
He stared up at the figure. It did not move. He continued watching. Before long he could have sworn that he detected movement, perhaps a slight shifting of the figure. But no more than that. Whatever or whoever it was preferred not to move.