“Which would certainly be direct evidence.” E. C. Tally gestured to Birdie. “Go ahead, Commissioner, with J’merlia. When Councilor Graves joins me we will come after you. The cable provides an unambiguous trail for us to pursue.”
Birdie found himself following the thin figure of J’merlia down an angled and jointed tunnel, whose sudden changes of direction made his head spin. The tunnel branched occasionally, and parts were so dimly lit that the walls could not be seen, but J’merlia followed the thin line wherever it led. Birdie trailed along behind, his hand touching the Lo’tfian’s back. Their emergence into a giant domed chamber came as a shock.
The downward-curving floor formed a shallow circular bowl, marked off in concentric rings of pure color. Under the brilliant overhead light their reflection hurt the eyes. From the meeting place of each pair of rings rose insubstantial hemispheres, arching up over the middle of the chamber. The line that J’merlia had been following led toward that center, straight as a spoke on a wheel. Halfway in it stopped. Kallik was lying on the floor there, a compact dark bundle on the boundary between a purple and a red ring. In two front paws she held the spool for the line, and the other end had been wrapped securely around her body.
And beyond Kallik’s unconscious form…
The innermost ring was blue, purest blue, a monochromatic 0.47-micrometer blue. At its center stood a raised dais of the same color, with a dozen glassy seats upon it. In two of those seats lolled the unmistakable forms of Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial.
Birdie started forward. He was restrained by J’merlia’s grip on his sleeve.
“With respect, Commissioner, it may be unwise to proceed farther.”
“Why? They don’t look dead, just unconscious. But they could be in bad shape. We have to get ’em out and take care of them, soon as we can.”
“Assuredly. My first reaction was the same as yours, that I must proceed at once and rescue the masters. But then I thought to myself, the Hymenopt Kallik surely operated with the same imperative. She saw the masters, she went forward toward them — and she did not reach them. When I realized that, I also realized that the worst way for me to serve the masters would be to become unconscious, as they are. I returned for safety to the second outer chamber. I had formulated no safe plan of action when the human, E. Crimson Tally, appeared.”
“He’s not a human. Tally’s an embodied computer.” Birdie did not go into details. He was too busy thinking about the other things that J’merlia had said.
“Why didn’t you just grab hold of the line and pull Kallik out?” he went on. “She doesn’t weigh much.”
“I was unable to do so, Commissioner. Try it, if you wish.”
Birdie seized the end of the line and heaved, as hard as he could. Kallik did not move a millimeter, and the line inside the pattern of rings did not even leave the floor. It was held there, fused to the surface or secured by some form of field. Birdie was still tugging and swearing when E. C. Tally and Julius Graves arrived.
There were five minutes of questions, suggestions, and counter-suggestions. At the end of it no one had bettered J’merlia’s first proposaclass="underline" that it was safe to do now what he had been reluctant to do before. He would enter the hemispheres and attempt to retrieve Kallik. If he failed, for any reason, the others would be on hand to help him. He would wear a line around him, so that if he became unconscious he could be pulled out.
“Which we know doesn’t work for Kallik,” Birdie said.
But he had no better ideas. They all watched in silence as J’merlia walked forward steadily, passing through the yellow and green rings and half of the purple one. At that point he hesitated. The thin head began to turn, and the pale yellow eyes on their short eyestalks moved dreamily from side to side.
“J’merlia!” Julius Graves shouted at him — loudly. The Lo’tfian stared around in a vague and puzzled way. He folded his thin hind legs and began to sit down.
“That’s enough!” Graves was already pulling on the line. “Get him out, quick — while he can still stand.”
J’merlia came reeling back from inside the pattern of rings. At the edge of the green annulus he jerked up to his full height and peered around him, but he allowed the others to haul him all the way out. On the edge of the yellow ring he sank down to his belly.
“What happened?” Tally asked. “You were progressing well, and then you halted.”
“I don’t remember.” J’merlia crouched down on all his limbs and turned his eyestalks to stare back into the circle. “I was going in. Steadily, without difficulty. And then all at once I was going out, facing the other direction and being pulled clear.”
“A Lotus field.” Graves was nodding his head soberly. “Once Darya Lang pointed out that Glister is a Builder creation, we might have expected it. There are Lotus fields on many artifacts. The most famous one surrounds and protects Paradox. But J’merlia is lucky — he was exposed to only peripheral-field strength. Only the most recent of his memories were erased.”
“Which may not be true of Kallik,” E. C. Tally said. “And still less of Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial. The Lotus field of Paradox erases all memories.”
“From men,” J’merlia said, “and from Lo’tfians and Hymenopts. But from machines? Or from computers?”
The others turned to look at E. C. Tally. He nodded. “According to the records, all memories are lost in Paradox, from Organics or Inorganics. However.” He bent down to release the line from J’merlia and place it around his own body. “However, this is not Paradox. The Lotus field here may not be the same. An experiment is in order.”
They watched in silence as he cautiously stepped into the yellow ring, then passed across the five-meter band that led to the green. In the middle of the green annulus he paused and looked back.
“I feel some slight disturbance of circuits.” His voice was calm. “It is not enough to inhibit performance, nor to prevent my further progress. I will proceed.”
He walked on, descending across the shallow bowl of the floor. Five paces short of the place where J’merlia had faltered, he paused again.
“I must return.” His voice had become halting and slow. “I cannot retain information. It is being destroyed in both current and backup files… I record a loss of fourteen thousand sectors in the past three seconds.” He turned and took one hesitant step away from the center. Then he seemed to freeze.
“Twenty-three thousand more sectors are gone,” he said dreamily. “The rate is increasing.”
“That’s enough.” Graves heaved on the line, and Tally came bobbing and weaving back to the periphery of the chamber. At the edge he halted and shook off Birdie Kelly’s supporting hands.
“Do not worry, Commissioner Kelly. I have lost some data — all recent — but I am still fully functional. Most of my stored memory has not been affected.”
“But we’ve answered the main question,” Graves said. “The field is just as effective on organic or inorganic memories. So we can’t get them out — any of them.”
“We must.” J’merlia stood up and made a movement as though he was ready to run back toward the middle of the chamber. “The masters are in there! Kallik is there! We cannot abandon them.”
“I am sorry, J’merlia.” Graves walked across to place himself between the Lo’tfian and the silent forms at the center of the room. “If we could do something to help Kallik and the others, we would — even though Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda tried to kill us, back on Quake. But we can’t do a thing to get them out.”
“That statement is plausible, but not proven.” E. C. Tally had been standing motionless. Now he raised his hands to touch the sides of his head. “I would like to question it. When I was receiving my original indoctrination, before I set out for Dobelle, there were calibration problems. To make the required adjustments, it was necessary to remove my brain.”