"What's the big deal?" I said softly. "He's going to do what you want done anyway now, isn't he?"
Adam nodded slowly, then shook his head. "Yes and no," he replied.
Prandy came up and rubbed his shoulders. Glory was at my side.
"It never occurred to me that Cagliostro might transfer his consciousness to the Dominoid," he said. "It was still in a sufficiently disorganized state that he was able to move in and dominate it completely."
I felt a moment's queasiness as an odd vibration jarred me. Looking back, I saw that the control panel was glowing with several colors.
"Still," I said, "he's providing direction. What's wrong with that?"
"The demiurge becomes, in effect, God," he said, "in the next universe. He can impose his will in many ways upon initial and subsequent conditions."
"Oh," I said, and it seemed we were turned inside out and spun, along with everything about us.
Cagliostro's voice rang in my head. "The last journey begins," he stated.
I awoke to a pumping feeling, within and all about me. When I opened my eyes, I saw that Adam, Prandy, Glory, and I were sprawled on the floor, walls, and ceiling, respectively. The Hellhole and our own bodies seemed to phase into and out of existence with each pulsing of the place. I heard Glory hiss, and Prandy groaned. A moment later, there came the annoying high whine of a UHF communication. I looked down at Adam and saw that he was sitting up. I did the same. Then I sprang, landing beside him.
"To continue," I said, "why don't we have a detectable God in our universe? You said they're almost indispensable."
"Oh, they wear out after a time," he replied. "Actually, you met ours. You gave him a bottle of wine."
"Old Urtch?"
"Yep. He was once the Big Guy."
I shuddered. I watched Glory uncoil into a standing position on the wall. I noticed that the pulses seemed to be coming further apart.
"We're slowing," Adam said, moving to the opposite wall where he helped Prandy to her feet. "We're approaching the moment at which I acquired the singularity and the Haven."
"What happens then?"
"He will position us, then accelerate to the final singularity. We will brush by the Big Crunch and depart the universe."
"And?"
"We will die, but the demiurge will change its state and continue on. At least another anthropically-endowed universe will come of this, no matter how warped. That is something to be grateful for. Perhaps analogues of ourselves will exist within it, in some form."
"Is there nothing left to do?" I asked.
"There is always something to do," he said, reaching down and unzipping another area of space. "In this case, we celebrate. I've several cases of champagne in here."
There came another slow pulse as he opened it fully and a cascade of empty bottles rolled out followed by the tatterdemalion figure of Urtch, a bottle still clutched in his hand.
"Eh! Eh! What's going on?" Urtch inquired.
"We're approaching Omega minus one/' Adam answered.
"You might have told me," the ancient demiurge responded.
"I didn't know you were in there drinking my champagne."
Urtch smacked his lips and smiled. "And very good champagne it was," he said. "A nineteenth-century Veuve Cliquot, I believe." He rose to his feet and brushed himself off.
"You didn't even leave us one?"
"I don't know. Didn't realize it was in demand." He gestured back toward the controls. "That the new demiurge?"
"Sort of," Adam replied.
"What do you mean 'sort of? Either he is or he ain't."
"Well, he was. But then another entity took him over within moments of his birth. He wanted to be the demiurge."
"That ain't right," Urtch said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and belching lightly. "That ain't how it's done."
"I know. But there's not much I can do about it."
Urtch rolled his eyes, in two different directions.
"Damn!" he said then. "Thought I was done with all this foolishness." He straightened his garments. "Guess I'll have to set things right."
"I don't think you're a match for him," Adam said.
"Experience counts for something," Urtch told him, and he turned and shuffled off toward the control section.
As he faded into and out of existence he began to glow faintly against the shadowy background. The pulses slowed even more, achieving full stoppage just as he touched the Dominoid's shoulder and said, "Excuse me, sonny."
"What—?" Cagliostro asked, turning toward him.
Urtch moved forward and embraced him. "Family," he said. "Family."
They stood so for several moments, and both of them began to steam to the point of indistinctness.
Then, "No!" Cagliostro cried. "You can't—"
"Yes, I can," Urtch said.
When the steam had fled only a single figure stood before the controls. It was that of the Dominoid. It turned then and waved at us. "Never thought I'd have to run the show twice," Urtch's voice came to us. I rushed to my Alf body even as he continued, "You folks got any way of getting back home?"
Removing the cuff link case from my pocket, I opened it and tore out the lining to reveal the control board for my tiny time-machine. "This is the best I have with me," I called out.
"Let's see it."
I carried it back to him.
He took it from me and studied it. "Dinky little thing would take you a billion jumps to get back there," he stated.
"I know. It was just for getting me to and from my ship, within the century," I said.
"I'll have to hype it up for you so you can do it in fewer steps than that," he said, clasping it with both hands and making it glow. He handed it back to me. "Okay. Better get on with you. I got it all to do over again."
"Uh, thanks," I told him.
I turned and rushed back. Adam was on his hands and knees, rummaging in the space pocket from which Urtch had emerged. "He missed two!" I heard him say. "We can still celebrate."
I raised Alf and slung him over my shoulders in a fireman's carry just as Adam popped a cork. We all moved close together. Urtch made a strange gesture to us and returned his attention to the controls. I activated my own.
We jumped backward from Omega minus one.
"Cats on the rooftops, cats on tiles!" Adam sang as we landed on the windswept plains of a dark world near a faintly-glowing, deserted city. He passed a bottle and then we jumped again. It's a long way to Tipperary.
... A dim, dead sea bottom near the dried-out hulk of an ancient vessel.
Alf the sacred river ran.
Backward
turn
backward
O
Time
in
your
flight
bring
back
my
Roma
for
one
shining
night
We held each other up and sang of strings and sealing wax as the stars were switched on again.
It's the wrong way to tickle Mary. . . .
'"Hsssssssssssssss-sssssssss! Sssssssssssss! Sssss-sss! 'Tis the song the first snake sang, there in her tree," she said.
"You know there are two real endings—one where we had to stay and accompany him as data, like the Haveners."
"' Seventeen bottles of beer on the wall. . .'"
And the light of our day, flashpoint to it alclass="underline"
NINE · NUOVO BUOCO NERO
It took us the better part of the year—there, twenty years forward from our time of departure—to wrestle the Martian singularity a sufficient distance away for our purposes, using my invisible stalking cruiser, and to connect it by warp to the shell of the old Black Place. And it took months to install the amenities, such as the Switch. I made a quick run far forward for some parts for the setting up of a new multi-purpose room. I'd grown attached to the idea of having one around. We all worked to set up the office.