Coils

by Roger Zelazny

  I did not reply. Some things about Ann were coming back to me as I spiraled with the current, rising and falling at dizzying velocities…

  Although I knew that she could see into my mind, I could not prevent myself from laying out some of the things about her which now returned to me. I could even feel her reactions as I did this.

  I was still hazy as to how we had met, while I was back at the university. It seemed that I had learned of her powers at a fairly early point, though. They were potent. She might have carved some sort of empire for herself, rather than helping Barbeau to build his own. What could be safe from her mental probing if she'd a desire to know it? Who could long stand the hallucinatory stresses, the mental harassment she could bring to bear? She could learn secrets, displace enemies… she was a one-woman intelligence agency.

  But.

  She'd a weakness. A big one. Dependency. She kept it well masked, but she needed someone. She had always needed a strong personality outside herself to cling to.

  Ahead… We were coming to something now. I perceived it as a moat of fire…

  Slow, now… Brake. Hold it. I was nearing my destination.

  I felt Ann's excitement growing. I sensed her pique at my appraisal of her weakness. But I also sensed acknowledgement that it was correct. Barbeau provided the rock she clung to now, which was the reason she had tried to confuse me, to finish me off. She had wanted to get back in his good graces again after having failed to keep me in the Keys or break me down on the plane.

  Steady… I drew nearer. Yes. I was moving about the peripheries of Angra's data-banks now. A dark form became apparent within the circle of fires. It grew even as I considered it, its outlines becoming more distinct. Dark, rough-hewn walls, notched as for battle, forms passing to and fro along them. Turrets, machicolated balconies…

  Big Mac was taking form as a fortress, a great, dark citadel within my mind's eye. Now lights flashed within a series of tiny oblong windows, giving to one wall the momentary impression of an old data-punched card held up to a bright light source…

  Circling… Beyond Phlegethon's blaze, another wall became a scarred, unhuman, sculpted face. I reverberated within the circuit and studied it from several angles at once.

  Now, a Stonehenge beneath the sea, filigrees of weeds swaying like smoke-plumes about it, luminescent barnacles winking on and off across its surfaces… Here, a nighted skyline within a massive box, fitted with internal movement. . . There, an ominous black altar…

  Fortress… Castle… Citadel. . . Pulsing, elemental servitors guarding its ramparts…

  I continued to reverberate, dividing, multiplying my points of view. I had been within those storm-gauged walls before. Time was when I was welcome there. To cross over now, I must find its weaknesses…

  I saw that no defender might leave its station…

  Ann's presence continued to intrude, if only in the form of thoughts about her. Had I once been the strong personality to which she had clung? How had I come to work for Angra? Had these things been somehow connected?

  And even as they ran through my mind, I felt these speculations—perhaps unwillingly—affirmed within Ann's consciousness, across the tenuous interface we shared.

  The fires . . . The fires now claimed my attention, resolving themselves into internal, myriad, microscopic movements… The petals of flame became a pointillist study, discrete bright units becoming more and more apparent… Further, further—to their almost but not quite Brownian dartings…

  And Ann, Ann was peering over my figurative shoulder as I carried out my probing. I could feel her wonder at the display. She could not see these things on her own. It was apparently worth the one drawback to her—namely, that I could sense certain things within her mind as well, when we were in such close proximity.

  No, it was not really a random movement of the fiery particles . . . There was a rhythm, a definite periodicity, which, from my many points of view, now became apparent. Somewhere beyond, I was certain, lay word of Cora, information concerning her whereabouts. I studied the movement more closely…

  I sensed an affirmative acknowledgement from Ann when I thought of Cora.

  "Where is she?" I queried. "If you know, tell me and save me this trouble."

  But I immediately sensed a negative. With some difficulty, she covered over a thought of Cora in a warm climate which was not that of Florida. I saw that Ann was with me mainly for the spectacle. She wanted to observe what I had done so far and what I was about to attempt, for her own pleasure and excitement. She could always withdraw in an instant if something horrible happened to me. Secondarily, she wanted to know it for certain if I did not succeed—to have something to take back to Barbeau, having failed in her latest attempt to do me in or drive me over the edge with her illusions. She would not willingly give anything away to me.

  "All right," I said. "Maybe voyeurism's better than no passion at all."

  A wave of pain, offended dignity and something else passed over me. I ignored it and pressed ahead on all fronts.

  … Continuing to reverberate at many points about the moat, I moved forward until I was all but embracing the defending

  movements of the fiery particles. Then I willed that they part before me…

  The flames separated like opening beaks before all of my posts of observation… I passed within.

  The walls, at this range, seemed smoky, swirling, flowing…

  I advanced at two points and was repulsed … The smokes had rushed together and taken on solid form before me, becoming some glistening substance—like blocks of black ice… Staring, I could discover crystal lattices within them, retreating into dark infinities…

  … But as the forces of the citadel were mustered to repel the two aspects of myself, I noted that the walls weakened, growing more tenuous before me at the other vantages I occupied…

  … And for a single, swimming moment they became again the walls which had resisted me when I had traced my check, the walls which then seemed to guard the lost log of my days… Somehow this was much less important to me now. Better now, I decided, to concentrate on my single objective…

  I advanced at four points, and everything which remained before me was transformed into a swarm of fireflies, rushing to block me there. . .

  I advanced at three more points, and at one of them I stepped through…

  … into another city of lights—a Paris, a New York among computers: huge, brilliant, in motion at every point…

  … A faceless phalanx of incandescent defenders rushed toward me, jerkily, like a grouping of marionettes…

  I reverberated, until there were more of me than there were of them. Leaving my phase-doubles to combat them, with those portions of my consciousness committed there, I pressed ahead…

  … to see that if I were to completely suppress the defenders in that place, a soundless alarm would divert a river of light which flowed to my left, causing it to flow to my right…

  … and if this occurred, I would be barred from entering a maze-like grid. It would cover it over, ruining the next stage of my journey…

  … so I deviated, heading for the place of the alarm. To tamper with it, however, I saw, would cause the grid itself to flip, closing down a part of the system…

  … but then there was the mechanism itself which would cause the flipping. It could be deactivated by means of a coded command, the template for which hovered near the alarm like a holographic negative hole-in-space…

  Back-reading, I found the code, then deactivated the alarm… In each of my other phases, I was holding one of the incandescent defenders at bay… For a nanosecond or so, I saw superimposed scenes of the storming of a castle from some medieval epic on the Late Late Show, my subconscious stirred by some vaguely poetic impulse now it was feeling its oats.

  … Torches, cries, flames, flashing blades, buckets of gore, bits of armor here and there, the neighing of a horse, arrow-pierced cuirasses. Alarms and excursions…

  I shook off
the illusions without shedding all of the excitement. I regarded the grid, knowing I had to enter there, knowing too that if I proceeded incorrectly the Double Z data I sought would be shifted, dispersed, to other locales in the overall system, necessitating my hunting them down again—and being faced with the same problem. The data would flee and continue to flee, finding new hiding places, unless it were approached in the proper fashion…

  Another template hovered nearby, but when I back-read it, it provided no key. I studied it, puzzled… It looked almost useful. Then I realized that it spoke my old language, deceit. I saw that it had to be inverted. I did this. Then I superimposed its pattern upon the grid and it was like staring simultaneously through the scopes of a whole battery of rifles—the crosshaired cells indicating the pattern of entry…

  I matched myself to the pattern—like patching a section of wallpaper—and slipped through…

  … into a multilevel maze. It was like moving through a kind of phase space, but the dimensionality was not that important a part of it. I was aware that my understanding of the situation would persist for so long as I was a part of the process. Afterwards, I knew that I would recall it less clearly. My power did not function in a vacuum; it required a situation against which to react. My awareness which accompanied its direction found some means of comprehending the situation, if only by functional analogy…

  … therefore, I saw myself/selves moving simultaneously through several levels of the maze. At each junction, it was necessary to pluck and back-read the template coding for the program I was following—somewhat more complicated than an on-off choice, as I had passed through a binary-quaternary converter on breaching this level of the system itself; a later addition, I decided, installed for greater economy of memory, but also situated where it was as an additional security baffle…

  I wormed my way through the grid's mazework, overflashed once with another combative construct… Fighting in rush-strewn, tapestried halls, stone-walled and gray … Screams and wailing… Heavy, dark-wooden furniture … A swaying candelabra… Dogs barking…

  … I emerged into a mall-like area, parallel rows of lights racing off before me toward some hopefully less than infinite vanishing point… I felt myself growing tired as I regarded them. The struggle with Big Mac's defenses was beginning to fray my concentration…

  I could feel Ann's rapt attention. She was impressed by what she had seen, though her comprehension lagged behind the sensations themselves. She seemed almost to be urging me to produce more spectacles for her.

  "I should charge you admission," I said in my mind, and I felt something like amusement in response.

  … I suggested to my subconscious that another analogue might come in handy. Immediately, the prospect before me began to waver and shift…

  … I stood in a seemingly infinite library. Lines of stacks ran on and on and on before me, into the distance. I moved among them…

  "Don't let it be the Dewey Decimal System," I warned my subconscious—long having suspected it of possessing a twisted sense of humor, I realized at that moment.

  I hurried forward. The rows were labelled alphabetically, huge metal letters affixed at the foot of each…

  … A, B…

  C!

  … I turned and moved up C. The Ca's seemed to go on for forever. I felt my mental fatigue increasing. The long shelves of elaborately bound books seemed determined to hold the Ca range. I began to run…

  … From somewhere in the distance, my mind supplied the sounds of continuing conflict within the huge central donjon—moving nearer. I was simultaneously aware, in my other forms, that the tide of battle was shifting—that I might be losing my grip on one of the alarm systems which I was simply holding, in abeyance, like the jaws of a spring-steel trap. To add a touch of the olfactory, my subconscious threw in a smell of smoke…

  "Thanks, subconscious" I growled, mentally…

  … I finally made it to the Ce's—another interminable-seeming stretch. I increased my pace. I felt Ann's excitement continuing to rise in direct proportion to my own distress. It was still moot as to whether she was cheering me on or hoping to witness an unhappy ending in spades…

  I threw extra strength into my reverberant-attackers' struggle against the defenders. As I did so, the titles beside me became harder to read. Smoke drifted past me, slid between me and the shelves, curled before the lettering upon the spines…

  Cursing, I slowed and read. Still in the Ce's. Damn!

  On and on I ran. The floor became a mirror, and then the ceiling did. An infinite race of BelPatris hurrying through the smoke of reality, the past ablaze to the rear, the future an uncertain progression to infinity. The race is not always to the swift, but that's the way to bet. Damon Runyon? Yes… I felt something like laughter—my own—within and about me. It frightened me…

  I checked the shelves again. Ch's now, thank God! Next the Ci's, and then…

  Ci's! I was into them almost before I knew it. Who needs Ci's? I'd a mind to dump the entire Ci section of Big Mac's memory here in Double Z, as an act of protest or revenge. I also realized that I was suffering from an increasing irrationality from the strain.

  … The clash of arms grew louder, the smells stronger. The smoke thickened…

  No!

  I could not let go at this point! Not this near to my goal!

  I struggled to reassert my control, to affirm my supremacy over all of the systems which confronted me. I slowed. I focussed my concentration…

  The smoke began to dissipate, the sounds grew fainter, the books seemed more solid, their titles clearer—Co! I was into the Co's!

  I almost lost control again at the realization. But the infinite clan of BelPatris—both upside-down and rightside-up—got hold of itself, stabilized its unimaginatively repetitive environment and continued through the Cob's and the Cod's…

  Col's…

  Com's…

  Con's, too. And after the Cop's and Coq's came Cora, coming cunningly, contiguous, constant Cora, Cora consolidated, contained, capsulized, captioned, captured—captive Cora!—concomitant Cora, Cora culled and collected, copyright Cora closed close, covered—

  I dragged my mind back from the Joycean power of the C-matrix and grasped at the Cora volume. Already the smoke was returning, at my brief interval of distraction. The sounds and the smells were rising again, the balance tipping once more in Big Mac's favor…

  I opened the blue-leather, gold-stamped volume. . .

  Cora read the title page, fading even as I regarded it…

  … Cora, still safe, in the hot Southwest… Cora, in… New Mexico? Arizona? "Southeastern quadrant of that section of northernmost New Spain…"

  "New Mexico." Ann could not hide the thought from me in her excitement at witnessing a problem almost solved—the universal impulse to kibitz—"near Carlsbad."

  Smoke billowed up about me. I let go the jaws of the trap. My troops retreated…

  Careless now, I rushed away, leaving Big Mac to scream and gnash his teeth. . .

  Ann, shocked, recovered in a moment with something almost like a sob. She went her way and I went mine…

  Somewhere along the homeward trail, I sensed the shadowy presence once again. This time it did not beckon…

  "Top of the morning to you," I broadcast. "Let's get together for lunch sometime."

  … And then the spiral.

  I opened my eyes for a few moments. Bright daylight flooded the cab. The truck's speed was undiminished. I thought I had what I wanted, but I did not feel like sorting through it all and making plans. A certain numbness had come to fill my head, slowing the thinking machinery.

  I closed my eyes again, to dream I was the cargo of a coffin on wheels, and other things…

  Chapter 10

  ...Were driving. A long stretch of Texas highway… I was reading a book in the rear seat. Nevertheless, I was peripherally aware of the desolate countryside, bleaker now beneath mountains of clouds than it had been when we had commenced
this journey. Aware, too, of the heavy crosswinds, gusts of which occasionally slammed our light car—blows from the palm of a giant hand. The thunder was long, deep rumbles somewhere in the distance, considerably later than the flashes which crawled like rivulets of molten gold spilled from the heights, the cloud-peaks… The sound of a horn dopplered toward us and passed. Dad was driving. My mother was in the front passenger seat. The radio was playing softly, a Country and Western station… I was home for a brief holiday, and we were on our way to visit Dad's older brother's family. I had a lot of studying to do, though, and the books were stacked on the seat at my side. The first drops of rain hit the rooftop like bullets, and shortly after that I heard the windshield wipers come on. The guitar and the familiar nasal twang of someone singing about cheatin' and drinkin' and sneakin' around and not havin' any fun doin' it was interrupted with greater and greater frequency by bursts of static, unless it was the irate husband shootin' at him. In either case, my mother switched it to an FM station where the music was all instrumental and less strenuous. A car passed us, going pretty fast, and I heard Dad mutter something as he put the lights on. Another slap of the giant hand and Dad twisted the wheel to bring us back off of the shoulder. A clap of thunder seemed to come from directly overhead, and a moment later the rain came down like a waterfall. I closed the book, holding my place with a finger, and looked outside. Heavy, gray, beaded curtains cut visibility to a few car-lengths. The wind began screaming at us between buffets. "Paul," my mother said, "maybe you'd better pull over…" Dad nodded, glanced at the rear and side-view mirrors, peered ahead. "Yeah," he said then, and he began to turn the wheel. As he did, another gust struck us. We were on the shoulder and then beyond it. He'd hit the brakes and we were skidding. My stomach twisted as we suddenly nosed downward. A scraping noise passed beneath me, and I heard my mother scream, "No!" Then we were falling, and I heard a crash that was thunder and one that was not thunder, smothering the music and my mother's final scream and everything else…