“That’s the trouble! Everything was terrifying and I was scared the whole time, and now ... just anticlimax. And ...”
He knelt and circled her with all his arms, covering her thorax from armpit to hipbone. “Going back to the Triskelians?”
“Yes.”
“Ardagh, you will be the greatest surgeon and Shirvanian will have created the ultimate automaton while I’m still trying to learn useful things like square roots and set theory. I have so much to catch up on.”
“And we won’t see each other again.” She loosened one of his arms and took the hand, examined it.
“You want one for a souvenir?”
She laughed. “I was thinking how perfect, how perfectly shaped it was, how suited to your arm and body. I wanted to remember ...”
“I’ll make sure we see each other again.” He replaced the arm around her body. “And you do look good in that creation of Clothier’s.” He grinned. “But not as good as you looked without it.”
* * *
Ardagh and Joshua were waiting in the aircar with the motor running. Mitzi ran across the field, hair flying and cigarette bobbing in her mouth; climbed aboard, slid into the pilot’s seat and pulled levers.
“Now let’s see your license,” said Joshua.
“Sorry, sweetie, I left it on the ship.”
“If that’s dope you’re smoking I’m getting out,” Ardagh said.
Mitzi laughed. “No such luck. Just tobacco, found it in the freezer under a ton of ice. Where’s Sven? Thought he or Dahlgren would come.”
“They both said they never wanted to see those things again,” said Joshua.
The aircar was the old model Joshua had found in the hangar. The engine had been put in order, and the craft was good enough for the weather: rain, sun, cloud and wind battling for control of the sky.
Three trimmers and a medtech rolled out the cage; the clones hung on to the reinforced bars and gaped sullenly. Once in a while the female whimpered and touched her face; it had a strange flattened look: medtechs had reshaped her harelip and sprayed the wound with skintex. Eventually it would peel, her face would be new and whole.
The ergs pulled a cable from the aircar and hooked it on the cage. Mitzi tapped a signal: the aircar rose, the cage swung. The female huddled in one corner. She had not provoked the male since the operation, because her face hurt so, and he had found her so strange he contented himself with giving her a few half-hearted pokes.
The aircraft soared over buildings, dead reactors like gray mausoleums, and two or three ergs stalled in the middle of the scoured terrain of Zone White; swung toward track 2, tracing the white brick road. The landscape was that of a sterile moon. The sky was pale, almost blue. Fabrics of fine rain parted like curtains, then wind swept it, and the salt-ringed pools below rippled, stilled to mirrors, rippled and stilled again. The pink sun stood overhead at noon.
The aircar rose until the dun-colored clouds covered the terrain. It flew through nothingness specked with glimpses of broken-backed land where the vapors thinned.
They did not say much during the hours of travel or when they circled over the green brick road, the remains of the house, the fresh mounds near the cabbage patch where the ergs had reburied Yigal, and nearby, Koz’s idol. The earth was already covered with seedlings.
The aircar lowered until the cage thumped the ground, and hovered. Joshua unrolled a ladder, climbed down to the cage roof and pulled out a pin. The door swung open. He disengaged the hook, climbed back and pulled the ladder up.
The clones hung back in the corners of the cage for a few moments, staring with distrust at the open door. Then they both jumped for it, tangling in the doorway. The male shoved away the female and stepped out. He took a few paces, gripped the soil with his toes, stood facing the trees; his body flashed pink-white in a brief clearing of the sky.
The female came out slowly, picked up a stone, and crept softly behind him, raised it—
“Oh, God—”
“Easy, Ardagh.” Joshua touched her arm. “They’ve been through that before.”
—and a multicolored bird flew by, screaming fiercely. She dropped the stone and followed it with her eyes till it disappeared. She forgot the male and took the bird’s direction; the wind lifted her hair, gently for once; in the distance her face was almost comely. She passed through waist-high brush, stopped and turned. The male was watching her. They had never in their lives been so far apart. He approached her slowly and paused where the brush began. They stood looking at each other clothed in leaves,
“Okay, that’s it.” Mitzi snapped flame to a fresh cigarette and the aircar rose, the cloud pressed in again.
Ardagh said, “I wonder what they’ll make of Topaze.”
“A ménage à trois,” said Mitzi.
* * *
“Sven.”
“Yes, Mod Dahlgren.”
“I hope you will not be offended if I ask you this question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Does my appearance disturb you?”
“Oh no ... it might if my father was dead. Why?”
“I was curious. Would you not have taken me for him, otherwise?”
“I’m sure I would at first. You do look just like him. But, you know, when I was a child, even though he hadn’t much time for—for being a father ... I lived close enough to him to know not only how he moved and spoke, but how he reacted to everything around him.”
“Then you would not truly have taken me for him.”
“Not for very long. I’d certainly take you for his brother.”
“Thank you,” said erg-Dahlgren.
DAHLGREN WAS breathing impatiently over a cranky Shirvanian who was trying to design a tree of machine hierarchies when there were a bare hundred and fifty live ergs left above trimmer class in the complex, and all echelons were broken.
“I would like to speak to you, Dahlgren,” said erg-Dahlgren.
“Just a minute! Just a minute!”
“Please, Dahlgren, now. Outside.”
“What do you want? What is it?”
“Shirvanian is about to throw a tantrum, and I know you need rest.”
“Mod Dahlgren, I have so much to fin—”
“I know, and I would like to show you something. Please.”
“Now what’s the tr—”
“Just down here, a short way ...”
“What—”
“ ... and in here.” Erg-Dahlgren closed the door behind them.
“Now what the devil do you want?”
Two rumpled beds, an overturned chair, a chess table. Erg-Dahlgren righted the chair. “The move is number twenty-eight. White Bishop prevents further advance of pawns by moving to Knight three.” He sat down on the righted chair and moved the Bishop.
“Have you gone crazy?” Fists on hips, Dahlgren was staring at him.
“Out of order is the expression, Dahlgren. I am the only person here capable of working around the clock, and I have been doing so. I do not need rest, but I would like a change, and I want to play chess.”
Dahlgren sat down suddenly and sweat broke out over him; he panted.
“You see. That is why I brought you here.”
A medtech slammed the door open and rolled in, needle poised. Dahlgren’s face was scarlet. “Yes, but you do not understand.”
“I do not know the words for what you are doing to yourself, but I believe I understand. You want to restore ...”
“The status quondam. I suppose so ...” He raised his hand slowly and attacked the White Bishop with N-R4. “There is very little time. In a few days I will board ship and face a GalFed inquiry. I will have a lot to think about on the way.”
29. Q-Q4. “Check. Nothing can be restored, Dahlgren. Some things may be finished.”
“Nothing can be finished.
I have nothing.”
“Nothing? Your son is alive, and you are playing chess.”
Dahlgren laughed. His eyes were full of tears. He took himself out of check with K-R2.
“Are you not satisfied with your son, Dahlgren?” 30. BxP.
Black pushed Pawn attack with P-N6. “I am more than satisfied with him. He is quieter than me, like the old man, and better-natured than both of us. He has her eyes and mouth ... and he nearly gave his life to save us ... and I have not told him how much ... and I have not even thanked you for all you have done.”
“That is not important.” 31. He took Pawn with Knight’s Pawn.
Dahlgren took Pawn with Rook.
32. PxP.
NxP.
“If we were not on the same side this would be a savage battle,” said erg-Dahlgren. “Now both Kings are exposed.”
“I am exposed. I will have to answer terrible questions.”
“I hope I have not helped save you to put you in more danger, Dahlgren.”
“I have put myself in danger.” And the magnificent, obscene erg-Queen had created the only two creatures in his prison, erg-Dahlgren and Grayhead, who had made any effort to help him. He had stimulated envy, malice and resentment in men; it had found its way into their machines and slaughtered them. Of all those murdered souls he could not think of any who would have battled to free him from his captors and only Haruni had tried to save him from his delusions.
33. Erg-Dahlgren moved King to R2 and avoided double check, and Black took Bishop with Rook so that 34. Queen would take Rook and remaining Black Rook would move to B7. “Check,” said Dahlgren. 35. King moved out of check to N1, and Rook to B3. 36. Queen to Q3, Black took Pawn with Knight. “Check,” said Dahlgren.
“Since you have an answer to everything, Dahlgren ...”
37. K-R2.
Dahlgren moved Rook to B7. “Check. I presume you are going to resign, Mod Dahlgren ... what did you have in mind?”
Erg-Dahlgren nodded and stared at the board as Dahlgren swept the pieces from it slowly with his arm and pushed them aside with the others. “Since Sven has said that although he would not mistake me for you over a period of time he would accept me as your brother, I do not see why I cannot go to Gal Fed Central and answer questions in your place. I would surely pass there: like you, Dahlgren, I am well-tested and built to last. Then you might be free here to do as you chose, whatever is possible, at least for a while.”
Dahlgren wiped his sweaty face with his palms and dried them on his thighs. He sat back and formed his face into a thoughtful shape. He did not say that his pride would never allow such an act, nor express insult that it should be suggested; he neither thanked nor reproved erg-Dahlgren for offering himself up to senseless risk; he did not tell erg-Dahlgren, in his innocence, that such a trick would certainly be found out sooner or later and that he, Dahlgren, would be punished for it. He simply took the gambit and began playing a different game.
“That is a very interesting idea,” he said.
“It would be much like what was planned before,” said erg-Dahlgren. “Only without erg-Queen and those stupid androids. You have said so yourself, that I must do it if it would save anything.”
Dahlgren smiled. “The questions would be much harder, and there would be no applause or admiration for Dahlgren.”
“I am not sure I would know what to do with those if I had them.”
“Then perhaps you should learn what it is like to want them, if you are to take my place.”
“If it is necessary I will learn that too.”
“It’s worth considering. But you still have much to do here, you know.”
“Yes, but I am supplementing you. Our tasks are almost equal. And my future is uncertain as well—and what other use is a machine in the shape of a man, except what I am suggesting? I would like to see a little of the universe before the future closes in.”
“Yes. Then let us say we stand in equal places, and we must make some kind of decision. How shall we decide, Mod Dahlgren?”
“Very easily, Dahlgren.” He picked up, tossed and caught the white coral Queen. ‘We’ll play a game of chess.”
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