"Yeah, Carl," I said. "When can these nice people turn out fifty million units for you?"
"Jesus. I don't know."
"Production is not contemplated?" the foreman asked sadly.
"Well… Jake, what do I tell them?"
I said, "The artist would like time to ponder the philosophical ramifications of his creation before considering sharing it with the universe at large."
"Of course. Commendable. Please contact us when time is proper."
"Oh, yeah," Carl said, nodding emphatically. "Sure. And thanks a lot."
"Extreme pleasure has been taken in assisting a consummate artist such as yourself." Carl looked embarrassed.
We got back to the receiving bay as the robots were delivering the Chevy. We had taken the long route-the foreman had insisted that we see the Submicron Fractionating Assembly. Whatever it was, it was pretty.
I didn't see Prime's arrival. I was inspecting what was left of the starboard stabilizer foil when I happened to glance up at Darla, who was staring open-mouthed at something out on the floor. I straightened up, walked around her…
And there was Prime, standing near our miniature spaceship, conversing with Arthur.
He turned a smiled at me. "Hello, Jake," he called.
"You're hard to get hold of," I said, walking over. "But you seem to get around."
Prime glanced around. "Wonderful facility. Have you toured the place?"
"Endlessly."
He laughed. "Odd that you should wind up here."
"Actually, we never intended to leave Emerald City."
"Really?" He seemed pleased to hear it. "I assumed that you were on your way home."
"Without Sam? Hardly."
"No, I suppose not. But it was my intention to give your father some voice in the matter."
"He's not my father. He's an Artificial Intelligence program."
Prime nodded. "And a remarkable one. His Entelechy Matrix was manufactured by the Vlathu, was it not?"
"Yes."
"We know of the Vlathu. They possessed techniques unknown even in the time of the Culmination. The Vlathu attained a very high degree of spirituality for a primitive race."
I thought about that for a moment before saying, "If you consider the Vlathu primitive, what does that make us? We humans, I mean?"
"Humans are one of the ancestral races of the Culmination itself. One of the tributary races. I have told you many times that I am partly human. I meant by that, that the Culmination is in some part composed of human elements."
"I'm not sure I understand," I said. "You may be descended from human beings, but after ten billion years of evolution…"
He laughed. "Evolution. Odd concept. The process isn't automatic, you know. If there is no good reason for a species to evolve, it won't. But let's set that aside. The elements I referred to aren't genetic remnants, but the minds of actual living human beings. Their very soul and substance. They are a vital part of the Culmination. Some of them are your friends."
Darla, Carl, and Lori had gathered behind me. I turned my head toward them, and Darla looked at me gravely. I turned back to Prime.
"What do you mean? Who?"
"Well, Susan D'Archangelo, for one. She has consented to contribute to the project. So has Yuri Voloshin, Sean Fitzgore, Roland Yee, and Liam Flaherty."
"I can't believe you."
"I'll leave it to them to convince you. There has been no coercion. None, Jake. You must believe that."
I was silent for a moment, my mind churning and churning. Then: "I still can't believe it."
Prime's hands went out in a helpless shrug. "I'm sorry."
"What about the others? Zoya, Oni, Ragna, John…?"
"They have declined. They will join you on your journey home." Prime chuckled. "Incidentally, you've forgotten one person. Sam has declined as well."
"Sam never went to church."
Prime laughed. "I dare say he didn't."
Darla asked, "Aren't you forgetting Winnie and George?"
"My dear, they are part of the Culmination. They always were. They are members of one of the Guide Races. Think of how you got here."
"We were kidnapped," I said.
"Your case was special, of course. But what prompted all these quests to find the end of the Skyway?"
He was right. Winnie's map lay behind it all. "About Sam," I said. "You'll return him to me?"
"He will return. Everything will be returned to you."
I stared at him. What was this form I saw? What? What did it represent? I shook my head. "Maybe I'm just slow, but there are a hell of a lot of things I don't understand about all this."
"Then lay yourself open to the dream-teaching. You need not join the project to do that. You will learn."
I was suddenly irked. "To hear you talk, everything's just going along swimmingly. But it isn't. The Goddess has other ideas. Doesn't she?"
He turned and stepped away, halted, then slowly wheeled about, his eyes on the floor, his lips drawn into a wry smile. "Other ideas. No. There is only One Idea, with variations."
"But she's opposed in some fundamental way."
"No."
"Then the dream last night… what was all that about?"
"Dream and find out. Don't fight it. Don't be afraid."
I considered it. "Maybe I will."
"Good. And keep this in mind. Conflict is part of the warp and woof of existence: That which contains no tension is static. If this is true, can any attempt to reach the ultimate be free of conflict? Do not think that the Culmination must be a success from the start. That was a fundamental error of those who conceived it. Yet that mistake did not necessarily lead to a fundamental flaw. The question is, what ultimately happened? Since the Culmination is outside of time, that question can be answered. And you will find the answer if you choose to seek it."
"Doesn't the Goddess know it, too?"
"Of course."
"It doesn't make sense," I said.
He turned and walked away a few steps, stopped, turned about. "I must leave you now. Jake, I have a sense that you must suffer further. I can help to some degree, but I am inhibited by circumstances you might find difficult to understand." He smiled again. "I shouldn't worry. You are well suited to overcoming adversity. I think that is why whatever forces are at work behind you chose you as their instrument. You are the archetypal hero, Jake." He raised his right hand. "Be well."
And he vanished, leaving behind the smell of ozone. The Goddess' exit had had more panache, but his showed real class.
14
"What now, Arthur?" I said wearily.
"I'm supposed to go fetch Sam and the rest of the washouts when Prime gives me thq all clear."
"When will that be?"
"I don't know, dearie. When the current flap has subsided. h won't be safe until then."
"Okay, say you go and get them," I said. "Then what?"
"I take you to the egress portal and show you what cylinders to shoot in order to get back where you belong."
For which there was no need, since I had the Roadmap. I looked around, throwing up my arms. "What do we do till then? Fill out a time card and punch in?"
"Make something," Arthur said, "like Carl did."
"Do you need any ashtrays?"
"How about a hand-tooled leather wallet, monogrammed?"
"You only have one initial," I told him.
"And I don't have any pockets, either. Well, then, I'm stumped."
So was I. But there was nothing to do. We couldn't leave for the master portal, and we couldn't very well drive all the way to the other side of the world, back to Emerald City. We were at Arthur's mercy.
There was sleep to catch up on, though, and thinking to do. Lay yourself open to the dream-teaching, Prime had advised. I wasn't sure I was ready for that yet. I thought about it. I needed answers, but falling into a swoon and getting infused with divine enlightenment wasn't my style. Besides, didn't you have to fast for forty days and nights in
the desert first? l had left my hairshirt at the cleaners back in T-Maze.
I was tired of searching for ever-elusive answers. Damn tired of it. As Darla said, we keep getting pushed around by unseen forces. A phrase Prime had used kept echoing: "whatever forces are at work behind you." Indeed, what forces? If neither Prime nor the White Lady were really calling the shots, who was? Were there other aspects of the Culmination? Was it something outside the Culmination entirely? More whispers in the darkness, more missing pieces of a puzzle I had grown weary of fumbling with.
I lay in the bunk, Darla asleep beside me. No dreams for her. It seemed that if you didn't want to hear the propaganda, you simply turned off your receiver.
I listened. The plant was quiet except for a faint background hum. Now and then came a faraway thump or bangmaintenance attendants about their chores, perhaps. Perhaps not. Were we safe here? Of course not. But Arthur had his funnel-ears pricked for any intruders-and whatever other sensors he had were tuned in, too.
I got up and went out to the cab, sat in the driver's seat. Arthur had inflated the spacetime ship to about half its full size, and had gone inside. Said he had things to do.
I regarded Carl's vehicle. Everyone, including Carl, had wondered about its origin. Had Carl created it himself? The answer, in gleaming chrome and whitewall tires, lay out there on the floor of the receiving bay.
The time comes, as the saying goes, when a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Push me, and I push back. Time to take the offensive. From now on it would be Jake McGraw, Master of Space and Time.
I woke Darla up. "Hmph?" she said.
"C'mon. I got an insane idea."
"Hmph."
I went back to the cab while Darla dressed. "Bruce?"
"Yes, Jake?"
"Patch me through to the plant foreman."
A short delay, then: "He's on the line."
"Hello?" I said.
"Greetings!" the foreman beamed.
"Hi. Uh, would it be possible to use the Product Ideation and Design Facility again?"
"Certainly! At this moment?"
"Yes, please."
"Will send transportation immediately."
But could I do it, make that insane idea a reality? Reality seemed a fluid, changing thing here on Microcosmos, a malleable lump of stuff that could be beaten and pummeled into whatever shape was desired. I'd take a whack at it myself.
I told Darla to take a blanket along. I thumbed the intercom button, thought better of it, and punched up the interior trailer monitor. Oops, Carl and Lori were busy back there. I hoped those kids knew at least the rudiments of birth control. I should talk, I thought.
The robocart arrived, and we stepped on.
"It is revolutionary concept," the design chief said. I thought I detected a note of awe in its voice.
"Yeah, it sure is."
I peered into the depths of the drafting board. Since the object I wanted to create was immaterial, there wasn't much to look at except geometry. But it was fascinating. There were all sorts of things: planar sheaves warping and folding back on themselves, torus shapes and saddle shapes distending and contracting, Moebius strips and Klein bottles and things that neither gentleman had dreamed of; a matrix bound up in knottcd tufts of nothing-at-all, forming the very fabric of space itself-and of time, and even of matter; point-masses migrating across limitless dimensions; impossible constructs, singularities, parallel lines meeting at the edge of infinity…
"However," the chief went on, "technique of dimensional impaction is not unknown. Scale here is much larger, but in theory can be done."
"Can be done in practice?" I asked.
"Would be honored to try. May suggest to begin by postulating isotropic homogeneity throughout entire metrical frame?"
"Sure, let's do that thing. What's an isotrope?"
Two hours later, I had a terrific headache, but the design chief seemed confident that the major theoretical obstacles had been overcome. Problems concerning the actual production of an artifact loomed large, though. The production manager was called in for consultation.
"Retooling necessary," the PM stated.
"How extensive?" the chief asked.
"Possibly entire facility."
"Can be done?"
"Affirmative."
Later, my head seemed about to burst. They brought me a bed-it was a big round cushy thing, very comfortable-and I racked out after trying to rouse Darla, who preferred the floor. Her back, she said.
I slept for an hour, got up and went to the board, where I was served a cup of hot beverage and a sweet roll. "Anything?" I asked.
"Design almost complete," the chief told me. "Must tell you that entire plant staff is much enthused and excited by this particular project. Retooling is progressing on schedule."
"Jeez, you guys must make a bundle in overtime."
"Say again, please?"
I took a slurp of ersatz coffee. "Sorry, just thinking aloud."
We went on an inspection tour of the retooling effort, visiting buildings that I didn't think we'd been in before. They were tearing the place apart. What we witnessed surpassed anything we had seen of the plant's "conventional" production operations. We watched an army of robots storm an assembly facility and reduce it to junk, then cart in new material and build a titanic contraption that looked like a particle accelerator married to an exciter cannon. We stood by, spellbound, as whole new wings were added onto existing buildings-slap, dash, bang-to accommodate new oversized equipment. One of the larger facilities now housed a monstrous affair that had been thrown together in under an hour, a towering edifice of black glass tubing, shining metal, copper spheres, and multicolored domes. At its top, dozens of shafts converged, bringing unknown forces together to clash inside a central chamber. They were apparently testing the thing when we drove through. Violet discharges snaked through the dark glass, and the machine screeched like a beast chained in the depths of hell. We got out of there.
When we returned to PL&D., Carl and Lori were there, looking worried.
"What's going on?" Carl asked. "The whole place is going crazy."
"Quotas to meet for the Five Year Plan."
"Huh?"
"I got a little project cooking," I said.
"Jesus, we thought something happened. Little project?"
A big problem came up: a power shortage. The energy requirements for final assembly of the object were beyond the plant's capacity. Calls went out to other automated industrial facilities around the planet, and most replies were favorable. They'd be willing to help. Word had gotten out about the project. We were a sensation.
The retooling went on for another twelve hours before the initial stages of final assembly commenced. It was then that a horrendous explosion rocked the plant. We tried frantically to contact the foreman. Half an hour later, our call was returned.
"Extensive damage sustained in facility housing Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Ring," the foreman reported.
I felt guilty. "Gee, that's terrible. What happened?"
"Failure in primary power tetrode, leading to fracture and subsequent leakage in coupling loop."
"Oh. Anybody hurt? Uh, I mean…"
"Several worker units lost. Have been replaced."
"I see. Maybe we'd better cancel the project before worse mishaps occur." I was thinking more of our own safety.
"Anomalous event, recurrence statistically negligible. We urge that effort be pursued through to completion."
"Well, I don't know."
"Abandoning task at this point would take on tragic aspect."
"It would?" These guys really were gung-ho. "Okay, let's go ahead then."
"Splendid! Your courage is to be commended."
"My courage?"
Repairs were effected, and work was resumed.
Arthur told me he was ready to leave any time. I told him we wanted to go back with him to Emerald City.
"Fine with me," he said, "though you could wait here. I won't
be more than an hour."
"I think I have to get out of this place before I go nuts. Can you wait till the project's done?"
"Sure. By the way, what in the world are you people trying to do?"
"Produce your hand-tooled, genuine leather, monogrammed wallet," I said.
"Just what I've always wanted."
The final assembly was almost an anticlimax. Everything went smoothly. We were summoned to the showroom.
I held it in the palm of my hand and stared at it. The robot who had delivered it whooshed away.
It was a very simple object, yet a very strange thing to look at: a small, totally black featureless cube.
"A most sublime artifact," the foreman said with almost religious solemnity.
"The cube!" Darla gasped. "My God, Jake, why?"
"I don't really know why, not intellectually," I told her. "Not yet. But everything seems to revolve around this little object. A whole legend has grown up around it, around us. The legend says that when we go back, we'll arrive before we left, and I will give the cube to Assemblywoman Marcia Miller, who will in turn hand it over to the dissident movement, who will in turn give it to you. And you will give it back to me. Except that the `me' you will give it to is the me of three months ago." I took Darla's hand and placed the cube in her palm. She stared at it in astonishment. "My duty seemed very clear. Since somebody stole the one you gave me, I thought I'd better come up with another one to give back to you. And there it is."
"But…" Darla was baffled.
"According to the legend," I went on, "the cube doesn't have an origin. It just keeps cycling from future to past and back again. Now, here I am at the end of the Skyway. It doesn't look as if I'm ever going to find an object like this. In fact, everyone here seems bent on taking the original one away from me. So, I thought I'd kill two paradoxes with one volitional act-I created the damn thing on my own. Now I have the cube again, and the cube has an origin. Well, these guys did the originating, actually. I just gave them the idea."
"But how, Jake?" Darla asked, shaking her head in wonder. "How did you know what to create? Nobody ever really cracked the cube's mystery. Ragna's people made some good guesses, but how did you know what the cube really was?"
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