"So," I said. "What you people do basically is hang out and… what, have each other over for tea?"
Sean chuckled. "Among other things." Sean walked to the pond's edge and surveyed the scene. "Very nice place indeed." Susan and I reseated ourselves.
"Tell me something, Suzie," I said. "Why did I have to climb a mountain to get here? If this is some Never-never-land, why couldn't you have just materialized me right here?"
"I didn't materialize you, I just let you into my space. I want people to have a sense of having traveled some to get here. Next time, though, I'll eliminate that part of it, if you like."
"No, no," I said. "It was interesting. Beautiful, actually."
"Yes, a journey is always beautiful."
"Some of ours haven't been."
"There've been some bad things," she admitted. "But it's all been an experience."
"I suppose you can say that about anything that happens."
"You can, but it's true."
I looked off into the quasi-Zen rock garden. I wasn't learning much. But then, I really had stopped caring so much about finding the key to all this. I was convinced that Susan and the rest were okay, were under no compulsion or duress, and that was all I needed to know. I decided right then that if the four of them wanted to stay, I wouldn't argue with them. I was going home; if they wanted a lift, fine. If not, fine.
Still, I wondered what would become of Susan, and felt obliged to find out.
She seemed to be in tune with my thoughts. "Jake, would you like a small taste of what it's like?"
"Is that possible?"
"Sure. I don't see why not."
"A free home trial, no obligation?"
She giggled. "So to speak."
I nodded. "Let me ask you this: Were you offered this sort af thing?"
"Uh-huh."
"And you took Prime up on it, right?" She nodded.
"Was everyone asked to take a trial run?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"And did anyone besides you four take it?"
Susan chewed her lip. "You know, I don't believe anyone but us did."
I bent over, rested my elbows on my knees, and watched a circular wave propagate across the pond. Well, I had at least one piece of evidence, circumstantial though it may have been.
"He's thinking we were hooked, Suzie," Sean said.
Susan nodded solemnly. "Funny that it worked out that way. But it's not true, Jake."
After a long moment's contemplation, I said, "There's only one way to find out."
But I thought, should I risk it?
I turned and looked deep into Susan's eyes, trying to see through to some core of her that might have been hollowed out and filled with something that was not Susan at all. I searched, but saw nothing but the warmth, affection, and trust I had come to know was there.
"Take me for a ride," I told her.
She smiled and took my hand. "Let's walk," she said, rising.
20
We walked past the pond and through more oriental gardens. Sean accompanied us.
"I'll go along with you a bit," he said, "if you don't mind. Then I'll be on my way."
"Come with us, Sean," Susan said. "By all means."
The gardens gave way to forest, and we climbed out of the valley. Reaching the timberline, we broke into alpine meadow. The air grew chilly, but I wasn't cold. The meadow sloped upward and ended where patches of snow lay atop gray-brown, shelves of rock. We walked laterally along the slope, crossing through colonies of mountain wildflowers, their stems bending in the wind. Cold breezes from the summit blew about us, and puffs of misty cloud scudded through a bright, silver-gray sky. The grass fluttered in waves up and down the mountain. A streak of sunlight fell across the high part of the meadow, then faded. Clouds grouped and broke apart, chased by icy fingers of wind. The smell of heather and wildflowers rode on the lean, bracing air.
Susan and I walked hand in hand, Sean to my left and a little behind us. Susan didn't seem to be leading me anyplace in particular, yet her stride had purpose in it.
"Beautiful, this place," I said. "Where is it? Is this someplace in space and time, or is this the Substratum?"
"This is the Substratum," Susan told. me. "And most of what's around us now is due to you."
"Huh?"
"This is basically your show now, Jake. My turf petered out a little ways back."
"Yeah?"
I didn't know what to make of that. I didn't feel in control of the situation. This place was as real as any I'd ever seen, and just as responsive to my whims and desires as the rest of the universe was, which is to say not at all.
We had traversed the windward face of a huge mountain whose peak was unseen, lost in clouds above. Now we came to a pass cutting between it and another mountaintop. We climbed a steep grade which gradually leveled off into a gravel-paved path between two steep slopes. The wind pushed at our backs, but as we began to climb again up the rockstrewn face of what apparently was a still higher mountain, it abated, replaced by stiff, cold breezes blowing down the slope and, into our faces. The going was tough; huge masses of rock reared up in our path, and we had to skirt an occasional deep crevasse.
I was beginning not to like this one bit. I was in no great physical shape, and was beginning to get tired-although, strangely, not as tired as I should have been. It was getting a little too chilly for comfort, now that I thought about it.
"Where the hell are we going?" I asked:
"As I said, Jake, this is your show," Susan said. "If you don't like the metaphor, change it."
"This is a metaphor?"
"A common one. Scaling the heights, that sort of thing. Change it. Find a new way of getting to where you want to go.
"Where-" I began, then stopped and looked around. Everywhere the earth seemed to run up to a ceiling of cloud., What to do? Go back down?
So I pushed on, leading Susan by the hand. Sean took up the rear. We trudged up the slope and entered a bank of fog. Wet mist enveloped us, and rocks glistened underfoot. I was fine, except for feeling a little chilled. Susan didn't seem to mind the cold at all. We broke through the fog and the ground leveled off abruptly. We had come up to a broad level plateau populated with dark monoliths. I looked up and saw a brightening sky painted in swirls of gray and silver, shot through with luminescent streaks. A fine icy rain fell, cold and bracing on my face. The clouds roiled and billowed like milk poured in water.
"What now?" I asked, stopping.
"I think you want to make it warmer," Susan suggested.
"Yeah."
The clouds parted and a golden sun broke through with shafts of cathedral light.
"Religious symbolism?" I commented.
"Maybe."
"Pretty," Sean said.
It did warm up a bit, and very quickly, but up here lay a high windswept plateau, and I turned my collar up against a breeze blowing sand from the direction of a ruined city far out in the flats-Broken towers, tumbled walls, sand drifting against a shattered dome. To our right, nearer, another ruin was wedged into a box canyon, stone dwellings pressed together under the eaves of a sheer cliff.
"This gotta be someplace," I said.
"It is," Susan said. "Everyplace is someplace."
"Penetrating philosophical insight."
"Thank you."
Hills in the distance, and somehow we reached them in a very short time. The wastelands dropped behind us as we followed a twisted trail upward through scrub brush and browned grass.
"California," I said. "Hm?"
"Reminds me of southern California."
"I've never been there. I'll have to go sometime."
"It was a good place circa 1960. Except for the smog. I've heard it was very nice between 1919 and 1940."
"I'll have to go, then," Susan said.
We reach a ridge. The path snakes down a hill and into changing terrain. The sky changes, and it becomes a star(lusted night, low half-moon hanging to our left, another moonlike b
ody-a tiny disk-speeding along the ecliptic. At zenith a river of stars… strange shapes in the darkness at either hand, moving things, hulking things. No trace of fear in rne, just resolution. I'm searching for a particular place. I don't know what it — looks like, or where it is. A meteor shower, brilliant points of green fire falling out of the night, vanishing almost as soon as they appear. Glowing filaments radiating from an area of sky to our left, galaxies pinwheeling overhead-to the right, an aura of zodiacal light at the horizon. A night wind rises, and the star-rivers flow.
"Beautiful," Susan comments.
"Thanks," I say, understanding that she means it as a compliment, not comprehending why I'm accepting it.
A violet sun comes up and chases the glory away. Another city to our right, a grouping of crystal bubbles sitting on a vast empty plain. This world stays with us for a short minute, then dissolves into a seascape at twilight, breakers pounding a porcelain-white beach. Shells crack under our feet as we walk the strand. The sky churns with grays and blacks. There is no color in this place-if it indeed is a place, and not a phantasm conjured by Prime or some hidden deceiver. No life here. The sky is dishwater gray fading to charcoal, and the bits of shell underfoot are chalk white, gray, and black. Sand dunes to the right bristling with stalks of dried beach grass. In the distance a line of low hills.
"Great place for a beach house," I say.
Susan nods. "Sure." Ironic agreement.
Sean says, "Don't much care for the look of this place, Jake."
I say, "Neither do I."
What to do? We step out of that place and into another. It didn't occur to me to ask how we had done that.
Night again here. A moonlit necropolis, a ruined temple, a mound of debris, truncated columns, a half-buried plaza. We walk in alien moonlight. Stars again, a gaseous nebula glowing above. Where are we? The question goes unspoken.
I stop and gaze at the time-swept city around us. "The ruined cityscape motif again," I comment.
"Time," Susan says.
"Yeah. Great big gobs of it."
Whispers from the darkness: ghosts. A shadow falls across our path, thrown by a communion-wafer moon backlighting a blasted tree. The shadow looks like a wild dancer. A temple sits on a hill up ahead, its riven dome no longer sheltering the statue of a tall alien deity. In a crypt somewhere a mote of dust falls and the heavens are disturbed.
"I'm spooked," I said. "Let's get out of here."
Over here, Susan says, so I follow her over there, wherever it is. It's not in any particular direction, really, just a slightly different frame of mind. It's a soothing emotional shade, a combination of restful contemplation and wistful nostalgia. It's more than a state of mind; it's almost a smell. I fell Susan that I'd rather see/feel something, and if she could du that for me, would she? Yes, I can, she says…
. and we're in another world, this one swampy and wet, so I can it and get into another, then another, then a fourth and fifth. We linger in this one, for it's a little like the place I'm
looking for, a little, not much, because it's much too warm, so I take the temperature down five degrees and change the color of the sky to blue-I like blue skies-and shade the grass so it isn't so blindingly, feverishly green, and I make the trees taller and give them fuller foliage, and perhaps touch up that bark to look a little less like cancerous leather, and what I'm looking at now is a planet under a kind sun, a very nice place indeed for good old-fashioned dirt farming, which is the sort I like best. The terrain rolls gently, not too flat like some places I'd seen-the tornados wouldn't be totally implacable here. There are some mountains in the distance; good, if you want a change of weather, you don't have to go very far. And there's o cute little farmhouse under some poplar trees, and a barn, and sheds, and a chicken coop, a corn crib, a granary, a cattle pen, and other outbuildings and accessories, all you'd need.
"Like this place?" Susan asks.
"Yes," I say. "Yes, I do. Very much."
And I do, because, although it's not a lot like our place on Vishnu (which is a much less benevolent planet than this one), it comprises all the elements that I require for a sense of wellbeing and peace: space, quiet, green things, more space. The clouds are white and puffy, and whoever had painted them had first laid down washes of pure Earth-sky blue underneath. It did look a lot like Earth. Maybe that's where all we humans belong, after all.
"Nice little farm," Sean said approvingly, grabbing up a fistful of black sod and smelling it. "Fertile."
"Great, I've found it," I said. "What have I found? What am I supposed to do?"
But I knew the answer. Susan told me, anyway.
"Your body can stay here while other parts of you roam wherever you want. No matter where you are or what you do, you'll always have a sense of being home. Just like now-I'm still back at the cottage by the pond, even though I'm here at your place, too."
"Makes sense."
"No, it doesn't." Susan laughed. "That's why it's so neat. It doesn't make any sense at all. But it's wonderful."
"This is it, then?"
"Of course not. It's only the beginning."
I knew that, too. I knew a lot of things, then. What this was, was a new form of existence. Exactly what kind of existence, I didn't know. The answer was part of what lay at the end of the long road ahead.
I thought about it for a while, and when I snapped out of it, I was back on the farm again. Susan was there, but Sean had left.
"He says he wants to visit again sometime," she told me. "He told me to tell you good-bye. Someone else is here, though."
I was already shaking hands with Prime. "We should talk," he said.
"I'll be going," Susan said.
Susan and I embraced. We parted, and I looked into her eternal brown eyes and saw that we would never meet again.
"It was wonderful, Jake. Knowing you. Loving you."
"I love you, too."
There were no other words to speak. "You won't join, will you, Jake?"
I turned my consciousness to Prime and said, "No."
The corners of his lips turned up into a knowing smile. "You are a remarkable individual."
"Thank you. I must go back."
"Of course."
"You gotta tell me about the cube, though. I'm not sure I understand everything. You took the first one, the one I brought from the Skyway."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"We opened it," he said.
"And?"
"The results were ambiguous. Not surprising, since the experiment sought to answer an ultimate question. Those rarely admit of unequivocal solutions."
"What ultimate question did the experiment pose?"
"It is perhaps the only ultimate question-the only one that matters. And that question is: Why is there something rather than nothing?"
I found a nearby tree stump-somebody had cleared this land-and sat down. I watched clouds for a moment, then said, "That is pretty damn basic."
Prime paced in front of me. "Oh, it can be formulated any number of ways, and it has a million corollaries. Did the universe come into being spontaneously, or was it caused by something else? If the latter, what does that do to the concept universe itself? And on and on and on."
"So," I said, "the results were ambiguous."
"Let's say that the data will be a long time yielding conclusive results. Very difficult to tell at this point."
"Okay. Tell me this: In all of space and time, no one ever lhought of constructing this experiment?"
"It had long been known to be theoretically possible. For some reason, it was never done. At least, there is no record of it ever being done. We don't know everything that ever happened."
"You're not omniscient?"
"Not quite."
"Uh-huh. You're not a deity-in the sense that beings of my time and space and culture understand the term."
"No. That is a very curious concept, by the way. Intriguing, though."
"Do you think there is such a deity?"
"It may yet be true," he said.
"The jury is still out on that one."
"I understand the allusion. Yes."
"All right." I took a deep breath. "All right. The cube created itself, didn't it?"
"It seems to have done just that. Remarkable. Possibly recapitulating the history of the universe it modeled."
"Possibly?"
"Very possibly."
"Why couldn't the Culmination have created the experiment?"
"We don't create. We don't do science. Science is knowledge. We seek wisdom. In the final analysis, science gives answers which lead only to more questions."
"But what does wisdom lead to?"
"Ultimately? Perhaps only to a state of mind… or a state of being in which a question is its own answer."
I got up. "Well," I said. "Thanks a lot. I have a load of goods in my truck that I have to deliver. I'm running late."
"I understand."
"Thanks for all your help."
"You're very welcome."
I turned to look at the farm one last time. Nice place. I could have stayed there for a million years or so.
But I have to get out on the road once in a while. And I really did have a load to deliver.
21
Dissolve to:
INTERIOR-EMERALD CITY DINING HALL-DAY.
A lap-dissolve from one scene into another, just like in nuipix.
And there I sat, in my free-form sculpted chair at the table. Everyone was looking at me.
"Jake?" Sam was eyeing me curiously.
"Yeah," I said. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. "How did I get back here?"
Sam arched an eyebrow. "What makes you think you've been anywhere?"
"Huh? I must've been gone for hours. Days maybe." I glanced around. Everyone was puzzled. Me, too. "Wasn't… I mean, didn't I-"
"You've been staring off into space for the last minute or so," Sam told me.
"What?" I sat back and exhaled. "Holy hell."
"It must have been quite a trek," John commented.
I looked at him and nodded. Then I noticed Prime was gone. Inclining my head toward his empty seat, I said, "What Iwppened to…?"
Paradox Alley s-3 Page 20
