Paradox Alley

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…?"

"Him?" Sam answered. "Oh, he just got up and left. Said he had some pressing business. Probably was double-parked."

I took a long drink of coffee. It was still warm. I began, "How long did you say-" I stopped and put my cup down. "Never mind."

"Jake, what happened?" Darla asked.

"Huh? Nothing. I mean… I'm not really sure. Tell you latter."

Darla shrugged. "Okay."

And I wasn't sure at all, now, what had happened. It had been something outrageously wonderful, mysterious, and sublime-that much I did know-but exactly what had happened was unclear. I might never really know for sure. I did know that all of a sudden I felt extremely depressed. It was a crashing to earth. A letdown, a feeling of great loss. The sense of bereavement was profound,

"Jake? Is something wrong?"

I didn't answer. I sipped my coffee and stared at the table. Conversation started up again, but I didn't listen.

I thought I heard Susan's voice, far off, faint. I cocked my ears. No. Just wind, maybe. Or a castle ghost.

"Jake?"

It was Darla, again. I turned my head to her. "Are you all right, Jake?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I'm… fine. Fine."

The feeling passed quickly, leaving a wistful longing for something I couldn't name. That gradually faded, too.

I sighed and sat up, drained my cup, and stood. "We're going home," I announced.

We hunted up Arthur and found him fiddling with the controls on the back of his little helper robot, which looked like a mobile gum-ball machine.

"What's gotten into you?" he was asking it as we approached. He looked up. "Oh. Hello, there."

"We're leaving, Arthur," I said.

"Want a lift to the exit portal, or are you taking the scenic route?"

"What you said."

"Right. Dearie me, this little guy's innards are all cockeyed." He flipped the access plate up, and it clicked into place. He tapped the robot's transparent globular head. "All right, Edgar, run along."

The mechanism rumbled off on wobbly wheels.

"'Bye, Edgar," Darla said, waving. "Nice meeting you."

"Whirrclickbeep," Edgar said, swiveling his head around and raising a mechanical arm.

"Nice kid, but from a low-tech family, if you know what I mean," Arthur said. "Okay, I'm your chauffeur again." There wasn't much to fetch from our quarters. John, Zoya, and Darla had a few things to pack, Ragna and Oni next to nothing, and I rounded up my toothbrush and an extra shirt. I didn't see anything belonging to Susan, Roland, or the Talltree boys. Sam had nothing but the clothes on his back:

Our host made no appearance as we made our way to the lower. I didn't expect him to show, but for some reason I diwbted we'd seen the last of him.

Emerald City's glossy green walls remained mute; the cmpty chambers were as silent as they had been for the last million years. What events had transpired in them, long ago? What plots had hatched, what scenes had unfolded? Don't ask rue. The place had made a fair motel, as motels go.

We took an up-chute to a higher level, walked down a hallway, then climbed a spiral stairway to the tower.

"Good Lord," Sam exclaimed. "You weren't kidding about a flying saucer."

"Would I kid you about a thing like that?" I said. Arthur dilated the saucer's main hatch and we boarded.

By the time we got our gear stowed in the truck, Arthur had taken off. As I stepped into the control room, the walls dm-hpaqued and I could see the tower's top closing behind us. Emerald City dropped away, and we shot out over the valley.

Sam was mesmerized as he watched the terrain of the diskworld slide beneath us.

"This is pretty weird." he finally decided.

"You think?" I said.

"Most spectacular!" Ragna exclaimed, his pink oval eyes wider than usual.

Oni's pale blue hands were up over her mouth in a very human gesture of amazement. She uncovered to say, "It is indeed magic, or something verily like it!"

"Verily," I agreed.

"I am almost sorry to leave this place," Zoya said quietly.

I regarded her for a moment. There hadn't been time to discuss what effect Yuri's decision was having on her. She looked relieved. Perhaps it had been for the best.

We were heading for the dark face of the planet-it was still broad daylight on this side. I scanned all around, trying to catch sight, of anything coming our way. And sure enough, slowly gaining on our tail…

"Arthur-"

"I saw it before you did," Arthur said as he stood at the control panel. He hadn't moved his head.

Darla searched the sky and saw the glittering many-colored phenomenon behind us. "I wonder what it is this time."

"I know what it is, and I'm scared," Arthur said. "And I'm not even alive. In the conventional sense, that is."

"What is it?" I asked.

"What's the conventional sense of being alive?"

"For God's sake, what's chasing us?"

"I don't have a name for it. You'll soon see."

The glittering vortex grew until it became a rotating wheel of fire that stretched from horizon to horizon.

"Oh, my God," Darla said, clutching my arm.

"Arthur," I said, "you had better reach deep, deep into that bag of tricks of yours."

"What bag is that, dearie?"

The rim of the wheel was a ring of golden fire braced by hundreds of green luminescent spokes that spun about a rubyred, star-bright hub. Cascades of pyrotechnics spewed from the rim at various points along its circumference. The spokes shimmered and left blue smoky trails as they rotated. The phenomenon wasn't a physical object in the conventional sense-the spokes and the rim seemed to be turning in opposite directions.

"Pretty," Sam said.

"Deadly," Arthur said.

"What's it do?" Sam asked.

At that instant the ship was enveloped in a brilliant fireball, and we were thrown to the deck by a terrific concussion. I rolled and got to my feet, helped Darla up, but another shock wave hit us, and we went down. This time I waited for a moment before trying to get up. I asked Sam if he was all right.

"Never better," he reported. "What hit us?"

The walls had opaqued instantly, but now they were partially transparent again. The wheel was radiating dazzling purple energy beams from at least a hundred points along the circumference of the golden ring, and they were all focused in on us.

"Whew!" Arthur said. "For a couple nanoseconds there we were actually subject to the normal laws of physics! Any more of that and we'll turn into vapor. But I have the energy pretty much neutralized now."

We all got up and looked back. We seemed to have put some distance between us and the wheel. Not much, but we were slowly pulling away. There was still a faint rounding us, gradually fading.

"I think we can outrun this thing," Arthur, said.

"Can you do a continuum jump?" I asked.

"Not with that thing chewing on our tail, and certainly not this close to the planet. We lucked out last time I did a blind jump. Our fortune might not be so good the second time. Just let me get some distance first, and then we might be able… uh-oh."

"There," Darla said, pointing to starboard.

A V formation of glowing red disks was coming abreast of us, having just darted out from a suspicious-looking greenish cloud. Arthur steered the ship to port, but we were met by another V, this one made up of a squadron of pulsating blue cubes. Arthur veered off again.

"Cubes," Arthur observed. "Well, at least that's in keeping with the minimalist style they seem to be fond of. Dodecahedrons next, I bet."

"They can give us trouble?" I wanted to know.

"Maybe. They don't seem to want to close with us-which means…"

"They're herding us somewhere," Sam suggested.

"Yes," Arthur said, "but I can't imagine where or why." The interceptors kept feinting at us, pinching us in, forcing Arthur to adjust and readjust our heading. They obviously had sonic specific course in mind for us.

"Very effective ploy," Arthur commented admiringly. "We can't outrun them while we're neutralizing the wheel's energy, nor can we outshoot them. I'm betting they can't outshoot us either, but all bets are off when we get to where they want us to go."

"We're coming up on the edge of the world," John inIormed us solemnly.

"That may work to our benefit," Arthur said.

The curve of Microcosmos' rim swept under us looking like an LP record covered with moss and lichen. We flew out into space following a trajectory that kept us at a fairly uniform altitude above the bulge of the cross-hatched, metallic disk edge.

That's where they got us. A blinding blue-white flash enveloped the ship.

"Oh, dearie me."

The ship wobbled, then shuddered, then wobbled again. The walls went opaque, and the interior lighting went off. Strange forces pushed and shoved at us. The lighting returned.

"Everybody up against the bulkhead!" Arthur yelled. "Strap in!"

I stepped back and leaned against the bulkhead, which immediately threw out rubbery tentacles that snaked around my thighs and my chest, wriggling under my arms.

"Merciful deity-types!" Ragna exclaimed as the same happened to him.

The next minute was disorienting. We went into a tumbling fall, then straightened out and dove in a tightening spiral. G-forces tore at us, but the straps, marvelously resilient, cushioned the shocks, and the bulkhead behind me seemed to have turned soft and mushy. I wondered if there were anything in the infinitude of possible universes that this craft could not do.

Besides making a claim of absolute invulnerability, that is. It couldn't do that.

"They caught us in a cross fire," Arthur said after he had regained control of the ship. We seemed to be flying fairly straight now, though still descending. "I was wondering if there was a weapon that could bring this ship down. And there isn't. But they maneuvered us exactly into a position so that three of the defensive batteries along the rim could get off shots at us simultaneously. That did the trick, at least temporarily. The main propulsion system is inoperative. It can fix itself, but it'll take time. Meanwhile, I have to set her down, like right now."

There was a gentle bump. The ship skidded a couple of dozen meters, stopped, rocked back and forth a few times, and came to rest.

"Whew," Arthur said. "Crash landing."

I said, "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, I always say."

"They'll be here any second," Arthur said. "There should be a tunnel entrance around here someplace. Our only chance is to get in the truck and get underground right away."

The rubbery straps retracted, disappearing into the bulkhead. I looked around. It was dark outside. We had come to rest on a flat metal plain whose only nearby discernible feature was a reticulated cube glinting in the starlight about fifty meters away.

I took a step forward, bounced up about ten centimeters, and floated gently back down.

"The only gravity here is what the mass of Microcosmos generates naturally," Arthur warned. "It's about one twentieth of what you people are used to. Watch your step."

"You coming?" I asked.

"If there's any time, I'll deflate the ship and stow it in your trailer. Get going."

"Looks like we're back in the trucking business," Sam said.

We ran to the rig and piled in. I turned her over, and by the time I had the engine squeezing hydrogen, the door to the cargo bay had dilated. I backed out, slipping and sliding. The gravity was just barely enough to allow the rollers to grab at all. I juiced them up to maximum traction.

"No need to brief me on the current situation," Bruce said. "I have been monitoring."

"Good boy Bruce," I told him.

Sam was staring at the dashboard camera, which had once been his eyes. "Who the hell is Bruce?" Then he figured it out. "The Wang A.I.?"

"Right," I told him.

Arthur followed us out. As soon as he stepped out onto the blue-tinted metal of the surface, the ship began to shrink. I cycled the trailer and opened the rear door. There was no air out there. When the spacetime ship had become a miniature of itself, Arthur picked it up and galumphed around back. Arthur could move when he wanted to.

I scanned the dark sky. One of the blue cubes was hovering off to starboard at about a hundred meters off the surface. "Damn!" I said. "We've had it."

I checked the trailer camera. Arthur was aboard and I saw something back there I couldn't believe, but now was not the time to ponder it.

I gunned the engine and shot forward, making a sharp turn toward the cubical structure. A pink flash stabbed my eyes. Sitting in the shotgun seat, Sam looked back. "It's the cube," he said. "Firing at us."

Green spots chased each other in front of my eyes. "Are they hitting us?"

"I guess. Can't tell. I don't see how they could miss at this range."

Another flash lit up the metallic plain, but by this time I had the ports polarized.

"Did you have this rig retrofitted with some kind of supertech defensive screen or force-field?" Sam asked.

"No-I never thought of it. Should have. Had the opportunity, in fact."

The cubical structure was big, its surface running with pipes and conduits. Antennalike projections bristled here and there. It had no opening, however. I swerved away from it, rolling over the smooth featureless surface. The cube got off another shot at us, and this time the rig shook a little with the impact.

"Hm," Sam said. "They're not missing."

There was an obstacle up ahead, a pipeline or something of the sort, running across our path. I turned left and ran along it until it ended at an elbow joint curling into the ground. There were other structures to the left, and I turned and scooted toward them, rolling in and out of one of two shallow troughs on the way. I ducked into the midst of some oblong buildings, shooting up and down the alleys between them, finally exiting the miniature town and heading for another just like it which lay across an obstacle course of valves and pumps: I nearly flattened a few of these; it was dark out here on the edge of the world. The flashes were getting more violent. The cab shook and buffeted more with each new assault.

"They're getting through to us," Sam said worriedly.

"I wonder what's been holding them back so far," I said.

I shot through another whistle-stop town of mechanical structures. At the other end I found a ramp leading up to a wide raised slab which cut across our path-a sort of elevated roadway. I had to get up on it or double back, so I gunned the engine, sent the rig thumping up the steep ramp, and turned left on the roadway, looking for a way down the other side, because we were sitting ducks up here. The star-filled sky crawled with red disks and blue cubes, most of them shooting beams of pink fire at us. Colorful bastards, I had to give 'em that.

I floored the power pedal and got some speed. up. The roadway was wide enough to permit cautious evasive action — the edge was difficult to pick out. As we made our way down the level road, I could see that the ground below was dropping away. Then all of a sudden the ground left off entirely, the road having become a bridge over a deep pit, at the bottom of which lay things that looked like cranes and wrecking equipment. There was no guardrail, and although being up there would have been scary under any circumstances, getting shot at into the bargain provided that certain zest, that sharp experiential tang, that… je ne sais quoi which makes life worth living. He said blithely.

There was something lighting up the murk at the other end of the bridge, something familiar yet frightening.

"What the hell is that?" Sam demanded, and I realized that Sam had never seen what Carl had named a Tasmanian Devil.

"It's a real pain in the butt," I answered, braking hard. Looking like a swirling tornado of red-orange fire, the strange phenomenon slowly but steadily advanced toward us, strange shadows writhing at its center. I slid the rig to a halt — it was hard stopping in this gravity-and switched all the monitors to rearview: The roadway wasn't wide enough to execute a U-turn, and there wasn't time to back and fill, so I slammed the transmission into reverse and floored it. This is just the sort of thing you don't want to do with a trailer truck. There was a very good chance that we'd wind up at the bottom of the pit. But we really had no choice. I knew what that thing would do if it caught us. When it caught us. I had first seen a Devil back on a planet called Splash-it seemed a thousand years ago. Roland and I had inadvertently unleashed one by fiddling with the weapons controls on Carl's Chevy. This one, and the one that had chased the spacetime ship, looked about the same. There was something absolutely implacable about it. It gave the impression that it would not stop until its assigned task of the complete destruction of its target was accomplished.

The trailer was already angling toward the edge of the roadbed. I cut the front rollers to the right, compensating and straightening it out.

We didn't get very far back up the road. Something came out of the pit and picked us off the bridge.

"Some kind of crane," Sam said, pressing his face against the port and trying to look straight up. "Don't know what the hell-some kind of magnetic gizmo."

Reeling us like a fish on a line, the gizmo or whatever it was swung the rig out over the pit, dangled it there for a moment, then began to lower it swiftly but carefully down. A hole opened up at the bottom, and we descended through it. The trailer hit the floor first, then the cab thumped down, not ungently. There came a loud, echoing clang above us: Then there was silence.

I looked around. In dim light I could see outlines and shapes of things-machinery and the like. We were in a large chamber, its farthest corners hid in shadow. The darkness was a little unsettling, even though the scanners showed nothing stirring out there.

"What now?" Sam wondered.

The engine was still running. I eased forward a mite, peering into the gloom. "I don't know. Can you see…?"

The scanners went crazy as a towering dark shape outlined in flashing lights came out from a hole in the wall. I focused the rig's spotlights on it. Rising to about thirty meters, it was an asymetrical structure composed of interconnected components, and taken as a whole it appeared to be some sort of mobile wrecking crane or other piece of heavy equipment. It was jagged with mechanical arms and appendages, some of them very wicked-looking, all of them capable of opening up the rig like a hotpak dinner.

And it was coming for us.