Paradox Alley

26

I spoke into the key.

"Sam, I'm in the Chevy. I'm taking it out against that thing."

"What?" Sam came back. "How did you- Never mind. All right, I guess it's the only superweapon we've got."

"It's the only weapon we've got. Over and out."

The ignition lock was set into the instrument panel on the right-hand side. There was no key, of course. "Damn it, Carl," I muttered, "you forgot to tell me how to start this thing without a key."

"I'd suggest putting your hands on the wheel," Roland said.

I did. And the engine roared to life. "Roland, how did you know that?"

"If the Culmination's good for anything, it's good for knowing things. Most of it's useless, but now and then…" He laughed.

I depressed the clutch pedal and fiddled with the floormounted "four on the floor" gearshift until I felt the transmission settle into reverse, then craned my head around and backed out of the trailer. The Chevy hit the temple floor with a slam and a jolt. I jerked the gearshift lever around again, this time finding the top of the left upright on the semi-imaginary H, and rammed it into first gear, my arms and legs and reflexes quickly remembering all the coordinated movements. Once you learn to drive a standard transmission, you never forget.

I peeled out around the truck arid weaved in and around the many supporting columns, heading for the outside. I slid into second and popped the clutch, and the tires gave a short chirping screech like a yelp of pain from a small animal. I swerved around a sacrificial altar, dodged a partition, and hit an open area of polished salmon-pink floor that led to the vestibule. The place was immense, and there was plenty of room to maneuver. By the time we hit open air the Chevy was screaming for third gear, which I gave it, prematurely, because now I had to slow down to make the turn onto the side road. I downshifted, wound out of second gear, shifted to third.

"There," Roland said, pointing to the left.

The Tasmanian Devil was coming at us, following the broad curve the side road took from the highway. It had lost no energy; the pale orange fire and luminescent yellow smoke of which it was made still swirled furiously about its sparkling, molten, ever-changing center. Shadows moved within it, the suggestion of a living thing, its shape constantly shifting, ephemeral, now a manlike form, now a winged demonic thing, now something else, some nameless terror, a shape out of the night, out of the deepest core of the ancient mind of man. My stomach coiled and quivered; and the taste of iron sat bitterly on my tongue.

Roland was busy with the car's weapons control panel, which had materialized automatically on the dashboard. "Roland," I said calmly, "Carl never showed me how to fire. it, but there's a weapon on this buggy he called the Green Balloon."

"That's exactly how he marked it," Roland said, peering at the board. He pressed a switch.

A spherical object whooshed out from under the car-it was green, about a meter across, and it sparkled like the Fourth of July. It streaked directly toward the approaching tornadolike phenomenon.

The Tasmanian Devil came to a full halt, still spinning. It seemed to sense what was coming, moving quickly to one side, scooting off the road and up a grass-covered hillock. Its course unchanged, the balloon went flashing out over the plain, missing its target by a wide margin.

"Interesting," Roland said.

"At least we know it's afraid of the balloons," I said, not very thankful for small favors. "Damn. I would've thought they could seek out a target."

` "Maybe the devil is doing something to confuse it."

"Maybe. Try it again."

Roland launched another glittering green ball. The devil retreated again, this time ducking behind the hillock and disappearing for a moment. When the balloon was gone, it came out of hiding, rolled down the hill and got back on the road.

"I wonder who or what it's programmed to kill," I said.

"Go off-road and see," Roland said.

I steered to the right and ran up a shallow grade, bumped down into a trough and ran up onto level ground. The devil crossed the road to follow us.

"So, it isn't the truck, and it isn't the spacetime ship," I said. "I was hoping it was the ship."

"No, Jake. I'm afraid it's after you and you alone."

"Fine. Why should it be different from everyone else?"

I floored the pedal. Streamers of dust trailed from the back tires. I ran the car up another gentle grade, this time turning sharply to follow a ridge that paralleled the road and eventually curved back toward it. I didn't know the top speed of that thing, but I was willing to bet the Chevy could outrun it, providing the race were run over the highway. Off-road, all bets were off. That horrible whatzis didn't have wheels and didn't need them. If we could dodge around the thing, though, and make it back to the road, we might have a chance.

But what about Sam?

Roland seemed to be reading my thoughts. "Sam's coming out of the temple," he told me, looking back through the rear window. "I don't think the devil will give him any trouble."

But it was giving us a truckload, racing to cut us off. I floored the pedal and immediately hit a rough spot that wrenched the wheel to the right. I countersteered, but saw that we'd never make it. I wheeled right again, and we rolled down a little hill, hit bottom and bounced. I bounced, my head hitting the mercifully padded roof. Roland lost his seat and wound up on the floor. I stood on the pedal, aiming up the opposite slope. The devil came over the ridge behind us. The slope was steeper than I had thought; the rear tires started spinning and throwing dirt; the back end began to fishtail. We made it to the top and rolled onto level ground, but the devil had gained ground and was now sniffing at our tail. It was all I could do to keep ahead of it.

"Jake, did you know that it was possible to drive the Substratum as well as walk it?"

"Um… no," I said. "I get the message, though."

And so I turned the wheel so that the front tires were aligned-as my friend Dave Feinmann would have put itwith a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. I floored it, and we went somewhere. It was a sort of shortcut between here-and-now and there-and-then, with a stopover in hither-and-yon. Angry clouds appeared above, and a spatter of rain hit the windshield, briefly-then bright stars came out and something trilled a night song in a wood off to the right. Quiet. The smell of autumn leaves… And then all that disappeared and we came out into bright sunlight back on Microcosmos, back to the here-and-now, only now we were here, on the side road, racing for the main highway. The devil was far behind us, whirling its dervish and wondering what the hell had happened.

"Neat trick," I said. "How did you do it?"

"You did it, Jake."

"Yeah, I know. It makes me feel creepy."

"Better creepy than dead."

The speedometer read over a hundred miles per hour, which was just cruising as far as the Chevy was concerned. We could outrun the devil, beat it to the portal, but Sam wouldn't be able to keep up. And I wouldn't be able to find the right portal without Sam. That meant it was best to deal with the devil now. I had no reason to doubt that it could follow us through a portal. But how to deal with it?

My mind raced furiously. Maybe I could lead the devil a merry chase until Sam caught up, then… But any ploy would call for close timing.

The side road diverged. I took the right branch, which swung us back onto the main highway.

"Roland, what the heck is the Substratum, anyway? In twenty-five words or less."

"It's the metaphysical base of the universe. It underlies everything."

"Who discovered it?"

"No one. It was agreed upon."

"Thanks, Roland. That helps a whole hell of a lot."

He guffawed. "You're welcome."

"No, really. You mean to tell me"-I glanced at the rear view mirror and saw that the devil was still well behind us, but keeping pace-"that consciousness can create a new universe?"

Roland looked at me; his eyes were limitless. "It's a good universe, Jake. But it could be better. Lots better. Don't you think?"

"I think it could be a whole shitload better, Roland. But that don't mean…" I checked the mirror again. The truck was a gray dot way back up the road.

Metaphysics 101, three credits, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 1500 hours. Kantian rationalism. Jesus, mercy, let me out of here.

"Why did you guys build the Skyway?"

"For those who're dissatisfied with the way things are, a path to follow."

I nodded. "And why the bloody hell did you make that path so difficult to follow?"

"You know the answer to that. A quest is never easy. Although there is a more mundane reason. If we'd handed out roadmaps, we would've had the biggest traffic jam in the universe on our hands. The real candidates would have been trampled in the rush."

"And that's why the White Lady wants me to have the Roadmap."

"Oh, that's part of it, I suppose. She has her reasons."

"Roland, answer me one more question. Will I ever understand it all?"

"No."

"Thanks, Roland."

"No problem. Why don't we try to deal with the Tasmanian Devil now?"

I said, "Suggestions?"

"The first devil we saw was generated by this automobile."

"Are you proposing we fire a devil at a devil?"

"Precisely."

"Oh, good. I always wanted to find out what happens when the proverbial irresistible force meets your average immovable object. They probably sign a nuptial contract and invest heavily in tax-free provincial bonds."

Roland bent over the weapons panel. "I have it set up here. It might be best to lure the things away from the road. There's the chance Sam might get in the way."

"Looks like suitable terrain up ahead," I said.

The creases had been smoothed out of the land. The road ran straight over a world-sized tabletop landscaped in cropped grass. This part of the planet had the look of extra space set aside for expansion. It was raw and undeveloped. The portal was ahead, its hundreds of black cylinders taking form out of the gray mist of distance. They looked like impossibly tall skyscrapers, a ghost city on the plains.

I veered off the road and onto the turf. It was smooth going; we hit only an occasional bump. The TD followed. Roland said, "There is the chance that when the two devils meet, there'll be a terrific explosion."

"You don't know for sure?"

"It's never been done before, so there's no way of knowing."

"You guys are timeless and eternal. Why can't you look into the future and see?"

"We did," Roland said, "but it has to happen first."

"Huh? Whaddya mean?"

"Well, if we knew what happens when one of these things meets another, then there'd be no reason to try it and see. In which case, when we looked into the future, we wouldn't find out anything. Would we?"

"Oh."

There are some days when it's useless to argue. This was one of them.

"Well," Roland said, "here goes nothing… and I don't mean that in the phenomenological sense."

He jabbed a switch, and a gout of orange fire leaped out from the underside of the Chevy, immediately coalescing into a twin of the phenomenon that was showing as a fuzzy purple splotch on the aiming device of the weapons board. The new devil rotated in place for a second, revving itself up and emitting a howl the likes of which are not heard in places where mortals dwell. Then it shot forward.

I yelled, "Go get 'im, boy!"

Roland said, "I'd suggest getting well away from them."

I was already doing that enthusiastically, heading back for the road. When we got there, Sam was nowhere in sight. I slowed, stopping completely when I got back on the pavement. I looked back through the rear window.

"I gotta see what happens," I said.

The devils met. They appeared to absorb each other, blending into one cyclonic cloud that stood still but rotated twice as fast. Then something began to happen at its center. The writhing shadows faded, supplanted by an ever-brightening star of white-hot intensity. The nova grew and grew until it was impossible to look at. I shut my eyes, then opened them again as the light began to fade. The star collapsed in on itself as the whole structure fell apart into streamers of fire, swirling about the dimming nucleus. Then, slowly, the Devil began to reform, finally solidifying into a cloud twice as big as either of the originals, this one darker in color. It wasn't stable. Parts of it kept radiating away in flaming auras, and chunks of energy flew off constantly, dissipating into the air.

"It's not going to last long," Roland said. "The resulting explosion might wreck the planet."

I whacked my forehead. "Great idea you had there, Roland. When you looked into the future, was there any future at all?"

Roland rubbed his chin. "I think what we have to do is give it something to focus all its destructive force on. Something almost indestructible that will absorb most of the devil's energy before being destroyed."

"Not the Chevy," I said, hoping against hope.

"I'm afraid so."

So I turned Carl's magical horseless carriage around and steered for the gates of Hell itself.

The devil met us halfway. The boiling cloud enveloped us, and we baked in radiation until the windows darkened and cut most of it off. It was like sitting in the middle of a nuclear fireball.

I said, "I presume you have a way of getting us out of this."

"We'll have to leave the car," Roland said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Get ready,"

It got awfully hot inside the Chevy. Very hot. The seat was beginning to burn the backs of my legs when Roland slapped my shoulder.

"Now," he said. "Get up and walk."

I did. The car was gone. We were walking down a country road. It was dusk, late, winter. The road was red and cold, lined with the dried stalks of last summer's weeds. There was a bare-limbed forest off to the right, to the left a meadow of browned grass with half-buried smooth gray stones sticking up here and there. The sky was gray. It was Pennsylvania.;

"Very nice," Roland said. "But a little too cold for comfort."

A chill wind blew through my jacket. Brown leaves lay trampled in the gravel underfoot. The sun was an orange smear behind the clouds on the horizon. There was the smell of an early spring in the air. The call of a blue jay came from the hills beyond the meadow as the wind stirred the tall brown weeds.

"You've never walked a specific part of the Substratum," Roland said, "just your wants and desires. It's endless, you know. Not like the `real' universe, which has limits. But you can walk the real one, too."

"Yeah? Isn't this Earth? It looks like it to me."

"Maybe, but it's probably a generalization of many places that you knew at one time."

"You may be right. This looks like Pennsylvania, but not any specific part that I remember."

We continued walking. For some reason, I felt obliged to keep moving. The air was pure and I filled my lungs with it. "This is great," I said, "but I want to get back to Sam."

"We have all the time we need," Roland said. "Don't worry. Find the road you want. If this isn't the one, find another."

I found roads, all right. Roads that led through places I didn't want to see, let alone spend a weekend in. It seemed as though we walked for days.

We came to a wide highway of silver metal sweeping over a plain of blue rock. I looked up and down it. I didn't know where it came from or where it was going.

"Roland, where the hell are we?" "Don't know. Find another road."

I found more. None of them were of any earthly use to me. I found another, and it was fine, except that it didn't go anywhere I wanted to go. Another, and I left immediately.

"I give up," I said.

"What about over here?"

It looked promising, so I followed it, and it turned into something that looked like the Skyway, but not much, so I changed it, and it looked a little closer. Then, all of a sudden, I understood how to do it and we were there, back on Microcosmos, and the truck was braking hard behind us. We moved to the shoulder. Sam brought the rig to a crackling stop and popped the hatch.

"What happened?" he asked as I climbed up the mounting ladder and got in. He got up and gave me the driver's seat.

I turned around to see Roland walking away, looking back, waving: "Good luck, Jake. Stay well," he called.

I watched him go. He didn't disappear. He just kept walking.

"I wonder if he'll be all right," I said, closing the hatch.

"Who?" Sam asked.

"Roland."

"What made you think of him?"

"What made me- Are you telling me you didn't see him?"

"Didn't see anybody out there but you."

"But he's right over-"

He was gone. Or was that moving dot out there him? The sun was low, and I couldn't tell.

"Never mind," I said.