Paradox Alley

3

The trip across the valley floor was leisurely and uneventful. We passed other structures along the way, ones we hadn't really noticed with the green fortress riveting our attention. We took time to puzzle over them now. One looked like a cross between an Ionic temple and a chemical factory. Another was in the shape of a squashed silver sphere melded to a blue pyramid. A third, lying some distance off the road, was a free-form aggregation of butterfly-wing shapes. There were others less easy to describe. Needless to say, we didn't have a clue as to what they were or what functions they served, if any. I suspected that some of them weren't buildings, exactly. Sculpture? Possibly. Machines? Maybe.

The Emerald City was different. There was a fanciful quality to it. Its lines were graceful and romantic, belying its bulk. It imparted a sense of solidity, though; it was big enough to contain a city, and if it truly were a fortress, a castle, it looked the part, high ramparts braced against the wind. It looked to have been carved out of a single uniform block of material. No seams, no joints.

It was a castle, but it was unlike anything you'd see in history books. An alien hand had drawn the blueprints; I was willing to bet on that.

Sam asked, "What was that about an entrance at the foot of the mountain?"

"That's what the man said."

But what was there was simply the end of the the road. The Skyway, that maze of interstellar road that stretched throughout the galaxy, terminated at the base of the citadel in front of a stand of short purplish trees. Road's end. We had come a long way.

I braked.

"Whoa!" Sam yelled. "What's this?"

The juncture of road and hillside parted, the edge of the hill rising like a hiked skirt, scrubby trees stitched to the hem. It stopped just high enough to admit the truck, forming an arch that revealed the mouth of a tunnel. The road continued through.

"What do you think of that, Sam?" I asked.

"Nifty."

"Shall we drive on in?"

"Sure. I'll put the headbeams on."

I looked at the underside of the tunnel mouth as we drove through the aperture. It was all metal inside. No earth or debris rained down on us, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how this trick was being done, but I didn't have much time to study it.

The tunnel was smooth-walled, lit by oval recessed fixtures positioned at regular intervals directly overhead. Otherwise it was featureless and reminded. me of the Roadbug garage planet, where the Bugs had caught us then dragged us across light-years to this place. The tunnel bore through the mountain for about half a kilometer before it debouched into a dimly lit, expansive cavern.

But here the similarity to the Roadbug planet ended, though the place did look like a garage. The skeletal shapes of huge cranes and gantries loomed in the shadows. Strange machinery lay everywhere. There were scores of vehicles here, too, some parked out in the middle of the floor and appearing ready for use, others occupying numerous maintenance bays recessed into the walls. The vehicles were of every shape and description.

"How much to park here by the hour?" Sam wanted to know.

"Where's the attendant?" I asked. "But seriously, folks, how the hell do we get up to the city from here?"

"Elevator, I guess," Carl said.

"Yeah," I said. "Where? This place is big. See anything?" We roamed through the place for a few minutes.

"What's that?" Roland said, pointing.

"Where?"

"Looks like a ramp. See? Through that opening right there, against the far wall. No, now you can't see it-behind that big electrical coil-looking thing."

"Oh." I eased the rig forward and saw it. It was a sharply inclined ramp barely wide enough to admit a small vehicle. No go for the truck.

"Looks like some sort of way up," I said, "but we'll have to hoof it."

"Looks like I stay here," Sam said.

"Sorry, Sam."

"Well, I'd be a little obtrusive sitting at the table, anyway. Enjoy your lunch."

I scrammed the engine. "Okay. Here we go."

The cavern was cool, redolent of garage smells-not oil and grease, just the definite ambience of heavy machinery. "Everybody have everything?" I asked when all the crew had gotten out. "We might not be back here for a while."

"Got all my Nogon camping gear," Susan said while reaching behind to adjust a strap on her backpack. "Don't know what use it'll be, but what the hell."

"Good idea to bring anything we might possibly need," I said. "There's no telling what's up there. Anybody else?" Everybody was content to make the trip up with what he had.

I took out my key and spoke into it. "Okay, Sam. Take care and keep an eye out for trouble."

"You, too. Good luck."

We made our way over the dark smooth floor, toward the archway that led to the ramp, walking past some extremely bizarre vehicles. They were composed of various geometrical shapes shoved together at odd angles. Farther along there were more vehicles, these more comprehensible but very alien in appearance.

Liam was first through the archway. He looked up and stopped in his tracks. "Mother of God," he said quietly.

We joined him at the bottom of a huge cylindrical shaft that shot straight up through the mountain, its vanishing point lost in darkness. Running straight up the middle of the shaft without visible support was a vertical ramp, a wide ribbon of some metallic substance, its color a pale blue, its bottom end curling outward like a length of tape. It touched the floor at a perfect tangent to form the ramp we'd seen from the truck.

We walked around it, keeping our distance. I walked around it twice, then again. The damn thing wasn't even three centimeters thick.

"It's a laundry chute," Carl ventured.

"Yeah, for express laundry," I said.

Carl nodded. "Well, the way it really works is, you're supposed to get this really good running start, see… like this." He backstepped, then ran up the sharply curling end of the ramp to a point where it became nearly vertical. He pivoted sharply and began to run back down

But he didn't. Couldn't.

His grin disappeared. "Hey!"

He began to glide up the ramp. He was still facing down, his body perpendicular to the ramp and now horizontal to the ground, held fast by some mysterious attractive force. He could move his feet, though. He tried walking back down, but the upward drift was too rapid. He started to run, clumsily, his steps slow and heavy.

"Holy hell!" he yelled. "I can't-"

We all stood there gawking. I couldn't think of a thing to do to help him. It was the strangest thing, watching him being borne straight up on this impossible vertical treadmill. As his ascent speed increased, he gave up running and turned slowly until he was facing up the shaft.

"Hey!" he called over his shoulder. "I guess this is the way up!" He laughed mirthlessly, the smooth walls of the shaft carrying his echoing voice down to us. "Anyway, I sure as shit hope so."

"Carl!" Lori screamed after him, her eyes round with fear and disbelief. "Carl, be careful!"

"I think he's right, girl," Sean said. "That's the way up."

I stepped forward and tentatively put my right boot on the ramp, testing it. I felt no pull, no quasimagnetic attraction. I inched my foot forward. Someone grasped my arm-Darla, stepping up onto the ramp with me.

"Going up?" she said, smiling.

"I'm with you, kid."

We climbed the steep incline. We hadn't taken more than a few steps when it began to happen. The world tilted. My sense of up and down rotated about forty-five degrees. Suddenly the ribbon of metal was no longer vertical but merely steep, and we rode upward as if on an escalator in a department store. I could move my feet, but it was like walking in sticky mud. It was a little disorienting, but not unpleasantly so.

I turned until I faced down the ramp. Everybody was just standing there.

"Hey," I called, "it's okay. Hop aboard."

They exchanged shrugs and reluctantly approached the ramp.

I shuffled back around again. Carl, a good distance ahead, was waving and shouting something I couldn't hear. I waved back.

"Don't get too far ahead!" I yelled.

He cupped his hand to his ear, so I yelled louder. He heard, nodded, and tried walking back down again. But he was still gaining speed. He finally gave up and threw out his arms in despair.

We were accelerating, too. I looked at my feet. It was hard to tell whether we were sliding over the surface or being carried along by some mysterious movement of the surface itself, as if it were a conveyor belt. The ramp was seamless, featureless, and the shaft around us was dark. I finally decided that we were sliding-and I was almost sure that the soles of my boots weren't actually touching the ramp but riding a few millimeters above it.

It was a quick trip up. A disc of light grew at the top of the tube, and we rushed toward it. Our speed was hard to judge, but we were moving right along, and the sensation was exhilarating. The experience recapitulated my recent recurring dreams, my fantasies-plunging headlong through a dark tunnel toward a source of brilliant light. I'd read something somewhere about that image-about it being a recapitulation of the birth experience. I considered it. I'm not one to set much store by armchair psychology, but there was an undeniable feel of truth to the notion.

We suddenly decelerated. My sense of orientation did a double flip as the ramp leveled off, shot through an opening into a large green chamber, and became one with the floor. Darla and I slid to a gradual halt, took a few jogging steps, and walked off the end of ramp onto a polished black floor.

"Where's Carl?" Darla asked.

I looked around. We were in a large circular room. Arched openings were cut into the walls at regular intervals. Ramp ends came out of them, converging and terminating on the circular black area where we stood.

"Darned if I know," I said.