The Caterpillars Question

Chapter 6

The three-day garden, Jack thought.

The many-colored wonder around him, the exotic plants and queer insects, the multitude of birdsongs would, under other circumstances, have thrilled him. He would have run from this fascinating growth to that fascinating growth and dragged Tappy behind him while he chattered away, describing everything he saw, moving her hand so that she could feel the trunks and leaves and fruits and berries, all of them strange and delightful.

Not now. All he could think of was the time limit they had. Three days. He had to perform a miracle before they had passed. And he was no god. God, he was no god!

The flaming colors and the varied shapes he saw did not blaze loveliness and form beauty. They imaged forth despair.

He closed his eyes to shut out the garden. He needed to think without distractions. A human in an unfamiliar place tended to think unfamiliar thoughts. It did not slide along the old groove, it lacked the oil of the accustomed, it halted because of the faction of the strange. True, the unfamiliar would, in time, become the familiar. But time was what he did not have.

He felt Tappy's left hand touch his right shoulder, move down his arm, find his right hand, and slip hers into his. It was as if the correct key had been inserted into the correct lock. But, for some reason, the key could not turn.

He said, "It'll be all right, Tappy We'll make it."

He opened his eyes. She was standing by his side, her head turned to look at him. Look? She could not see. If he did not find a way soon to restore her vision, both of them would be dead and forever sightless. That thought soared like a silent scream from the garden and drilled into the sky.

He was close to breaking down.

Become at ease with the surroundings, he told himself. Then you can think straight, whatever pressure you might be under. Maybe.

The sky was blue, and the sun, now straight overhead, looked like Earth s. It could be real or it could be an illusion made by the AI. It made no difference. It was a clock. When it was at the zenith for the fourth time, it would mark the end of the third day.

Oh, Time! Run slowly! Flow no faster than a glacier!

Still holding Tappy's hand, he turned toward her. She was smiling as if she knew something he did not. He was going to ask her if she really did when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He switched hands and kept on turning. The object was a huge tent that looked like one of those he'd seen in Arabian Nights movies. Caliph Haroun al-Rashid's or Aladdin's. It was scarlet with strange green, yellow, black, and white symbols on it, with a wide entrance over which sheer drapes fell, with symbol-bearing flags fluttering in a light breeze. He led Tappy into its cool interior. The ground was covered with very thick Oriental-type rugs displaying abstract designs. Six rooms were within, gauzy drapes forming their walls. In the center of the entrance room was a marble fountain with running water. A faint quite-pleasant musky odor was everywhere.

He found a table large enough for six diners. On it were many covered dishes and silver cups and cutlery. In two other rooms were beds suspended from the overhead poles. One room contained a washbowl, a bathtub, and a toilet. Plenty of towels, washrags, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and toilet paper. Everything, in fact, including cosmetics, that they could possibly need. Much more than they could use in three days.

"Maybe we'll have guests," he murmured.

Since neither was hungry, they went back outside. He was silent for a long while as they walked through the garden. He led her by the hand, but, often, she stopped when her free hand felt something interesting. Then she caressed it until she had the shape and texture and odor of the tree bole or flower or bush branch or berry in her mind.

Once, while she was doing that, he said, "You're like one of the four blind men who felt the elephant. You can feel a part of the elephant, so you think you know how all of it looks."

He paused for emphasis.

"But! But if you could see, you would know what an elephant really looks like! And if you could talk, you could describe how the elephant looks to those who can't see."

She frowned with puzzlement.

He said, "So, okay, you haven't heard that story."

He told her the ancient Arabian tale of the four blind men who had, for the first time in their life, a chance to feel an elephant. When asked what it "looked" like to them, each gave a different answer. The man who'd felt the tail said the elephant was like a rope. The second, having fingered the trunk, said the beast resembled a large snake. The third groped around a leg and reported that the elephant was undoubtedly shaped like a living hairy monolith, was, in fact, a very tall uniped. The fourth felt a tusk and said that the beast was more like a hard-shelled fish than anything else.

"I may not remember that grade-school story very well," Jack said. "But it was something like that. You get the idea. Feeling and hearing aren't enough. You can't get the whole picture, the true picture, of the world unless you can see."

He waited for a reaction. She was expressionless for a minute or so while they stood there. Then her face became sad, and a tear oozed from her left eye. She gestured with her free hand as if she were signaling hopelessness. At least, that was how he interpreted it. It could have indicated helplessness.

"What if those blind men only had to open their eyelids to see?" he said harshly.

He hurt inside. The pain resonated with hers, but he could not be too tender, too careful of bruising her feelings.

"If they had refused to see... well, they should've been kicked in the ass."

A second amoeba-shaped tear crawled out and ingested the first. And she pulled her hand away from his.

"Oh, hell!" he murmured.

Doing this was like attacking her with a spear equipped with a blade on each end. He stabbed himself and her at the same time.

They were standing by a tree with a twenty-foot-wide trunk at the ground level. Instead of bark, it had a transparent and skill-smooth covering. Below it were blue and red networks. The finger-thick red tubes and the pencil-thick blue tubes pulsed alternately. The trunk bent abruptly just above the ground, became horizontal, then curved into an upward spiral. The trunk narrowed as it ascended, becoming a thin tip when a hundred feet high.

Atop it was a flower which looked like a Christmas-tree star. Corkscrew branches bearing round purple leaves grew from the trunk halfway up it.

Jack thought he saw the vertical part of the tree move itself slightly toward him. It almost had the air of an eavesdropper bending his head to hear better. No. Must be his imagination. But, several seconds later, something fast slammed into the tree a few feet above him. Instead of bouncing off, it clung with eight tiny legs. The legs telescoped from below the buttercup-yellow body, which was hemispherical and as large as a half-coconut. It had no head or wings that Jack could see. Then, from the bottom center of its body, a thin and stiff member extended downward. Its sharp tip plunged through the glassy skin into a red tube. The skin rippled violently. The thing, insect, whatever, was propelled from the skin. It fell onto its back and lay there while its legs telescoped into themselves, the red-fluid-tipped proboscis became limp, and the yellow body turned green and then black.

Jack had no idea of what had happened. But the tree had gotten rid of the parasite just as a horse twitches its hide to get rid of a biting fly. But the twitch doesn't kill the fly.

Where had the AI gotten the fauna and flora of the garden? From what strange world had they come?

Distractions, he thought. I've no time to explore the garden and to contemplate its wonders and beauties. The tent should be pitched in the middle of a flat desert.

He became aware that Tappy looked as if she had a question. Suddenly, he recalled that she, like him, had been startled by the loud noise of the impact of the creature on the trunk. He said, "It's okay. Just a big insect running headlong into a tree. Must've been going fifty miles an hour."

He wanted to be alone for a while so he could think. But he could not leave her. Since neither had had any sleep for a long time, he suggested that they lie down in the tent. He did not intend to take a nap. That would waste time. But sleep would give her the energy she was going to need when he started the intense process of artificial emotional maturation. Force-feeding of the psyche. When he started? If he started! At the moment, he did not have a smidgeon of confidence that he would be able to think of a plan that would work within the strictly allotted time.

In fact, he doubted that he would be able to imagine any plan at all.

They entered the tent and went into a room with two large banging beds. Tappy crawled into one and gestured that he should join her. He was pleased. She must have gotten over her wounded feelings, and she would want the physical and emotional warmth of his body next to hers. Any other time, he would have lain down by her.

He went to the bed, leaned over, and kissed her. Then he said, "I have to think, Tappy. I'll be in the other bed while you sleep. Believe me, it's absolutely vital for me to be undisturbed. If I held you, I'd have thoughts I couldn't control. You understand?"

She shook her head, and she held out her arms.

"You have to grow up fast," he said softly. "Become an adult in hothouse time. Part of being an adult is being able to give up something so you can achieve something better."

He kissed her on the lips again and patted her.

"That's the way it's going to be."

As he got into the bed, however, he did not feel nearly as confident as he had sounded. His project was, in some ways, equal to God's creation of the world. But God took four days just to make the heavens and the earth and divide the waters from the dry land and make plants and then the animals. The work assigned by the AI to one puny Earthman had to be done in three days.

The big difference, aside from the Power demanded, was that God knew how to go about doing what must be done.

No, there was another difference. Tappy had free will. Assumedly, once God had created humans, He had left the use of their free will entirely up to them. Tappy did not want to see and speak, and God Himself wasn't going to change her mind.

He stared up at the sagging ceiling of the tent. The girl was snoring gently. Somehow, she had managed to fall asleep at once. That pleased him. She very much needed the rest, and she would not be bothering him with her silent but seen presence.

It was not easy to organize his thoughts and slide them down a single channel. He kept thinking of the AI's words. "Past manifestations of the Imago have not had incidental interests of the flesh."

Put simply, "She won't care at all about affection or screwing."

Well, he could handle that.

That was what one part of him said. Another part was greatly disturbed by it.

He steered his mind firmly back to the initial phase of his task: Project Tappy. How could he get her to see and to speak?

Then, there was the warning the AI had given him. He must make sure that Tappy did not misuse the power of the Imago. But that sounded as if she would have some control over the Imago. If she did, how much?

Hey! he told himself. I've drifted off the first phase. Back to the track.

Then, there was the promise of the AI to help him with the project. No. The AI had said that he would be working under its guidance. But no AI had shown up to help him, and it— they— had not told him how to summon them.

And he had to use Tappy's love for him to get her to do what must be done— if he ever figured out what to do. Since he didn't love her— did he?— he was somehow not honorable. To use her love as a tool against her— though it was actually for her— he might have to pretend that he was madly in love with her. That made him feel sneaky and treacherous. Really rotten. Unclean.

Suddenly, he heard bells ringing loudly.

They might be warning bells or wedding bells.

Or funeral bells.

What a crazy idea, he thought. Almost at once, he realized that he had fallen asleep between the thought of how rotten he was and the wakening thought of the bells. Or had the latter been the tag end of a dream he did not remember?

He sat up, rocking the bed.

"Oh, Lord!" he said loudly, "Whatever I do, I'll lose her!"

If he could not make her mature enough within three days, he and Tappy would be destroyed.

If he did succeed, he would keep her alive. But she would no longer be completely human. She would be the fleshly instrument of the Imago.

Tappy must have heard his exclamation. She turned slightly. But she did not awaken. Presently, he heard her mutter, "Reality is a dream."

Was that phrase the key to the door which would admit the Imago?

I'm just not up to this! he told himself. Talk about your frail vessel or your brittle tool! I'm it! I just can't do it! Might as well give me a spoon and tell me to dig the Panama Canal! In three days!

He got out of bed and went to the entrance room. There he drank deeply from a cut-quartz glass filled with the fountain water. Then he turned toward the entrance. He stopped.

The garden was gone. Replacing it was the flat desert he had wished for. Sand and rock, rock and sand, no plants at all, no shadows, the only moving things heat waves, the expanse as straight and as level as the tracks of God's locomotive to the unbroken horizon.

He felt as if he had just seen zero and infinity converge.