Convergent Series (50 page)

While Graves and Tally went on to the site of the field inhibitor, Birdie took a quick look inside the
Have-It-All
. He headed first for the control room. The ship was untouched, ready to fly within a few seconds of giving the command. That gave Birdie his first warm feeling for quite a while. He patted the control console and hurried back outside.

He had half expected to see the surface of Glister littered with crashed Phages, but there were only two crumpled remains in sight. Did they lose interest if no organic life-forms were present? That was a new thought—though not an encouraging one, to an organic life-form.

Birdie followed the stretched cable from the
Have-It-All
's stanchion to the place where Graves and E. C. Tally were standing. Tally had his hand on the line, close to the point where it disappeared into the gray surface, and he was tugging on it vigorously. As Birdie came up to them Tally released the cable, reached down, and pushed his hand easily
into
the slate-colored plane.

"Observe," he said. "The field inhibitor is still operating, with near-perfect field cancellation. The surface offers negligible resistance to the penetration of my hand, and at this point it must, I think, be a weakly secured gaseous form. But the cable itself offers considerable resistance to its own withdrawal. We conclude that it must be secured at its lower end, within the interior of Glister."

"In other words," Graves said, "it's tied to something."

Now that he was close enough, Birdie could see that the surface for a radius of a few meters around the field inhibitor appeared slightly indistinct. And the legs of the inhibitor equipment stood not
on
Glister, but buried a few centimeters in that hazy gray.

"So who shall be first?" Graves asked.

"First for what?" But Birdie knew the answer to that question before he asked it. The one thing that made no sense was to come all the way here, run the gauntlet through that belt of aggressive Phages, and then sit and wait for the same Phages to come back and dive-bomb them. The only way to go was
down
, into that gray horridness.

Tally had taken hold of the cable without waiting for discussion. "It is possible that I will be unable to return messages to you through the suit communications system," he said calmly. "However, when I reach a point where it is appropriate for another to descend, I will strike the cable—thus." He hit it with the palm of his suited hand. "Feel for the vibration."

He pushed his feet over the edge and swung hand-over-hand down the cable. His body disappeared easily into a gray opacity. When only his head showed above the smoky surface he paused.

"It occurs to me that my words leave the required action for some possible future situation inadequately defined. A contingency may arise in which I become unable to strike the cable in the manner that I described. If I do not signal in a reasonable time, say, one thousand seconds, you should assume that contingency."

"Don't worry your head about that," Birdie said. "We'll assume it."

"That is satisfactory." E. C. Tally disappeared completely. A second later his head popped up again from the gray haze. "May I ask, if I do not signal in one thousand seconds, what action you propose to take?"

Birdie stared off to the horizon. The hulk of the
Incomparable
had vanished—devoured, or flown far away, he could not tell. There was a cloud of glittering motes visible in the same direction. The same Phages, probably, sensing motion on the surface of Glister and coming back for another go at it.

Except that these Phages were not interested in the surface of Glister. They wanted to have a go at humans. At
him
.

"I don't know what action we'll take, E.C.," Birdie said. "But don't be surprised if it happens before you count out your thousand seconds."

The cable went down ten meters through gray obscurity, then emerged into a spherical region with another gray floor and a ceiling above it that glowed with cold orange light.

Birdie clung to the line, high up near the ceiling, and peered downward.

It was a long drop—a horrid long drop, for somebody from a planet where the buildings were never more than a couple of stories high; and there was no sign of E. C. Tally down there. But the cable went on, straight downward, into the floor.

Birdie slightly relaxed the grip of his hands and knees and continued his controlled descent. When he came to the part of the second floor where the line ran through, that surface proved just as insubstantial as the first one. The field inhibitor had been focused downward, and for all Birdie knew, its effect went right through Glister and out the other side. He allowed himself to drop on through. Somewhere above him, Julius Graves was waiting for his signal, as he had waited for E. C Tally's. But this was no time to give it, suspended in midair.

The gray fog filled his nose and mouth, passing through his supposedly sealed suit as though it did not exist. The gas was thin, tasteless, and odorless, and it did not interfere with Birdie's breathing. In another ten meters he was through that and dropping again toward a spherical surface.

This level was more promising. There were structures and partitions and webs, dividing the space into giant, oddly-shaped rooms. Birdie was coming down into one of the bigger open areas. He released the line with his crossed legs, let go with his hands, and dropped the last few feet. The gravity was more than he had realized. He landed heavily and flopped backward to a sitting position. Before he stood up he took a quick look around.

Dull gray walls. A jumble of nets and unconnected support lines on the floor, right by his side. He was sitting on a length of flexible netting, springy enough to be a bed. The cable he had come down ran off to the right, to a descending ramp that became part of a brightly lit tunnel.

Off on that right side—he stopped, stared, and stared again. On that right side, close to the entry to the downward ramp, was E. C. Tally.

And crouched next to him, eight legs splayed, was J'merlia.

Birdie scrambled to his feet. The Lo'tfian was supposed to be hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, on Dreyfus-27. What was he doing here?

Birdie jerked at the line he was holding, to send a signal back to Graves that it was safe to descend, and hurried across to the other two.

"You were right about messages, E.C.," he said. "I assume you tried to send something through your suit communicator, but we didn't hear a thing."

"Nor I from you. The surface is presumably impervious to electromagnetic signals, though it permits material objects to pass through with no difficulty." E. C. Tally gestured to J'merlia. "It is not necessary for you to introduce the two of us, Commissioner Kelly. We have already done that. Although J'merlia and I never met before, I recognized the Lo'tfian form from stored records."

"That's as may be. But what's
he
doing
here
? Why aren't you over on Dreyfus, J'merlia, the way Captain Rebka's messages said you would be?"

"I beg forgiveness for that act. I came to Glister to seek the masters, Atvar H'sial and Louis Nenda, and also the Hymenopt Kallik. But when I was on the surface, I was forced to seek refuge in the interior from the attack of Phages. The ship that I had arrived in, the
Summer Dreamboat
, took off from the surface and left me helpless."

"Sorry, J'merlia, that was our doing—we needed it to come down in. But you were a bit ambitious, wouldn't you say, looking for Nenda and H'sial and Kallik? Seeing as how we've all no idea where any one of them is. You'd have been better off staying on Dreyfus, out of harm's way. Phages are bad news."

"With apologies, Commissioner Kelly. The Phages are, as you say, amazingly aggressive. It was unwise of me to come here. But there is good news also. I know where the masters are! And the Hymenopt Kallik. They are all three together, in a chamber closer to the center of Glister."

"I can't believe it." Birdie turned to E. C. Tally. "Is J'merlia telling the truth?"

"I have no direct evidence that supports his statement. But if you will accept indirect evidence, according to the central data banks the species that lead the spiral arm in deliberate falsehood are humans and Cecropians. Everyone else, including J'merlia and all Lo'tfians, is far behind."

"With respect, Commissioner Kelly, you may verify that I speak the truth. All you need to do is act as I did—follow the cable. It led me all the way from the surface, to were the masters and Kallik can be found."

"Which would certainly be direct evidence." E. C. Tally gestured to Birdie. "Go ahead, Commissioner, with J'merlia. When Councilor Graves joins me we will come after you. The cable provides an unambiguous trail for us to pursue."

Birdie found himself following the thin figure of J'merlia down an angled and jointed tunnel, whose sudden changes of direction made his head spin. The tunnel branched occasionally, and parts were so dimly lit that the walls could not be seen, but J'merlia followed the thin line wherever it led. Birdie trailed along behind, his hand touching the Lo'tfian's back. Their emergence into a giant domed chamber came as a shock.

The downward-curving floor formed a shallow circular bowl, marked off in concentric rings of pure color. Under the brilliant overhead light their reflection hurt the eyes. From the meeting place of each pair of rings rose insubstantial hemispheres, arching up over the middle of the chamber. The line that J'merlia had been following led toward that center, straight as a spoke on a wheel. Halfway in it stopped. Kallik was lying on the floor there, a compact dark bundle on the boundary between a purple and a red ring. In two front paws she held the spool for the line, and the other end had been wrapped securely around her body.

And
beyond
Kallik's unconscious form . . .

The innermost ring was blue, purest blue, a monochromatic 0.47-micrometer blue. At its center stood a raised dais of the same color, with a dozen glassy seats upon it. In two of those seats lolled the unmistakable forms of Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial.

Birdie started forward. He was restrained by J'merlia's grip on his sleeve.

"With respect, Commissioner, it may be unwise to proceed farther."

"Why? They don't look dead, just unconscious. But they could be in bad shape. We have to get 'em out and take care of them, soon as we can."

"Assuredly. My first reaction was the same as yours, that I must proceed at once and rescue the masters. But then I thought to myself, the Hymenopt Kallik surely operated with the same imperative. She saw the masters, she went forward toward them—and she did not reach them. When I realized that, I also realized that the worst way for me to serve the masters would be to become unconscious, as they are. I returned for safety to the second outer chamber. I had formulated no safe plan of action when the human, E. Crimson Tally, appeared."

"He's not a human. Tally's an embodied computer." Birdie did not go into details. He was too busy thinking about the other things that J'merlia had said.

"Why didn't you just grab hold of the line and pull Kallik out?" he went on. "She doesn't weigh much."

"I was unable to do so, Commissioner. Try it, if you wish."

Birdie seized the end of the line and heaved, as hard as he could. Kallik did not move a millimeter, and the line inside the pattern of rings did not even leave the floor. It was held there, fused to the surface or secured by some form of field. Birdie was still tugging and swearing when E. C. Tally and Julius Graves arrived.

There were five minutes of questions, suggestions, and counter-suggestions. At the end of it no one had bettered J'merlia's first proposal: that it was safe to do now what he had been reluctant to do before. He would enter the hemispheres and attempt to retrieve Kallik. If he failed, for any reason, the others would be on hand to help him. He would wear a line around him, so that if he became unconscious he could be pulled out.

"Which we know doesn't work for Kallik," Birdie said.

But he had no better ideas. They all watched in silence as J'merlia walked forward steadily, passing through the yellow and green rings and half of the purple one. At that point he hesitated. The thin head began to turn, and the pale yellow eyes on their short eyestalks moved dreamily from side to side.

"J'merlia!" Julius Graves shouted at him—loudly. The Lo'tfian stared around in a vague and puzzled way. He folded his thin hind legs and began to sit down.

"That's enough!" Graves was already pulling on the line. "Get him out, quick—while he can still stand."

J'merlia came reeling back from inside the pattern of rings. At the edge of the green annulus he jerked up to his full height and peered around him, but he allowed the others to haul him all the way out. On the edge of the yellow ring he sank down to his belly.

"What happened?" Tally asked. "You were progressing well, and then you halted."

"I don't remember." J'merlia crouched down on all his limbs and turned his eyestalks to stare back into the circle. "I was going in. Steadily, without difficulty. And then all at once I was going
out
, facing the other direction and being pulled clear."

"A Lotus field." Graves was nodding his head soberly. "Once Darya Lang pointed out that Glister is a Builder creation, we might have expected it. There are Lotus fields on many artifacts. The most famous one surrounds and protects Paradox. But J'merlia is lucky—he was exposed to only peripheral-field strength. Only the most recent of his memories were erased."

"Which may not be true of Kallik," E. C. Tally said. "And still less of Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial. The Lotus field of Paradox erases all memories."

"From men," J'merlia said, "and from Lo'tfians and Hymenopts. But from machines? Or from computers?"

The others turned to look at E. C. Tally. He nodded. "According to the records, all memories are lost in Paradox, from Organics or Inorganics. However." He bent down to release the line from J'merlia and place it around his own body. "However, this is not Paradox. The Lotus field here may not be the same. An experiment is in order."