Tower of Glass (14 page)

“What are the chances of that?”

“Finite,” Guilbert said. “You’ve got a century and a half of life coming to you. Does it make sense to—”

“I’m with Manuel,” Cadge Foster said. He was the least glib member of the group, verging on taciturnity, but when he spoke he spoke with conviction. “Risk is essential to life. We need to take chances. We need to venture ourselves.”

“Pointless chances?” Tennyson asked. “The quality of the shunt wouldn’t be any better if we went in immediately. The only difference would be that we’d eliminate the waiting time. I don’t like the odds. To gamble a century in order to save a couple of hours? I’m not that bored by waiting.”

“You might be bored by life itself,” Nick Ssu-ma said. “So weary of it all that you’d stake a century against an hour, just for the sake of diversion. I feel that way sometimes—don’t you? There once was a game played with a hand weapon, a game called—ah—Swedish Roulette—?”

“Polish,” Lloyd Tennyson corrected.

“Polish Roulette, then. In which they took this weapon, which could be loaded with six or eight separate explosive charges, and loaded it with only one—”

Manuel disliked the trend of the conversation. Breaking in, he said sharply to Cadge Foster, “What’s that thing you’re playing with?”

“I found it in a niche under my couch. It’s some kind of communications device. It says things to you.”

“Let’s see it.”

Foster tossed it over. It was a gray-green plastic rectangle, vaguely cubical, but beveled to a curve at most of the intersections of its faces. Manuel cupped it in his hands and peered into its cloudy depths. Words began to form, making a brilliant red strip across the interior of the object.

YOU HAVE FIFTY MINUTES MORE TO WAIT

“Clever,” Manuel said. He held it out for Nick Ssu-ma to see. When he took it back, the message had changed.

LIFE IS JOY. JOY IS LIFE.

CAN YOU REFUTE THAT SYLLOGISM?

“It isn’t a syllogism,” Manuel said. “Syllogisms take the form, All A is B. No T is A. Therefore, T is not B.”

What are you babbling about?” Mishima asked.

“I’m giving this machine a logic lesson. You’d think a machine would know—”

IF P IMPLIES Q AND Q IMPLIES R, DOES P IMPLY R?

“I’ve got one too,” Ssu-ma said. “Just to the left of the channel selector. Oh. Oh, my. Look at that!” He showed his cube to Lloyd Tennyson, who emitted a guffaw. Manuel, craning his neck, still could not see the message. Ssu-ma held the cube so that Manuel could read it.

THE CHICKEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE PIE

“I don’t understand it,” Manuel said.

“It’s an android dirty joke,” Ssu-ma explained. “One of my betas told it to me a few weeks ago. You see, there’s this hermaphrodite gamma—”

“We’ve all got them,” Jed Guilbert announced. “It’s a new thing for keeping people amused while they’re waiting, I guess.”

DEFEND THE FOLLOWING THESES:

GOLD IS MALLEABLE

ALL ELECTRIC RADIOS REQUIRE TUBES

ALL WHITE TOMCATS WITH BLUE EYES ARE DEAF

“How does it work?” Manuel asked.

Cadge Foster said, “It’s primed to pick up anything we say. Then I imagine it relays a signal to a randomizing message center that picks out something vaguely relevant—or interestingly irrelevant—and feeds it onto the screen inside the cube.”

“And we each get a different message?”

“Nick’s and mine are the same right now,” Tennyson reported. “No—his is changing, mine is staying —”

THE SUM OF THE ANGLES OF A TRIANGLE IS 180°

THIS IS NOT BOTH A CHAIR AND NOT A CHAIR

WHO SHAVES THE SPANISH BARBER, THEN?

“I think it’s insane,” Mishima said.

“Maybe that’s the whole point,” said Manuel. “Is it handing out anything but gibberish?”

BECAUSE OF NECESSARY CLIMATE ADJUSTMENTS,

THE FOURTH OF NOVEMBER WILL BE CANCELLED

BETWEEN 32° AND 61° SOUTH LATITUDE

“I’m getting a news report on mine,” Guilbert said. “Something about your father, Manuel—”

“Let me see!”

“Here—catch—”

FEMALE ALPHA SLAIN AT KRUG TOWER SITE.

POLITICAL EXECUTION, AEP FIGURE CHARGES.

KRUG ORGANIZATION DENIES CLAIM, ALLEGES

“More nonsense,” Manuel said. “I don’t think I find these things amusing.”

CLEVELAND LIES BETWEEN NEW YORK AND CHICAGO.

“I’m getting the news story on mine, now,” said Tennyson. “What do you think it’s all about?”

ALPHA CASSANDRA NUCLEUS DIED INSTANTLY.

THE FATAL BOLT WAS FIRED BY KRUG’S PRIVATE

SECRETARY, LEON SPAULDING, 38.

“Never heard of her,” said Manuel. “And Spaulding’s older than that. He’s been working for my father since—”

CAN THE RHYTHM OF THE UNIVERSE’S

BREATHING BE DETECTED BY STANDARD

METABOLIC ANALYSIS?

“Perhaps you should call your father, Manuel,” Ssu-ma said. “If there’s really trouble “

“And cancel the shunt? When we’re booked in here for a week? I’ll find out about it when I come out. If there’s anything to find out.”

ACTION FOR DAMAGES HAS BEEN INSTITUTED BY

LABRADOR TRANSMAT GENERAL, PROPRIETOR OF

THE DESTROYED ALPHA. EARLY SETTLEMENT IS EXPECTED.

“Let’s go back to syllogisms,” Manuel told the cube he held. “If all men are reptiles, and alpha androids are reptiles—”

THE SUM OF THE PARTS IS EQUAL TO THE

SQUARE ON THE HYPOTHESIS

“Listen to what mine says!” shouted Tennyson.

PANTING WITH DESIRE SHE WAITS FOR THE

ARRIVAL OF HER COAL-BLACK PARTNER IN

UNSPEAKABLE SIN

“More!” Guilbert cried. “More!”

THEREFORE, YOU ARE A REPTILE

“Can we put these things away now?” Manuel asked.

SHOWING DEEP EMOTION, ALPHA SIEGFRIED

FILECLERK OF AEP ACCUSED KRUG OF PLANNING A

PURGE OF ANDROID EQUALITY ADVOCATES.

“I think this really
is
a news broadcast,” Cadge Foster murmured. “I’ve heard of this Fileclerk. He’s pushing a constitutional amendment that would open Congress to alphas. And—”

WEEPING AS THE DEAD FEMALE ALPHA LAY IN

THE SNOW BESIDE THE MIGHTY BULK OF THE

TOWER. AN ALMOST HUMAN SHOW OF GRIEF.

“Enough,” Manuel said. He began to toss his cube to the floor; but, seeing the message change, he glanced at it once again.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR OWN MOTIVES?

“Do you?” he asked. The cube went blank. He dropped it, gratefully. The alpha attendant entered the subchamber and started to disconnect the electrodes.

“You may proceed to the shunt room, gentlemen,” said the alpha blandly. “The programming has been completed and the stasis net is ready to receive you.”

16

 
They had moved the chapel to a dome near the outer rim of the service area, in a section where tools were repaired. In less than two hours a flawless transfer had been carried out; inside, the new chapel was indistinguishable from the old. Watchman found a dozen off-duty betas going through a ritual of consecration, with a knot of gammas looking on. No one spoke to him or even looked directly at him; in the presence of an alpha they all scrupulously obeyed the code of social distances. Briefly Watchman prayed beneath the hologram of Krug. His soul was eased some, after a while, though the tensions of his long wintry dialogue with Siegfried Fileclerk would not leave him. His faith had not wavered before Fileclerk’s brusque pragmatic arguments, but for a few moments, while they were thrusting and parrying beside the body of Cassandra Nucleus, Watchman had felt a touch of despair. Fileclerk had struck at a vulnerable place: Krug’s attitude toward the slaying of the alpha. Krug had seemed so unmoved by it! True, he had looked annoyed—but was it merely the expense, the nuisance of a suit, that bothered him? Watchman had riposted with the proper metaphysical statements, yet he was disturbed. Why had Krug not seemed lessened by the killing? Where was the sense of grace? Where was the hope of redemption? Where was the mercy of the Maker?

The snow was slackening when Watchman left the chapel. Night had come, moonless, the stars unbearably sharp. Savage winds knifed across the flat, treeless expanse of the construction site. Siegfried Fileclerk was gone; so was the corpse of Cassandra Nucleus. Long lines of workers stood in front of the transmat banks, for the shift was changing. Watchman returned to the control center. Euclid Planner, his relief man, was there.

“I’m on,” Planner said. “Go. You stayed late tonight.”

“A complicated day. You know about the killing?”

“Of course. Labrador Transmat’s claimed the body. The lawyers have been all over the place.” Planner eased into the linkup seat. “I understand the chapel’s been moved, too.”

“We had to. That’s how it all started—Spaulding got too interested in the chapel. It’s a long story.”

“I’ve heard it,” Euclid Planner said. He prepared to jack himself into the computer. “There’ll be problems out of this. As if there weren’t problems enough. Go with Krug, Thor.”

“Go with Krug,” Watchman murmured. He took his leave.

The outbound workers on the transmat line made way for him. He entered the cubicle and let the green glow hurl him to his three-room flat in Stockholm, in the section of the android quarter favored by alphas. The private transmat was a rare privilege, a mark of the esteem in which he was held by Krug. He knew no other android who had one; but Krug had insisted that it was necessary for Watchman to be able to leave his apartment on a moment’s notice, and had had the cubicle installed.

He felt drained and weary. He set himself for two hours of sleep, stripped, and lay down.

When he woke he was as tired as before. That was unusual. He decided to give himself another hour of rest, and closed his eyes. But in a short while he was interrupted by the chime of the telephone. Turning toward the screen, he saw Lilith Meson. Sleepily he made the Krug-be-praised sign at her.

She looked somber. She said, “Can you come to the Valhallavagen chapel, Thor?”

“Now?”

“Now, if you can. It’s tense here. The Cassandra Nucleus thing—we don’t know what to think, Thor.”

“Wait,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

He put on a robe, set the transmat coordinates for the Valhallavagen cubicle, and jumped. It was a fifty-meter walk from the cubicle to the chapel; transmats were never installed inside a chapel. A feeble, strained dawn was breaking. In the night there had been a little snow here too, Watchman saw; the remnants of it fleeced the deep window ledges of the old buildings.

The chapel was in a ground-floor flat at the corner. Some fifteen androids were there, all alphas; the lower classes rarely used the Valhallavagen chapel, though they were free to do so. Betas felt uncomfortable in it, and gammas preferred to worship in Gamma Town, far across the city.

Watchman recognized some of the most distinguished members of his kind in the group. He acknowledged the greetings of the poetess Andromeda Quark, the historian Mazda Constructor, the theologian Pontifex Dispatcher, the philosopher Krishna Guardsman, and several others who were among the elite of the elite. All seemed ragged with tension. When Watchman made Krug-be-praised at them, most of them returned the gesture halfheartedly, perfunctorily.

Lilith Meson said, “Forgive us for breaking your rest, Thor. But as you see an important conference is in progress.”

“How can I help?”

“You were a witness to the slaying of Alpha Cassandra Nucleus,” Pontifex Dispatcher said. He was heavy, slow-moving, an android of dignified and imposing bearing who came from one of the earliest of Krug’s batches. He had played a major role in the shaping of their religion. “We have somewhat of a theological crisis now,” Dispatcher went on. “In view of the charges raised by Siegfried Fileclerk “

“Charges? I hadn’t heard.”

“Will you tell him?” Pontifex Dispatcher said, glancing at Andromeda Quark.