Tower of Glass (17 page)

“Beautiful,” Krug whispered. “The music of the spheres. Oh, you mysterious bastards! Look, doctor, you come see the tower next week, next—oh, Tuesday. I’ll have Spaulding call you. You’ll be amazed. And listen, anything else new comes up, another change in the signal, I want to hear right away.”

Pleep pleep pleep.

He headed for the transmat.

Pleep.

Krug leaped northward along the meridian, following the line of 90° E., looped the North Pole, and emerged beside his tower. He had sped from icy plateau to icy plateau, from the world’s bottom to its top, from late spring to early winter, from day to night. Androids were busy everywhere. The tower seemed to have grown fifty meters since yesterday’s visit. The sky was ablaze with the light of reflector plates. The song of NGC 7293 sang seductively in Krug’s mind.
Pleep pleep. Pleep.

He found Thor Watchman in the control center, jacked in. The alpha, unaware of Krug’s presence, seemed lost in a drugged dream, climbing the precipices of some distant interface. An awed beta offered to cut into the circuit and tell Watchman, via the computer, that Krug had arrived. “No,” Krug said. “He’s busy. Don’t bother him.”
Pleep pleep pleep pleep pleep.
He stood for a few moments, watching the play of expressions on Watchman’s tranquil face. What was passing through the alpha’s mind now? Freight invoices, transmat manifests, welding cues, weather reports, cost estimates, stress factors, personnel data? Krug felt pride geysering in his soul. Why not? He had plenty to be proud of. He had built the androids, and the androids were building the tower, and soon man’s voice would go forth to the stars—

Pleep pleep pleep. Pleep.

Affectionately, a little surprised at himself, he put his hands to Thor Watchman’s broad shoulders in a quick embrace. Then he went out. He stood in the frigid blackness a short while, surveying the frenzied activity at every level of the tower. On top they were putting new blocks in place with flawless rhythm. Inside, the tiny figures were hauling neutrino-sheathing around, joining lengths of copper cable, installing floors, carrying the heat-cool-power-light system higher and higher. Through the night came a steady pulsation of sound, all the noises of construction, blending into a single cosmic rhythm, a deep booming hum with regular soaring climaxes. The two sounds, the inner and the outer one, met in Krug’s mind,
boom
and
pleep, boom
and
pleep, boom
and
pleep.

He walked toward the transmats, ignoring the knives of the Arctic wind.

Not bad for a poor man without much education, he told himself. This tower. These androids. Everything. He thought of the Krug of forty-five years ago, the Krug growing up miserable in a town in Illinois with grass in the middle of the streets. He hadn’t dreamed much about sending messages to the stars then. He just wanted to make something out of himself. He wasn’t anything, yet. Some Krug! Ignorant. Skinny. Pimpled. Sometimes on holocasts he heard people saying that mankind had entered a new golden age, with population down, social and racial tensions forgotten, a horde of servomechanisms to do all the dirty work. Yes. Yes. Fine. But even in a golden age somebody has to be on the bottom. Krug was. Father dead when he was five. Mother hooked on floaters, sensory scramblers, any kind of dream-pills. They got a little money, not much, from a welfare foundation. Robots? Robots were for other people. Half the time the data terminal, even, was shut off for unpaid bills. He never went through a transmat until he was nineteen. Never even left Illinois. He remembered himself: sullen, withdrawn, squint-eyed, sometimes going a week or two without speaking to anyone. He didn’t read. He didn’t play games. He dreamed a lot, though. He slid through school in a haze of rage, learning nothing. Slowly coming out of it when he was fifteen, propelled by that same rage, turning it suddenly outward instead of letting it fester within:
I show you what I can do, 1 get even with you all!
Self-programming his education. Servotechnology. Chemistry. He didn’t learn basic science; he learned ways of putting things together. Sleep? Who needed sleep? Study. Study. Sweat. Build. A remarkable intuitive grasp of the structure of things, they said was what he had. He found a backer in Chicago. The age of private capitalism was supposed to be dead; so was the age of free-lance invention. He built a better robot, anyway. Krug smiled, remembering: the transmat hop to New York, the conferences, the lawyers. And money in the bank. The new Thomas Edison. He was nineteen. He stocked his laboratory with equipment and looked for grander projects. At twenty-two, he started to create the androids. Took awhile. Somewhere in those years, the probes began coming back from the near stars, empty. No advanced life-forms out there. He was secure enough now to divert some attention from business, to allow himself the luxury of wondering about man’s place in the cosmos. He pondered. He quarreled with the popular theories of the uniqueness of man. Went on toiling, though, diddling with the nucleic acid, blending, hovering over centrifuges, straining his eyes, dipping his hands deep into tubs of slime, hooking together the protein chains, getting measurably closer to success. How can man be alone in the universe if one man himself can make life? Look how easy it is! I’m doing it: am I God? The vats seethed. Purple, green, gold, red, blue. And eventually life came forth. Androids shakily rising from the foaming chemicals. Fame. Money. Power. A wife; a son; a corporate empire. Properties on three worlds, five moons. Women, all he wanted. He had grown up to live his own adolescent fantasies. Krug smiled. The young skinny pimpled Krug was still here within this stocky man, angry, defiant, burning. You showed them, eh? You showed them! And now you’ll reach the people in the stars.
Pleep pleep pleep. Boom.
The voice of Krug spanning the light-years. “Hello? Hello? Hello, you! This is Simeon Krug!” In retrospect he saw his whole life as a single shaped process, trending without detour or interruption toward this one goal. If he had not churned with intense, unfocused ambitions, there would have been no androids. Without his androids, there would not have been sufficient skilled labor to, build the tower. Without his tower—

He entered the nearest transmat cubicle and set coordinates in a casual way, letting his fingers idly choose his destination. He stepped through the field and found himself in the California home of his son Manuel.

He hadn’t planned to go there. He stood blinking in afternoon sunlight, shivering as a sudden wave of warmth struck his Arctic-tuned skin. Beneath his feet was a shining floor of dark red stone; the walls that rose on either side of him were coruscating swirls of light bursting from polyphase projectors mounted in the foundation; above him was no roof, only a repellor field set for the blue end of the spectrum, through which there dangled the fruit-laden branches of some tree with feathery gray-green leaves. He could hear the roar of the surf. Half a dozen household androids, going about their domestic chores, gaped at him. He caught their awed whispers:
“
Krug... Krug...
”

Clissa appeared. She wore a misty green wrap that revealed her small high breasts, her sharp-boned hips, her narrow shoulders. “You didn’t tell me you were—”

“I didn’t know I was.”

“I would have had something ready!”

“Don’t feel I need anything special. I’m just dropping in. Is Manuel—”

“He isn’t here.”

“No. Where?”

Clissa shrugged. “Out. Business, I guess. Not due back until dinnertime. Can I get you—”

“No. No. What a fine house you have, Clissa. Warm. Real. You and Manuel must be very happy here.” He eyed her slender form. “It’s such a good place for having children, too. The beach—the sun—the trees—”

An android brought two mirror-bright chairs, expanding and socketing them with a swift deft twinkle of his hands. Another turned on the waterfall on the inland side of the house. A third lit an aroma spike, and the odor of cloves and cinnamon unfolded in the courtyard. A fourth offered Krug a tray of milky-looking sweets. He shook his head. He remained standing. So did Clissa. She looked uncomfortable.

She said, “We’re still newlyweds, you know. We can wait awhile for children.”

“Two years, isn’t it, you’ve been married? A long honeymoon!”

“Well—”

“At least get your certificate. You could start thinking about children. I mean, it’s time you—time I—a grandchild—”

She held forth the tray of sweets. Her face was pale; her eyes were like opals in a frosty mask. He shook his head again.

He said, “The androids do all the work of raising the kid, anyhow. And if you don’t want to get yourself stretched, you could have it ectogenetically, so—”

“Please?” she said softly. “We’ve talked about this before. I’m so tired today.”

“I’m sorry.” He cursed himself for pushing her too hard. His old mistake; subtlety was not his chief skill. “You’re feeling all right?”

“Just fatigue,” she said, not convincing him. She seemed to make an effort to show more energy. She gestured, and one of her betas began to assemble a stack of glittering metal hoops that rotated mysteriously about some hidden axis; a new sculpture, Krug thought. A second android adjusted the walls, and he and Clissa were bathed in a cone of warm amber light. Music trembled in the air, coming from a cloud of tiny glittering speakers that floated, fine as dust, into the courtyard. Clissa said, too loudly, “How is your tower going?”

“Beautiful. Beautiful. You should see it.”

“Perhaps I’ll come, next week. If it isn’t too cold there. Are you up to 500 meters yet?”

“Past it. Rising all the time. Only not fast enough. I ache to see it finished, Clissa. To be able to use it. I’m so full of impatiences I’m sick with them.”

“You do look a little strained today,” she said. “Flushed, excited. You ought to slow down, sometimes.”

“Me? Slow? Why? Am I so old?” He realized he was barking at her. He said more temperately, “Look, maybe you’re right. I don’t know. I better leave now. I don’t mean to be a bother for you. I just felt like a little visit.”
Pleep pleep. Boom.
“You tell Manuel it was nothing special, yes? To say hello. When did I see him, anyway? Two weeks, three? Not since right after he came out of that shunt-room business. A man can visit his son sometimes.” He reached out impulsively, drew her to him, hugged her lightly. He felt like a bear hugging a forest sprite. Her skin was cold through that misty wrap. She was all bones. He could snap her in half with a quick yank. What did she weigh, fifty kilos? Less? A child’s body. Maybe she couldn’t even have children. Krug found himself trying to imagine Manuel in bed with her, and pushed the thought away, appalled. He kissed her chilly cheek. “You take care,” he said. “So will I. We both take care, get lots of rest. You say hello to Manuel for me.”

He rushed to the transmat Where to next? Krug felt feverish. His cheeks were flaming. He was adrift, floating on the broad bosom of the sea. Coordinates tumbled across his mind; frantic, he seized one set, fed it to the machine.
Pleep. Pleep. Pleep.
The scaly hiss of amplified star-noise nibbled at his brain. 2-5-1, 2-3-1, 2-1. Hello? Hello? The theta force devoured him.

It brought him forth inside an immense musty cavern.

There was a roof, dozens of dim kilometers overhead. There were walls, metallic, reflective, yellow-brown, curving toward some distant place of union. Harsh lights glared and flickered. Sharp-edged shadows stained the air. Construction noises sounded: crash, thunk, ping, bavoom. The place’ was full of busy androids. They clustered close to him, glistening with awe, nudging, whispering:
“
Krug... Krug... Krug
...” Why do androids always look at me that way? He scowled at them. He knew that perspiration was bursting from every pore. His legs were unsteady. Ask Spaulding for a coolpill: but Spaulding was elsewhere. Krug was jumping solo today.

An alpha loomed before him. “We were not led to anticipate the pleasure of this visit, Mr. Krug.”

“A whim. Simply passing through, looking in. Pardon me—your name—?”

“Romulus Fusion, sir.”

“How big a work-force here, Alpha Fusion?”

“Seven hundred betas, sir, and nine thousand gammas. The alpha staff is quite small; we rely on sensors for most supervisory functions. Shall I show you around? Would you like to see the lunar runabouts? The Jupiter modules? The starship, perhaps?”

The starship. The starship. Krug comprehended. He was in Denver, at Krug Enterprises’ main North American vehicle-assembly center. In this spacious catacomb many types of transportation devices were manufactured, covering all needs that the transmat could not meet: ocean-crawlers, sliders for surface travel, stratospheric gliders, heavy-duty power-haulers, immersion modules for use on high-pressure worlds, ion-drive systemships for short-hop spacing, interstellar probes, gravity boxes, skydivers, minirailers, sunscoops. Here, too, for the past seven years, a picked technical staff had been building the prototype of the first manned stargoing vessel. Lately, since the commencement of the tower, the starship had become a stepchild among Krug’s projects.

“The starship,” Krug said. “Yes. Please. Let’s see it.”

Aisles of betas opened for him as Romulus Fusion ushered him toward a small teardrop-shaped slider. With the alpha at the controls they slipped noiselessly along the floor of the plant, past racks of half-finished vehicles of every description, and came at length to a ramp leading to yet a lower level of this subterranean workshop. Down they went. The slider halted. They got out.