He walked on ahead of her. She followed him when he turned into the complex.
In the lobby he pretended to read the bulletin board while waiting for her. When she passed him on the way to the stairwell he grinned.
“Good evening,” he said.
She gave him a brilliant smile. “Every day we’re getting better and better!”
“It’s great, isn’t it?” he replied.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.”
She entered the stairwell and walked up.
His eyes wandered over the bulletin board. One posting, handwritten in a scrawl, read: troubled citizen w. unsocail thougts wants to join “self-critisism group” help me citizens! Apt.
He wondered how such “thougts” were possible, but obviously they were. InnerVoice’s control might not be as complete as he had surmised. Bugs in the system? Programming errors in the tiny biological computers?
Perhaps there were random glitches, but he doubted that they were anything but rare. How long could he hope to go on thinking such blatantly unsocial thoughts as he was thinking right now?
He would have to do something, and fast.
Fifteen
Laboratory
“Jeremy, something’s happening.”
Jeremy poked his head out of the hatch of the Sidewise Voyager.
“Did you say something, Isis?”
Isis was seated at the mainframe station. “Yes. We’re receiving data through the modem, but it looks like gibberish.”
“Wait a sec, I’ll be up.”
Jeremy sat in the craft’s pilot seat and entered a few commands on the keyboard of a Toshiba laptop computer, which was bolted to the control panel.
A voice replied: “Will do, Jerry-baby.”
“Hey, that’s ‘Jeremy.’ Cut the crap.”
“Well, all right. Just trying to be friendly.”
Jeremy’s Toshiba laptop had been an ordinary personal computer before he brought it into the castle. Since then it had inexplicably developed a personality of its own. After it interfaced with the old mainframe — the one that had been destroyed in the altercation with the Hosts of Hell — it got even stranger. Against his better judgment, Jeremy gave the laptop voice capability when he installed it in the traveler, and because the result unsettled him so much, he decided not to give the same capacity to the rebuilt mainframe. He was glad of the decision. He had needed a model in designing the mainframe’s operating system and chose the laptop’s MS-DOS system because it was handy. Perhaps this explained why the laptop’s personality and the mainframe’s were similar. Whatever the reason, he did not need two talking smart-asses.
Now, Isis was another matter entirely. With the Isis program running, the mainframe’s personality was submerged. Or was it that Isis was an improved version of the mainframe? Both had the hots for him. The laptop, thankfully, didn’t.
As he keyed in more commands, he felt a sudden wistful yearning for the days when computers didn’t think.
“Run these instrument checks again,” he added orally.
“Right away, sweetie.”
“Weird,” he muttered. He got up and left.
Outside, he checked the small induction coil that was taped and glued to the craft’s bell-shaped hull. Screws had been impossible; the hull seemed impermeable, and Jeremy wouldn’t have chanced breaching it, anyway. Improvised as it was, the coil would provide a reading of the “interstitial etherium,” whatever that might be.
Arriving at the mainframe terminal station, he asked, “What’s up?”
“I can’t get a feel for what this data is,” Isis said fretfully.
“It seems to be patterned, but I can’t put any kind of interpretation on it that makes sense.”
Jeremy looked at the clot of numbers on the screen.
“I smell pixels in all that.”
“Pixels. You mean it’s —?” Isis’s brow went up. “Of course!” She threw her arms around Jeremy’s waist. “You’re so brilliant!” She typed in some commands.
The numbers disappeared and what appeared in their place was the face of Lord Incarnadine.
“Ah. You figured it out. Good work, Jeremy.”
“Lord Incarnadine! Hey, you found a way to call again. Great. What’s your situation?”
“Still on the way to a place where I might effect a spell to get me home. By the way, who’s your new assistant? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Hello again, my lord. It’s Isis. Remember?”
“Isis! Why, how nice.… You know, I don’t recall ever seeing you in this configuration.”
“I’ve never been in this configuration before. It was only a fortunate fluke that allowed it to happen — and of course Jeremy’s expertise.”
Incarnadine chuckled. “You mean his recklessness in loading un-debugged programs into defective operating systems.”
Isis pouted. “I’m hurt.”
He laughed. “Don’t be. I’m glad you turned out as well as you did.”
“But I don’t have bugs. Endearing foibles, maybe.”
“I stand corrected. My dear, I’d love to chat, but we don’t have the time. Jeremy, I just called to check in. Don’t have any new information. There were some problems along the way, and I just got done riding a hellwind.”
“What’s that?”
“A fast but dangerous mode of transportation around here. The trick is getting off. I managed to do it, but the ride was exhausting. And my horse is about fagged out. I expect to be delayed even more. I’m assuming that Isis helped you with the operating system.”
“With Isis, we have a fully functioning installation here,” Jeremy said. “Also, we’ve got the spell program pretty much worked out, but we need to input data on the state of the whatchamacallum.”
“Yeah, getting a reading on the whatchamacallum is going to be a problem. Unfortunately I don’t have any answers. There are instruments in my study that would give us some idea, but one, they’re very old and temperamental and only I can use them effectively, and two, they wouldn’t yield the accuracy we would need, anyway.”
“Right. We’re gonna need an energy-state factor accurate to a couple of decimal places,” Jeremy said. “We figure the only way to do that is to rev up the Voyager, fly out into the inter-universal medium, and get it.”
Incarnadine shook his head sharply. “Absolutely not. Too dangerous.”
“We know it’s dangerous, but it’s the only way we’ll get the data we need.”
“We’ll end up losing you, the data, and the Voyager. No, too great a risk. Under no circumstances are you to try this. Understand?”
Jeremy shrugged. “You’re the king.”
“And don’t you forget it, kid. Seriously, it’s much too risky. Don’t do anything at least until I get there. There may be a way to interpolate the data from those rickety instruments of mine, but I’ll have to be there to do it.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Anything else happening?”
“Yeah, Linda said that there’s something strange about the Earth aspect. Halfway disappeared, and there’s some unknown world out there.”
“That’s not good,” Incarnadine said. “Anything else?”
“Well, I haven’t heard anything. We’re pretty isolated up here. I’m expecting a report any minute now, though, and …”
The door to the lab flew open and Osmirik rushed in.
“Here’s Ozzie now, sir. Maybe he —”
“Is that His Majesty?” Osmirik was breathless.
“Right here, Ozzie. What’s wrong?”
Osmirik elbowed Jeremy aside. “My lord!”