… And Ann plunged with me.
“Turn!” I felt her say within my mind.
In that moment, I realized that the summons which I had ignored still held her. She wanted to travel that byway, trace it to its source.
I did not reply. Some things about Ann were coming back to me as I spiraled with the current, rising and falling at dizzying velocities…
Although I knew that she could see into my mind, I could not prevent myself from laying out some of the things about her which now returned to me. I could even feel her reactions as I did this.
I was still hazy as to how we had met, while I was back at the university. It seemed that I had learned of her powers at a fairly early point, though. They were potent. She might have carved some sort of empire for herself, rather than helping Barbeau to build his own. What could be safe from her mental probing if she’d a desire to know it? Who could long stand the hallucinatory stresses, the mental harassment she could bring to bear? She could learn secrets, displace enemies… she was a one-woman intelligence agency.
But.
She’d a weakness. A big one. Dependency. She kept it well masked, but she needed someone. She had always needed a strong personality outside herself to cling to.
Ahead… We were coming to something now. I perceived it as a moat of fire…
Slow, now… Brake. Hold it. I was nearing my destination.
I felt Ann’s excitement growing. I sensed her pique at my appraisal of her weakness. But I also sensed acknowledgement that it was correct. Barbeau provided the rock she clung to now, which was the reason she had tried to confuse me, to finish me off. She had wanted to get back in his good graces again after having failed to keep me in the Keys or break me down on the plane.
Steady… I drew nearer. Yes. I was moving about the peripheries of Angra’s data-banks now. A dark form became apparent within the circle of fires. It grew even as I considered it, its outlines becoming more distinct. Dark, rough-hewn walls, notched as for battle, forms passing to and fro along them. Turrets, machicolated balconies…
Big Mac was taking form as a fortress, a great, dark citadel within my mind’s eye. Now lights flashed within a series of tiny oblong windows, giving to one wall the momentary impression of an old data-punched card held up to a bright light source…
Circling… Beyond Phlegethon’s blaze, another wall became a scarred, unhuman, sculpted face. I reverberated within the circuit and studied it from several angles at once.
Now, a Stonehenge beneath the sea, filigrees of weeds swaying like smoke-plumes about it, luminescent barnacles winking on and off across its surfaces… Here, a nighted skyline within a massive box, fitted with internal movement. . . There, an ominous black altar…
Fortress… Castle… Citadel. . . Pulsing, elemental servitors guarding its ramparts…
I continued to reverberate, dividing, multiplying my points of view. I had been within those storm-gauged walls before. Time was when I was welcome there. To cross over now, I must find its weaknesses…
I saw that no defender might leave its station…
Ann’s presence continued to intrude, if only in the form of thoughts about her. Had I once been the strong personality to which she had clung? How had I come to work for Angra? Had these things been somehow connected?
And even as they ran through my mind, I felt these speculations—perhaps unwillingly—affirmed within Ann’s consciousness, across the tenuous interface we shared.
The fires . . . The fires now claimed my attention, resolving themselves into internal, myriad, microscopic movements… The petals of flame became a pointillist study, discrete bright units becoming more and more apparent… Further, further—to their almost but not quite Brownian dartings…
And Ann, Ann was peering over my figurative shoulder as I carried out my probing. I could feel her wonder at the display. She could not see these things on her own. It was apparently worth the one drawback to her—namely, that I could sense certain things within her mind as well, when we were in such close proximity.
No, it was not really a random movement of the fiery particles . . . There was a rhythm, a definite periodicity, which, from my many points of view, now became apparent. Somewhere beyond, I was certain, lay word of Cora, information concerning her whereabouts. I studied the movement more closely…
I sensed an affirmative acknowledgement from Ann when I thought of Cora.
“Where is she?” I queried. “If you know, tell me and save me this trouble.”
But I immediately sensed a negative. With some difficulty, she covered over a thought of Cora in a warm climate which was not that of Florida. I saw that Ann was with me mainly for the spectacle. She wanted to observe what I had done so far and what I was about to attempt, for her own pleasure and excitement. She could always withdraw in an instant if something horrible happened to me. Secondarily, she wanted to know it for certain if I did not succeed—to have something to take back to Barbeau, having failed in her latest attempt to do me in or drive me over the edge with her illusions. She would not willingly give anything away to me.
“All right,” I said. “Maybe voyeurism’s better than no passion at all.”
A wave of pain, offended dignity and something else passed over me. I ignored it and pressed ahead on all fronts.
… Continuing to reverberate at many points about the moat, I moved forward until I was all but embracing the defending
movements of the fiery particles. Then I willed that they part before me…
The flames separated like opening beaks before all of my posts of observation… I passed within.
The walls, at this range, seemed smoky, swirling, flowing…
I advanced at two points and was repulsed … The smokes had rushed together and taken on solid form before me, becoming some glistening substance—like blocks of black ice… Staring, I could discover crystal lattices within them, retreating into dark infinities…
… But as the forces of the citadel were mustered to repel the two aspects of myself, I noted that the walls weakened, growing more tenuous before me at the other vantages I occupied…
… And for a single, swimming moment they became again the walls which had resisted me when I had traced my check, the walls which then seemed to guard the lost log of my days… Somehow this was much less important to me now. Better now, I decided, to concentrate on my single objective…
I advanced at four points, and everything which remained before me was transformed into a swarm of fireflies, rushing to block me there. . .
I advanced at three more points, and at one of them I stepped through…
… into another city of lights—a Paris, a New York among computers: huge, brilliant, in motion at every point…
… A faceless phalanx of incandescent defenders rushed toward me, jerkily, like a grouping of marionettes…
I reverberated, until there were more of me than there were of them. Leaving my phase-doubles to combat them, with those portions of my consciousness committed there, I pressed ahead…
… to see that if I were to completely suppress the defenders in that place, a soundless alarm would divert a river of light which flowed to my left, causing it to flow to my right…