… and if this occurred, I would be barred from entering a maze-like grid. It would cover it over, ruining the next stage of my journey…
… so I deviated, heading for the place of the alarm. To tamper with it, however, I saw, would cause the grid itself to flip, closing down a part of the system…
… but then there was the mechanism itself which would cause the flipping. It could be deactivated by means of a coded command, the template for which hovered near the alarm like a holographic negative hole-in-space…
Back-reading, I found the code, then deactivated the alarm… In each of my other phases, I was holding one of the incandescent defenders at bay… For a nanosecond or so, I saw superimposed scenes of the storming of a castle from some medieval epic on the Late Late Show, my subconscious stirred by some vaguely poetic impulse now it was feeling its oats.
… Torches, cries, flames, flashing blades, buckets of gore, bits of armor here and there, the neighing of a horse, arrow-pierced cuirasses. Alarms and excursions…
I shook off the illusions without shedding all of the excitement. I regarded the grid, knowing I had to enter there, knowing too that if I proceeded incorrectly the Double Z data I sought would be shifted, dispersed, to other locales in the overall system, necessitating my hunting them down again—and being faced with the same problem. The data would flee and continue to flee, finding new hiding places, unless it were approached in the proper fashion…
Another template hovered nearby, but when I back-read it, it provided no key. I studied it, puzzled… It looked almost useful. Then I realized that it spoke my old language, deceit. I saw that it had to be inverted. I did this. Then I superimposed its pattern upon the grid and it was like staring simultaneously through the scopes of a whole battery of rifles—the crosshaired cells indicating the pattern of entry…
I matched myself to the pattern—like patching a section of wallpaper—and slipped through…
… into a multilevel maze. It was like moving through a kind of phase space, but the dimensionality was not that important a part of it. I was aware that my understanding of the situation would persist for so long as I was a part of the process. Afterwards, I knew that I would recall it less clearly. My power did not function in a vacuum; it required a situation against which to react. My awareness which accompanied its direction found some means of comprehending the situation, if only by functional analogy…
� therefore, I saw myself/selves moving simultaneously through several levels of the maze. At each junction, it was necessary to pluck and back-read the template coding for the program I was following—somewhat more complicated than an on-off choice, as I had passed through a binary-quaternary converter on breaching this level of the system itself; a later addition, I decided, installed for greater economy of memory, but also situated where it was as an additional security baffle…
I wormed my way through the grid’s mazework, overflashed once with another combative construct… Fighting in rush-strewn, tapestried halls, stone-walled and gray … Screams and wailing… Heavy, dark-wooden furniture … A swaying candelabra… Dogs barking…
… I emerged into a mall-like area, parallel rows of lights racing off before me toward some hopefully less than infinite vanishing point… I felt myself growing tired as I regarded them. The struggle with Big Mac’s defenses was beginning to fray my concentration…
I could feel Ann’s rapt attention. She was impressed by what she had seen, though her comprehension lagged behind the sensations themselves. She seemed almost to be urging me to produce more spectacles for her.
“I should charge you admission,” I said in my mind, and I felt something like amusement in response.
… I suggested to my subconscious that another analogue might come in handy. Immediately, the prospect before me began to waver and shift…
… I stood in a seemingly infinite library. Lines of stacks ran on and on and on before me, into the distance. I moved among them…
“Don’t let it be the Dewey Decimal System,” I warned my subconscious—long having suspected it of possessing a twisted sense of humor, I realized at that moment.
I hurried forward. The rows were labelled alphabetically, huge metal letters affixed at the foot of each…
… A, B…
C!
… I turned and moved up C. The Ca’s seemed to go on for forever. I felt my mental fatigue increasing. The long shelves of elaborately bound books seemed determined to hold the Ca range. I began to run…
… From somewhere in the distance, my mind supplied the sounds of continuing conflict within the huge central donjon—moving nearer. I was simultaneously aware, in my other forms, that the tide of battle was shifting—that I might be losing my grip on one of the alarm systems which I was simply holding, in abeyance, like the jaws of a spring-steel trap. To add a touch of the olfactory, my subconscious threw in a smell of smoke…
“Thanks, subconscious” I growled, mentally…
… I finally made it to the Ce’s—another interminable-seeming stretch. I increased my pace. I felt Ann’s excitement continuing to rise in direct proportion to my own distress. It was still moot as to whether she was cheering me on or hoping to witness an unhappy ending in spades…
I threw extra strength into my reverberant-attackers’ struggle against the defenders. As I did so, the titles beside me became harder to read. Smoke drifted past me, slid between me and the shelves, curled before the lettering upon the spines…
Cursing, I slowed and read. Still in the Ce’s. Damn!
On and on I ran. The floor became a mirror, and then the ceiling did. An infinite race of BelPatris hurrying through the smoke of reality, the past ablaze to the rear, the future an uncertain progression to infinity. The race is not always to the swift, but that’s the way to bet. Damon Runyon? Yes… I felt something like laughter—my own—within and about me. It frightened me…
I checked the shelves again. Ch’s now, thank God! Next the Ci’s, and then…
Ci’s! I was into them almost before I knew it. Who needs Ci’s? I’d a mind to dump the entire Ci section of Big Mac’s memory here in Double Z, as an act of protest or revenge. I also realized that I was suffering from an increasing irrationality from the strain.
… The clash of arms grew louder, the smells stronger. The smoke thickened…
No!
I could not let go at this point! Not this near to my goal!
I struggled to reassert my control, to affirm my supremacy over all of the systems which confronted me. I slowed. I focussed my concentration…
The smoke began to dissipate, the sounds grew fainter, the books seemed more solid, their titles clearer—Co! I was into the Co’s!
I almost lost control again at the realization. But the infinite clan of BelPatris—both upside-down and rightside-up—got hold of itself, stabilized its unimaginatively repetitive environment and continued through the Cob’s and the Cod’s…
Col’s…
Com’s…
Con’s, too. And after the Cop’s and Coq’s came Cora, coming cunningly, contiguous, constant Cora, Cora consolidated, contained, capsulized, captioned, captured—captive Cora!—concomitant Cora, Cora culled and collected, copyright Cora closed close, covered—