He lowered the saucer until it hovered only inches above the pale sand and taxied to the entrance. From the ground the garage appeared to be a collapsible Fullerdome hangar joined with three module-shax, a cheap, mass-produced housing system in which rooms could be added at whim.
Before leaving he made Hali promise to keep an eye on Althea.
“I truly must be ninety percent human,” she said, accepting the gun as though it were some slimy lizard. “No Alta-Ty would ever do such a thing.”
“Just be human until we’re out of danger. Then you can be anything you want.”
He climbed down from the saucer and slogged through the sand. As he approached the entrance, electronic music poured over him like a thick sweet syrup, one of those radio stations the kids played.
“I’m savin’ all my money for a geno-engineer. Tell you what I want him to fix, Turn my poor ears from flesh to wax So I won’t go failin’ for your tricks.”
His steps echoed across the concrete floor of the dome. The yellow plastic roof was semi-transparent, and sunlight bathed the strange machine which stood in front of him in a golden radiance.
It was animal-like, with silk skin stretched across bones of wood, with two pairs of wings and a tail, with clumsy balloon tires for feet. A man in bright-orange overalls was working inside the cockpit, and a woman, similarly dressed, had her head under the engine cowling. Only her trim rear protruded, wiggling in time to the music.
“I’m savin’ up my money for a geno-engineer.
Tell you what I want him to change, Turn my poor eyes from flesh to glass So the sight of you won’t drive me insane!”
Nick cleared his throat and the sound echoed all around. The girl pulled her head out from under the cowling and faced him. She was no more than sixteen, with acne around her nose and big blue eyes filled with wonder. Her hair was thickly greased and coiffed in the shape of a cube.
Of course, Nick thought. Greaseheads. They were called that because they greased their hair, but also because they had grease on their minds—that is to say, they worshipped machines. Nick didn’t fully understand their creed, something about finding enlightenment by immersing oneself in the maintenance of machinery, something like that. They even had their own Lifestyler, titled, simply enough, Mr. Machine, an assembly of fleshy gears and levers, of entrails pulled into pulleys, of organs turned into worm gears. But these socio-re-ligious fads came and went like the seasons, and Nick couldn’t believe that anything so transient could mirror, even in part, eternity.
“I’m savin’ all my money for a geno-engineer, Tell you what I want him to do. Turn my poor heart from flesh to stone, So you won’t go breakin’ it in two!”
“Joe,” she called, rapping her knuckles on the windshield, “we’ve got a visitor.”
The man climbed out of the cockpit, grinning. He was Nick’s age, but smaller and skinnier, with a look of surpassing gentleness and a way of chewing his gum that reminded Nick of a cow chewing cud. His hair too was greased and pressed into a cube. He trotted to Nick, wiping his hands on his overalls.
“Welcome, friend.”
“Hi,” Nick said. “I’ve got an MHD saucer parked outside—I’m having some trouble with her and I was wondering if you had a pan-frequency signal tracer I could use for a couple of minutes.”
“Sorry. All I’ve worked on for the last couple of years is Cynthia here”—he patted the machine affectionately—“and she’s so simple I wouldn’t have any use for a tracer.”
“What is it?” Nick said. “An airplane?”
“That’s right. Internal combustion. Propeller pushes the air back, wings lift it up, tail stabilizes and steers. Just like they used on classical Terra, but I made some improvements of my own.”
“Improve the machine,” the girl said—Wanda was her name—“improve the self.”
“Computerized most of the controls,” he continued, “installed Standard SAB instrumentation, modified the engine to run on hydrogen.”
“And he did it all by hand,” Wanda said proudly. “Took him three years.”
“It’s beautiful,” Nick said, “but I’d better be going. Thanks anyway.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Joe said. “Tell me what you need the tracer for. Maybe I can improvise something.”
The song had ended, and now a news broadcast took its place, the announcer’s voice rising to fill the silence:
“ . . . escaped with the alien and a hostage in a Class A MHD saucer ... are expected to be somewhere in Darwin’s Desert . .. Black hair, brown eyes, six feet, two inches, muscular build . . . Harmon is armed and may be dangerous . . .”
Wanda and Joe looked at each other, and then they looked at Nick.
“Are you him?” Joe said. The only emotion in his voice was curiosity.
Nick hesitated. He trusted his instincts about people, and this greasehead seemed totally guileless. Furthermore, greaseheads were loners, notoriously opposed to bureaucracy of any sort. He’d chance it.
“I am.”
“We’ve been listening to reports about the assassinations, and to tell you the truth, I don’t buy that lone-alien theory at all. What’s your side of it?”
Nick told him, briefly.
“And you want the signal tracer to see if you’ve been bugged?”
Nick nodded.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Joe said. “Take Cynthia.''
“Your airplane?”
“Sure. Now that she’s perfected I don’t have any use for her. The process toward perfection, that’s the important part. Become one with the machine; improve the machine, improve the self. Every machine is a step along the path.”
“Your coming here today,” Wanda continued, picking up where he’d left off, “it’s a sign. It’s God’s way of telling Joe to give up the airplane and move on to a new machine. If you get too attached to one machine, it stops your spiritual growth.”
“We’ve always got to move on,” Joe said, “until we reach the final machine, the Cosmic Mill.”
“The Cosmic Mill?”
“This,” he said, taking in everything with a wave of his hand. “I mean, once you’ve gotten into the Cosmic Mill, well, what else is there?”
“What indeed?” Nick agreed, totally mystified.
“Take it,” Joe said, pressing the keys into Nick’s hands.
“Take it,” Wanda said, smiling warmly.
“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but I think it’s too slow. They’ll catch up with me.”
“No they won’t. See, they’ll be scanning the skies for MHD, which means they’ll be looking for high-gauss magnetic fields and shit-kicker voltages. Cynthias biggest magnet is half a gauss, and her electrical system is twelve volts. That won’t even tickle their instruments.”
“Don’t you see,” Wanda said, “it’s perfect! It’s God’s way of helping us both out, you with your escape, Joe with his spiritual development.”
“You just want to reach the islands, right?” Joe was referring to a unique geological feature of Sifra Messa, a chain of islands which circled the planet at an altitude of ten thousand feet. They were an obvious place to hide since they were deserted, thousands in number and constantly in motion. “If you leave now, you’ll reach them in a half hour. Cynthia will get you there fine as long as you’re careful about landing.”
Nick looked pensive; then he laughed.
“Why not? Things can’t get more screwed up than they are now.”
PART V
Escape to the Islands
I
The flying islands appeared overhead like quick low clouds, suddenly thickened into earth. They trailed streamers of roots and vines, and showered pebbles and clods of dirt. Nick pulled back on the steering wheel, nosing the plane into a steep climb in their direction. He glanced over his shoulder at Hali and Althea. None of them had ever ridden in a plane before, much less seen one, and they did not look happy: Hali sat with her eyes closed and every muscle of her face strained, as though her concentration alone were keeping them aloft; Althea observed their progress with wide-eyed terror and every bit of “chop” elicited from her as much of a scream as the ball gag would permit.