The two previous times he had been down to bring his portfolio up to date he had not seemed to notice so much purposefulness to the feeling of mechanical life about him. He wondered if he was becoming sensitized, perhaps in the same way that Malorn had.
The idea was ridiculous. The moment he held Malorn's broken personality up alongside his own for purposes of comparison, that much became immediately plain. Malorn had been afraid.
Paul stood still for a moment on the sixty-seventh level, looking about him. Far down the open corridor in which he was standing, a tall gleaming bank of units slid across the opening, blocking it, and a new path opened up, angling off to the right. It was like being down in among the moving parts of some engine. An engine equipped to be careful of crushing any small creature climbing about within it as it moved to break old connections between its parts, and make new connections.
Paul turned back to his portfolio with a suddenly inquiring eye. It had not occurred to him before to consider areas within the levels of equipment. He, like all other staff members, simply went to the point where it was necessary to check on a change, checked on it, then took the most direct route to the next closest change point. But the portfolio was simply a history of changes running back to the general chart put out at the beginning of each year. He glanced through it.
The forty-ninth to the fifty-second level, he saw, showed no changes whatsoever since the beginning of the year. In this area the chart showed the Earth terminal of the no-time connection with Station Springboard on Mercury, and the equipment dealing with the relationship of this project to Earthside economy, social factors, and science. Paul frowned over the immediate chart of that area. It seemed incredible that an area dealing with research and discovery should have failed to show a multitude of changes in seven months, let alone showing none.
It occurred to Paul, abruptly, that information about the changes in that area might be restricted to certain qualified people. Perhaps to Tyne himself. The World Engineer had, not once but a number of times in the past weeks, recommended that Paul ask about anything that puzzled him. Paul lifted his wrist phone and buzzed the office on the two hundredth level.
"Nancy," he said to the receptionist, "this is Paul. Do you know anything about any area down here I'm not supposed to go into or know about?"
"Why, no," said the girl. In the small tank of Paul's wrist phone, her face was slim, cheerful, but puzzled. "Staff members from this office can go anywhere in the Supe."
"I see," said Paul. "Could I talk to Mr. Tyne?"
"Oh, he just went down into the Supe himself, about five minutes ago."
"Portfolio?"
"That's right."
"He's wearing a phone, isn't he?"
"Just a minute." She glanced at her board. "I guess he must have left it on his desk here. You know he doesn't like wearing one." She grinned at Paul. "It's just the rest of us have to follow rules."
"Well," said Paul, "I'll catch him later after he's back."
"I'll tell him you called, Paul. 'By."
" 'By, Nancy ." Paul clicked off his phone. He thought for a second and then headed himself for the unchanged area between the forty-ninth and fifty-second levels.
He found it no different on the forty-ninth level than on other levels in the Supe, until he came suddenly upon the long, looming roundness of the three-step accelerator tube. He passed around the end of this and found himself crossing the small open area that was a counterpart of the contact point he had seen at Springboard. This was one end of the no-time pathway that abolished the distance between terminals.
As his first step came down on the highly polished surface of the area, the alarm of a sudden warning rang loudly in his inner sensitivity. He almost checked himself. But just at that moment something attracted his attention otherwise.
The sound of a conversation came to his ears. Both voices used the deeper, male register of tones, and one was the voice of Kirk Tyne. The other voice was unnatural.
They reached Paul's ears down an angled corridor between high units of equipment. Paul went quickly and, he did not think why, quietly up the corridor toward them.
He turned the angle of the corridor. And stopped, finding himself shielded behind the angle of a projecting unit some eighteen or twenty feet high. Just beyond this angle he looked out into a fairly good-sized open space, almost a square, surrounded by units a good two levels in height. Their lower levels were lighted for the benefit of those living people who might need to work among them, as all units were lighted. But their upper part projected up into the dusk where lights were not. All around the square of open space they loomed like finely machined and polished idols in a temple. Tiny below them, facing one wall of these great shapes, stood Tyne.
"There's no doubt about it," Tyne was saying, "the weather - all this rioting and upset. The world situation is abnormal."
"It has been recorded." The voice came from somewhere in the wall of units facing the World Engineer. "It has been symbolized and integrated with the base situation. No apparent need for extraordinary measures is now indicated."
"There's an atmosphere of unrest. I can feel it myself."
"No concrete indications have been signalized or recorded."
"I don't know," said Tyne, almost to himself. He raised his voice slightly. "I think I may override you on this."
"Override," said the voice, "would introduce an uncalculable factor rising to a peak unit influence of twelve per cent and extending over an eighteen-month period."
"I can't simply ignore the situation."
"No situation is ignored. Ordinary measures are in process to correct the aberrancies."
"And you think they'll prove sufficient?"
"They will correct."
"By which you mean, you think they'll correct," said Tyne, a little harshly. "Sometime I'm going to take a summer off and design an honest element of self-doubt for you."
The other voice did not answer.
"What should I do?" asked Tyne, finally.
"Continue normal routine."
"I guess," said Tyne. He turned suddenly and strode off toward an opposite side of the square. Before him, a corridor opened up. He went away down it, and it closed behind him.
Paul was left watching in silence.
Quietly, he came out into the square and looked about him. The units he looked at were in appearance no different than the larger computer elements on other levels. He walked over to the side where Tyne had stood. But he could not even discern a loud-speaker element in the faces of the units he was observing.
A slight sound behind him made him glance over his shoulder. He turned completely around. The corridor by which he had come to this spot was now closed. The units stood looming, side by side, unbroken around him.
"Paul Formain," said the voice that had spoken to Tyne. Paul turned back to the units he had just been looking over.
"Your presence at this point in space and tune is unjustified within the symbolic structure of human society. Accordingly, your removal may now justifiably be effected."
Book Three: Pattern
Emerging on that final plain,
Once more the watch-bell tolled again.
-Twice! Thor's soul and mine were one,
And a dragon shape had crossed the sun,
The Enchanted Tower
Chapter 17
"Set!" said Paul.
The word went out and was lost in the shadowy stillness above and behind the metallic shapes of the huge units standing over and around Paul. There was a slight noise behind him. He glanced toward it and saw a corridor opening once more in the general direction from which he had reached this area on the forty-ninth level. In the opposite direction a single unit slid out to fill most of the open space, and turned toward Paul. It rolled slowly toward him. He backed up and saw he was being forced into the newly opened corridor.