Darla, Carl, and Lori had gathered behind me. I turned my head toward them, and Darla looked at me gravely. I turned back to Prime.
"What do you mean? Who?"
"Well, Susan D'Archangelo, for one. She has consented to contribute to the project. So has Yuri Voloshin, Sean Fitzgore, Roland Yee, and Liam Flaherty."
"I can't believe you."
"I'll leave it to them to convince you. There has been no coercion. None, Jake. You must believe that."
I was silent for a moment, my mind churning and churning. Then: "I still can't believe it."
Prime's hands went out in a helpless shrug. "I'm sorry."
"What about the others? Zoya, Oni, Ragna, John…?"
"They have declined. They will join you on your journey home." Prime chuckled. "Incidentally, you've forgotten one person. Sam has declined as well."
"Sam never went to church."
Prime laughed. "I dare say he didn't."
Darla asked, "Aren't you forgetting Winnie and George?"
"My dear, they are part of the Culmination. They always were. They are members of one of the Guide Races. Think of how you got here."
"We were kidnapped," I said.
"Your case was special, of course. But what prompted all these quests to find the end of the Skyway?"
He was right. Winnie's map lay behind it all. "About Sam," I said. "You'll return him to me?"
"He will return. Everything will be returned to you."
I stared at him. What was this form I saw? What? What did it represent? I shook my head. "Maybe I'm just slow, but there are a hell of a lot of things I don't understand about all this."
"Then lay yourself open to the dream-teaching. You need not join the project to do that. You will learn."
I was suddenly irked. "To hear you talk, everything's just going along swimmingly. But it isn't. The Goddess has other ideas. Doesn't she?"
He turned and stepped away, halted, then slowly wheeled about, his eyes on the floor, his lips drawn into a wry smile. "Other ideas. No. There is only One Idea, with variations."
"But she's opposed in some fundamental way."
"No."
"Then the dream last night… what was all that about?"
"Dream and find out. Don't fight it. Don't be afraid."
I considered it. "Maybe I will."
"Good. And keep this in mind. Conflict is part of the warp and woof of existence: That which contains no tension is static. If this is true, can any attempt to reach the ultimate be free of conflict? Do not think that the Culmination must be a success from the start. That was a fundamental error of those who conceived it. Yet that mistake did not necessarily lead to a fundamental flaw. The question is, what ultimately happened? Since the Culmination is outside of time, that question can be answered. And you will find the answer if you choose to seek it."
"Doesn't the Goddess know it, too?"
"Of course."
"It doesn't make sense," I said.
He turned and walked away a few steps, stopped, turned about. "I must leave you now. Jake, I have a sense that you must suffer further. I can help to some degree, but I am inhibited by circumstances you might find difficult to understand." He smiled again. "I shouldn't worry. You are well suited to overcoming adversity. I think that is why whatever forces are at work behind you chose you as their instrument. You are the archetypal hero, Jake." He raised his right hand. "Be well."
And he vanished, leaving behind the smell of ozone. The Goddess' exit had had more panache, but his showed real class.
14
"What now, Arthur?" I said wearily.
"I'm supposed to go fetch Sam and the rest of the washouts when Prime gives me thq all clear."
"When will that be?"
"I don't know, dearie. When the current flap has subsided. h won't be safe until then."
"Okay, say you go and get them," I said. "Then what?"
"I take you to the egress portal and show you what cylinders to shoot in order to get back where you belong."
For which there was no need, since I had the Roadmap. I looked around, throwing up my arms. "What do we do till then? Fill out a time card and punch in?"
"Make something," Arthur said, "like Carl did."
"Do you need any ashtrays?"
"How about a hand-tooled leather wallet, monogrammed?"
"You only have one initial," I told him.
"And I don't have any pockets, either. Well, then, I'm stumped."
So was I. But there was nothing to do. We couldn't leave for the master portal, and we couldn't very well drive all the way to the other side of the world, back to Emerald City. We were at Arthur's mercy.
There was sleep to catch up on, though, and thinking to do. Lay yourself open to the dream-teaching, Prime had advised. I wasn't sure I was ready for that yet. I thought about it. I needed answers, but falling into a swoon and getting infused with divine enlightenment wasn't my style. Besides, didn't you have to fast for forty days and nights in the desert first? l had left my hairshirt at the cleaners back in T-Maze.
I was tired of searching for ever-elusive answers. Damn tired of it. As Darla said, we keep getting pushed around by unseen forces. A phrase Prime had used kept echoing: "whatever forces are at work behind you." Indeed, what forces? If neither Prime nor the White Lady were really calling the shots, who was? Were there other aspects of the Culmination? Was it something outside the Culmination entirely? More whispers in the darkness, more missing pieces of a puzzle I had grown weary of fumbling with.
I lay in the bunk, Darla asleep beside me. No dreams for her. It seemed that if you didn't want to hear the propaganda, you simply turned off your receiver.
I listened. The plant was quiet except for a faint background hum. Now and then came a faraway thump or bangmaintenance attendants about their chores, perhaps. Perhaps not. Were we safe here? Of course not. But Arthur had his funnel-ears pricked for any intruders-and whatever other sensors he had were tuned in, too.
I got up and went out to the cab, sat in the driver's seat. Arthur had inflated the spacetime ship to about half its full size, and had gone inside. Said he had things to do.
I regarded Carl's vehicle. Everyone, including Carl, had wondered about its origin. Had Carl created it himself? The answer, in gleaming chrome and whitewall tires, lay out there on the floor of the receiving bay.
The time comes, as the saying goes, when a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Push me, and I push back. Time to take the offensive. From now on it would be Jake McGraw, Master of Space and Time.
I woke Darla up. "Hmph?" she said.
"C'mon. I got an insane idea."
"Hmph."
I went back to the cab while Darla dressed. "Bruce?"
"Yes, Jake?"
"Patch me through to the plant foreman."
A short delay, then: "He's on the line."
"Hello?" I said.
"Greetings!" the foreman beamed.
"Hi. Uh, would it be possible to use the Product Ideation and Design Facility again?"
"Certainly! At this moment?"
"Yes, please."
"Will send transportation immediately."
But could I do it, make that insane idea a reality? Reality seemed a fluid, changing thing here on Microcosmos, a malleable lump of stuff that could be beaten and pummeled into whatever shape was desired. I'd take a whack at it myself.
I told Darla to take a blanket along. I thumbed the intercom button, thought better of it, and punched up the interior trailer monitor. Oops, Carl and Lori were busy back there. I hoped those kids knew at least the rudiments of birth control. I should talk, I thought.
The robocart arrived, and we stepped on.
"It is revolutionary concept," the design chief said. I thought I detected a note of awe in its voice.
"Yeah, it sure is."
I peered into the depths of the drafting board. Since the object I wanted to create was immaterial, there wasn't much to look at except geometry. But it was fascinating. There were all sorts of things: planar sheaves warping and folding back on themselves, torus shapes and saddle shapes distending and contracting, Moebius strips and Klein bottles and things that neither gentleman had dreamed of; a matrix bound up in knottcd tufts of nothing-at-all, forming the very fabric of space itself-and of time, and even of matter; point-masses migrating across limitless dimensions; impossible constructs, singularities, parallel lines meeting at the edge of infinity…