“Are you doing that?” she called out.
“Doing what?” Aybee’s head appeared at the trapdoor.
“Spin up and spin down. But just little changes. Now it’s stopped.”
“I’ve been entering a question about kernel operation. But it shouldn’t cause kernel spin change.” Aybee was suddenly gone again. “How about that?” his voice called from above.
“Yes. It’s doing it again. And now I’m seeing a change in the kernel radiation pattern. What’s causing it?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ve got ideas. Hey!” His voice rose half an octave. “Did you just poke something down there? Touch the sensor leads, maybe?”
“I’m nowhere near them.”
“Well, I’m getting something wild on the display here. Come up and look at this.”
Sylvia hurried up the stairs and went across to Aybee at the console. The display was flickering with random lights. While they watched, it moved suddenly to a distorted pattern of letters. Sylvia gaped as the screen steadied and an intelligible message began to scroll in.
QUERY… QUERY… QUERY: ARE YOU READY TO RECEIVE?
“Ready,” Aybee said. He added softly to Sylvia, “Let’s hope we are.”
MESSAGE TRANSFER: DEGREE OF TRANSMITTED SIGNAL REDUNDANCY HAS BEEN REDUCED. ENCODING ENTROPY PER UNIT NOW DIFFERENT FROM ALL PREVIOUS RECEIVED COMMUNICATIONS. DEDUCE PRESENCE OF NEW SIGNAL GENERATOR IN SENDING SYSTEM. QUERY: WHO ARE YOU?
Aybee blinked and stared at the panel. After a moment he shrugged. “My name is Aybee Smith.” His voice was suddenly husky and uncertain, and there was a moment’s pause before the vocoder could make the adaptation and a transcript of his words appeared on the display screen. “I am special assistant to Cinnabar Baker, general coordinator of the Outer System. I have with me Sylvia Fernald, responsible for control systems in the Cloud. Hey, more to the point. Query: Who the hell are YOU?”
Chapter 28
“…he felt for the first time the dull and angry helplessness which is the first warning stroke of the triumph of mutability. Like the poisoned Athulf in the Fool’s Tragedy, he could have cried, ‘Oh, I am changing, changing, fearfully changing.’ ”
The interior of Ransome’s Hole rerninded Bey of a great cluttered warehouse. Scattered through it, seemingly at random, were hundreds of kernels, each enough to power a structure twice the total size. The minute singularities were distributed through the whole structure, held in position by electromagnetic harnesses and floating within their triple spherical shields.
With no other masses to provide gravity, the kernels defined the whole internal field of the habitat. Corridors curled and twisted, following the local horizontal; free-hanging cables snaked their anfractuous and eye-disturbing paths across open spaces, bending to follow invisible equipotentials. The floor of a corridor could veer through a right angle in a hundred feet and still provide a constant-gravity environment.
In Bey’s condition, the journey through the interior was one episode in a surrealistic nightmare. The spiraling geometry around him matched perfectly the reeling condition inside his head. He concentrated his attention on following Aybee’s instructions and staggered forward. Fortunately, the interior tunnels were almost deserted. He was beginning to hope that he would reach Ransome’s quarters unseen when he saw ahead of him an armed group of four security officers. Two of them were facing his way. There was no way he could avoid their attention, and in any case he knew no other way to his destination.
Bey put all his strength into standing upright and walking smoothly forward. When he was five paces from the group, he gave them a curt nod. “Busy?”
“No, sir.” The reply was prompt and respectful. “Not particularly.”
“Good. There’s an important message going out from Com Central, and I don’t want anything to disturb it. I want you to go there and make sure there are no interruptions until I return.”
It sounded feeble—he sounded feeble. But all he saw was a deferential nodding of heads. As the men moved past him, Bey risked his luck one more time. He reached out to take the hand weapon from the last man’s belt. “Let me borrow this. I’ll return it to you.”
He had gone too far—he was sure of it. But the man did no more than nod, say, “Yes, sir,” and hurry along after the others.
Bey stood without moving until they were all out of sight, then allowed himself to sag against the wall of the corridor. Standing erect and talking had been an enormous drain on his energy. He took one step forward and felt in midpace a shock go through his whole body. It was an internal vibration, a tremor of catabolism from every muscle and every nerve. Some inner barrier to destructive change had suddenly crumbled.
He set his mind on the turn in the corridor, twenty meters farther on, and thought of nothing beyond that point. He took one step. His body responded reluctantly and imprecisely to his will—but it moved. Another. One more. One more…
He was at the turn. How long had it taken? The next goal was… what? A change in color of the corridor, thirty paces away. He had to get to that; there was nothing beyond that. Another step, and then another.
He guided himself along the wall with one outstretched hand. There at last. His eyes sought out and recorded the next objective.
One more effort—twenty steps. Surely he could do that much?
And then one more. Don’t think, just move.
On the final approach to Ransome’s personal quarters, Bey caught sight of his own reflection in a silvered wall panel. He thought at first that he was facing a distorting mirror. His limbs hung stiff and awkward from his body, his eyes started bloodshot from their sockets, and there was a gray, pasty look to his face. He tried Ransome’s confident and commanding smile, and it was a madman’s leer.
He stepped closer to the shining surface. It was perfectly smooth and flat, producing no hint of distortion. And the closer he came, the less he looked anything like Black Ransome. He stretched his arms wide and flexed his shoulders. There was the click and crack of frozen joints. His muscles were on fire, and every sign of mobility was leaving him. More and more, he was a poorly made, ungainly scarecrow hung on a misshapen frame. He staggered on.
He had been prepared to bluff, lie, or fight his way into Ransome’s quarters. Now he was sure that he had passed the point where he had the strength to do any of those things. Fortunately, they were unnecessary. Perhaps Ransome was so confident of his own power to command loyalty that he scorned protection, or perhaps the area was protected only when Ransome was there; whatever the reason, Bey was able to pass unchallenged through the entrance.
Aybee had told him about the rococo style of the first chamber, with its great water globe filled with exotic fish. Otherwise, Bey would have added that to his growing list of hallucinations. He went on toward the inner suite of rooms. He had no idea how much time had gone by since he had left Sylvia and Aybee. They needed every minute he could give them. In the back of his mind he still held an unvoiced hope: If somehow he could capture or neutralize Ransome himself, the chance of escape from Ransome’s Hole still existed. He knew they could not wait for reinforcements. That would take weeks, even with an instant response to Aybee’s signal from the fastest ships of the Inner or Outer System.
At the door of the inner chambers he hesitated for a moment. Surely the message would have been completed. In any case, he dared not wait. He could feel the changes coursing through every part of his body. His long training allowed him to compensate for some of them, but he was close to the limits.