"I imagine you're right," he dismissed it. "More coffee?"
"No, thanks."
Deciding it was time to continue the discussion, he said, "So you want to be a Shaper...."
"Yes."
"I hate to be the one to destroy anybody's high ambitions," he told her. "Like poison, I hate it. Unless they have no foundation at all in reality. Then I can be ruthless. So—honestly, frankly, and in all sincerity, I do not see how it could ever be managed. Perhaps you're a fine psychiatrist—but in my opinion, it is a physical and mental impossibility for you ever to become a neuroparticipant. As for my reasons—"
"Wait," she said. "Not here, please. Humor me. I'm tired of this stuffy place—take me somewhere else to talk. I think I might be able to convince you there is a way."
"Why not?" he shrugged. "I have plenty time. Sure—• you call it. Where?"
"Blindspin?"
He suppressed an unwilling chuckle at the expression, but she laughed aloud.
"Fine," he said, "but I'm still thirsty."
A bottle of champagne was tallied and he signed the check despite her protests. It arrived in a colorful "Drink While You Drive" basket, and they stood then, and she was tall, but he was taller.
Blindspin.
A single name of a multitude of practices centered about the auto-driven auto. Flashing across the country in the sure hands of an invisible chauffeur, windows all opaque, night dark, sky high, tires assailing the road below like four phantom buzzsaws—and starting from scratch and ending in the same place, and never knowing where you are going or where you have been—it is possible, for a moment, to kindle some feeling of individuality in the coldest brainpan, to produce a momentary awareness of self by virtue of an apartness from all but a sense of motion. This is because movement through dark-ness is the ultimate abstraction of life itself—at least that's what one of the Vital Comedians said, and everybody in the place laughed.
Actually now, the phenomenon known as blindspin first became prevalent (as might be suspected) among certain younger members of the community, when monitored highways deprived them of the means to exercise their automobiles in some of the more individualistic ways which had come to be frowned upon by the National Traffic Control Authority. Something had to be done.
It was.
The first, disastrous reaction involved the simple engineering feat of disconnecting the broadcast control unit after one had entered onto a monitored highway. This resulted in the car's vanishing from the ken of the monitor and passing back into the control of its occupants. Jealous as a deity, a monitor will not tolerate that which denies its programmed omniscience: it will thunder and lightning in the Highway Control Station nearest the point of last contact, sending winged seraphs in search of that which has slipped from sight.
Often, however, this was too late in happening, for the roads are many and well-paved. Escape from detection was, at first, relatively easy to achieve.
Other vehicles, though, necessarily behave as if a rebel has no actual existence. Its presence cannot be allowed for.
Boxed-in on a heavily-traveled section of roadway, the offender is subject to immediate annihilation in the event of any overall speedup or shift in traffic pattern which involves movement through his theoretically vacant position. This, in the early days of monitor-controls, caused a rapid series of collisions. Monitoring devices later became far more sophisticated, and mechanized cutoffs reduced the collision incidence subsequent to such an action. The quality of the pulpefactions and contusions which did occur, however, remained unaltered.
The next reaction was based on a thing which had been overlooked because it was obvious. The monitors took people where they wanted to go only because people told them they wanted to go there. A person pressing a random series of coordinates, without reference to any map, would either be left with a stalled automobile anda "RECHECK YOUR COORDINATES" light, or would suddenly be whisked away in any direction. The latter possesses a certain romantic appeal in that it offers speed, unexpected sights, and free hands. Also, it is perfectly legaclass="underline" and it is possible to navigate all over two continents in this manner, if one is possessed of sufficient wherewithal and gluteal stamina.
As is the case in all such matters, the practice diffused upwards through the age brackets. School teachers who only drove on Sundays fell into disrepute as selling points for used autos. Such is the way a world ends, said the entertainer.
End or no, the car designed to move on monitored highways is a mobile efficiency unit, complete with latrine, cupboard, refrigerator compartment and gaming table. It also sleeps two with ease and four with some crowding. On occasion, three can be a real crowd*
Render drove out of the dome and into the marginal aisle. He halted the car.
"Want to jab some coordinates?" he asked.
"You do it. My fingers know too many."
Render punched random buttons. The Spinner moved onto the highway. Render asked speed of the vehicle then, and it moved into the high-acceleration lane.
The Spinner's lights burnt holes in the darkness. The city backed away fast; it was a smouldering bonfire on both sides of the road, stirred by sudden gusts of wind, hidden by white swirlings, obscured by the steady fall of gray ash. Render knew his speed was only about sixty percent of what it would have been on a clear, dry night.
He did not blank the windows, but leaned back and stared out through them. Eileen "looked" ahead into what light there was. Neither of them said anything for ten or fifteen minutes.
The city shrank to sub-city as they sped on. After a time, short sections of open road began to appear.
"Tell roe what it looks like outside," she said.
"Why didn't you ask me to describe your dinner, or the suit of armor beside our table?"
"Because I tasted one and felt the other. This is different."
"There is snow falling outside. Take it away and what you have left is black.""What else?"
"There is slush on the road. When it starts to freeze, traffic will drop to a crawl unless we outrun this storm. The slush looks like an old, dark syrup, just starting to get sugary on top."
"Anything else?"
"That's it, lady."
"Is it snowing harder or less hard than when we left the club?"
"Harder, I should say."
"Would you pour me a drink?" she asked him.
"Certainly."
They turned their seats inward and Render raised the table. He fetched two glasses from the cupboard.
"Your health," said Render, after be had poured.
"Here's looking at you."
Render downed his drink. She sipped hers. He waited for her next comment. He knew that two cannot play at the Socratic game, and he expected more questions before she said what she wanted to say.
She said: "What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?"
Yes, he decided, he had guessed correctly.
He replied without hesitation: "The sinking of Atlantis."
"I was serious."
"So was I."
"Would you care to elaborate?" lt! sank Atlantis," he said, "personally.
"It was about three years ago. And Godi it was lovely! It was all ivory towers and golden minarets and silver balconies. There were bridges of opal, and crimson penants and a milk-white river flowing between lemoncolored banks. There were jade steeples, and trees as old as the world tickling the bellies of clouds, and ships in the great sea-harbor of Xanadu, as delicately constructed as musical instruments, all swaying with the tides. The twieve princes of the realm held court in the dozenpillared Colliseum of the Zodiac, to listen to a Greek tenor sax play at sunset
"The Greek, of course, was a patient of mine— paranoiac. The etiology of the thing is rather complicated, but that's what I wandered into inside his mind. I gave him free rein for awhile, and in the end I had to splitAtlantis in half and sink it full fathom five. He's playing again and you've doubtless beard his sounds, if you like such sounds at all. He's good. I still see him periodically, but he is no longer the last descendent of the greatest minstrel of Atlantis. He's just a fine, late twentiethcentury saxman.