“Notice that even the doorways have six sides, although they ain’t hexagons,” Jules Wallinchky noted. “Kinda makes you think they looked like giant turnips. Wouldn’t that be something? Findin’ out that they were vegetables? Giant thinking veggies. I don’t think we’ve ever come across anything like that.”
“Yeah, well, maybe in their time the vegetables ate us,” Ari grumped worriedly.
Jules Wallinchky laughed. “Cheer up, nephew! I don’t think we’re gonna die, but if we do, then today is as good as any to do it! If you don’t lose that fear of death, then you can never appreciate life or take the chances life gives you.”
The old boy was breathing hard, but his spirits seemed high. Too high for his nephew’s tastes.
It took much longer, with more breaks, to reach the city center. The computer reported that the man on the maglev bike was far to their left and had halted short of that entrance to the city. The other continued to follow them, but at a distance.
“O’Leary on the bike is playing pickup,” Wallinchky noted. “He’s not gonna get himself wrapped in our doings. He’s gonna wait just outside and come in when whatever’s done is done, mostly to pick up the pieces. Since nobody’s likely to be pouring in from space blowing us and the city to bits, he should be able to just pick up our gadget and leave. Very convenient.”
The grand mansions, shaped with their own odd angles, went on and on, but as perplexing were the open areas, which were prevalent. The roads inside seemed to follow a definite logical grid, but there were empty lots all over the place, some of great size, smooth as glass and made out of the same stuff as the houses. Something was supposed to be there, or had been there, but there wasn’t a clue as to what. The empty lots weren’t intended to be built on later, though; they were spaced too regularly, and were too different in size and shape from the blocks of houses, to be fill-ins and afterthoughts.
No streetlights, no signs, no cartouches, nor so much as an ornate doorknob or something that might have been a house number. Nothing. Inside the structures it was the same; although large enough to be multistoried and have lots of specialized space, they were in fact hollow, as if cast and left only to be seen, not lived in.
“Ari, why don’t you help the girls set the thing up? It’s kind of obvious how it goes,” Wallinchky said. “I think I need to sit and rest for a few minutes.”
Ari complied, meanwhile wondering why he was here, doing this. It was the last place he wanted to be, with a cop raiding party almost certainly overhead, a giant supercop maybe a few kilometers away, and maybe an obsessed nut case coming along while his uncle was, well, clearly in poor health and becoming more and more unhinged. Still, as Ari helped the women unpack the thing, slide it out, then steady it while their augmented limbs positioned it as if it were foam, he couldn’t help but reflect that something inside him was just too weak to resist his uncle, even now. At least I’m not like those two, he thought, but that very idea brought him up short.
Maybe he was like them. Maybe he could no more disobey Jules than they could. Damn! The only way to know was to disobey, but how the hell was he supposed to do that here and now?
In the meantime, they began to assemble the thing, whatever it was.
It didn’t seem sufficient to threaten or kill anybody over, let alone risk a lot. It looked in fact like something molded out of cheap plastic, although its weight and balance said that something was buried inside, something heavy. It unfolded in a pattern that soon became clear: a hexagon, with internal bracing between each junction point, much like the layout of the great ancient city. In the center was a hexagonal hole, and into this a large and definitely not hexagonal device fitted. This was the heavy part; he could guide it, but the two women’s augmented strength was necessary to lift it into place. The big unit was a good four meters across unfolded, but covered maybe a third of its center and used both hub and ribs for support.
“The power supply,” Jules Wallinchky told him. “I have no idea what’s in it, but it’s not the kind of thing you want to start taking apart to see how it works without maybe a solar system between you and it. Is it seated?”
“Looks to be,” Ari told him, stepping away from it. “Alpha, go up to the central unit and press a panel on the side. Yes—just look for it. There! Now open it!”
She did so, and a small control panel was revealed as the door slid back. There were seven active lights on it, six green forming a hex, and one yellow and larger for the center.
“It turned itself on?” Ari asked, fascinated in spite of himself.
“Naw,” his uncle responded. “It never turned off. There’s no way to do that. But all those lights were red when it wasn’t here and set up. They were still red in the lab back at the house. Now look! Green!”
“Yeah, but the center’s yellow!”
“Caution, as always, nephew. The people who built this thing were Realm types, maybe Terrans like us. This isn’t any ancient stuff.”
“Are you all right, Uncle? You don’t sound so good.”
“My heart is telling me that something gave or didn’t take well, nephew. Doesn’t matter now, so long as this thing works, and if the replica did with that ersatz power supply we gave him, hell, this should do wonders.”
“But—surely they tested all this out. Why didn’t it swallow up the makers?”
Wallinchky laughed. “Maybe it did, and that’s what scared ’em so much. Then again, maybe this ancient machine needs more motivation. It didn’t take the ones who came after, and it didn’t take old Josich when it was turned on. It only took him when he wanted to be taken. Well, nephew, I sure as hell want to be taken. I got nowhere else to go, and I wouldn’t even survive the trip back to the house.”
Ari had a sudden hope that maybe Wallinchky would croak before this went any further. That would solve a lot.
“Beta, come stand by me and be ready to assist me as needed,” the old man commanded, breathing hard but still very much alive. “Alpha, touch the center yellow light, then touch each of the green lights in turn as the display indicates. When the whole thing blinks, come over here with us.”
“Yes, Master,” she responded, and pushed the yellow button. A white light emerged and went to the top left light. She pressed it, then followed as it drew the hex completely around the center and then went back so that she pressed the center again. The center light turned green and the whole display began to blink. The center power plant started vibrating, and Alpha made her way quickly out and over to Jules Wallinchky’s side.
A dark, man-sized shape appeared just opposite them, its e-suit dark and impenetrable.
“You’re too late!” Wallinchky shouted with satisfaction at the newcomer. “It’s already begun! Even we can’t stop it now!”
“You’re wrong,” the newcomer responded in a deep, eerie voice that seemed as much machine as human. “I am just in time.”
Ari was beginning to relax. Except for a slight whining in the comm system of his suit, the great device didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. He finally got up, walked over to the newcomer, and looked to see if anything of the face could be made out in the permanent night.