Was it interesting?
Overpowering, I say. And there’s so much you have to explain, Lilith.
Images swim in my brain. I burn. I sizzle.
Of course you won’t tell anyone I took you, she says. I could get into awful trouble.
Of course. Strictly confidential.
Come close, Alpha Leaper.
Manuel.
Manuel. Come close.
First tell me what it means when they say Krug be—
Later. I’m cold. Warm me, Manuel.
I fold her in my arms. The heavy mounds of her breasts inflame me. I cover her mouth with mine. I thrust my tongue between her lips. We sink down together to the floor.
Without hesitation I spear her. She trembles. She clasps me.
When I close my eyes I see slobies and rejects and stackers.
Lilith.
Lilith.
Lilith.
Lilith I love you I love you I love you Lilith Lilith Lilith
The great vat bubbles. The moist crimson creatures crawl forth. Laughter. Lightning. O shallow is thy bowl, filthy grig! My flesh crashes against hers. Plit! Plit! Plit! Plit! Plack! With humiliating swiftness the overwrought Leviticus Leaper pours a billion little boys and girls into his beloved’s sterile womb.
26
January 9. 2219.
The tower is at 940 meters and rising more swiftly than ever. Standing at the base, one cannot easily see the summit; it is lost against the white glare of the winter sky. At this time of year there are only a few hours of daylight at the site, and during those hours the sun’s rays ride fiery tracks down the length of the shimmering shaft.
Much of the interior structure now is complete throughout the building’s lower half. Three of the high-capacity communications equipment modules have been hoisted into place: somber black metal containers fifty meters high, within which are the huge kickover units that will amplify the messages as they climb the tower. Viewed from afar, these modules seem to be giant seeds ripening in a great glossy transparent pod.
The accident rate continues to be high. Mortality levels are causing concern. The losses among gammas have been particularly severe. Yet morale is said to be good; the androids are cheerful and appear to be aware that they are playing an essential role in one of humanity’s most ambitious projects. If their attitude remains so positive the tower will be finished well ahead of schedule.
27
After showing them the state of progress at the tower, Krug took his guests that day to dine at the Nemo Club, where a suite was perpetually held in readiness for him. The club was one of Krug’s minor enterprises; he had built it a dozen years back, and for some time it had been Earth’s most fashionable gathering-place, with reservations required at least six months in advance. Situated 10,000 meters under the western Pacific in the Challenger Deep, it consisted of fifteen pressurized bubbles through whose walls, fashioned of the same sturdy glass from which the tower was being constructed, it was possible to view the strange inhabitants of the dark abyss.
Krug’s companions were Senator Henry Fearon and his brother Lou, the lawyer, of Fearon Doheny; Franz Giudice of European Transmat; Leon Spaulding; and Mordecai Salah al-Din, the Speaker of Congress. To reach the Nemo Club they had journeyed by transmat to the island of Yap in the Caroline group of Micronesia, where they boarded an immersion module of the kind used for the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. The density of the medium made transmat travel impossible under water. The pressures of the ocean’s depths meant little to the immersion module, however, and at a calm and steady speed of 750 meters a minute it sank to the Pacific floor and entered the Nemo Club’s transit hatch.
Floodlights bathed the abyss. The dwellers of the deep paid no heed to the illumination, and came quite close to the club’s glass walls: fragile, flimsy, unmuscular fishes, loose and flabby of body, their tissues pervaded by water under a compression of ten or twelve tons per square centimeter. Many of them were luminescent; cold pale glows glistened from photophores along their sides or between their eyes or on fleshy dangling lanterns jutting from their foreheads. The wavelength of the club’s floodlights had been carefully chosen in order not to interfere with the luminescence of the fishes, and their little sparkling beacons were plainly visible even in the brightness; Justin Maledetto, the architect of the tower, had also designed the club, and Maledetto was clever in such details. Up to the walls the bizarre little monsters came, black and brown and scarlet and violet in hue. Many of them had jaws that unhinged, so that their mouths could gape down to their chests, ready to swallow enemies two or three times their own size. In the random encounters of the abyss pygmies devoured giants. Diners at the club were treated to visions of miniature gargoyles and horrors, sinister in their radiance, brandishing their savage teeth within their vast mouths, trailing strange appendages and protrusions, bearing eyes that bulged like globes, or eyes on stalked tubes, or no eyes at all. One did not need to travel to distant worlds to behold bizarre beasts; the nightmare creatures were here, on man’s own planet, and one had only to look. Huge spines, curved teeth so long that mouths could never close, branching stems rising from snouts, things that were all jaws and no body, things that were all tail and no head, anglers with twitching rods that danced about, giving off yellow or blue or green pulsations, grotesqueries of a thousand kinds, and no fish as much as half a meter long: the show was extraordinary and altogether unique.
Krug ordered a simple meal-krill cocktail, algae soup, steak, Australian claret. He was no gourmet. The club offered every sort of delicacy, but Krug never took advantage of its bounty. His companions had no such reluctance; cheerfully they called for Swedish oysters, benthic crabs, unborn squid, contrefilets of veal, snail mousse, breast of oryx, shirred euphorbia buds, manta tips, baked cycad hearts, and more, all washed down by the world’s finest golden wines. The waiter looked delighted at their prowess with the menu cubes. All waiters here were alphas; it was unusual to employ alphas in what was essentially menial personal service, but this was an unusual place, and none of the staff at the Nemo Club appeared to be embittered at doing a job normally performed by betas or even gammas.
Yet the waiters could not have been entirely content with their station in life. When the appetizers had been served, Senator Fearon said to Krug, “Did you notice the AEP emblem on our boy’s lapel?”
“Are you serious?”
“A very small one. Sharp eyes are needed.”
Krug glanced at Spaulding. “When we leave, speak to the captain about that. I don’t want any politics here!”
“Especially revolutionary politics,” said Franz Giudice, and laughed. The transmat executive, long and angular, was noted for his bland ironies. Though well past ninety, he had adopted the styles of dress of men half his age, mirror-plates and all, and retained astonishing vigor. “We’d better watch that waiter. With two members of Congress at the table, he’s likely to slip propaganda into our dishes, and we’ll all walk away converted.”
“Do you really think the AEP is a threat?” Lou Fearon asked. “You know, I got a good dose of their Siegfried Fileclerk while I was handling the business of the alpha girl killed at the tower.” He nodded toward Spaulding, who scowled. “I got the impression that Fileclerk and the whole AEP bunch are completely ineffectual,” the attorney said.
“A minority movement,” said Senator Fearon. “Not even commanding the support of the bulk of androids.”
Leon Spaulding nodded. The ectogene said, “Thor Watchman had some stinging words for Fileclerk and his party. Watchman doesn’t seem to feel there’s any value in the AEP whatever.”
“An unusually shrewd and capable android, Thor is,” said Krug.
“I was quite serious, though,” Giudice declared. “You can laugh at the AEP all you like, but I feel its aims are genuinely revolutionary and that as it gains backing it will—”