Lilith smiles. What else can we hope for?
Have you ever approached Krug directly?
Never. You see, we distinguish between Krug the man and Krug the Creator, and we feel — She shakes her head. Let’s not talk in here. Someone might listen.
We start to go out. Halfway to the door she halts, goes back, takes something from a box at the base of the altar. She hands it to me. It is a data cube. She turns it on and I read the words that appear:
In the beginning there was Krug, and He said, Let there be Vats, and there were Vats.
And Krug looked upon the Vats and found them good.
And Krug said, Let there be high-energy nucleotides in the Vats. And the nucleotides were poured, and Krug mixed them until they were bonded one to another.
And the nucleotides formed the great molecules, and Krug said, Let there be the father and the mother both in the Vats, and let the cells divide, and let there be life brought forth within the Vats.
And there was life, for there was Replication.
And Krug presided over the Replication, and touched the fluids with His own hands, and gave them shape and essence.
Let men come forth from the Vats, said Krug, and let women come forth, and let them live and go among us and be sturdy and useful, and we shall call them Androids.
I thumb the cube. More of the same. Much more. An android bible. Well, why not?
Fascinating, I tell Lilith. When was this written?
They started it years ago. They still add sections now. About the nature of Krug, and the relation of man to Krug.
The relation of man to Krug. Beautiful.
She says, Keep it, if you find it interesting. It’s for you.
We leave the chapel. I hide the android bible under my clothes. It bulges.
At Lilith’s flat again. She said, Now you know. Our great secret. Our great hope.
What exactly do you expect my father to do for you?
Someday, she said, he will go before all the world and reveal his feelings about us. He will say, These androids have been treated unfairly, and now it is time to make amends. Let us give them citizenship. Let us give them full rights. Let us stop treating them as articles of property. And because he is Krug, because he is the one who gave the world androids, people will listen. He alone will sway them all. And things will change for us.
You really think this is going to happen?
I hope and pray it will, she said.
When? Soon?
That’s not for me to say. Five years — twenty years — forty years — maybe next month. Read the cube I gave you. It explains how we think Krug is just testing us, seeing how tough we are. Eventually the test will be over.
I wish I shared your optimism, I said. But I’m afraid you may wait a long, long time.
Why do you say that?
My father isn’t the humanitarian you think he is. He’s no villain, no, but he doesn’t think much about other people and their problems. He’s totally absorbed by his own projects.
Yet basically he’s an honorable person, Lilith said. I mean Krug the man, now. Not the divine figure we pray to. Just your father.
Yes, he’s honorable.
Then he’ll see the merits of our cause.
Maybe. Maybe not. I took her in my arms. Lilith, I wish there was something I could do to help!
There is.
What?
Speak to your father about us, she said.
32
January 30, 2219.
The tower is at 1165 meters. Even the androids are having some difficulty with the cold, thin air, now as they labor more than a kilometer above the surface of the tundra. At least six, dizzied, have fallen from the summit in the past ten days. Thor Watchman has decreed oxygen-infusion sprays for all who work on high, but many of the gammas scorn the sprays as degrading and emasculating. Doubtless there will be more casualties as the final 335 meters of the tower are built in February and March.
But how splendid the structure is! The last few hundred meters cannot possibly add anything to its majesty and elegance; they can merely provide a terminal point for the wondrous thing that already exists. It tapers, it diminishes, it dwindles, and its upper reaches are lost in a halo of fire far overhead. Within, the busy technicians are making rapid progress installing the communications equipment. It is thought now that the accelerators will be in place by April, the proton track will be running in May, the preliminary testing of the tachyon generator can be done in June, and by August, perhaps, the first messages can go forth.
Perhaps the star-folk will reply; perhaps not.
It does not matter. The place of the tower in human history is assured.
33
At the beginning of the day, awakened beside snoring Quenelle Uganda, Krug felt an enormous surge of energy, an upwelling of the vital force. He had rarely known such strength within himself. He took it as an omen: this was a day for activity, a day for the display of power in the pursuit of his various ends. He breakfasted and sped through the transmat to Denver.
Morning in East Africa was evening in Colorado; the late shift was at work on the starship. But Alpha Romulus Fusion was there, the diligent foreman of the vehicle-assembly center. He told Krug proudly that the starship had been transported from its underground construction hangar to the adjoining spacefield, where it was being readied for its first flight-tests.
Krug and Alpha Fusion went to the spacefield. Under a dazzle of reflector plates the starship looked plain and almost insignificant, for there was nothing unusual about its size — ordinary systemships were much larger — and its pebbly surface failed to gleam in the artificial illumination. Yet it seemed unutterably beautiful to Krug, second only to the tower in loveliness.
“What kind of flight-tests are planned?” he asked.
“A three-stage program. Early in February,” Romulus Fusion said, “We’ll give it its first lift and place it in Earth orbit. This merely to see that the basic drive system is functioning correctly. Next will come the first velocity test, at the end of February. We’ll put it under the full 2.4 g acceleration and make a short voyage, probably to the orbit of Mars. If that goes according to plan, we’ll stage a major velocity test in April, with a voyage lasting several weeks and covering several billion kilometers — that is, past the orbit of Saturn, possibly to the orbit of Pluto. Which should give us a clear idea of whether the ship is ready to undertake an interstellar voyage. If it can sustain itself under constant acceleration while going to Pluto and back, it should be able to go anywhere.”
“How has the testing of the life-suspension system been going?”
“The testing’s complete. The system is perfect.”
“And the crew?”
“We have eight alphas in training, all experienced pilots and sixteen betas. We’ll use them all on the various testing flights and choose the final crew on the basis of performance.”
“Excellent,” said Krug.
Still buoyant, he went to the tower, where he found Alpha Euclid Planner in charge of the night crew. The tower had gained eleven meters of height since Krug’s last visit. There had been notable progress in the communications department. Krug’s mood grew even more expansive. Bundling up in thermal wear, he rode to the top of the tower, something he had rarely done in recent weeks. The structures scattered around the base looked like toy houses, and the workers like insects. His pleasure in the tower’s serene beauty was marred somewhat when a beta was swept by a sudden gust from his scooprod and carried to his death; but Krug quickly put the incident from his mind. Such deaths were regrettable, yes — yet every great endeavor had required sacrifices.
He traveled next to the Vargas observatory in Antarctica. Here he spent several hours. Vargas had found no new data lately, but the place was irresistible to Krug; he relished its intricate instruments, its air of imminent discovery, and above all the direct contact it afforded him with the signals from NGC 7293. Those signals were still coming in, in the altered form that had first been detected several months earlier: 2-5-1, 2-3-1, 2-1. Vargas by now had received the new message via radio at several frequencies and via optical transmission. Krug lingered, listening to the alien song on the observatory’s apparatus, and when he left its tones were pleeping ceaselessly in his mind.