As he entered Krug’s office after the transmat hop, Krug said, “Thor, how long have I been your god?”
Watchman was jolted. He struggled silently to regain his balance; seeing the cube on Krug’s desk, he realize what must have happened. Lilith — Manuel — yes, that was it. Krug seemed so calm. It was impossible for the alpha to decipher his expression.
Cautiously Watchman said, “What other creator should we have worshipped?”
“Why worship anyone at all?”
“When one is in deep distress, sir, one wished to turn to someone who is more powerful than oneself for comfort and aid.”
“Is that what a god is for?” Krug asked. “To get favors from?”
“To receive mercy from, yes, perhaps.”
“And you think I can give you what you’re after?”
“So we pray,” said Watchman.
Tense, uncertain, he studied Krug. Krug fondled the data cube. He activated it, searching it at random, reading a few lines here, a few there, nodding, smiling, finally switching it off. The android had never before felt so thoroughly uncertain of himself: not even when Lilith had been luring him with her body. The fate of all his kind, he realized, might depend on the outcome of this conversation.
Krug said, “You know, I find this very difficult to comprehend. This bible. Your chapels. Your whole religion. I wonder if any other man ever discovered like this that millions of people considered him a god.”
“Perhaps not.”
“And I wonder about the depth of your feeling. The pull of this religion, Thor. You talk to me like I’m a man — your employer, not your god. You’ve never given me the slightest clue of what’s been in your head about me, except a sort of respect, maybe a little fear. And all this time you were standing at God’s elbow, eh?” Krug laughed. “Looking at the freckles on God’s bald head? Seeing the pimple of God’s chin? Smelling the garlic God had in his salad? What was going through your head all this time, Thor?”
“Must I answer that, sir?”
“No. No. Never mind.” Krug stared into the cube again. Watchman stood rigidly before him, trying to repress a sudden quivering in the muscles of his right thigh. Why was Krug toying with him like this? And what was happening at that tower? Euclid Planner would not come on shift for some hours yet; was the delicate placement of the blocks proceeding properly in the absence of a foreman? Abruptly Krug said, “Thor, have you ever been in a shunt room?”
“Sir?”
“An ego shift. You know. Into the stasis net with somebody. Changing identities for a day or two. Eh?”
Watchman shook his head. “This is not an android pastime.”
“I thought not. Well, come shunting with me today.” Krug nudged his data terminal and said, “Leon, get me an appointment at any available shunt room. For two. Within the next fifteen minutes.”
Aghast, Watchman said, “Sir, are you serious? You and I—”
“Why not? Afraid to swap souls with God, is that it? By damn, Thor, youwill! I have to know things, and I have to know them straight. We’re shunting. Can you believe that I’ve never shunted before either? But today we will.”
It seemed perilously close to sacrilege to the alpha. But he could hardly refuse. Deny the Will of Krug? If it cost him his life, he would still obey.
Spaulding’s image hovered in the air. “I have an appointment at New Orleans,” he announced. “They’ll take you immediately — it involved some fast rearranging of the wait-list — but there’ll be a ninety-minute interval for programming the stasis net.”
“Impossible. We’ll go into the net right away.”
Spaulding registered horror. “That isn’t done, Mr. Krug!”
“I’ll do it. Let them ride gain carefully while we’re shunting, that’s all.”
“I doubt that they’ll agree to—”
“Do they know who their client is?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, tell them that I insist! And if they still mumble to you, tell them that I’ll buy their damned shunt room and run it to please myself if they won’t cooperate.”
“Yes, sir,” Spaulding said.
His image vanished. Krug, muttering to himself, began to tap the keyboard of his data terminal, while ignoring Watchman completely. The alpha stood rooted, chilled, clotted with dismay. Absently he made the Krug-preserve-us sign several times. He longed to be released from the situation he had created for himself.
Spaulding again flickered in the air. “They yield,” he said, “but only on the condition that you sign an absolute waiver.”
“I’ll sign,” Krug snapped.
A sheet slithered from the facsimile slot. Krug scanned it carelessly and scribbled his signature across it. He rose. To Watchman he said, “Let’s go. The shunt room’s waiting.”
Watchman knew relatively little about shunting. It was a sport only for humans, and only for the rich; lovers did it to intensify the union of their souls, good friends shunted on a lark, those who were jaded visited shunt rooms in the company of strangers of similar mood purely for the sake of introducing a variety to their lives. It had never occurred to him that he would shunt himself, and certainly he would not ever have dared entertain the fantasy of shunting with Krug. Yet there was no pulling back from it now. Instantly the transmat swept them from New York to the dark antechamber of the New Orleans shunt room, where they were received by a staff of remarkably uneasy-looking alphas. The tensions of the alphas increased visibly as they realized that one of today’s shunters was himself an alpha. Krug too seemed on edge, his jaws clamped, facial muscles working revealingly. The alphas bustled around them. One said again and again, “You must know how irregular this is. We’ve always programmed the stasis net. In the event of a sudden charisma surge anything might happen this way!”
“I take responsibility,” Krug answered. “I have no time to waste waiting for your net.”
The anguished androids led them swiftly into the shunt room itself. Two couches lay in a chamber of glistening darkness and tingling silence; glittering apparatus dangled from fixtures somewhere overhead. Krug was ushered to his couch first. Watchman, when his turn came, peered into the eyes of his alpha escort and was stunned by the awe and bewilderment he found there. Watchman shrugged imperceptibly to say, I know as little about this as you.
Once the shunt helmets had been put in place over their faces and the electrodes were attached, the alpha in charge said, “When the switch is thrown you will immediately feel the pressure of the stasis net as it works to separate ego from physical matrix. It will seem to you as though you are under attack, and in a sense you are. However, try to relax and accept the phenomena, since resistance is impossible and all that you will be experiencing is actually the ego-shift process for which you have come. There should be no cause for alarm. In the event of any malfunction we will automatically break the circuit and restore you to your proper identity.”