“I would like you to leave now,” Watchman said.
“No. Guarding this tower is my responsibility. We hold a contract.” Fileclerk looked at the androids gathered in a loose circle around them. “Friends!” he called. “Alpha Watchman has gone mad! He is destroying the tower! I ask for you help! Seize him, restrain him, while I enter the control center and restore the refrigeration! Hold him back or the tower will fall!”
None of the androids moved.
Watchman said, “Take him away, friends.”
They closed in. “No,” Fileclerk cried. “Listen to me! This is insanity! This is irrationality! This is—”
A muffled sound came from the middle of the group. Watchman smiled and started to return to the control center. Lilith said, “What will they do to him?”
“I have no idea. Kill him, perhaps. The voice of reason is always stifled in times like these,” Watchman said. He studied the tower. It had begun distinctly to lean toward the east. Clouds of steamy vapor were rising from the tundra. He could make out bubbles in the mud on the side where the tapes were pumping heat into the permafrost. A bank of fog was forming not far above the ground, where the Arctic chill clashed with the warmth rising out of the tundra. Watchman was able to hear rumbling noises in the earth, and strange sucking sounds of mud pulling free from mud. What is the tower’s deviation from the perpendicular, he wondered? Two degrees? Three? How far must it list before the center of gravity shifts and the whole thing rips itself out of the ground?
“Look,” Lilith said suddenly.
Another figure had stumbled out of the transmat: Manuel Krug. He wore the costume of an alpha — my own clothes, Watchman realized — but his garments were torn and blood-stained, and the skin showing through the rents was marked by deep cuts. Manuel barely appeared aware of the intense cold here. He rushed toward them, wild-eyed, distraught.
“Lilith? Thor? Oh, thank God! I’ve been everywhere trying to find a friendly face. Has the world gone crazy?”
“You should dress more warmly in this latitude,” said Watchman calmly.
“What does that matter? Listen, where’s my father? Our androids ran wild. Clissa’s dead. They raped her. Hacked her up. I just barely got away. And wherever I go — Thor, what’s happening? What’s happening?”
“They should not have harmed your wife,” Watchman said. “I offer my regrets. Such a thing was unnecessary.”
“She was their friend,” Manuel said. “Gave money secretly to the AEP, did you know that? And — and — good God, I’m losing my mind. The tower doesn’t look straight.” He blinked and pressed his thumbs into his eyeballs several times. “Still seems to be sagging. Tipped way over? How can that be? No. No. Crazy in the head. God help me. But at least you’re here. Lilith? Lilith?” He reached for her. He was trembling convulsively. “I’m so cold, Lilith. Please hold me. Take me away somewhere. Just the two of us. I love you, Lilith. I love you, I love you, I love you. All that I have left now—”
He reached for her.
She eluded his grasp. He clutched air. Swinging free of him, she thrust herself at Watchman, pressing her body tightly against his. Watchman enfolded her in his arms. He smiled triumphantly. His hands ran down her sleek, supple body, testing the tautness of back and buttocks. His lips sought for hers. His tongue plunged into her warm mouth.
“Lilith!” Manuel shrieked.
Watchman felt an overwhelming tremor of sensuality. His body was aflame; every nerve-ending throbbed: he was fully awake to his manhood now. Lilith was quicksilver in his arms. Her breasts, her thighs, her loins, blazed against him. He was only dimly aware of Manuel’s baleful croaking.
“The tower!” Manuel bellowed. “The tower!”
Watchman let go of Lilith. Pivoting, he faced the tower, body flexed, expectant. From the earth there came a terrible grinding noise. There came sucking sounds of gurgling mud. The tundra rippled and bubbled. He heard a cracking sound and thought of toppling trees. The tower leaned. The tower leaned. The tower leaned. The reflector plates cast a shimmering stream of brightness along its eastern face. Within, the communications equipment was plainly visible, seeds in the pod. The tower leaned. At its base, on the western side, huge mounds of icy soil were being thrust up, reaching almost to the entrance of the control center. There came snapping sounds, as of the breaking of violin strings. The tower leaned. There was a squishing, sliding sound: how many tons of glass were rocking on their foundations now? What mighty joints were yielding in the earth? The androids, standing in massed rows out of harm’s way, were desperately making the sign of Krug-preserve-us; the muttered hum of their prayers cut through the eerie noises out of the pit. Manuel was sobbing. Lilith gasped, and moaned in a way that he had heard twice before, when she had lain beneath him in the final frenzies of her orgasm. Watchman himself was serene. The tower leaned.
Now it tumbled. Air rushed wildly past Watchman, displaced by that falling bulk, and nearly threw him down. The base of the tower barely seemed to move at all, while the midsection changed its angle of thrust in a leisurely way, and the unfinished summit described a sudden fierce arc as it sped wildly toward the ground. Down and down and down it came. Its falling was encapsulated in a moment outside time; Watchman could separate each phase of the collapse from the one before, as if he were viewing a series of individual images. Down. Down. The air whined and screeched. It had a scorched smell. The tower was striking, not all at once but in sections, striking and rebounding and landing again, breaking up, sending immense gouts of mud flying, hurling its own shattered blocks for great distances. The climax of the toppling appeared to last for many minutes, as humps of glass wall rose and fell so that the tower seemed to writhe like a giant wounded snake. A terrible rumbling boom echoed endlessly. Then, finally, all was still. Crystalline fragments lay strewn across hundreds of meters. The androids had their heads bowed in prayer. Manuel was crouched dismally at Lilith’s feet, cheek against her right shin. Lilith stood with her legs apart, her shoulders flung back, her breasts heaving; she glowed in the aftermath of ecstasy. Watchman, a short distance from her, felt wondrously calm, though he sensed the first taint of sadness entering his jubilation now that the tower was down. He pulled Lilith close to him.
A moment later, Simeon Krug emerged from one of the transmats. Watchman had expected that. Krug shaded his eyes with his hand, as though warding off some dazzling glare, and looked around. He peered at the place where the tower had arisen. He glanced at the hushed, huddled gangs of androids. He stared for a long while at the immense stretch of sleek rubble. At last he turned toward Thor Watchman.
“How did this happen?” Krug asked, quietly, his voice under rigid control.
“The refrigeration tapes ceased to function properly. The permafrost thawed.”
“We had a dozen redundancy overrides to prevent such a thing.”
“I overrode the overrides,” said Watchman.
“You?”
“I felt a sacrifice was needed.”
Krug’s eerie calmness did not desert him. “This is the way you repay me, Thor? I gave you life. I’m your father, in a way. And I denied you something that you wanted, and so you smashed my tower. Eh? Eh? What sense did that make, Thor?”
“It made sense.”
“Not to me,” Krug said. He laughed bitterly. “But of course I’m only a god. Gods don’t always understand the ways of mortals.”
“Gods can fail their people,” Watchman said. “You failed us.”
“It was your tower too! You gave a year of your life to it, Thor! I know how you loved it. I was inside your head, remember? And yet — and yet you—”
Krug broke off, sputtering, coughing.