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Kikura glided up to them and indicated they would be leaving the flawship
soon; a V.I.P disk shuttle was already leaving the gate terminal to take them
aboard.
Heineman was questioning Olmy about the identity of the Frant that had
accompanied them, suspicious that it might have changed places with one of the
nine other Frants tiding with them. "It looks different.
Are you sure it's the same Frant?"
"They all look alike when they're mature," Olmy said.
"Why does it matter?".
"I just want to know where I stand with somebody," Heineman responded,
reddening.
"It's really not important," Olmy said. "Once they've homogenized and passed
current memory to each other, one can take up where the other leaves off."
Heineman wasn't convinced, but he decided it wasn't worth pursuing.
The V.I.P transportation disk was as wide as the flawship was long.
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It ascended to within thirty meters of the axis, surface crawling with glowing
sheets of charge picked up in the plasma field. The glow slipped away from
the disk's upper surface like phosphorescent sea foam, and a circular opening
appeared in the center.
The flawship's hatches opened then, and the guests leaped out through the
connecting fields in orderly pairs and triplets, hanging on to each other,
tracting to the opening in the disk.
Olmy took hold of Farley and Lanier and Lanier held Patricia; Ram
Kikura took Carrolson's and Heineman's hands. Together, they flew with the
rest of the group.
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The disk was little more than an enlarged version of the cupolas that had
covered the gates just beyond the seventh chamber; except for a webwork of
glowing lines, it had no visible lower half, and to
Heineman's consternation, no platform or support to rest on. The party simply
floated in the space immediately beneath, suspended in an invisible and
all-enveloping traction field which was in turn shot through with smaller
visible fields. All that separated them from the vacuum---all that lay
between them and the walls of the Way, twenty-five kilometers below--was a
battier of subtle energies.
Lanier saw several homorph and many more neomorph pilots and workers at the
edges of the disk, segregated from the entourage. He watched a spindle-shaped
neomorph weaving its way through purple traction sheets, followed by boxes
from another section of the flawship. On the opposite side, the eight Frants
also waited to disembark. Their own
Frant had returned to its fellows and had already homogenized with them,
rendering Heineman's question academic.
Lanier reached out for a tenuous purple traction line and twisted around to
look at Heineman.
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"How're' you feeling?" he asked.
"Lousy," Heineman said.
"He's a sissy," Carrolson said, a little pale herself.
"You should love this," Lanier chided him. "You've always been in love with
machinery."
"Yeah, machines!" Heineman growled. "Show me any machines!
Everything works without moving parts. It's unnatural."
The disk began its descent as they spoke. The clusters of passengers
excitedly exchanged picts; Patricia floated with arms and legs spread, one
hand grasping the same taction line as Lanier.
She stared down at the terminal, watching the disks enter and exit ports near
the base from four directions. Many more disks waited in stacks like so many
pancakes, or fanned out in spirals within a holding column.
The disk descended slowly, giving them plenty of time to inspect the wall
traffic around the terminal. Most of the lanes were filled with the
cylindrical container-vehicles of many diverse shapes spheres, eggs, pyramids
and some of a blobby appearance, composed of many complex curves.
Lanier tried to make sense out of it all, using what the data pillar had
taught them, but couldn't--there was apparent order, but no easily discerned
purpose. Patricia tracted in his direction.
"Do you understand all that we're seeing?" he asked her.
She shook her head. "Not all."
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Ram Kikura broke from a cluster of brightly dressed homorphs and came their
Way. "We'll pass through the gate in just a few minutes," she said. "You
must know, if Olmy and the Nexus allow it, that I can make you very wealthy
people."
"Wealth still means that much?" Carrolson asked dubiously.
"Information does," Ram Kikura replied. "And I've already picted with four or
five powerful information distributors."
"Send us on tour like circus freaks," Heineman grumbled.
"Oh, give me some credit, Larry," Ram Kikura said, touching his shoulder.
"You won't be abused. I wouldn't stand for it, and even if
I turned out to --what did you call them?--a scheister, Olmy would protect
you. You know that."
"Do we?" Heineman undertoned as she departed.
"Don't be a grouch," Carrolson scolded.
"I'm being on my guard," Heineman said testily. "When in Rome, watch out for
public restrooms."
Lanier laughed, then shook his head. "Hell, I don't even know what he means,"
he confided to Patricia. "But I admire hi caution."
The disk was now level with a broad, low port in the eastern side of
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surface of the building was coated by a material resembling opalescent milk
glass, with bands of brassy orange metal spaced at seemingly random intervals
on the horizontal planes.
"It's beautiful," Farley said. Patricia agreed and then felt her eyes grow
warm and moist; she couldn't be sure why. Her throat clutched and she wiped
her cheeks as drops broke free.
"What's wrong?" Lanier said, edging closer to her.
"It is beautiful," she said, stifling a sob. Involuntarily, Lanier felt his
own eyes 'moistening.
"We can't forget them, can we?" he asked. "Wherever we go, whatever we
see---they're with us. All four billion of them." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]