It was very hard, in spite. of the floor plan, to tell just exactly how far away anything was on Helior, since the diagrams were all diagrammatic and had no scale. But the trip he was planning seemed to be a long one, since one of the key bits of transportation, an evacuated tunnellinear magnetic car, went across at least eighty-four submaps. His destination might very well be on the other side of the planetl A city as large as a planet] The concept was almost too big to grasps In fact, when he thought about it, the concept was too big to grasp.
The sandwiches he had bought from the dispenser in the barracks ran out before he was halfway to his destination, and his stomach, greedily getting adjusted to solid food again, rumbled complaints until he left the slideway in Area 9266-L, Level something or other, or wherever the hell he was, and looked for a canteen. He was obviously in a Typing Area, because the crowds were composed almost completely of women with rounded shoulders and great, long fingers. The only canteen he could find was jammed with them, and he sat in the middle of the high-pitched, yattering crowd and forced himself to eat a meal composed of the only available food: dated-fruitbreadcheese-and-anchovy-paste sandwiches and mashed potatoes with raisin and onion sauce, washed down by herb tea served lukewarm in cups the size of his thumb. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the dispenser hadn’t automatically covered everything with butterscotch sauce. None of the girls seemed to notice him, since they were all under light hypnosis during the working day in order to cut down their error percentages. He worked his way through the food feeling very much like a ghost as they tittered and yammered over and around him, their fingers, if they weren’t eating, compulsively typing their words onto the edge of the table while they talked. He finally escaped, but the meal had had a depressing effect, and this was probably where he made the mistake and boarded the wrong car.
Since the same level and block numbers were repeated in every area, it was possible to get into the wrong area and spend a good deal of time getting good and lost before the mistake was finally realized. Bill did this, and after the usual astronomical number of changes and varieties of transportation he boarded the elevator that terminated, he thought, in the galaxy-famed Palace Gardens. All of the other passengers got off on lower levels, and the robelevator picked up speed as it hurtled up to the topmost level. He rose into the air as it braked to a stop, and his ears popped with the pressure change, and when the doors opened he stepped out into a snow-filled wind. He gaped about with unbelief and behind him the doors snicked shut and the elevator vanished.
The doors had opened directly onto the metal plain that made up the topmost layer of the city, now obscured by the swirling clouds of snow. Bill groped for the button to recall the elevator, when a vagrant swirl of wind whipped the snow away and the warm sun beat down on him from the cloudless sky. This was impossible.
“This is impossible,” Bill said with forthright indignation.
“Nothing is impossible if I will it,” a scratchy voice spoke from behind Bill’s shoulder. “For I am the Spirit of Life.”
Bill skittered sideways like a homeostatic robhorse, rolling his eyes at the small, white-whiskered man with a twitching nose and red-rimmed eyes who had appeared soundlessly behind him.
“You got a leak in your think-tank,” Bill snapped, angry at himself for being so goosy.
“You’d be nuts, too, on this job,” the little man sobbed, and knuckled a pendant drop from his nose. “Half-froze, halfcooked and half-wiped out most of the time on oxy. The Spirit of Life,” he quavered, “mine is the power …”
“Now that you mention it,” Bill’s words were muffled by a sudden flurry of snow, “I am feeling a bit high myself. Wheeee … !!” The wind veered and swept the occluding clouds of snow away, and Bill gaped at the suddenly revealed view.