But the theory and the—if even slight—possibility of getting the Artificial Wombs working on a practical level fascinated and cheered Davis. He had come to feel, after the first couple of days of celebration at their escape and his resurrection, that it would be criminal for them to spend the rest of their lives in pursuit of pleasure within the vast complex while all the facility of the Demosian culture, all the knowledge and expertise, was here at hand in an easy-to-use form. The library was vast; the sleep-teachers could make them experts in any field overnight. Or, at least, overmonth. The machines that performed the miracle chores from genetic juggling to maintenance were the type that either responded to verbal commands or to keyboard instructions typed out in native Demosian tongues (which Davis learned the first week under the sleep-teachers). It seemed to him that all of this could be put to some use, though he was not certain what. The thought had passed through his mind that the two of them might take some form of revenge upon the Alliance—not only for the misery they had been put through, but in retaliation for the destruction of the millions of winged men and women who had died in the genocidal conflict.
On a simpler basis, he realized that if he and Leah were to have children, to raise them as a guerilla army against the Alliance control, they would have to form the fetuses in the Artificial Wombs, working with the basic chemicals of creation—for Leah was, after all, sterile.
The door to the study opened, a thick slab of wood that hummed away on power runners as Leah entered bearing a box of spools. She had been doing research in the tape library, looking up those subjects he wished to know more about, and she was the sort of clever and selective research aide every writer dreams about, never bringing him anything esoteric unless it was in some way illuminative of the major topic—in which case, he guessed, it wasn’t esoteric at all.
“Success, I see.”
“A good bit of it. There are three other fortresses, just as I told you. It’s all here. And this number two fortress you’ve been finding mention of, the one Mi’nella speaks about in conjunction with its computer, is the largest of the four. It makes this place look like a mole hole. There are 48 floors, each 450 feet long by 600 wide. The last 10 stories contain the main computer and an auxiliary node computer whose purpose is to extrapolate on scientific data discovered in the genetic engineering chambers and project possible research avenues a man might not think of.”
“We could use that lovely machine.”
“We can get to it,” she said.
“You have the location?”
“It’s 86 miles from here, at the northern tip of this range, the third major mountain from the end. The other two fortresses are both over twelve hundred miles from here. We’re fortunate it isn’t one of those.”
“Eighty-six miles. Well, we know we can use the computer if the standard model we have here can’t help us. That extrapolative node might very well be the turning point. But I want to learn everything here, first, before we move.”
“It’s getting dark,” she said, holding out her hand.
It had become their custom to fly, together, when the last light of day was in the sky and the world was in that lovely stage that corresponded to half-undressed in a woman. He did not break that custom tonight, but joined her in the bubble of the lift that carried them smoothly toward the top of the mountain where a disguised observation nook had been built—which they used for a launching and landing platform.
That first night, when he had arisen from the couch of the mechanical surgeon, suffering from the emotional shock of finding himself in an alien body and knowing his own temporal shell was rotting in a grave, he had been unable to fly. He had spread the wings, done as she had told him to, but he could not lift himself, not even a foot. That had depressed him, on top of all else that had happened, and he had thought he would have to look forward to a future in which his body was perfectly capable of flight but his mind was too earthbound and hungup to allow it.