“Yes—that’s as good a name as any.”
“What about the other v—”
“Hush!” Roland said grimly.
The steel ball paused in front of the hatchway. The wheel spun and the hatch popped ajar.
Roland pulled it open, and they stepped into a huge underground room which stretched
away in three directions as far as they could see. It was filled with seemingly endless aisles
of control panels and electronic equipment. Most of the panels were still dark and dead, but
as Jake and Roland stood inside the door, looking about with wide eyes, they could see
pilot-lights coming on and hear machinery cycling up.
“The Tick-Tock Man said there were thousands of computers,” Jake said. “I guess he was right. My God, look!”
Roland did not understand the word Jake had used and so said nothing. He only watched as
row after row of panels lit up. A cloud of sparks and a momentary tongue of green fire
jumped from one of the consoles as some ancient piece of equipment malfunctioned.
Most of the machinery, however, appeared to be up and running just fine. Needles which
hadn’t moved in centuries suddenly jumped into the green. Huge aluminum cylinders spun,
spilling data stored on silicon chips into memory banks which were once more wide awake
and ready for input. Digital displays, indicating everything from the mean aquifer
water-pressure in the West River Barony to available power amperage in the hibernating
Send Basin Nuclear Plant, lit up in brilliant dot-matrices of red and green. Overhead, banks
of hanging globes began to flash on, radiating outward in spokes of light. And from below,
above, and around them—from everywhere—came the deep bass hum of generators and
slo-trans engines awakening from their long sleep.
Juke had begun to flag badly. Roland swept him into his arms again and chased the steel ball past machines at whose function and intent he could not even guess. Oy ran at his heels.
The ball banked left, and the aisle in which they now found themselves ran between banks
of TV monitors, thousands of them, stacked in rows like a child’s building blocks.
My dad would love it, Jake thought.
Some sections of this vast video arcade were still dark, but many of the screens were on.
They showed a, city in chaos, both above and below. Clumps of Pubes surged pointlessly
through the streets, eyes wide, mouths moving soundlessly. Many were leaping from the
tall buildings. Jake observed with horror that hundreds more had congregated at the Send
Bridge and were throwing themselves into the river. Other screens showed large, cot-filled
rooms like dormitories. Some of these rooms were on fire, but the panic-stricken Grays
seemed to be setting the fires themselves—torching their own mattresses and furniture for
God alone knew what reason.
One screen showed a barrel-chested giant tossing men and women into what looked like a
blood-spattered stamping press. This was bad enough, but there was something worse: the
victims were standing in an unguarded line, docilely waiting their turns. The executioner,
his yellow scarf pulled tight over his skull and the knotted ends swinging below his ears
like pigtails, seized an old woman and held her up, waiting patiently for the stainless steel
block of metal to clear the killing floor so he could toss her in. The old woman did not
struggle; seemed, in fact, to be smiling.
“IN THE ROOMS THE PEOPLE COME AND GO,” Blaine said, “BUT I DON’T THINK
ANY OF THEM ARE TALKING OF MICHELANGELO.” He suddenly
laughed—strange, tittery laughter that sounded like rats scampering over broken glass. The
sound sent chills chasing up Jake’s neck. He wanted nothing at all to do with an intelligence
that laughed like that . . . but what choice did they have?
He turned his gaze helplessly back to the monitors . . . and Roland at once turned his head
away. He did this gently but firmly. “There’s nothing there you need to look at, Jake,” he said.
“But why are they doing it?” Jake asked. He had eaten nothing all day, but he still felt like vomiting. “Why?”
“Because they’re frightened, and Blaine is feeding their fear. But mostly, I think, because they’ve lived too long in the graveyard of their grandfathers and they’re tired of it. And
before you pity them, remember how happy they would have been to take you along with
them into the clearing where the path ends.”
The steel ball zipped around another corner, leaving the TV screens and electronic
monitoring equipment behind. Ahead, a wide ribbon of some synthetic stuff was set into
the floor. It gleamed like fresh tar between two narrow strips of chrome steel that dwindled
to a point on what was not the far side of this room, but its horizon.
The ball bounced impatiently above the dark strip, and suddenly the belt—for that was what it was—swept into silent motion, trundling along between its steel facings at jogging
speed. The ball made small arcs in the air, urging them to climb on.
Roland trotted beside the moving strip until he was roughly match- ing its speed, then did
just that. He set Jake down and the three of them—gunslinger, boy, and golden-eyed
bumbler—were carried rapidly across this shadowy underground plain where the ancient
machines were awakening. The moving strip carried them into an area of what looked like
filing cabinets—row after endless row of them. They were dark . . . but not dead. A low,
sleepy humming sound came from within them, and Jake could see hairline cracks of bright
yellow light shining between the steel panels.
He suddenly found himself thinking of the Tick-Tock Man.
There’s maybe a hundred thousand of those ever-fucking dipolar computers under the
ever-fucking city! I want those computers!
Well, Jake thought, they’re waking up, so I guess you’re getting what you wanted, Ticky . . .
but if you were here, I’m not sure you’d still want it.
Then he remembered Tick-Tock’s great-grandfather, who’d been brave enough to climb
into an airplane from another world and take it into the sky. With that kind of blood running
in his veins, Jake supposed, Tick-Tock, far from being frightened to the point of suicide,
would have been delighted by this turn of events . . . and the more people who killed
themselves in terror, the happier he would have been.
Too late now, Ticky, he thought. Thank God.
Roland spoke in a soft, wondering voice. “All these boxes … I think we’re riding through
the mind of the thing that calls itself Blaine, Jake. / think we’re riding through its mind.”
Jake nodded, and found himself thinking of his Final Essay. “Blaine the Brain is a hell of a pain.”
“Yes.”
Jake looked closely at Roland. “Are we going to come out where I think we’re going to
come out?”
“Yes,” Roland said. “If we’re still following the Path of the Beam, we’ll come out in the Cradle.”
Jake nodded. “Roland?”
“What?”
“Thanks for coming after me.”
Roland nodded and put an arm around Jake’s shoulders.
Far ahead of them, huge motors rumbled to life. A moment later a heavy grinding sound
began and new light—the harsh glow of orange arc-sodiums—flooded down on them. Jake
could now see the place where the moving belt stopped. Beyond it was a steep, narrow
escalator, leading up into that orange light.
39
EDDIE AND SUSANNAH HEARD heavy motors start up almost directly beneath them.
A moment later, a wide strip of the marble floor began to pull slowly back, revealing a long
lighted slot below. The floor was disappearing in their direction. Eddie seized the handles
of Susannah’s chair and rolled it rapidly backward along the steel barrier between the
monorail platform and the rest of the Cradle. There were several pillars along the course of
the growing rectangle of light, and Eddie waited for them to tumble into the hole as the
floor upon which they stood disap- peared from beneath their bases. It didn’t happen. The
pillars went on serenely standing, seeming to float on nothing.
“I see an escalator!” Susannah shouted over the endless, pulsing alarm. She was leaning forward, peering into the hole.
“Uh-huh,” Eddie shouted back. “We got the el station up here, so it must be notions, perfume, and ladies’ lingerie down there.”
“What?”
“Never mind!”
“Eddie!” Susannah screamed. Delighted surprise burst over her face like a Fourth of July firework. She leaned even further forward, pointing, and Eddie had to grab her to keep her
from tumbling out of the chair. “It’s Roland! It’s both of them!”
There was a shuddery thump as the slot in the floor opened to its maximum length and
stopped. The motors which had driven it along its hidden tracks cut out in a long, dying
whine. Eddie ran to the edge of the hole and saw Roland riding on one of the escalator steps.
Jake— white-faced, bruised, bloody, but clearly Jake and clearly alive—was standing next