“Nope. I’m going to blow the lid off. Tapping public power, eh? And—”
Goober was shaking his head pityingly. “Kipp, do you really think anyone will listen?”
“Sure.” Barnaby indicated his roommate. “This fellow here already knows about it.”
“Fellow,” Goober said in a kindly tone, rolling an electrolens on the man, “do you know anything detrimental to the best interests of Goober Enterprises?”
“Sure, Mr. Goober! I mean, heck no, Mr. Goober! I mean, say, I’ll sign anything you like, only just get me outa here—”
“You’ll be sprung by nightfall, my man,” Goober said grandly. “I can see there’s been a miscarriage of justice.”
“An abortion, you mean!” Quale shouted. “Look here, Goober—”
“All I want from you, my dear Queeb, is a full report on your findings while inside the environmental field. Decree of verisimilitude, accuracy of detail, consistency of illusion, tactile, olfactory and—”
“Go take a look for yourself!” Barnaby snapped. “I’m not one of your guinea pigs.”
“In the name of science, Geep! I appeal to your sense of intellectual responsibility! You were there, a trained observer—”
“Send in your own crew, or is the thing permanently off the air?”
“The Simulator is back in readiness for use; it wasn’t damaged, thank heaven! But I’ve had to postpone the demonstration indefinitely.”
Quale laughed sharply. “Having a little trouble getting volunteers, are you?”
“It’s your fault, Queep! You scared the wits out of us—I mean out of them. The field interface was like a wall of rubbery steel! Then when it started to expand, it simply gobbled up everything it touched. Dissolved the experimental shed as though it were a cookie in hot water. Used the matter to convert into the illusion, I suppose.
“And the power drain! It was rising at the rate of seventy-two percent per hour! And we were helpless to shut it down. You know about the automatic interlocks that operate during a power flow; the Governor suggested a fusion bomb, but our calculations revealed the Simulator would merely consume the energy and put on a spurt. If the Simulator hadn’t shorted out—due to the flood, I assume—it would be growing yet. It’s a Frankenstein, Geel! And it’s all your fault!
“Now, the least you can do is tell me what you saw in there! What was it like? Plenty of brand names in evidence, I assume. You saw consumers in action; what were they consuming? I spent over a hundred thousand dollars programming typical audience characteristics into that panel. I have a right to know what the machine came up with!”
Barnaby sat back on his bunk, folded his arms. “Nuts to you, Goober,” he said. “Figure it out for yourself.”
Goober turned an unusual shade of magenta.
“I’ll see you sealed in concrete five hundred feet underground, Gerp!” he grated. He whirled, collided with his toady, snarled and stalked away.
* * *
“Boy, you’re nuts to rile Mr. Goober thataway,” Barnaby’s roomy said pityingly. “Look at me: I’m getting sprung, and by tonight I’ll be putting on the feedbag with a swell doll down at Ration House Number Seventy-nine. All you hadda do was go along with the gag and you coulda been sitting pretty too.”
“Nuts to Goober,” Barnaby said shortly. He went to the door, fiddled with the lock. There was a click; the door swung open an inch.
“Hey!” Barnaby said. “It’s not locked . . . ”
“So what. Look, whyncha send word to Goober that you been thinking—”
“I can walk right out,” Barnaby said. He poked his head out and looked along the corridor.
“Are you nuts? What’s out there? Without you got a job, you’re better off right here. You get three squares, plenty TV, lotsa sob-sisters sending in bound volumes of Playboy and the National Geographic. You got security here, man. Don’t knock it!”
“I’ve got an idea,” Barnaby said. “In fact, I’ve got a couple of ideas. Listen, friend, if they ask, just tell them you didn’t notice me leaving. Say you were asleep. You can do that much for a fellow jailbird, can’t you?”
“I think yer cookie’s crumbled, pal, but if that’s the way you want it, okay.”
“Thanks. Arrividerci!” Barnaby slipped through the door and moved off toward the light at the far end.
* * *
“Barnaby!” Gigi squeaked. “Where did you—”
“Shhh! Don’t attract any attention.” Quale eased through the door into the girl’s six by eight cubicle. “I’m glad you were here, Gigi. I was afraid you’d be in jail too.”
“In jail! Oh, Barnaby, is that where—”
“Yep. Goober tried to buy me off, but I didn’t go for it. For a while I had ideas about exposing Goober’s racket, but a legal expert I ran into pointed out the impracticality of that.”
“But, Barnaby—if you don’t go to work for Mr. Goober—”
“And give up the last shred of hope for independence? I’d rather starve!”
“But what can we do?”
Barnaby took her hand. “You did say ‘we’?”
“Of course, Barnaby Quale. You’re insane, but I love you . . . and I guess it’s because you are insane—wanting to do things your own way, when the Government’s got a program for everything already taped.”
“I hoped you’d feel that way. We’ll lie low till dark and then make our move. Listen, here’s what I have in mind . . .
* * *
It was dark in the Experimental Complex, except for the floodlit circles where workmen still toiled to clear away the last of the ring of debris left by the flash flood from the abruptly terminated simulated environment. Barnaby and Gigi rounded the end of the Admin Building, surveyed the site of last night’s holocaust. Where the big shed had been, only the massive shapes of the equipment housings squatted against bare ground.
“You see? The field got out of hand,” Barnaby breathed. “It developed some kind of self-perpetuating feedback; started cannibalizing everything around, and building itself bigger. Naturally, the apparatus itself was exempt because it was isolated from the field by the way the antennas were strung. And it had the whole state’s power supply to draw on. And come to think of it, with the emergency interlock system, it can tap the whole supply for North America—and probably South America too.”
“Barnaby, what if somebody catches us? After last night—”
“We won’t think about that. Let’s go.” Keeping the shadows, he approached the tarp-covered control console. While Gigi watched nervously for patrolling guards, Barnaby cut through tie-down ropes, lifted the Gooberplast cover, slipped under it.
“Barnaby, hurry!” Gigi hissed.
“Sure, it will only take a few minutes . . . ” He switched on a small flashlight, propped it by the panel.
“Now, let’s see,” he muttered. “First I’ll have to code in some instruction about interactions between the environment and the external observers, namely Gigi and myself . . . ”
The tarp twitched. “Barnaby! They see us! There’s a spotlight!”
“Hold on just a minute longer!” Quale called. “I’m almost done!” He punched keys, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. ” . . . weather . . . crops . . . architecture . . . vegetation . . . ”
A siren wailed. Barnaby heard a hoarse voice shout. Gigi squeaked. He scrambled from under the tarp, took her hand. “Okay, if everything works, we’re ready . . . ” He jumped to the large lever, hauled it down. The humming noise started up. There were clicks and rumbles from underground. The big red light on the panel blinked on. Barnaby reached, punched the ACTIVATE button. The humming deepened. A dim light sprang up; something seemed to shimmer at the center of the bare expanse of concrete . . .
“Get ready!” Barnaby took Gigi’s hand.
There was a dull boom! and the air whistled furiously past Barnaby’s head. A curtain of gray fog hung before him. He swallowed hard, took a step, felt a tingle as the mist parted before him . . .
* * *
Bright sunlight gleamed on a grassy field where immense wildflowers nodded to a gentle breeze. Woods clothed the nearby hills, and on the crest of a low mountain a castle stood, pennants fluttering from its towers. An odor of spring filled the air.
“Barnaby, it’s lovely!” Gigi breathed. “Do you really think we’re safe here?”
“Certainly. It is nice, isn’t it? I had to work pretty fast, but I think I got it all in.”
“Barnaby! I just happened to think. What about the people? Will it just . . . convert them too?”
“They’ll be screened and modified to fit the specs. After all, they’re part of the environment, too.”
There was a sound behind them; they turned. A vast man in a blue jacket and knee breeches was standing looking about with a perplexed smile. He saw Barnaby and the girl and doffed his pointed hat with a jingle of bells.