He picked up the box, still wrapped in the damp slave garment; this made no difference. Then he stepped forward into the curious electrical embrace of the wall, which was like water tingling with living energy. A moment later, he walked out into the inner room of the tower, with its luminous curved walls.
It was the first time in many months that this had happened. He normally found himself in some strange and often frightening landscape. On one occasion it had been the yellow, sulfurous mists of Venus; on another, the boiling maelstrom of water at the foot of the Victoria Falls; once he had even found himself sharing a sunlit pond with other ani-malculae. But the Steegmaster, who had inaugurated this guessing game, clearly felt that now was no time for distractions.
Niall said aloud: “What’s happening?”
As he spoke the words, the old man was standing in front of him, exactly as if he had been there all the time. He offered only the briefest nod of greeting. “The walls of the tower were designed to exclude potentially hostile entities.”
“I do not understand.”
“The creature you tried to bring into the tower was potentially destructive.”
“But it wasn’t a creature. It was a piece of stone.”
The old man stared at him from under the bushy eyebrows. “Are you certain of that?”
“Quite certain. It was a kind of odd little statuette.”
“Where did it come from?”
“A room in the slave quarter. It was the hideout of Skorbo’s killers.”
The old man shook his head. “I suspect you have been deceived. Describe the circumstances in which you found it.”
Since this was precisely why he had come, Niall described the events of the past hour in some detail. The old man listened without expression — Niall suspected that it was part of his present policy to accustom Niall to the fact that he was merely a machine — then said: “I must see this artifact.”
To Niall’s astonishment, he walked into the wall and vanished. Niall stepped after him, and found himself standing in the sunlight — it was always a slightly vertiginous sensation to walk through a solid wall and step into nothingness. The old man was already bending over the cloth-wrapped figurine on the grass. A few passers-by in the square apparently took him for someone like themselves, for no one paid any attention to him.
Niall found it impossible to resist asking: “Have you even been out here before?”
The old man shook his head. “There has never been any occasion for it.”
He unwrapped the cloth from the figurine, and held it on the palm of his hand.
Niall said: “Well?”
“I admit that I cannot understand why it has produced this anomalous reaction. It is clearly a piece of silicate mineral related to nephrite.”
He turned and once again vanished through the wall of the tower. Niall followed him in. The old man was still studying the figurine — Niall observed that it was the one with closed eyelids — in the palm of his hand. He shook his head. “I must confess that this problem is beyond the capacity of my information circuits.”
Niall could not repress an ironic smile. “You mean it contradicts Steeg’s conception of the universe?”
“Precisely.”
“Doesn’t that suggest that your information circuits need to be extended?”
“That inference seems reasonable.” Niall reflected that the advantage of a machine is that it is not ashamed to admit that it might have been wrong.
“What do you propose to do?”
“First of all to neutralize it.”
He placed it on the floor, then stepped back. What happened next made Niall jump. A beam of intense blue light stabbed down obliquely from above, illuminating the figurine. There was no obvious source of light; it appeared to emanate from the plain white surface of the ceiling. In its glow, the figurine appeared to be faintly luminous. The air around them became suddenly chilly.
Niall asked: “What’s that?”
“A cold beam.”
“I thought they were green.”
“They normally are. But this one induces a temperature of absolute zero, reducing all the molecules to immobility. If there is any vestige of life, it will be placed in suspended animation.”
“Wouldn’t that destroy it?”
“Not if the freezing process occurs rapidly enough. In the great ice ages, fish were sometimes frozen instantaneously in rivers, and were able to swim away when the ice melted.”
The temperature had plunged swiftly; Niall’s breath now turned to vapor as he exhaled. But as he shivered and pulled his cloak around his neck, the blue beam vanished, and the room seemed to become instantly warmer. Water vapor immediately froze around the figurine, turning it white. Niall winced as the old man bent and picked it up, aware that his own flesh would have been seared as if by a white hot iron. After contemplating it steadily for several seconds — Niall was aware that he was performing some kind of analysis — the old man once again stepped into the wall. A few moments later he reappeared, but this time without the figurine. In answer to Niall’s look of interrogation he said: “The cold had neutralized its force. But caution suggests that it would be better left outside.”
“Have you any idea of the nature of the force?”
“None, except that it is biological.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because it was neutralized by the cold.”
“But you admit that Steeg didn’t understand it?”
“I admit that he made no allowance for it in creating my information circuits.”
“Doesn’t that suggest that he may have been mistaken about the existence of magic?”
“Magic signifies supernatural interference in natural processes. Steeg regarded that as a primitive superstition.”
Niall said patiently: “Look. A group of murderers came to this city carrying pendants inscribed with magical symbols of revenge. They also brought stone figures that appear to be alive. Surely Steeg himself would have agreed that this was something beyond his understanding?”
“Steeg knew that the universe is full of things beyond his comprehension. But he would have denied that these things can contradict the basic laws of logic and reason.”
“Perhaps they don’t. Perhaps they simply obey a different kind of logic.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Well, you have hundreds of books on magic, don’t you? Some of them must contain clues about what’s going on. Couldn’t you find out?”
“You are asking me to make a comprehensive search of more than three thousand volumes.”
“Could it be done?”
“Of course. But it would take a long time.”
Niall’s heart sank. “How long?”
“Perhaps half an hour.”
Niall burst out laughing. “That’s all right. I can wait that long. I’ll go to the dining room. Would you give me a call when you’re ready?”
The dining room was on the same floor as the “Florentine” gallery. It was a small room, containing no more than a dozen tables, although since Niall had been eating there regularly, these had been enlivened with attractive table cloths, and the food was served on decorated china plates instead of plastic dishes. There was no fresh food available, but the food synthesizer was of such a high standard that its products were greatly superior to the food cooked by Niall’s own kitchen staff. Even after six months he was still astonished by its variety.
The synthesizer was an oblong metal box, about three feet long, which was attached to the wall beside the window. The menu that was displayed above it offered a list of food and drink amounting to more than a hundred items, beginning with hamburgers (with or without onions) and ending with Burgundy, Bordeaux, and American Chardonnay. Over the past six months Niall had sampled everything on it, from pâté de foie gras and tournedos Rossini to peach melba and crêpes suzettes; he had finally concluded that his taste was too unsophisticated for most of these culinary marvels, and that he preferred a two-course meal of fish and chips and pecan pie with pistachio ice cream. This is what he now proceeded to order from the synthesizer, unaware that in so doing he was merely confirming the verdict of dozens of generations of teenagers. He also ordered a glass of sparkling apple juice, whose taste he greatly preferred to that of wine.
As he ate he looked out the open window at the bustling market scene, which looked exactly as it must have looked in the days of Lorenzo de’Medici. Niall had come to recognize many of the stallholders and their typical cries, as well as many of the servants and housewives who made regular visits to the market. The man who ran the butcher’s stall on the corner had a hoarse shout that could be heard above all the other sounds of the city, including the bellowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep. Like most of the males in the square, he took a keen interest in the red-haired peasant woman who ran the vegetable stall that was directly opposite Niall’s window. This woman, who was in her mid-thirties, was taller than the average man, and had a magnificent ringing laugh and a jaunty way of throwing back her head and placing her hands on her hips. She made Niall think of a noisier and coarser Princess Merlew. Most of the men enjoyed laughing and joking with her, and although Niall was unable to understand the language, he guessed from the ribald laughter that many of the jokes must have been indecent.