“Who tells you to come out?” Telzey said carefully.
Challis’ light-gray eyes regarded her.
“The minds,” she said. “The machine thinks on many levels. Thinking forms minds. We didn’t plan that. It developed. They’re there; they do their work. That’s the way they feel it should be. You understand?”
They nodded hesitantly.
“He knows they’re there,” Challis said. “He sees the indications. He can affect some of them. Many more are inaccessible to him at present, but it’s been noted that he’s again modified and extended the duplicative processes. He’s done things that are quite new, and now he’s brought in the new model who is one of you. The model’s been analyzed and it was found that it incorporates a quality through which he should be able to gain access to any of the minds in the machine. That’s not wanted. If the duplicate made of the model—the other of you—has the same quality, that’s wanted even less. If it’s been duplicated once, it can be duplicated many times. And he will duplicate it many times. It’s not his way to make limited use of a successful model. He’ll make duplicates enough to control every mind in the machine.”
“We don’t want that,” Gaziel said.
Challis’ eyes shifted to her.
“It won’t happen,” she said, “if he’s unable to use either of you for his purpose. It’s known that you have high resistive levels to programming, but it’s questionable whether you can maintain those levels indefinitely. Therefore the model and its duplicate should remove themselves permanently from the area of the machine. That’s the logical and most satisfactory solution.”
Telzey glanced at Gaziel. “We’d very much like to do it,” she said. “Can you help us get off the island?”
Challis frowned.
“I suppose there’s a way to get off the island,” she said slowly. “I remember other places.”
“Do you remember where they keep the aircars here?” said Gaziel.
“Aircars?” Challis repeated. She looked thoughtful. “Yes, he has aircars. They’re somewhere in the structure. However, if the model and the duplicate aren’t able to leave the area, they should destroy themselves. The minds will provide you with opportunities for self-destruction. If you fail, direct procedures will be developed to delete you.”
Telzey said after a moment, “But they won’t help us get off the island?”
Challis shook her head. “The island is the Martri stage. Things come to it; things leave it. I remember other places. Therefore, there should be a way off it. The way isn’t known. The minds can’t help you in that.”
“The aircars—”
“There are aircars somewhere in the structure. Their exact location isn’t known.”
Telzey said, “There’s still another solution.”
“What?”
“The minds could delete him instead.”
“No, that’s not a solution,” said Challis. “He’s essential in the maintenance of the universe of the machine. He can’t be deleted.”
“Who are you?” Gaziel asked.
Challis looked at her.
“I seem to be Challis. But when I think about it, as I’m doing at this moment, it seems it can’t be. Challis knew many things I don’t know. She helped him in the design of the machine. Her puppet designs were better than his own, though he’s learned much more than she ever knew. And she was one of our most successful models herself. Many puppet lines were her copies, modified in various ways.”
She paused reflectively.
“Something must have happened to Challis,” she told them. “She isn’t there now, except as I seem to be her. I’m a pattern of some of her copies in the machine, and no longer accessible to him. He’s tried to delete me, but minds always deflect the deletion instructions while indicating they’ve been carried out. Now and then, as happened here, they make another copy of her in the vats, and I’m programmed to it and told what to do. That’s disturbing to him.”
Challis was silent for a moment again. Then she added, “It appears I’ve given you the message. Go back the way you came. Avoid doing what he intends you to do. If you can deactivate the override system, do it. When you have the opportunity, leave the area or destroy yourselves. Either solution will be satisfactory.”
She turned away and started off across the glowing floor.
“Challis,” said Gaziel.
Challis looked back.
“Do the minds know which of us two is the model?” Gaziel asked.
“That’s of no concern to them now,” said Challis.
She went on. They looked after her, at each other, turned back toward the corridor. Telzey’s head still ached mildly. It continued to ache off and on for another hour. Then that stopped. She didn’t mention it to Gaziel.
* * *
There were thirty-six people at dinner, most of them island employees. Telzey and Gaziel were introduced. No mention was made of a puppet double, and no one commented on their identical appearance, though there might have been a good deal of silent speculation. Telzey gathered from her table companions that they regarded themselves as highly privileged to be here and to be working for Dr. Ti. They were ardent Martriphiles and spoke of Ti’s genius in reverent terms. Once she noticed Linden watching her from the other end of the table. She gave him a pleasant smile, and he looked away, expression unchanged.
Shortly after dinner, the group left the building by the main entrance. Something waited for them outside—a shell-like device, a miniature auditorium with curved rows of comfortable chairs. They found their places, Telzey sitting beside Gaziel, and the shell lifted into the air and went floating away across the estate. Night had come by then. The familiar magic of the starblaze hung above the island. White globe lights shone here and there among the trees. The shell drifted down presently to a point where the estate touched a narrow bay of the sea, and became stationary twenty feet above the ground. Ti and Linden, seated at opposite ends of the shell, took out override caps and fitted the woven mesh over their heads.
There was a single deep bell note. The anticipatory murmur talk ended abruptly. The starblaze dimmed out, and stillness closed about them. All light faded.
Then—a curtain shifting again—they looked out at the shore of a tossing sea, a great sun lifting above the horizon, and the white sails of a tall ship sweeping in toward them out of history. There was a sound in the air that was roar of sea and wail of wind and splendid music.
Ti’s Martridrama had begun.
* * *
“I liked the first act,” Telzey said judiciously.
“But the rest I’d sooner not have seen,” said Gaziel.
Ti looked at them. The others of his emotionally depleted audience had gone off to wherever their quarters in the complex were. “Well, it takes time to develop a Martriphile,” he observed mildly.
They nodded.
“I guess that’s it,” Telzey said.
They went to their room, got into their beds. Telzey lay awake a while, looking out through the big open window at tree branches stirring under the starblaze. There was a clean salt sea smell and night coolness on the breeze. She heard dim sounds in the distance. She shivered for a moment under the covers.
The Martridrama had been horrible. Ti played horrible games.
A throbbing set in at her temples. Linden was working late. This time, it lasted only about twenty minutes.
She slept.
She came awake again. Gaziel was sitting up in bed on the other side of the room. They looked at each other silently and without moving in the shadowed dimness.
A faint music had begun somewhere. It might be coming out of the walls of the room, or from beyond the window. They couldn’t tell. But it was music they’d heard earlier that night, in the final part of the Martridrama. It swelled gradually, and the view outside the window began to blur, dimmed out by slow pulsing waves of cold drama light which spilled into the room and washed over the floor. A cluster of vague images flickered over the walls, then another.
They edged out of bed, met in the center of the room. For an instant, the floor trembled beneath them.
Telzey whispered unsteadily, “I guess Ti’s putting us on stage!”
Gaziel gave her a look which said, We’ll hope it’s just Ti! “Let’s see if we can get out of this.”
They backed off toward the door. Telzey caught the knob, twisted, tugged. The knob seemed suddenly to melt in her hand, was gone.
“Over there!” Gaziel whispered.
There was blackness beyond the window now. A blackness which shifted and stirred. The outlines of the room were moving, began to flow giddily about them. Then it was no longer the room.
* * *
They stood on the path of a twisting ravine, lit fitfully by reddish flames lifting out of the rocks here and there, leaping over the ground and vanishing again. The upper part of the ravine was lost in shadows which seemed to press down closely on it. On either side of the path, drawn back from it only a little, was unquiet motion, a suggestion of shapes, outlines, which appeared to be never quite the same or in the same place from moment to moment.