"It's alive!" Alice exclaimed. There was a ceaseless flowing of light and curvature in and around them.
"This is the Universe, Alice. This is all there is."
"But what about the outside . . . where we just were?"
"That's inside," Vernor answered. "Inside every particle."
Alice was quiet, lost in space. "Can we go further?" she asked presently.
"We're on our way down already," Vernor said. He raised his voice. "You get it Phizwhiz? Universe inside every particle? And inside every tiny piece of space?"
The machine was silent for some time, then it responded. "Yes. I can model such a state of affairs. It feels . . . paradoxical. But it is only a model."
"But it's not only a model," Vernor insisted. "That's what this trip is all about."
The networks of light were clearly visible now. Again, powerful patterns drifted and merged through the networks' paths. "Mick called this God's brain," Vernor told Alice.
She nodded, silent and absorbed. "Where is Mick?" Vernor put a finger to his lips and rolled his eyes towards Phizwhiz's sensors.
The network pattern grew, and once again Vernor could make out bright nodes at the points where the network filaments intersected. Each of the nodes was a cloud of bright particles around a brilliant central point, a quasar or white hole.
Quickly Vernor went to the control panel. "Phizwhiz, this is where I could use some help. Last time we hit a black hole at this level and had to turn back. I think if we go slowly, and quickly increase our size whenever we get near a hole, we might make it through. I want you to keep analyzing the gravitational field strength and warn me whenever it starts looking sinister."
Phizwhiz did Vernor's bidding, and by carefully backing up, waiting, and then reshrinking whenever a black hole drew near, they were able to find their way down to the next size level.
"Are we safe from now?" asked Alice.
"I think we're small enough so that we're unlikely to run across another bad hole," Vernor replied. "What we have to worry about now is whether we've moved off course enough to miss our galaxy."
They were inside the outer region of one of the nodes now. The node's incredibly bright center was a good distance away, and they were surrounded by roughly spherical glowing clouds. The clouds seemed to ooze out of the core, and then go into orbit around it.
Soon they could see that the nearest cloud was composed of bright flecks of varying shape. Some were spherical, some looked like small rods, and some appeared to be tiny spinning pinwheels. They were still shrinking.
"This could go on forever," Alice remarked.
"It could," Vernor admitted. "But I'm inclined to think that we're looking at a cloud of galaxies. Those little pinwheels?"
"Vernor is right," Phizwhiz put in. "The spectra and other radiation characteristics indicate that we're just outside the Local Group."
"Local Group?"
"That's what they call the cluster of galaxies which our galaxy, the Milky Way, belongs to," Vernor explained. One of the galaxies was quite close now, a large spiral rotating slowly like a whirlpool of light.
"Milky Way right under us," Phizwhiz exclaimed, then added with apparent satisfaction, "It's going to take me a year to process all the new data I'm getting."
The galaxy was like a huge roulette wheel, turning below them, and they were a ball about to drop into a slot. Billions of slots. How could they hope to end up on Earth? And the galaxy takes 100 thousand years to rotate once, Vernor suddenly recalled . . . and he'd been watching it spin for ten minutes. Would there even be an Earth left anymore?
The Milky Way filled most of their visual field by now. They could make out some individual stars as well as the brighter star-clusters. The spin rate was slowing down as their size decreased. They were about a tenth as large as the galaxy, and the bottom of the scale-ship's sphere seemed to be resting on the galactic disk.
Suddenly Vernor felt an extremely unpleasant series of jolts . . . as if something were alternately squeezing and stretching him. Alice screamed, and he called out, "Phizwhiz, what's happening?"
"You're crossing a band of strong gravitational radiation, emitted beacon-like by the polarized fields at the galactic center."
Grimly Vernor and Alice clung to each other as the terrible internal bumping continued. Gradually it diminished, and they relaxed again. They were now so small that the galaxy no longer looked so much like a single object. Individual stars and nebulae were scattered about beneath the scale-ship.
And now they were inside the galaxy, with stars on all sides. Their apparent motion had slowed to a crawl. "The sun should be visible by now," Vernor said. "Assuming that it's still here. Do you see it, Phizwhiz?"
"Not at this time." The machine paused, then continued, "I feel I should tell you that I have notified the Governor and Dr. Burke of your unsafe conduct in bringing an unauthorized person on the ship, Vernor. Indeed, you yourself were expressly forbidden to come. The Public Safety Officers will be waiting outside the laboratory."
Vernor eased back on the shrinking. "You are going to stop doing things like this once you get a mind of your own, Phizwhiz." Easy, now. "Alice and I are your friends. We are helping you to wake into newness of life. You are going to help us escape when we get back to the lab."
This was Vernor's plan, to win the newly conscious Phizwhiz over. He had been thinking in terms of imprinting. A new-born duckling assumes that the first moving object it sees is "mama." If you drag a shoe past a duckling fresh out of the shell, it follows the shoe everywhere for the next few weeks. Vernor's hope was that Phizwhiz would imprint on him as soon as the scale-loop gave him a mind.
"I'm afraid I'll have to report that remark to Dr. Burke as well, Vernor." Evidently the time was not yet ripe.
"That's all right, Phizwhiz, we love you anyway," Vernor said with forced warmth. Alice gave him a wondering look and he gestured reassuringly to her.
Alice was not reassured. "Look, Vernor, instead of trying to be buddy-buddy with this mechanical loach, why don't you figure out how we're going to get back to Earth. Has it occurred to you that a million years of Earth time ticked off while we were watching the Milky Way spin?"
"Well, yes. But that may not matter."
Alice laughed bitterly, and Vernor hastened to amplify. "It could still come out all right. Time is so relative on Circular Scale . . . the center should hold around us. Like the center of a whirlpool."
Alice shook her head. "That's just gibberish, Vernor, I think we should give up and coast back up."
"We can't do that. If we do, then Phizwhiz won't get a scale loop built into him, so he won't have a nexus for paradox . . . which means no change, which means prison or behavior modification for us." Behavior modification was about the worst thing that could happen to you. They took out most of your brain and replaced it by miniaturized electronic components, radio-controlled by trusty Phizwhiz. It amounted to having your soul removed.
Alice began pounding at Vernor. "You shithead," she shouted. "Why did I listen to you?" Vernor let her hit him until her fury had subsided. He couldn't really blame her. Now she was sobbing on his shoulder. "Vernor, get us out of this."
Something the Professor had said surfaced in Vernor's mind. After expressing doubt in the validity of Vernor's perceptions below the atomic level, he had wondered if Vernor would have been able to "imagine the Earth into" the universe inside the hypersphere. Imagine.
"Alice, we can find the Earth. And it doesn't have to be a million years in the future. It depends on us. Imagine the Earth." He turned the VFG field back up to full. "Imagine people's faces; imagine trees against the clouds."
Alice was sitting on the floor of the tensegrity sphere. She looked exhausted, but she nodded her head in agreement with his suggestion. She looked so beautiful and soft sitting there, her legs out in front of her and slightly parted . . .
Vernor sat down next to her and began to kiss and caress her. She responded warmly. They took off their clothes slowly—
"Vernor, I would advise you to stay at the controls," Phizwhiz interrupted. "Sexual intercourse is expressly forbidden in transportation vehicles of any kind."
"If you shut up, Phizwhiz, I'll get the Professor to build you a pair of mechanical sex organs so you can see what you've been missing. Alice and I are about to fuck the Earth into this Universe."
Alice smiled. "Father Sky," she said, lying back.
"Mother Earth," he answered, mounting her.
Once again Vernor had the sensation of seeing just as well with his eyes closed. Better, actually. There was more to see with his eyes closed. For one thing he could see in every direction.
Alice was all space and he filled her with matter. She swirled around him and the interaction produced energy.
One kind, two kinds, one kind, two kinds, two kinds. Plus and minus, yang and yin.
Plus and minus made zero. Zero was infinity. Infinity was Everything. Everything was One. One was Many.
Alice squeezed him down low and whispered, "Earth."
His swollen penis seemed to flutter. He was there. "Earth," he murmured as his seed shot into her womb. "Earth," he cried, seeing every detail of his planet in the flash of orgasm.
They lay still for a timeless interval. A small, dense object was clinging to the base of the scale-ship. A star blazed nearby, the size of an orange.
The little ball beneath the scale-ship grew steadily as the ship shrank. It was like a chick embryo drawing nourishment from the yolk of its egg.
Soon the scale-ship's offspring was as large as the ship. The two linked spheres floated, a transparent one above, a blue-white one below. A black cable led out of the upper sphere and tapered down to a point on the lower sphere.
"This is Earth," stated Phizwhiz unnecessarily. Vernor and Alice opened their eyes. They could see the continents, partly obscured by clouds. The shapes were right.
"Congratulations," Vernor said to Alice...and to himself.