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Chapter 18

Incredible. The service robot was back in the hallway outside his apartment. Ruskin cursed as he approached the door.

The mech turned at the sound of his footsteps. "Good evening, Mr. Ruswick. I'd hoped you might be along. I'd hoped I might complete the job we spoke of earlier."

Ruskin stared at it in disbelief. Are you an exceptionally stupid mech, he wondered, or a surveillance device trying to look like a stupid mech? Either way, he didn't want it around. "My name's Ruskin—not Ruswick," he said finally.

"I'm sorry, but that's the name I was given," the mech said. "One of us must have the wrong information."

"One of us must," Ruskin agreed. "Well, you're not coming in now. I'm tired. I told you—call and make an appointment. All right? Now, get out of here, please."

The mech whirred. "But sir, if you would just consider—"

He exhaled noisily. Anger was starting to boil up inside him. He would love to thrash this machine. I wonder if I could just . . . ?

Rubbing his index finger with his thumb, he felt the tiny nub of the implanted laser. It was tempting. Could he still make it fire? he wondered. It wouldn't exactly be legal; but if the thing wouldn't listen to him, surely he had the right to protect his privacy. He pointed his finger. "I'll give you three seconds to leave before I—"

"Excuse me?" the robot said. "What?"

He almost lost his nerve. "Before I inflict serious damage on you," he growled finally. (Dax, can we make this thing fire?) "One . . ."

((I've disabled the laser, Willard.))

(Now you tell me.) "Two . . ."

The mech lurched away from the apartment door. In satisfaction, he walked toward the door himself; but the mech lurched again and altered course, back into his path. He hopped out of the way, stunned. The robot seemed confused; now it was bouncing off the wall. "Stop that!" Ruskin yelled. The mech rolled in his direction, shuddering, as though it were fighting itself. He fended it off with both hands, but not before it nearly rammed him into the wall. "HEY! Are you crazy? Get the hell out of here!" He heaved it away.

The robot turned with a loud clicking sound and edged in the other direction. "Sorry . . . apparently some difficulty . . . very sorry!"

He gave it an angry shove toward the exit. "That way!" To his relief, it rolled away down the hall. He sucked the back of his hand where he'd scraped himself; he was still breathing hard as the mech disappeared into the lift. Only then did he utter a sigh and finally unlock his apartment.

 

* * *

 

"Rus'lem!" Tamika came out of the bedroom to greet him. "Is that mech still out there?"

"I just chased it off." He tossed his jacket over a chair, unbuckled the belt pack that held his data slivers, and dropped it onto his console. "Has it been out there all day?"

"It came and went a few times. I kept telling it to go away, but finally it just camped out there." Tamika looked annoyed. "It insisted that only the legal resident could order it to leave. Do you think it actually belongs to the service company?"

"Easy enough to check." Ruskin stepped back over to the console. "System, please retrieve the identification of the service mech that just left. Contact the company and ask if it was theirs." He turned his head. "Anything else happen while I was gone?"

Tamika grimaced. "I got bored and did some editorial work. But eventually our little friend showed up and we played cat and mouse." She glanced at the door again; the robot had indeed unnerved her. And no wonder, sitting here just waiting for some word from him.

"It didn't try to force its way in, did it?"

"No, it wasn't violent, just obnoxious."

He sighed. And how would she feel, sitting here while he flew off to watch a supernova? He decided to postpone bringing the subject up.

Tamika slipped an arm around him. "How'd it go?"

His answer was interrupted by the console's voice: "I have the information you requested. There was a service mech dispatched, marked as a special order, origin unlisted. I was informed that the order must have come from your console; but I put in no such order, Willard."

"Thank you." He glanced at Tamika. "So we can't tell whether our little friend was legitimate or not. But I know what I think. How about you?"

"I think it makes me damn nervous."

"Yes, but as long as they're only watching us . . ."

"Uh-huh. What now?"

He let out a long sigh. "Dinner?"

 

* * *

 

Tamika shoved her plate away. "Like hell you're going without me! Not in your condition!"

He tried not to smile at her anger. "Easy, Twig. I had a feeling you might say that."

She glared. "Well?"

"I'm open-minded. You might be able to convince me."

"Yeah, well, you are in no position to turn away help. Any help. That means me. And I suppose it means Max, and those guys in your head." Her frown deepened. "Is Max going?"

"If he can get away. Twig, it's the danger I'm thinking of." She rolled her eyes. "Well—" He gestured helplessly. He honestly didn't know whether she'd be in greater danger staying here, or going with him; but the truth was, he was grateful that she wouldn't take no for an answer.

But something else had just occurred to him, something troubling: "No position to turn away help . . ." He recalled Judith's invitation to bring his work to her before it went to Ankas—surely a well-intentioned offer. But did he dare betray how incomplete his knowledge was? It could take him many days to piece together the total picture; almost certainly he would have to work on it all the way out to the site. But if he presented his knowledge to either Judith or Ankas in such a state, they might not let him leave at all. And the one thing his intuition told him with absolute certainty was that he had to go on this expedition; and time was short.

He might have to leave even sooner than he'd thought—without clearing it with them at all. They didn't have to see his work beforehand, did they?

"Willard! Hello—are you there?"

He forced a smile. "Sorry, just thinking."

"Well? Have you come to your senses? Will you take me along?" He took a breath and nodded. "Good," she said. "When are we leaving?"

His eyelids closed; his brain filled with flashes of light. "In a day or two, I think." He found her gazing at him in wordless astonishment. "Still want to come?"

She nodded, her lips moving silently. At last he tuned in and heard, ". . . you're crazy. But yes, I'm with you. I'll have to cancel some jobs—but what the hell, I guess you're worth it."

"Thanks," he murmured.

"And what about tonight? More of the same?"

He shook his head, eyes closed. He'd been intending to ask Ali'Maksam's help in sorting through the information in his files—and in his own brain—looking for something that would provide illumination. But perhaps that wasn't what he needed tonight. Lights were strobing up and down his optic nerves. He remembered Judith's advice to take a night off. Perhaps she was right. (Dax, what's happening to me?)

((You're a battlefield, Willard.))

(Big help.) He opened his eyes. "What do you say we just relax. What's on the channel tonight?"

Her eyes widened. "Are you kidding? You hate watching the channels."

"Do I?" He smiled. "Well, tonight I don't."

 

* * *

 

They settled on an interactive light/dance concert. It actually caused him to forget his worries, at least for a little while. He scarcely felt the two featherweight probes that rested atop his head. His living room was submerged in the spectacular light effects of the holographics; his mind was enfolded by a crazy quilt of sensual feedback. He felt a soaring exhilaration as he stood atop a craggy peak on a world of mountains and watched a flight of new-eagles soar dizzyingly about his head. The wind moaned in his ears. The music soared and danced.

High off to his left, Tamika was floating against an exploding star. No, it wasn't a star; it was a kaleidoscopic light effect, now turning to molten rivulets of color.

Change—

Where were they now? The mountain was gone, but the music was thrumming in his head and people were dancing on all sides, whirling by like great diaphanous wind-figures; and farther away, more solid to the eye, were rows of dancers, rising and rippling in waves. Overhead, clouds swirled and scooted. Bass rhythms broke the air; glass strings melded it back together again. The sensation was intoxicating. Euphoric.

He found himself astride a cloud, borne by the power of song. As he strode, soaking in the rhythms, and the sadness and sensuality of the music, he began to feel changes in himself, a free association like that which often followed upon lovemaking: memories and ideas floating free across his mind, a haze of emotions expanding after a great explosion of feeling. Images raced across the sky—a spaceship, a forest, an assassin, Tamika's naked body, a research file. One after another, they vanished or burst into flowers of light or changed into other images altogether. For a fleeting moment he wondered if they meant anything, but he didn't care; it was not a time to think.

A beacon of light blazed across his vision, and the holographed dancers spun by again, and he was caught up by another change in rhythm. The performance was turning into a provocateur for the subconscious; the music trembled and melted around him—

—and a series of images rose up like flat photographs, turning to show their faces before rotating away and disappearing into the mist of the music and the lights. He felt silent astonishment as he glimpsed memory or imagination—he couldn't tell which—glimpses like reflections on a glass:

A dark fortress floating in an amber sea-mist, and a glow emanating from deep in the heart of the mist; and almost lost in the glow a tiny living thing huddled, waiting . . .

And at the very edge of the reflection, a figure in black cracked a whip, sending an invisible shock wave through the amber mist, which could free the fortress or destroy it. . . .

He blinked and the images were gone, and a feeling of total helplessness caught him in the pit of the stomach, lifted him like a wave on an ocean. He was swimming in a blue-green sea, a distant bell buoy clanging; and he was drowning . . .

* * *

A jolt of electricity jarred him awake. Stunned, he knocked the probes away from his head; he blinked his eyes open. He was on the sofa, Tamika beside him.

((That was a tricky one, Willard.))

He took a sharp breath. (What happened?)

((Something was coming up out of your memory, something you didn't want to look at. You've got some conflicts inside you, fellow.))

(Great . . .)

((And I've got to tell you: I can't resolve all of this for you. I'm just a working stiff; I'm not a psychiatrist.))

(I stand reassured. All right if I talk to Tamika?)

((Go ahead. I'll be right here.))

A deep feeling of weariness had come over him; he could barely focus his eyes. He forced his breath out and turned his head. Tamika was still lost in the holographic concert. The lights and images danced in silence around his living room; with the effects-probes pushed away, they were pale and ineffectual. He watched as Tamika's eyelids fluttered, as her hands twitched in her lap. Finally he lifted the probes from her head; as he did so, the holographics faded to darkness.

Tamika stirred in confusion. "What happened? Why'd you stop it?"

He gazed at her, remembering the jolt with which Dax had brought him out of the blackout. It seemed impossible that she hadn't noticed. "I—" he began, then shook his head. The associations were still stirring in the back of his mind. "I couldn't watch anymore."

Her brow creased, her eyes suddenly alert. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. And I—" His breath caught, as the images flashed again through his memory. (Dax, are you doing that?) A feeling of peace welled up within him. With a sudden clarity he remembered something else, something triggered by those images, by his memories of work. Star-mapping across the galactic spiral arm / cosmic hyperstring / supernova . . . Something was coming to him in a rush . . .

Interstellar gateway.

"Tamika," he whispered. And stopped, because his mind was suddenly so full of details and fragments of pictures that he couldn't hold it all together, couldn't contain it in one place in his mind. Interstellar gateway . . . There had been talk of such a thing: yes, a gateway so vast and powerful that it could put enormous tracts of the galaxy within reach. But what did the talk amount to? Was that why they were studying a supernova, to find clues to how such a thing could be created?

"What is it, Rus'lem?" Fingers touching his temples.

"I—" He swallowed. He blinked, focusing on her. It had seemed so clear in his mind at that instant. And yet so much remained hidden. "Tamika—" And his voice, little more than a husky whisper to begin with, cracked.

"Yes?" She kissed him gently on the cheek.

He was startled by the touch of her lips. Whatever it was he'd been trying to grasp, it was gone now. Lost to the wind; lost to the kiss. "I don't know anymore," he whispered. He met her eyes, eyes of startling gold. She kissed him again, this time on the lips—a dry, brushing kiss. He drew a breath and let it out in a long hiss. "Yes," he said. He was having trouble breathing. She nodded, murmuring. Their lips met again and this time lingered.

Whatever it was, it would come back. It would have to.

Perhaps in the night. Or in the morning.

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