Red Limit Freeway

Chapter 22

About four weeks into the journey, the Bugs pulled us over for a rest stop. You could call it that, but it might only have been to give the Talltree contingent an opportunity to bury Corey Wilkes. Apparently the strain had been too much for him.

They didn't bury him, though. We had to do it.

We stopped in the middle of one of the most attractive landscapes I had ever seen. It could have been Earth itself.

"Maybe it is," Roland said. "We have no idea where we are in space or in time." He pointed to a range of mountains lifting snow-capped peaks above the horizon. "Those could be the Pyrenees two million years ago. Or maybe the Appalachians."

"I'd be willing to bet," Yuri said, "that we're a bit farther back than that. Several billion, in fact. This might be a planet of a star that lived and died a billion years before Earth's sun was a gleam in the universe's eye."

"Hey, they're getting out!" Carl yelled.

Sean ran into the cab with a handful of weapons, but the men who had come out of one of Moore's vehicles weren't in a position to make a move. Chubby, Geof, and two others were carrying the limp body of Corey Wilkes. They dumped him like a load of garbage just a meter or so from the shoulder, looked around briefly, then returned to their vehicle and shut the hatch. I wondered whether they had done this on their own or at the Roadbug's behest.

I radioed and asked.

"He was beginning to smell a bit," Chubby told me. "So we requested permission to open the hatch and throw 'im out as we were going along. Instead, the Bugs stopped."

"They answered you?"

"No, they just pulled over, and we found we could open up."

"Okay, thanks."

"Right-o."

"Weren't the Bugs afraid they'd escape?" Roland wondered.

"To where, pray tell?" Sean asked, gesturing toward vast expanses of rolling pastureland dotted with stands of tall timber. It all looked friendly and inviting, but there wasn't very much to do out there.

"True."

"The patrol creatures must have had their reasons," Zoya said.

"They have orders to take care of us," Lori said, sounding as if she knew.

"Who?" I asked.

"'The Bugs. They got orders to deliver us safe and in good health. And you can't have a stinky body lying around, can you?"

"Hmmm," I said, and thought about it. Then I asked, "Who ordered them, Lori?"

She looked at me and said impatiently, "The Roadbuilders, of course." She shook her head. "Really, Jake, sometimes you're just a little bit thick. Don't you realize that we're going to meet them? Where do you think they're taking us, on a punking picnic or something?" She rolled her eyes up in exasperation. "Sheesh!"

"Ohhh, I see."

We looked out at Wilkes' pale body.

"We can't just leave him lying there for the local scavengers," Sam said. "Somehow it's just not right."

This surprised the hell out of everybody, including me, but nobody commented.

"You really think?" I asked halfheartedly.

"Look, as far as I'm concerned, Wilkes was the lowest form of life in the known universe. But he was human, dang it, and if he deserves to rot in hell, which he surely does, he also deserves a decent burial―or the best one we can give him." Sam grumbled to himself for a moment. "Besides, I think we should do it because we're better than he was."

"Well, we may be moving again any second―but let's see if the Bugs'll let us," I said.

I bent toward the dash microphone. "Hey, out there. You guys. Bugs―whatever the hell you call yourselves. We'd like the time and the opportunity to conduct a ceremony of interment. You know? We want to dig a hole and put him in it. It's our custom."

"Use Intersystem, for God's sake," Sam scolded.

The answer was astonishingly quick.

"GRANTED."

And it was in English.

"Be damned," Sam said. "When will those things stop surprising me?"

Yuri said, "I think they were waiting for someone to go out there and do it."

"Maybe."

Carl pulled the release bar on the left hatch. It whooshed open, rising like a seagull's wing into the sweet-smelling air.

"Nobody thought to check when those guys got out," he said. "These were unlocked all the time."

We went outside to find Ragna and Oni climbing out of their vehicle, looking crumpled and weary. The thing they were driving was sort of like a camper, with a little room to move around in, but for the time they had spent cooped up in there, it must've been hell. They were indomitably cheery, though, in spite of it all.

Ragna stretched and took several deep breaths. "Ah, that is feeling much like the body I had of old, not this hurting thing I am having for the last several years, it is seeming like."

Oni smiled. "I am hoping we will be having the time to be working out the entirety of our kinks."

"Depends on how kinky you are, Oni," I said.

She nodded, then did a take. "Oh, that is a joke." She gave a polite, forced laugh. "Quite funny, too!"

I laughed. I liked Oni a lot.

So we buried Corey Wilkes. I found an old shaped-charge mine in the ordnance locker―they're good for clearing a blocked back road when you have to make a delivery, though I hadn't had the occasion to use one in a long time. I picked a likely spot a little way off the road and blasted out a good-sized hole with it. Sean helped me carry the body over. Before dumping Wilkes in, I looked down at him. Bare blue feet, white pajama bottoms, bandaged chest, purple lips and earlobes, the generally collapsed look about the face and swelling of the abdomen signaling the commencement of decomposition―he didn't look like the formidable enemy I had known.

"I suppose some appropriate words should be spoken," Sean said.

"If you feel like it, go ahead," I said. "Unless you have something to say, Sam."

Sam spoke from the key. "Not really. Dump him in."

"I didn't know the man," Sean said, "except by reputation, though I've seen his handiwork in what was done to Carl, and the trouble those rowdyboys have given us. Nevertheless…" He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them and spoke. " 'And Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is too great to bear. You are driving me today from the soil; and from your face I shall be hidden. And I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." But the Lord said to him, "Not so! Whoever kills Cain shall be punished sevenfold." Then the Lord gave Cain a mark so that no one finding him should kill him. And Cain went out… and dwelt in the land of Nod to the east of Eden.' "

Then Sean crossed himself. He smiled and shrugged. "I'm not sure how appropriate it was, but I imagine it sounded all right."

"It was fine," Sam said. "Better than he deserved. That was the Douay version, wasn't it?"

Sean nodded. "It's the one I know."

I sighed. "Well…"

We threw him in. I used another mine to blow a shelf of rock to smithereens. John and the rest, who had been looking on from a distance, came over to help us carry the pieces over and cover him up. We filled the hole to about three quarters of the way, up, making a sort of sunken cairn, then kicked in what little loose dirt was handy. Everybody helped but Darla, and I didn't blame her.

And that was that. We stool around, not very eager to get back into our traveling prison. I wasn't very worried about Moore trying something, not with the Roadbugs around.

Darla was gazing off into the distance.

"If there is a heaven, I imagine it would look something like this place."

I looked out. It was the most Earthlike planet I'd ever seen.

I could have sworn that the trees in the closest stand of timber were Douglas firs. The sky was purest blue, daubed with fleecy clouds. The air carried familiar smells, the tall grasses were kelly green, waving in a benign breeze. A clear stream flowed through a dip in the terrain to the left. A gentle hill rose from the far bank―great place for a farmhouse, nice little place indeed.

"You could find peace here," Darla said.

I watched her for a moment. Then she came out of her daydream, gave me a strange little smile, and walked off.

Winnie and George were having a good time, chasing each other through the grass like two kids―which they were, in a way.

"We go home!" Winnie had said when asked where she thought we were being taken.

"Home!" George had echoed.

Everyone still wondered what they meant.

An hour had gone by quickly.

"Okay, everybody," I said. "I hate to say it, but we should probably get back aboard. The Bugs are probably getting impatient."

Groans. But they all climbed in.

We told Ragna and Oni to come with us. They protested but finally gave in, and after running to fetch some things, they climbed aboard.

Before I did, I looked toward Moore's string of vehicles. They had been watching us enviously through the ports the whole while. Apparently, their doors had been sealed after they'd deposited the body.

"Too bad, kids," I yelled. "Be good and they might let you out for recess next time."

Puzzled looks from the boys. What'd he say?

We watched it happen on a lifeless planet with a thin, clear atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Around us, endless plains of orange dirt rolled out to a featureless horizon.

We saw a Bug road crew create and spin up a cylinder.

It was about a week after the rest stop. We hadn't run out of food, but most of the good stuff had been consumed. We assumed Moore and his gang were in bad shape in that regard. We had gotten a few desperate calls.

On our arrival, we had discovered a number of Bugs moving about, towing strange equipment and generally scurrying back and forth over the road. Farther down the road, there were more gathered a few kilometers from where the portal should have been.

Our Bug trainmen pulled us over not far from the road crew. Out on the plain, something was happening. A gray shadow of a cylinder appeared, wavering at first, then stabilizing and taking on substance. The shadow darkened, becoming an inky shaft jutting into an orange sky. Gradually, the cylinder took on its familiar hue, which is to say it was no color at all except that of black velvet at midnight.

We watched, mouths agape.

Yuri, though, was excited. "I was right! Damned if I wasn't right. They're made of pure virtual particles. The goddamn things don't even exist?"

"What do you mean?" John asked.

"I don't have the ghost of an idea how it's done, but these objects are being sustained in their existence from microsecond to microsecond. No, let me correct that. The time interval has to be vastly smaller. Perhaps the mass that makes up cylinder only exists within an increment shorter than the Planck limit, less time than it takes light to cross the diameter of a proton. But string those infinitely tiny blips of time together, and the mass takes on virtual existence. The thing of it is, anything goes within that interval. The physical laws of our continuum are null and void. You can create a new-class of matter and a new set of physical realities in there. You can do anything, as long as it's canceled out within a short enough period of time. Our universe looks the other way. It's like a student making rude faces when the teacher's back is turned and instantly becoming a model pupil when the teacher spins around to catch him at it."

"I think I'm understanding this," John said. "Somewhat."

"I won't say it's very simple," Yuri went on. "But what's important here is understanding that this new kind of mass may have, and probably does have, radically different gravitational characteristics. That's how the gravitational fields around a cylinder can be shaped and tailored so as not to interfere with the planet it rests on. That's how the effect zone can be so limited. And that may be how the field is cut off precisely at the level of the road surface and centimeters off the ground."

"Pretty slick," Sam said.

Yuri laughed. "Yes, yes, it is."

I said, "Everybody's always wondered what would happen if the machinery holding up a cylinder were to fail."

"Exactly," Yuri said. "And the answer is―the cylinder would simply cease to exist! They're no more than projections, like the images of a motion picture film. If you turn off the projector, they disappear."

"But they are real, in a sense," Roland said. "Aren't they?"

"In a sense," Yuri said. "Taken one frame at a time, one infinitesimal interval, they are the stuff of nonexistence. But taken as a progression of serial events in a block of real time, they have virtual existence. Virtual―possessing qualities or being something in effect or essence, though not in actual fact."

Zoya said, "Congratulations, Yuri. Your theories were precisely on target."

It wasn't grudging, but it was cool.

Yuri's smile faded. "Thank you, Zoya. We must of course collaborate on the paper." His expression turned grim. "If there was only some way to get out and use our instruments."

"Pity," Zoya said.

"Where do you think the machinery that sustains the cylinders is located?" Liam asked Yuri.

"Most likely it's beneath the ground at the portal site. Perhaps in the roadbed itself."

I nodded. "Like Sam said, pretty slick."

Eventually my gaze was drawn elsewhere. I hadn't noticed it at first, for understandable reasons, but there was a huge circular paved area off the left shoulder, connected to the road by short ramp made of Skyway material:

Our train started up again. The locomotive Bug made a sharp turn onto the ramp, dragged us to the middle of the disk and stopped. There were other disks, about half a dozen of them, spaced at even intervals up and down the road. Like this one, they were colored silver.

"Have we been shunted off to a siding?" Sam wondered.

"Yeah," I said, "to take on coal and water."

There was about a ten minute wait. We looked out the starboard ports but nothing was happening out on the plain at the portal site.

Then suddenly, something very disconcerting happened.

The world began to tilt.

It wasn't us, or didn't seem to be. Everything seemed normal and it felt as if we were still level. It was the ground that appeared to drop from beneath us. Looking straight ahead, we saw sky. The ground looked to be tilted down forty-five degrees from the disk―but of course it was the disk that was tilting up.

"Strap in, everybody," I yelled. "Just in case."

"Jake!" Susan screamed. "What's happening?"

"Um, I think we're going to take off."

And we did.

Oh, did we take off.

The planet dropped away from us. Our acceleration must have been a hundred Gs. We felt nothing. We heard nothing.

"Sam, are you registering any airspeed at all?"

"None. 'Course, that can't be."

"Maybe, if there's some kind of force field around us. Can you see a slipstream or contrail behind us?"

"Yup, you're right, there is."

Presently, the sky darkened and the curve of the planet appeared. Ahead was star-sprinkled blackness. We were in space, just like that.

"Incredible," Yuri murmured. "Absolutely…"

As distance increased, the visually-induced sensation of speed abated. We floated above the planet for a while, banking to the right. The still mammoth but slowly dwindling orange disk of the world below heaved full into the starboard ports. Then the terminator line came over the horizon and swept past. We were heading for the dark side and away from the sun.

Roland's face was transfixed with delight. His grin drew a crescent from ear to ear and he was giggling like a three-year-old child on his first merry-go-round. His Oriental eyes were narrowed to curved slits. He looked absolutely insane.

"Spaceship!" he burbled, then laughed maniacally.

"Yeah, neat," I said. "Jesus Christ, Roland, take it easy."

Everyone else was silent and awed to the very marrow.

The planet waned to a thin bright crescent and dropped away behind. Oblivious to the laws of physics as they are commonly understood, our magic disk, our spaceship, whisked us at unimaginable speeds into deep space. We were like meat on a serving dish. The planet crept to the stern, dwindling fast, and by the time I could get it on the rearview screens it had been reduced to a tiny scratch against the dark wall of night. Gone.

"Sam, can you get any kind of estimation of our speed?"

"Trying," he said. A moment went by, then he went on, "You wouldn't believe it. I can't believe it. We're accelerating so fast I can't even give you numbers. Call it umpteen million klicks per second and still accelerating."

"Carl," I said, "did your flying saucer look anything like this?"

"Nah, but I bet it went as fast."

"I'll have to try for star readings now," Sam said.

The illusion of speed was gone now that there weren't any points of reference. But even the stars, what little of them there were, seemed to be shifting like distant scenic features as we flew past. If Sam's readings were to be believed, we would be out of the local solar system and into interstellar space in a matter of a few hours, a day at the most.

"By Christ," was all Sean could say, staring out the port. "By Christ."

"Well, gang," I said, "what do you make of this?"

"If Bugs can fly," Carl wondered, "why do they run on the road?"

"Good question," I said. "But I never doubted that Bugs could do anything they wanted to do. They probably keep to the Skyway for their own good reasons. Which are… who knows?"

"The stars," Yuri said, leaning forward in his seat and looking out the front port.

The stars ahead were taking on a violet-blue cast, and in an area directly in line with our path, they were disappearing.

"We're approaching lightspeed," Yuri said. He sighed and leaned back, shaking his' head, his expression troubled. "I may be losing my mind."

"Hang on for a while," I said, but I knew what he meant. There is only so much wonderment the human mind can absorb before it just takes a cab. This journey had been one long assault on the limits of endurance.

"Anybody have any speculation?" I asked, "on where they're taking us, and why?"

"I think we've pretty much run that subject into the ground over the past month," Susan answered. "Haven't we? I mean, first we thought they were taking us to Bug jail, then back to T-Maze, then to the Roadbuilders, and now… God, who could possibly guess? What would the Roadbuilders be doing off the road?"

John said, "I think at this point we have to dispose of all the common assumptions made about the Skyway and whoever created it. None of the usual explanations ever made any sense anyway."

"Exactly," Yuri said. "It's always been taken for granted that the Skyway is an artifact of some long-vanished civilization. But just think about it. Here we have a road system that actually goes nowhere. There are no ruins of cities along it, nothing that would indicate that the road was ever used by those who built it. There were always the patrol vehicles―but now we know they're not vehicles at all but actual beings of some kind. Jake said it best, I think, when he likened them to civil servants. The Bugs were created to keep the road passable and relatively safe… for us. I've always believed that the Skyway was built for the express purpose of providing a way to bridge the fantastic distances separating the intelligent races of the universe. And for no other purpose."

"But why are we now off the road?" John asked.

Yuri shrugged. "We all saw that road crew spin up a new cylinder."

John nodded. "Of course. It's still under construction."

"We're on a detour," Susan put in.

"Very good, Susan," Yuri said, smiling.

John's brow knitted and he put a long-fingered hand to one side of his face, massaging it. "So confusing," he muttered. "See here. You just said that the Skyway doesn't go anywhere. But we've just spent a month on Red Limit Freeway. I don't know where in God's name we're going, but we're surely going somewhere, and it bloody well seems to me that Red Limit Freeway was built for the express purpose of taking us there."

Yuri sat forward and propped his chin up on his fists, his eyebrows twitching perplexedly. "Yes," he said. "Yes, it does seem that way, doesn't it? You're absolutely right, John, and I have to confess that it undermines my theory." He sat up sharply and pounded a fist into his thigh. "But dammit, if the Roadbuilders wanted people to be following a prescribed path, why the devil didn't they make that path abundantly clear? Why the blind alleys, the cul-de-sacs, the obscurity, the whole tangled mess of it all?" As he spoke, the accumulated frustration and stress of the past two years and the boredom and uncertainty of the past four weeks rose from whatever place it is where such things cook and stew under pressure until they have to be released. "Dammit all, I've spent half my life trying to understand one basic thing, trying to find some sort of clue, struggling to shed a single ray of light on a single overriding question and it's been like butting and butting my head against the roadbed itself. Sometimes I think I've been a fool―but that's of little importance. It was my choice―I made it and I must live with it. But the question still remains, dammit. It won't go away." He crashed a fist into the armrest, his voice erupting to a shout. "If the goddamn fucking Roadbuilders had wanted us to follow their fucking road―' He began pounding the armrest in cadence. "―why the bloody fucking HELL didn't they give us a fucking MAP!"

The last thwack on the armrest nearly broke it.

After a pregnant pause, Sam began to laugh. And that set us all off.

Yuri looked around at us, his eyes wide. Then he collapsed inside, spent, the redness in his face quickly turning from anger to embarrassment. He fell back in his seat in total helplessness and started to laugh, too.

We spent at least two full minutes laughing ourselves silly.

We began sobering up when we realized that Yuri had dovetailed into crying. Zoya got up, stood behind him, and began massaging his shoulders, stroking his tousled hair.

Yuri wiped his eyes on his filthy, tattered sleeve. "Forgive me," he said, his voice choked with remorse. "My friends… you must… forgive me."

"Nothing to forgive, Yuri," I said. "You were entitled to that, and it was just about time you collected."

"Still, I must apologize for the outburst…" He managed a smile. "And the language."

"You won't find any virgin ears around here," Susan said, "so don't worry about that." She thought a moment. "Of course, I've never tried it that way."

This set us off again and this time Yuri's laugh was unadulterated mirth.

When we had sobered up again, Sean got up from the deck, straightened his black turtleneck, and thumped his stomach, which had become drastically reduced in the last few weeks.

"I'm for grub," he said. "What there is of it left, anyway. What do you say, me hearties?"

"None for me," Zoya said. "Maybe a drink of water."

"Zoyishka, you're wasting away," Yuri said.

"Good for the soul."

"Not so good for the body, Zoya," I said. "You should eat. Come on, we're not on starvation rations yet."

She shrugged, then looked at me and relented. "You're right, I should. It's just that my appetite seems to have disappeared. And when I do eat, my digestion is frightful. There's some pain."

"What about Winnie?" Roland broke in.

The non sequitur brought everyone up short. Carl asked, "What did you say, Roland?"

"What about Winnie's map―and George's? Isn't it clear by now that they were planted? Maybe there are other races, other borderline-sapient animals who have map knowledge. Thousands, millions of species seeded along the Skyway like that. It all fits." He ground fist into palm, his lips pursed. He seemed to be off somewhere on his own magic carpet of thought. "It all fits."

Yuri was willing to plod back to the previous conversational sequence. "Yes, that's a distinct possibility, and in fact that's been one of the operating assumptions of our investigation into the matter. But it's also manifestly clear that Winnie and George's so-called knowledge is anything but reliable."

"Yeah," I said, "which brings us back to square one. So quit grinding your teeth, Roland, and relax. It's a safe bet we're not going to get to the bottom of this for some time."

Roland seemed miffed. "I wasn't grinding my teeth."

"Just an expression." I reached back and slapped his knee "Take it easy. Okay?"

He unwound a bit and smiled a little sheepishly. "Sure Sorry."

"It's okay."

"I have an announcement," Sam put in.

"Let's have it," I told him.

"We've just gone superluminal."

"What's that?" Susan said.

"Fancy for 'faster than light'."

Yuri and Zoya exchanged glances. Then a slow, world-weary smile of capitulation spread over Yuri's face. "Well, we knew the Roadbugs had superscience. Now we know they have magic."

"Sam, are you sure?"

"Hell, no. I'm not equipped to analyze data like these, but I'm damned if I can explain this crazy stuff any other way. Do you see any stars out there?"

I looked. Blank space. "Wow. No, I don't."

"I watched them disappear, but they didn't just disappear, they dopplered right off the scale."

"What's he saying, Jake?" John asked.

"I have an inkling, maybe."

"I can't really explain it," Sam said. "I don't have the wherewithal to put it into easily understandable terms. Not really in my programming. I can give you figures, but you wouldn't want 'em."

"Sam," I said, "this radiation. I was wondering about that. Even at lightspeed, we'd be smacking into stray hydrogen atoms with terrific energy. It'd fry us. What kind of count are you reading?"

"I'm not getting any high-energy particles, but I'm tracking very high frequency photons, about one per second. Which is nothing, really, in terms of health hazard."

"You say you're tracking them at faster-than-light speeds?"

"No, no, no, of course not. Light that's faster than light? The situation isn't that crazy yet. What I am saying is that these little buggers used to be starlight."

"Oh."

"Here's my hunch. We have just crossed the lightspeed barrier. No hyperspace, no fifth dimension', none of that horse nonsense. We are simply going faster than light."

"Oh," I said again, not knowing what else to add.

Susan was befuddled. "Hey, isn't that supposed to be impossible?"

We all looked at her.

"Just trying to be helpful," she said lamely.

"Let's eat," I said.

Our space journey lasted three days. We spent the time pretty much as we had done up till then, eating, sleeping, attending to personal matters, playing cards, playing chess (Sam took us all on in a marathon session―he won hands down against all comers. "It's not me, it's just my game files," he said modestly), reading, gabbing, although that tapered off after a while. We had hashed over everything of moment and were running out of small-talk material. We'd decided not to trade life stories. Carl was still reticent on the subject of Everybody-Knew-What, but he said he was working on it.

Sam eventually admitted he had given up trying to make sense of the data he was getting. And pretty soon he wasn't getting anything.

"Nothing out there, I guess," he said. "I'm not equipped for radio astronomy, so there's no use even speculating."

Along about a Tuesday morning… Actually, it was a Tuesday, and it was the fourteenth of March―at least it was back on a little blue planet some billions of light-years away, billions of years in the future, or the past, who knows. Anyway, along about a Tuesday morning we spotted something up ahead. That is, Sam did through the light-amplifier. I looked into the scope. Nothing but a faint smudge of light. Couple hours later, though, it was brighter.

"A star?" I ventured. "That'd mean we're nonsuperluminal, wouldn't it?"

"I think so. Actually, judging from the blue-shift, I'd say we were strolling along at a little under point nine cee and decelerating."

"So that's our destination."

"Well, seeing that there's no other place around the place, I reckon that must be the place… I reckon."

"Hmph."

"Except that's no dang star," Sam said.

"What is it?"

"Beats the living hell out of me."

I sat back in the driver's seat. "From what Yuri's been telling us, we're billions of years back in the history of the universe, no telling how many billions. Obviously far enough back so that stars haven't even formed yet. Maybe this is a quasar."

"No, if you swing that thing to these settings, you'll see something that looks like what a quasar should look like."

I positioned the scope and looked. A fuzzy blob of light with a faint spike coming out of it came into focus. "Yeah, that's what they're supposed to look like―some of 'em, anyway. But it should be a lot brighter, shouldn't it? I mean, if we're back when quasars first formed, we should be a hell of a lot closer to them, and…" I sat back. "Hell, who am I kidding. What I know about astronomy you couldn't stuff a flea with."

"Maybe it isn't a quasar," Sam said. "I was just guessing. Why not ask Yuri?"

"We've been picking his brains for three days now. Zoya's and Oni's, too. They're sleeping." I thought a moment, then said, "Yuri told me that if we had the right kind of microwave scoop we could tune in the cosmic background radiation and calculate exactly how far back we are."

"If we had the right kind of microwave scoop," Sam snorted. "Look, this is fun, but another hour and we're gonna be there. So let's wait."

So we did.

When we first began to see some detail, the strange object looked like a small star cluster with a bright core that was a bit off-center. Then it got very strange. It wasn't a cluster but a perfect sphere of stars with a brilliant spot near the very edge. But here was a problem.

"Those can't be stars," Sam said. "We're too close to that thing. They're just points of light."

"Artificial objects?"

"Gotta be."

Soon, an interior feature revealed itself, a solid disk bisecting the sphere. We were viewing it almost edge-on. It had the albedo of a planetary body and reflected its light from the much smaller sunlike disk riding just below the outer surface of the sphere. Our magic spaceship changed course, and eventually the disk tilted up toward us. I got out the missile aiming sight, cranked it up to full gain and had a look.

The surface of the disk was a world.

There were blue areas and brown areas―seas and continents. Wisps of cotton floated just above the surface. Clouds. As we got closer, rivers, mountain ranges, and other details appeared. A patchwork of tans and browns and greens spread over the land masses and details of the coastal regions revealed themselves. There were deserts, plains, and areas of what seemed to be thick vegetation. All this geography, though, was on a smaller scale than one would expect. It looked like a planet in miniature.

"Five thousand kilometers in diameter," Sam said. "Exactly."

"Nice round number."

The star sphere was just that. It was like a glass bubble spattered with drops of luminous paint. Not everything in the skies above the planet-disk orbited in the same plane, though. The sun-thing, whatever it was, hung a little lower, and there were other points of light and a smaller, less luminous disk―a moon-thing?―which looked as if they were borne along on inner concentric spheres.

The entire construct―it had to a construct―looked like a medieval astronomer's orrery.

"A damn planetarium," Sam said.

"It's a working model of the Ptolemaic universe," Roland said. "Though I think even Ptolemy accepted a spherical Earth, so it's a mixture of ancient astronomies, probably alien ones at that."

Beyond this, no one was willing to speculate.

The disk of the surface tilted full face toward us and we began our descent. We could see now that the back side of the sunlike object, also a disk, was dark.

In a few minutes we reached the surface of the star globe and found nothing there. Individual stars were still only points of light, all floating in exactly the same plane.

"What, no crystalline ethereal spheres?" Sam complained.

"Well, you wouldn't see them anyway," Yuri pointed out, "if I remember my ancient astronomy correctly." He laughed. "Imagine crashing into one and leaving a hole."

"So all these screwy objects up here are just artificial satellites of this even goofier planet," I said.

We dropped quickly. The sun object, which had become a dark oval when we got above it, turned its bright side to us again and we were in brilliant daylight. You couldn't look directly at it, and it looked for all the world like a sun, a Sol-type one at that. The stars faded and a blue canopy of sky came up, dark and cold at first, lightening and warming as we continued to drop.

The surface was a patchwork of every kind of terrain. There were deep forests, wastelands, mountains, grasslands, stretches that looked like alien planets, stranger areas where it was hard to tell what was going on. It was a crazy quilt down there. And there were signs of intelligent life. I could see roads now, though not many. Structures, too, some very big and very unusual ones, dotting the landscape at random. I didn't see any cities but there was an immense green-colored edifice below that seemed centrally placed. It could have been an arcology of some sort. The thought made my skin crawl.

The jumble and variety reminded me of something, and the notion was so incongruous, when juxtaposed with my expectations of what this place could possibly be, that I laughed aloud. I was reminded of what, in my day, used to be called disneyworlds. I forget what they're called now―in fact, I really don't know if there are any on the colonized planets. Amusement park is another and even older term.

Were we being taken on a school picnic?

In any event, we were about to land. I looked back at everybody. We were all armed, Lori included. Everyone had the same expression: a little fear mixed with expectation. We had discussed what to do at journey's end. We had no idea of what to expect, but we all knew it could be bad. That was one possibility. It was also possible that we could be greeted by brass bands and cheering crowds, and be hailed as intrepid explorers. We could hope. Of course, nobody had any delusions of defending ourselves against either the Roadbuilders, if they were down there, or the Bugs, if this was their home planet. But the slight glimmer of hope existed that we could be set free, and so could Moore and his gang. We simply did not know. In any event, and for any event, we were prepared.

I looked down and saw a familiar sight. The black band of the Skyway. So we never really did get off it. Just a detour, as Susan had said. But one thing we did not see on this planet was a portal. The Skyway was here all right, but this was it. This was Road's End.

Below, strange buildings lay along the highway. Maybe these were the ancient ruins Yuri and everyone had been looking for. But maybe not―from this height they didn't look ruined, just incredibly varied and uniformly strange and wonderful. Were they temples?―palaces?―residences? I hoped we would get to find out.

Our magic carpet was coming in for a landing.

"Okay, people, this is it," I said. "Whatever 'it' is."

"I wouldn't be worried about Moore too much," Sam tried to reassure us. "I'd be wary, of course, but I suspect he and his boys are going to be on their best behavior. Wouldn't do to scrap in front of Roadbuilders, and I can't believe they'd be stupid enough to do it."

"I'm half-inclined to believe you," I said, "but I wouldn't put anything past that slimeball."

"Maybe they're dead," Lori said. "We haven't heard a peep out of them for a while."

"That would be a bit of luck," John said. "We haven't had a fart's worth of good luck on this entire trip."

"We're alive, aren't we?" Susan said.

"Are we? I hadn't noticed."

We swooped over the roadway and came to a sudden stop, hovering momentarily before drifting down. There were docking ramps here, too, and the silver disk lined up over one of them and settled down. Our train was pointed toward the road.

As soon as we had landed, the Bugs dragged us off the disk, swung out onto the Skyway, and stopped. Then they decoupled us.

The rig's main engine groaned and turned over. A quick check of the instrument panel told me we had full power and total control of our weaponry.

The Bugs were pulling away. The three of them, locomotive, tender, and caboose, shot ahead and quickly disappeared. We were free.

But Moore and his gang were heading the other way. The rearview cameras showed all four vehicles wheeling around and tearing off down the road.

Twrrrll's vehicle followed them all, though the pursuit was halfhearted. The domed bubble-top of his buggy was opaque, but I could just imagine him looking over his bony shoulder, camera-eyes on extreme zoom, hoping to catch sight of his quarry one more time before he beat a hasty but strategic retreat.

"See?" Sam laughed. "They're more afraid of us than we are of them."

"Since when?" I said. "They have a guilty conscience, is all. They're afraid of the Roadbuilders."

"So am I," Susan said. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"What, and miss shaking hands with the Mayor?" I said. "Not on your life, Suzie." I looked around. Susan was hunched over on the seat, thin arms wrapped tightly about her and holding the gun she abhorred tightly against her side. Her eyes were wide and worried, her face tight and strained.

I reached back, took her shoulder, and squeezed it consolingly. "How far do you really think they'll get, honey?" I asked gently. "Hmm?"

Gripping my arm, she bent her head and kissed my hand. "I know," she said quietly. "I know." She looked up. "I'm just… you know, a little scared."

"It's okay."

We sat for a while. Nothing happened.

"You know," I said finally, "this is a high speed road. We should either pull over or get moving."

"What'll it be?" Sam asked.

"I hate to sit and wait. If our destiny's down this road, let's go have a look at it. What say, everybody? Shall we take a vote?"

"The ayes have it, Jake, me boy," Sean said, speaking for everyone. "Let's roll."

"Ragna, are you back there?"

"Indeed. I am hardly elsewhere."

"Do you want to get back in your vehicle or leave it here and come with us?"

"Being that I am scared to the point of voiding my nitrogenous wastes, no, thank you, I think. We will be space truckers for a while."

I started forward.

The road followed a trough between two low grassy hills. There wasn't much to see except a few strange trees and some shrubbery. This area had a manicured look to it, like a park. The grass was short and the trees had a pruned and cared-for look to them, though that very well could have been their natural state. There was a lot of color here. The green of the grass was brilliant, almost iridescent, and the trees and shrubs were of various pastel shades. Pink and blue strata of rock ran along the slopes higher up.

"Pretty," I heard Darla say.

Everyone nodded in silent agreement.

The valley began to wind and the road bore slowly upward.

"Anything sneaking up behind, Sam?"

"Not a soul."

"Hmm. I was just thinking."

"What?"

"Did you erase the Wilkes Al program yet?"

"No."

"How come?"

"I haven't been ordered to. You know I can't erase any files without your okay."

"Oh, right, sorry."

"So why haven't you?" Sam asked pointedly.

"Huh?"

"Why haven't you ordered me to erase Wilkes?"

"It's harmless now, right?"

"Absolutely. I got him right where I want him."

"Well, maybe we should let it be. That program may have some information we need. There are still plenty of question marks that need clearing up."

"Whatever you say."

"You're sure you pulled its teeth, now."

"Don't worry about it. You can't fool this computer twice."

"Well, we don't want a repeat of that takeover bid."

Sam grew exasperated. "Hey, did anybody else just hear me tell him not to worry about it?"

"I'd never count Corey Wilkes out," Darla said. "I wouldn't even trust death to cramp his style."

"Yeah," I said. "He's soma like you, Sam, in a way."

"How would you like to walk, son of mine? Next time you get out of this rig, I just might not let you back in."

"Sorry."

"No respect for the dead." The road leveled off on a bluff overlooking a wide plain. I slowed and pulled off the road. I wanted to have a look at this.

"Oh, it's beautiful," Susan said.

"Sam, something tells me the air here is just fine." "It certainly is." "Let's get out."

"Uh, I'll stay in the truck."

"Okay. You―" I did a double-take. "Yeah," I said, and laughed.

We all spilled out, walked off the shoulder, and stood looking at the marvel across the valley below. On a far hill stood a magnificent structure.

It was a palace or maybe an entire city, a massive yet graceful array of tall domed cylinders and lofty spires all enclosed behind a fortress wall. It was a fairy city, an imperial palace in a never-never land. It was El Dorado, or Xanadu, or Shangri-La. And it was all a glossy, brilliant green. Flying buttresses of green glass soared between towers, sparkling in the late afternoon sun. Crystalline ramparts looked out across the valley.

Susan was awed. "It's the Emerald City."

"It is looking quite like our fables and stories of old," Ragna commented.

I looked down. The Skyway cut across the valley and went into serpentine turns as it climbed the citadel atop which the city stood.

The black dot of a vehicle had just come down from there and was heading across the valley toward us at a terrific clip.

"Well," I said. "Here comes something."

Everybody caught sight of it and drew back a little, getting closer together.

We waited.

The dot grew into a vehicle that was sleek, long and black with green trim. After shooting across the valley, it slowed a little and began its ascent up the near side, taking sharp turns with effortless grace.

In another minute it gained the crest of the hill. It pulled off the road about twenty meters away from us.

The vehicle was magnificent, a technological rhapsody in shining ebony and jade green, its aerodynamic surfaces whimsical and free yet somehow mathematically precise as well. Fins angled up from the rear, thin swept-back wings flared from the sides. The fuselage was set about with tear-shaped bubbles and rounded protrusions. The needle-nose was tipped with silver. It looked more like a plane than a ground vehicle, and I didn't doubt that it could fly.

Was this an example of Roadbuilder technology? If there were Roadbuilders inside, why hadn't they simply levitated across the valley to meet us? Compared to the wizardry that had brought us here, this was decidedly middle-tech.

The next thing that happened shocked the hell out of us.

The green-tinted bubble-top popped open and a human being climbed out.

A strange one, though. His long hair was the color of copper, his face the color of coffee with heavy cream. His black eyes were large and wide apart. He had a straight sharp nose over full lips and his face was a perfect oval. There was something of the androgyne in him, with masculine and feminine aspects melded into one body. He climbed down from his vehicle and walked toward us in a flowing movement in which grace and self-assurance were combined.

He was dressed in a green full cape, black pantaloons and boots, and a black leather jacket with black piping. The cape was embroidered along the edges with elaborate designs in black thread and the jacket flowed with green scrollwork.

He stopped a few meters from us and spoke.

"Welcome," he said, and smiled. "You've come a long way and you must be very weary. We offer our apologies if you've been inconvenienced in any way."

The voice was not effeminate so much as it was epicene. It was clear, lyrical, lilting―almost musical.

No one responded. We all stood there airing our tonsils.

Finally I shut my mouth, swallowed, and said, "Hello. Yes, we're pretty tired. Uh, thank you." I massaged my forehead and tried again. "Uh, look here. I'm Jake McGraw. And these are my friends…"

"Greetings to you all," the man said, smiling warmly and looking around. "You may call us Prime."

"Us?" I said.

"Uh… me. Forgive the plural. Merely a habit."

"Prime," I repeated.

"Yes, Prime will do." He turned and looked up, watching a cloud roll by. "Beautiful weather, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes." I shook my head. "See here―" I began.

"You know, I was just about to have lunch," Prime said, turning to me, "when I had news of your arrival. You must be tired and hungry. Would you all do me the honor of joining me for a bite to eat?―After you've all had a chance to freshen up a bit, of course."

"Yes," I said. "Yes. But―"

"Forgive me. I'm sure you have many questions to ask me. And I'm perfectly willing to tell all in good time. But some things take priority, don't they? The universe stops for lunch. Why shouldn't we?" He laughed.

"One question first," I said. I pointed to the Skyway. "Did you build that?"

He looked. "What, that road specifically? Myself?"

"No, all of them. All the roads. We call it the Skyway."

His grin was strange and sly. "I suppose in a way I did."

"In a way?"

"Please. I don't want to sound enigmatic, though I'm sure I do. But I will answer all your questions at a later time. Any questions, truthfully and honestly."

He motioned over his shoulder. "I live across the valley there. If you'll be so kind as to follow me―"

"Do you know anything about a black cube?" I blurted.

"What? Oh." He frowned. "Yes. Um, you have it, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Good. Well; keep it for now. But at some point I would like to get a look at it."

"What is it?"

"What is it," he repeated. "Well, it's basically an experiment."

"An experiment in what?"

He considered his phrasing. "Let us say, an experiment in the creation of a universe."

"Any universe in particular?" I asked.

He looked at the sky and smiled. "Is there more than one?"

"Is there?"

His gaze lowered to meet mine. "That question can be answered in many ways." He laughed again. "Well. More of this later. And now―"

"I have a question." Cart shouldered me aside, walked forward, and stood in front of Prime.

Prime eyed him up and down, still smiling. "Young man, I sense that you harbor some hostility toward me."

"You're damn right. What's the big idea of kidnapping me and dumping me on some goddamn planet somewhere?"

"My dear young man, I―"

Carl cocked back his right fist and hit him full in the face.

Prime spun around and fell to the ground, his flowing cape spread out over the grass like crippled green wings.

Lori screamed. Then there was silence.

Prime didn't move. Carl stood there over him, both fists balled and arms straight at his sides.

I overcame my shock and stepped over to Carl. I looked down at Prime.

"Carl," I said. "You may have just punched out God."

"Nah." He looked at me sharply. "God has a beard."