Entoverse

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The room was just a cubicle, its main furnishing being a kind of recliner, padded in red, with several panels of what looked like a multicolored crystalline material above and on either side of a concave support where the occupant’s head would be. The wall behind carried equipment and fittings of unfamiliar construction.

Gina ran her eye over the interior. “I take it this is how you connect into the Thurien virtual-travel net,” she guessed.

“That’s right,” Hunt said. He tapped the communicator disk attached behind his ear. “This gadget that they gave you when you came aboard is just a two-way audiovisual link to VISAR-a viphone that goes straight into your head instead of through screens and senses. But this is the full works.”

“What they call total neural stimulation?”

“Instead of you having to go take your sense to wherever the information is, this brings the information to your senses-provided that the place you want to ‘go’ is wired with sensors for the system. It wouldn’t work too well for Times Square or the middle of the Gobi. Also, it intercepts the motor and speech outputs from your brain, and generates the feedback that you’d experience from moving around and interacting there.”

Gina nodded but still looked unsure. After a few seconds, she said, “And all of that two-way information transfer takes place instantly through the same-what do you call it, ‘dimension’?”

“I-space.”

“That’s it… that this ship goes through to get to Jevlen, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay… But the ship has to spend a whole day getting out past Pluto before it can use i-space. How come this coupler can do it from right here? Or how come you can do it from Goddard, for that matter?”

Hunt was already nodding. “A port big enough to take a ship would mess up everybody’s astronomical tables if you projected it into a planetary system. So instant planet-to-planet hopping is out. But for communications it’s a different matter. You can send information on a gamma-frequency laser into a microtoroid that can be generated on planetary surfaces-or in ships like this one-without undesirable side effects. The Thuriens use it for most of their routine business and social calling-and you don’t have to worry about drinking the water or catching any foreign bugs. It’s got a lot of advantages.”

Gina moved forward and touched the material of the recliner curiously. It was soft and yielding. Hunt watched from inside the doorway. “So what do I do?” she asked.

“Just take a seat. VISAR will handle the rest.”

Gina hesitated for a moment, feeling just a trifle self-conscious. The she lowered herself into the recliner, settled her feet on the rest, and let herself sink back. A warm, drowsy feeling swept over her, causing her head to drop back automatically onto the concave support, which was also padded. She felt more relaxed than she could ever remember. The interior of the cubicle seemed to be floating distantly in a detached kind of way. A part of her mind was aware that she had been thinking coherently only moments before, and that someone else had been there for some reason, but she was unable to recall who or why, or really to care. Nothing really mattered.

“Like it?” She recognized the voice as VISAR’s.

“It’s great. What do I do-just lie back and enjoy it?”

“First, we’ll need to register some more of your personal cerebral patterns,” VISAR said. “It only takes a few seconds.” When Gina had first tried the communicator disk, she had experienced a strange series of sensations and illusions in her hearing and vision. VISAR had explained that the range and activity levels in the sensory parts of the brain varied from individual to individual, and it was necessary to tune the system to give the right responses. Once established, the parameters were stored away for future reference, making the process a onetime thing, analogous to fingerprinting. Presumably VISAR now needed to extend its records to accommodate the other sensory centers, too.

Gina found herself becoming acutely conscious of the pressure of the recliner against her body, the touch of her clothes, and even the feeling of air flowing through her nostrils as she breathed. She could feel her own pulses all over, and then a weird tingling unrolling down her spine. VISAR was experimenting with her sense of touch, exercising her nervous system through its range of responses and reading the neural activity.

She felt herself convulsing in spasms-and then realized that she wasn’t moving at all; the sensation was due to rapid variations of sensitivity occurring all over her skin. She felt hot, then cold, then itchy, then prickly, and finally numb. Sweet, sour, bitter, then again sweet tastes came and went in her mouth; her nose experienced a succession of odors… And all of a sudden, she was wide awake and alert again, and everything was normal.

“That’s it,” VISAR informed her. “How would you like me for your dentist?”

Gina was too intrigued by what was going on to reply, but as she waited, a her brow creased in puzzlement. It didn’t seem as if anything much was going on.

She sat up and found Hunt still standing in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the side, arms folded, watching her curiously with an odd smile twisting his mouth.

“Can I get up now?” she asked him.

“Sure.”

She put her feet on the floor, sat upright, and stood cautiously, not quite knowing what to expect. Nothing changed. Everything felt normal.

“So, what happened?” she asked uncertainly. “Technical hitch?”

“You think so, eh?”

“You mean it worked?”

“Thurien engineering works. That’s one thing you never have to worry about.”

“But… we’re still in the ship. I thought we were supposed to be going to Jevlen.”

“No. You’re falling into the illusion already. Virtual travel, remember? You knew you weren’t really going anywhere.”

Gina put a hand to her brow and shook her head. “Okay. Let’s not start getting picky about words. You know what I mean. I thought that sensory information from Jevlen was supposed to be coming to me.”

“VISAR, give us a preview,” Hunt instructed.

At once, Gina and Hunt were standing in a wide, circular space like a gallery, overlooking a central area below. There were figures walking this way and that, some human, some Ganymean. As Gina stared, a small group consisting of two Ganymeans surrounded by a half-dozen or more humans gesticulating and seemingly talking all at once passed close by. Although the conversation was presumably being conducted in an alien tongue, the snatches that came through were transformed into English.

“…thousands of them, with nothing to do. They must be entertained. You have to arrange something.”

“Why can’t they learn to entertain themselves?” one of the Ganymeans asked, sounding harassed.

“They have always been entertained. It is their right!”

Gina looked at Hunt disbelievingly. He grinned back at her, clearly enjoying himself. “Let’s take a walk,” he suggested, and led the way across to the rail at the gallery’s edge. Gina’s mind was in too much turmoil for her to do anything but follow mechanically.

They looked down over a concourse of various levels and partly enclosed spaces, where more figures were standing or sitting, walking, and going about their business. The concourse appeared to connect to other spaces beyond, and had pedestrian avenues entering from several directions. The architecture was unusual, with generous use of curvature and asymmetrical divisions of space that blended strange notions of aesthetics and ornamentation with what was clearly a functional purpose. Gina’s first thought as she began to recover her reeling senses was of a Moorishly inspired airport terminal. It was all definitely very futuristic, and unquestionably alien… but it did keep itself tidily to definite planes, without assaulting the eye with anything resembling the geometric chaos of the Thurien spacecraft.

But as she continued looking, a puzzling aspect of it all registered itself. For what was supposed to be a glimpse of an advanced, technologically adept culture, it was all rather shabby. The finishing on the elaborately styled shapes and surfaces was drab and unimaginative, with a general air of wear and neglect and tiredness. There were lights that weren’t working, panels missing from one of the walls, and on the far side a whole, partly dismantled section closed off by barriers, with machines that looked like maintenance robots standing idle.

Hunt indicated a direction with his hand, and they began walking around the gallery toward a series of low arches on its outer edge. The figures around them passed by unheeding. Gina had to remind herself that she was merely perceiving what was taking place at a distant location; the people who were actually there had no knowledge of her “presence.”

Beyond the arches was a semicircular, windowed space, an eating lounge of some kind, with seats and tables on several tiered levels. Again, the surroundings were plain and utilitarian. The figures, human and Ganymean, took no notice as Hunt and Gina descended a stepped aisle to a clear area along the window wall, which turned out to be a continuous expanse of glass. That was when Gina realized that the sky was not blue, but light green, with strange, curling, sheetlike clouds of streaky orange.

The city beneath the pale green sky extended away and below them in waves of interconnected towers, terraces, and heaps of architecture that at first defied comprehension. But then Gina noticed that one of the bridges nearby was missing two of its central spans; a tower beyond it was showing daylight through its windows and seemed to be a derelict shell; below them, a terraced roof had had several sections removed and was open to the elements.

Finally she looked back at Hunt.

“Believe it now?” He waved a hand casually. “Shiban, one of Jevlen’s principal metropolises.”

Gina moved forward to take in more of the view and saw, through a gap between two of the structures, a tall, streamlined shape standing upright in what appeared to be an open space, possibly beyond the edge of the city proper. Although the bottom part of it was obscured, she had seen enough pictures to recognize it. “Isn’t that the Shapieron?” she asked, indicating with a motion of her head. It was the Ganymean spacecraft from ancient Minerva. If anything, the nose was still some way below the level they were looking out from-and the Shapieron stood almost half a mile high.

“Shiban is where the Shapieron is currently berthed,” Hunt replied. “It’s at a place called Geerbaine, just to the west of the city. The place we’re in is Garuth’s Planetary Administration Center. It used to be the governing center for this region of Jevlen. We can’t go any farther without resorting to total simulation, because this is the only part that the Thuriens adapted for VISAR-Jevlen was managed by JEVEX, which had slightly different sensor wiring. But anyhow, welcome to another world. What do you think?”

Gina stared outside again. She rubbed her brow with a knuckle and shook her head, then looked back at Hunt. “No… this still doesn’t make any sense. How can I be seeing Jevlen through VISAR, if I’m not coupled into VISAR?”

The strange smile, which had never quite left Hunt’s face, broadened. “Aren’t you?”

“Well, no… I got up out of the chair and talked to you. I-oh, Vic, stop looking at me like that. Tell me what’s going on.”

And then, just as abruptly as before, she was standing inside the cubicle in the Thurien starship again, with Hunt facing her from the doorway, just as they had been before the transition.

“It’s simple,” Hunt told her. “If VISAR can make us think we’re walking around on Jevlen, it can just as easily make us think we’re standing here in the ship.”

It took a few seconds for the meaning of what he was saying to sink in. “You’re kidding!” Gina breathed incredulously. Hunt shook his head. She ran a finger experimentally down the edge of the door-frame. It felt cool and hard and solid. There was even a burr at one place, where something had scratched it.

“Hold out your hand,” Gina said. Hunt obliged. She ran a finger along one of his and traced it over the palm. It felt warm and fleshy, with each line and wrinkle in the skin clearly discernible. “It’s uncanny,” she whispered.

“Not bad,” Hunt agreed. “What you saw a moment ago is what’s happening in a part of Shiban at this moment. Those people are really there. VISAR is very good at realism.” Hunt pointed at a spot on her arm. “You’ve even got the stain on your sleeve, where you rubbed your elbow in some ash that had fallen on the table when we were in the cafeteria.”

Gina looked at the sleeve of the green sweater she was wearing, and flicked at the gray patch with her other hand. Sure enough, most of it brushed away, leaving a faint smudge, just as real ash on a real sleeve would have done.

Hunt laughed. “There’s an easier way. In this world, you can do anything you want. VISAR, clean the sleeve.” The remaining discoloration vanished, leaving no trace. “Or change the whole thing if you don’t like it. VISAR, how about a red sweater?” Gina’s sweater promptly changed to a rich ruby red.

She gasped. “It’s true! This is all happening inside my head? I’m not really standing here? So aren’t you here, either?”

“Of course not. I’m inside your head, too. So I must be hooked in through another coupler, just as you still are.”

Gina struggled to come to terms with the meaning of it, but in the end faltered and shook her head decisively. “It’s no good. I can’t believe this. Prove it.”

“I can’t. Ask VISAR to.”

“VISAR. Prove it.”

And instantaneously she was back in the recliner, at ease and comfortable, as if she had never gotten up from it.

“Voilà,” VISAR announced, managing to sound quite proud of itself.

As Gina’s confusion subsided, she reminded herself that she never had gotten up. She had been here all the time… or had she? Was she really here now, or was this yet another construct in the maze of mirages that Hunt had led her into? She sat up with a strange feeling of déjà vu-only this time, Hunt wasn’t standing watching from the doorway, and the door was closed. Her sweater was green again; the smudge of gray was back on her elbow. It was all as the real thing should have been, but there was no way of telling. If this was another illusion, she could see no purpose in it. Anyway, it seemed she had no option but to go along. She moistened her handkerchief and cleared the smudge from her sleeve.

“Where’s Vic?” she asked aloud.

“Next door, to the right.”

Gina got up and moved to the door. She opened it, let herself out into the corridor, and peered into the next cubicle. Hunt was in repose in the recliner there, motionless with his eyes closed.

“Happy now?” VISAR asked her.

Okay, it was good enough for her. “Convinced, anyhow,” she conceded.

“Never say I don’t give you your money’s worth.”

Hunt opened his eyes and sat up. “Neat, eh?” he said to Gina. “Just think, you could go anywhere in the Thurien world-system right now if you wanted to. Imagine what that saves them in a year on bus fares.”

“Right now, you only need to worry about getting back to the lounge area,” VISAR said. “The others are there, and they’re asking where you are.”

“Tell them we’re on our way,” Hunt answered.