Psychoshop

FOUR · SEVEN WELL-HUNG GENTLEMEN

Later, after Adam had departed to scuff around the Olduvai Gorge of a million-plus years ago in search of I the origins of the human collective unconscious, I asked Glory where the Switch was. I knew there had to be one somewhere about or even the Mystery Cat might go mad at the pace. We knaves must sometimes rest.

She removed an exquisite pale blue Ming vase from a niche, exposing a simple switch on the wall behind. I reached in and threw it. Nothing changed, but everything changed. A field flux of the singularity executed a deft Dedekind Cut between a pair of seconds whose interval we traversed, transporting us to a timeless space where we dawdled, showered, ate, drank, diddled, and did it again while no customers were kept waiting or could be as we did it in her room atop the iron stair, skins of her former selves proudly displayed upon the wall.

"A gallery of Glorys," I remarked, stroking the nearest.

"Perpetually reflowering forth," said she, "for delight of man and beast. Come bed with me and love my be, Alf of the thousand stars. Have I not waited down the nows?"

"Indeed," said I, kissing her now, and kissing her now again.

Many a time I rose to the occasion, but finally fell as a dead man falls, into her arms or her eyes, where a soft susur­ration like ancient waves welcomed me down and down.

... I remembered the iron stair beneath my bare feet, dim, distant, and faint. Then I was through the half-lit room and the big door, drowsing down dark ways where images of sex and violence seemed to scroll at either hand. Follow­ing the claw marks then, back between the taking-away and the adding-to places . . .

.. . coming to the place where the seven hung, turning in the breeze—though, in truth, this seemed my first splin­ter of awareness, the other few but impressions of passage which had been restored to me in that instant. Something about that field ... I didn't know how it worked. Better not to enter there.

I reached forward. I leaned. There was a chill. . . .

I touched his arm, gripped it. Was it Pietro the painter or was it the Crusader? I could not be certain. It was necessary, though, that I turn him, so that the faint forward light—

"Ssss! Alf! What are you doing?" I felt her hand upon my shoulder. "You walk in your sleep. Come away!"

She tugged at me, as I was tugging at my hung com­panion. Our joint effort had him turning proper in a moment. . . .

I released his arm.

"What dream is this?" I asked as the light came upon his face.

It was my face that I beheld, turning in the pale illumi­nation.

"Why's the Pussycat got my double hanging in the meat locker, Glory?"

"The story he told you was true. This one just happens to look like you."

I strode forward, knowing now that I could take more of that chill. I seized the next one by the legs and twisted sharply. He came around, and my own face looked down at me again. I moved to the next, turned him. Again, it was me. And the next, and the next. . . Again, again. I dropped to my knees.

I felt her hands upon my shoulders.

"All of them! What is this, Glory? Does he collect guys who look like me? Am I going to be Number Eight? Should I start running? How can I, from a guy who can follow me anywhere? What does he want? Why are they here?"

"We must get you out of the field now." She caught hold of me under my armpits and drew me to my feet. "Come away."

"Tell me!"

"I will, if you'll come along with me now."

"I'm sorry, Alf, that you had to find out for yourself. He was going to tell you, after he got to know you better."

"So you discussed my case?"

"Yess."

"In UHF, while I was standing there, I suppose?"

"Yesss."

"So what was it that I found out for myself? I still don't know."

"That you are a part of something, perhaps dangerous, that affects him and this place. He wanted to cultivate you, observe you, to see whether you might give some indication of what your plans are for us, before he risked talking with you about it."

"'Risked'? You act as if he's afraid of me."

"He is."

"Let me point out that he's smarter, stronger, older, wiser—all that cloned quadratic crap—and probably has a lot more sheer animal cunning than me. Maybe he's even crazier."

"He has no simple way of knowing what goes on inside you. You might even be his equal and be keeping it well-hidden. You may be a special observer, studying his growth and development—or something much darker. That is why he brought you into his affairs as he never has another—to watch you for some clue as to what your agenda might be."

"And you are helping him?"

"Of course."

"Learn anything you'd care to share?"

"No. You baffle me completely. You seem to be just what you held yourself out to be—a journalist with expen­sive tastes who gets himself assignments to match, a man with a strong curiosity, easy-going, well-educated, and with a grotesque sense of humor. Only we know there has to be more to it than that, if for no other reason than that there are eight of you."

"This place attracts weirdness, Glory. Maybe I'm part of some harmless synchronicity that reverberates down the years. It provides a fatal attraction for curious guys who look like me— Hey, you weren't in love with any of them, were you?"

She laughed.

"Many skins ago, who can say?"

"Lots of virginities back, eh? I find the thought of being the recurrent satisfier of your emotional needs rather dis­tasteful. Smacks too much of the assembly line. Says too much about both of us."

"Ssss. It's very romantic. Eternal return stuff."

"—And the other guys didn't learn any better concern­ing the Hellhole either. Says a lot about my supposed supe­rior intelligence."

"Says nothing. We don't know."

"Just call me Alf the Eighth."

Again that sibilant laughter. Her hand continued to knead my right shoulder.

"Only one Alf."

"Oh?"

"You are all the same person."

"I don't understand."

"After several visitors were swinging in the Hellhole it occurred to Adam to compare tissue samples."

"And?"

"They are all genetically identical. Clones, Alf."

"And me?"

"We were able to type you, too. It is the same."

"You mean I'm a clone?"

"Ssss. I do not know. You may be the original and the rest your reconnaissance team. Perhaps they each learned enough from each occasion and you were somehow moni­toring it all. Now, finally, you may be ready to move in per­son."

"That's preposterous! Move? In what fashion? Against what? For what?"

"How am I to know? There are so many possibilities. This place is unique. It represents power, knowledge, wish fulfillment. There is no way to tell what you might be after."

I shook my head.

"Ridiculous!"

She moved nearer, slithered against me.

"Then let it stay a mystery," she said, twining about me in an interesting fashion. "Perhaps a ninth one will show up one day and explain everything. In the meantime, let us consider the ways of the flesh." I felt her tongue upon my cheek and its argument was persuasive. Soon we were twined together in a love-knot I knew I could never undo unassisted, which of course was half the fun.

It was only later, near sleep, that I realized they had kept my thinking and feeling equipment under full siege the entire time I had been with them. I let my thoughts begin to flow, but the tides of fatigue were stronger…

When I woke later I was alone.

I made my way down the stairs and passed to the front of the foyer. The Switch in the niche was still thrown, but I moved to the door, wondering the while. If opening it were absolutely hazardous to the health under null-time condi­tions, I presumed that throwing the Switch would have locked the door.

So I opened the door.

Beyond the recessed area of the entranceway hung a dense, white fog. I stepped outside, staring. Was it real fog or was it a thing the mind did when confronted with some fundamental physical paradox?

I took a step forward, feeling nothing inclement despite my nudity.

"Glory?" I called, my voice seeming oddly muffled. "You out here, snaky lady?"

There came no reply, and I took another step, as it seemed for a moment that something low and dark was flowing by.

"Come on," I said. "Let's get back inside."

I moved to take yet another step and I felt my ankle seized. Stumbling back, I noticed that the thin, pale hand which had taken hold of me had emerged from a bundle of rags by the front door.

"No!" came a harsh voice from that same level. "You must not the underlying fullness set foot upon."

"I'm just looking for my girlfriend—Glory. I thought she might have come this way."

"None have departed here since you brought the place to this condition."

"You can let go my ankle now."

"I'm not so sure but that, disbelieving me, you might walk ahead."

"What would happen if I did?"

"'Tis not a street for you to step out onto." With that, another hand emerged from the bundle, this one holding a bottle. Then a hair-covered head and face I had not recog­nized as such were raised from the floor. A few final drops were poured from the bottle into the sphincter-like mouth which dilated open. There followed a small belch, then the arm was drawn back and the bottle cast forward. "Shade your eyes!" the mouth writhed, barely in time.

It was soundless and incredibly brilliant, x-raying me, it seemed, with its intensity.

"What the hell!"

"Photon smear," he replied. "We let there be light."

"I saw something black, low, flowing by," I said, through clenched teeth.

"Only old Ouroboros making his rounds."

"That's just mythology."

"Man is a metaphor-making mammal, and that is the secret of his success."

I blinked against blindness, waiting for it to pass. Then, "Who are you?" I inquired.

"Urtch."

For all its apparent frailty, his hand still held my ankle like a manacle.

"You can release me now. You've made your point. You seem to know a lot for an old drunk."

"Street smarts," he replied, letting go, "and if you're acknowledgin' you owe me one, I'll take you up on it."

"What do you want?" I asked, leaning against the jamb.

"Go back inside and find me a fresh bottle of wine."

"Hell, you can come on in and drink it there," I told him. "Be a lot more comfort—"

"No, this is my street, and I'm happy on it."

"Sure," I told him. "Just a minute."

I turned up a straw-basketed bottle of Ruffino Chianti through a fading violet haze, uncorked it, and took it to him.

"Will Chianti do, Urtch?"

"Just fine." He extended an arm upward and accepted it. "What's your name, boy?"

"Alf"

He took a drink and sighed.

"Better go find your lady, Alf."

"Yes. Yes, I should," and I closed the door and turned away.

I crossed to the Hellhole, and with some misgivings I opened it and entered.

Passing a mundane workbench, I made my way down and back, and it seemed that I cast more shadows than usual. I went a good distance, but I did not see her until I came to the region of the seven Alfs. She was off to its right, arms moving as if she operated a piece of invisible equip­ment in the darkness.

"Glory, why'd you come back? What are you doing?"

There followed a solid clunk, as of the closing of a cabi­net. I continued to move toward her.

She turned slowly toward me.

"You threw me off schedule," she said. "I woke and remembered some maintenance I'd neglected."

I swept past her, reaching into the area where she had been working. My hand encountered only air.

"Where is it?" I asked. "This equipment?"

"We keep it all folded on shelves in other spaces. I draw what I need to a work station, return it when I'm done."

"Why here?"

"Because I've been thinking about it a lot." She ges­tured. "The matter of the eight Alfs."

"Learn anything new?"

"No. You think of anything you'd care to tell me?"

"No."

She took hold of my arm, turning me gently back in the direction from which I had come.

"I guess that makes us even then." Her hip brushed lightly against my own.

I found myself growing distracted again, but before it took hold of me completely I said, "I checked outside the front door for you first. Met an interesting old bum named Urtch."

"That's impossible," she said.

"Nevertheless, he was there. Showed me a photon smear. Stopped me from becoming one."

"You must have been hallucinating, Alf. There couldn't be anything outside."

"He was in the entranceway, on the stoop. So was I for a time, watching the fog. So I know it's possible."

"Still..."

I turned her as we emerged from the Hellhole, heading back to the front door.

"I've thought of more questions I want to ask him. C'mon."

There was nobody there. Some fog had even crept into the entranceway. And it was too dense now to distinguish the dark flow.

"It can't be. He was here—just minutes ago."

"Urtch. Strange name."

"I also saw the back of the Ouroboros Serpent."

She placed the fingertips of her right hand between her eyes and made a downward spiraling gesture with them.

"Great ancestor," she muttered then. "Did he say—any­thing—else?"

"No," I replied. "Just mooched a bottle of wine and told me you hadn't been by that way."

"Might he have entered, I wonder?" she asked, sud­denly surveying the room behind us.

"I don't think so. I invited him inside to enjoy his drink, and he said he preferred it out there, on his street."

She shook her head and hissed. She went back and closed the front door. Then she commenced searching the premises and I helped her—everywhere but the very depths of the Hellhole.

"Urtch, Urtch," she muttered, from time to time.

"You have seen him about."

"No, it's not that. It's—nothing."

We checked the final closets and storerooms, even ven­turing into Adam's surprisingly neat—almost monastic— quarters. But Urtch did not turn up.

Finally, we repaired to her room, where we distracted each other no end. So, when it finally ended I was too far gone to notice.

"You're awake?" she said softly, slithering slowly along my right side.

"Yes. You're good for me, you know?"

She chuckled and stroked my hair.

"It's mutual," she whispered. "Shall we throw the Switch and go back?"

"No way. We stay. I don't know whether I'm ready for more of the yoni-lingam business, but we can always talk while my body figures that one out."

"Talk. Surely. Say on."

"I hardly know where to begin. This is such a place of mysteries."

"So it must seem. But they're only the sweepings of small puzzlements from across the years."

"Then let's start with years. This place has actually been around at least since Etruscan times?"

"Yes."

"Adam went back there from the future and set up shop in this place?"

"It's as he told you."

"And you've been living forward since then, doing deals throughout history?"

"Yes."

"And Adam is being evaluated by his creators on the basis of how he runs this show?"

"Yes."

"Because he has a super-high IQ and all sorts of unclas­sified talents as well?"

"That, too." She glided slowly across me.

"So you are centuries—millennia—old?"

"As we told you."

"You are originally from the twenty-fifth century. You went back in time and opened the shop, and now you are headed home via the slow, scenic route."

"We are not originally from the twenty-fifth century."

"Adam said that you came here—or, rather, went to old Etruria—from there."

"This is true. We stopped there on the way back for repairs. This unit where we live and do business was dam­aged in flight. The twenty-fifth century was the earliest point in time at which repairs might still be made."

"Oh. Well, where—or rather, when—did you originally come from?"

"I can't say."

"Why not?"

"I promised Adam that I wouldn't, when you came here."

"Why?"

"The clones. If you were the clone-master this could be important information to you."

"In what way?"

She slithered against me again.

"That, too, dear Alf, I may not disclose."

"I guess I understand."

"No, you don't."

"Then tell me about your genetic origins."

"Surely. I am snake. Adam is cat. That's all."

"It would seem that a lot of gene-splicing would be involved to bring both species to the level of human appear­ance and equivalent intelligence."

"The old projects weren't aimed at giving us minds like yours, but rather at developing our own, with our own styles of thinking, to high potential."

"Obviously, they succeeded."

"Yesss."

"And you breed true? You are your own races now?"

"Oh, yes."

"Then why all the test-tube business with Adam? He made it sound very experimental."

"He was. Is. He was actually the result of an ongoing experiment to push each of the species to its fullest poten­tial, to see how far each would go, to see which would pro­duce a special being—by means of that 'cloned quadratic crap.' The proper term sounds something like 'Kaleideion' in your tongue—if indeed it is truly your tongue."

"Of course it is. Why shouldn't it be?"

She was all over me for a moment, then still and hug­ging.

"You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Alf?" she said. "You're not plotting against us?"

"I wouldn't even know how, or what to plot for. Lay off, will you?" Then I was hugging her, too. "If I am, I've gotten myself fooled as well. So Adam is a Kaleideion?"

She shook her head.

"Not a Kaleideion. The Kaleideion. It is the only time in the long history of the program that the work succeeded and produced such a one."

"Okay. The Kaleideion," I said. "Gives me something else to call him. I already knew he was bright and inge­nious."

"It's more than just that," she began, then stopped abruptly.

"But you can't discuss it?"

She nodded.

"I'd already figured that. Don't feel badly." I gave her another squeeze. "How do they watch him to evaluate his performance?"

"We think they watch the wave of disruption that we cause on our way through time and its history," she said, "since they don't seem able to watch him directly. Unless, of course, you and your clones are a special evaluation team."

"You never let up, do you?" I asked, shaking my head. "Isn't it dangerous to let him go around rearranging his­tory? When it catches up with your century you may all turn into pumpkins."

She laughed.

"It doesn't work that way," she said. "The universe is sufficiently big that it contains, dampens down, and absorbs. Your history is actually a very minor event in its existence. It could never spread to the point of importance. From focusing on it, though, someone in a later age might be able to make guesses as to the Kaleideion's development."

"Very poor guesses, I would say, since the nature of this business is so random."

"Yes, there might be something to that, mightn't there?" she said, smiling.

"Are you saying I'm right?"

"I shouldn't say."

"You don't have to. Makes me wonder why, though."

"Think about it."

"You want to fool them."

"Perhaps."

"You want them to underestimate—or to mis­estimate—the Kaleideion, as he is contemplating some action for which he wishes them to be totally unprepared, tricky devil that he is."

She stiffened. "A guess worthy of the mongoose or coy­ote people!" she said.

"Come on. You led me to it."

I felt her tongue in my ear. Her hands stroked my belly.

"True. Yet there were distractions."

"I'm not, am I?"

"What?"

"A mongoose or a coyote."

"We have examined your tissues, remember? You're definitely standard human."

"That's a relief."

"Or a misfortune. They're both worthy species. You could do worse."

"Would you still love me?" I asked, as she slipped loose and slithered over my face.

"Unlike some, I believe in interspecies romance," she said. "I'm sure you could have won my heart as a coyote. I don't know about a mongoose, though."

"There could be great literature in it. Two noble Houses—Snake and Mongoose—mortal enemies, of course. Enter a lovely snake maiden and a dashing mongoose youth—"

"Glory and Alf, the star-crossed!" she cried. "I can see the despairing scene in the tomb where you force my mouth open to break the skin of your lips with my fangs in a kiss that lingers and lingers till the audience realizes you are lying dead beside me. Awakening just a few minutes too late, I raise my hand to my mouth in horror, then bite it—"

"You really have fangs, and poison?"

Her laugh was hissed. "Alf! O pale! Allow a girl some secrets, and fear her if you must!"

Her teeth grazed my ear and I winced.

"I've always been decent to you, haven't I?"

"So far," she said.

"I hope you haven't just been sent to keep an eye on me."

"It's become more than that," she said. "Yes, it troubled me, but what the hell! I do it anyway! Kiss me, human!"

Later, my glass shattered on the bedside table as she shrieked in UHF.

Sitting, propped up in bed by pillows, sipping cappuccino— again, with no idea of the passage of time—I said, "You made some sign and said 'great ancestor' to my reference to the Ouroboros Serpent. Why?"

"All the species have their totems, their gods or god­desses," she said. "Adam's is the Egyptian cat goddess Bast. We all claim at least spiritual descent from such sources. It goes back to the founding of the species, I gather, to give a new people a sense of continuity with ancient things. At least, that's what is said. It was so long ago, tales get so twisted."

"It must have taken thousands of years to develop the species and see their numbers reach the point where they could develop a culture."

"Oh, it did. Though the cultures developed quickly when we each were given our own worlds. Some of us min­gle with others, of course, on their worlds, as they with us. But having home worlds helped."

"All that time, though—plus your long lifespans—and you refer to it as an ancient past. It must be from considerably far beyond the twenty-fifth century that you come."

"Oh, it is. It is."

"I'd figured that. This shop—complete with its wish-effect—bespeaks a technology so advanced that it's close to magic for me. But what was the purpose of enhancing the various species involved in the program your kind came out of?"

"At first, we were useful in dealing with special prob­lems on newly discovered worlds. Then many other unique talents were manifest, and we became welcome citizens."

"But probably a big social problem first."

"True. But we achieved equal rights eventually, and grant of the home worlds. Later, we were courted by our old masters to join the Galactic Union as Terran-bloc worlds."

"I'll bet. How many Terran species are there?"

"Twenty-eight," she said. "Adam's and mine were two of the earliest."

"A Galactic Union makes it sound like an extremely dis­tant future."

"Past," she said. "It is a part of our past."

"How did the original human race fare?"

"You were a distinct minority in the union at the time of our creation. Our joining the bloc helped you greatly."

"And later, in your own day, the time from which you departed?"

"Alf, by then it has grown difficult to explain what human is, the body and mind can be shifted about so many ways. If you mean people who could mix easily with peo­ple of this day, they are a minority—or several interesting minorities."

"I find this somewhat depressing. Was the Earth still around in your day?"

"I don't like discussing this with so many out-of-contexts. But yes, it was around, but in different form. It had been depleted and its components employed for terraforming elsewhere. On the other hand, it was later reconstructed by groups of political nostalgics. More than once. On still another hand, I see now that they got it wrong in many ways. Perhaps we will take you to see some version one day. Perhaps you already have."

"Cut the insinuations, Glory!"

"Could your present culture provide you with seven clones? Or get them back through time for you?"

I sipped my cappuccino.

"I hadn't really thought about it that way," I said. "I guess I was just fixed on the image of all those Alfs."

"A future connection would seem necessary. The ques­tion is, which future?"

"Any candidates?"

"None that I care to discuss."

"Any idea how we're going to resolve this thing?" I finally asked.

"When Adam gets a little free time he'll deal with it."

"How did you come to be his nursemaid?"

She smiled.

"I was the logical choice," she said, "for I was the closest my species came to producing the Kaleideion."

"Oh. Of course. Makes eminent good sense. You and Adam are from different points in time, aren't you?" I asked.

She gave the longest hiss I had ever heard her utter and sat bolt upright. Her eyes flashed and her hair swam about her head as if with a will of its own. She seemed to radiate— something like heat, but without temperature; there was a pressure there, as of the emanation of force. She seemed much larger, filling, dominating the room. When she spoke, her voice possessed the same persona quality I had heard Adam use in much smaller doses. The skins of her former selves stirred and rattled upon the walls. Her fangs were suddenly apparent. Her tongue darted, and I drew back, spilling my coffee. When she spoke, it was even worse:

"How is it that you know this yet deny other knowledge of the affair?"

"Easy, lady!" I cried. "Take it easy! It was just a journal­ist's mind at work. If it's so damned hard to breed a Kaleideion that the effort had been going on for ages, it seems statistically unlikely that two of you should come along at the same time."

"Of course," she said, seeming to shrink as I watched, "of course," and she stroked my cheek and made the worst . of the moment vanish. I reached out and returned the com­pliment.

"Ssss," I said.

"Sss," she corrected, "but your accent's getting better."

"Sss," I repeated, and I slithered toward her, after my fashion. Nor was she hard to come by.

Somewhere between a pair of sleeps I found myself in the kitchen with Glory, filling a picnic basket.

"A shady grove near a stream, a stone bench," I said.

"Right you are," she replied.

"Without throwing the Switch?"

"Again, yes," she answered, adding napkins and a matching tablecloth. "Ready now."

I raised the basket.

"Lead on," I said.

I followed as she turned away and walked down the small hallway off the kitchen's rear.

"I don't recall there being an arboretum up this way," I said, thinking back to the post-Urtch search.

She laughed softly and halted before an unfamiliar door. When she opened the door and entered, it proved to be the entrance to a small area holding a few odds and ends of equipment. Closing the door behind us, she turned and took a step. Immediately, the room vanished, to be replaced by a rolling green field dotted with wildflowers, leading off toward a distant hilly area. Ahead and to the left, a line of trees bordered what must be a stream. Birds passed among them, and after a brief walk I heard a faint gurgling sound.

"Virtual reality setup," I said. "Nice trick."

"We can set reality levels here," she said, "even making things more real than your own reality, should we wish. I usually just call it the multi-purpose room."

"More real than real. Now that might be worth experiencing," I said, as I helped her unpack the basket and spread our fare. "How real is it right now?"

"If you were to fall into the stream you could drown in it," she replied.

"What do you use it for, besides picnics?"

"It's multi-purpose," she said.

"You already told me that. Show me what it can do."

"All right."

She looked past me, out from the grove, across the field toward the hills. Abruptly, the countryside vanished.

We stood in a gray place of diffuse lighting, three-dimensional clusters of variously-colored tubes extending in most directions. Globes of yellow light drifted within the tubes, taking turns at their junctions.

"It looks like a big schematic," I said, "only at an enor­mous level of complexity. The insides of a microprocessor, perhaps."

"These, I believe, might have been distant ancestors."

With her fingertip, she traced a small rectangle in the air before her. It assumed a bright, metallic opacity, covered with numbers or letters in a language I could not read. She touched a small red spot at its lower right-hand corner then, and the characters changed each time her finger moved. As they did, the area about us flowed from one prospect to another. Finally, she simply held it depressed and the char­acters flowed. So did our surroundings. I clenched my teeth and fists and waited. At length, she slowed it, then stopped it. I beheld another set of schematics.

"There," she said. "Name a primary or secondary color."

"Green," I said.

"All right," she told me. "That shall be the color of its walls and spires."

"What's walls and spires?"

"This city," she replied.

Then her hands began to move, darting forward, pass­ing somehow into the tubes, pushing glowing balls through junctions, creating new tubes and junctions as if she were shaping dough. She directed some of the spheres down these new courses.

"What are they?" I asked. "The glowing balls?"

"What you would call electrons," she replied, extracting , One and tossing it to me. I caught it. It was near-weightless, neither hot nor cold, and yielded to pressure like a tennis ball.

I tossed it back.

"What are you making?"

"The shaping of a seed," she replied. "I chose this one because I've worked with the model before and recalled some easy ways to make minor changes."

I shook my head.

"Is it all simulation?" I said. "Or were you doing some­thing real?"

"Both," she said. "Either. You'll see. We can use it how­ever we would. This is a design and manufacturing center, among other things. Multi-purpose."

"And you just edited an existing design?"

"Yes."

"To what?"

"Those things you spoke of ... ?"

"Microprocessors?"

"Yes. Think of a complex of billions of them, each serv­ing special ends. Think of them as having access to tiny manipulators which can be ordered to create more of them­selves. Think of a master program which switches them on and off in various appropriate sequences. Now imagine them as having access to the necessary raw materials to ful­fill their programs."

I laughed.

"It sounds like a genetic code. But since you said 'city' it must be an inorganic artifact."

She raised her hand and traced the rectangle again. This time she pressed a sequence of colored places along its top. Immediately she had finished, the structure collapsed in upon itself, imploding to a bright point, leaving us to regard it there in the gray place of diffuse lighting.

"Yes," she said, and she stooped and picked up the olden mote. Rising, she touched my right fist, which I had not noticed was still clenched. "Open," she said.

I did so, and she deposited a tiny seed on the palm of my band.

"Don't lose it," she said. So I closed my hand and held it.

Then, taking my arm, "This way."

We took only a few paces along a rocky trail which had suddenly appeared beneath our feet, blue sky overhead, bright sun behind. Looking back and downward, I beheld a greener plain, perhaps a half-mile distant, running up to a line of trees.

"Is that our picnic area way over there?" I asked.

"Yes."

"I hope the virtual ants didn't get at the sandwiches. If they can be as real to them as the tablecloth is to the table—"

"Pick a spot," she said.

"Is that a proposition?"

"No. I want you to cast your seed upon the ground."

"There's a biblical injunction against that sort of thing."

"Plant that designer seed anywhere you wish—or just toss it onto a likely spot around here."

"Okay."

I knelt, brushed back a little dirt, laid the seed on that spot, brushed some over it.

"Now what?" I asked.

"That's it. You're finished."

I rose.

"What now?"

"We walk back and have our lunch."

She took my hand and we walked the walk.

From our picnic area, we did have a view of the rocky hill where I'd planted the thing. Nothing untoward occurred during the next half-hour or so, though, and I almost forgot about it.

"Shall I uncork the wine now?"

"Please."

Then, almost between eyeblinks, the surface of the dis­tant hill was altered, losing its gentle curves.

"Damn!" I said.

"Here. Let me." She reached for the bottle.

"No. It's that hilltop." I gestured.

"Ah. Yes, it's starting."

An irregular line worked its way across the hill, contin­uing a constant stirring along its length. It pushed itself higher, also.

I finally opened the bottle, poured us two glasses.

The city's pace of development seemed to increase as we watched. Slow at first, it rose higher, beating out the rate at which the hilltop sank. Soon its towers grew visibly, almost swaying, as its walls broadened and rose.

"Now this has to be a virtual readout of the seed's pro­gram, right?" I asked.

She sipped her wine.

"It is whatever I want it to be, dear Alf, whatever I choose to make it. This is omniality, remember? I could even reverse it and make the city go to seed."

"Most cities do that on their own, anyway. Says more about citizens, though, than it does about cities."

The sunlight glinted on the spires, which had taken on a distinctly greenish coloration.

"One can set up a world for habitation in a day's time, this way," she said.

"I'll bet you have other seeds you might sow that could overwhelm the other guy's," I said.

"Yes, and there are counters to those, and counters to those," she said. "It's a memorable sight to see an entire planetary surface awash in colors—overwhelming each other, falling back, rising to the top."

"How might something like that end?"

"I once saw a totally furnished world. Every possible spot was taken. But no one could live there. Too much had been planted by the warring factions. The planet's resources were exhausted."

"A whole world—wasted."

"Well, no. The matter was settled elsewhere—whether by war or money, I forget—and the winner came back and seeded a total breakdown for a return to basics, then started over again on a smaller scale. Place needed a lot of landscap­ing later, though."

I took another drink and watched the spreading city.

"Could we have taken that seed and planted it some­where on the surface of the Earth and still produced the city?"

"Yes."

"But here in omniality we can just shut it down and file it away when the picnic's over?"

"Yes."

"Your technology fascinates me," I said. "It's a wonder we can talk to each other at all."

"I've had the advantage of living through your history."

"True. And you know where we're headed."

"Only in general ways. And it's not immutable, as I tried to tell you earlier."

"You're not really going to ride this thing all the way back to your own times, are you?"

"We've ridden it this far."

"You said yourself that the Earth doesn't even go that distance."

"Well, there's that. But we've still a goodly way to go."

"You're looking for something, aren't you? Hunting after some event in time you're not certain about—or some turning point. It's a probability thing, isn't it?"

"Which question do you want me to answer first? Yes, there is an element of probability there, as in everything. Who knows what we might find? And the nature of the beast determines its disposition."

I refilled our glasses.

"Still not giving anything away, are you, Medusa?"

Her hand moved nearer mine, our fingers intertwined. We watched the emerald city rise before us.