Part 27 (1/2)

The adjutant shrugged. ”Who knows? Not easily. In my opinion they're over-confident. They think the Engines are broken and maybe they are but they still have damage left to do.”

”We are under siege, then.”

”By order of the Kingstown Engine itself I'm here to escort you and the Apparatus to the front, where you are to begin the Process. Like the Log-Town test again, sir- they don't care who dies on either side. Not anymore- not if they ever did. They want you there personally.”

She held out her hand to me and helped me to my feet. I was so tired after my work that I could hardly stand. I was locked in a crouch, like a rusted machine or a comic actor. My legs shook.

”I don't intend to do that, sir. The contact from the Republic got word to me this morning- we must meet them under Arch Six, by noon, no later.”

”Will Adela be there?”

”Yes,” she said. ”So they say. She knows the contact- I don't.”

”Then we should hurry,” I said. ”One thing before we go.”

Have I described the inside of the laboratory before? I think I have not- an oversight. I apologize. It was one very big room with walls made of gray metal and a flat gray roof from which hung lamps powered by the Process- sometimes trapped pigeons died on them like moths. From one end of the laboratory you could hardly see the other- it could be hot at one end and cold at the other. I would not have been altogether surprised if one day it started to storm overhead. I have been in towns that were smaller than the laboratory and considered themselves to be booming little towns on the go. A room like that was h.e.l.l for echoes at the best of times and you can imagine that under the conditions of heavy experimentation with the Process, I mean the phantoms and the effects on gravity and time and distance, it was a strange and confusing place to work. Rows of desks and workbenches were laid out grid-fas.h.i.+on to the farthest wall. Between them was a chaos of machinery. The letters nlc were etched over and over into the metal whether I liked it or not. There were experimental forms of the Apparatus everywhere. Many of those departed wildly from my design- I did not understand some of them at all. Some of them were big as houses with magnetic cylinders like a miller's wheels and they disturbed the bowels of every person who went near them. Sometimes a team of engineers would venture inside and I cannot say for sure that they always emerged. Some were even taller than that, and constructed like grandfather-clocks, with a great iron weight that would drop with a terrible whoos.h.i.+ng noise. There were empty zones cleared by past frightening incidents where maybe only an overturned bench or a single hammer lay on the floor. There were half-constructed or half-dismantled designs lying on their sides with their ribs sticking out. There were machines that were made to monitor the efficiency of the other machines and I'll confess again- I did not understand them. The enterprise had long since surpa.s.sed the understanding of any one person's mind. I do not think the Engines understood it either.

I guess I understood it well enough to break things.

For most of that last sleepless week I had been working on the various half-made Apparatuses that stood around the laboratory like crumbling ruins. I had rebuilt three of the largest models, readying them to run wild. The Line wanted weapons. I had made weapons. They were not weapons that could be controlled, but they did not need to be.

”Here we go,” I told the adjutant.

I threw levers, turned wheels. There were signs on the three Apparatuses warning of danger if certain parameters were exceeded. I exceeded them.

”What will happen?” asked the adjutant.

”Nothing good,” I said.

”Why?”

”I won't leave them behind for just anyone- besides this may give the Republic's men a fighting chance. I believe in fair play.”

”How long?”

”Half an hour? Maybe less. Maybe more. Sometimes it builds slowly and sometimes it comes on at a rush. To be honest I thought it might happen at once.”

She was a good soldier, and said nothing, only stiffened slightly. I respected her.

”Well,” I said. ”I guess we'll see.”

There was a protocol in event of emergencies that called for the laboratory and all of the many-storied building beneath it to be evacuated. It required both my key and the adjutant's. We activated it, causing alarms to sound and telegrams to be rattled off from the machines of offices everywhere-clear the building in an urgent but orderly fas.h.i.+on. . . .

The three Apparatuses were magnificent beasts, even if I did not fully understand them. I remarked to the adjutant that it felt like I was setting them free.

”Sir-we have to go.”

We left the laboratory and went down from the roof. Alarms blared. A panicked mob blocked the elevators, including my private elevator, which they would never be able to use. I confessed to the adjutant that I had not thought of that before starting the alarms- I blamed sleeplessness. We were forced to go down from the rooftop by one of the endlessly spiraling echoing staircases. We stumbled in the gloom. Crowds pushed past us. Already the Process as it built up in the laboratory was creating its phantoms- summoning them to it- and as we ran downstairs there were phantom people doggedly heads-down climbing the stairs as if the event upstairs was an appointment they had to keep, like it or not. There was that usual moment of electric uncertainty every time you b.u.mped into one. Like always they were in a variety of styles of dress and like always they were silent. It was no use saying excuse me to them or are you mad because they were not really there.

We stumbled down the staircase. The adjutant and I carried the suitcase with the miniaturized Apparatus between us. The suitcase also contained a number of Adela's letters, and it contained a great deal of money and a fortune in letters of credit and stock in what was left of the Baxter-Ransom Trust. I had to leave Mr. Baxter's typewriter behind. I was somewhat sorry to leave the thing after all the time I had spent with it but when I suggested that together we might carry it out, the adjutant told me as respectfully as she could not to be a fool.

We quickly went further down than I had ever been- I had not touched ground level for months. There were noises and stinks of machinery. Below us somewhere in the subterranean levels the Kingstown Engine cowered in its lair. I wondered what it made of the alarms.

I followed the adjutant outside through a big open doorway through which hundreds of people were streaming- it led out onto a concrete plaza under a concrete sky. Everyone was running everywhere and shouting. By no means everyone running out there on that plaza was really a real person. There was a light up above on the roof of the building that was hard to look at but also hard to look away from.

It was just as we got outside and while I was still staring up at that light that a group of men in black coats stopped us. I only recognized them as engineers from the Ransom Project after blinking and thinking for a moment and after they called me sir in a menacing way.

”Evacuate,” the adjutant told them.

”What's happening- where are you going?”

”I said, evacuate- didn't you hear the alarms?”

Well, they weren't fools and they quickly guessed that we were up to no good. Two of them tried to seize the suitcase and the adjutant had to shoot one of them in the leg. I wrestled the suitcase from the other and swinging it I knocked him on the head. I do not know where I found the strength to swing it like that.

The adjutant waved her gun and the other engineers scrambled away. Addressing the crowd, she explained, ”Traitors.” n.o.body seemed to care-I am not sure who was on whose side anyhow. Harrow Cross was in chaos. The streets were full of phantoms. Tall Folk in robes strode brazenly down the Station's avenues. I saw the citizens of Harrow Cross running, crouching in dark corners, screaming, laughing, looting, kissing each other right in the street- I saw people shooting the phantoms conjured by the Process, to no avail- I saw people taking the phantoms in their arms and kissing them- I cannot tell you how strange that was to see. The living and the dead, the real and the unreal, all running here and there in the maddened avenues- I remarked to the adjutant that maybe that was what the Process was for after all. All together as one, I said.

The adjutant waved her gun. Above us, one by one, the windows began to break, all the way down the building. Below us there was a sound like a great beast roaring, and the concrete shuddered beneath our feet.

Light leapt from the earth to the sky and back again. A hole opened up in the world. I do not mean that metaphorically. That is what the Process did- what it does- I did not fully understand that until I saw it open in the middle of Harrow Cross. It strips away the world and reveals the energy that lies beneath. That is why it seems to make more energy than you put in, and that is why it has strange effects on gravity and other forces, and that is why its light casts ghostly shadows of men and women from other worlds, and finally that is why it is so very dangerous.

An area about the size of White Rock right in the middle of Harrow Cross vanished into bright light, like the world was a map and somebody was holding a candle behind it until the light burned through.

I do not know how many people died, and I do not care to offer an estimate. No more than would have died in the siege anyhow, I think, or I hope.

”Died” is not precisely the right word, but it is good enough. It would be more accurate to say that they ceased to exist. Small comfort to anyone, I know.

The Kingstown Engine was reported lost after the battle. Opinions differ on who can take credit for its destruction- I believe it was me. The radius of the devastation was so great that it could have reached even the subterranean levels where the Kingstown Engine hid. I believe that I thereby shortened the siege by days at least, probably weeks- and who knows, maybe without me the Station would have not have fallen to the siege at all. Then who knows where we would be.

”When I was a boy,” I said to the adjutant, as we turned our faces away from the light and crouched behind a motor-car, ”I read the Autobiography of Mr. Baxter over and over. Do you know it?”

”No, sir.”

”Well, he talked a lot about great men and how history was like a woman and seizing the reins of history. I guess he was thinking of horses not women but he was an old man and maybe confused. Anyhow when I was a boy, I was red-hot for being like him. I mean that I wanted to be a big man and I wanted to leave my mark on history.”

”Sir,” she said.

”I guess I've done it now. What do you think?”

”How long will it- it keeps growing, sir. Will it-?”

”Stop?”

It was hard to estimate the rate at which the light was expanding- it was hard to look at it. But it seemed to be expanding slowly but steadily, at perhaps the speed of a man walking, a tourist taking in the sights of the Station.

The truth is that I was not sure when the light would stop expanding. It had already exceeded my wildest predictions. I was not sure it would ever stop.

The car's windows burst, showering black gla.s.s on my shoulders.

”We'll be okay,” I lied. ”So long as we keep moving.”