Of Machines & Magics (27 page)

“I think this may be a dead end,” said Ponderos, pointing. Ahead of them, the corridor led into a long low empty hall.

“We had better look at the place anyway,” Calistrope said. “There may well be doors opening from it. But go on, Morph. You were left behind at the town of Jesm when we were deported…”

“I reasoned that others would be going your way. I simply waited until your craft returned and slithered up the rope which tied it to the quay before it left the next time. I reached this mountain you had expressed interest in and made my way up it—not in this form, of course. I had abandoned
that
before I reached the village.”

“And you found a way in and waited for us?”

Morph nodded. “I could hear your thoughts faintly. It took you a long time to get up to this level. What were you doing?”

“That is a tale on its own, Morph. I’ll tell you when we stop to rest.”

“I could do with stopping to rest now,” said Roli.

“I’m hungry,” complained Ponderos. “Where are we going to find food up here?”

“Put the thought from your mind, Ponderos. There are far too many interesting things around to be bothered about food.”

They had come to a stop where the corridor opened out. Calistrope nodded towards the hall. “Look! It is changing—look!” The dim lighting was brightening. The walls, which had seemed to be rough rock or the grey artificial stone they had seen before were now paneled with golden colored timber, tapestries and pictures were hung at intervals. The ceiling was loftier, made of planks of the same golden colored wood supported on wide laminated trusses, the illumination was coming from clusters of globes at the corners of each roof beam. A polished wooden floor lay underfoot and timber furniture of simple design with soft cushions was scattered at random.

“It’s cold in here,” Roli shivered and hugged himself.

“It is a little. Perhaps we became too used to the warmth in the lower levels.”

They walked on. Everything looked new, gleaming, polished; as though it had been made only hours before and placed here for them. Ponderos wondered if it was all illusion and rested a hand on the surface of a low table. He felt a slight tingle in his fingertips but the table was solid, as was the glass candle sconce which it supported and the candle itself. The candle flame was hot but as Ponderos paused to watch it, he noticed that the wax was not consumed. He caught up with the others just as Calistrope halted.

“Have you noticed the furniture ahead of us is laid out as a mirror image of that behind us?” Calistrope asked.

“Perhaps it is a mirror,” replied Roli in a reasonable tone of voice.

“It is an odd mirror, then, since it does not show us ourselves.” Calistrope went forward to the dividing line and reached out a hand to the imaginary mirror. It was quite real, except that all their reflections were missing. “What do you say to that, Ponderos?”

Ponderos, on his knees, was conducting his own investigation. He was kneeling at the end of a low table, another table which bore a candle. Ponderos blew the candle out, an instant later it ignited again. He licked forefinger and thumb and pinched out the flame, a second after it was burning again. Ponderos flicked the dead ash from his finger and where it landed on the table top, it vanished with a tiny spark. In the mirror, the flame had disappeared and reappeared too. “I say that it is no ordinary mirror.” And he scratched his gleaming pate.

“In that, you are exactly right,” Calistrope sat down in a convenient chair and made himself comfortable, he closed his eyes. “Where do we go from here?” he asked, “We seem to have arrived—somewhere, at least. The location is right but apart from that crazed contraption we have just escaped from, no one is here.”

“Did you expect someone to meet you?”

“Well, no. I expected to find some
place
with lots of levers and wheels and switches and things but so far, there has been nothing to suggest a control room.”

“There’s the corridor that was blocked off,” suggested Roli. “That junction we came to before the exhibition…” the sound of Roli’s voice petered out and then returned. “Er, Calistrope, Ponderos. Um, Morph…”

The two older men looked up and followed Roli’s gesture. Morph, who was pacing around the walls examining the tapestries and paintings, looked as well. Reflected in the peculiar mirror, a person was visible. Disturbingly, it was seated in the same chair that, on this side of the mirror, Calistrope occupied; there was no basis in reality for the new reflection.

Chapter 21

The man in the mirror was tall; as tall as Calistrope and as spare, with dark hair and long, narrow bright green eyes. He appeared to be in the first flush of manhood, perhaps sixty or seventy years old.

“Greetings,” said the man, who frowned slightly when he saw he had secured their attention. “How did you come here?” his image in the mirror seemed to pause for the briefest of moments before continuing, perplexity was added to his expression. “Every door seems to have been opened to you—the reason escapes me for the present. Somehow, our security is compromised.”

Though his expression remained serious, the frown disappeared. “Well well, be that as it may. Now that you are here, I must say that I am pleased to meet you. My name is Gessen Fil Maroc, call me Gessen.”

Calistrope heaved a huge sigh of relief. “And greetings to you,” he said. “We were wondering what to do now that we had reached our goal. Finding someone here already is a relief, even though we were told to expect no less.”

“Your goal?” Gessen leaned back in his chair. “What then is this goal of yours?”

“Why, to see if the engines which drove the world away from the sun could be restarted. The sun is shrinking, before too long the Earth will freeze.”

“Aha.” Gessen laughed briefly. “You have come to send us back.”

“Just so.”

“Well, well, you have come to the right place, if a little late. Will you not introduce yourselves?”

“Of course. This is the Sorcerer Ponderos, this is my apprentice Roli, and this is Morph—a being of uncertain provenance. Myself, I am Calistrope the Mage.”

In the mirror, Gessen’s image paused a moment. He stared hard at Calistrope before continuing, “Excuse me, your appearance startled me.”

Calistrope looked down at himself. Since his renewal of magical energy, Calistrope thought he cut a figure of some excellence. “My appearance?”

“You bear a marked resemblance to a colleague of mine. Let me speak with him a moment.” And Gessen froze in place, every movement stilled in mid-action. After several seconds, he moved again in the same, all-at-once fashion. “He will be here directly. The computer suggests a close family relationship, clearly an impossibility in these circumstances, it has been far too long for bloodlines to persist.” Gessen half rose and then sat down again. “Please, our visitors are so few—in fact, there have been none—that I forget the niceties, please seat yourselves.”

This they did and after a moment’s awkward silence, Ponderos spoke. “We had some trouble with animals on the lowest level, did you encounter the lizards?” he raised his eyebrows in query. “Although you may have come by a different route.”

“Lizards?” Gessen’s eyes blinked slowly. “Ah, yes; the chameleons. There are a few but we tolerate them—they help to discourage the insects. Even so, some reach this far and make a nuisance of themselves; they seem to eat almost anything. However, it gives the janitor something to do.

“Ah. Now here is Calvin.”

A swirl of dark colors became visible, the colors coalesced into the shape of a human being and became distinct. As with Gessen, the reflection had no original.

“Gessen,” said the newcomer, nodding to his colleague. “And these are…” Calvin halted for several moments and his image became blurred; when it cleared, his face bore an expression of consternation.

For his part, Calistrope was no less astounded. Calistrope knew who Calvin was without a shadow of a doubt. Everyone has an image of themselves tucked away inside their brain. That image emphasizes those features which the possessor finds most attractive, and minimizes the characteristics which are least appealing. This picture of the self which only its owner sees ages slowly—it moves gracefully, its voice is harmonious, its speech compelling. Calistrope recognized all of these things in this tall, gentian-eyed man with features as sharp as an axe-blade. This, he knew beyond peradventure, was his own self-image made manifest. He could not fail to recognize his own idealized version of himself.

“You’re…” said Calistrope, and then he stopped for the words he had been about to utter seemed meaningless.

Calvin, for his part, was experiencing a similar
déjà vu—
although from his point of view, the relationship between them was less easily identifiable.

“We are the same person,” Calistrope stated at last. “Or you are my forgotten twin brother. Have you or I been cloned in the past?”

Ponderos queried, “
Cloned
? What is cloned?”

Calvin remained silent for the better part of a minute—a long time in terms of
his
existence within the computing machine. He looked up, having obviously reached a similar conclusion. “None of these is exactly the case,” he said, showing Calistrope’s habit of pedantry when unsure of himself. “My name,” he told them, “is Calvin Steinbeck Roper. Shorten this to
Cal S. Roper
and you will see the similarity between my name and yours—Calistrope.”

Calistrope nodded. “The name has some familiarity.”

“A very long time ago, Calistrope, you elected to leave stasis and to journey out into the world. I am a copy of
that
Calistrope, the person you used to be. My—your—personality is maintained in the computer systems, so I can deal with certain matters here if the necessity arises. Do you see?”

Calistrope reviewed the one or two phrases he thought he understood, but they were not enough. He shook his head. “This copy of me? It’s not a physical copy, such as the curator wished to make?”

“I don’t follow your reference, but no, it was a data copy. It is used in the computer as a pattern for my electronic existence.”

Calistrope struggled with the concept. “I infer that your existence is only within this
computer
? A machine?”

“Exactly so. We—that is, Gessen and I and the others—do not have physical bodies like yours. We are displayed here, at the interface, only so that we can communicate with corporeal creatures in a manner which they find acceptable.”

Ponderos grunted. “You never leave this place?”

“That is an impossibility,” Gessen answered him while the two versions of Calistrope sized each other up.

“Never to see the sun and the stars, never to feel the wind or the frost? I am sure I would lose my sanity,” Ponderos replied.

“I can assure you that all these things and more are available to us, sir. We can simulate whatever environment you can imagine.”

“Simulate and imagine,” Ponderos shook his head. “This is
life
?”

Gessen smiled but did not reply.

“So who is the
real
Calistrope? You or me?”

“I knew that this would be one of your first questions. The answer is both of us. You are the original, of course, but now both of us are different people. Apparently you don’t remember being here before, but you have lived a long life since then. Your experiences will have changed you as mine have changed me—however your friend may view the quality of my experiences.”

“Excuse me,” Gessen interrupted. “Did you mention a curator?”

“Yes. He—or it—had ambitions to make a more durable version of me and drain my memories into a facsimile.”

Gessen frowned. “Where was this?”

Calistrope described his experiences and Gessen’s frown deepened.

“I have a feeling that the caretaker has ideas above its station. One moment.”

Gessen’s image froze. It remained still for several tens of seconds, during which time it began to lose definition. Its colors lost their brilliance, its edges became fuzzy, and the image faded until it was almost transparent. Then it regained its clarity, grinning a trifle grimly. Calistrope entertained the notion that the personality which controlled this image had temporarily shifted its attention elsewhere and was now back, looking out at him.

“You have our apologies in this matter. Our janitor has decided its talents lie elsewhere and converted the old assembly hall into a museum. It has been a long time since any of us have taken the time to examine the more tangible world and meanwhile, our caretaker has added to itself and changed its programming.” Gessen held out his hands. “The fault is ours. However, the fact that you were able to reach this interface without our being warned is now explained. All the automatic systems recognized Calistrope—he has as much right to be here as anyone,” he grinned. “He’s one of our own.”

Roli spoke for the first time. “This… caretaker. Is it a machine or a person?”

“Oh, a machine,” Calvin replied. “Not a very bright one at that—not originally, anyway. Just a few subroutines thrown together.”

“Parts of it are human or animal. It has arms made from skin and muscle and blue eyes?”

“Well,” Calvin’s image paused in the now-familiar manner. “It must have sharper wits than we gave it credit for. It was built with two mechanical arms; in fact, it was purely mechanical, but now it seems to… blue eyes?”

Roli nodded.

“And oversized anthropoid arms and that hand?”

Again, Roli nodded.”

Calvin shook his head. “I don’t suppose we have looked at it for several hundred years, perhaps longer. So long as its duties were being performed, we wouldn’t bother.”

“How long is one of your years?” Calistrope asked, standing up and walking closer to the translucent interface.

“How long?” Calvin looked a little puzzled. “Ten thousand hours. Five hundred standard days.”

“Hmm,” Calistrope nodded. “A twenty hour standard day. Yes, about what we term an
old year
. Time scales have changed over the past epoch you see. A year no longer exists since the world stopped turning.”

“Stopped?” There was a moment of inaction and then again, “No, I suppose not.”

“Speaking of the world’s turning,” Calistrope continued, “It reminds me of our objective. Gessen told us, I believe, that we have arrived too late.”

“What
was
your objective?” asked Calvin.

“The sun shrinks again—the engines which drove us into the colder parts of the solar system must be restarted to take us back again.”

“Ah, I see. You really don’t remember?”

“Remember what? I carry only the past, what—thousand old years? Before that, my memories were transferred to a vault for safekeeping.”

“Really?” Calvin said with a smile. “So being part of a machine may have more compensations than Ponderos believes.
I
remember it all very clearly. The journey back to the inner system was begun a quarter of a million years ago—in old years. You and I were the engineers who came here to do just that.”

Calistrope sat down heavily, for the shock of this news was considerable. “I am two hundred and fifty
thousand
years old?”

Calvin shrugged, his mouth twisted in a smile. “Give or take a millennium or two. But once the work had been done we—like most of our colleagues—went into stasis for several thousand years in case we were needed again. Awake and functioning, you will have experienced somewhere between five and ten thousand standard years.”

The Mage absorbed this silently for a few minutes. “Did you say
engineer
?”

Calvin nodded.

“Hmm,” Calistrope nodded ruminatively. “How many of us were there?”

“About four thousand at the start. The driving systems were several million years old. We needed a lot of old-fashioned work in the early days; the devices are spread throughout the world’s mass, and all of them needed to be overhauled or replaced. Later on, only a hundred or so stayed on.”

“And they’re all copied as well, to live in
there
?”

Calvin shook his head. He raised his hand and appeared to tap the interface with a knuckle. “Twenty-five of us. Four are like me; our physical counterparts left to live out there, on the Earth. The others have also left, but to go to their home worlds or to other places. The system monitors the planet’s course; it will call us if necessary.”

“So we truly
are
too late? Our journey to this place was quite unnecessary?”

“Well, yes. But surely a journey can be sufficient in itself? Surely it has not been without interest? After all, that is why you left us originally—to find interesting things.”

“Yes,” Calistrope leaned back and thought. “Yes, it
has
been very interesting. Dangerous, too… You
are
right, however; the journey has been worth it, as has our arrival. It is an amazing place. And I really am—or
was
—an engineer?”

“Oh, yes. All who came here were among the best of our time—we came to save the mother world from extinction—as did those who moved it in the first place.”

Ponderos, who had been listening to the conversations without taking part, rose and went to stand in front of Gessen’s image. He tapped the glass with his finger. “Do you eat in there?” he asked. “Out here, we are hungry.”

“Why yes,” said Gessen. “We can eat in here if the fancy takes us. We can also provide victuals for you out there.”

Later, the companions left on a tour of the place, with a disembodied voice giving them directions. Just before they left, Roli asked, “Where did Calistrope come from?”