them.
I looked at the web of lines within the big spiral. She'd executed them meticulously. The lines crisscrossed the entire figure, and I was curious as to how she could be so definite about them if they were mostly imaginary. Well, she'd learned the pattern from somebody, who'd learned it from somebody else, who'd learned it from…? Did the Cheetah who started the tradition have an active imagination… or could the pattern be based on fact? More to the point, was it possible that Winnie's people could have had contact with alien cultures long before humans invaded their planet? Yes, not only possible, but probable. And could they have picked up hints of where major Skyway routes led throughout the galaxy? Yes, it was ' possible all right, and I should have thought of it immediately.
Something dawned on me, and the'very thought of it made me laugh out loud. Absurd, no? Winnie's sand drawings… the Roadmap? Couldn't be. This was no map, merely a stylized rendering. Fascinating cultural phenomenon, yes ? but an accurate map of the most labyrinthine road system in the universe? Not even close. First, you'd want to know what portals to take, and you'd need supplementary planetary maps for that. Make the first right, go x number of kilometers, etc. And you'd want to know what stars were on the routes, what part of the galaxy you were in, and all that. There was a limit to how detailed you could get in the medium of sand and stick. No, it seemed to me that a proper Skyway map would be not only three-dimensional, but hyperdimensional as well. Graphically impossible perhaps, but you'd need some sort of mathematical understanding of how the time element worked into the picture. Over long distances you'd want to keep an eye on the curve of the geodesic, since every jump involved some time displacement. Simple relativity. And somewhere along the line, according to legend, the geodesies took weird shortcuts and closed up 'timelike loops,' causing you to double back on yourself, or do something even more outrageous.
But the more I thought about it, the more the idea grew on me. No, I could never convince my self that this was the vaunted Roadmap, but what if everybody thought it was? I tried that on for size. Maybe the Reticulans wanted Winnie ? maybe they came to the farm to kidnap her. But how could they have found out about her mapping abilities when I had just learned myself? If they knew about it before me, they could have grabbed Winnie at the motel anytime. Unless… unless ? ridiculous! It was all nonsense. Well, what else? Let's see, how about this ? maybe they're figuring this way. They see me shoot a potluck portal. They know I didn't have the Roadmap on my person, since the Militia didn't get it… and they're thinking, wait a minute, what's this guy doing? He must have the map. Sam doesn't have it, because Sam didn't shoot the portal. Hell, maybe they disabled Sam and searched him. So Sam's out, and they think ? well, what the hell does he have, since he barely got out of the station with his skin? The Cheetah! It must be her, because why the hell did he bother bringing her along? Yeah, that's it. The Cheetah. Sic 'im, Fido. Get that map.
Oh hell, Sam back there disabled and helpless, and me here on the other side of nowhere. No, think a minute. Wouldn't they have let Sam shoot the portal and then search him? Because if they saw Sam turn around and go back, or hesitate, then they wouldn't bother with him. In that case I'd have to have the map, otherwise I'd be expecting Sam to shoot through. But if all that were true, why didn't Sam shoot the portal? What happened to him?
I gave up, slumped back into the sand, and threw my arm across my face.
'Darla?'
'Yes, Jake?'
'Are you keeping a lookout?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Good girl. G'night.'
'Sleep tight.'
13
It was a ferryboat.
Rather, that's what it looked like when it first appeared above the horizon. Then it started looking strange. There was a boat there all right, or at least the superstructure of one, but close to the waterline something else was going on. Far out, it looked like a ship run aground on a shoal, but as we watched, the shoal moved with the boat ? it looked like it was carrying the boat. Other objects appeared, globular translucent things in the water, and as the whole improbable apparition neared shore, they looked like inflated bags bobbing in the water at the edges of the dark line of land. The overall impression I got was one of a shipwrecked vessel plunked down on top of an island. There was even some vegetation growing here and there.
The boat-structure was big enough, and the island was fair-size as islands go, but for something moving in the water it was huge, filling the mouth of the harbor until there was barely room to float a dinghy to either side. The superstructure was just that; there was no hull. There were three huge decks up on pilings smack in the middle of the island, and the design was out of the last century, possibly earlier, all the way back to the late 1900's. It looked new, gleaming white with red and gold trim, proudly thrusting flying bridges to port and starboard, and sporting three, count 'em, three smokestacks, two of which belched puffs of white smoke. Why they were doing that was anybody's guess. Crewmen were scurrying all over the decks. Humans mostly, but there were a few aliens. The island proper was also busy, but here there were no humans. Animals ? beings ? slithered across the ground toward the leading shore, converging on a point that would be closest to the beach. They were seallike creatures, from what we could see, with sleek wet bodies, three sets of flippers, with the front pair looking larger and very prehensile, fingerlike. Their bodies were a dull orange color.
What was very strange was the surface of the island. It was not land. Between clumps of seaweed and barnaclelike growths there lay a base of brownish-gray blubbery material, mottled with whitish scars and creases. There was more to see. Dotting the island were clusters of domed structures made of piled sea vegetation, cemented with mud or congealed sand. The seal-beings lived in these; some were still wriggling out of roof-holes and rushing to join the others.
The shape of the island was more apparent now; it was roughly oblate, a squeezed circle, with six air-bag structures positioned at even intervals around it. The bags were multi-compartmented and looked like gigantic floral arrays of balloons bunched in the water. Whether they contained just air or a lighter gas wasn't apparent, of course, but obviously they supplied flotation. At the leading edge of the island was a high bulge.
The shore slowly came alive. Humans stretched and yawned, mashed out cigarettes, knocked out pipes. Hatches slammed and engines started. Lines began to form starting at the top of the wide, inclined section of beach.
We walked along the curve of the harbor and watched, fascinated.
'Are we to assume,' Roland said, 'that everybody's supposed to drive up on this thing and park?'
I looked the island over. No guard rails, lots of obstacles, no apparent way to get up to the decking, lots of curving slippery surface. 'Can't imagine mat,' I said, 'but I can't imagine the alternative.'
'It's a big fish and it swallows everyone,' Susan said. We all stopped and looked at her. She giggled. 'What else?' she asked.
About fifteen minutes later, we stood on a narrow strip of sand to one side of what we now knew to be the loading ramp. 'I'll be damned,' John said.
About seventy-five to one hundred seal-creatures were lined up behind a bony ridge that crested the forward bulge like a mammoth brooding brow. The creatures were using their forward flippers to beat rhythmically on the ridge. It all seemed orchestrated. Sections of them would start a rhythm sequence while another slapped out a syncopated beat. Then the first group would stop while the other played on, while still another ensemble joined in. As the percussion concerto continued, the high curving bow of the island inched closer to the end of the loading ramp. It took a while. Finally the two islands met, and the creatures began to beat in unison, smacking out a single rhythm ? one… two… three…
I think it was Susan who gasped audibly when the gigantic eye rose out of the water. I know it shook me. It's one thing to calmly contemplate a creature of that size. As it was docking, I mulled over the biophysics of the thing. How long would it take a nerve impulse to travel from one end of the critter to the brain (wherever that was) and
