computer-generated and paper varieties. (In regard to arrows, I theorized that, since the Nogon had been cave dwellers for a good part of their recorded history, they hadn't invented the bow and arrow until very recently. Roland disagreed, contending that both the weapon and the arrow symbol were comparatively recent human inventions.)
'As nearly as we can ascertain,' Roland went on, 'we're well off Winnie's route, somewhere along the inner edge of the Orion arm. a want to go in the opposite direction.'
'How far can we go in the right direction before we have to shoot a potluck?'
'About a thousand light-years, which works out to about ten thousand kilometers of road.'
I clucked ruefully. 'That's one hell of a lot of driving just to shoot a potluck. We might as well pick any old one and take our chances, since we're shit out of luck anyway.'
Roland frowned. 'I don't like the idea of wandering aimlessly. We could get hopelessly lost.'
'What are we now?'
Roland shrugged. 'True.' He stared pensively at his empty plate for a moment, then banged his fist on the table beside it. 'Damn. If we could only get something out of that Black Cube.'
I looked at Ragna. 'Have your scientists had any luck with it?'
Ragna eyed me dolefully. 'Luck, I am afraid, we are also shit out of.'
Again, everyone had trouble stifling a giggle.
'Howsoever on the other hand,' Ragna went on, 'we are slightly doubting that it is a map.'
Raised eyebrows around the table, except for Roland's.
'What makes you doubt it?' John was first to ask.
Ragna made a clawing motion with the five digits of his right hand-an expression of frustration and regret. 'Ah, my good friends, that I cannot be saying. I am not a scientist. I cannot be making you understand if on the one hand I am not understanding what they are saying on the other.'
John narrowed his eyes momentarily, then nodded. 'Oh, I see.'
Ragna's status in the colony was roughly equivalent to that of a mayor, but his position wasn't official, so far as we could ascertain. He was simply an individual to whose judgment everyone deferred in matters of great importance. He didn't run for office, didn't rule by divine right. It was more an obligation on his part. Somebody has to drive.
'But I can be saying this,' Ragna continued. 'Our technical individuals are saying to me that there is something strange inside. Also, they say that nothing can be going into this Black Cube on the contrary, however, things can be coming out.'
I said, 'Can you tell us what they suspect is inside the Cube?'
Again, he made the clawing motion. 'Ali, Jake, my friend, this is that which is difficult. They are saying that… that inside is a vastness of nothing.' He blinked, milky nictitating membranes coming upward before his eyelids closed down. 'But it is a nothing that they do not understand.'
'I see.'
Right.
A collective sigh at the table.
'Well,' I said finally after a long moment, 'what say we hit those maps and figure out something. Every maze seems to have legends or rumors concerning what's on the other side of its various potluck portals. With Ragna's help, maybe we can make a decision based on that.'
'In that case,' Roland said, 'I'm for picking one at random.'
'You never know, Roland,' I answered. 'Rumors always have some basis in truth. Legends, too.'
'I agree,' John said.
'But the Ahgirr haven't settled their maze long enough to have developed a road mythology,' Roland countered, turning to Ragna. 'Have you?'
Ragna touched his headband. 'I am not sure… Ah, yes. A mythology. Yes, I can be answering that in the affirmative, which is truth. We are having those stories and legends.'
'Then again,' Roland said, smiling thinly, 'I could be wrong.'
Ahgirr tradespeople helped us fit Sam with the new rollers. I offered to pay them but they wouldn't hear of it. No one had brought up the issue of compensation up to that point, and no one broached the subject after that.
The newbies fit fine, and Sam and I went back to the road and picked up the trailer. Doing so eased my mind a little. The trailer was a dead giveaway just sitting there. I thought it improbable that Moore would follow us through a potluck portal, but you never know. He just might be crazy enough. I'd also been worried shout looters and salvagers, even though this ingress spur was seldom used.
With the trailer now at the mouth of the cave complex, we began the repair job in earnest. There was more damage than we had thought. The small motor that raised and lowered the door was completely useless, and the airtight silicone bushing around the door itself was in tatters. Where would we find replacements? Carl and Roland were willing to go out and search for a junked trailer, and I was ready to say go ahead, but the Ahgirr craftspeople said don't bother. They could manufacture most of the mechanical parts we needed in their shops. For the electronics we'd probably have to make a trip to a faln complex. They could breadboard same stuff for us, but it would be easier just to buy modular components off the shelf. They would send a technician, a female named Tivi, along to advise us. I felt I had to make the trip myself; the craftspeople knew the local technology, but I knew my rig, and I didn't want them making trips back and forth should I be dissatisfied with the goods they bought. Besides, I wanted to see what these fate things were all about.
But a big block of Ahgirr religious holidays came up and everybody knocked off for a week. There were strict laws?no work, no shopping, no nothing on high holy days, and these, called the Time of Finding Deeper Levels (rough translation), were the highest and holiest.
'No sex, I bet,' Susan ventured. 'Pity the way same religions are.'
'I'm not even sure what they have is a religion.' I thought a moment, then said, 'I'm not at all sure that what you have is a religion.'
'Teleological Pantheism isn't a religion… It's just a way of looking at the universe and its processes.'
'Uh-huh. Tell me more.'
'Later. Let's mess around.'
Besides doing the above, Susan and I took advantage of the slack time to explore some of the vast system of caves in which the Ahgfrr had made their home. It was a marvelous place. There is something of the claustrophile in me. I love eaves, and I found a fellow spelunker in Susan. So we set out into the restful silences of the unoccupied regions. We toured vast smooth-walled chambers, many-leveled galleries, huge caverns with floors populated by fantastic rock monuments standing like sentinels in the dark. We walked along lava flows that had hardened millions of years ago, traversed vaginalike tunnels through which one had to push and squeeze in a psyche-stirring imitation of birth. Once, we followed a sinuous side passage that coiled endlessly through the rock, finally dead-ending in a delightful little grotto, walls sparkling in the light of our torches with millions of tiny multicolored points. An underground stream flowed through it, cascading down a small waterfall. We spent the 'night' there, discovering more delights in the darkness.
There were other marvels. We found spherical chambers, hundreds of them, which had probably been formed by pockets of gas trapped within the magma. We dubbed them the 'Pleasure Domes.' And in the regions that had not been disturbed by vulcanism, strange geological formations presented themselves at every turn. The processes at work here were, for the most part, totally unEarthlike. There were chambers with walls glazed with a ten- centimeter-thick coating of frosted glass ('Twas a miracle of rare device!), rooms that looked as if they had been designed by Bauhaus architects under the influence of hallucinogens, caverns that looked like the interiors of great cathedrals, alcoves with intimate seating in the shape of contoured folds of rock like a couch, passageways with corbelled walls, vaults with grained ceilings, porticos with fluted columns, elaborate suites of adjoining rooms, and all were unmistakably natural formations. There were no right angles; slabs of rack were sheared, not cut; no chisels marks, no debris about that would be evidence of stonecutting; nothing. There was an undeniable randomness to it all.
And not one goddamn stalactite in the whole place.
'I always forget,' Susan said. 'Is it stalactites that hang down and stalagmites that stick up, or vicey versy?'
'No, that's right. I think.'
