Chapter 14
'Entity X,' as we came to call it, proved a tough nut to crack. When we'd completed all other repairs and still had no success, we threw in the nutcracker and left.
The phantom program obstinately resisted analysis, no matter how cleverly we devised the probe. We couldn't get too tricky, though, for fear the thing was booby trapped. I didn't want to risk damaging the CPU or maybe even the rig itself. No telling what the thing could or would do if provoked. So we gave up. Whatever Entity X was, it wasn't inhibiting business as usual. Sam's Vlathusian Entelechy Matrix was firmly in control of 99 percent of the computer's functioning, and the mysterious program's claim on the rest seemed harmless, though we strongly suspected it wasn't. We still didn't know exactly what it was up to in the waste management system, but we could guess.
'So you think it's dropping off a trail of waste products, is that it?' Sam asked.
'Maybe,' I said.
'Put most vehicles leak a little stuff now and then. How could the trackers find the trace?'
'By spiking our fuel with something. They filled you up on Talltree, right?'
'Right. You may be on to something here.'
'Best guess I can come up with,' I said.
'And we can't do anything about it, either. Beautiful.'
'Not unless we want to fiddle with the waste system, and we're certainly not equipped for that.'
'No, we're not. One thing, though. Why would they need major artificial intelligence to do the job? A dumb little Trojan horse program would've sufficed.'
'Maybe not,' I countered. 'We could deal with one of those.
A program that's a computer in itself can keep itself hidden and resist attempts to ferret it out.'
'Set a computer to avoid getting caught by a computer, so to speak.'
I nodded. 'So to speak.'
We said good-bye to the Ahgirr, with no little regret and sadness. I still felt Tivi's loss, and many others had come to be friends. Darla was especially loath to leave a fascinating alien species that was so much like us. No race in the known mazes approached them in their similarity to humans. The Reticulans ran a distant second, which is to say they weren't close at all. It made sense that we had found them here, in a noncontiguous maze. The Roadbuilders had probably wanted to separate species who might compete for colonizable worlds.
In the shade of the cave-mouth, Ragna's eyes brimmed with tears.
'We shall invariably be missing each of you as individuals,' he said, clutching the hand of Oni, his wife?the term seemed applicable here, even though Ragna and Oni were lifecompanions in the truest sense. The Ahgirr were given to life-long monogamous relationships. There was no word for 'divorce' in their language, though separations were not unheard of.
Hokar wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his plain gray tunic. 'Yes,' he said, 'we shall be missing you much.'
'And we you,' John said, enveloping Hokar's hand in both of his.
About thirty cave dwellers had come up to the entrance to bid us farewell. We had come to know most of them. In the shadows toward the rear, glowing eyes of shy children peeked out at us from behind stacks of crates and cylindrical containers. I waved, and the eyes disappeared. Susan saw me smiling as the children dared another peek.
'They're adorable, aren't they?' she said, coming up to me.
'Cute as buttons,' I said.
'Always makes me wonder…' she began, then gave me a wan smile.
'About having children? Or not having them?'
'I made that decision long ago, but it's not irrevocable. So I have second thoughts when I see a bunch of darling little things like that?and these are nonhuman kids, so you can imagine.'
Taking her arm I said, 'I usually ask long before this, but… uh, do we have anything to be concerned about in that area? You said it wasn't irrevocable.'
'Hm? Oh, no way. I went in for old-fashioned surgery. My tubes are tied. Those three-year pills are so damned expensive, and with my brain I'd forget when the next one was due. The other nonsurgical options aren't very attractive either. They're irrevocable, and who the hell wants to go into premature menopause? But undoing a tubal ligation is easy, so I'm always safe, and I always have the option of changing my mind.' She grinned and put her arms around my neck. 'And…'
'And?'
'If I ever do change my mind about having children?'
'Whoa there,' I said, undraping her arms from around me. 'I'd have to think about that for a good long while.'
She was annoyed. 'Why, you big egomaniac. Do you think I necessarily want to sign a lifecompanionship contract with you simply because I might want to bear your child? I say might.' She put her fists on her hips and tossed her head defiantly. 'Think I want to be a truckdriver's wife, stuck at home with half a dozen screaming brats while you go highballing around the universe picking up skyhookers?'
'I never indulge, my dear. Don't like diseases in the groinal area.
'Don't make me laugh.' She poked me in the ribs with two stiffened fingers. 'You're good stock, is all. Prime genetic material.' She kept poking till I flinched. 'Healthy as a horse, good teeth, no inheritable defects?'
I reached and bobbled her right breast. 'You're not so bad yourself, kid.'
She squealed. 'You creep! Groinal, huh?'
I tried to stop her hand as it shot out and under, but missed. I jumped half a meter.
'Susan, really,' I groaned. 'What will our friends think?'
Our friends were regarding us bemusedly, and I caught a particularly curious stare from Ragna as Susan ceased her attack upon my privates and jumped up, locking her legs around my hips, hugging me, laughing, kissing me.
Ah, this is being some strange courtship ritual, perhaps, invariably?
Well?actually, yes.
The road, the road. Always the road, the endless black ribbon, like the one that'll be around my casket probably, tying off my life in a tangle topped by an enigmatic floral bow, Moebius-looped and infinite.
Planet after planet rolling impassively by, barely glimpsed at as I keep my eyes caged dead ahead. But I do notice some. Here a gray-skyed leaden lump of a world in the loosening grip of Pleistocene ice-lock, looking crushed and glacier-scarred; here a tropical seraglio- blanketed in feather-plume trees; here relentless plains of pinkish grasses edged in distant blue-black mountains. Another: this one is all rolling hills of raw red clay landscaped in brush with mauve foliage. It looks like spring here, telltale yellow buds everywhere. Another world comes up, and we roll across the pale corpse of winter, powdery snow heaped in wisp-tailed drifts along the road (which, by the way, is completely clear of snow, as usual). Then, another portal, to the dark towers we come once again, hot- nodding blithely into the gap between the worlds, between here and there, wherein there is neither space nor time, wherein there is no now or then, no past, no future. And we come to a fairy garden of purple rocks with beds of multicolored flowers laid in between, set against a painted backdrop of violet sky.
'I'm getting sick of scenery,' Susan announced.
'Already?' I said. 'We've only been on the road, what??a couple hours?'
'Six,' she told me. 'Thought I'd be fresh after a five-week break, but it's already wearing thin.'
'Well, try bearing up. We only have ten billion light-years to go.'
'Great.'
This is good road?straight and flat. We were going along at a fair clip, making excellent time (as if we had some kind of schedule to keep?absurd, of course). The worlds went sliding by. Back in the breakfast nook, John and Roland were puzzling over the Ahgirr maps, now and then yelling out contradictory directions. They were very confused. So far, none of the planet descriptions matched what we were seeing out the ports. We were still in the Nogon Maze, that I was sure of, because we were still seeing their distinctive middle-tech vehicles with smiling blue faces behind the windscreens. We had a complete map of this maze, along with others, so John and Roland should
