'There's only one possibility.'
'The lady, the goddess in white?'
Arthur glanced at me over his shoulder. 'I've never met her. Let me tell you, though, you should put quotes around lady. She's no lady, any more than Prime is a man. Those are simply outward forms, adopted for the sake of convenienceand for facilitating communication with you people.'
'Can you guess why she'd want to give you trouble?'
'I can guess, but when you're talking about the Culmination, dearie, you might as well be trying to figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.'
'She's part of the Culmination?'
'That's right. And mortals like us can only dream about what's really going on.'
I began, 'But I thought-' And realized I didn't know what to think.
'What you have to understand, dearie, is that Prime and the Goddess represent two aspects of the same being. They both share the same ontological base. Stop me if the vocabulary gets too stuffy.'
'I think I know what you mean.' I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
The walls faded again, and we saw that the land below had brightened up. Brilliant morning light fell across the face of the world. Our altitude had decreased to the point where we could pick out individual features of the landscape. There seemed to be more structures on this side. Sizable city complexes lay here and about. We swooped toward one of them.
'This is an industrial arcology built by a race known as the Mumble-mumble,' Arthur informed us. 'Like most alien names, you can't say it in human.'
Below us lay an aggregation of multicolored domes, spires, and polyhedral buildings. The ship angled toward an octagonal structure with a wide flat roof.
Arthur smiled at me over his shoulder. 'I'm in contact with the Artificial Intelligence that runs the complex. It wants to know if we're technicians on our way to work. I'm telling it yes. When we land, try to look proletarian.'
'What are we doing here?' I asked.
'Laying low for a while. We don't dare try making the trip back to Emerald City until we find out what's going on.'
It made sense. I nodded.
Our craft swooped in over the roof and hovered over a circular area outlined in red. Then it set gently down. Arthur made a few swipes at the control panel, then turned away. The wall opaqued again.
'Nice landing,' I told him.
'All in a day's work.'
He led us back into the connecting tube. We passed the valve-door of the chamber where the truck was, following the curving corridor around to another valve. Arthur touched an area of the wall beside the bulge, and the sphincter dilated.
We were descending.
'Elevator,' Arthur said, pointing up.
The hole in the roof was being sealed off by a secondary sliding door. The platform on which we rode came down into a large machinery-clogged chamber and merged with the floor. The door-valve distended itself, seeking ground, met it, and dilated a bit more. While all this was going on, I examined the seemingly monolithic material of which the ship was constructed. Its color was a very dark olive drab, not really black. The texture was grainy, and there was something else going on across the surface, an ingrained pattern of tiny lines and geometric shapes, barely visible. I tapped the wall. It rang hollowly.
We stepped out and got our first chance to get a good look at the ship. It was essentially an irregular grouping of curving tubes with nipple-shaped ends. Breast-shaped protuberances stuck out here and there. Rather erotic, this ship, in a way. I wondered what symbolism it had had for its nonhuman builders.
The big valve, the one we'd gotten sucked up by, was open.
'Jake, would you get your truck out of there, please?' Arthur asked.
I did, backing it out carefully. By the time I had parked and powered the rig's engine down, something startling was happening to the ship.
It was shrinking like a balloon with a fast leak. It didn't hiss. It just got smaller.
And smaller. And…
When it had shrunk to a diameter of about two thirds of a meter, Arthur picked the damned thing up and held it in both arms. It looked like a model of itself. It was a model of itself.
'Arthur!' I screamed. 'That's impossible!'
'Why?' Arthur asked.
I looked at Darla, Carl, and Lori. They were dumbfounded, staring at me as if I had the answer.
'Why?' I said. 'Because you couldn't possibly pick it up. It's got to weigh-'
'Oh, no,' Arthur said, 'its mass isn't very much at all. Here.'
He tossed the thing at me. I lurched and managed to balance it. It was heavy as hell, but it should have weighed at least a hundred tons. More, maybe.
He looked at Carl, Darla, and Lori, then back at me. 'Satisfied?'
'Very,' I said, stepping forward to give him his ship back.
'Oof,' Arthur said, struggling with it, though he obviously had three times my strength. 'Just don't ask me about the power source.'
'Don't worry, I won't,' I told him.
Arthur waddled over to the middle of the red circular platform, set the ship down and walked back. 'When it's deflated it's kind of inert, and can't be detected at all.'
'What now?' I said.
'Now I get in touch with Prime.' He stared off into space for a moment. 'Except he's not available, damn it. He never is, when I want him. Dearie me.' He sighed. 'We'll have to wait.'
Bruce's voice came from the rig's exterior speaker. 'Jake?'
'Yeah?'
'Jake, there is some sort of attempt being made to communicate with me. My guess is that it is a computer system indigenous to this structure.'
'Oh, I forgot,' Arthur said. 'That's the… I guess you'd call it the plant foreman.'
'I am making an attempt to establish contact. Is this permissible?'
'Go ahead, Bruce, do your best,' I told him, then turned to Arthur. 'Now, before anything else, what was it you were trying to tell me about Sam?'
'Oh, yes. Well, he's been… loaded into another machine.'
'By whom, and for what reason?'
Arthur's tone was apologetic. 'I'm afraid Prime is the culprit, Jake. And the reason, as far as I can understand it, was that Prime determined that Sam, as an Artificial Intelligence, was sufficiently advanced enough to warrant special consideration.'
'You mean he's to be a Culmination candidate?'
'You got it.'
I scowled, shaking my head. 'Why is it that Prime's motives always seem to be as pure as the driven snow, no matter how underhanded his methods are?'
'Good public relations?' Arthur suggested.
'You ought to know.'
'It's a living, dearie. The employment situation here is tight.'
'Yeah. One other thing. You said that Sam looks like me. How could you know what he looks like?'
'From your memories of him, Jake. I have a pretty clear picture of Sam in my data files.'
I nodded. Somehow Arthur's answer didn't satisfy me. 'Jake?'
It was Bruce again. 'Yeah?'
'Jake, I have managed to establish a rudimentary form of communication with the unknown A.I. It has put a number of questions to us. Do you wish to reply?'
'Well, what's it asking?'
