Veering again, we dove between two huge towers and came to a screeching halt above a third. The domed top of the tower opened like a morning glory and we descended into it, coming to rest on a smooth black floor. The dome closed up, and we had arrived.
Arthur sighed and took his stubby fingers from the control box. His narrow shoulders slumped.
'If I were flesh and blood,' he said, 'I'd be exhausted. As it is, I only need a two-day recharge session.'
'Some pretty fancy flying, there, Arthur.'
'Thank you. I thought it best to hurry like hell. Looks like someone called a truce, but you never can tell.'
I locked up the truck, telling Bruce to keep an eye on things, and we debarked from the ship.
'Jake,' Arthur said as we walked toward a nearby downchute. 'I think you have a little bit of a shock in store.'
I stopped. 'What?'
'Well, it's about Sam. He's no longer a computer. He's alive, Jake. He's very much alive.'
19
'Hello Jake,' Sam said.
He was sitting at the dining room table with John and Zoya, having coffee and rolls. He got up with a smile that lived in my memory. The face was my father's face, but it was one I hadn't seen since childhood, for the man coming toward me with arms extended was my father as he had been as a young man, around thirty-five. His hair was dark brown, almost black, his eyes the color of slate. He was about six feet tall (lately I'd fallen into using that antiquated system of measure), plus an inch or two. His jaw was strong, his shoulders broad, and his hands and feet, like mine, were a bit oversized. His lips cut a thin line over a markedly cleft chin. His nose, thin and straight, was prominent but not large. Altogether a handsome figure of a man. He was dressed in a trim gray two-piece utility suit with a black belt, and he wore black hiking boots.
He embraced me, and I could not speak. Although Arthur had done his best to prepare me, there is little that can serve as an adequate buffer against the shock of your life.
'Son,' he said, 'it's good to see you again.'
'Dad,' I finally croaked. I put my head on his shoulder and shut my eyes tight against the flow of tears.
I think I was a little irrational for a few minutes; it was a total state of shock. I don't remember what was said, or who said it, but sooner or later I noticed Prime standing off to one side, observing us with approval.
'Welcome back!' he said brightly.
I nodded and looked around. Ragna and Oni were seated at the table along with John and Zoya. Ragna smiled, his wide pink eyes gleaming. Zoya beamed at me. John looked bored.
Another wonder-so what?
Darla had been standing off to one side. She walked over and said, 'So we finally meet in the flesh.'
'Come here, Darla darling,' Sam said. They hugged.
I couldn't help keeping one arm around Sam, could not relinquish the feel of his flesh, his corporeality. If I hadn't been used to having Sam's disembodied personality around, the sight of him like this, reborn, reincarnate, would probably have been enough to stop my heart. I would have died on everybody right there.
As it was, I had trouble fully regaining my powers of speech.
'How… was it done?' I gasped at Prime.
'An artificial body is nothing miraculous,' he said. 'The problem lies merely in effecting an adequate interface between it and the artificial brain that controls it, which in this case is the Vlathusian Enteleehy Matrix. You are aware of the many resources on this planet. I simply used those needed to accomplish the job. And I think we were quite successful. Wouldn't you agree, Sam?'
'I sure would.' Sam slapped his chest. 'Never felt better in my life.' He turned to me. 'I'm told that this isn't your garden variety human body.'
'No,' Prime said. 'It doesn't have some of the biochemical subtleties of a natural organism-even science at its height can't duplicate the genius of the Creator. For instance, Sam will never have another son, nor any more progeny. But his body does have a number of advantages. Sam will never grow old. He won't suffer illness-'
'But I'm not immortal,' Sam said.
'No,' Prime said, walking over to us. 'I offered to tell Sam the body's estimated life span, but he didn't want to hear it.'
'Even if it were a million years, or only a week,' Sam said, 'I wouldn't want to know. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my second life counting down the days. You can't live like that.'
'I understand and agree,' Prime said.
I asked, 'How did you get this body to look like his former one?'
'The imaging entailed using a number of sources-but chief among them was a three-dimensional photograph of you and Sam that was stored in the on-board computer's auxiliary memory. Did you know it was there?'
I said, 'Yeah, I do seem to remember having an old holo scanned into pixels and stored away.'
'Your memories of Sam also were useful,' Prime added.
'Okay,' I said, rather absurdly, as if we'd been talking about the weather. I sat down and poured myself a cup of coffee. I couldn't keep my eyes off Sam, who seated himself and took a sip from his cup.
He winked at me. 'Who says you only go around once, eh?'
'Sam, did you have any choice in this?' I asked.
'Not in getting shanghaied out of the truck. When I came to, I found that I'd been loaded into some weird kind of computer… I think.' Sam looked to Prime for corroboration.
'It was a computer, in essence,' Prime said.
'Anyway,' Sam went on, 'I was in contact with our host here, and he asked me if I wanted to join the Culmination. I said thanks, but no thanks. He said, okay, then how about a new body? I said, sure, why not?'
I laughed. 'Sure, why not.'
'I was getting a little tired of being a trailer truck. I like this just fine.'
'I can't blame you. Your turning up missing like that gave me quite a scare, though.'
Prime had seated himself at the table. 'Our apologies. But had I told you our intentions, I doubt you would have believed me.'
'You could have tried,' I said.
'I did try,' Prime said, 'and would have succeeded if you hadn't left rather abruptly.'
Aside from pointing out about a half-dozen holes in Prime's reasoning-for instance, hadn't he ever heard of radio communication? — I had little to say to that. It seemed that in any given argument, Prime had a subtle way of manipulating the emotional tug-of-war so that he always wound up oil solid ground, leaving his adversary in quicksand. I couldn't figure exactly how he did it, but you simply couldn't argue with him, and I didn't feel like going through the motions with him now.
'Where have you guys been?' Sam was curious to know. I looked around.
'How long have we been gone?'
'About five days,' Zoya said. 'We were worried.' Darla filled them in while we breakfasted.
'So Carl finally got home,' Sam said. 'Well, good. And I think Lori will be happy back there.' He pushed his coffee cup away and sat back. 'Imagine,' he said wistfully. 'Earth, way back when. It must have been something to see. Nineteen sixty-four. Let's see, that was almost seventy years before I was born.'
Darla changed the subject with, 'I can't get over how much you two look alike.' She swiveled her gaze back and forth between us. 'And with your looking just about the same age, you could almost be twins.'
I was about to remark that I'd always been accused of being Sam's clone when I suddenly realized that amidst the confusion and shock I had completely forgotten about the most important topic of all.
'Where the hell is Susan and everybody else?' I blurted.
'That's hard to say,' Sam said, rubbing the blue-black stubble of his chin. He had always had a heavy beard. He looked at Prime. 'Do you want to tell him what you told us?'
'I'd be glad to,' Prime said as he buttered a croissant. 'Ah… John, would you please pass me the
