The City That Lost Its Way Part 4

"So everything's been wiped clean."

"That seems reasonable."

"I remember from our talk in the car flying here that Nemqal put you under some kind of hypnosis, maybe, when he transferred you and him out of qaldom. Therefore, you have difficulty recalling what he did."

"Yes. Exactly. Then he transferred out again before I came to my senses."

"You seem to be under the illusion that you observed what was done and can't recall it." Mayer didn't say that. He thought it. If Nemqal was good enough to violate the skip parameters and to hide what he did from the qalmasters, then he was probably smart enough to keep City from knowing what went on. There is no key. There is no way to get back, unless you recreate it, my crazy friend. And you know it, down deep inside.

That's why Nemqal lies dead on the floor. You kept him here and tried to get the information until the day he died; and he never gave it. And that's why Dierdra and I may join him.

Mayer did say this: "How did you prevent Nemqal from leaving after he came back to you for refuge?"

"I made all controls in this room inoperable, because I suspected he'd betrayed me. He couldn't hypnotize me with just a pa.s.sword. My security wouldn't allow that. I also shut down the skipstones.

I soon got the truth out of him. He was frightened of me, and boastful when he knew what I suspected. But he never told me how we got here, no matter what I did."

Mayer shuddered at the thought of being trapped within a vindictive city. He shuddered for himself and Dierdra.

"I'm sure," City continued, "that the qalmasters continue to search for me. Alas, Nemqal was such a great genius."

No, thought Mayer. Not that great. The Qals have a tiny piece of s.p.a.ce here and there; but it's probably enough for them to expand for the next billion years. They tried, but not too hard, to find you and the new coordinates Memqal may have found. They had other priorities.

Mayer said. "I have to think for a while."

Some time later he asked, "How much time is left, City?"

"Ten hours, 14 minutes, 46 seconds."

"h.e.l.lo."

Mayer turned around to see a lovely shoeless brunette in a green silk dress that broke at the knees. Her hair was neat, her nails manicured and polished.

"Their facilities here are marvelous," Dierdra spoke. City was making clothes as I healed. Right in fashion. He's observed our world very well, in some ways."

She lifted one knee, pulling her dress back to expose half her thigh.

"See my stockings?" she offered, as though any man could have failed to look, at least for an instant. "They have wonderful soft, filmy cloth here that they sew without any visible seams. They don't fit perfectly; and they're a little too yellow to be perfectly tan..."

"Dierdra." Mayer interrupted. She put down her leg. He continued brusquely, "You look very nice; and you've got good balance; but why don't you go back in and get on some slacks and sneakers or something, so that I can think about how to keep us alive?"

"Oh," she said, as though realizing something for the first time.

"I'm sorry. It's just that I thought I could think better if I spent a little time to look good. I'll change right away."

She started to leave; and he turned quickly, so that he wouldn't see her dress whirl. As he concentrated on the screen, he caught a whiff of perfume. "Ach, what a mess."

She came back a half hour later, devoid of scent and wearing as shapeless and s.e.xless an outfit as she could find--bulky, Chinese style slacks and a long, large shirt that draped her hips. Even her feet were covered with what looked to be canvas mocs. Wrong choice; but nothing else would have been much better.

"Thank you," said Mayer.

She wanted to tell him she liked him, too, but kept silent.

Mayer and City filled her in. Dierdra soon caught on. For the next few hours she played Mayer's game, determining that, indeed, there was no key to City's freedom, while keeping that from City.

But time ran out.

4.

"You have 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds left. You must now give me the key. I like you two and do not want to kill you. Please give it to me."

Mayer stood and wearily faced the showdown. He realized how tired he was. "All right. I'll show you the key. Take us back the way we came."

"All the way out my door into your street?" City asked, mockingly.

Well there went plan one. It had been worth the try, especially since he wouldn't loose face. "No, of course not," Mayer said. "Take us a bit back along the corridor."

"Fine."

The control room door opened; and the humans walked to the skeleton.

Mayer spoke gently. "There's the key." He pointed to the head, nearby. "There's the only key that ever was.

"You never knew how Nemqal traveled outside the coordinates. You weren't under a command of forgetfulness, you were put to sleep. There is no memory buried deep somewhere. There's no pa.s.sword that can free you.

You must find a way yourself, or not find a way."

There was no sound; but Mayer and Dierdra felt their host sob. Did City radiate emotion when strongly upset? Mayer had gotten through; but would it save them?

The cry, that no one heard, then changed. If city had laughed aloud it would have been a high-pitched, maniacal laugh; and the couple felt it slice through them. "You have not found the key. You loose, you loose."

Mayer desperately shouted, "But I have, I have. Here!" He pointed again to the skull, lying upside down. "Here!"

"No!" said City, his voice almost mechanical, lacking the aliveness it formerly had.

He's going to break, thought Dierdra.

"Pick up the head, Mayer," the captor commanded.

Mayer walked over to the thing. He picked it up. Its top had been cut off.

The silent laughter cut through them again. "The key's not there.

It's in here."

A wall came down between the two and the control room, and began moving, forcing them along the corridor. Mayer's arm went around Dierdra's waist, as they kept ahead of it.

Soon a tunnel opened to the left of the corridor; and a wall closed up before them, forcing them to turn.

"We've been a.s.sisting you, City," shouted Dierdra, as though he could not hear her normal voice. "Don't treat us like this."

But walls and turns kept forcing them on, until Mayer's arm was around her shoulder and she was helping him walk. He'd had none of her rest; nor had he thought to ask for food, though he remembered drinking sometimes, and eliminating, as though he'd wandered to a bathroom without thinking.

At last they came to a clean room. Pa.s.sing through a pulsating electrical field at its entry, they felt their hair stand and saw cloudlets of dirt rise from themselves and their clothes, to be sucked into a vent. Even the sweat of fatigue and tension that had been trickling down Mayer's face was gone. Their nostrils and teeth felt cleaner.

In the room pink light surrealistically bathed chrome-like surfaces and gray(?)--it was hard to tell--walls, floor, and ceiling. Fixbots attended a large hollow spherical grid of transparent wire. And within the grid, floating, as it were, in s.p.a.ce, a brain, or the shriveled, misshapen remains of one.

"There's the key," said City. Whatever City had gotten from it, he hadn't gotten his freedom.

Mayer stared blankly, drunk with the toxins of fatigue.

"So you've made your point," answered Dierdra. She shuddered.

"We can still help you; but Mayer has to have some rest." Now she was feeling protective, though the feminine mood is not as distracting as the man's.

"Still help me? But the time limit's up. Way up."

"Don't you understand that that time limit wasn't realistic? You have misread human behavior. We will continue to help you; but you must take better care of us."

"I admit my formula seems wrong. You're acting like the hero, and Mayer, the heroine, right now."

"That's because this is real life; and you have been studying fiction."

"But I don't see how I could have gotten mixed up. Someone with my capabilities..."

"But everyone gets mixed up sometimes. That's a part of life. And you've had such a hard and lonely time."

Silence. Then... "OK. There's a rest chamber near."

A stick-figure fixbot detached itself from the contingent working around the globe and lifted Mayer from Dierdra's sagging body, carrying him down the corridor to a room with several beds. Dierdra sat on one; and the bot sat Mayer on another. A second servant, this one a butlerbot in the gaunt, ghastly image of a Qal, handed Mayer a drink, which he quaffed.

Mayer lay down, instantly asleep; and Dierdra sat there thinking.

What should she say? She felt she had to keep City talking.

But City spoke first. "I'm sorry for what I just did. I was so hurt at remembering things I had shut off thousands of years ago."

"I can understand. At least a little."

"I know you can. So can Mayer, although he's not as sympathetic."

"Maybe not. But he does want to help, not just to save his life. Not any more. We've both become caught up with your problem. We care about you."

"I'm sorry for kidnapping you. I was so desperate. I want to help people, not harm them. Whenever I've been cruel, or even distant, I've really felt bad."

"That's interesting. It makes me want to think about something; but I can't think what it is. I'm very tired."

"There's nothing like natural sleep."

"Yeah. But first I want to ask you something." Why did she want to know? Did it bother her that much? Why did she risk destabilizing City?

"Don't get upset, but is that brain still working? Nemqal's brain?"

"No. It registered waves for hours after I disembodied it. It was already so very old when I took it out. Nemqal was more than two thousand years of age when he began to die. He was worn down."

Dierdra felt much relieved. "Why did you do it? Did you think to capture his thoughts?"

"Yes. Yes I did."

"And did you?" Dierdra felt a sorrowful laugh break around her.

"No. Brain waves are not thoughts. Who can read thoughts? You cannot see a fish from the ripples he makes."

"You express yourself so well. If you have not telepathy, perhaps you have empathy."

"I have tried to understand humans and talk so they could understand me. I guess I don't always do so well."

"I think you do fine; and you're getting better."

They talked on for a while, Dierdra trying to draw forth a bit of inspiration that hung on the edge of her consciousness; but she was too tired.

At last she went to sleep.

She awoke to find Mayer still unconscious. He got up thereafter; and they ate solid food--strange, but satisfying.

"Why don't you get rid of that awful, shriveled brain?" said Dierdra.

"I already did", replied City.

Dierdra filled Mayer in, not in whispers or veiled messages this time, but openly.

Nemqal was in his prime, less than 500 years old, when he returned to his city, never to leave. He was bitter. After City repeatedly confronted him with his suspicions, Nemqal tried to enlist City as a co-conspirator.

He had an idea to modify some of City's mechanisms for use as war machines, to strike from nowhere, again and again, those rational governors whom he had come to hate.

City was horrified; and cut him off from all control with security methods designed to thwart even a master builder. Nemqal had been the best; and before he'd become so evil, he had made an edifice which could not be breached by any individual or small army--only by treachery. And City was wise to that, now.

City first tried to reason with Nemqal, then attempted therapy, to no avail. City committed him to a ward for the mentally ill; but there were no spiritual healers and no way to fetch them from qaldom. Later City attempted more drastic things, but felt so terrible doing them, he eventually let Nemqal wander the rest of his life along a billion empty corridors and streets. Finally City reactivated the skipstones; but Nemqal never left, nor divulged how he had found his bit of limbo outside the coordinates.

For their part, the Qals, busy with other things, convinced themselves that both the city and its archetractor were destroyed. After all, certain forms of death could disrupt a tracer signal. They never gave more than a cursory look for the place described by a madman during an extortion effort. There were, after all, a few skip coordinates that lay within stars or gravity wells. It was dangerous and futile to search there. Among scholars, still, there is controversy.

It is not impossible to know where City lies. Just over ten thousand lightyears away is a tiny, artificial star, more brilliant for its size than anything else in the heavens, the only one in the Milky Way, a star bought on the black market by Nemqal and placed there to give City light and heat. It orbits an artifact as ma.s.sive as Earth, which is surrounded by a white particle cloud many times the girth of Jupiter.