With the enhanced computative power of his double brain, the super-Karg thus created had at once a.s.sessed the situation, seen the usefulness to his mission, s.n.a.t.c.hed energy from the entropic web, recreated the accident.

And was quadrupled.

And again. And again. And again.

On the sixteenth doubling, the overload capacity of his original organizational matrix had been reached and catastrophically exceeded.

The vastly potent Karg brain-warped and distorted by the unbearable impact, but still a computer of superb powers-had blanked into a comatose state.

Years pa.s.sed. The original Karg aspect, amnesiac as to the tremendous event in which it had partic.i.p.ated, had completed its mission, returned to base, had in time been phased out and disposed of along with the rest of his tribe, relegated to the obscurity of failed experiment-while the shattered superbrain proceeded with its slow recuperation.

And then the Karg superbrain had awakened.

At once, alone and disembodied, it had reached out, seized on suitable vehicles, established itself in myriad long-dead Karg brains. It had a.s.sessed the situation, computed objectives, reached conclusions, and set its plans in motion in a fractional microsecond. With the singlemindedness of a runaway bulldozer grinding its way through a china factory, the twisted superbrain had sc.r.a.ped clear a temporal segment, erected an environment suitable for life-Karg life-and set about reinforcing and perfecting the artificial time-island thus created. An island without life, without meaning.

And there it established the Final Authority. It had discovered a utility for the human things who still crawled among the doomed ruins of the primordial timestem; a minor utility, not totally essential to the Grand Plan. But a convenience, an increase in statistical efficiency.

And I had been selected, along with Mellia, to play my tiny role in the great machine destiny of the universe.

We weren"t the only affinity team, of course. I extended sensitivity along linkways, sensed thousands of other trapped pairs at work, sorting out the strands of the entropic fabric, weaving the abortive tartan of Karg s.p.a.ce time.

It was an ingenious idea-but not ingenious enough. It would last for a while: a million years, ten million, a hundred. But in the end the dead-lock would be broken. The time dam would fail. And the flood of the frustrated past would engulf the unrealized future in a catastrophe of a magnitude beyond comprehension.

Beyond my comprehension, anyway.

But not if somebody poked a small hole in the dike before any important head-pressure could build up.

And I was in an ideal position to do the poking.

But first it was necessary to pinpoint the polyordinal coordinates of the giant time engine that powered the show.

It was cleverly hidden. I traced blind alleys, dead ends, culs de sac, then went back and retraced the maze, eliminating, narrowing down.

And I found it.

And I saw what I had to do.

I released my hold and the timesender field threw me into Limbo.

32.

It was a clashing, garish discord of a city. Bars and sheets and jittering curves and angles and wedges of eyesearing light screamed for attention. Noise roared, boomed, whined, shrieked. Pale people with tortured eyes rushed past me, pinched in tight formalized costumes, draped in breathing gear, radiation a.s.sessors, prosthetic-a.s.sist units, metabolic booster equipment.

The city stank. It reeked. Heat beat at me. Filth swirled in fitful winds that swept the frantic street. The crowd surged, threw a woman against me. I caught her before she fell, and she snarled, clawed her way clear of me. I caught a glimpse of her face under the air-mask that had fallen awry.

It was Mellia-Lisa.

The universe imploded and I was back in the transfer seat. Less than a minute had pa.s.sed. The Karg was gazing blandly at his instruments; Mellia was rigid in her chair, eyes shut.

And I had recorded one parameter.

Then I was away again.

Bitter wind lashed me. I was on the high slope of a snow-covered hill. Bare edges and eroded angles of granite protruded here and there, and in their lee stunted conifers clutched for life. And huddled under the trees were people, wrapped in furs. Far above, silhouetted beneath the canopy of gray-black cloud, a deep V cut the serrated skyline.

We had been trying for the pa.s.s; but we had waited too long; the season was too far advanced. The blizzard had caught us here. We were trapped. Here we would die.

In one part of my mind I knew this; and in another I watched aloof. I crawled to the nearest fur-swathed form. A boy, not over fifteen, his face white as wax, crystals in his eyelashes, his nostrils. Dead, frozen. I moved on. An infant, long dead. An old man, ice in his beard and across his open eyes.

And Mellia. Breathing. Her eyes opened. She saw me, tried to smile- I was back in the transfer box.

Two parameters.

And gone again.

The world closed down to a pinhole and opened out on a dusty road under dusty trees. It was hot. There was no water. The ache of weariness was like knife blades in my flesh. I turned and looked back. She had fallen, silently. She lay on her face in the deep dust of the road.

It was an effort to make myself turn, to hobble the dozen steps back to her.

"Get up," I said, and it came out as a whisper. I stirred her with my foot. She was a limp doll. A broken doll. A doll that would never open its eyes and speak again.

I sank down beside her. She weighed nothing. I held her and brushed the dust from her face. Mud ran in a thread from the corner of her mouth. Through the almost closed eyelids I could see a glint of light reflected from sightless eyes.

Mellia"s eyes.

And back to the sterile room.

The Karg made a notation and glanced at Mellia. She was taut in the chair, straining against the straps.

I had three parameters. Three to go. The Karg"s hand moved- "Wait," I said. "This is too much for her. What are you trying to do? Kill her?"

He registered a faintly surprised look. "Naturally it"s necessary to select maximum-stress situations, Mr. Ravel. I need unequivocal readings if I"m to properly a.s.sess the vigor of the affinity-bonds."

"She can"t take much more."

"She"s suffering nothing directly," he explained in his best clinical manner. "It"s you who experience, Mr. Ravel; she merely empathizes with your anguish. Secondhand suffering, so to speak." He gave me a tight little smile and closed the switch- ?.

Pain, immediate, and yet remote. I was the cripple, and I was outside the cripple, observing his agony.

My-his left leg had been broken below the knee. It was a bad break: compound, and splinters of the shattered bone protruded through the swollen and mangled flesh.

It had been caught in the hoisting gear of the oreship. They had pulled me free and dragged me here to die. But I couldn"t die. The woman waited for me, in the bare room in the city. I had come here, to the port, to earn money for food and fuel. Dangerous work, but there was bread and coal in it.

For some; not for me.

I had torn a sleeve from my coat, bound the leg. The pain was duller now, more remote. I would rest awhile, and then I could start back.

It would be easier, and far more pleasant, to die here, but she would think I had abandoned her.

But first, rest . . .

Too late, I realized how I had trapped myself. I had let sleep in as a guest, and death had slipped through the door.

I imagined her face, as she looked out over the smoky twilight of the megalopolis, waiting for me. Waiting in vain.

Mellia"s face.

And I was back in the bright-lit room.

Mellia lay slack in the chair of torment.

"You gauge things nicely, Karg," I said. "You make me watch her being outraged, tortured, killed. But mere physical suffering isn"t enough for your sensors. So you move on to the mental torture of betrayal and blighted hope."

"Melodramatic phrasing, Mr. Ravel. A progression of stimuli is quite obviously essential to the business at hand."

"Swell. What"s next?"

Instead of answering he closed the switch.

Swirling smoke, an acid, sulphurous stench of high explosives, powdered brick, incinerating wood and tar and flesh. The roar of flames, the crash and rumble of falling masonry, a background ululation that was the ultimate verbalization of ma.s.s humanity in extremis; a small, feeble, unimportant sound against the snarl of engines and the scream and thunder of falling bombs.

He-I thrust away a fallen timber, climbed a heap of rubble, staggered toward the house, half of which was still standing, beside a gaping pit where a broken main gushed sewage. The side of the bedroom was gone. Against the faded ocher wallpaper, a picture hung askew. I remembered the day she had bought it in Petticoat Lane, the hours we had spent framing it, choosing the spot to hang it.

A gaunt scarecrow, a comic figure in blackface with half a head of hair, came out through the charred opening where the front door had been, holding a broken doll in her arms. I reached her, looked down at the chalk-white, blue-nostriled, gray-lipped, sunken-eyed face of my child. A deep trough ran across her forehead, as if a crowbar had been pressed into waxy flesh. I looked into Mellia"s eyes; her mouth was open, and a raw, insistent wailing came from it. . . .

Silence and brightness blossomed around me.

Mellia, unconscious, moaned and fought the straps.

"Slow the pace, Karg," I said. "You"ve got half of eternity to play with. Why be greedy?"

"I"m making excellent progress, Mr. Ravel," he said. "A very nice trace, that last one. The ordeal of the loved one-most interesting."

"You"ll burn her out," I said.

He looked at me the way a lab man looks at a specimen.

"If I reach that conclusion, Mr. Ravel, your worst fears will be realized."

"She"s human, not a machine, Karg. That"s what you wanted, remember? Why punish her for not being some thing she can"t be?"

"Punishment? A human concept, Mr. Ravel. If I find a tool weak, sometimes heat and pressure can harden it. If it breaks under load, I dispose of it."

"Just slow down a little. Give her time to recuperate-"

"You"re temporizing, Mr. Ravel. Stalling for time, transparently."

"You"ve got enough, d.a.m.n you! Why not stop now!"

"I have yet to observe the most telling experience of all, Mr. Ravel: the torment and death of the one whom she loves most. A curious phenomenon, Mr. Ravel, your human emotional involvements. There is no force like them in the universe. But we can discuss these matters another time. I have, after all, a schedule to maintain."

I swore, and he raised his eyebrows and- * * *

Warm salty water in my mouth, surging higher, submerging me. I held my breath; the strong current forced me back against the broken edge of the bulkhead that held me trapped. Milky green water, flowing swiftly over me, slowing, pausing; then draining away . . .

My nostrils came clear and I gasped and snorted, got water in my lungs, coughed violently.

At the full ebb after the wave, the water level was above my chin now.

The cabin cruiser, out of gas due to a slow leak, had gone on the rocks off Laguna. A weathered basalt spur had smashed in the side of the hull just at the waterline, and a shattered plank had caught me across the chest, pinned me against the outward-bulging bulkhead.

I was bruised a little, nothing more. Not even a broken rib. But I was held in place as firmly as if clamped in a vise.

The first surge of water into the cabin had given me a moment"s panic; I had torn some skin then, fighting to get free, uselessly. The water had swirled up waist-high, then receded.

She was there then, fear on her face turning to relief, then to fear again as she saw my predicament. She had set to work to free me.

That had been half an hour before. A half hour during which the boat had settled, while the tide came in.

She had worked until her arms quivered with fatigue, until her fingernails were broken and bleeding. She had cleared one plank, but another, lower down, underwater, held me still.

In another half hour she could clear it, too.

We didn"t have half an hour.

As soon as she had seen that I was trapped she had gone on deck and signaled to a party of picnickers. One of them had run up the beach; she had seen a small car churn sand, going for help.

The Coast Guard station was fifteen miles away. Perhaps there was a telephone closer, but it was doubtful, on a Sunday afternoon. The car would reach the station in fifteen minutes; it would take another half-hour, minimum, for the cutter to arrive. Fifteen minutes from now.

I didn"t have fifteen minutes.