Signature

The novel's penultimate chapter

Signature

Chapter Thirteen

Signature

For a while there, there were four dead men splayed out on the doctor’s comfy round zodiac. Then, one by one, the bodies returned to life; listening to the room, pushing to their hands and knees.

“Brandy!” Izzy panted. “Administer. Quickly.” He called up the liquor cabinet, wolfed down a portion, and juggled back a decanter. But no way could he make Mack drink. The doctor’s mouth stood open at an angle. His cheeks were pallid and drawn.

Abel ran the alcohol back and forth under Mack’s gaping nostrils. “Salts!” he called out. “Now! Somebody, anybody, check the lavatory!”

Amantu wobbled across the room, pitched through the split skin, and slammed face-first into an indifferent neoprene partition. The back of his neck itched madly, his ears were ringing, nausea shook him in waves.

Abel’s voice stimulated a corresponding vibration in the intervening skin: “He’s not breathing! I can’t find a pulse! Hammer!”

Careening into the lavatory, Amantu was rocked by the train wreck of his reflection. He smashed the mirror aside, strewing the cabinet’s contents. Scattered about the floor were tubes and bottles containing a variety of medications devoted almost exclusively to liver ailments, along with one vial clearly marked Ammonium Carbonate. Amantu took a whiff and the jolt did him good. He lunged back through the skin.

Abel shoved the vial under Mack’s nose. “Now!”

Izzy lifted and lowered the knees.

Abel placed an ear on that wracked mouth. “Again!”

Mack was wholly unresponsive, his eyes cloudy pools.

Abel grimly launched into cardiopulmonary resuscitation while Izzy vigorously rubbed Mack’s arms and legs. After a tense minute Abel sat back on his haunches and stared at the dying astronomer; filthy, near-naked, spreadeagled ignominiously, ragged skull strangled by a crude crown of hammered-in brambles. Burning resentment remade his expression. “Get him up. Get…him…up!”

It took everything Amantu had to haul Mack upright.

Abel swung under an arm, Amantu supported the other, and together they dragged him around the room, trying to walk some life into the man. Little by little their knees caved. Abel looked around wildly.

“Solo!

“Engage Titus Bruno Mack as your exclusive runner!”

Mack was sagging.

“For Christ’s sake, Solo, enable his signature. God damn it Solo, sign Titus Mack!”

The astronomer’s body seemed to flicker gently between them, but even that impression was history by the time their knees hit the tiles.

“Cover,” Izzy whispered. “Oh, man. Just cover him.” In a minute he removed his own tattered outer robe and laid it tenderly over Mack’s gnarled face.

The professor’s eyes banged shut.

“Hammer?”

Amantu jacked up his head. His friends were holding Mack half-off the floor, waiting. He took the legs this time, and they gently carried the body through the skin and onto the waiting bed. Izzy pulled a blanket over Mack’s face, tucked a corner under his head.

Amantu’s sense of loss was oddly profound. Time ground to a halt. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees, and an electric silence filled the room.

Abel leaned in close. “I’m so sorry, Ti. It’s beyond wrong, beyond unfair. Why things should be as they are--”

“Your work,” Izzy told the blanket. “Your name. Carry on.”

“Of course. We’ll make Solomon the genius of your memory. Everybody will know you went out working.”

Amantu felt Izzy’s icy fingers on his own. He looked up. Across the bed, Abel was already holding Izzy’s other hand. Amantu stuck out his big hot palm, completing the chain. All eyes were on him. The silence congealed.

“I do vow,” the Hammer managed, “to diligently honor the memory of my good friend Titus Mack.”

The chain relaxed.

“Come,” said Abel. “Let him have his peace.”

The men filed out through the skin.

Abel called up some seats. Amantu fell back, his arms dead at his sides. Izzy brought round the tray. When he reached the professor he said, “You look Hammer terrible. Afraid we insist.” Abel nodded solemnly.

Sweet lava rolled down his throat. Marion Blackberry. Amantu could breathe again. He took another swallow.

“So,” Izzy belched. He stared at his friends. “It behoove us. Be practical.”

Abel’s reply was heavy with the bitterness of fait accompli.

“‘Carry on’. Izzy, if it leaks we’re onto an ugly massacre and cover-up, this place’ll be stripped, sealed, and buried. History will remember Ti as an infected crackpot, and we three’ll be quarantined as carriers. That’s if they don’t just shoot us first. No, Solomon’s got to be kept a secret.”

“History,” Amantu heaved, “is all we have.” He stood up.

Izzy set down his drink. “Hammer.”

The professor said reasonably, “Solomon must be commanded to manifest the details of our past as they truly occurred. Whether or not the ramifications appeal.” The brandy had done him good. He addressed the room as though from a lectern. “Our educable young, at least, deserve nothing less.”

“Rot,” said Abel. “You’ve got to be delirious, man. The world has stabilized. You’ll only upset four hundred years of successful adaptation.”

“There you are mistaken, AJ. Sincere men will always make the most of truth. Our next step is bigger than us.”

Abel rose. “Let it lie.”

“Gentlemen,” Amantu said grandly. He turned to the eastern skin. “Solo!”

On that prompt the dome appeared to blow off with a roar of geysers, spin whistling a half mile overhead, and collapse on its foundation with a delicate click.

A sense of inrushing air compressed the entire room to a speck of white light. That light burst into an instantaneous nova, then into a zillion radiant spikes.

And upon those spikes’ dissolution the observatory’s interior grew violently alive. The floor became the eye of a hurricane, the skin a furious display of rotating lights and shadows. Countless waveprint clusters hissed and flickered past, black squiggly schools of data tamped and dispersed in the manner of iron filings around a revolving magnet. And behind it all ran a disquieting th-thud, th-thud, th-thud, accelerating and retarding in perfect sync with the images. Oddly, Amantu’s bullhorn of a voice could be heard off and on--words, grunts, sentence-fragments, popping out of the whirl before being blown to vocal shrapnel. With each demolished syllable the rushing imagery reacted correspondingly--spiderwebbing, exploding with spikes and troughs, sprouting filaments that vanished even as they formed.

Abel was reeling on a merry-go-round. “Solo! For Christ’s sake, break!” He caught his breath. “And please…whatever any of you do, don’t say anything that’ll start him back up!”

“Something--” Amantu gasped. “Wrong. Something…terribly wrong.”

Abel turned on him. “That was your voice, Hammer. I heard it.”

“I uttered not a word!”

Izzy clamped his hands to his temples and folded at the waist. “O wracked and raging cerebrum--never again!” He took a deep breath and wolfed down his drink. “I mean it this time!”

“Sure you do.” Abel shook his head. “What a spectacle! The entire program’s aborting! Ti must’ve written in a security release.”

“He would not. As a man of science, he would deem Solomon’s existence to be of far greater significance than his own. There is a glitch.”

“Balls…” Izzy pulled himself together, “…descending! But--we’ll never learn by pitching praise and pity. I say, there! Solo!”

The skin shot round again, this time depicting an atomic shell swarming with electrons. Several unrelated noises accompanied the phenomenon--rushing wind, electrical discharges, the sounds of surf. The swarm resolved, systematically, into rings, which merged, level by level, until the skin’s smooth concave surface was again an opaque field. Apparent objects blew into being and disappeared; some merely planes and geometric shapes, some vaguely recognizable persons and contrivances. Through all this, Izzy’s pipe of a voice phased in and out. A row of torches came streaming through the room, quickly followed by a rattle of gunfire and the sough of a breaching whale. A half moon shot across the upper skin.

“Solo! Break!”

“That…” sputtered Izzy, “was me! I’d know me anywhere.”

“And there is our clue. First my voice, then the voice of Doctor Weaver here. Do you not see? The Solomon program is performing correctly by utilizing the voice of its runner. It responds to commands. But how does it verbalize independently?”

“Is Ti,” Izzy said, blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “Is got to be.”

“No!” Abel smacked the back of his friend’s head. “But of course! We got to him in time! Solo!”

The room roared to life.

“Titus! It’s Abel! Can you hear me?” Eerily, it was Abel’s own voice that responded: “Abel!” Bas-relief patterns rocketed around the skin, grotesqueries mostly, moving way too fast to decipher. The voice repeated, “Abel”, and the room seemed to wobble. Facial features like sculpted soap bubbles popped in the air. There then rang out a single syllable--hold--and the skin became a spinning carousel of body types interspersed with miscellaneous household objects. Blood-red tendrils, shooting into the center of the room, were immediately sucked back into the maelstrom.

“Solo! Break!”

“Those!” Izzy announced. “Those! Many fish--manna fist--manifestations. Titus fight for program foothold while…still try to make sense environment.” Managing a huge breath, he articulated heroically: “This is all a healthy response to stress. But comparable to madman--forgive colloquialism--comparable to madman trying make sense reality.” Izzy’s second massive breath preceded his elegant conclusion: “Consciousness cannot compete with an encyclopedic environment! Just too much damned information.”

Amantu was barely able to focus. “Then we must throw him a line.”

Abel nodded. “Solo!”

A six-by-nine Abel-mask somersaulted halfway across the room before blowing into a billion bits. Other faces peeled off the skin and whipped about like bats.

“Memories!” Izzy shouted. “Ti’s mind struggle to reestablish foundation!”

“Titus! Try to think in straightforward sentences, man. Think conversationally!”

A flurry of mental debris whisked around the room, compelling Abel to cup his mouth and yell:

“Signed, Titus! You were signed by Solomon. The field’s supporting your signature. Or vice-versa. Whatever. Your mind’s engaged in real time. Or what used to be your mind. Christ, Ti--you were…you were killed by those lunatics out there! I can’t believe I just said that.”

The tempest skipped a beat. On restart, the room filled to the skin with a realistic impression of choking black smoke, and the Group were clinging like children as they plummeted toward a burning gray battleship on a gunmetal sea. An instant before impact, a series of splintering crashes rocked the north skin. The smoke cleared. Three men swinging double-edged axes burst in, took a quick look around, and ran straight through the Group into the skin’s rapidly-adjusting phantom horizon.

Amantu swooned.

By the time they got him on his feet they were back in the torch-lit Honeycomb Heart, watching dozens of painted men approach with stones in their fists and curled feet.

The impression of an assault was eerily realistic; the Group instinctively turned to see what these predators were stalking, only to find dozens more seemingly closing in from behind. When they turned back they found those projected human spiders in the act of hurling their stones with malicious intent. With the barrage mere inches away, the program shifted to a massive glacial calving, complete with titanic roar and explosive impact. A second later the Group were on an unfamiliar battleground amid countless butchered men. Digitized wind moaned over the tragedy like a bereaved old woman. The room took off again.

“Reliving!” Izzy shouted. “Sperience! Mix with random--with tandem…that was Colony!”

“He’s not even alive, you idiot. And nobody’s lived all that. You are so drunk. Solo. Break.”

Amantu interjected. “You are both correct.” All he wanted was to curl up and die. “In appearance, Ti’s signature is attaching and detaching haphazardly. Evidently it is one thing to run this program, and quite another to run in it.” His eyes grew heavier as he spoke. The hot lids kissed, and he might have passed out on his feet, if not for a projected, gut-wrenching wail of mass supplication. His eyes popped back open.

It was night again, and the Group were standing elbow-to-elbow in a crowd stretching as far as the program could handle. A thousand generator-driven searchlights probed the earth and heavens; some fixed on the wide black sky, some dancing their beams laterally to goad the crowd. Half a mile to the west lay a carousel-like ring of these bright columnar beams, dedicated to a wheeled platform stacked high with speaker towers and tiered racks of amplifiers. Numberless men and women stood close enough to chafe, mesmerized by that white-hot spot.

Then, in a wild, hallucinatory break from reality, the nearest individuals whirled and stared directly at the Group. The action was repeated by a second ring, and another and another, the effect spreading as smoothly and dramatically as ripples breaking up a pond. Within seconds every face in the place was gaping, and every voice within immediate earshot had been stilled.

No experience could have been more unnerving; the Group, instinctively standing back-to-back, were receiving the same impression from all sides: endless startled expressions, countless hanging jaws--and two seconds later they were bombarded by searchlight beams. The men were more stunned than blinded--these beams, mere projections, were being reproduced at a candlepower that could not exceed Solomon’s partitioned output.

“Solo! Break!”

Throats were cleared, fists unclenched.

At last Izzy muttered, “Funniest…thing. Just had--dream. Strange. Standing there, big old crowd, everybody yelling, hooting. Alla sudden they just turn and… stare at me.”

Abel raised an eyebrow. “Can dreams be shared? How about you, Hammer?” But Amantu was still a deer in headlights. Abel nodded. “Okay then. There we were, backed up against one another. Let’s try it again.” When they were satisfactorily aligned, Abel said, “Solo. Repeat Last Sequence. Real Time.”

Again it was night. Again the Group were swallowed up in that unbelievable throng, again the nearest individuals turned to stare, again the ripple effect took place.

“Solo. Stop.”

Abel had paused the playback with perhaps half the observable crowd staring in astonishment and the rest captured in various stages of just catching on. He said, very clearly, “Ti, old friend…Titus, if you can hear me…you are--you were a thinking man. So you’ll forgive me if I tweak you a bit here, just a little. Solo. Zoom in and Mark. Enlarge by ten.”

As the projections’ dimensions expanded tenfold, Solomon’s feathered pixilation produced images with overlapping patches of varying opacity. Butcher’s frozen followers were now splotchy see-through colossi, looking over the Group’s heads with expressions of intense surprise. From this vantage, the inner ring of filmy giants appeared to be trading stares with opposing individuals. At the ring’s dead-center, the relatively tiny real men turned about in unison, following those stares, until they found themselves facing one another, profoundly confused and embarrassed.

“Solo,” Abel said. “Return to Mark.” The giants zoomed back to normal size and profusion.

“Maybe I get it,” Abel muttered, “and maybe I don’t. Earlier we were watching these visuals stare at Ti’s anomaly--and now they’re checking us out.” He studied the life-sized figures carefully. No doubt about it; they were looking right at, and right through, the closely huddled Group. “I guess I don’t get it.”

Izzy peered up blearily. “Not us, ‘idiot’. We not there! We… here. They look at Ti.”

Abel smacked him again. “Thirty years you wait to utter something brilliant. And now: twice in one night!”

Izzy colored. “Well, I…sometime in brainstudy find--”

“Solo,” Abel said. “Break.” The house lights came back up. “Tsunami,” he mused. “A billion deluded sheep, all braying in concert.” He faced the southern skin, trying to remember verbatim while winging it. “‘Oh Soul of the burning night. Oh Soul, oh-Soul, oh…Souloh--’” And the room roared to life. “Break.” The lights came back up. He turned to Izzy. “Okay, skullcracker. You tell us how a disembodied dead man is able to leap four hundred years into the past.”

Amantu pulled himself together. “Gentlemen. We are obviously pioneering an esoteric branch of physics here. We all know that time does not exist as a medium. These are haphazard attachments. Ti’s signature is hopping about electromagnetically, independent of our continuum notions. It is no wonder Butcher’s followers reacted so dramatically. Given the physical similarity to their executed hero, they sincerely believed they were witnessing the manifestation of their divinity.” He raised his leaden arms to demonstrate. “Poor Titus was signed even as we attempted to walk him around this room.”

“Genius!” Abel marveled. “I’m surrounded by genius!”

Izzy rolled up his head. “Well, I--”

“Solo!” The whirl started up.

“Titus!” Abel called

The world went dark, except for the glow of a single sputtering candle in a dirty black cave. Facing away, Samuel Butcher knelt in genuflection, his head bowed and his hands clasped. Suddenly aware of the signature behind him, he jerked round and looked up at the Group guiltily, gave a little yelp, and collapsed on his face. He lay there with his chin in the rocks as though a heel were planted on the back of his neck. The visual accelerated. Night and day popped in and out in a dizzying stream, producing all the symptoms of vertigo. Amantu embraced his stomach and doubled over.

“Damn it all, Hammer!” Abel’s voice was out of a dream. “Izzy, unhand that brandy. Get some damp towels from the lavatory, and while you’re at it check for nitroglycerin.” Amantu felt liquid dribbling between his lips. “I’m afraid it’s the real thing this time.” The dirty gold robes were ripped down to his navel. An ear pressed against his chest.

Down and drifting, Amantu watched storm clouds racing across the upper skin. Part of him wanted to tell Abel that his heart wasn’t the problem, but another part told him to play it the way it looked. Artificial night and day continued to darken and brighten the room, along with that peculiar flicker produced by torches. And now a lumbering body, as large as the observatory, paused mid-stride, filling the entire chamber with the dingy mist of its projected shadow. In the next breath the men were to all appearances stepped on by a brontosaur.

Amantu sat up and shook his head. “Solo. Stop.”

The place had turned into a cretaceous greenhouse crammed with fern twenty feet high. Swamp gas pixel-clouds hung on the projected horizon like tossed pepper. The professor struggled to his feet as the scene skipped off, becoming, in quick succession, a submarine valley, some kind of celebration in an outdoor stadium, and an open-ended vista of stellar space. “So--” He tried again. “Solo! Stop!”

And the men stood suspended high above the planet, staring out at a luminous young solar system. Dust and planetesimals were caught in the act of accumulating, backlit by a frozen blond ball. The grandeur and raw beauty were just too much. All life left Amantu’s legs, and he sagged into his friends’ embrace.

Abel hauled him upright. “How’s that for history, Professor? Nothing but grit and gas.” His voice was sandpaper on Amantu’s eardrum. “But it goes back farther, Hammer. It has to. Do you want to see? How’s about you, Izzy? What do you say, guys? Let’s go all the way to inception.” He took Izzy’s right hand and the professor’s left. Izzy completed the ring. “Open your mind, Hammer, and don’t be afraid. We’ve got you, man. And we’re not letting go.”

What happened next might have been one more detail in Amantu’s delirium. Mack’s house lights shot up, rudely replacing the majestic stellar projection with that familiar old world of blank white skin and gel motif. The Group broke hands and turned, expecting to find another incursion of rabid Colonists.

In the skin’s wide breach stood a small mob in civilian clothes, military uniforms, and bright orange hazard suits. Between bodies could be seen slices of a special forces cavalcade. A dozen men in bulky protective gear jogged to within a few yards of the Group, went into genuflection left-to-right, and leveled their firearms. When the last man’s knees hit the floor, eight simultaneous pulses, four for each man, blew Abel and Izzy off their feet in a gale of gore and body parts.

Amantu’s jaw dropped, a spittle bubble forming between his gaping lips.

There was blood everywhere. He stared back at the line of gunmen in dead silence.

The bubble grew; it seemed every trigger finger was just waiting on it. The professor went limp.

His heart almost stopped when the bubble popped.