Spacetime Donuts (17 page)

With a sudden twisting motion, he turned and heaved Alice back-first through the taxi's windshield. It shattered into powder and she slid limply into the passenger compartment as the taxi rammed into the backs of Vernor's legs.

He managed to jump up a little, and slid rapidly over the hood and through the smashed-out windshield; but not without slamming his head against a jagged plastic edge.

Since the automatic driver was under the hood with the engine, the taxi's cabin was exclusively for passengers. Alice was lying there unconscious but alive—half on the seat and half on the floor, blood oozing from her parted lips. There was a large gash on the back of Vernor's head, and his shirt was soaked with blood.

The taxi seemed to be aware that it was occupied, although the speaker on the dash emitted only the same blare as all the other speakers under Phizwhiz's control. The taxi stopped trying to run people down and began concentrating on killing Vernor and Alice.

The taxi wove through the surging activity on the square to get to the expressway. Vernor knew what was coming, but it seemed no safer to get out . . . and he couldn't get out anyway, with Alice unconscious and the taxi going faster, faster . . .

They were speeding across a bridge now. At the end of the bridge the road rose up and veered left. The taxi was doing about seventy now, and the wind through the broken windshield beat at Vernor's eyes. It was clear what was going to happen. They were going to shoot up the rise, miss the turn, and crash through the guard rail, catapulting through space to what lay below.

Vernor wedged his feet and his left hand against the front of the passenger compartment, and pressed himself protectively over Alice. He kissed her face again and again, though he didn't want to wake her. Not to this. He glanced back out the open windshield. The guard-rail was upon them. So soon. So terribly soon.

The impossibly violent motion through dark space stopped; and Vernor Maxwell was lying in smoking wreckage with a corpse in his arms.

"Alice, oh Alice." Sobs racked his body and he sucked in lungfuls of air; wanting never to stop. He pressed the body closer to him. "Don't leave me here, Alice, don't leave. Let me come with you."

But the reality he was embedded in wasn't finished. Flames licked at his calf, and when he jerked his leg away a terrible pain shot up it, jolting him into physical activity. Alice was dead and he was lying in a slowly burning taxi. Instinct took over, and he obeyed mechanically.

Vernor dragged himself out of the twisted hole where the windshield had been. His left leg was broken. Flames were all over the taxi now. He reached in to drag Alice's body out, but his left leg buckled and he fell to the ground. It was no use. Crawl back in, his mind told him, but his body wouldn't obey. He dragged himself away from the flaming taxi to lean against a plasticrete wall. He began sobbing again as he watched the blackening smoke pour out of the taxi, and after an indefinite period of time he sank into unconsciousness.

He was awakened by someone shaking his shoulder. It was a bum. He realized now that the taxi had crashed into an alley in the Waterfront district. The bum took in Vernor's tearstained face and jerked his head towards the charred wreck of the taxi. "She's gone, friend. You better get on your feet before the machines find you here."

Keeping his head averted lest he see something unbearable, Vernor leaned on the bum's shoulder and started down the alley with him.

"I got a place down by the water," the bum explained. "I was over a few blocks scrounging the restaurants' garbage when the War broke out. Kitchen robot came out after me with a carving knife. I got up on the roofs. Took me four hours just to get back here."

"The War?" Vernor said thickly. He felt so dazed. He reached back to feel the wound on his head.

"I wouldn't touch that if I was you," the bum cautioned, then went on with his story. "Yeah, the War. The machines against the people. Hell, I seen it coming for years. Nobody listened, nobody ever listened to me. I moved down here to get away from people as much as from the machines. I keep the kids away with rocks, the loaches don't bother me, and whenever a clean-up robot decides to evict me I throw it in the river." They were under a ramp leading to the bridge, and the bum stopped. "Here we are."

"The War," Vernor slurred, "it's my fault. I'm the one who gave Phizwhiz free will. But I never thought . . . " He started to weep and sank to the ground.

"Take it easy, buddy. Take it easy." The old man pushed some rags around Vernor. "Give yourself a break." But Vernor was out again.

The next few days passed in a flickering of wakefulness and unconsciousness. It was hard to say which was worse . . . when awake, Vernor had the pain and the awful guilt to contend with, but when he was asleep these elements were incorporated into terrible, merciless visions, unlimited in space and time.

Strange, strange dreams. And it wasn't just the blow on his head, it was something to do with having completed the circuit around Circular Scale. Some strange new dimension had been added to his mind's space, something more than the mere soul which he had promised Phizwhiz.

When Vernor could forget his own feelings he would wonder about Phizwhiz. What had happened? Phizwhiz was certainly alive and conscious, there was no doubt about that, but why had he become so vicious, so malignant? If anything, Vernor felt more passive and gentle than before. Still, the first thing he and Alice had done on their return was to kill three people. Would he have done that before the trip around Circular Scale? Would Alice? Maybe the noise Phizwhiz had been making had made them do it. Blame it on Phizwhiz, sure, but who had changed Phizwhiz? Vernor Maxwell. And why? To make the world dangerous enough to be interesting.

Old Bill, the machine-hating bum who'd rescued Vernor, went out foraging for food every day and brought back daily reports on the War's progress. Certain parts of the City were simply too dangerous to enter—they were populated by fleets of killer machines. In the residential regions, such as Dreamtown and the Waterfront, all the machines had been smashed during the first few days' combat. And active battles were still underway in certain disputed parts of the city.

There were rumors that the surviving Dreamers had organized an army under the leadership of Mick Turner and some of the other Angels. "You're an Angel, aren't you, Vernor?" Old Bill asked one evening, two weeks after the War's outbreak.

"Yeah, I was." Vernor's voice was slurred, but not from the head injury. His wounds were just about healed, though he still had a bad limp. "Gimme that wine."

"You've had enough wine, you. I didn't save your life so you could turn into a bum like me. You're an Angel, not a bum."

Vernor shook his head hopelessly. "I'm not even a bum. If it wasn't for me she'd still be alive." He lurched towards Old Bill menacingly, "I said gimme that wine, old man."

Old Bill surrendered the bottle grudgingly. "There ain't much left." He watched with displeasure as Vernor chugged the rest of it. "Kid, it's about time for you to move on. It's been interesting having you, but you're just about healed up . . . and me, well, you know, I'm a hermit. And I'm damn tired of you hogging so much wine."

"I paid for it, didn't I?" Vernor challenged.

"Sure, sure you paid for it. That ain't the point and you know it. The point's that I'm sick of watching you fall apart. You're body's well now, and the only way your mind is going to heal is for you to
plunge back into the fray
."

"Why don't
you
plunge into the fray?" sneered Vernor.

"This
is
the fray for me. Getting drunk under a bridge. For
you
it's got to be going out and killing off the machines." The old man was right, and Vernor knew it.

"All right," he said, throwing the empty plastic wine bottle high out over the river. "Tomorrow I go kill machines."

"That's my boy," said Old Bill. "Now get some more wine."

Vernor slept badly that night. His last thought before sleeping had been of the instant before the taxi crashed through the guard-rail. In his dream the thought returned to him over and over . . . always in the same way.

He would be floating in a vaguely athletic dream space when it would slowly dawn on him that the random patterns around him were taking on a peculiar significance. As he watched, the space around him would contract and form itself once again into that terrible instant before the taxi crash. "Too soon," he'd think and then force the vision to shrink on down to invisibility, but soon it would have gone around Circular Scale to surround him again with a vast slowly dawning horror . . . which would once again draw itself together to form the unbearable scene . . . which would dwindle again, only to surround him again . . . and again and again, faster and faster . . .

Some time before dawn he jerked up to a sitting position. It was dark under the bridge and the unbearable thought loop was still running in some part of his mind . . . some new part of his mind. He staggered down to the river and splashed water on his face. Slowly the dream faded. It was time to go.

Old Bill was asleep and snoring wetly. Vernor left the rest of his money in the old hermit's pocket and started walking.

He reached the burned taxi just before sunrise. He couldn't quite bring himself to look inside. But he knelt near it and said his last goodbyes to Alice. There was no way to make it right—all those decisions that had ended with her dead like this, instead of on a lovely outing.

He wept softly for awhile, then picked up a tubular length of guard-rail for a crutch, and went on down the alley.

Dawn was breaking now and he saw some people trucking by on a street up ahead. Suddenly eager to re-enter the world, he hurried out to the sidewalk and began limping along after the others, leaning on the staff he'd found near Alice's pyre.

The whole City seemed so different. It was less crowded for one thing—many people had died during the first few days of the War. There were no taxis, vans, or street-cleaning robots moving about, of course; but there were also no radios, no electric lights, no running water. Garbage was piled everywhere; rats and roaches scuttled underfoot. There was no more Dreamfood and people were living on canned goods. Gardens were springing up. On the whole, morale was good, but the outbreak of disease and famine seemed imminent. Some were leaving the City for the countryside, but not many . . . it was, after all, a long trip by foot with the constant threat of machine attack. There was some hope that people would be able to get into and start up the various utility plants, but as yet the Eastside and its factories was still under the machines' control.

Vernor and Alice had seen the galaxy spin yet they'd returned to Earth only a week after leaving it. Vernor still didn't understand how. Time—time was a crazy maelstrom. Sometimes he imagined this was all a hallucination, and that he'd awaken in the scale-ship, still in Alice's arms.

What had become of Professor Kurtowski in his Eastside hideout? No telling. But everyone knew about Mick Turner. While Vernor had been gone Mick had been busy organizing an underground network of revolutionaries to strike after Vernor's work with Phizwhiz was completed. They hadn't anticipated that Phizwhiz would turn against the human race, but they'd had the organization to take control of Dreamtown when the War started.

Vernor decided to walk to Dreamtown. He's only need to cross three blocks of machine-controlled territory to get there. He scrounged a meal and set off.

As he neared the machines' turf he saw fewer and fewer people. Finally he was all alone, walking down the middle of a deserted street toward Dreamtown with the aid of his crutch of plastic guardrail.

His partially healed leg was paining him considerably, and a bright mid-morning sun beat down on him. His senses should have been at a high pitch of attention, but somehow he felt drowsy and distant in the hot light.

With the suddenness of a hit of speed, a dog-sized cleaner robot sped out of a small street on his left, broadcasting Phizwhiz's electronic snarl. Vernor turned to face it, holding his staff at the ready. Although he didn't much care if he lived or died, he was eager to fight.

The robot was roughly hemispherical, and was sliding along supported by some type of field. When it was almost upon him, Vernor danced to one side, smashing downwards with his staff at the spot where he'd just been.

The robot, however, wasn't there. It had swerved as quickly as Vernor had moved, and now smashed into his legs  . . . easily toppling him, caught unaware. The robot scooted up towards Vernor's head, and a cutting arc of electricity crackled into life between two stubby antennae on its smooth carapace.

As it moved towards his head the robot passed over his staff, which was lying on the ground. Vernor seized the opportunity to lift his end of the stick, tilting the domed machine up on one edge. Using his hands, Vernor quickly finished the job of flipping the robot over. Helpless to right itself, the machine began emitting a distress signal.

His hands slightly numb from the effects of the robot's support field, Vernor hurried on down the street. Dreamtown was still two blocks away.

The next cross-street was a main thoroughfare, and had two taxis patrolling it. They spotted Vernor as soon as he saw them, and accelerated towards him, blaring the Phizwhiz noise. This was going to be a tough one. If he could make it past these taxis there'd be maybe another small robot and then he'd be in Dreamtown. He'd go to Waxy's and have some weed with Mick—it'd be fine. With an effort Vernor wrenched his attention back to the present.

He was running across the intersection toward Dreamtown. The taxis were about twenty feet from him, heading towards him from either side. It looked like the taxi on the right might reach him first. Even though he wasn't fully clear on what his strategy was, some instinct told him to angle to the left.

It was only at the split second when the two taxis were evenly spaced at arm's length on either side of Vernor that he consciously understood his plan. Jump! He dug the end of his staff into the street and pole-vaulted.