Total Recall (22 page)

George turned to Quaid and held out his hands. “Take my hands,” he said. Then, noting Quaid’s hesitation: “Go on.”

Quaid reluctantly held George’s hands. He was trying not to be finicky, but the notion of being close to the mutant repelled him. So did the notion of holding hands with a man.

“I’ll leave you with Kuato,” George said. He closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep.

Simultaneously, the Kuato head twitched, yawned, and woke. One of his eyes was abnormally large.

Kuato stared intently at Quaid, opened his toothless little mouth, and spoke. “What do you want, Mr. Quaid?”

“Same as you,” Quaid said as evenly as he could manage. “To remember.”

“But why?”

Quaid was puzzled. If Kuato knew his name, why didn’t he know his mission too? “To know who I am.”

“You are what you do,” Kuato said. He paused, letting that sink in. Unfortunately, most of what Quaid had been doing recently was searching for his memory, and trying to survive.

“A man is defined by his actions, Mr. Quaid,” Kuato continued. “Not by his memories.” He stared at Quaid, who had difficulty returning that uneven gaze. One eye was so big, the other so small!

“Now open your thoughts to my presence . . .”

Quaid couldn’t help staring at Kuato’s large eye. It was hypnotic. He found himself falling into a trance.

“Open . . .” Kuato said.

Quaid seemed to fall toward that huge eye. He saw himself reflected in the pupil. It was as if he were zooming in on his own image, on his own reflected head, his eye, his pupil, in which he saw the reflection of . . .

CHAPTER  21
Revelation

Q
uaid saw the Pyramid Mountain rising like the Matterhorn from one side of a canyon. He floated, seeming disembodied, contemplating it.

“Go inside,” Kuato said, from somewhere in another reality.

Quaid discovered that he could move simply by willing it. He jumped to the side of the mountain, then traveled into the tunnel in its side, as in his dream. The tunnel went deep inside, then dead-ended at a hole in a stone wall. He glided through that hole and into an abyss.

A gigantic metal structure seemed to fill the central core of a dark pit. His dream-pit—but somehow different. The structure—it was in its fashion alive, not dead, and dynamic rather than passive. He had seen it before and thought it defunct; now he knew it was not.

He floated to it. There were huge metal trusses, like the arched understructure of a bridge.

He moved on toward the center of the structure and saw a forest of gigantic corroded metal columns.

Kuato’s voice came again. “What is it?”

Quaid didn’t answer. He didn’t need to; Kuato was reading his mind. The questions were merely to focus his attention.

He dropped down, down, down, as if on a tether, as he had in the dream. But as he passed the point where the dream had ended—

His hands, of their own accord, found the line at his waist and closed about it. They clamped automatically, and suddenly were jerked up as they tried to break his fall. His arms were wrenched almost out of their sockets as they took the full falling weight of his body. Even in the lesser gravity of Mars, it was a shock. He swung, hurting—and smashed into the wall of the pit. The shock was transmitted through his suit, stunning him. His gloves slipped on the line, starting him down again. He knew he couldn’t afford that; he was still a long way from the bottom.

He willed his hands to hang on, whatever the cost. But the cost was his consciousness. He felt himself swinging again, into . . .

The galaxy was crisscrossed by lines of communication and trade. Lightspeed limited both, on the interstellar level, but species that took the long view prospered. They sent out missionary ships, knowing that they would not see any results in the lifetimes of those aboard, or in the lifetimes of any of the creatures extant. But they continued, for that was the nature of the long view.

The galaxy was actually the debris being drawn into the monstrous black hole that was its center. It had started as a cloud, formed into a quasar, and swept the gas and dust of its vicinity into itself, its appetite insatiable. In the course of billions of years it had dimmed somewhat, for the substance around it was thinning, but it remained a well-organized system.

Hauser recovered consciousness. He was at the bottom of the pit. He had suffered a brief vision of a black hole, but while his mind was out, his hands had evidently eased him on down safely.

He detached himself from the cord. He needed freedom to explore. Then he would climb back up and—

And what? Melina had heard him fall. She would know that something had gone wrong, and would head back for help. He should have told her he was all right, only he had gotten knocked partway senseless. He wasn’t sure how long he had been out. So his mission—

What
was
his mission? He couldn’t quite remember. That disorientation—

But it was coming back. He was trying to find out about this alien artifact. What it was, what it did, who had left it, anything. So that Melina—

Whatever thought had started was preempted by another.
He loved Melina
. He closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his forehead. How could he have allowed this to happen? He was an experienced professional, not some lovesick trainee. His love for her had been a pose, a means to an end, the oldest trick in the book. He had used her to infiltrate Kuato’s rebel forces and he had succeeded in that, though he had not succeeded in locating Kuato himself. Now it was time for the rest of the plan to go into action. It was time for him to return to Cohaagen, to the world of intrigue and double-cross and cold calculation.

But it looked as though
he
had been double-crossed, by his heart. He had sensed the loss of control, of detachment, a while ago, but he had ignored it, suppressed it, tried to forget it. He could do so no longer. Melina’s courage and determination had pierced his amoral armor—and awakened feelings in him that he had never experienced before.

He loved Melina
. He could deny it no longer. And if betraying the rebels meant losing her, then he could not betray them. He didn’t care what Cohaagen thought his mission was. He was doing this for her.

He set out to explore the alien device whose struts towered above him in the near-darkness. He had for a moment seemed to understand the aliens, their missionary ships, their long view—or was that something he was about to learn? His memories were jumbled, with chronology seeming to be something other than a straight line. The memory implants, laid over each other, one, two, three of them, synaptic turbulence where they interfered with each other at the fringes—how could he be sure what was real? Focus on the lowest level, exclude what hadn’t yet happened . . .

He found what might be a footpath, but for other feet than human. The surface was rough, almost like sandpaper, with crisscrossing corrugations. It was like a tape, curving around on the contour, without guardrails, and he had to duck to pass under other tapes that crossed above it. It dead-ended in a drop-off into a hole, and picked up again a few feet below. It was as if the tape had been folded at right angles, then straightened out again at the lower level. Whoever had walked this hadn’t been much concerned about continuity.

He jumped down and resumed his walk, determined to find out where this path went. It stood to reason that it went somewhere, and that it might offer some hint about the alien structure. He had no better notion how to proceed than this.

The path seemed determined to thwart him. It made a right-angle turn up, proceeded along a low ceiling, then turned the corner to the top of a substructure within the giant complex. If this really was a path, the creatures who used it must have feet like those of flies, so that they could walk up walls or upside down on ceilings. Did that make sense?

He persevered, managing to climb back to the level surface so that he could walk normally again. There was always a clear way forward; sometimes he had to proceed on hands and feet, but it never blocked up completely. From this he judged that the aliens had been about half the height of a man. They were also unafraid of heights, for some paths he passed extended straight up the sides of towering columns. The image of a fly was growing stronger, distressing as he found it. Could flies be builders? What would they build
for
? Some titanic framework for the airing of carrion?

At last he came to a kind of central plaza where a number of paths converged. There was a squat column in the center, covered with what looked like carvings in relief. They were of all types, from straight geometrical designs to weird blobs.

He walked around it, looking at the figures. Many of them were reminiscent of ants.

Ants! Ants could walk on walls and ceilings, and were longer than they were tall. They built mounds, and tunneled through wood. They had quite an organized society, and even made war, in the fashion of man. Could the aliens be ants?

Then he spied a picture of a man. Immediately he concentrated on it, suspecting he had misinterpreted it, too eager to spy something familiar. But it was definitely a man—and beside it, definitely a woman. The figure was naked, and the female reminded him of Melina in her perfection of form.

Melina . . .

There was no doubt now: he was getting warm! He knew these figures had not been carved by men; they were part of the alien structure. The aliens had put them there. Why?

Could this be a message intended for men?

He studied it. Both the man and the woman were looking out from the column, interest in their faces. Hauser looked in the direction they were looking. There, at the edge of the circular platform, was a chamber. It was about the size and shape of a man.

It seemed an obvious enough invitation. He could step into that chamber—and what? Be pickled for future reference, a specimen of Homo sapiens? The term meant “rational man,” but he wasn’t sure it would be rational to take the suggested action!

Yet if the aliens had known of man, they must also have known how to capture a specimen if they wanted it. They didn’t need to set a roach trap for the adventurous soul who found this hidden place.

He looked again at the figures on the column. Could these be examples of many creatures the aliens had known, the males and females of the systems of the galaxy? One set of each, like in Noah’s ark? So was this some kind of memorial, and any creature who visited it would find himself represented?

But why?

He looked more closely at some of the other figures. Many were indecipherable, but others were vaguely recognizable. For example, there was a perfectly good set of BEMs—Bug Eyed Monsters—of the type usually drafted for Evil Menace duty in comic videos. Their bugging eyes were gazing out at a chamber evidently designed to contain a BEM.

One figure looked like a cross between a giant spider and a small snake. Sure enough, there was a chamber made for it too.

Since there were no such creatures on Earth, and never had been, as far as he knew, any such beings who appeared here had to be galactic travelers. They would not fall for any roach trap!

Then it came to him: communication! These must be communications chambers, each for its own species. A central phone system, maybe, so that travelers could call home, or at least find out where the local facilities were.

Did he trust the ancient aliens?

What did he have to lose?

Hauser went to the man-chamber and stepped inside.

There was a faint flash of green light, and a measured clicking, as of something starting up. Then—

The galaxy was crisscrossed by lines of communication and trade . . .

So
this
was where he had remembered this from! The alien indoctrination tape. Now he had it in its proper order. He listened and looked, not with his senses but with his mind.

At the edge of the galaxy, still far from the maw of its central black hole, dust was spiraling in, and new stars were forming. Some of them acquired planetary systems, some of which were suitable for the development of life. Some of these “living” planets were prospects for new trade, to replace those being lost at the interior as their systems entered the event horizon and were lost. Experience had shown that the process could be facilitated by seeding: by presenting advanced technology to nascent traders, and facilitating their development to full trader status. Thus the network of the galaxy was maintained at a constant level despite the continuing loss of advanced planets. The appearance and chemistry of the new species did not matter; the only requirements were that they be capable of mastering advanced technology and using it in a positive way.

The normal course was for a trading species to develop after several billion years of life on a planet, if some natural cataclysm didn’t wipe it out. Such a species could proceed from the first realization of mind as a commercial force to interstellar travel in just a few million years. It could then achieve galactic contact and trade in a few hundred years—if appropriately seeded. The chance of an unseeded species reaching full trading status was only one in ten; about half destroyed their planets and therefore themselves in the course of making the breakout to space. Many of the rest lost interest and turned away from space, preferring the security of isolation. But seeded species had a 50 percent chance because they were caught at the first surge of their ambition and were able to follow through before destroying their habitat by war, depletion of resources, or accident.

But there was risk in seeding. Sometimes a species that would have been eliminated by natural selection (destroying itself) was enabled to survive. Such a rogue species could then embark on the destruction of legitimate species, using the technology in a negative instead of positive manner. The rogue species tended to like conquest for its own sake, failing to appreciate the advantage of normal trade. If allowed to continue, such a species would wreak the same havoc on the galaxy as it did on its home planet, culminating in destruction on a far broader scale.