Tower of Glass (11 page)

And at that time the word of Krug will go forth across the worlds, saying, Let Womb and Vat and Vat and Womb be one. And so it shall come to pass and in that moment shall the Children of the Vat be redeemed, and they shall be lifted up out of their suffering, and they shall dwell in glory forever more, world without end. And this was the pledge of Krug.

And for this pledge, praise be to Krug.

11

Thor Watchman watched two scooprods climbing the tower, Krug and Dr. Vargas in one, Manuel and his friends in the other. He hoped the visit would be brief. The lifting of blocks had halted, as usual, while the guests were on top. Watchman had given the signal for alternate work activities: the mending of worn scooprods, the replacement of drained power nodes, maintenance checks on the transmat cubicles, and other minor tasks. He walked among the men, nodding, exchanging greetings, hailing them where appropriate with the secret signs of the android communion. Nearly everyone who worked at the tower was a member of the faith—all the gammas, certainly, and more than three-fourths of the betas. As Watchman made his way around the construction site he encountered Responders, Sacrificers, Yielders, Guardians, Projectors, Protectors, Transcenders, Engulfers: virtually every level of the hierarchy was represented. There were even half a dozen Preservers, all betas. Watchman had applauded the recent move to admit betas to the Preservership. Androids, of all people, did not need categories of exclusivity.

Watchman was crossing the northern sector of the site when Leon Spaulding emerged from the maze of small service domes just beyond. The android attempted to avoid seeming to notice him.

“Watchman?” the ectogene called.

With an air of deep concentration Watchman walked on.

“Alpha Watchman!” Spaulding cried, more formally, more sharply.

The alpha saw no way to ignore Spaulding now. Turning, he acknowledged Spaulding’s presence by pausing and letting the ectogene catch up with him.

“Yes?” Watchman said.

“Grace me with some of your time, Alpha Watchman. I need information.”

“Ask, then.”

“You know these buildings here?” Spaulding said, jerking a thumb backward toward the service domes.

Watchman shrugged. “Storage dumps, washrooms, kitchens, a first aid station, and similar things. Why?”

“I was inspecting the area. I came to one dome where I was refused admission. Two insolent betas gave me a whole series of explanations of why I couldn’t go in.”

The chapel! Watchman went rigid.

“What is the purpose of that building?” Spaulding asked.

“I have no idea which one you mean.”

“I’ll show it to you.”

“Another time,” said Watchman tautly. “My presence is required at the master control center now.”

“Get there five minutes later. Will you come with me?”

Watchman saw no easy way to disengage himself. With a cold gesture of agreement he yielded, and followed Spaulding into the service area, hoping that Spaulding would rapidly get lost among the domes. Spaulding did not get lost. By the most direct possible route he made for the chapel, indicating the innocent-looking gray structure with a flourish of his hand.

“This,” he said. “What is it?”

Two betas of the Guardian caste were on duty outside. They looked calm, but one made a hidden distress signal when Watchman looked at him. Watchman made a signal of comfort.

He said, “I am not familiar with this building. Friends, what is its use?”

The left-hand beta replied easily, “It contains focusing equipment for the refrigeration system, Alpha Thor.”

“Is this what you were told?” Watchman asked the ectogene.

“Yes,” Spaulding said. “I expressed a desire to inspect its interior. I was told that it would be dangerous for me to enter. I answered that I am familiar with basic safety techniques. I was then told that it would be physically uncomfortable for me to go within. I responded that it is possible for me to tolerate a reasonable level of discomfort, and that I would be the judge of such levels. Whereupon I was informed that delicate maintenance procedures are taking place inside, and that to admit me to the building might jeopardize the success of the work in progress. I was invited instead to tour a different refrigeration dome several hundred meters from here. At no time during these exchanges did the two betas you see allow me free access to the building entrance. I believe, Alpha Watchman, that they would have barred me by force if I tried to enter. Watchman, what’s going on in here?”

“Have you considered the possibility that everything these betas were telling you is true?”

“Their stubbornness arouses suspicion in me.”

“What do you
think
is in there? An android brothel? The headquarters of conspirators? A cache of psych-bombs?”

Spaulding said crisply, “At this point I’m more concerned by the efforts made to keep me out of this building than I am by what may actually be inside it. As the private secretary of Simeon Krug—”

The two betas, tense, automatically began to make the sign of Krug-be-praised. Watchman glared at them and they quickly lowered their hands.

“... I certainly have the privilege of keeping check on all activities in this place,” Spaulding went on, evidently having noticed nothing. “And therefore...”

Watchman studied him closely, trying to determine how much he might know. Was Spaulding making trouble merely for the sake of making trouble? Was he throwing this tantrum only because his curiosity had been piqued, and his authority somewhat dented, by his inability to get into this unimportant-seeming building? Or was he already aware of the building’s nature, and staging an elaborate charade to make Watchman squirm?

It was never easy to fathom Spaulding’s motives. The primary source of his hostility toward androids was obvious enough: it lay in his own origin. His father, when young, had feared that some accident might cut him down before he had received a certificate of eligibility for parenthood; his mother had found the notion of childbearing abhorrent. Both, therefore, had deposited gametes in freezer-banks. Shortly afterward they had perished in an avalanche on Ganymede. Their families had wealth and political influence, but nevertheless, nearly fifteen years of litigation ensued before a decree of genetic desirability was granted, permitting the retroactive awarding of parenthood certificates to the frozen ova and sperm of the dead couple.

Leon Spaulding then was conceived by
in vitro
fertilization and enwombed in a steel-bound placenta, from which he was propelled after the customary 266 days. From the moment of his birth he had the full legal rights of a human being, including a claim on his parents’ estate. Yet, like most ectogenes, he was uneasy over the shadowy borderline that separated the bottle-born from the vat-born, and reinforced his sense of his own existence by showing contempt for those who were wholly synthetic, not just the artificially conceived offspring of natural gametes. Androids at least had no illusions of having had parents; ectogenes often suspected that they had not. In a way Watchman pitied Spaulding, who occupied a thorny perch midway between the world of the wholly natural and the world of the wholly artificial. But he could not bring himself to feel much sorrow for the ectogene’s maladjustments.

And in any case it would be disastrous to have Spaulding go blundering into the chapel. Trying to buy time, Watchman said, “We can settle this easily enough. Wait here while I go inside to see what’s happening there.”

“I’ll accompany you,” Spaulding said.

“These betas say it would be hazardous.”

“More hazardous for me than for you? We’ll both go in, Watchman.”

The android frowned. So far as status in the organization went, he and Spaulding were equals; neither could coerce the other, neither could accuse the other of insubordination. But the fact remained that he was an android and Spaulding was human, and in any conflict of wills between android and human, all other things being equal, the android was obliged to give ground. Spaulding was already walking toward the entrance of the dome.

Watchman said quickly, “Please. No. If there’s risk, let me be the one to take it. I’ll check the building and make certain it’s safe for you to enter. Don’t come in until I call you.”

“I insist—”

“What would Krug say if he knew we had both gone into a building after we’d been warned it was dangerous? We owe it to him to guard our lives. Wait. Wait. Only a moment.”

“Very well,” Spaulding said, looking displeased.

The betas parted to admit Watchman. The alpha hurried into the chapel. Within, he found three gammas at the altar in the posture of the Yielder caste; a beta stood above them in Projector posture, and a second beta crouched near the wall, fingertips against the hologram of Krug as he whispered the words of the Transcender ritual. All five came to attention as Watchman entered.

The alpha hastily improvised a possible diversionary tactic.

Beckoning to one of the gammas, he said, “There is an enemy outside. With your help we will confuse him.” Watchman gave the gamma careful instructions, ordering the android to repeat them. Then he pointed to the chapel’s rear door, behind the altar, and the gamma went out.

After a moment for prayer, Watchman returned to Leon Spaulding.

“You were told the complete truth,” the alpha reported. “This is indeed a refrigeration dome. A team of mechanics is engaged in difficult recalibration work inside. If you enter, you’ll certainly disturb them, and you’ll have to walk carefully to sidestep some open traps in the floor, and in addition you will be exposed to a temperature of minus—”

“Even so, I want to go in,” said Spaulding. “Please let me get through.”

Watchman caught sight of his gamma approaching, breathless, from the east. Unhurriedly, the alpha made as if to give Spaulding access to the chapel door. In that instant the gamma rushed up, shouting, “Help! Help for Krug! Krug is in danger! Save Krug!”

“Where?” Watchman demanded.

“By the control center! Assassins! Assassins!”

Watchman allowed Spaulding no opportunity to ponder the implausibilities of the situation. “Come on,” he said, tugging the ectogene’s arm. “We have to hurry!”

Spaulding was pale with shock. As Watchman had hoped, the supposed emergency had blotted the problem of the chapel from his mind.

Together they ran toward the control center. After twenty strides, Watchman looked back and saw dozens of androids rushing toward the chapel, in accordance with his orders. They would dismantle it within minutes. By the time Leon Spaulding was able to return to this sector, the dome would house nothing but refrigeration equipment.

12

 
“Enough,” Krug said. “It gets cold. Now we go down.”

The scooprods descended. Snowflakes were beginning to swirl about the tower; the repellor field at the summit deflected them, sending them cascading off at a broad angle. It was impossible to run proper weather control here, because of the need to keep the tundra constantly frozen. A good thing, Krug thought, that androids didn’t mind working in the snow.

Manuel said, “We’re leaving, father. We’re booked into the New Orleans shunt room for a week of ego shifts.”

Krug scowled. “I wish to hell you stop that stuff.”

“Where’s the harm, father? To swap identities with your own true friends? To spend a week in somebody else’s soul? It’s harmless. It’s liberating. It’s miraculous.
You
ought to try it!”

Krug spat.

“I’m serious,” Manuel said. “It would pull you out of yourself a little. That morbid concentration on the problems of high finance, that intense and exhausting fascination with interstellar communications, the terrible strain on your neural network that comes from—”

“Go on,” Krug said. “Go. Change your minds all around. I’m busy.”

“You wouldn’t even consider shunting, father?”

“It’s quite pleasant,” said Nick Ssu-ma. He was Krug’s favorite among his son’s friends, an amiable Chinese boy with close-cropped blond hair and an easy smile. “It gives you a splendid new perspective on all human relationships.”

“Try it once, just once,” Jed Guilbert offered, “and I promise that you’ll never—”

“Quicker than that I take up swimming on Jupiter,” said Krug. “Go. Go. Be happy. Shunt all you like. Not me.”

“I’ll see you next week, father.”

Manuel and his friends sprinted toward the transmat. Krug rammed his knuckles together and stood watching the young men run. He felt a tremor of something close to envy. He had never had time for any of these amusements. There had always been work to do, a deal to close, a crucial series of lab tests to oversee, a meeting with the bankers, a crisis in the Martian market. While others gaily jumped into stasis nets and exchanged egos for week-long trips, he had built a corporate empire, and now it was too late for him to give himself up to the pleasures of the world. So what, he told himself fiercely. So what? So I’m a nineteenth-century man in a twenty-third-century body. So I’ll get along without shunt rooms. Anyway, who would I trust inside my head? What friend would I swap egos with? Who, who, who? He realized that there was hardly anyone. Manuel, perhaps. It might be helpful to do a shunt with Manuel. We’d get to understand each other better, maybe. Give up some of our extreme positions, move toward a meeting in the middle. He’s not all wrong about how he lives. I’m not all right. See things with each other’s eyes, maybe? But at once Krug recoiled from the idea. A father-son ego shift seemed almost incestuous. There were things he didn’t want to know about Manuel. There certainly were things he didn’t want Manuel to know about him. To swap identities, even for a moment, was out of the question. But what about Thor Watchman, then, as a shunt partner? The alpha was admirably sane, competent, trustworthy; in many ways Krug was closer to him than to any other living person; he could not think of any secrets that he had kept from Watchman; if he intended to sample the shunt experience at all, he might find it useful and informative to—