They ducked around a man hanging from an overhead heating-duct and pounded down a flight of steel stairs behind the floating steel ball.
“Jake!” Roland shouted. “You never let me in at all, did you?”
Jake shook his head.
“I didn’t think so. It was Blaine.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs and hurried along a narrow corridor toward a hatch with the words ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE printed on it in the spiked letters of the High Speech.
“Is it Blaine?” Jake asked.
“Yes—that’s as good a name as any.”
“What about the other v—”
“Hush!” Roland said grimly.
The steel ball paused in front of the hatchway. The wheel spun and the hatch popped ajar. Roland pulled it open, and they stepped into a huge underground room which stretched away in three directions as far as they could see. It was filled with seemingly endless aisles of control panels and electronic equipment. Most of the panels were still dark and dead, but as Jake and Roland stood inside the door, looking about with wide eyes, they could see pilot-lights coming on and hear machinery cycling up.
“The Tick-Tock Man said there were thousands of computers,” Jake said. “I guess he was right. My God, look!”
Roland did not understand the word Jake had used and so said nothing. He only watched as row after row of panels lit up. A cloud of sparks and a momentary tongue of green fire jumped from one of the consoles as some ancient piece of equipment malfunctioned.
Most of the machinery, however, appeared to be up and running just fine. Needles which hadn’t moved in centuries suddenly jumped into the green. Huge aluminum cylinders spun, spilling data stored on silicon chips into memory banks which were once more wide awake and ready for input. Digital displays, indicating everything from the mean aquifer water-pressure in the West River Barony to available power amperage in the hibernating Send Basin Nuclear Plant, lit up in brilliant dot-matrices of red and green. Overhead, banks of hanging globes began to flash on, radiating outward in spokes of light. And from below, above, and around them—from everywhere—came the deep bass hum of generators and slo-trans engines awakening from their long sleep.
Jake had begun to flag badly. Roland swept him into his arms again and chased the steel ball past machines at whose function and intent he could not even guess. Oy ran at his heels. The ball banked left, and the aisle in which they now found themselves ran between banks of TV monitors, thousands of them, stacked in rows like a child’s building blocks.
My dad would love it, Jake thought.
Some sections of this vast video arcade were still dark, but many of the screens were on. They showed a city in chaos, both above and below. Clumps of Pubes surged pointlessly through the streets, eyes wide, mouths moving soundlessly. Many were leaping from the tall buildings. Jake observed with horror that hundreds more had congregated at the Send Bridge and were throwing themselves into the river. Other screens showed large, cot-filled rooms like dormitories. Some of these rooms were on fire, but the panic-stricken Grays seemed to be setting the fires themselves—torching their own mattresses and furniture for God alone knew what reason.
One screen showed a barrel-chested giant tossing men and women into what looked like a blood-spattered stamping press. This was bad enough, but there was something worse: the victims were standing in an unguarded line, docilely waiting their turns. The executioner, his yellow scarf pulled tight over his skull and the knotted ends swinging below his ears like pigtails, seized an old woman and held her up, waiting patiently for the stainless steel block of metal to clear the killing floor so he could toss her in. The old woman did not struggle; seemed, in fact, to be smiling.
“IN THE ROOMS THE PEOPLE COME AND GO,” Blaine said, “BUT I DON’T THINK ANY OF THEM ARE TALKING OF MICHELANGELO.” He suddenly laughed—strange, tittery laughter that sounded like rats scampering over broken glass. The sound sent chills chasing up Jake’s neck. He wanted nothing at all to do with an intelligence that laughed like that . . . but what choice did they have?
He turned his gaze helplessly back to the monitors . . . and Roland at once turned his head away. He did this gently but firmly. “There’s nothing there you need to look at, Jake,” he said.
“But why are they doing it?” Jake asked. He had eaten nothing