Project Pope

'Not while we're out here. They might pick up an interest if we went inside.

'I wonder, said Te

'If you are going, I am going, too, said Jill. 'I'm not going to be left out here.

— Any one of them would be happy to, said Whisperer. Which hole do you have in mind?

— Any one of them, said Te

— Would that one just behind you be all right?

— It would do just fine.

'I have a feeling, said Jill, 'that we're quite out of our minds.

The rose-red cube had moved up close to the wall, below the indicated mouse hole. The cube began broadening out, spreading itself, squatting down so they could reach its back.

'I'll boost you up, Te

'Okay, she said. 'I hope this won't be as bad as I think it will.

He boosted her up and she scrambled to the top of the cube.

'It's ishy, she said. 'It's terrible. The thing is like a mound of jelly. I'm afraid I will break through it. And it's slippery as hell.

Te

The mouse hole was in front of them and Te

They rose to their feet and looked about them. The mouse hole was another tu

At the end of it blazed a brilliant light. The floor was solid underneath their feet and they moved toward the light. Looking over her shoulder, Jill saw that the five equation folk had entered the tu

When they reached the other end of the tu

The interior was vast, but its vastness was masked by columnar structures that rose within it, spearing from the depths into the upper reaches, both the depths and the upper reaches being blotted out by sheer distances. The columns basically were of the same white material of which the rest of the structure was made, but little of the white showed through the blinding, crazy flickering of the lights that ran all around them. The lights took no particular pattern and their flickering had no rhythm. They were of every color.

The entire place, Te

'Look, said Jill, jogging his arm. 'There is one of our friendly worms.

'Where?

'Right over there. On one of the columns. Look where I'm pointing.

He looked but it took a while to see what she pointed at. Finally he made it out. One of the worms was clinging tightly against one of the columns, hanging straight up and down the column. But not using all its feet to maintain its grip, for it was using many of them in a manipulatory way, working on the circuitry or the lights or whatever the column held.

'Maintenance men, said Jill. 'Maintenance worms, that is, Jason, they are the things that keep whatever this is ru

'It makes sense, he said.

'Let's get out of here, said Jill. 'All this makes me dizzy.

They hurried down the whiteness of the road, although the road no longer was entirely white. It shimmered with the many colors of the flashing lights.

Far ahead they glimpsed the opening of another tu

At the mouth of the tu

Three of the cones stood at the back of the platform and, as Jill and Te

'I guess they want us to stay here, she said to Te

When all of them had been herded onto the platform, the cones stationed themselves at each corner, and the platform and the cones began to move down the tu

The platform shot out of the tu

In between the roadways, set at every angle, each surrounded by small courtyards, were buildings of every shape and size. These were not formed of the same material as the larger structures, but were of every color. It was, thought Te

The platform took a sudden curve, almost throwing them off their feet, changing from one roadway to another and almost at once entering another tu

Jill and Te

They entered a room. At the farther end of it a bubble sat on a dais ranged against the wall. Other cones were there in groups around the dais, and to one side of it sat a small haystack that had eyes peering from the hay, while an octopuslike creature hopped back and forth before the bubble. Each time it landed on the floor, it made a squishy sound like a large chunk of fresh liver hurled against a solid surface.

The cones herded them forward until they stood before the bubble, then fell back and left them there.

The bubble was more than just a bubble. It had a dimple in the forefront of it, and inside the dimple was what might have been a face — the sort of face that one could not be sure was there. One second you could see it and the next moment it had dissolved into drifting smoke.