Destination: Void

"Or tear the whole damn thing down and start over," said Prudence. "Didn't either one of you hear me? Our word assumes there's a self to be conscious."

"We heard you," Flattery said. "But there are more important hidden assumptions... than 'Know thyself.' "What about 'Know thy limits'?"

"Limits," Timberlake picked up the word. "At one end - sleep or the sleep of death; and at the other end - waking."

"And the question of Western religion," Flattery said, "is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking?"

"For Kee-rist's sake!"

The voice was Bickel's and it plunged down onto them from the command-circuit screen overhead.

Flattery looked up with a smug smile to find Bickel glaring down at him from the screen.

"I leave you for a half-hour, and you lure these poor fools down some mystical dead end! Tossing labels around just like those jackasses back at UMB! Zen master! Next you'll trot out Cosmic Consciousness! Of all the impractical -"

"John, we've refined this question down to its essence," Timberlake said. "If you'd -"

"I asked you to give me some circuit suggestions. I've been listening to you play verbal medicine ball for ten minutes, and what I want to know is this: How will all that yakking build one circuit? Just one circuit!"

"You yourself asked UMB to define consciousness," Prudence protested.

"Because I wanted to keep them occupied and out of our hair." The screen went blank.

Flattery looked over to the console in front of Prudence, saw that the command-circuit key pointed to "on," but the screen remained blank.

That key is on! Flattery told himself. It had to be turned on deliberately. She did it! To waken Bickel.

But why was the screen blank?

As though she read his mind, Prudence said: "John's installed an override on the command circuit. Any idea why?"

"Didn't you see where he was?" Timberlake demanded. "He was in the shop - working on that Ox mess!"

Timberlake unlocked his action couch and, in almost the same motion, launched himself at the hatch to the computer maintenance shop. He wrenched at the lock dogs, but they remained immovable.

"He's jammed the lock!" Timberlake's voice rose in fear. "If he wrecks our computer..."

"You noticed... so you may as well watch," taunted Bickel's voice.

They looked up to see a view of the shop on their big screen. Bickel stood with the detritus of the initial Ox installation around him - dangling leads, meters, neuron blocks - all stacked precariously away from the computer wall.

"Bickel, listen to reason," Timberlake pleaded. "You can't just tear into -"

"Shut up or I'll turn you off," Bickel warned.

He knelt with a substitute neuron block, inserted it between the Ox and the computer wall, began making co

"Please, John," Prudence begged, "if you'd -"

"You're not going to stop him by talking to him," Flattery said.

"Listen to Raj." Bickel slipped another neuron block into place against the wall, made new co

"Rhythm," he said. "I went to sleep on it... and it woke me up - that and your yakking. Rhythm."

Another substitute neuron block went into place beneath the first two.

"Describe what you're doing," Flattery said, and he motioned for Timberlake to come to his side.

"Brain-vision anatomy can be reduced to the mathematical description of a sca

"What's the function of each of these human rhythms?" Flattery demanded.

As he spoke, Flattery scribbled a note on a pad of ship flimsy, pressed it into Timberlake's hand.

Timberlake looked up to the screen, but Bickel still had his back to the video eyes that matched the screen-view.

"We don't know that function for certain, do we?" Flattery asked, and he motioned frantically for Timberlake to read the note.

Timberlake turned his attention onto the paper, read:

"BACK WAY, AROUND THE HYB TANKS. BICKEL HASN'T JAMMED THE HATCH FROM QUARTERS. TAKE THE OTHER TUBE AND SURPRISE HIM."

Again, Timberlake looked up to the screen.

The Ox was taking on new shape under Bickers hands - reaching out to the angle of the shop against the computer wall. It began to assume a feeling of topological improbability in Timberlake's eyes - with jutting triangles of plastic, oblongs of neuron couplers, strips of Eng multipliers... and the color-coded leads interweaving like a crazy spiderweb.

Timberlake felt a hand grab his arm, shake him. He looked at the hand, followed its arm to Flattery's glaring face.

Flattery gestured to the note in Timberlake's other hand.

Again, Timberlake looked at the note, recognizing why he remained rooted to this spot. Around the hyb tanks?

No.

It would have to be through the hyb tanks.

Flattery must know that.

Timberlake turned his tortured gaze on Flattery, bringing the terror up to full awareness. Bickel has infected me with his cynical skepticism. I'm afraid of what I'll find in the hyb tanks if I look too close. I'll find the tanks empty, and nothing but leads back into the computer from the tanks. And the computer will be programmed to simulate the presence of hybernating life in those tanks. The whole thing will turn out to be a monstrous hoax.

I'll discover I've been life-systems engineer to... nothing....

Why do Ifear that? he wondered. Even this thought set him shivering.

Again, Flattery shook his arm.

Why doesn't he go? Timberlake wondered. He's so anxious!

The answer was obvious: Flattery wasn't as knowledgeable about computers. He couldn't analyze what Bickel was doing and repair - if that was possible - the damage.

I'm panic-stricken, Timberlake thought.

But he knew he couldn't stay rooted here. He had to take that other passage. And when he got into the hyb tanks, he wouldn't be able to resist the close inspection. He'd look beyond the dials and gauges and repeaters. He'd look into the tanks.

Despite his unexplainable terror, the other possibility remained - that the tanks contained life, and this life shared their danger.

CHAPTER 19

The cell has energies that oscillate and pulse with the tumult of living. We see reflections of this root-activity in that coordinated cell structure which we commonly refer to as a human being. Have you ever watched a man tapping his finger nervously on a desktop? Have you ever timed the periodicity of the human eyeblink? Breathing has characteristic rhythms for different conditions of the total cell structure. You must keep this in mind when you design devices to be used and occupied by this human bundle of cells. You must always remember the pulse and the needs of the component cells.

I'll use the shot-effect generator again, Bickel thought.

He leaned into the organized clutter of the Ox, clipped a lead onto the temporary input, threaded the lead out, and draped it to one side.

The effect and the way to achieve it were still clear in his mind. He had awakened suddenly, not knowing how long he had slept, but feeling refreshed and with this answer filling his mind.

He turned to the computer leads, linked the Ox through a buffer that would feed its impulses into a test-memory bank, co

"Will you at least explain what you're doing, John?" Flattery's voice flowed out of the screen.