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manually.
| Give it a while. We re learning something aren t we?
| We re learning that Goldsmith has contracted incredibly, Martin said. All
this emptiness.
| What if this is all there is? Carol suggested, turning to look at him. Black
afterimages fled behind her. Carol s eyes were intensely blue. He imagined and
then saw her eyes become part of a shallow lagoon. The lagoon spilled around
her image until he could barely see her through the rippling water. He fought
back the fantasy and it broke up into dust that fell behind with her
afterimages.
| Nobody is completely empty.
| Not even a mass murderer? Carol suggested.
| Not even. Take it from me. Mentally impossible.
| But we could be on the wrong level. Not an entry level.
Martin disagreed with that, too. | Be patient.
| Patience, patience, Carol said. On past incursions Carol had become
childishly enthused, almost frenetic, before their real work began. He saw her
as a spirit of fire, a feminine Anel or afreet of the desert. He quelled that
fantasy before it could manifest.
| Use the time to get accustomed to the rules, Martin suggested.
| You re the one who s eating me up with your eyes, Carol said. I saw that
lagoon.
You almost got me wet.
| I wish, Martin said.
She scowled. | I feel a change coming on do you?
Yes. He pulled down his toolkit and looked at the timer. Thirty seconds. They
could have fully crossed half of the points Margery had mapped, scanning
Goldsmith s entire hypothalamic loci in that time. Perhaps they had to make
several circuits of all the channels to come across what they wanted... But
the central city had never been elusive in past subjects.
| There s something, Martin said, pointing ahead. The sky changed color above
the vertex of endless highways, from dusty blue to black undertinted with gray
orange.
| Looks like a storm, Carol said.
To Martin it resembled furnace glow from a factory or a city on fire seen at
night. It did not look at all hospitable. The blue sky faded with a distinct
whining sound into darkness as if distant machinery had lowered a curtain over
floodlights. Still, the region above the highway, and they in their flight,
seemed cast in the same daylight as before.
Ahead the furnace glow pulsed and shifted as if reflecting red lightning.
Martin had never found occasion to fear the Country; but seeing this he began
to have his doubts. In all previous subjects the city had been a lively if not
a pretty place, never dreadful; this might have been a gate to hell itself.
| We ll go in together, Carol suggested.
| Might as well, at first, Martin agreed.
| Are you worried? she asked.
| You know damned well what I m feeling, Martin said. You re worried, too.
No buffer, she said with a sigh. She flipped over like an airborne ballet
dancer and pointed her finger to the ground. We might all have nightmares
here.
Everything in Martin s experience led him to believe that no harm could come
to them in the Country; on the other hand, being in direct connection with
Goldsmith s mental symbology could conceivably disturb their own interior
landscapes. The effect would almost certainly not be permanent but it would
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not be pleasant, either, if the present scene was any indication.
The living glow filled the sky all around them. The outermost highways
branched off to each side of a vast canyon, of which they could see only the
near edge and the far side.
They remained on the straight center road. Sound surrounded them a continuous
booming as of drums or machines, so tangible they could see the waves rippling
through them and through the road s asphalt.
We re going right over the edge, Martin observed.
They slowed and drifted beyond a rugged tumble of smooth boulders, over the
lip of the canyon.
That mu.st be it, Carol said. The canyon was a crystal lined pit, the crystals
resolving into buildings of all sizes and descriptions, rising from the bottom
of the canyon into a ridge of Manhattan skyline. The city might have stretched
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