(07) High Rollers


The fueling rod fit the passageway precisely. It moved with habitual precision through it and into the chamber, where Legggs and Jukebox had concealed themselves behind the reactor in the center. The rod extended itself across the chamber and into the reactor's green door, where energy began to flow through it and back to the Mother Ship hovering over Masterson County Park.

The Five Masters of Prax were aware that Legggs and Jukebox were in the chamber. Now that they had collected Bethaus, they each had a human simulation suit befitting their enormous vanity. "Gentlemen, let's go collect our driver and our anthropologist and we can get to work," Archer Prax said. Actually he didn't say it, he just thought it and it communicated as if he'd said it. It works that way on Prax.

The ability to communicate directly, bypassing the spoken word, gave the Masters of Prax an enormous advantage over humans, who were for the most part stuck in a linear language process. The Masters of Prax were of like mind, the way people were before they built the tower of babel by separating intention from meaning. The "old way" was, however, still in place, just deeply unconscious, because it was located in the part of the brain controlling the lower organic functions of the body: digestion, elimination, and procreation. "Did you hear something?" Jukebox asked.

Legggs said, "I don't know."

"I don't know, either. It seemed like it was a voice in my head."

Legggs giggled. "Maybe all this pleasure is driving you crazy."

"There it goes again."

"It didn't by any chance say, 'We are the Masters of Prax?'"

"Goddamn. Something's talking to us inside our heads, Legggs."

"Masters of Prax? What's Prax? Or did it say pricks?"

"Masters of Pricks? I don't think so."

"Silence!" Archer Prax instructed with such force that they both jumped to attention. "We have business to conduct on your planet and we need a driver and an anthropologist. That is why you have been chosen. Serve us well and you will we rewarded with unusual powers."

"What unusual powers?" Legggs asked. "I'd like to be able to drive a stick shift."

"I can teach you that," Jukebox said. "I wish I could sing."

Archer's voice continued to sound inside them with the special charm of schizophrenic hallucination. "As soon as the fueling rod withdraws from the reactor and the tunnel is open, we will come for you." Then the communication ended.

"I guess it's pointless to hide behind this thing," Jukebox said.

"Yea," Legggs agreed. "And we're all hunched over." She started to straighten up and then remembered the feeling she'd had before when she lay down on the floor of the cavern. She fell straight forward, at the last moment putting up her hands and landing in pushup position, then she crumpled to the floor and rolled back and forth. Jukebox watched in awe and consternation because she didn't roll across the floor at normal speed, but at such an accelerated pace her body was a blur. When she stopped she was bristling with energy. "You've got to try this," she said.

Jukebox wanted to try it, but he was still unable to let go of the remnants of Kyle Training that told him he should now be on Orange Alert. To her surprise, Legggs was able to hear his thoughts. "Jesus, Jukebox," she said, "what's the point of being on Orange Alert when you're facing technology so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic?"

"That's Clarke's third law."

"What were his first and second laws?"

"The first one," Jukebox said, "was that when a distinguished old scientist says something's possible, he's almost certainly right. When he says something's impossible, he's very probably wrong. The second one is, the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture past them a little ways, into the impossible."

"Like this, you mean?" Legggs asked, and she resumed rolling at high speed across the floor of the cavern.

Finally, Jukebox admitted to himself that he wasn't going to be able to fight with whatever was going to come through the passageway. He touched the floor first, then lowered himself onto it. "How do you do that?" he asked.

"You just think about it," Legggs said, "and it happens all by itself. There's no separation between thinking about it and doing it."

Suddenly Jukebox took off across the room. He was headed right for the fueling rod. "Watch out!" Legggs yelled. Amazingly, he passed right through it as if it had no substance. "Are you all right?" Legggs asked when he came to a stop.

"Oh boy," Jukebox said. "You gotta try that."

"What did it do to you?"

"It turned me on something fierce."

"So that's why you want me to try it?"

"Uh huh."

"I'm already feeling very, very good," Legggs said.

"You ain't felt nothing yet."

Legggs giggled again and she thought about rolling right through the fueling rod. Her body was suddenly made of pure energy and it flew over the floor like a spotlight, and through the rod. She stopped for just a moment and then she rolled back through it again.

"Do you want to have sex?" Jukebox asked.

"I am having sex," Legggs replied, and she continued rolling back and forth through the fueling rod until it withdrew from the green door of the reactor and back into the passageway.

They became more sober, now, as the whining of the fueling rod retreated away from them, and they were left with the anticipation of some unknown beings, from an unknown world, preparing to come through the passageway. "I'm scared," Legggs said.

"Do you want me to hold you?" Jukebox asked.

She looked at him, sitting on the floor in a state of obvious excitement, and was seized by another of her fits of uncontrollable laughter, pausing once to repeat, "Do you want me to hold you?" and then collapsing into spasms of laughter again.

"I know," Jukebox said resignedly. "It's how you handle the anxiety."

Posted: Tue - May 17, 2005 at 05:50 PM