Clifford Simak - Project Pope

'The worm probably is much stronger than the two of us. They may be exclusively worm doors. The worms may be the only things that have the strength to open the doors.

'We're fairly sure, said Jill, 'that this place is not Heaven. But we have no proof. We can't just go back and say it isn't Heaven. Before we go back, we must have proof. If I only had a camera.

— We had to hold down weight, said Whisperer. We knew not what we'd find. We travel light and fast.

— What think our equation friends of this? asked Tennyson.

— They stand much amazed.

— So do we, said Jill.

'Maybe photographs alone, said Tennyson, 'would not be acceptable proof. Photographs you can get anywhere at all. We have to do better than a handful of pictures.

They made a circuit of the square and found nothing else. 'We're trapped in here, said Jill, 'with only one way out, those mouse holes that the worms use. We could have Whisperer float over all of this and see what's on the other side. There must be another side.

'So could the equation folk, said Tennyson. 'They can float in the air, but at the moment I would hate to have us divide our forces. I have a feeling we should stick together.

Far down the plaza another worm came out of a tunnel and came straight toward them, but it swerved to pass them by to reach another of the mouse holes. Rearing, it passed through the hole and disappeared.

'I'm not certain I would want to use one of those holes, said Jill. 'All that ever seems to go through them are worms.

'The worms seem to have little interest in us.

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

'I wonder, said Tennyson, paying no attention to what she had said. - Whisperer, could you ask one of our equation friends to squat down a bit so I could climb up on him. Then he could float me up' to one of the holes.

'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 Tennyson. I wouldn't ask it, but those holes are out of reach for us.

— 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, Tennyson told Jill.

'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.

Tennyson made a running leap and landed spread-eagled on the quivering surface of the cube. Jill reached down a hand and helped him scramble up beside her. They sat together, clinging to one another to retain their balance. The cube ceased some of its quivering and seemed to harden slightly, offering more support. It began to rise slowly in the air, not really rising, but assuming its normal shape, rising from its squat.

The mouse hole was in front of them and Tennyson made an awkward leap for it. He landed on his hands, and knees, swiftly scrabbling around to reach out a hand for Jill, but before he could extend his help, she was there, sprawling beside him.

They rose to their feet and looked about them. The mouse hole was another tunnel, but a short one and there was no door.

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 tunnel behind them, with Whisperer scintillating above the foremost one.

When they reached the other end of the tunnel, they saw that the tunnel floor connected with a broad white road, apparently constructed of the same materials as the walls and towers. It led off into the distance, finally blotted out by the glare of light. It was suspended in midair, with dizzying heights above it and dizzying depths below.

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, Tennyson told himself, was a massive carnival, a riot of dancing color, a gaudily decorated Christmas tree multiplied a million times.

'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 running.

'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 tunnel. When they came up to it, four creatures were waiting for them. The creatures were black cones, dead black, with no highlights in the black, as if the blackness sucked light into it, leaving none to be reflected. They were broad-based and stood five feet high, moving easily but with no hint as to the mechanism that made it possible to move.

At the mouth of the tunnel, just inside it, stood a platform, also black, mounted on wheels.

Three of the cones stood at the back of the platform and, as Jill and Tennyson and the equation folk came up, effectively herded them, without a sound or signal but by some judicious shoving, onto the platform. When Jill would have walked over the platform and back onto the roadway, the fourth cone blocked her doing so, keeping itself in front of her no matter where she turned.

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

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 tunnel, the cones apparently furnishing the motive power.

The platform shot out of the tunnel into another vast space in which there were no columns. A number of roadways, a three-dimensional roadway system, ran in all directions, crossing over one another, looping around one another. Some of the roadways were for vehicles only, most of them platforms powered by the cones, although now and then other vehicles, some of them beetle-shaped and others shaped like flying open arrows, also shared the roads. Other roads seemed to be for pedestrians only. Along these crawled and hopped and skipped and walked and jumped and shambled an array of life. Looking at them, Tennyson remembered the Wayfarer captain and his loathing of all alien forms. Seeing some of those that traveled the pedestrian ways, he could understand something of the captain's loathing. In his time he had come into contact with varied alien life, but never in such horrifying forms as he now was seeing.