Infinity One Read Online Free PDF Page B

starting this? What are you trying to do?” “You know we all love you,” said Lydia.
    “We hate to see you not thinking clearly, Father,” Lynx said.
    “Weren’t you planning to run out all along?” said Mark. “Wait! Stop! Wait!”
    “Strictly as a matter of—”
    Voigtland rushed into the control room and pulled the Juan-cube from the slot.
    “We’re trying to explain to you, dear—”
    He pulled the Lydia-cube, the Mark-cube, the Lynx-cube, the father-cube.
    The ship was silent.
    He crouched, gasping, sweat-soaked, face rigid, eyes clenched tight shut, waiting for the shouting in his skull to die away.

    An hour later, when he was calm again, he began setting up his ultrawave call, tapping out the frequency that the underground would probably be using, if any underground existed. The tachyon-beam sprang across the void, an all but instantaneous carrier wave, and he heard cracklings, and then a guarded voice saying, “Four Nine Eight Three, we read your signal, do you read me? This is Four Nine Eight Three, come in, come in, who are you?” “Voigtland,” he said. “President Voigtland, calling Juan. Can you get Juan on the line?”
    “Give me your numbers, and—”
    “What numbers? This is Voigtland. I’m I don’t know how many billion miles out in space, and I want to talk to Juan. Get me Juan. Get me Juan."
    “You wait,” the voice said.
    Voigtland waited, while the ultrawave spewed energy wantonly into the void. He heard clickings, scrapings, clatterings. “You still there?” the voice said, after a while. “We’re patching him in. But be quick. He’s busy.” “Well? Who is it?” Juan’s voice, beyond doubt. “Tom here. Tom Voigtland, Juan!”
    “It’s really you?” Coldly. From a billion parsecs away, from some other universe. “Enjoying your trip, Tom?” “I had to call. To find out ... to find out . . . how it was going, how everybody is. How’s Mark ... Lydia.. . you...”
    “Mark’s dead. Killed the second week, trying to blow up McAllister in a parade.”
    “Oh. Oh.”
    “Lydia and Lynx are in prison somewhere. Most of the others are dead. Maybe ten of ms left, and they’ll get us soon, too. Of course, there’s you.”
    “Yes.”
    “You bastard,” Juan said quietly. “You rotten bastard. All of us getting rounded up and shot, and you get into your ship and fly away!”
    “They would have killed me too, Juan. They were coming after me. I only just made it.”
    “You should have stayed,” Juan said.
    “No. No. that isn’t what you just said to me! You told me I did the right thing, that I’d serve as a symbol of resistance, inspiring everybody from my place of exile, a living symbol of the overthrown government—”
    “I said this?”
    “You, yes,” Voigtland told him. “Your cube, anyway.” “Go to hell,” said Juan. “You lunatic bastard.”
    “Your cube—we discussed it, you explained—”
    “Are you crazy, Tom? Listen, those cubes are programmed to tell you whatever you want to hear. Don’t you know that? You want to feel like a hero for running away, they tell you you’re a hero. It’s that simple. How can you sit there and quote what my cube said to you, and make me believe that / said it?”
    “But I. .. you—”
    “Have a nice flight, Tom. Give my love to everybody, wherever you’re going.”
    “I couldn’t just stay there to be killed. What good would it have been? Help me, Juan! What shall I do now? Help me!”
    “I don’t give a damn what you do,” Juan said. “Ask your cubes for help. So long, Tom.”
    “Juan-”
    “So long, you bastard.”
    Contact broke.
    Voigtland sat quietly for a while, pressing his knuckles together. Listen, those cubes are programmed to tell you whatever you want to hear. Don't you know that? You want to feel like a hero for running away, they tell you yotCre a hero. And if you want to feel like a v illain ? They tell you that too. They meet all needs. They aren’t people. They’re cubes.
    He