Spacetime Donuts Read Free Page B

hand.
    "Take this," he said. "It'll help you study," and then he was gone.
    It was a small pill the size of an aspirin tablet. "ZZ-74," Vernor murmured reverently, and swallowed it.
    He spent the rest of the night wandering the streets of Dreamtown. ZZ-74 was different . . . a new place. Around dawn, he returned to the library. It was locked for the night and he sat on the steps. What had happened during the last twelve hours? He recalled a phrase from a book called Ascent to the Absolute , " . . . of some of our packed thoughts it is as proper to say that they are very rich in distinct items as that they are wholly void of any distinct items at all . . . " What was ZZ-74? What was anything? That night, Vernor Maxwell became an Angel.
    He spent the next day recuperating, and the day after he went in for his test. The Angels' operation had expanded to include a whole building, christened the Experimental Metaphysics, or EM, building. It was not that a building's worth of technicians, secretaries, data analysts, standing committees, etc. was in any way necessary for the Angels' activities. It was just that so little was happening in the Drones' lives that they came hungrily buzzing around when there was a scent of real action.
    At the EM building, Vernor found a few other young Dreamers applying for membership in the Angels. Only one besides Vernor made it through the initial screening to be sent upstairs for a machine test. She was a pretty woman, and they rode up in the elevator together.
    Vernor looked at her hungrily. They might both be dead in an hour. Sadly he compared their healthy young bodies, imagining the delights they could give each other. He was practically a virgin . . . he'd had his share of playful romps, but never a real liaison. He could make out the shape of her privates through the taut fabric of her pants. He moaned softly.
    "Are you scared?" she asked suddenly. He raised his eyes from her crotch to her face. She was looking at him pleasantly, openly. "Because I am," she continued. "I'm not going to do it. I just decided."
    "You're not . . . " he said, breaking the eye contact. "Oh, I'll do it. I met Andy Silver. He told me it would be easy for me." As he said these words they sounded false to him. At the advice of a madman he was going to plug his brain into the world's biggest machine?
    "You met him?" The girl was interested, "What was he like?" The elevator was coasting to a stop.
    "Weird. We got high and he gave me some ZZ-74." Saying the name of the magic drug worked like a charm on Vernor. Suddenly his confidence returned and he stepped from the elevator. "What's your name?" he said, holding the door.
    "Alice," she said. "Alice Gajary."
    He hesitated a moment longer. "And you're going back down?" She nodded. "If I make it can I come see you tonight?" She nodded again, and as the elevator doors closed she told him her address.
    "32 Mao Street. Come for supper." And then she was gone.
    A white-coated lady beckoned to Vernor and he followed the coat down the hall. The guide nodded at the various rooms they passed, explaining their functions. The artificial intelligence laboratory caught his eye, it was a whole roomful of marvelous looking technical devices. A man was sitting at a bench cutting a thick sheet of plastic with a heavy-duty industrial laser. Safety precautions seemed to be minimal here.
    "And here," the guide was suddenly saying, "is where you . . . drool or fly." She opened a door and he entered to find two men waiting for him. One was a technician bent over a bank of dials, the other was a Japanese man wearing street clothes.
    "My name is Moto-O," the latter said, stepping forward. "I am newest Angel and will supervise test." No smiles.
    Vernor sat down in the chair they indicated. He started violently when the technician slipped a plug into the socket at the base of his skull, but Moto-O gestured reassuringly.
    "Phizwhiz not turned on, Mr. Maxwell," Moto-O said. "You