by Bill Adams
But I’d assumed that the mercenaries were locked out. They weren’t.
Reopening, the bright arch turned out to be farther than I had imagined—less illuminating—but all of us turned to face it. A few minutes later the mercenaries entered, moving in well-drilled pairs, sneaking along the edges, their weapons raised against the ambush I was glad we hadn’t tried.
We saw the little silhouettes stop, point, and turn what had to be binoculars in our direction. Some went back out, only to return with others. Eventually, fifteen or so came toward us, well dispersed and hard to see. It took a long, long time. The point man, armed with a bow and arrow, had nearly reached the Lagados when the lights went out once more, all but a patch of ceiling panels around the glow of the archway.
Again the immense groan sounded. I touched a wall and it seemed to be resonating with the noise, but that was all. Then the rings of tiles and panels adjacent to my cell came back on, while the center blocks, my floor and ceiling, stayed off. This way I could see the crouching, baffled mercenaries more clearly than before, no ghosts of my own reflection in my way. I could see the other islands again, too, but relit in the new manner; with their central squares out, their cell walls were no longer transparent from my side, instead reflecting the surrounding panels.
Lights out again. It hadn’t quite lost its surprise value. Because this time full darkness returned; the last off-on had been a diversion, covering the reclosing of the archway door.
Now the mercenaries were as lost in the dark as we, backstage at the mystery play.
After a long pause, cells began to light up again, one at a time. Some new displays had been added to the museum; the themes were “primitive weapons” and “military fatigues.” Members of our party were reappearing, too. But there were no islands of adjacent blocks this time; only booth floors and ceilings were lit, and more dimly—no, it was just that the glass walls around them were less transparent, a blue-gray tint overlaid. I understood why the mercenaries kept turning around and around, but Ariel had seen her cell before; why was she—?
Then it was my turn, and I understood. The squares above and below me blazed to life, and with all the light coming from within the cell, the outside world was cut off.
My walls had become perfect mirrors, endlessly reflecting each other—four infinite corridors, with partial views of illusory corridors parallel and intersecting. A universal matrix of glass cells, and in each cell a Larkspur uniformed as a Parker, alternately facing me or turned away to face the next, and all of us spinning around, trying to take in the whole.
I stopped, cupped my hands into a tube around one eye, and pressed them against a wall. This created a small transparent window into the larger chamber, which was still blacked out; I could see the faint glow of the other cells. Assuming they were as brightly illuminated as my own, some trick of polarization—shifting laminations within the glass?—was being employed to trap most of the light inside each, maximizing the mirror effect.
I dropped my hand and reentered the illusory honeycomb of Larkspurs. The half-infinity of them facing me looked pretty glum, though the illimitable radiant planes above and below made our faces appear pink and unlined.
I hate floors that glow. Take away all shadows and you don’t seem to be standing on anything. We Larkspurs would all have been floating in unrelieved whiteness except for the faint impression of lines where the image walls met, and a fadeoff of intensity in the middle distance, a foggy receding grayness.
I turned once more, to spooky effect. Precision-drill clones.
Wait a minute. What had happened? Why was only one sub-commissioner facing me now, a vacant corridor behind him? I spun on my heel and put out a hand.
Empty air. This wall had slid up or down, out of sight, its edge flush with ceiling or floor. And before me stretched a long corridor—a real one. Evidently the computer controllers could raise or lower glass walls along any tile edge to make cells, rooms, or hallways at will.
They had lit the floor and ceiling panels down the length of the corridor, making mirrors of the sides and cutting off any view of the larger chamber. The hall ended in a tiny, distant silhouette—another person, or just another reflection. At least it was nice to see no Larkspurs in between. Perhaps there would be a side opening or two near the end. In fact, I realized, there could be many cross-corridors, so long as they were also lit; I wouldn’t be able to tell an intersection from another mirror except at point-blank range. I put out a hand again as I stepped forward—the strange glass could be awfully clear, and I was beginning to calculate the pitfalls—but the way was indeed open. I knew not in what direction, but I walked.
◆◆◆
Ranks of me marched an enfilade of corridors, sandwiched between glowing planes. True geometric planes, mind you—the infinite kind. The figure at the end of the corridor was indeed a reflection in another mirror, just half as far away as he appeared. There was a good stretch of imaginary corridor behind him, the infinite regress beyond that too small to see; he was therefore the sole Larkspur to march against the tide of them marching to my right and left.
But suddenly the tide broke. I stepped into a new square and only one Larkspur followed me, on the right. So the left was a real corridor and—I reached out a hand confidently and stubbed all the fingers—there was a real piece of clear glass in my way. I swore at it. As I’d feared, unpolarized panes, when lit on both sides, were virtually invisible.
The next cross-corridor, however, was not only lit but also open. I took the right turn, saw a head-on reflection a few tiles away, but was given another turn before that dead end. Left, into a long stretch indeed, with a side view of Friar Francisco at the end of it. I called out, but he walked off to the right and disappeared, and when I chased him I ran head-on into another clear pane.
Then my corridor was blacked out.
This was indeed a looking-glass world: you saw much more clearly in the dark. The unlit side of a glass wall was not a mirror; I was still enclosed, but now the panes were transparent. I could once again see the great ebony-tiled chamber around me. Not far away, a mercenary in fatigues was walking along a path of lit tiles parallel to the course I’d been walking a moment before. From this side of the glass, polarization made his corridor appear dimmer than mine had been, but there was no other indication that anything separated us. He couldn’t see me, though—only his own reflection, the same view I saw in the wall beyond him, an infinite regress of mercenaries without a single Larkspur in it.
Other corridors, some with right angle turns in them, could be seen in the other directions, one far away. I could see into them all—Hello, Helen!—but no one could see me. Still, it was an illusion to think I stood outside the picture. There might be many clear layers between us; I might be in a one-block cell again, for all I knew. More looking-glass logic: when I could see the most, I was most likely to run into a wall. Then I heard the great moaning from the upper air again. The maze walls were being reconfigured for me. Perhaps.
Let there be light, said the god in the machine—and there were mirrors.
I walked down the shiny new corridor, looking to right and left. Hello, boys.
Down a short length, turning right and facing myself, another right, another walk, left and a long stretch, right for longer still, a choice of right or left or straight—choose left to avoid doubling back. And on and on. I would lose the soul of an artist soon; I was getting sick of my own reflection.
◆◆◆
I knew something about mazes. When I was in school and steeped in Kanalism, looking forward to that final walk among symbolic scenes that caps one’s initiation—the Shining Fare, our version of the stations of the cross—I had read up on the lore of the famous labyrinths of antiquity, the tricks for solving them.
But of course, if people keep moving the walls, there’s no strategy at all, and no point. It’s all a sham, a wait for the computers running the game to call quits, turn on the lights, drop the walls—
&
nbsp; And leave your party at the mercy of enemies who outnumber you two to one. So, just in case there is an exit, you walk, without knowing what it will look like, as in life. And when random choices are required of you, you make them, as in life…
I had been walking all day, one place or another, and by my reckoning it was now late evening; nor had I slept much the night before, working on the Otis cyberdiagnostics. I was too tired to think well, but I forced myself to memorize a long sequence of turns and the number of blocks between them. Perhaps ten minutes’ worth. Then I retraced my route to see if it matched.
It didn’t.
I experienced something like relief. Proof that it was a sham puzzle. Permission not to think.
◆◆◆
Ibid. From the Latin: “In the same place.”
I turned a corner, and my outstretched hand hit glass. I expected to see my own face and instead found Ruy Lagado standing in a lit corridor perpendicular to mine. The glass between us was invisible—no reflection, no dimming of his side.
Lagado seemed overjoyed to see me, and I welcomed the change myself. He tried to semaphore in some code I didn’t recognize. He couldn’t understand my spacer hand signs either. Not that we had anything to communicate, it was just a basic human urge.
His fat face lit up, and he dug into the pocket of his jacket, coming up with a small notebook and a marker. He began to print something out, clumsily and slowly. Waiting for him to finish, I noticed that the infinite repetition behind him was not of three cells—his, mine, and the empty one at my heels—but six. So there were another three empty blocks between his back and the mirror.
And as I watched, a mercenary appeared in one of them, eerily, walking through what had seemed to be a mirror in its side. He turned and saw us. He had somehow lost his hunting piece, if any, but he had a knife, and was unafraid of civilian numbers. He charged.
Shouting, I pounded on the glass that would protect me, trying to warn Lagado. The partition gave a little, it vibrated in that mysterious way that absorbed sound, and the little sociologist heard nothing, two handspans away from me, head bent over his notebook, as the merc charged—
Into a clear glass wall just behind Lagado. Bounced off, fell flat. I was too relieved to laugh. Jumping to his feet again, the enraged soldier tried to kick his way through.
Lagado didn’t hear this either. He looked up, beaming, and showed me what he had printed out: THEY MOVE THE WALLS VERY MISLEADING I THINK.
I nodded politely and pointed over his shoulder, tapping the glass. He didn’t get it, reaching up to tap it, too. So I pointed back over my shoulder and moved sideways. I saw him peer past me, past the empty cell behind me, into the reflections beyond that: my back; his front; and behind him, Who the hell? He spun around, but as he did the adjacent corridor must have been blacked out, because the mercenary disappeared—just Lagado and me again, and more of us—and as Lagado turned back to face me with a “How did you do that?” expression on his face, my hall was blacked out, too, and I could see him jump when he found only a mirror in front of him.
Walking away in the dark, I couldn’t help but think about working this into a stage illusion.
◆◆◆
Ibid. Every now and then another type of mirror stood slantwise across a block, creating a new type of illusion: the corridor would appear to continue forward, when it was actually taking a right-angle turn. I had to be very close before I could see the faint diagonal lines on floor and ceiling that warned me I was actually looking around a corner.
I saw a wasp that way. The plumed giant, as long as a finger and silvery in the white light, flew in jerking zigzags back and forth. The angry curve of its abdomen brought back a sudden, vivid image from childhood: a barbed fishhook going into the ball of my thumb. I didn’t take that turn.
◆◆◆
Ibid. A mercenary walked through one of the seeming side-mirrors far ahead—no, wait a minute—one reflection of me was in the way. He was really behind me, farther in that direction than I had come myself…
I spun around. He wasn’t close, but he’d get closer; that reflection of me had marked a dead end in the direction away from him.
Slowly, enjoying himself, he nocked an arrow behind his huge metal recurve bow. It probably had a forty-kilo throw, but he paced closer. Wanted to see if he could drive it all the way through me, I thought, then realized that an arrow isn’t a bullet. He was minimizing the chance I’d dodge.
I walked toward him.
I had passed other intersections on this corridor. I had to reach one of them, sidestep before he fired, and meanwhile…
I talked sense to him: “You don’t want to mess with a Column official, buddy. Besides, you guys are as lost as we are now, we could help each other, my friends have information you need”—that sort of thing.
Only I didn’t make a sound, just moved my lips.
For a moment I feared he didn’t get it, or would risk one of his few arrows anyway. But then he swore, lowered the bow, and started forward slowly, groping ahead with one hand for a pane of invisible glass. I remembered to look relieved when he spoke, as though realizing I couldn’t hear him. And I tried to look nonchalant about continuing to narrow what was in fact the empty gap between us…
But then I stepped forward another block and the reflections on my right flank didn’t follow. Eureka! I wanted to make the dodge to the right quick and unexpected, maximizing the chance he’d lose track of which intersection I’d taken. Suppressing the childish urge to shout an insult now, I bolted to the side—
To smash my kneecap and my old bum wrist, and bounce off invisible glass. The lateral corridor was closed, and I had involuntarily cried out. The bowman heard me, not twenty meters away; I saw him grin.
Yes, he was lost, yes, he was frustrated, yes, his orders didn’t make much sense anymore, but so what? At least he had permission to kill someone. At least he was still the big man, the man I’d run into under dozens of faces over the years, one more personification of power reduced to lowest terms. I could feel sweat sprouting on my back as the bow came up, and dropped to my knees when I thought he would fire. No good; he caught himself. Adjusted his aim. Let fly.
I had a split-second’s impression of a blur coming toward me, but even as I flinched, another arrow seemed to emerge from a side corridor between us and strike his at a right angle, tip to tip, destroying it utterly—to land, broken and spent, not far from my feet! For an instant the bowman and I stared at each other stupidly; then I jumped up and forward, looking for the next intersection, laughing at my luck.
He’d been around a corner all the time, a diagonal mirror waiting to smash his arrow! I don’t know if he figured it out, but he did come running, to be momentarily twinned as he made the turn, his face working furiously. But by then I’d already heard the sound of my deliverance, that immense moaning, and for the first time I saw a wall move, the edge of it anyway, a sheet of impenetrable glass rising between him and me.
The bowman saw it, too, came up to it kicking and swearing like a schoolboy—but now I didn’t hear a thing.
He raved on. It was so stupid. What had he been deprived of? How could he work up so much fury over it? I’d only been terrified before; now, I was irked.
I stepped close to the glass between us, adopted a perplexed and almost pitying expression, and pointed contemptuously down the new lateral corridor that had opened to my left. He swore some more, soundlessly. I shook my head, sneered, and jabbed my finger to the left again.
He hadn’t calmed down, exactly, his face still crimson, but he was tracking again. Why didn’t I just make my escape? What the hell could I possibly be trying to show him? He couldn’t see anything. Not yet.
One hand on the sheathed knife he obviously didn’t need, he stepped to the side of the frame on my right in order to get the best possible angle on the corridor opposite. I joined him, a half step away from the glass, as if to get out of the way. Still unable to see anything, he presse
d his face close to the glass, closer, almost touching—
And I elbowed the flexible partition with the full weight of my body, sending him staggering back with a bloody nose.
Oh, I howled. A master of subtle comedy. I had to lean against the Larkspur next to me, I was laughing so hard, while Bloody Nose threw himself against the wall again and again like a madman. I demonstrated the obscene hand-gestures of various planets for him and walked away, still laughing.
You had to be there.
◆◆◆
Soon I slowed to a stroll. Hurrying, you might smash your face. Especially when your corridor was blacked out. Slow down and observe the lit-up hallways around you, so near and yet so far.
Hello. I looked through clear glass. A new feature, displayed in an odd little loopway.
A papery mass hung from one ceiling panel, and giant wasps-of-paradise circled it in the erratic manner I’d noticed earlier. It was a hive, all right, surprisingly small; I was fascinated by the way the wasps’ “plumes” rolled up into nothing at all just before they entered their nest. But they swarmed out as fast as they went in. And busy bees are not always happy bees.
I had a thought. The other hive I’d seen was near the entrance, back when it was open. There’d been no walls, then, and few lights. And that had been the norm for—how long? Centuries, perhaps. The burning white panel above their hive was bound to disturb and threaten the wasps. I was glad of the glass between us.
Especially when my own corridor lit up again, and they could see me. One flew near and instinct made me step back, unable to see the protective glass I knew was there. And now, beyond the hive, Bloody Nose appeared, another arrow nocked in his bow. He could see me, but couldn’t know if he had a genuinely clear shot. He was still furious, still brainless, and now enraged to discover another concealed corner as he entered the loop.
