The Unwound Way

by Bill Adams

  Perhaps he came from a world without stinging insects. He swatted the first few down with unconcern, reached out to confirm that there was glass between us, worked his mouth disgustedly, and turned back into the swarm.

  I was close enough to see a barb enter the back of his neck. This was news to him, all right, but he still didn’t run; he swung his bow and knocked a half-dozen wasps out of the air.

  I could see how it was going to be, and winced for his resemblance to a human being. I still hated and feared him, but didn’t want to watch.

  And couldn’t look away.

  He swatted out again, the metal bow gleaming like a sword. And swatted out again, as more and more of them dove in to sting. And bounced off the walls, too pained and panicked now to find the one that was really a corridor. And swatted out yet again.

  It had its own rhythm and inevitability, a ballet on the theme of human stupidity and violence. I could almost hear the thrum of the huge wasps, the contrapuntal whistle of the bowstring through the air.

  His face was contorted beyond any mere emotions as the stingers sent their poison into him. His mouth twitched spastically; the long muscles of his arms and legs jerked without intention now, and sent the bow scything through the hive itself. It broke open, and the full swarm boiled out, the long plumes unfurling like lancers’ pennons as the wasps circled and struck, circled and struck.

  When I lost sight of Bloody Nose he was just flopping about. It had been enough to break the spell. It had been too much. My corridor was blacked out again, but I blundered away at high speed, fending off with both hands, full of guilt for having ever wished anyone dead. And for knowing, as I slowed, exhausted, that I would do it again, soon enough. I drifted along, massaging my left wrist; the old break never set right, and impact always makes it ache.

  But what was this? Who were these foxfire wraiths—what was their role in the mystery play? Embodiments of conscience? Ghosts of Christmas Yet To Be?

  Foyle and Helen Hogg-Smythe were sitting in adjacent cells, faintly illuminated in blue. They waved, urging me toward them.

  The space between us was a black unknown, but I tried it and found an opening. I reached a block adjacent to them and the wall between us slid away as another rose in place behind me, two more faint blue panels turning on to link my cell with theirs.

  A wave of weakness came over me. I didn’t actually hit the floor, but that was because they were supporting me; I hadn’t seen them do it, but they had taken my arms. They held me up. They let me gently down.

  Chapter Fifteen

  My wrist still hurt. Someone had given me a ball of gel to squeeze for therapy. It squished out between my fingers and around my thumb as I grasped it, then returned to a sphere when I relaxed my hand. Squeeze—a little pain shooting from my palm up my arm to near the elbow, wrist tendons becoming defined. Relax—a shiny amber ball, heavy, warm in my palm. This was an important activity. In and out of shape, that’s the healing process.

  I sensed feminine warmth, and heard a woman’s voice. “Are you back with us? Do you know where you are?”

  For some reason, I didn’t want to open my eyes. And I realized, with a thrill of panic, that I had no answer to the question.

  “Do you know who you are?”

  Overwhelming relief. But even as I gave the answer, I began to remember that I shouldn’t.

  “Evan Larkspur?”

  The sad laughter of several people. I opened my eyes and saw a simple hospital room. Whitewashed adobe walls, wooden furniture, institutional attempts at homey decoration. Stage center, the square and suddenly familiar shape of my doctor; two male interns or nurses stood attentively behind her. She was a stocky woman with iron-gray hair, brown eyes, deeply tanned and freckled skin. A strong jaw, short lips. She smiled kindly, as if forgiving an infidelity with total understanding. “I had hoped we’d seen the last of these lapses.”

  “It’s coming back to me now,” I said. “But what’s so funny?”

  One of the interns pointed at the cheap reproduction bust on the nightstand: a brooding, effeminate face in plastic. “Sorry. It’s a standard joke, that’s all. The guy in the asylum who thinks he’s Larkspur, or the Consultant. I didn’t mean to laugh.” Sitting up now, I could see the mirror behind the bust. “Doesn’t look much like you, does it? We should take it out of here. You read the name off it and give it back to us every time.”

  “Every time?” I said. “How many times have I lost my memory?”

  My doctor answered carefully. “You’ve never remembered anything coherent from before the crash. But there’ve been five of these other lapses, where you forget everything you’ve learned since. They always pass, Freeman Notwan. More quickly every time.”

  “Yes, I’m…I’m almost with you now.” Horror and disgust accompanied the memories. The human race was divided into Freemen and Citizens now, and ruled by my Nexus classmates grown old, the worst enemies I could possibly have. “Larkspur” was a tin household god. “Notwan” had been something to offer the doctors instead, a variant on Odysseus’s old dodge in Polyphemos’s cave. They knew it was a lie, thought I was an itinerant smuggler, but didn’t care. They were kindly people, but nothing good would have come from telling them the truth. Had it been dumb luck, or a protective mechanism, that had brought my memory back in phases?

  She nodded sadly. A warm, flower-scented breeze entered the room through open windows. She signaled for the others to leave us alone.

  “Aptitude tests tell us you are a competent space-pilot and a profound scholar of language and literature. Do you remember anything about your formative years this time?”

  I shook my head. But in fact I squeezed and relaxed, squeezed and relaxed: the dun plains of Wayback, sun beating down; a night-moth snuffing the candle I read by; a line of kisses up Domina’s white inner thigh; Summerisle solemnly warning me of vast conspiracies and secrets too horrible for mankind. All real, if anything in the universe was real. Training in the navy, boring but real. The edge of a suspend-sleep tank against my hand as I entered it, the cutting edge, the dividing place. After that, nothing real…Hiding in a harem. Sailing a windjammer in a storm. Fighting hijackers and cosmic disaster in space, just as Summerisle had foretold…I felt a wave of revulsion for the last dream, its sickening mock-heroics.

  “You had a great interest in astrophysics,” she said. “Do you remember that?”

  “Astrophysics?” This was new.

  “We gave you access to the library. I’d call it a layman’s interest, nothing too technical.”

  What was she⁠—⁠? Oh, yes. Helter’s bubble universes in praeterspace. A hundred years had passed, but in all the new accumulation of knowledge no mention of universes created by p-space drives. Image of a bubble. Fragile. A dreamworld. But if it popped, what would I find?

  “We think you were a smuggler,” she said. “We see a lot of them here on Far End; we’re at the limit of Column control, and most of us like it that way.” She smiled to reassure me. “And it would explain why you would be traveling space with substandard equipment.”

  “I thought nothing survived the crash.”

  “Your vessel sank in the sea, true. But a crash doesn’t speak well for its spaceworthiness, does it? And there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re also suffering from a suspend-sleep malfunction. At first, to be frank, we thought you irremediably psychotic. But now that you accept the unreality of the trauma dreams, the only problem is concussion amnesia. It’s a loss, but you can start over. There are people who value good pilots here. And let’s say they can supply you with a serviceable ID.”

  “I remember you telling me that before,” I said. “I’m with it, now, thanks. I think it’s best I leave soon.”

  Something kept her in the room—perhaps had kept her from discharging me before—something personal, I thought. “Are you sure there’s nothing else we can help you with? I think you remember more now. You’re certainly more guarded. But you don’t seem happier.”

&
nbsp; “What would it mean,” I asked slowly, “if I couldn’t suppress one of the dreams?” Image of a bubble. “If it’s full of details that are no good, if it’s physically impossible, but still seems as real as the solid memories. Why would I hold on to this one, when I’ve let more attractive ones go?”

  She didn’t probe. She just looked thoughtful. “There is also psychological amnesia. The dream could have just enough truth in it to be an effective mask for something you don’t want to remember. The usual reason is a sense of guilt or shame.”

  I didn’t have anything more to say, and soon she turned to go. A bubble. A mask. Why should I be the only one to survive? An officer could use his codes to commandeer the escape shuttle, might not want to share air and supplies with twenty others…Just the sort of thing you’d expect from an artistic type who’d only fantasized himself the stuff of naval heroes. And it was true, what she’d said. I still didn’t want to believe it, to burst the bubble—a sly, guilty clue from the unconscious?

  I’d rather think that everything was a mask. Couldn’t that be true? Couldn’t a lowlife smuggler prefer to imagine himself the legendary Larkspur? The asylums, I reminded myself, are full of them, and I’d had plenty of time and enough access to the library to build up the story, and think my memory was returning “in phases.” I didn’t look like him, apparently. Why torture myself with guilt for his Lord Jim act, when there was no shred of evidence that I really was⁠—

  “If you’re going to go,” she said, turning back, “don’t forget your keepsake. If it still means nothing to you, it may at least be worth some money.” She opened the nightstand and handed me a small brass disk. “An antique like that.”

  I reached for it with my left hand. Squeezed it, released it. Squeezed it, released it. They probably didn’t use data disks of this kind anymore, I thought—wouldn’t recognize the coding on the case. As she closed the door, I felt the tears begin to come, as I bore down harder and harder, despite the pain, on the log of the survey cruiser Barbarossa, the lost Barbarossa. My ship.

  When the crying became sobbing, they came and shook me. I tried to be quiet, I knew I must be quiet.

  They were shaking me again. “Please wake up, Commissioner, you sound miserable, please.” I had to open my eyes. I was lying on the hard tiled floor, my head in Helen Hogg-Smythe’s lap. Foyle, who had been looking down at us with concern in her face, straightened up and turned her back.

  “Feel better now?” Hogg-Smythe asked. I rolled over and blinked at the huge dark chamber. I could see that everyone had been segregated into dim blue groups of three like ours, most of them far away.

  “That time I flew you⁠…⁠” Foyle said. “Tell me, do you always have such bad dreams?”

  “Only when I sleep.”

  “And who was ‘Barbara’?” Hogg-Smythe wondered. “Or should I ask?”

  “ ‘Barbara’?…No, that would be my barber,” I said. “My last session with him was particularly traumatic.”

  I stood up. There was nowhere to walk, but I stretched my legs.

  “This would be the barber who dyed black roots onto your gray hairs?” Foyle asked.

  “What? Oh, the silver streaks. Ridiculous fashion, isn’t it? But all the rage in the central worlds.”

  “First I’ve heard of it.”

  “Spend a lot of time at official receptions, do you?”

  “Do you? Do Shadow Tribunes?”

  “So contentious, Foyle,” Hogg-Smythe said. “No one would think you were so worried about him a⁠—⁠”

  A green-eyed glare cut this short.

  “I’ve never claimed to be a Shadowman,” I said. “Just a bureaucrat with a few extra political duties. They issue us a cloak and dagger sometimes, in the fringes, but we don’t wear them well…Sorry I conked out on you two. I didn’t get any sleep last night, and all this walking⁠—⁠”

  “Yes, we saw you,” Hogg-Smythe interrupted. “You went about so purposefully, but the mirrors toyed with you. Why didn’t you just⁠—⁠”

  “Stop and reflect?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “Dear Commissioner.”

  “Oh, he’s quick enough.” Foyle turned her back again.

  We looked across the black sea at the other blue islands.

  “How long has it been this way?” I asked. “Everyone celled up, I mean.”

  “Not long,” Foyle said. “But you were out for hours and hours first. I had a long nap, too, then took the watch until you woke up Helen with your twitching and talking.”

  “She’s not quite this rude to anyone but you,” Hogg-Smythe said apologetically.

  “How many hours?”

  “The wristcomps burned out, remember? But it’s been a while. The mercenaries just wouldn’t quit walking. I don’t know, it feels like four or five in the morning now, don’t you think, Helen?”

  “I have no opinion.”

  “Has anything interesting happened?”

  “There was a loud voice,” Hogg-Smythe said. “In Ur-Linguish, we think, but with a heavy accent. Our best guess is that it said ‘Why so long, why so many decades?’ But it didn’t respond to replies.”

  “Anything else?”

  “One of the mercenaries appeared to be unconscious,” Foyle offered. “Some robots, like dogs with hands, dragged him over to share a cell with Ken and Ariel. I thought those two would have the sense to tie him up with his clothes, but they didn’t.”

  “Where? I don’t see them.”

  “That was the last thing. Some of the cells have sunk into the floor, out of sight. Should be our turn soon.”

  “Well, don’t worry. That ‘unconscious’ merc was probably dead; I saw one stung by giant wasps. Did anyone else get trapped with the enemy?”

  “Piet and the Lagados found each other; that made three, which seems to be the magic number. The friar got caught with two soldiers, but they were just talking peaceably as they sank out of sight. They’ll probably want to check back with their superiors before killing a holy man. Funny little scruple—There goes another group.” She pointed.

  I followed the line of her finger and saw a distant three-block cell of mercenaries slowly sink into the floor. The blue light winked out and they were gone.

  “So where do we go from here?” I asked.

  “Helen, you read more about that than I did.”

  “Apparently pilgrims must still go through the whole rite of passage,” Hogg-Smythe said. “Even though our group must be confusing the computers. It would be too much of a coincidence for this to be the right time of year for a Hellway run. But perhaps they’re fitting us in now because we’re six hundred years overdue.”

  “Assuming we do get the standard treatment, what can we expect?”

  “Oh, dear. Remember, I only had time to skim it. We’ve been divided into initial teams of three. Now, each team will be sent through the Hellway’s own closed-circuit transport system to a different place in the wilderness.

  “There are scores of these sub-environments. Testing grounds, all quite different. Their secrets were well kept from generation to generation. Even if your parents and grandparents broke the taboo against preparing you for the Hellway’s surprises, the odds were you wouldn’t face the same tests. Naturally, those library terminals didn’t reveal much either.

  “But the ground rules are simple. Once we exit into a testing ground, our goal is simply to reach the next t-stop. If the path isn’t obvious, the way will be north—I think we’re issued equipment if necessary, including a direction finder.”

  “That’s it? We hike to the next stop?”

  “And solve any problems we face on the way. Learn a lesson, have an unusual experience⁠…⁠”

  “Survive an ordeal,” Foyle suggested.

  “I’m afraid it is all rather vague,” Hogg-Smythe admitted. “The library files we read were intended for children who already knew the moral purpose of the Hellway, whatever that was.

  “Anyway, when we’ve finished ou
r test or adventure, the new transport terminal breaks up our team; each of us is sent to a new place far ahead, with new partners. Which suggests that each subtrek is supposed to last about the same length of time—one or two days. Teams of three or four are preferred, but if one team gets hung up somewhere, it may be given additional reinforcements. And there was a whole section on the social makeup of teams that was hard to follow. ‘A desirable mix of classes.’ ”

  “Of course,” Foyle said. “Masters need servants.”

  “That’s only your hunch, we’ve no evidence. But to continue: the average number of subtreks for each candidate was three, depending on how quickly he got through them. Five or six days total, and then a ceremony of affirmation at the north pole.”

  “Five days would be soon enough to warn the construction base against the mercenaries, if we could contact a satellite as soon as we emerged,” I said. “The merc commander was going to take a week to plan his operation.”

  “We all have at least two chances of being teamed up with mercs before then, however,” Foyle pointed out.

  “But will the mercenaries understand what is going on? Will they know enough to go north? To cover ground at all?” Hogg-Smythe asked.

  “Maybe not,” I said. “And if we are eventually teamed with some of them, they may be willing to keep us alive as translators. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Amen,” said Helen Hogg-Smythe—as we sank through the floor.

  ◆◆◆

  Our walls had become perfect reflectors again. “I hope to God I never see another mirror in my life,” Foyle said. Actually, she looked pretty good in them; disaster suited her. I helped Hogg-Smythe to her feet.

  One panel slid down. What was revealed was not a corridor but a transport-tube car, different in design from those of the Titan city system. We sat down and it began to move, with a moderate but constant acceleration; we probably reached a high velocity, but there were no windows to judge by.

  A robot voice began to address us in confidential tones. The women groaned as the Ur-Linguish words came faster. “It’s not fair,” Foyle complained. “We actually can read the language, but no one speaks it.”