He did not know how far his panic-stricken running had carried him into this new space. He had no idea how far back a door was or even which of the seven doors it was. He had no idea if the bird that had flown through a door before him was in this space or another space.
He looked all around but saw nothing because of the total darkness. Then, lights that seemed to be recessed somewhere on the ceiling came on. But the lights were dim, giving the whole place a ghostly look. He saw that he was in a new corridor by means of the light that now existed. Other lights, little ovals of light that ran along the top and bottom edges of walls on either side of him, also came on. The new lights combined made up dotted lines of light that receded far down a corridor. There were dotted lines of light with gray halos along the walls another line of lights made up of little circles on the ceiling.
He got up and started walking down this corridor, not seeing anything but the lights up above and on each side of him. He held his hands out. Because the lights did not seem to illuminate the surrounding space, they seemed to him to be more like stars shining through the firmament during an otherwise dark night than lights that shined in and illuminated a dark room.
He thought: “I might as well be blind.” He walked from point to point of light. He had no idea where he was going or what he was passing because, except for circles and ovals of light, he could not see anything. He did not even know if he was going back in the direction from which he had come or was heading in some new direction.
He walked in the gloom for what he estimated was an hour. Then, at some point, the lights became brighter. He began to see something of the dimensions and contours of the corridor he was now in. He saw a ledge about five feet from the floor jutting out from the wall on his left. Its edge made a straight line. He kept his eye on the line; and that is why, at a certain point, he saw a swelling on the ledge. It was a lump of something resting on the ledge. The closer he got to the swelling, the more it seemed to turn into something recognizable.
He realized as he drew very close that a bird was there huddled against the wall. Its head was contracted onto its torso. Its wings were folded up tight against its body. And its legs were not even visible. Though he felt it had to be a bird, he also realized that what he saw looked more like an oblong ball than a bird.
Was it the same bird he had seen before, the one that sat behind the windows and opened one and zoomed through the air and through the round door? He didn’t know. He couldn’t possibly tell while the bird sat so still and so hunched up on the ledge.
It was white. Its eyes were closed. Its only movement was the slight shrinking and slight swelling of the body indicating that it was breathing. From where he stood, given the light he had to see by and given the posture of the bird, he did not think this bird looked like an owl. Yet it might be.
He just looked at the bird in that dim light. Its eyes were closed. He wondered if it was asleep or injured. He wondered if it was just resting while waiting to take off again.
As he watched, the lights along the top and bottom edges of the walls on either side seemed to brighten a little bit more than before. He began to be able to make out more of the details of this corridor than he could before. He saw the floor and ceiling for instance which earlier had been lost in the gloom. He saw the walls which, though gray, were visible. He saw that the ledge was part of the wall on his left and continued for quite a while before stopping.
And he saw aspects of the bird that he was not able to see until then. For instance, he saw a trace of red on a feather that crept out from among white feathers on the side of the bird that faced him. He wanted to put his finger on that red feather. He put out his hand with his index finger extended in order to touch it but, before actually touching it, he hesitated and then pulled his hand away. He did not want to scare the bird any more than it was already scared and did not think his touching it would bring it any comfort.
In fact, its breathing had quickened. It was aware of him and with that awareness, he felt sure, came fear. It panted and kept its eyes closed. It seemed to draw ever closer to the wall. It seemed to flatten itself against the wall beside it and, at the same time, to crouch down closer to the ledge.
Sensing that the bird was tired and full of fear, he felt great compassion for it. He too was tired and full of fear. He felt at one with it. It was lost and so was he. It was trapped and so was he. Where it came from and where it would go, he had no idea, but neither did he have any idea about either of those things in relation to himself.
He felt like crying not just for himself but also for the sad fate of the bird. Impelled by his compassion and self-pity, he raised his hand and pushed it slowly towards the bird. He wanted to comfort the little thing. He would have like to coax it onto his hands and wrap his fingers around it and give it the warmth that no kind heart or warm fingers gave to him.
But it seemed not to appreciate his efforts to give it warmth and comfort. When the tips of the fingers of his right hand barely touched the feathers of its exposed shoulder, it began to shake. He pulled away. It continued shaking and, by means of that effort, got up on its feet. Then it stretched its wings. Then it walked forward a few steps. Then it jumped off the ledge and, while falling, spread its wings, flapped them, and flew. It flew in the same direction he had been going, the same direction it was facing. He watched that little bauble of light (the bird, being white, reflected the ever brightening lights all around it quite well) recede into the distance.
As the bird flew away from him, it made a sound that sounded to him at first like someone crying and then, as it got farther and farther away, the sounds it made resembled the words “not yet.” “Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.” The sound was high pitched. It sounded like a howling or a wailing. As the distance between them widened, the sound the bird made diminished steadily in volume and pitch. It became just a murmur and turned into a whisper. Then it became nothing at all.
When the bird first took off, he leaned to the side and put his elbow on the ledge where the bird had been and followed its flight path with his eyes. When he no longer was able to see the bird, he still watched for quite a while out of desire for it to reappear.
He moved out into the middle of the corridor, cupped his hands around his mouth, and called to it, “Here, bird, here. I am waiting for you.”
But the bird did not come back to him from up ahead. Instead, Despair came from behind. Its footsteps sounded to him like water slowly dripping from somewhere high above its landing spot.
He felt Despair come from somewhere far away to somewhere very close. It came on tiptoes. It stalked him. It alone was never confused or alarmed. It was at home in this place. It was at home everywhere.
It came and touched his shoulder just as he had touched the shoulder of that bird. It was mocking him by behaving towards him as he behaved towards the bird. He flinched and took a couple of steps down the corridor. It followed him and touched him on the shoulder again. Where it touched him, he felt his skin burn. He flinched and staggered to the left wall and turned sideways, crouching against the ledge, and wishing he could crawl up there and make himself become small enough to hide or strong enough to be able to fly away.
Despair was patient. When Despair saw that he was not yet ready to follow it, it went away leaving him to wonder about Despair. Standing against the wall of the corridor that held the ledge, he thought: “Despair has places to go that I knew nothing of including this place so far away from Earth and so different from anything I used to know as to be nearly beyond imagining. Yet it knew this place and felt at home here. It knew all the nooks and crannies. It knew the hidden doors.”
He shivered. Feeling temporarily rid of Despair, he walked on. Even though he knew Despair could still be close by and hiding, he walked on, thinking: “Despair could be anywhere at any time. It could come from up ahead. It could come from somewhere far behind.”
He walked down the corridor, trying to forget about despair. He wished he could see that bird a
gain. He wished he could find Sylvia Ridgeway. He would talk to her about Despair. He would like to find out if she knew of it or had been visited by it or had discovered ways of fending it off.
Chapter 24: One-Way Mirrors
The light steadily increased. After a while, he passed under and through a wood molding. Stopping to study it, he got the idea that the molding had once held a door. He examined the spot more carefully. He ran his fingers across the surface of the molding. He found a pair of grooves on the molding on his right side, suggesting places where hinges had been. He found also holes where screws might have been. And, in the recesses that he believed had been created for the attachment of hinges, he saw traces of blue paint.
Having satisfied himself that here there once was a door, he walked under and through the molding and noticed that the corridor became wider and higher once he passed beneath the molding. The corridor was also lit differently. There were also differences in the design and mode of construction.
Though lights running along the top edges of the walls on either side were still there, their spacing was different. They were arranged as groups of three. There would be three lights very close together and then a space and then three more lights. Where the clusters were, there was a very bright light that illuminated quite well everything around them.
The floor and ceiling seemed to be made of big flat slabs of stone each one separated from the ones adjacent to it by a strip a couple of inches wide that was filled with fine gravel. The stone was white. The gravel was red.
There was a wainscoting made of wood painted white on the walls on each side that came up to about his chest and, between the top of that and a molding set about a foot from the ceiling, were flat, shiny, reflective surfaces that reminded him of mirrors. Round bulbs shined above and below the shiny surfaces on each side.
Not too far up ahead, he saw that this corridor ended in a wall that had geometric shapes attached to it that he supposed must be more doors. He braced himself for the doors, the inscriptions that might be on or around them, and the choice that had to be made. Once again, he thought, I walk down a corridor that ends at a set of doors.
Walking down that corridor, in between the mirrors, he felt for some reason like he was a Hindu firewalker except that, in this case, the walls alongside and not the ground beneath were the things that burned.
Turning from side to side, he watched his various reflections make their way through the corridor. The reflections looked from side to side. They looked scared. And behind those were others reflections, also of him. And those reflections too kept looking from side to side. They too looked scared. He saw also another set of reflections behind the second set. And, behind those, still another set of reflections existed.
He began to feel that he was one of many beings, all identical, and all marching down a narrow corridor to get to some other unknown place for reasons altogether vague.
Then, suddenly, the lights along the walls dimmed so much he got the idea they nearly were extinguished. At the same time that happened, lights came on inside of the mirrors, lights that made dotted lines at the top and bottom edges of all the mirrors. They had a reddish glow. And then those lights too went out.
And, when that happened, the reflections went away. The mirrors became windows. He was able to see landscapes on either side.
He looked to his right and saw trees and a river and birds flying in a sky that was pale red with white stars in it. He looked to his left and saw other trees in a line across a reddish horizon and in front of them a pond. Birds hopped and flew from tree to tree.
To his left, he saw the silhouette of something that seemed to be human. It was walking and weaving in and out among the trees and sometimes stopped as if tired; and, when the thing that looked human stopped, it supported itself by leaning against one of the trees.
He pressed his head against one of the squares of glass on his left because he wanted to get a clearer view of the figure he saw walking there. It occurred to him that the figure out there was Sylvia Ridgeway and, if it was, he might be able to figure out a way to get her to notice him.
So he leaned very close to the window. But, instead of getting a clearer view, he nearly lost sight of the figure entirely because his breath fogged up the glass. He moved back a little and grabbed a corner of his jacket and wiped that foggy part. He looked again and caught sight of the figure again, but, once again, in his eagerness to see, he moved too close to the window and made it fog up again. He moved to the next square of glass and looked again. He saw the figure, but that window too fogged up. He went to another window.
He wanted to get closer to the figure and to see it more clearly, but the fogging kept occurring. Then something that made looking out there even more difficult occurred. The lights on his side of the wall came on again. Suddenly the windows reverted to being mirrors and all he saw when trying to see outside was his own reflection. Instead of seeing another world and what it contained, he merely saw his own desperate eyes staring at nothing.
Then the lights on his side went out again while whatever lit up the outside began blinking on and off very rapidly. Strobe lighting replaced the steady lighting of a little while before. And the silhouette he had spotted, because of the strobe effect, appeared to be walking jerkily. The figure moved at an angle away from him. It was heading towards a lake in the far distance. Then the lights on his side went on and began blinking. When the lights inside were on, the lights outside went out and vice versa. He looked alternately at himself through a mirror, moving spasmodically, and at the person outside heading towards a lake and moving spasmodically.
The one who walked between the trees looked more and more human to him; furthermore, it appeared to be a woman. Though he saw her only in silhouette, that silhouette seemed womanly. She wore a dress. Her hair was long. She moved like a woman. She gestured like a woman. When she turned at a certain angle, he saw that there was something jutting out from the left side of her head. It was a flower of some kind.
This woman seemed to notice something in the direction where he was that interested her. She made a slight turn. She began moving away from the trees and the lake. She came straight for him.
The silhouette walked across the velvety ground. Then, at a certain point, when she got very close to him, some kind of indirect lighting hit her, making her become more than just a silhouette. She emerged from the velvety background, ghostly and white.
She came right up to him or, in any case, as close as she could get. She came right up to the glass not directly across from him but a little to the side. And, at this point, when the lights blinked out on his side, she stopped being a silhouette. He saw her. He recognized her from her pictures. It was Sylvia Ridgeway. It had to be.
He looked at this apparition of Sylvia Ridgeway lovingly, admiring her lovely symmetrical face with high cheekbones and full lips and large luminous eyes. Though he doubted she could hear him, he said “Astronaut Ridgeway, is that you?” When she cocked her head and tapped her ear to indicate she could not hear him, he mouthed the words.
She began tapping on the glass that separated them. He could hear the tapping distinctly. It was a very soothing drumbeat.
She pressed her face against the glass and looked at him, no doubt also looking at herself whenever the lights on her side went on, turning the window into a mirror.
And, after a while, she looked around at the walls and ceiling and floor of the corridor where he was. Then, she seemed to see him or, if she was not able to make anything out clearly, she saw something that she thought might have been another human being.
And, seemingly in order to make his image out more clearly, she blew on the glass to make it fog up and bent down for a while, going out of sight, and stood up with a piece of white cloth in her hand, possibly torn from her gown, and began wiping the glass furiously.
He watched all of this with great difficulty because two different images kept alternating. He’d see himself and then her and then himsel
f again. Because the lights inside and out flickered quickly, the two images (one of himself and the other of the other person he was more and more certain was Sylvia Ridgeway) seemed superimposed. Over and over again, he seemed to turn into her and then back into himself again.
He closed his eyes and saw in his mind’s eye two flames burning side by side in a wilderness. A wind blew extinguishing the flames, but could not keep two ghostly trails from rising out of the wicks where the fires were. The wind blew softly. It made the two thin columns of smoke lean over in the opposite direction. And the two columns began twirling. They twirled around one another.
He opened his eyes and saw her still looking at him. She looked at him for a long time. She brought her hands up to the sides of her head in order to block the glare that must have existed on her side. Then, at a certain point, she took her hands away and brought them back to the glass as fists and began banging with the sides of her fists against the glass.
He listened to the dull thudding sound for a while and then got the idea of doing the same. So he made fists out of his hands too and pounded back. He tried to pound in the intervals between the sounds of her pounding. She caught on and began pounding more evenly so that her pounding fell into the gaps between his poundings.
At some point, she dropped her hands and leaned away from the glass and just stood at a slight distance away and looked forlornly at it. Or perhaps she was looking at him. Afraid she would lose hope and go away, he pounded harder.
When it was clear the glass would not succumb to the force of his pounding, he tried communicating with her by signs. He tried to get her to stay where she was. He wanted to investigate each pane of glass in order hopefully to find one that would open.
He began to feel around the edges of each pane of glass while also looking around the edges of the panes. But, by doing what he was doing with his hands, he must have hit a switch or set off an alarm of some kind because immediately the lights in his corridor grew in intensity and became steady, utterly cutting off his view of anything that was outside. Instead of his reflection alternating with a view of the outside, he saw only his own reflection. Astronaut Ridgeway disappeared along with everything else he had been able to see on what he assumed was outside of the corridor, on both sides.
A Theory of Gravity Page 14
