The captain had just finished speaking with Broto, the Ramiran ambassador to Gatari. An elderly woman, the white hair on her face and neck contrasting sharply with her ebony skin, Broto had seemed genuinely distressed by the plight of Hunter’s team. The ambassador had promised to bring immediate diplomatic pressure to bear. She’d also undertaken to try and contact Grand Trader Haji, currently on Lega, in the hope that his influence might make a difference.
Broto’s pessimism had been plain, though she tried to hide it. There was no quick way to contact Haji – the Matans had no technology capable of sending messages across the vast distances between their colonies, so any interstellar communiques had to be physically taken into Vitana’s monoliths and teleported to their target planets. That took time to arrange, then Haji’s response would take the same time coming back, then the ponderous wheels of bureaucracy had to be set in motion …
It would be too late.
Hunter rose slowly, her mind scrabbling for an alternative solution. Might Chamonix be able to help? Surely not while she was up in space, and probably not even if she were here. The hybrid’s powers, by her own admission, weren’t what they had been. Could Nomi be persuaded? Bribed, even? Hunter doubted it, but it may be the only plan worth trying.
Except, of course, for the default plan. Wait and hope.
She stepped over to the doorway of the communication booth she’d been given. The door itself had been left open, so that the young aide, Rolo, could hear what was said. Initially, he’d insisted on hovering by her shoulder while she spoke, but had reluctantly granted her the illusion of privacy when she’d asked for it, retreating to just outside the booth.
Other than the two of them, the circular Social Centre was all but empty; a pair of young females eyeing her with undisguised curiosity from a table at the far end of the room were the only other occupants.
Have people been ordered to keep away from me? Hunter wondered. Or is it by choice?
“Finished?” asked Rolo, stepping forward to stand in plain view. He seemed determined to say as little as possible.
“For the moment.” Hunter abruptly decided to try a long shot. “What do you think of the little trap that Nomi’s sprung? She’s putting innocent lives at risk for her own political gain. Perhaps if you spoke to her on my behalf, as one of her own people, you might be able to…”
As she spoke, Rolo had crossed both arms before him, fists clenched. This gesture, Hunter knew, was considered highly impolite, a crude demand for silence.
“I should have been delighted if no alien had ever stained Gataran soil with their blood,” he said, open spite breaking through his screen of diffident neutrality. “But there is a price to pay for forcing oneself where one does not belong. Would you like to return to the studio?”
Hunter swept past the man without a word. She had no time to waste lecturing a xenophobe, nor energy to spare on futile anger at his words. Eight of her crew were fighting for their lives, and she didn’t want to miss another second of their struggle.
If she couldn’t help them, then she would at least bear witness to what took place.
* * *
Bala was the first to notice Annie’s absence. Rounding the last bend in the tunnel, she emerged into the dim light and found five of her crewmates brushing themselves down and taking in their new location, a passageway much the same as the one they’d left behind.
The scientist wanted to check that everyone had made it through before thinking too much about the road ahead. As expected, Hisano followed mere moments later. Bala helped the Japanese technician out of the tunnel, looking expectantly past her for the last of the party. But Annabelle Grace was nowhere to be seen.
It only took a few seconds for concern to set in. Bala leaned into the tunnel and called Annie’s name, but no response was forthcoming. The rest of the group, realising what was happening, gathered around the tunnel, concern on every face.
“Could she have taken a wrong turning?” wondered Rivers, voice tight with tension. “Hisano, she should have been right behind you. What did you notice?”
Hisano frowned. “I don’t remember hearing anything unusual, but I was just focused on following the rest of you. I wasn’t thinking about her.” She placed a delicate hand to her head. “It’s my fault. I’ll go back and find her myself.”
“Wait,” cut in Rivers. “It’s no-one’s fault, and Iris is still the best qualified to search.” She turned to the doctor. “Check every branch, and don’t hesitate to come back for help if you need it. I can hardly imagine -”
Bala raised a hand. “Quiet a second. Listen.”
A frantic scrabbling could be heard coming from the tunnel. Initially barely audible, it increased rapidly in volume until Annie shot out of the opening and onto the ground at their feet: clothes torn, skin scratched, gasping for breath.
“Thank goodness!” Relief and concern mingled in Rivers’ voice. “What happened to you?”
“Close the door!” cried Annie. “Quick, quick!” Lurching to her feet, she slammed the bronze disc shut herself, sliding the bolt into place. She backed up slowly, arms spread to draw her friends with her. “It’s after us…”
“We need details, Annie,” Bala prompted, in as soothing a tone as she could muster. “Something chased you?”
“Yeah.” The technician’s eyes, wide and wild, were still fixed on the little door. “That sound I heard before? It was some kinda, some kinda monster! Swirling eyes, glinting steel in the darkness. I only just escaped…”
Bala had doubted Annie earlier when she claimed to have heard something behind them. One’s ears could play tricks in a place like this, and the young woman was prone to flights of fancy.
Those doubts were gone. Annie’s fear was palpable and contagious; Bala felt her own pulse quicken, but she forced herself to step forward and take a position between the rest of the team and the door.
“Careful!” Annie cautioned, but Bala again raised a hand for silence. She trained her ears on the now-concealed network of tunnels that lay before them, her knees slightly bent and hands raised ready for a fight.
But there was nothing to be heard.
“I think,” said Rivers softly, “that it may be best not to linger here. Ki, would you take the lead, please? Bala, watch our backs. And Annie, I want to know every detail about this ‘monster’ that’s pursuing us…”
They began to work their way along the new corridor. After taking more than a few deep breaths to steady herself, Annie dutifully filled in the details, relating every sight and sound she could recall.
“Interesting,” mused Rivers. “Surely not a naturally occurring creature. I suspect an element of showmanship. The cloud of darkness is an effect our own stage magicians are well familiar with. And inside that? Most likely a Gataran in a costume.”
“It looked way too spindly for that,” said Annie, pausing to take an anxious glance back the way they’d come. The tunnel door was now hidden from view by a bend in the passageway. “I mean like a skeleton, almost, and the Matan races are all pretty beefy.”
“They’re stockier than humans, on average,” said Bala, “but I daresay they have just as much physical diversity as we do. Thin Gatarans will exist.” She laid a reassuring hand on Annie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep watching.”
“I’m not trying to downplay this new threat,” Rivers clarified. “However, it’s important that we demystify it. We’re up against flesh and blood, however cunningly disguised. It’s neither supernatural nor invincible, and if we have to face it, we’ll win.”
Annie gulped and nodded. “Right. Gotcha. Thanks, guys. It’s just hard to think straight when something like that’s in front of you.”
They followed the passage for perhaps a hundred yards – numerous twists and turns made it difficult to judge – before meeting their next challenge.
Bala, still bringing up the rear, heard her crewmates’ gasps and groans of consternation even before she stepped out into a long,
semi-cylindrical chamber. The ground was still rough and rocky, but the ceiling was a smooth white arch overhead.
Before them lay another pit. Like the last one they’d seen, it stretched from one wall to the other, and was deep enough and dark enough that their one remaining torch couldn’t find the bottom. It was substantially larger, being perhaps four times as far across, but this was not the most important difference.
There was no bridge.
“You gotta be kidding me,” said Annie. “They want us to turn round and head all the way back? No fair!”
Bala wouldn’t have used those exact words, but she certainly agreed with the sentiment.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” cautioned Rivers. “This is still a test, just as it was during Examination 1. It’s most likely that there is a way forward – we just need to find it. I want every inch of this room studied. Look for any irregularities, no matter how small. I believe I shall examine this pit…”
“Be careful by the edge,” said Bala. “The floor is a little treacherous here.” A light carpet of loose stones scrunched beneath their feet when they moved, most of them little more than pebbles. Bala picked one up at random and examined it. Unremarkable specimen, she thought. Jagged and uneven, certainly no evidence of design, but there is something strange about it. What?
The answer, once it came to her, was glaringly obvious. This pebble, together with all of its cousins, was a slightly lighter shade of grey than the stone of the floor. They’d evidently been brought in here from elsewhere and placed very deliberately on the ground. Part of the solution to this puzzle? Bala’s instincts told her: “yes”.
The scientist felt a familiar sensation: a slight buzz around the edges of her mind, a frisson of intellectual excitement. She’d felt it many times before, when grappling with scientific mysteries, and it had always meant the same thing – that she already knew the solution, and now just needed to elevate it to her conscious awareness. This couldn’t be done by force; Bala lightly held the details of the problem in her mind as she gazed about the strange room, paying little heed to her friends as they investigated various nooks and crannies.
The pale arc of the ceiling was striking for its smooth, artificial quality. This was significant too, she thought. The only breaks in the perfect curvature were a handful of little indentations. Each of these held a camera, a reminder that their plight was being recorded for the amusement of strangers.
Annie had seen the cameras too. Impulsively, she grabbed a decent-sized pebble and flung it at the nearest of the mechanical spies. Her aim was good, the projectile striking its target with a little crack before dropping into the pit below.
“Heartless jackasses,” spat the redhead. “Planetful of pervs. Got nothing better to do than watch us suffer…”
Things abruptly clicked into place for Bala. “Thank you, Annie. I believe that’s the answer.”
Annie looked blank. “What is?”
For answer, the scientist scooped up a big handful of stones. Stepping close to the edge of the pit, she flung them upwards and outwards.
“That’s real pretty,” said Annie, watching as the little pebbles silently fell past them and vanished from view, “but not real helpful.”
“Is it not?” Bala pointed above them. “Look carefully.”
The technician looked. After a moment, her fiery brows knit in puzzlement. “Some of the stones’ve stuck to the ceiling. What could be keeping them … oh!” Comprehension dawned. “More fun with gravity, right?”
“Exactly. It’s easy to forget that the boundaries between the possible and the impossible are drawn up a little differently here.”
“Good work, Bala,” said Rivers approvingly. “Clearly, we need to think outside the box if we’re to escape this labyrinth. Now, not all the stones you threw have remained in position, so Matan anti-gravity doesn’t cover the whole surface; I suspect that there’s a very specific path across. We need to locate the start of that path; spread out and check the walls thoroughly.”
Initially, the women were frustrated in their search. It took a little more lateral thinking to find the last piece of the solution. Kiaya Ferguson made the breakthrough this time. Reaching over the lip of the pit she found nothing, but when she dropped more of the pebbles at a point just next to the right-hand wall they fell about twelve feet and then stuck in place.
“Leap of faith,” said Ferguson, fingering the little crucifix she wore at her throat. “We gotta step off the edge and trust in their anti-grav to do the rest.”
Bala nodded. “Fine. I’ll go first.” She was plainly the best qualified for physical feats, albeit no more likely to survive a thousand-foot drop than anyone else. “Help me clear the food and drink from my pack – I’m going to fill it with pebbles. We may need them.”
“To guide us across?” asked Hisano.
“Exactly.”
“The next best thing to a trail of breadcrumbs,” Annie quipped.
Soon, Bala stood at the edge of the pit, one hand resting lightly on the wall to her right. She had never been afraid of heights, but her every instinct told her that stepping forward would be a very bad idea. The sides of the shaft were straight, the surface largely smooth. There were one or two bumpy patches, but nothing to grab a hold of if things went wrong. The only thing standing between herself and certain death would be alien technology she couldn’t begin to comprehend.
She was aware of the eyes of her friends upon her. If she kept dithering on the edge she was liable to wreck their equanimity as well as her own. Simply jumping was an unnecessary risk, though. Instead, she sat down and swung her feet over so that they were dangling over the pit. Next, she rolled onto her belly and slowly lowered herself, until she was hanging by her fingers. The area affected by anti-gravity should begin just a couple of yards beneath her toes now.
Bala took a single look down to check that she was definitely in the right place. Her heart quickened at the sight of the deadly drop beneath her, but the tell-tale pebbles were right there, seemingly glued to the wall of the pit.
Before she had the chance to change her mind, Bala let go.
There was a lurch in her stomach, and a rush of air. She heard gasps from above her. Panic and despair flooded her mind – of course, she would plummet to her death, what else had she expected?
Then she was skidding to a halt, just a few yards below ground level. The pull of the planet’s gravity vanished, to be replaced by a new force tying her to the side of the yawning chasm.
“My God!” Annie shouted from above her. “You okay down there, buddy?”
“Yes…” Bala decided to say nothing more until her heart-rate was back to something approaching normal. She began to test the boundaries of the force that kept her from death.
Sitting up, Bala felt a wave of dizziness. She quickly ducked her head back down and explored with her hands instead. Stretching out to either side, she discovered a small weightless buffer zone; beyond that, gravity functioned as normal.
“It’s like a tube of gravity,” she reported. “A tunnel. I wouldn’t recommend standing up, but if we crawl we should be fine.” She fished a handful of pebbles from her pack and threw them experimentally down past her feet. “I think the tunnel turns onto the right-hand wall just below me.”
“We’ll join you,” said Rivers.
It took several minutes, but eventually all eight of them made the transition. Even the terrified Gypsy was able to find the courage, helped in part by her mother’s comforting presence below her and in part by screwing her eyes firmly shut.
They began to crawl along the invisible trail on their hands and knees, a bizarre snake of people working their way slowly along the walls of the pit, and soon up onto the broad curve of the ceiling. Bala carefully threw pebbles ahead of them to mark their path, which twisted and turned a few times before reaching an unexpected obstacle.
“Why’ve you stopped?” demanded Annie, second in the line behind Bala. “Don’t say it’s a dead en
d!”
“The opposite,” responded the scientist. “A fork in the path. I’m just checking, but it looks like there are three ways forward … no, here’s a fourth. How are we to know which one to take? I can’t believe it’s an arbitrary choice.”
“Try the leftmost one,” called Iris from the very back of the snake. “This is an intelligence test – those often feature pattern recognition.”
“You think the same sequence as the previous challenge will apply again. Leftmost, rightmost, second left, second right.”
“As plausible as anything…”
“Yes, that’s the answer,” said Rivers. “Do it.”
Bala had worked under Sandra Rivers long enough to recognise when a show of confidence was being employed to cover uncertainty. Still, Iris’ reasoning was sound enough. She started off along the left path; it led them towards the highest point of the chamber.
“You doing good back there, Gypsy Moth?” called Annie.
“Erm, I think so. It’s sort of too weird to be scary, I think? I mean, I’ve never been afraid of falling upwards or sideways, only down. If I can avoid thinking about it too much, I’m okay.”
Bala nodded to herself. She understood what Gypsy meant: the human brain, instinctively thinking of gravity as a simple, omnidirectional force, automatically assigned the direction of that force the label “down”, and the opposite, “up”. It was difficult to imagine plummeting into the dark void currently situated, from their perspective, dead above them.
Every now and then, though, her mind would briefly recalibrate its bearings, swapping those labels around. Then her whole body would tense until the moment passed. As the slow crawl continued, conversation between the group entirely died out. She guessed that each of her companions was facing the same struggle of perspective.
Three more junctions were met and passed, Bala following Iris’ formula in each case. The final junction set them on a direct course for the far side of the pit. Paradoxically, her tension grew the closer she came to that relative safety; would the artificial gravity field vanish when they were inches away from their goal, a cruel joke at their expense?
Amygdala Page 22
