The tale of how everyone happened to be on the landing beneath the sealed exit was relatively straightforward. After the octospiders left with Ellie, Benjy ran out into the corridor, screaming and yelling and vainly attacking the rear guard of the octos. Robert joined him and the two of them followed Ellie and the alien contingent all the way to the cathedral room. The gate was open to the fourth tunnel. One octospider held Benjy and Robert off with four long tentacles while the others departed. The final octospider then locked the gate behind itself.
The subway ride was exhilarating for Max. It reminded him of a trip he had made to a large amusement park outside of Little Rock when he was ten years old. The train was suspended above what looked like a metal tape and touched nothing as it sped through the tunnel. Richard conjectured that it was powered in some way by magnetism.
The subway stopped after about two minutes and the door quickly opened. The four explorers looked out at a plain platform, creamy white in color, behind which was an archway about three meters high. “I guess, according to Plan A,” Max said, “Eponine and I should exit here.”
“Yes,” said Richard. “Of course, if the subway doesn’t move again, then Nicole and I will join you shortly.”
Max took Eponine’s hand and stepped gingerly down on the platform. As soon as they were clear of the subway, the door closed. Several seconds later the train sped away.
“Well, isn’t this romantic?” Max said after he and Eponine had waved good-bye to Richard and Nicole. “Here we are, just the two of us, finally all alone.” He put his arms around Eponine and kissed her. “I just want you to know, Frenchie, that I love you. I have no idea where in the fuck we are, but wherever it is, I’m glad to be here with you.”
Eponine laughed. “I had a girlfriend at the orphanage whose fantasy was to be all alone on a desert island with a famous French actor named Marcel du Bois, who had a mammoth chest and arms like tree trunks. I wonder how she would have felt in this place.” She looked around. “I guess we’re supposed to go under the archway.”
Max shrugged. “Unless a white rabbit comes along that we can follow into some kind of a hole.”
On the other side of the archway was a large rectangular room with blue walls. The room was absolutely empty and there was only one exit, through an open doorway into a narrow, illuminated corridor that ran parallel to the subway tunnel. All the walls in this corridor, which continued in both directions for as far as Max and Eponine could see, were the same blue color as in the room behind the archway.
“Which way do we go?” Max asked.
“In this direction I can see what looks like two doors leading away from the subway,” Eponine said, pointing to her right.
“And there are two more this way as well,” Max said, looking left. “Why don’t we walk to the first doorway, look into it, and then decide on a strategy?”
Arm in arm they walked fifty meters down the blue corridor. What they saw when they came to the next doorway dismayed them. Another identical blue corridor, with occasional doorways along its length, stretched in front of them for many meters.
“Shit,” said Max. “We are about to enter some kind of a maze. We damn sure don’t want to get lost.”
“So what do you think we should do?” Eponine asked.
“I think…” Max said, hesitating, “I think we should smoke a cigarette and talk this over.”
Eponine laughed. “I couldn’t agree with you more,” she said.
They proceeded very carefully. Each time they turned into another blue corridor, Max made marks with Eponine’s lipstick on the wall, indicating the entire path back to the room behind the archway. He also insisted that Eponine, who was more adroit with a computer than he was, keep duplicate records on her portable—”In case something comes along that removes my marks,” Max said.
In the beginning their adventure was fun, and the first two times they backtracked to the archway, just to prove they could do it, Max and Eponine felt a certain sense of accomplishment. But after an hour or so, when every turn kept producing another identical blue scene, their excitement began to wane. At length Max and Eponine stopped, sat down on the floor, and shared another cigarette.
“Now, why would any intelligent creature,” Max said, blowing smoke rings into the air, “create a place like this? Either we are unwittingly undergoing a test of some kind—”
“Or there’s something here that they don’t want anybody to find easily,” Eponine finished. She took the cigarette from Max and inhaled deeply. “Now, if that’s the case,” she continued, “then there must be some simple code that defines the location of the special place or thing, a code like one of those ancient combination locks, second right, fourth left, and—”
“Straight on until morning,” Max interrupted with a grin. He kissed Eponine briefly and then stood up. “So what we should do is assume we’re looking for something special and organize our search logically.”
When Eponine was on her feet, she looked at Max with a furrowed brow. “Just exactly what did that last statement of yours mean?”
“I’m not certain,” Max replied with a laugh, “but it sure as hell sounded intelligent.”
Max and Eponine had been walking up and down blue corridors for almost four hours when they decided it was time to eat. They had just started their lunch of Raman food when off to their left, at a full intersection of corridors, they saw something pass. Max jumped to his feet and ran to the intersection. He arrived not more than a few seconds before a tiny vehicle, maybe ten centimeters high, made a right turn into the next nearby hallway. Max scrambled forward and was barely able to see the vehicle disappear under a small archway, cut into the wall of another blue corridor, about twenty meters away.
“Come here,” he yelled at Eponine. “I’ve found something.”
Eponine was quickly beside him. The top of the small archway in the wall was only about twenty-five centimeters above the floor, so both of them had to drop down on their knees, and then bend over some more, to see where the vehicle had gone. What they saw first was fifty or sixty tiny creatures, about the size of ants, climbing out of the buslike vehicle and then scattering in all directions.
“What the hell is this?” Max exclaimed.
“Look, Max,” Eponine said excitedly. “Look carefully… Those little creatures are octospiders… You see… They look just like the one you described to me.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Max said. “You’re right. They must be baby octospiders.”
“I don’t think so,” Eponine replied. “The way they’re going into those little hives, or houses, or whatever. Look, there’s a canal of some kind, and a boat- “
“The camera,” Max shouted. “Go back and get the camera. There’s an entire miniature city here.”
Max and Eponine had taken off their backpacks and other gear, including Eponine’s camera, when they had sat down on the floor to eat. Eponine jumped up and raced back for the camera. Max continued to be fascinated by the complex miniature world he saw on the other side of the archway. A minute later he heard a faint scream and a cold shiver of fear coursed through him.
Max immediately cursed himself for having left his rifle back where they had been eating. He jumped up and ran in the direction of Eponine’s scream. When Max turned the last comer, he stopped sharply. Five octospiders were in front of him in the corridor. One had enwrapped Eponine with three of its tentacles, another had seized Max’s rifle. A third octospider was holding Eponine’s backpack, into which all her personal items had been neatly placed.
The look on her face was sheer terror. “Help me, Max… please,” Eponine entreated.
Max stepped forward but was blocked by two of the octospiders. One of them sent a stream of colored bands around its head. “I don’t understand what the fuck you’re telling me,” Max shouted in frustration. “But you must let her go.”
Like a football halfback, Max darted past the first two octospiders and had almost reached Eponine when h
e felt tentacles coiling around him, pinning his arms to his chest. Struggle was useless. The creature was unbelievably strong.
Three of the octospiders, including the one who had captured Eponine, began to move down the blue corridor away from him. “Max… Max,” the terrified Eponine cried. He could do nothing. After another minute Max could no longer hear Eponine’s cries.
Max was enwrapped for about ten more minutes before he felt the powerful muscles that were holding him relax. “So what happens now?” Max said when he was free. “What are you bastards going to do next?”
One of the octos pointed toward his pack, which was still leaning against the wall where Max had left it. He slumped down beside it and pulled out some food and water. The octospiders talked to each other in color while Max, who understood very well that he was being guarded, ate a few bites of his food.
These corridors are too narrow, he thought, thinking about trying to escape. And those goddamn things are too big, especially with their long tentacles.
The two octospiders did not move from their post for hours. At length Max fell asleep on the floor between them.
When he woke up, Max was alone. He walked cautiously to the first corner and looked both ways down the blue corridor. He saw nothing. After spending a minute studying the lipstick marks on the wall and adding a few scribbles describing the location of the city of the tiny octospiders, Max returned to the room behind the subway platform.
He had no clear idea of what he should do next. Max spent several minutes wandering the blue corridors and yelling Eponine’s name periodically, but his effort was wasted. He eventually decided to sit on the platform and wait for the subway. After more than an hour, Max was almost ready to return to the miniature octospider city when he heard the whoosh of the approaching subway. It was coming from the direction opposite the spiked vertical corridors.
As the subway drew near, he saw Richard and Nicole through the windows. “Max!” they yelled simultaneously, even before the door opened.
Both Richard and Nicole were wildly excited. “We have found it,” Richard exclaimed as he jumped down onto the platform. “A large room, with a dome maybe forty meters high, in rainbow colors. It’s on the other side of the Cylindrical Sea-the subway goes right through the sea in a transparent tunnel…” He paused as the subway whooshed away.
“It has bathrooms and beds and running water,” Nicole added rapidly.
“And fresh food, believe it or not. Some weird kinds of fruits and vegetables, but they’re really great for all—”
“Where’s Eponine?” Nicole said suddenly, interrupting Richard in the middle of his sentence.
“She’s gone,” Max replied tersely.
“Gone?” said Richard. “But how? Where?”
“Your non-hostile friends have kidnapped her,” Max said dryly.
“Whaaat?” said Richard.
Max told the story slowly and accurately, without omitting anything important. Both Richard and Nicole listened attentively until he was finished. “They outsmarted us,” Richard commented at the end, shaking his head.
“Not us,” Max said in frustration. “They outsmarted me. They lulled Ep and me into believing we were solving some kind of puzzle in that maze of blue corridors… Shit. Just shit.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Nicole said quietly, touching Max on the shoulder. “You had no way of knowing.”
“But what colossal stupidity,” Max said, raising his voice. “I bring along a rifle for protection, and where is that rifle when our eight-legged monster friends show up? Leaning against the fucking wall.”
“We were initially in a similar place,” Richard said, “except all our corridors were red instead of blue. Nicole and I explored for about an hour and then returned to the platform. The subway picked us up again in ten minutes and then took us through the Cylindrical Sea.”
“Have you looked any for Eponine?” Nicole asked.
Max nodded. “Sort of. I wandered around and shouted her name a few times.”
“Maybe we should give it another try,” Nicole suggested.
The three friends returned to the world of the blue corridors. When they came to the first intersection, Max explained his lipstick marks on the wall to Richard and Nicole. “I guess we should split up,” Max said. “That would probably be a more efficient way to search for her. Why don’t we meet at the room behind the archway in, say, half an hour?”
At the second corner Max, who was now by himself, found no lipstick map. Puzzled, he tried to remember if he could possibly have failed to make a map at every turn. Or maybe, he never even came this way. While he was deep in thought, he felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Whoa,” said Richard, seeing his friend’s face. “It’s only me. Didn’t you hear me calling your name?”
“No,” said Max, shaking his head.
“I was only two corridors away. There must be fantastic acoustic attenuation in this place. Anyway, neither Nicole nor I found one of your maps when we made our second turn. So we weren’t certain—”
“Shit,” said Max emphatically. “Those clever bastards have cleaned the walls. Don’t you see? They have planned this entire affair from the beginning, and we have done exactly what they expected.”
“But Max,” Richard said, “there’s no way they could have accurately predicted everything we were going to do. We didn’t even know our strategy completely. So how could they?”
“I can’t explain it,” Max said. “But I feel it. Those creatures deliberately waited until Eponine and I were eating before they let us see that vehicle. They knew we would give chase and that they would have a chance to seize Eponine. And somehow they were watching us all the time.”
Even Max agreed mat it was useless to search any longer for Eponine in the maze of blue corridors. “She’s almost certainly not here anymore,” he said dejectedly.
While the trio waited on the platform for the subway, Richard and Nicole told Max more details about the large room with the rainbow dome on the southern side of the Cylindrical Sea. “Okay,” said Max when they were finished, “one connection is clear, even to this Arkansas farm boy. The rainbow in the dome is obviously connected with the rainbow in the sky that distracted Nakamura’s troops. So the rainbow people, whoever they are, don’t want us to get captured. And they don’t want us to starve to death. They’re probably the ones who built the subway-or at least that makes some sense to me. But what is the relationship between the rainbow people and the octospiders?”
“Before you told me about Eponine’s kidnapping,” Richard replied, “I was virtually certain they were one and the same. Now I don’t know. It’s difficult to interpret what you experienced as anything other than a hostile act.”
Max laughed. “Richard, you have such a way with words. Why do you keep giving those ugly bastards the benefit of the doubt? I would have expected it from Nicole,but those octospiders once kept you prisoner for months, sent little creatures up your nose, and probably even tampered with your brain.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Richard said quietly, for what felt like the hundredth time.
“All right,” said Max. “But I think you’re discounting a lot of evidence—”
Max stopped when he heard the familiar whoosh. The subway arrived, heading in the direction of the octospider lair. “Now why is it,” Max said with a trace of sarcasm just before they stepped into the train, “that this subway always happens to be going in the right direction?”
Patrick had managed eventually to talk Robert and Nai into returning to the museum room. It had not been easy. Both the adults and the children had been severely traumatized by the octospider attack. Robert could not sleep at all, and the twins were plagued by dreams from which they would awaken screaming. By the time Richard, Nicole, and Max showed up, the remaining food was almost gone and Patrick had already started formulating contingency plans.
It was a subdued reunion. Both the kidn
appings were discussed at length, leaving all the adults, even Nicole, acutely depressed. There was very little excitement about the rainbow dome in the south. But there was no question about what they should do. Richard summarized their situation succinctly. “At least there’s food under the dome,” he said.
They packed all their belongings in silence. Patrick and Max carried the children down the spiked vertical corridor. The subway appeared soon after everyone was on the platform. It did not stop at either of the two intermediate stations, just as Max had wryly predicted, but instead hurtled on into the transparent tunnel through the Cylindrical Sea. The strange and wonderful sea creatures on the other sides of the tunnel wall, almost certainly all biots, fascinated the children and reminded Richard of his voyage to New York years earlier, when he had come to look for Nicole.
The large chamber under the dome at the other end of the subway line was indeed staggering. Although Benjy and the children were more interested initially in the variety of fresh new food that was spread out along a long table on one side of the room, the adults all wandered around in amazement, not only staring at the brilliant colors of the rainbow far above their heads, but also examining all the alcoves off the back of the platform, where bathrooms and individual sleeping suites were located.
Max marched off the dimensions of the main floor. It was roughly fifty meters wide, and forty meters from the subway platform to the alcove entrances. A few minutes later Patrick came over to talk to Max, who was now standing beside the slot cut into the platform for the subway. Everyone else was discussing the allocation of the sleeping suites.
“I’m sorry about Eponine,” Patrick said, putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
Max shrugged. “In a way it’s worse that Ellie is gone. I don’t know if Robert or Nikki will ever recover completely.”
The two men stood side by side and stared at the long, dark, empty tunnel. “You know, Patrick,” Max said grimly, “I wish I could convince the farmer in me that our troubles are over and that the rainbow people are going to take care of us.”
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