Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  ‘Uh-uh.’ Steve held up his hand. ‘That’s far enough, Cartographer. Either get back off this bridge and stop following us, or I throw Gorgon’s precious vials into the water. What’ll it be?’

  Sophus stepped back. He addressed Steve in a low, trembling voice. ‘You can’t take our compound. You don’t understand what we’re doing here. How important it is—’

  ‘I’m not here to understand things,’ Steve snarled. ‘I’m here to stop you.’

  ‘I understand your anger,’ Sophus said. ‘I was once like you. They tricked me and trapped me in the Real City. But then I woke up and they explained everything.’

  ‘They brainwashed you.’

  ‘They told me the truth.’

  ‘Ha! What do mathematicians know about truth? Get off the bridge or your precious compound goes in the water!’

  Sophus licked his lips. ‘All right. But let’s make a deal. We need this plank to cross the stream, for our work.’ He swept his torchbeam over the plank. ‘If we promise not to follow you, will you promise to leave it in place? As a gesture of good faith.’

  Steve considered the offer. ‘All right,’ he agreed, covertly placing the toe of his shoe beneath the plank. ‘Good faith.’

  Steve and his subcommittee reached the top of the steps when they heard someone scream, followed by a loud splash.

  ‘Sounds like one of the Cartographers is mapping the stream,’ said Steve. His shock troops laughed.

  Steve glanced back at his troops, remembering their escape from captivity. After he’d stunned Eleanor with the taser, he hurried inside and scraped together a syringeful of DoorWay to drug her with. But she was tougher then she looked. By the time Steve returned, she’d picked herself up out of the mud and escaped. She would go for reinforcements, he knew. Return with hordes of Cartographers and try to recapture him. He needed to get out. Fast.

  But then he’d heard a groan from the lounge. Then another: a cry for help. Two voices. Two captives were awake. If Steve was lucky he could rescue them both; drag them across the yard and into the trees, out of sight. Get them somewhere safe, then train them up.

  That’s what he did, and now those two handpicked soldiers trotted along behind Steve as they made their way through the catacombs. The first one said, ‘I wonder if these tunnels are gazetted in the Te Aro Charter?’ and the second replied, ‘Piperfant cunang.’

  Steve would have preferred to go into battle with someone other than the Council secretary and Kim, Steve’s former opponent in the election campaign. Anyone else, really. But great military leaders worked with the elite strike force they had. And they had acquitted themselves well against the giant.

  ‘I wonder if the legitimacy of our subcommittee extends down here,’ the secretary continued. ‘Are we still in Te Aro? Do you think we’ve exceeded our authority?’

  Steve did not reply. He was concentrating on getting them back to the surface. They came to a fork in the tunnel. Steve believed in making irrational decisions based on intuition and instinct—it made him unpredictable to his enemies—so he swerved to the left without stopping and continued downwards, noting, briefly, that the other passageway sloped up.

  Something nagged at him. He felt he’d seen something important back in the bookshop, some detail or clue, but he didn’t know what. His powerful subconscious urged him to stop and think about it. But they didn’t have time. They needed to flee. Meanwhile the secretary continued to muse aloud. ‘The legal principle here, I think, is Cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos. Whoever owns the soil it is theirs all the way to heaven and down to hell,’ he translated. ‘But that is a principle of property law, not government, and even so I’ve never been happy with it. Does the council’s authority extend all the way through the Earth’s core to the surface on the opposite side of the planet? Preposterous. And, since it mentions heaven and hell, what about the Real City? Does our authority extend there?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Steve replied. The tunnel he’d chosen seemed to be leading deeper into the earth, and he wondered if they should turn back, pick the other direction. No: he couldn’t second-guess himself in front of his troops. If they lost confidence in him, the entire subcommittee could fall apart. ‘Pick up the pace,’ he called, and they hurried down into the dark behind him.

  ‘Why wouldn’t we have legal authority over the Real City?’ the secretary demanded. ‘It’s a legal territory accessed and located within the Aro Valley.’

  ‘The Real City isn’t real,’ Steve explained.

  ‘Why not? We all saw it. The exact same spiral-haunted labyrinth, down to the smallest detail.’

  ‘We only saw it because they drugged us.’

  ‘You only hear radio broadcasts if you intercept the waves with a conductor. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there.’

  ‘Taking DoorWay is like reading a novel,’ Steve explained. ‘The words are real, just like the drug. But when people read they experience profound hallucinations, and the hallucinations are the same, but that doesn’t make the contents of the book real. Destroy all the physical books and the contents are destroyed. That’s what we’re going to do to the Real City. We defeat Gorgon and destroy the drug and the City vanishes.’

  The secretary frowned. ‘By that logic, if we stay within these caves and seal off the outside world so that we can never reach it, does the outside world cease to be real?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Steve.

  ‘Larlet,’ said Kim.

  ‘Speaking of the outside world, we seem to be moving away from it. Are we lost?’

  ‘We are not lost,’ Steve assured him. ‘We’re just exploring alternative routes.’ He paused when they came to another fork in the tunnel. He chose a direction at random and said, ‘This way has a good feel about it.’ He led his troops down it.

  The downward slope became steeper. The air seemed colder. Eventually the secretary said, ‘We’re not in an access tunnel anymore.’ He played his torch over the walls. They were stone, roughly hacked. The floor was smooth. ‘There used to be a quarry in Aro Valley, back in the late nineteenth century,’ he continued. ‘It was mostly open cast, but they dug a few tunnels looking for ores, and this must be one of them. How interesting. And what do you think that terrible stench is?’

  Steve had noticed it too: an alien yet oddly familiar smell that grew stronger, more pungent the deeper they went. His powerful nose identified the odour of brine along with complex aromatic compounds. Whatever was down there was metallic and old.

  Then they came to the end. The tunnel terminated in a wall of bricks. Diagonal wooden beams braced the wall, set against the hard stone floor. The three men swept their torchbeams over the structure.

  ‘The tunnel keeps going past this wall,’ the secretary said. ‘You can feel the breeze.’ He held his hand up near the roof of the tunnel. ‘And you can see the gaps around the edges.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Steve directed his beam of light to the side of the tunnel. There was something scratched into the stone. Words. Names carved into the rock.

  ‘Elizas McKenzie.’ The secretary read them aloud. ‘Augustus Conway. Loyal Smith. Victorian names. Probably the masons who carved the tunnel.’

  ‘Qlip.’

  ‘This wall isn’t Victorian, though.’ Steve rested his palm against it. The bricks were dry and cold. He saw something gleam in the darkness at its base and knelt down to find a wooden clipboard hanging from a rusty nail. There was a single piece of paper on the board; time and the dry air had curled it into a scroll. Steve took a latex glove from his jacket pocket, snapped it on and gently flattened the page. The edges crumbled at his touch.

  It was an official form from the Department of Works and Engineering. The underlined heading read ‘Completion Sheet’. Beneath that, ‘Building or Structure: Underground Reinforced Wall’. Beneath that: ‘Note name of senior inspecting engineer, time, date and any comments.’ Beneath this were columns corresponding to those headings, but the page was blank except for a singl
e entry. ‘M. Ogilvy. 16/08/1974’.

  ‘Sutala,’ said Kim. He nudged Steve and pointed up at the roof.

  The tunnel above their heads was curved, and rent by fissures that swallowed the light. Between these were smooth planes covered with carved pictures: stick figures, some standing, most of them lying down; above the figures were vague sketches: lines, vast shapes. A wave of fear ran through Steve’s heart. He knew now that they were looking at a rough depiction of the Real City. Looming over the sleeping stick figures and the plazas and bridges of the City was a shape, half concealed by the brick wall: a brooding, malignant pattern.

  The Spiral.

  ‘Daylight!’

  ‘Pluqentoil!’

  Steve saw it too. A faint wash of blue colouring the dark. They all cried out and stumbled towards it.

  They’d wandered the tunnels for many hours, until Steve had begun to doubt his own leadership skills. Now he felt vindicated. He hadn’t led them to a lingering death in the darkness after all.

  The tunnel sloped upwards, narrowing. As they trudged on, the light resolved into a series of faint blue outlines illuminating a pile of bulky, square boxes blocking the exit.

  The secretary climbed to the top of the pile, throwing up clouds of dust. ‘It’s someone’s garage,’ he called down. ‘I don’t think anyone’s been in here for years.’

  They cleared a path through the boxes and emerged into a double garage filled with rusting car parts, garden tools and obsolete electrical appliances. The garage’s roller doors were shut. Sheets of Perspex in the roof admitted a murky, underwater light.

  Steve picked his way through the debris covering the floor, knelt by the doors and tugged it up.

  He recognised his surroundings immediately. Central Te Aro. Boston Terrace. The sun was hidden behind dense cloud and the shadows were vague. Steve estimated that the time was 9.28 am.

  ‘The Cartographers will be looking for this.’ He held up the stolen suitcase filled with DoorWay. ‘They’ll watch the streets. We need to hide until dark.’ He gestured at the garage littered with rusting lawnmower blades, the air heavy with the stink of petrol and paint-thinner. ‘This seems like a good place to hole up. Everyone get some rest.’

  ‘What about food?’ the secretary asked.

  ‘Vlay,’ added Kim.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘We haven’t eaten in about sixteen hours. We’re pretty hungry.’

  ‘Hunger is just a very powerful physical craving,’ Steve explained. ‘Try to ignore it.’ He frowned at Kim, who was heading towards the roller doors. ‘Where are you going, soldier? You have your orders.’

  Kim pointed at something. Steve squinted in the light and stepped closer.

  There was a blue envelope taped to one of the doors. Kim tugged it free, inspected it and held it out to Steve. ‘Baal chring.’

  Steve’s name was on the envelope.

  32

  It’s a trap!

  Dear Steve,

  Gorgon wishes to meet with you. Today. Te Aro Archive. 12 pm. Come on time and come alone, with no companions or substitutes or tricks, or everything you care about will be destroyed, utterly.

  Yours,

  A Friend.

  ‘It’s a trap,’ said the secretary.

  Steve agreed and was about to say so, but the secretary wasn’t done. ‘Look there,’ he said, pointing at the note. ‘It tells you to meet Gorgon at 12 pm. But that’s impossible. There’s no such thing as 12 pm.’

  ‘Isn’t 12 pm twelve noon?’

  ‘No.’ The secretary shook his head, saddened by Steve’s ignorance. ‘PM stands for post meridiem. After the meridiem. But twelve is the meridiem. How can you have a time that is both the meridiem and past the meridiem? You can’t. It’s a logical impossibility.’

  Steve turned his back on the secretary and showed Kim the note. ‘I think this is a trap,’ he said. ‘However, if we know it’s a trap then it ceases to become one.’

  ‘Kanb.’

  ‘And if we go and spring this trap we can get something to eat on the way.’

  ‘Ere kanb.’

  ‘Then it’s decided.’ He rubbed this hands together. ‘I’ll do exactly as this note says. I’ll go to the archive all right. Alone, with no tricks or substitutes. But with one slight, subtle twist.’

  ~

  Steve sat cross-legged on the roof of the Community Hall, watching Kim and the secretary approach the archive.

  The park and the Community Hall were deserted. Clouds hung low about the hills. No one had entered or left the archive in the two hours Steve had it under observation.

  Kim and the secretary neared the entrance. The doorway was recessed into the wall of the concrete bunker, atop a short flight of steps. Steve’s troops hesitated before it. They looked back at him; he gave them a cheerful thumbs-up and flapped his hands, urging them into the darkness.

  Kim tried the door. It opened. Steve sipped his soup, which he had purchased from Sufi Soup on his way to the meeting. He’d promised Kim and the secretary soup of their own if their mission was successful. Hunger will sharpen your wits, he assured them.

  He’d worked out a series of signals with the secretary. ‘If you enter the archive and it turns out to be a trap, which it will, scream “It’s a trap” and try to run away,’ Steve instructed. ‘If someone drugs you with DoorWay, scream “I’m drugged”. If someone electroshocks you with a taser, scream “I’ve been electroshocked with a taser”. Or just scream. If Gorgon herself is inside, scream twice. Got it?’

  ‘I have,’ the secretary replied. ‘But there’s a problem. Gorgon is still, technically, the legal Councillor of Te Aro. I work for her. If she’s in the archive then I can’t betray her by signalling you.’

  ‘I see your problem.’ Steve thought for a moment. ‘I have it. If Gorgon’s inside, come back out but don’t signal. You’re not betraying her by not signalling, are you?’

  ‘Isn’t not signalling a form of signal? Wouldn’t that still be a betrayal?’

  Steve sighed. ‘Just signal then. Why does everything have to be so complicated?’

  ‘I won’t betray the rightful Councillor,’ the secretary declared. ‘I won’t signal.’

  ‘Then not signalling will be the signal. Now go. Hurry!’

  Steve waited as his troops shuffled closer to the archive entrance. While he waited, he wondered who had left that note for him in the abandoned garage. Gorgon or one of her lieutenants? How had they known Steve would end up there? There were many secret entrances to the catacombs, and Steve had chosen the path to the garage at random. Impossible to predict. Yet they had. How?

  Also, why set a trap in the archive? If they could predict his movements then why not set a trap for him back in the tunnels? And why make it so obvious? Did Gorgon underestimate Steve’s leadership qualities? His tactical brilliance and willingness to sacrifice his entire team by sending them directly into an ambush? Or was something else playing out here? Schemes within schemes, plans within plans?

  Something else nagged at Steve. He’d seen something during his raid on the bookshop: something significant, but he didn’t know what. His subconscious needled him. He tried to think, to focus. It might be important …

  Then he heard the first scream.

  It was Kim. A series of nonsense words tapering into an incoherent cry of terror which hung in the air for a moment then died away. Steve drank some more soup and waited. Kim’s cowardly howls could mean anything. Steve was relying on the secretary to transmit meaningful information.

  Then the secretary appeared. He emerged from the shadows of the archive doorway and stood, blinking in the sunlight. He looked up at Steve. Steve chewed his bread and looked back.

  The secretary did not make a signal. Steve nodded to show that he understood. Then the secretary pitched forward. He landed face down, a dart embedded between his shoulder blades.

  Did that mean Gorgon was inside? Or just that the secretary couldn’t signal because he was drugged? St
eve didn’t know. The secretary had botched the operation. Typical. At least they now knew that the archive was a trap.

  Sipping his soup, he planned his next move. He’d remain here on the roof, out of sight, and see who emerged from the archive. Next he’d follow Gorgon, or whoever it was, back to their lair. Then he’d rescue some more pilgrims from the Real City, somehow, and train them up as shock troops. Good ones, this time. Then he’d strike a decisive blow of some kind.

  Steve waited. Minutes crawled by. He looked at the secretary sprawled on the concrete. Why didn’t they move him? Were they using him as bait? Did they think Steve would break cover to rescue his fallen comrade? Were they that naive?

  Then he noticed movement in the corner of his vision. There was someone in the park. He ducked down behind the peak of the roof.

  It was a giant, loping through the trees. The same giant Steve had encountered yesterday in the bookshop. It stopped in the middle of the great lawn, took something from its pocket and looked at it, then corrected its direction, heading for the Community Hall.

  Watching the giant, something plucked softly at Steve’s memory. The elusive thought that had been nagging him returned. You saw something, it whispered. Something in the bookshop. Something important.

  Steve cast his mind back to the raid, replaying the scene. They burst into the room. Stunned Sophus and the archivist. Grabbed the suitcase. Fought with the giant. Fled into the labyrinth. Steve’s memory recreated each instant with eidetic detail. He was attacked by the giant, hauled up into the air. Interrogated. Then dropped …

  There! Steve froze the moment in his mind and zoomed in. He was lying on the ground while Kim and the secretary fought the giant. And in the periphery of Steve’s vision was a second man, kneeling on a mattress in the giant’s great shadow; one of the so-called pilgrims lured into the bookshop to be drugged and trapped in the Real City. The man’s face was partially obscured by an outflung hand but Steve could see that his mouth was open; the man was clearly stunned by the violence exploding around him. Steve flipped through more images in his mind, trying to find a clearer picture of the man, and when he did he gasped.