Tidelands: I-Eight (15)
Maze. Door. Pinprick. Room. Elastic Band.
“No, no, Jacques, this is all wrong. How can you have a maze without any forking paths? In order to get lost, people must make choices! That’s the whole point of a maze! But where’s the choice in this! It’s … there is only one route! One way in and out!” Eva spears the plans with robust pokes of the Duc’s index finger. “Who gave you these?”
The Duc’s head gardener just pulls at his forelock apologetically and looks confused.
“The new designer, my Lord.”
“What new designer? I have appointed no …” Is this the new guy that she’d seen from the Duc’s bedroom? Is this Azimuth’s doing? “Where is he?”
Jacques vaguely indicates the entrance to the maze, and Eva stomps off in search of this person, whoever he is. She has no recollection of appointing a new designer – of any designer. The garden is all her own work, something she has come to take great pride in, and the new maze was to be its crowning glory. An intricate puzzle where every cul-de-sac presents a fresh delight: a musical fountain that serves seven different flavours of fruit juice, a tiny golden tree full of exquisitely coloured singing birds, an animated statue of a faun and a nymph disporting naughtily. And now some klutz has ruined it all.
Where is he?
As she turns the first corner, she spots a figure at the very end of the curved avenue of trees, about to round the corner – a tiny figure, no bigger than a child’s.
“Hello? Monsieur …”
She should have thought to ask Jacques his name.
But when she rounds the corner the little figure is already another avenue’s length away, and turning the next.
“Monsieur!”
She jogs on to the next turn, but there again he is ahead of her, and almost again out of sight. He moves surprisingly quickly for a small person.
She increases her speed again, almost to a sprint, and the next is an even longer avenue, at the end of which she spies a small black form, standing there, staring at her: and he is a very curious figure indeed. A tiny gnome-like man – no, not “gnome-like”: a gnome. A little pointy hat, flopped to one side; a full white beard, like a mini Father Christmas; rosy-cheeked and bobble-nosed. He is stood to one side of a tiny door.
“Are … are you the designer?” she asks, walking towards him.
At which the gnome turns, opens the tiny door, and disappears through it.
Eva stands before it, hesitant. It is a door, but not a door; door sized and shaped, that is (more or less), but oddly and disquietingly askew, as if – well, it messes with her head to look at it for long. The angles don’t quite make sense. For it is almost as if the hole exists at a tangent to everything; almost as if some non-Euclidean shape has intruded from a world outside and quite unlike our own – like she has been living in Flatland her whole life, and suddenly some 3D denizen’s foot has come crashing through the ceiling, punching a hole through the plane of existence. But to what purpose?
She bends down and tries to peer into the space which the little figure has disappeared inside – or is it outside? But all is darkness, with no variation in the blackness to indicate that it is itself another form of space. Some sort of exit at least – perhaps – but where to? Out of this world? Out from reality itself?
Not that eighteenth-century France is real, of course, notwithstanding how “real” it looks and feels. The statues and finely crafted topiary; the insects that buzz and flit through the balmy mid-summer afternoon, the tiny water droplets from the fountains spraying out onto the pebbled ground, the koi-filled pools, so faithfully recreated that she can see the Duc’s own rippled reflection staring back at her. Such verisimilitude. Such attention to detail. And yet, she knows, just another finely crafted illusion. And one from which, with a thought, a gesture, she can step out of, back into the day-to-day drudgery of her life in the Arc, of questions and deceits, of the endless playing of games.
Will this lead her back there?
Or on to somewhere else?
Or is this yet another one of Azimuth’s tests? A trick? Another move within The Game?
Always more questions.
Ah well, she has nothing to lose but her chains.
She gets down on her knees and begins to crawl towards it – and as she does so, she begins to get smaller! Or does the door itself get larger?
Ha! Just like—
—Alice!
Eva emerges through the door into a space outside of space.
At least, that’s the best that her mind can do. She feels bodiless, amorphous, as if, having stepped through – into whatever this now is – she has left behind all solidity, all certainty of shape and form.
But there is form – of a sort – and what she had at first taken as unmitigated blackness now begins to resolve itself into structure and outline, though not like any geometry she has ever known. What appears to be a path stretches out below her – in fact, many paths, branching away, and of which this is merely one – or is it above her? Should she follow it? But the path twists and turns, looping this way and that, then back upon itself like a Möbius strip, and where any forward motion merely takes her further away; any sideways motion, back to the centre.
[This way.]
The gnome-like man has gone, and there is now a voice, jagged, staccato, as if straining against some contorting force as it struggles to make itself heard. Not one of her voices, the ones that come at night, nor Azimuth’s smooth tones; this is different, in some way. But impossible to identify its location, emitting now from here, now there, like echoes in a cave, its source jumping and shifting this way and that.
[Over here.]
As if diagnosing her disorientation, there is now a pinprick of light, which at last provides a point of focus, a means of orientation; but it too, despite her efforts, remains both far and near.
[Just focus on it.]
And doing so, she finds, by fixing it with her attention, that she can indeed move toward it – or at least, the pinprick of light appears to be getting bigger.
“Where is this?” she says, and her voice is distorted too, broken and echoless.
[There’ll be time for explanations soon. You’re almost there.]
And as it gets bigger, she realises that the light, though not door-shaped, is in fact also a type of door – and she begins to make out another sort of space beyond it – a room, of some sorts?
[A temporary construct,] the voice explains – reading her thoughts? [It’ll be easier to talk there.]
“And where is there?”
It is indeed a room. And in the room there is no sign of the gnome. Just a woman. A youngish face, long dark hair, dark eyes; quite pretty. And although she is smiling, there is also a strange look in her eyes – something like sadness? Could even be happiness. Eva can’t tell. She’s never been very good with reading faces; but not one, she thinks, that she has ever seen before.
The woman is standing behind one of the room’s only two chairs, a white blouse unbuttoned at the neck, jeans and flat shoes. One hand toys with a red-stoned ring on her middle finger, rotating it with the thumb of the same hand. Nervous? Guarded? She gestures to the accompanying chair, indicating for Eva to sit.
“Are you … OK?” the woman asks, herself taking a seat.
Eva supposes she is. She looks down, as if checking herself for peripheral damage. She has her body back, anyway – and her body, not the Duc’s – which is sort of reassuring; even if the body in question is no more real than the Duc’s was, or than the rest of all this is – whatever “this” turns out to be. Which, if not Azimuth’s doing, must be some sort of psychotic episode. Or maybe she’s fallen asleep, drifted off into a dream or reverie. She’s not yet sure which of these options she prefers.
“That was quite a trip, wasn’t it?” the woman says and smiles again.
Eva looks around. The room is utterly bland – white, unadorned walls, a simple wooden floor; besides the two plain and functional chairs, there is a small table with two glasses and a bottle of what she presumes is water. No windows.
“Where is this?”
The woman shrugs. “As I said, temporary construct. A bit basic and thrown-together, I’m afraid.”
The woman eyes her strangely.
“Do you remember anything?” she asks. “From before?”
“Before what?”
“Before … before you lived … where you live now.”
But she’s always lived in the Arc. Hasn’t she?
She studies the woman’s face for clues, but she just smiles again with that slightly sad look, and looks down, toying with her ring.
Eva looks down at her own hand, flips it over – once, twice – during which it remains unchanging and sturdily hand-like. Not a dream, then.
“This is virtual?”
“Look, Eva, we don’t have much time, I’m afraid. Please.” She gestures again to the empty chair, and leans forward to fill both glasses with water. Eva remains standing, eyeing the glasses suspiciously. Why is there water if none of this is real? A courtesy designed to put her at her ease?
“Who are you?” she asks.
A slightly pained expression crosses the woman’s face, and changes again to a smile; a professional mask, for talking people off the ledges of tall buildings.
“I … I’m here to help you.”
“Help me to do what?”
“Escape. Among other things.”
“How?”
“Ah.” She pulls a face and wobbles a hand in the air uncertainly. “A work in progress. But we are progressing.”
Eva nods. Not a dream, she decides, but all too coherent for a psychotic episode. Which only leaves Azimuth. Well, if it wants to take The Game to the next level, then at least this is more interesting. She sits.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Eva points out. “The fact that you are here to help me doesn’t tell me who you are. Or ‘we’, as you keep saying. Do you even have a name?”
Again, the strange sad look.
“I’m Abi,” the woman says eventually.
“Well, Abi, so why do you want to help me ‘escape’? Among ‘other things’?”
“Because you don’t belong there.”
“In the Arc? With my father?”
The Abi woman looks even more pained at this. “That man is not your father.”
A tiny beep sounds.
“Damn. Seems your AI is better than we’d anticipated. We are coming to get you. Soon. Here.” Her hand rummages in her jeans pocket, reemerging with something clasped in her closed fingers; she reaches out her hand, turns it over and flattens her palm, upon which now rests a tiny golden key.
“What’s that?”
“For when we come. At our signal, make your way onto the balcony. We’ll come for you there.”
Eva frowns.
“The balcony?”
“Yes, but remember to wait for our signal.”
There is a fourth option, of course: not a dream or a hallucination, not another move in The Game, but something genuinely other; something – someone – from Outside. She’s heard of these – foreign powers, domestic extremists, bad actors within the state. Those who want what they have, who want to bring the Arcs down. Could she be one of these?
Another reason not to drink the water, not to accept gifts from strangers. That’s from faery lore, isn’t it? Don’t eat faery cake, don’t drink faery wine, because then you’d be stuck in faeryland forever? She can’t remember. And no Azimuth here to chip in with the answer to her query – unless of course it’s sat right in front of her.
The woman is still holding out her hand, the key still sat in the flat of her palm.
And if this is just another computer simulation, then even more reason not to accept gifts – which, Azimuth has warned her, is an ideal concealment for malicious code, something those malevolent powers could smuggle into her implant, then use to spread viruses, to hack the Arc’s security. Making this all the more likely to be another one of Azimuth’s tests – a sneaky drill just to check her retention of security protocols 101.
Well fuck that.
She reaches across and takes the tiny key from the woman’s palm.
“OK, this has been a fun little interlude.” Eva smiles sarcastically. “Please do let me know next time you’re in the vic—”
And just like that the room is gone.
And there’s an elastic band around her middle, tugging at her innards, dragging her back with sickening speed through the space-that-is-not-space, snapping her backwards, buckling her knees with a jolt that feels like a landing.
She is staring down between her hands, which are clenched into fists on an ornate carpet, its geometric pattern curling through an ivory ground with veins of red and blue. The Duc’s hands; his Aubusson rug. If she throws up here, will she throw up for real? Surprisingly, given all she’s experienced, she discovers that this is not a hypothesis she can remember ever having tested.
“Ah! You’re back.”
She looks up, into the superior demeanour of the Cardinal.
“And where, may I ask, have you been?”
She turns over the Duc’s right hand, unclenches his fingers and looks down into his palm.
It is empty.
Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi & fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. Part 1 is free to read, but you can keep up with the story by signing up for exclusive access, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments as they appear.