He gently touched the three symbols in order.
A dazzling vertical white line suddenly appeared on the column, hairline thick, then it became a thick bar, flooding the chamber with light and the deep thrumming hum of energy. The bar widened until it was six feet across. Impatient energy crackled and fizzed before them. Maddy shielded her eyes, squinted at the glare until her vision adjusted to it, and then she found herself staring at the featureless white.
She picked out Bob and Becks standing to one side. ‘Let it close up by itself, and then open it later like we agreed! OK?’
The support units nodded. They’d calculated a gap of a minimum of four hours between openings would allow the field energy surge time enough to die down and then spike again. If there were ‘currents’ or ‘flows’ of energy inside for her to try to follow, it would help to have a discernible tide-flow to look for and carry her back.
She nodded at Billy and Bertie, then at Rashim. ‘Coffee, black, when I return.’
He saluted that.
Her eyes met Liam’s and she mouthed, ‘I’ll be fine.’
He nodded. Cupped his mouth against the noise. ‘You bring yourself back, Mads. You hear?’
And finally Adam. Her eyes met his.
You answered a question for me, Adam. And yes. Yes, I can do that. I can fall in love.
She turned towards the bar of brilliant white light and stepped forward. She could feel the build-up of escaping static electricity lifting the hairs on her arms. Stepping closer, chaos space was now just a yard away from her, the static stirring the hair on her head, tickling her scalp.
Directly in front of her now, a wall of chaos space. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and took one, two, three steps forward.
Chapter 60
At once familiar – that featureless white. But slightly different in that there was no sensation of falling this time. She was not flailing with her arms. Instead there seemed to be something beneath her feet. Not firm floor, but soft and yielding, like the elastic of a trampoline.
As always, it was silent. The only noise she could hear was her own ragged breath, the rhythmic thud of her heart in her chest.
She cupped her hands round her eyes and narrowed them against the brilliant white, knowing from past experience that this seemingly blank, milky froth surrounding her did yield some form and detail when you shielded the glare a little. Now the empty white became a faint pattern, splotches, areas, slightly brighter and slightly darker. She thought she detected the faint movement of thin strands of something rising from the ‘ground’ and fading into the fog above her, like souls rising from cemetery dirt to the heavens above.
She wondered if she might just be seeing the faint ghostlike forms of future humans busy in transit along this projected conduit of chaos space. The Archaeologists, coming and going through history, quietly observing, cataloguing and archiving information about their long-lost ancestors.
‘Helloo!’ she called out. Her voice was deadened in here. No echo or reverberation. No hard surfaces off which sonic waves could bounce – indeed, no time or space in the normal sense for those sonic waves to travel through to find any hard surfaces to bounce off.
The smothered sound of her voice against the absolute silence was still alarmingly loud. She squinted at the ghostly forms rising from the ground around her. Some of them seemed to be only a few feet away from her. Curious, she was tempted to step towards the nearest and try wafting her hand through the denser mist. But what effect might such a careless act like that have? Would it cause some poor far-future human to emerge – on the way to or from an errand – completely mis-formed? To be turned inside out?
She’d said to the others that she wondered if this artificial tunnel of chaos space had some kind of flow, direction, that would carry her somewhere; that would decide on her behalf where she was to go. Perhaps these ghostly forms were showing the way, that she needed to travel upwards like them? Perhaps ‘up’ was the way to go? And what did up lead to? The future? The past?
Uncertain what to do, she tried calling out again. But this time calling for Sal.
‘Sal! SAL!! You there?!’
None of these rising forms seemed to hesitate at the sound of her voice. She wondered if sound carried at all in this place anyway. She called again. And again.
And waited.
The ‘wraiths’ passed up around her, seemingly unaware of her – or, if they were aware, then they were utterly uninterested. She was about to cup her hands round her mouth and try again when she picked out the faintest sense of movement working against the uniform upwards motion.
Looking directly at it, it seemed to vanish, merged into the mist. But on the periphery of her vision she detected something curling down from above. Now it was on her level, at her height, moving slowly, horizontally, around her. Circling cautiously. Drawing nearer and now more distinct.
‘Hello?’ she called again.
The ghostly form seemed to hesitate for the briefest moment at the sound of her voice.
God, it heard me.
‘Hello,’ she said again. Her voice deadened and lifeless. ‘Who is that? Is that you, Sal?’
The form remained motionless. Maddy tried to discern the outline of this silhouette. But it changed from moment to moment, as intangible as candle smoke caught in a draft. Whatever, whoever, it was – it seemed to have reacted to her voice. It had heard her. Definitely heard her, and now it seemed curious.
‘Are you another … traveller?’
The form shifted slightly. Maddy thought she could see tendrils of smoke emerging from the densest area, tendrils that seemed to reach out and taste the air, then evaporate into disassociated curls of mist.
‘Can you hear me?’ she asked. ‘Can you understand me?’
The form drifted closer to her. More distinct now, closer in fact to Maddy than any of these ‘wraiths’ they’d all admitted to seeing at one time or another had ever been.
Closer still.
Now she could see this thing was more than just a denser patch of mist. She could discern the faintest surface details, texture. And these details, the texture, seemed to be in a constant state of flux: patterns that suggested the creases of leather, the grain of wood, the scales of a fish, veins of marble … as if this thing was choosing what it wanted to be crafted from, second to second. It reminded her of how the pigment in a chameleon’s skin cells can oscillate through colours and patterns and assume any camouflage in a matter of seconds.
She wondered, if this was another person, then this must be how she would appear to them, something equally mysterious, equally alien and disturbing. Perhaps sound, though, perhaps her voice, wouldn’t be corrupted into something so weird by chaos space. Perhaps she would sound human to this thing.
‘Hello,’ she said again, her voice quieter and softer. It was close enough that she felt she didn’t need to shout. ‘Can you hear me?’
Yes.
She wasn’t sure whether she actually heard that answer, or merely imagined it. It didn’t seem to have come from any particular direction, certainly not from this undulating cloud of indecisive matter hovering just feet away from her.
‘You can hear me?’
Yes.
‘Understand me?’
I understand you.
Maddy struggled to not let out a yelp of relief. To be able to communicate with this thing – this person? – was somehow reassuring. Not some animalistic or unfathomable alien mind, but quite possibly another human, albeit in chaos-space form.
Incredible.
She wondered what question to ask this fellow traveller first. What question? What question?
‘Are you … are you a person? A human?’
The form drifted around her, she sensed it was trying to understand her too, perhaps also seeing another amorphous form and frightened by it. She wished this thing had something analogous to eyes – eyes that she could meet, address her conversation towards.
Yes. It replied a
s it shifted form, tendrils spinning out like tissue strands in water.
Yes. Human. Once. The voice sounded sexless. Ageless. Emotionless. Like an averaging-out of all possible voices, the very definition of neutral, impossible to read … and yet, in its bland voice, Maddy thought she detected a hint of – grief? Sadness?
‘Are you someone else … in transit? A time traveller?’
No answer.
‘Are you one of the people who built this displacement field?’
The being shifted textures. In places its ‘skin’ thinned and became gossamer, a semi-opaque membrane revealing even deeper complexities of curling texture and form within. It reminded her just a little of the interior of a time wave.
Once, just once, she’d been up close and had her eyes open as a time wave had swept past her, just inches away. She’d witnessed the churning, roiling sea of possibilities inside: millions of souls seemingly screaming in torment at lives they would never lead; structures, cities that would never be built; kings that would never rule, empires that would never have a chance to rise and fall.
The entity answered her. Travelled through time. Long ago.
She shuddered as a thought suddenly occurred to her. Perhaps it was something like this entity that Waldstein had witnessed, perhaps even spoken with, on his very first trip through chaos space.
‘Are you from the future?’ she asked. She realized as soon as she voiced the question how stupid it was. How would this traveller know how to answer that? If it didn’t know when Maddy came from, it couldn’t say if it was from her future.
‘Are you from beyond the event that wiped us all out? Beyond the year 2070?’
It drifted a little closer to her. She noted several bacilli-like tendrils of vapour reaching out towards her. She felt nothing as they seemed to touch her skin. Maybe this thing was seeing tendrils reaching out from her as well; perhaps these wisps of vapour were a visual representation of thought, curiosity expressed in an ethereal form?
Future, past, present, there is no difference. There is now. There is an eternity. That is all.
There seemed to be a bottomless, weary grief folded into that answer. She wondered if this could be a traveller who had got lost, some fool who had stupidly walked into a portal without having an exit window arranged.
A stupid fool just like her, she realized. No. She had an exit arranged. The others would open the column in four hours. Although she had no idea what four hours of ‘real’ time would be to her, stuck in this place.
‘Are you lost? Are you trapped in here?’
Trapped? It shifted form and glided around her. From here all possibilities can be seen. Seen so many things in here.
She wanted to ask this creature about Sal. But how to ask and what to ask? You seen my friend walking around? She’s five foot two, about a hundred and twelve pounds, dark hair. Perhaps she would ask about Sal soon. But first she needed to know what it was, even who it was, she was communicating with.
‘What have you seen?’
Beginnings, endings and all between. Everything that could be, and never was.
‘You mean alternative timelines?’
Yes.
‘Have you seen what happens to us, to humanity after we destroy ourselves?’
The entity took its time answering that. There is a future beyond that way.
‘We do survive then? We go on? We rebuild?’
Only on that way.
Maddy pondered that curious choice of words. ‘That way … you mean the timeline in which we wipe ourselves out?’
Other ways … it is dark. Nothing to be seen. Empty.
‘Why?’
There can be only one way out.
‘One way out?’ What the hell did that mean? One way out of what? Chaos space?
We are all trapped. For eternity.
The entity’s surface phased momentarily, revealing ghostly images within itself. She saw images she could comprehend – this thing was showing her pictures, thoughts, to help her understand: a dungeon, the padded cell of an insane asylum, a face locked behind an iron mask, a prisoner sealed in a buried coffin, screaming, scratching at the wood.
Were those metaphors it was showing her? Was this a warning? A caution of what might be? Or what already was?
‘Are you showing those things to help me understand?’
No answer.
‘What do those images mean?’
All trapped. Only one way to be free.
She thought of Waldstein again. ‘We have to destroy ourselves? Is that what you’re saying? To be free we have to destroy ourselves?’
It stirred, shape-shifted. She had a sense the question was confusing it. Distressing it.
‘Are you trapped? Can you leave here? Can you leave this place?’
No answer.
‘What about me, can I leave?’
Its membranous surface became opaque again, hiding the turmoil of images within. Somehow, guarded. She sensed it was becoming suspicious of her, wary.
‘I came in here looking for someone. Another person like me – another traveller. She entered just before me.’
No before. No after. Only now. Only eternity.
The entity retreated from her. Becoming less detailed in the mist.
‘Please!’ she called out after it. ‘Don’t go away. Don’t leave me alone.’
She tried to keep sight of it as it grew fainter. ‘I can get out! I can come out the way I came in! There’s an opening nearby. You could come with me!’
Out of the mist a long thin tendril of vapour rapidly coiled towards her, hovered just inches short of her face. Its thin end expanded, mushroomed, and then on its undulating surface she saw the fleeting images of tormented faces. Dozens morphing one after the other in quick succession.
Then one last face. One she recognized. Sal’s face, contorted and stretched as her mouth opened impossibly wide with a dreadful scream that seemed to fill the space around them. In one shrill raw wail, there was rage, grief, insanity, agony … yearning.
‘Sal?’
LET ME OUT.
Just then, Maddy felt the flow change. Something pulling at her softly, insistently. The thin and faint tissue-like forms, travelling upwards, stirred and spun like jellyfish, like water-borne debris tugged by a fresh current. As if a plug had been pulled from a bath tub, and all that was free-floating was now drawn along by the flow of vacating water.
Maddy backed away from the tendril as it retreated into the mist again. She could smell the ozone-like odour. Air charged with energy. Rage as pure energy.
She backed away in the direction that the current was pulling her. Quick step after quick step across the uncertain, giving surface of the ‘floor’.
Then one foot settled on a hard, unyielding surface. She turned round and found herself staring into darkness. Her eyes adjusted to reveal a smooth floor, and emerging out of the gloom, several approaching figures …
Chapter 61
1479, the Lost City of the Windtalkers
‘Maddy!’ Adam reached out for her. He looked relieved. ‘My God, you’ve been gone days! We didn’t know whether to –!’
‘Close it!’ She gasped for air as she staggered past him, several yards away from the column, and then finally came to a halt, doubled over. ‘Need to close it!’
He joined her, shook his head. ‘Still haven’t worked that out. It closes on its own –’
‘Jesus! Then –’ Her laboured breath came in wheezing, ragged gasps – ‘we – got to – run!’
The others had gathered round her. Liam had a half-cocked smile stamped on his lips; utter relief and growing concern wrestling with each other. ‘Mads! I thought we lost you! Two days we’ve been waiting! Did you see Sal?’ He stopped himself and looked at her pale face. ‘What is it? You look like you’ve seen a –’
She finally caught her breath. ‘RUN!’ she screamed. ‘WE HAVE TO RUN!’
Behind them the white glow of the field began to ripple, deform, then bu
lge. The steady, deep, rhythmic throbbing gave way to a crackling sound.
‘Good Lord,’ gasped Bertie, ‘what is going on there?’
They turned as one to look.
The air just outside the field now shimmered like the flame-heated air above a campfire. Something invisible, super-heating the area it occupied – a space twenty feet high and just as wide, was causing it to warp and dance.
Jagged forks of static electricity arced from the field, flickered round the edge of the mass of heated air, momentarily, fleetingly, describing an artist’s sketch of its outline. In one blink of an eye, they had a lightning-strike depiction of its form: three thick elephant-like legs supporting the round mass of a giant head. A mouth that looked vaguely human but stretched impossibly, vertically, with a Munch-like scream, like a Halloween mask. A mouth filled with teeth. Above the gaping maw, two small coal-dark eyes that slanted with grief and pity. The mouth was all rage, the eyes were sadness.
Its roar filled the chamber. Not the roar of a predator, but the shrill scream of a chorus of human voices. It swayed, weight shifting from one thick leg to another, the giant head surveying the darkness around it, then turning to look down at them.
‘What is that creature?!’ screamed Bertie.
‘Jay-zus,’ Liam uttered. ‘That’s a – a seeker?’
Maddy wasn’t sure what it was. Explanations could come later. ‘RUN!’
She was the first to turn on her heels and flee, more than happy to lead from the front this time as they raced across the floor, then scrambled for the narrow stairwell that led to the upper chamber. Behind her she heard the crack of gunfire. She halted, turned to see who it was. Guns weren’t going to stop this thing.
Twenty yards behind her she could see Billy shouldering his AK, his torch strapped to the barrel, the flicker of muzzle-flash as he fired shots out into the darkness.
‘Billy! Forget it! Run!’
The seeker had stepped far enough away from the column that the arcing electricity was no longer leaping across from chaos space to hint at its outline. It was invisible now – the only thing giving its location away, the tell-tale shimmer of heated air. From where Billy was, closer, much closer, he had obviously picked out that faint outline and was now emptying rounds of ammo into it.