“Wait. Let me go first.” Noble has had second thoughts. He doesn’t want her in the vanguard. “Princess? Come out. Please.”
“But the cabinet! You said you’d tidy up!” The old woman’s tone is becoming shrill. “You have to move the cabinet before you leave!”
“In a minute.” Noble grabs Lorellina’s foot before it can disappear into the hole. “Princess! Let me!”
It’s no good, though. Lorellina pulls against Noble’s grip, jerking her foot and twisting her slender ankle. She’s so determined to shake him off that he finally has to let go, for fear of hurting her.
She immediately vanishes down the tunnel.
“You promised!” the old woman cries. “That filing cabinet has to go back where it was!”
“Princess! Wait!”
“You have to move it!”
“No I don’t!” Noble barks. He stands up and rounds on the old woman, flustered and fuming. “It doesn’t have to go back! You don’t have to go back! You don’t have to stay here—you can leave anytime!” He stops suddenly, aware that he’s sounding just like Rufus. Then he thinks, Why not? and gruffly concludes, “This is an awful place. It’s dark and gloomy and hopeless. There are better places than this. You should get out. You can get out. We did.”
He’s hoping that his words might strike a chord with the old woman. It even occurs to him that if she joins him on his quest, she won’t be able to talk to the man in the white coat.
But all she does is gape at Noble, her expression stunned. And because he doesn’t have time to waste, Noble admits defeat. Instead of launching into an argument, he maneuvers the displaced cabinet back to its original position. Then he drops down and follows Lorellina.
Inside the tunnel, it’s very dark. Lorellina is blocking the light up ahead with her voluminous skirts—and Noble’s own bulk is like a cork in the neck of a bottle. It’s such a tight fit for a broad-shouldered warrior that no light can seep past him from the room he’s just left. He can’t see a thing.
If this gets any narrower, he thinks as he squirms along, I’ll never be able to get out.
At that instant, however, light floods into the darkness. “Princess?” he asks. “Are you all right?” Though the glare is making him squint, he can just discern a vague silhouette framed in the tunnel’s mouth. Then a hand reaches toward him—a familiar hand.
He seizes it gratefully.
“Would you like me to give you a pull?” offers the princess, somewhere beyond his line of sight.
“Not if you’re in danger. Are you safe out there? Is anything amiss?”
“Oh, no,” she says. “It looks quite calm.”
Before Noble can ask her what looks calm, she wraps her other hand around his wrist and begins to haul at it with all her might. He’s amazed at how strong she is. Next thing he knows, his head has popped out of the narrow shaft into a space that’s not much brighter.
“This isn’t much better than the other place,” Noble remarks softly as he scrambles to his feet. He’s found himself in a dingy hallway lined with metal doors. There are no windows. Bundles of pipes are attached to the ceiling, where glass tubes full of light are flickering on and off in a sickly kind of way. The walls are made of painted brick, though here and there they’ve been patched with sheets of wood.
One of these sheets has been punctured by the very hatchway through which Noble and Lorellina have just emerged.
“We should block that up.” Lorellina points at it. “To stop the man in the white coat from following us.”
“I suppose so,” Noble concedes. “What should we use? Something heavy. Like one of those cabinets we saw back in the basement …”
Unfortunately, there are no cabinets in the corridor. There’s no furniture of any description. Even a small metal box full of switches and cables is firmly attached to the wall on which it’s hanging. And when Lorellina starts trying to open doors, they all prove to be locked.
“Look!” she says, pointing at an intersection at the far end of the hallway. “Maybe we should try up there.”
“Maybe …”
“Come on! Quick!”
“Princess, let me go first.” Noble is convinced that he’s better equipped to deal with any lurking dangers, even though he’s unarmed and practically unclothed. But Lorellina doesn’t seem to share this opinion. She bolts down the corridor, and by the time Noble catches up with her, she’s turned the nearest corner into another long, gloomy hallway.
“Locked again,” she advises him, scowling at a door handle that won’t budge no matter how furiously she jiggles it. “There must be an open door somewhere.”
“Maybe this is why Rufus wanted keys,” Noble remarks.
“We could be here all day,” says Lorellina, releasing her grip on the uncooperative door handle. “This is fruitless. We need help. We need to find someone like that old woman. Someone who can tell us what to do.”
“We could use some help,” Noble cautiously admits. When she shoots off again, however, he raises his voice in warning as he hurries to catch up. “Princess, it’s not always that easy. There are things in this computer that don’t want to help. They just want to eat people. Or kill them—”
“Or toss them in a trash heap. I know,” Lorellina finishes. She doesn’t sound too concerned. “Have no fear. I can always spot a mortal foe when I see one.”
The words have barely left her mouth when she freezes—so abruptly that Noble nearly collides with her. After regaining his balance, he peers over the top of her head, looking for whatever it is that’s causing her to stand rigid, like a startled deer.
The corridor has ended at the threshold of a large, low, octagonal space. At least half a dozen more corridors open onto this space, which contains nothing but a very small, detached room with glass walls.
Inside the glass-walled room is a middle-aged man sitting at a desk shaped like a horseshoe. All around him are banks of screens with moving pictures on them. He’s drinking from a ceramic mug, sipping brown liquid through his mustache. His olive-green shirt has embroidered patches sewn onto it.
When he spots Noble and Lorellina, his brown eyes open wide in utter astonishment.
“What the—” he begins, his voice muffled by the glass screen encircling him. Then he leans across his desk and seizes a curious instrument like a roll of coins wrapped in black felt, which is attached to a silver stand.
When he speaks into the instrument, his question rings out like the blast of a trumpet.
“How on earth did you get in here?” he asks.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Um …” Noble doesn’t know what to say. He’s not sure if he should say anything.
It’s Lorellina who finally answers. “We used a trapdoor,” she explains as the man behind the window struggles to his feet.
“A trapdoor?” he echoes. “What trapdoor?”
“It’s over there.” She points. “Down that passage.”
“Show me.” He maneuvers his large belly out of the cramped little booth, which is brightly lit and cluttered. Strewn around the desktop are screws and screens and torches and spools and keys and dusters and glass globes and mechanical parts of every description. Tucked beneath the man’s ample stomach is a belt hung with all kinds of tools.
His hands are scarred, and his bald head is gleaming. There’s a smear of oil on his pants, which are the same shade of green as his shirt.
“We’re looking for our friend,” says Noble. “He’s young and skinny, with hair like a sheep’s fleece—”
“Oh, he hasn’t got in yet,” the man interrupts. “Though he might if there’s a back door around here. Where is it? Down that way?”
He gestures at the passage behind Lorellina, who nods.
Noble can’t help adding, “It’s more like a hatch than a back door.”
The man shrugs. “Back door, trapdoor, it’s all the same thing. It just means that some sneaky piece of malware has managed to install a secret access route.” Hitc
hing up his pants, he bustles off down a corridor, his tools jangling. “Must be in a bit of a dark spot. Normally, I wouldn’t miss a thing like that.…”
Noble hesitates for a moment, glancing back toward the little glass room. He’s fascinated by all its glowing, flickering screens, which look like windows onto a dozen different worlds.
But when Lorellina sets off after the man with the tool belt, Noble decides to follow her. Having already lost most of his other friends, he’s not about to let the princess out of his sight.
“We should cover the hole,” Lorellina suggests. “So that no one else can get in.” She’s addressing their new acquaintance, who unhooks some kind of machine from his belt. It looks more like a weapon than a tool, with a handgrip, a trigger, and a silver barrel.
“Oh, I’ll take care of that,” he assures the princess. “Don’t worry.” The tool that he’s holding gives a sudden, high-pitched squeal. “Now where’s this back door? I can’t see it anywhere.…”
Lorellina brushes past him. She hurries along until she reaches the sabotaged panel, which is set low on a dimly lit stretch of wall. “Is there another way out?” she inquires as he bends over to inspect the damage. “Because we need to find our friends.”
Instead of replying, the uniformed man shakes his head and clicks his tongue. “Well, I’ll be,” he mutters. “How’d this one get past me?”
Lorellina sighs. Then she glances at Noble, prompting him to remark, “One of our other friends is a little boy. Did he come through here?”
“I doubt it.” Before Noble can ask him another question, the man with the tool belt observes, “This is quite neatly done for a hack job. And it looks like it’s been here a while. You came through the mailbox, didn’t you?”
“Uh …” Noble hasn’t the slightest idea. It doesn’t matter, though, because the man doesn’t seem to expect a response.
Straightening up, his face damp and his knees cracking, he rumbles, “Yeah—I don’t think this was done by a rogue programmer. This is definitely hack work. Old hack work. Your friend with the long hair didn’t do this.”
“Of course not!” Lorellina snaps. “You just said he hasn’t been here!”
“But we have other friends you might have seen,” Noble interjects. “There’s that little boy I mentioned, and a bearded mage, and a blonde girl, and a pink unicorn.…”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen ’em.” The man gives a distracted nod. “They haven’t been through here, but I picked ’em up on surveillance a couple of times.” Before anyone can ask him what that’s supposed to mean, he turns to Lorellina. “I’m going to patch this,” he informs her. “If you want, you can check out my CCTV screens back at the booth. You might be able to find your pals on those.”
“But—”
“I’ll be with you in a minute. This won’t take long.”
As he waddles away, Lorellina and Noble stare after him dumbly. Then Lorellina says to Noble, “What are CCTV screens?”
“I’m not sure,” Noble admits. “They must be those little windows.”
“What little windows?”
“Didn’t you see? They were back in the glass room.” He motions to her. “Come on. Let’s have a look.”
“What is this place?” the princess demands. Trailing after Noble, she begins to fire questions at him. “Where do all the doors lead? Why are they locked? And who is that man?”
“Don’t ask me. Ask him.”
“He’s gone.” She glances over her shoulder. “He went down that other passage.”
Noble shrugs. As they round a corner and approach the glass booth, it occurs to him that the keys on its desk might unlock some of the doors that he’s passing.
Would it be wrong, he wonders, to take one of those keys?
“Oh, I see now!” the princess exclaims. She quickens her pace until she’s overtaking Noble, drawn by the lure of the bright, cluttered box lined with moving pictures. “They are like windows! Only there’s nothing behind them.”
“They might be magic windows,” Noble speculates. By now, he’s reached the threshold of the glass booth, which is so small—and so crammed with objects—that he’s not sure how he and the princess are both going to fit inside. He has to duck just to get through the door. And when Lorellina wriggles past him, he’s forced to turn sideways.
“O-o-oh,” she marvels, gazing in awe at the bank of screens in front of her. “It’s like having a whole row of eyes.…” She catches her breath. “Noble! Look! There’s that room!”
“What room?” He has to twist around to peer at a familiar network of chutes and shelves and conveyor belts, shown from above. It’s the e-mail room, in miniature, captured like water in a little gray box. But the conveyor belts are all motionless, and the room itself is slowly filling with great drifts of paper.
“Are you sure it’s the same place?” murmurs Noble, scanning the screen for a glimpse of the white van. “I can’t see Rufus, can you?”
“No,” says the princess, “but I can see that old woman.” She nods at another screen, where a tiny, thin, gray-haired figure is frantically tearing up paper and tossing into the air. “I think we must have upset her.”
“Princess!” Noble grabs her arm, so abruptly that she gives a little squeak of protest. Then she sees what he’s pointing at.
“Thanehaven!” she cries.
“Is—is it real?” Noble stammers. “I can’t—it’s so small.…”
They both gape at an angled view of Lord Harrowmage’s throne room, with its bone chandelier and discarded sewing equipment. An armed guard is dragging another armed guard across the floor of the chamber. Suddenly, the screen blinks. The throne room vanishes.
Noble finds himself staring at a view of the fortress drawbridge, where the big truck is still parked. “What the …?”
“Look!” Lorellina pokes at the screen. “Those guards are fighting one another! Why are they doing that?”
“Because some of them are false guards,” Noble says gloomily, “come to replace the real ones.”
“We have to stop them!”
“We can’t. Only the Colonel can stop them.”
“Oh, wait!” Lorellina actually grabs the magic box with both hands as the picture changes again—this time to a view of her bedroom. Noble can tell that it’s a bedroom because it contains a large bed. And he can tell that the bed belongs to Lorellina because she’s sitting on it.
Or at least, the false princess is.
“Filthy jade!” shrieks the real princess. “How dare she touch my things!”
“Princess—”
“We must go back!” She rounds on Noble, her voice trembling, her eyes awash with tears. “This is so wicked! It cannot be allowed!”
“If you go back, you’ll end up on that rubbish heap again,” Noble warns her. “I told you, we can’t go back until we speak to the Colonel.”
But Lorellina won’t listen. “You! Functionary!” she barks, catching sight of the man with the tool belt. He’s emerged from the shadows, breathless and empty-handed. The armpits of his shirt are darkened by two half-moons of sweat.
“Have you spotted your friend?” he inquires, on his way back to the booth. “I caught him in the music library at one stage, but he gave me the slip.”
Lorellina ignores this appeal. She prods at a picture of Morwood, which has replaced the image of her own bedroom. “We want to go home,” she says, “and this is it. Thanehaven. This is where we belong.”
“Not anymore, it’s not,” the man in the uniform rejoins gruffly. “Right now, it’s a mess. Your friend’s made sure of that.” He surveys the overstuffed booth, then jerks his chin at Noble. “Everybody out, please. I’m coming in, and this room ain’t big enough for the three of us.”
Noble immediately sidles out of the booth, knowing that he’ll still be able to see inside because of its glass walls. Lorellina, however, refuses to budge.
“Thanehaven is ours,” she declares staunchly, “and we intend to fight f
or it, even if it costs us our lives!” She flings out an arm at the Thanehaven screen, which now displays a picture of her cousin’s library. “This is a window into Thanehaven, so you must know where we can find a door,” she says to the fat man. “Where is it? How can we get back in?”
“Princess, I already told you, there’s no point,” Noble intervenes, from outside the booth. And the man with the tool belt backs him up.
“That’s right. There isn’t. Not now that your game’s been hacked.”
“But—”
“It’s chaos, love. Creeping chaos.” Before Lorellina can take issue with this, her new acquaintance bellies up to the desk (nudging her aside as he does so) and draws her attention to one screen, then another, then another. “Look at this. And this. I mean, a few malfunctioning games … that’s one thing. But messing with the memory heap? That’s on a whole different level. We’re all in serious trouble here, let me tell you.”
Noble frowns. From the threshold of the booth, he can just make out two familiar figures on one of the screens: For some reason, Skye and Krystalle are now wandering dazedly around the garbage dump. They must have come down the laundry chute after us, he concludes. I wonder why they did that? On the screen beside theirs, two identical Arkwrights are fighting near the spaceship airlock. And on the very next screen, the old woman in the cellar is still tossing torn paper around like snowflakes.
“I can’t see where your friend is, right now, but I can see where he’s been,” the man with the tool belt complains. “And soon I won’t even be able to do that, because there’s always a knock-on effect when you start tampering with memory. It just gets to a point where you can’t isolate the damage. Not in a computer. Everything here is connected, see.” He nods at the array of moving images. “It won’t be long before your friend starts wrecking programs without going anywhere near ’em. You watch. It’s called the butterfly effect.”
“What are you talking about?” Lorellina is red-faced and seething. “I asked you about Thanehaven! I want to know about Thanehaven, not butterflies!”