But not yet. She turned from the well and passed through the great arch into the Entrance Hall, pausing in the threshold to gaze down the long line of cathedral pillars to the furthest end. It had taken her breath away when she had first beheld it, now it felt bare and freezing and dead, a mausoleum in which no one had ever been buried and never would be, a pointless construction. And behind every massive pillar, Richman might be hiding.
Her skin crawling, she inched down the long aisle, the quiet weighing heavier and heavier on her, though here there was at least a whisper of rain from the tall windows and from the ceiling panels. The faces in the paintings of Richman’s art collection stared down at her silently from their hanging places, and human statues carved by long-dead masters observed her motionless as she passed by. At length, she came to the oval cavity and the stairs that led down to the private Museum in the crypt.
Richman would not be down there, Rita told herself, not wanting to descend the steps. Why would he be? But then, why would he be anywhere? And yet he must be somewhere, so …
Step by step, she descended. And there he was, waiting for her at the bottom, arm raised and triumphant at the very summit of the Wheel, the image life-size, printed on stone. But she had remembered that she would see this, and was ready for it. More disturbing was the hulking pressure suit, standing somehow alert and alive on its dais. It was all too easy to imagine eyes staring from behind the mirrored glass of the faceplate, to imagine that any moment the arms would stir and the gloved hands reach for her. Easy, but nonsensical. Richman would not be hiding in his old suit. Still, it took all Rita’s self-possession to turn her back on the thing and search the rest of Museum, to be sure he was not secreted somewhere else there amid the relics of his glory days.
Was it getting even colder? The chill seemed very real now. Maybe it was just that the crypt, clutched particularly tight within the frozen rock of the Mount, was always lower in temperature. But Rita could sense too a psychic edge to the chill, as if the room was the focus of a bitter ill will—and she remembered then that the Museum was a testimony to Richman’s victory over the Wheel.
No, this was no place to linger, not at a time when the mountain was extracting its revenge. She fled as soon as her circuit was complete.
Back in the Entrance Hall rain still hissed black against the windows. Reluctantly, Rita forced herself onwards between the pillars and the watching statues, and so came at last to the foyer at the Hall’s end, with its altar-like stone within. Richman was not there, and Rita spared only a wistful glance at the elevator doors by which she had entered this prison, all unknowing, five, no, six, days ago. She knew the lift was defunct, that there was no escape that way. Her eyes were drawn instead to the great painting that hung on the foyer wall, The Triumph of Death.
It seemed bigger than she remembered, as if it had swollen in accord with the desolation of the Observatory around it. Death indeed now triumphed here. Ah … but what was it Kennedy had said, when he and Rita had stood in this spot? That’s right … he’d said that Richman liked this painting because the billionaire could not see his own death in it, that he saw it as proof of his own triumph over death.
But as Kennedy had pointed out, all the deaths in the painting were man-made; they were killings by war and poison, by hanging and torture. There were no deaths at nature’s hand. Nowhere upon the canvas was there a body frozen in a pool. Nor a body flayed to death by the wind. Nor one fallen and lost in an underground labyrinth. Nor one blasted apart by lightning. Which only proved it. The painting was a fool’s deceit, a comforting lie. The truly mortal danger lay somewhere else entirely.
For the billionaire, for everyone.
Far away, a metal thing fell and clattered, echoing from beyond the Entrance Hall.
Rita froze, listening, but the sound did not repeat. She almost called out, but could not bear the thought of her voice echoing in the cathedral space. Instead, she hurried in a silent, painful shuffle down the aisle, and so came again to the arch. From there, she peered into the Atrium and the chambers beyond: the Saloon, the Library, the Dining Hall.
Nothing. No one. Nor could she spy any object that might have spontaneously fallen: a tray carelessly placed on the edge of the bar in the Saloon, perhaps, two or three days previously, and only just now toppling off because of the vibrations she had caused as she had walked by a few minutes ago …
Fantasy. There was no tray. Nothing had fallen. Had there even been a noise at all? How could she be sure of anything right now, when there was only herself to confirm it?
So … what to do next?
She moved frigidly to the top of the Helix Staircase, gazed down into the heart of the Mount. It was a pit of spiralled shadows that seemed to swirl as if actively revolving. Nauseated, she thought again of all the rooms down there—the guest apartments, the recreation wing, the storage levels, and knew that she could never search them all, not alone in this silence. And even if she did, Richman could elude her effortlessly, so it was pointless.
Defeated, she leaned against the balustrade and took several ragged, tearful breaths. Then a sensation came creeping, raising the hackles on the back of her neck. She lifted her head, stared about.
She was being watched, she was sure of it. Someone was observing her.
Someone was laughing at her.
There! Far overhead in the Atrium dome, where the night and rain darkened the windows, she could discern a small black protuberance. It had to be a security camera. She could remember, from her night in the Control Room, that there had been a screen displaying from on high this very place in which she stood, at the top of the stairs.
Someone was watching her now, on one of those screens, watching this very second as she gazed up. It could only be Richman. He must be in the Control Room, must have been watching her all along as she searched fearfully through the halls.
Why was he there? Was what he hoping for? Was he trying again to make contact with Base or with the outside world, by radio or telephone? Or had he merely chosen it as a place in which to barricade himself, with the all-seeing security eyes to show him what was happening in the rest of the building? She couldn’t imagine, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she now knew where he was.
So, the Control Room. It would mean venturing into the service tunnels, into their maze of twists and turns, all on her own. She had done it once before, yes. But now, god, it would be bad …
But it was that or give up on confronting the billionaire. And her anger was greater than her fear. She was walking already, moving towards the Dining Hall. He would see her, of course, on other cameras, he would know she was on her way, but there was nothing to be done about that.
Beyond the Dining Hall she passed through the servery area and into the banquet kitchen. It, too, was empty and evocative of the people who had been there—minor messes littered the counters, a disorder that would remain uncorrected for all eternity now. Rita only hurried through, and turned into the first of the service tunnels, the doorway to the Observatory’s underworld.
Signage and arrows on the walls pointed the way to enigmatic destinations—SC1-4, RD1, GR, SD1-12, SE—but for Rita they may as well have been hieroglyphics. She ignored them, summoning the memory of her earlier visits to the Control Room. Along this tunnel to a landing, down one flight of stairs to another landing off which four tunnels opened, take the left tunnel, straight ahead through two more junctions, and she would be there.
She set off, arms hugged to herself because here too the cold was deeper than elsewhere. Presumably the service passageways had never been as fully heated as the public zones. Nor as well lit, even before the lighting had switched to emergency power. Now, in the chill gloom, the tunnels felt like the concrete pipes of some under-city stormwater system, empty for the moment, but still dank and forbidding, and never meant to be inhabited.
The tunnel bent left and right, then, sure enough, she came to a landing and a stairwell running up and down. She descended
one flight and came to a second landing with four passages extending off. She took the left tunnel and held straight through two junctions … but instead of coming to an unmarked door, she found herself descending a steep flight of stairs to a T-intersection, with not a door in view.
Well, this wasn’t right.
She retreated, consulting her mental map. That left-hand turn at the second landing, was it meant to be left as you faced down the stairs, or left as you faced up the stairs? She came back to the landing and this time took the opposite tunnel. But after a single turn, it arrived at a dead-end space off which three doors opened, all of them locked, but none of them, she was sure, the Control Room.
What was going on? She couldn’t be that much out in her reckoning, could she? But actually, was it supposed to be just one flight down to reach the correct landing, or two flights? She remembered now that the first time she had been shown the way, she had been able to hear the emergency generators running from somewhere further down the stairwell. She hadn’t heard anything this time. That must be it; she had to go one level lower.
She retraced her steps and descended a second flight down. Her leg, after so much walking, was becoming seriously painful, and the bandage was wet about her thigh, but at least, yes, now she could hear the dull roar of the generators from below. She was on the right track again. But from this third landing, which tunnel was it, the left or the right?
She went left. But that only led to another intersection, and more dead ends with locked doors. When she was making her way back to the main stairs to try again, she somehow found herself in a new passage that twisted about confoundedly and dropped down several levels of stairs without any chance of an exit, before debouching into a long low chamber lined with more doors and tunnels still, none of them familiar. She spun about, stared.
Fuck.
She was lost.
She pushed her frustration, and her fear, down. She couldn’t be that lost, the tunnels all led eventually to the public zones that she knew, so she had only to keep trying doors and passages, and eventually she would emerge somewhere to get her bearings.
But the thought was only limited comfort. It was so dark, and so cold, and so silent. God, what if the power should fail? She didn’t even have a torch! She hurried back up the twisting tunnel, but now could recognise nothing, none of the intersections or passages, and so she made turns at random. She needed to climb several levels up, she knew, and so took ascending stairs whenever she could, but often there were only downward-leading flights, and overall, it seemed, she was descending deeper and deeper.
Then another horrid thought came. What if she was not merely lost, but instead had been deliberately misled? What if this was the Wheel’s doing, playing with her mind? Not possessing her completely, not making her sleepwalk to her death, but confusing her just enough to trap her forever in these passageways, always taking the wrong turns?
Panic rose in her then, and she shuffled madly on for a time, pushing at doors that did not open, lurching this way and that at each crossway, a black claustrophobia roaring in her head, desperate for fresh air and for the sight of something, anything, other than the endlessly blank concrete walls.
And so it was that, having blundered down who knew how many levels, she finally came upon a sight that she did know: turning a corner, she beheld a collection of shining metal pipes that emerged from the bedrock to enter a side-room room that was filled with gleaming tanks and machinery.
It was a filtration room. For a pool. For the Cavern Pool. It was where she had found the lost cleaning lady, all those days ago. Yes, she was sure of it. She hurried on. She only had to turn left here, and go through the door at the end, and then …
With something like a sob, Rita emerged into an alcove lined with shelves piled with fluffy towels. Two steps beyond that and she was out on the paved terrace that fronted the Cavern Pool. She spun there, glorying in the familiar scene, the great cave, the huge pool, the beach chairs. Oh, how good it was to recognise something, to know exactly where she was. True, she had strayed miles from her original route to the Control Room, but who cared? She was free, she could find her way now, she was—
Her elation drained away abruptly, and she paused, cold once more. She was … no better off at all, really. Nothing had changed or improved. She was still alone, still trapped within the Observatory, and Richman was still missing.
And, now that her relief had faded, an unpleasantness in the air began to bear down on her. The Cavern Pool had changed since her last visit. The chill had invaded here too, and all the waterfalls and fountains that had filled the cavern with noise were now silent. But worse, there was a mildewy, stagnant, neglected smell about the place … of water that had stood undisturbed for too long.
Of course. Under the emergency power protocols, the heating and filtration down here had been suspended. Rita stared out over the pool. Its surface was dark now that the underwater lighting was switched off, and here and there were flecks of a white, oily scum.
No, she wouldn’t want to swim here anymore. It would be black in the tunnels and grottoes now, the water silent and undisturbed, and who knew what bacteria or moss or algae would grow in there as the years mounted and no one came to turn the lights or the filtration back on …
But there was another smell too. What was it? Not watery or mouldy at all, but a ranker, sweeter smell. Like … like meat boiled and left to …
Oh. Oh lord. She turned to the doorway that led to the sauna wing, remembering the tales of the man who had died in there, alone and forgotten in the steam room, his body baked so long that it cooked, the flesh soft and beginning to fall away.
They had gutted the place afterwards, she had been told. They had removed every tile and stone of the old sauna and replaced them with new. But Christ, that smell, oozing out to hang in the cold, still air. They must have missed something, there must be some crack or crevice into which the bodily fluids had leaked and then escaped detection, only to emerge now that the air circulation had failed.
Hand to her mouth again, Rita fled the Cavern, stumbling out through the swing doors to the landing at the base of the Helix Staircase. There she paused, heaving in deep breaths until the panic receded. Idiot, she told herself. Fool. Most likely she had just imagined the dead-man smell. The stagnant pool air had triggered a memory, and her own loneliness and morbid fantasy had done the rest …
But god, what she would give to see another human face right now. Anyone.
There was no one, however, just the great silence of the Observatory, and the vast emptiness of the well, soaring up with the Helix Staircase to the Atrium dome high, high above. The windows were still black way up there, but if the storm still blew outside and thunder boomed, this deep down in the Mount there was no sound to indicate it.
Rita expelled a final tremulous sigh, felt her heart settle back almost to normal—at least, as normal as it could be, with her bruises aching, and her gashed leg singing, and her nerves stretched taut. But what should she do now? Should she try again for the Control Room? Did she have the nerve to delve into the service tunnels once more?
No … she didn’t think she could face that. But if not, then she was giving up on finding Richman. And what did that leave? Where could she go? Where would be safe? How could she stop the Wheel from seeping into her mind, and finishing her off?
What, in Christ’s name, in the depths of all this disaster, was she supposed to do?
No answer came.
Her gaze fell upon the only other passage that opened from this level, a wide hallway curving off into gloom. It led, she knew, to the Games Arena: the site of her father’s death, and the one place in all the Observatory she had never visited.
Even now, she could not explain why she had always put off going in there. After all, her father’s heart attack could have happened anywhere; it did not matter that it had happened there. But even so, every time it had been suggested, by Clara or Eugene, or even by Richman, Rita had always told h
erself that she would go another time, another day, not then, not yet.
She did not want to go there now, either. But Richman knew of her aversion to the Arena, and if his intention was to hide from her, then it was possible he might be in there. After all, she could well be wrong about him being in the Control Room, that had only been a hunch, a feeling …
She crossed the landing, peered down the passage. It wasn’t level, but rather descended away, paved with flagged stone, bending as it went, its end out of sight. And she noted an interesting thing: unlike most of the other large chambers of the Observatory, which were orientated north–south, it seemed that the Arena must lie off at a right angle, to the east, if her sense of direction was true.
She bit her lip, hesitating, then frowned. Goddamnit, go and look, it’s just a gym or a basketball court or something, that’s all.
She walked down the curved hall. It ended in a level space backed by a set of swing doors. She pushed them open a crack and was surprised to find complete darkness waiting beyond. That was unusual. Even on emergency power, most of the Observatory had remained at least partially lit, whether the rooms were in use or not. So why not here?
She opened the doors further, took a step inside. In the light that entered from behind her, she saw a floor extending away into a gloom that appeared limitless, except that on the fringe of the light she could recognise what looked like the edge of a multi-lane running track.
She took another step inwards, hand outstretched behind to stop the doors closing and leaving her in blackness—but she need not have bothered, for with that step she heard a subdued click, and a light glowed to life on the inner side of the door. It must have been set on a motion sensor. And then she was staring in wonder as another light came to life, further away, and then another still further on, and more still after that, receding.
The Rich Man’s House Page 51