by Kir Lukovkin
Maya looked up at the ceiling in surprise and turned off her torch. Rick only shrugged.
“I have studied the papers,” she said. “And something has become clear.”
“Tell me,” he got excited and sat down by her side.
Maya pointed at a large diagram, which was carefully laid down and smoothed out.
“We are extremely lucky that we came across a diagram of the whole world.” She pointed her finger between the third and fourth segments. “We are here. Here, where the base is wide, is the ground. The very first level.”
“So the chasm does have a bottom.”
“Don't interrupt. Now look over here, at the opposite, narrow end—this is the top. The top of the world. This is all of Thermopolis. And it's absolutely gigantic. The floors and levels are shown here on the side. There are one thousand, two hundred and fifty floors in our world! Just imagine this number. Thermopolis is divided into five large parts, called aeons, each of which contains two hundred and fifty floors. Every aeon contains five sectors, with fifty floors per sector. And all of these floors are pierced by the Axis from the bottom to the top. We suspected that every sector is called after a letter of some ancient alphabet, but now we have documented proof. And the main thing is that we know where everything is located. Do you understand?”
Rick carefully examined the diagram.
“Here is your Omicron sector, for instance. Let's read what it says: “Residential sector. Avenues and park zone.””
“It looks like they are talking about our farm.”
“Of course! Your ancestors dug plots in the parkland throughout the sector. This saved your lives. And now my sector, Kappa. “Residential sector,” and nothing more. But we have warehouses of ancient supplies, which I will tell you about sometimes.”
“I see. And where is that Control Center you spoke of?”
“Here!” she pointed at the highest point of the diagram. Gamma sector. “Control Center.””
“Is that all?”
“What else do you need? I could not find detailed descriptions. The rest of the papers describe the structure of the particle accelerator and material synthesizer. Formulas and clusters of numbers everywhere that even I find hard to understand. I am sure we will be able to find out much more once we get there.”
“All right. Let's say that we know where we're going. But before we set off, you must teach me two things. Firstly, reading and secondly, how to use that ancient weapon that you carry in your pocket. If I don't know these things, it could cost us both our lives.”
Maya nodded. First, she explained the inner workings and principles behind the weapon which fired bursts of energy. Rick quickly caught on and overcame his fear of technology. His hand easily laid on the handle and his finger wanted to touch the trigger. Yet again, he felt a feeling of familiarity, the same way as he did when he sat in the Operator's Chair. He hurried to share his thoughts with Maya.
“This is curious,” she said. “I can't say for sure that I have the same thing, but sometimes I somehow manage to understand the inner workings and mechanics of ancient artifacts that I study without any outside explanations. This always surprised Reiner, because I often described devices using words which were the same as those used in ancient sources. This was possibly the reason he took me into the unit. He sometimes spoke about some sort of mission or purpose for humanity, but he formulated it in such an abstract way that it was difficult to understand. All I understood was that people like you and me were chosen for something. That is exactly what he said—the future of humanity is in the hands of the new generation. He said that we were far more intelligent and able than older people.”
Next, Maya started to teach Rick the basics of the alphabet. She spoke the letters and Rick kept diligently repeating them. They spent half a day studying, while Tommo stayed silent and stood by the instrument panel by the door all of this time.
“Well, then,” Maya said at last. “That's enough for today. We should set off.”
She looked at the prole. He seemed to have been waiting for the order, as he turned off the light and opened the door.
They left the airlock and stepped into the space between the aeons. They walked along, as the hoarfrost crackled underfoot and the walls lazily blinked their bluish reflections.
“This is amazing,” Maya said. “Just imagine, how much effort it took to create all of this.”
“For me, it's hard to imagine that our word never existed once upon a time,” Rick admitted.
“But that's the truth.”
And they moved along and quietly thought about everything they found out over the last few days. Rick told Maya about the last words that the dwarf said to him, about Omega.
“Not the end, but a beginning,” Maya repeated thoughtfully. “The end, because it is the last letter of the alphabet. The next sector is called “Aqua”. The water reservoirs are located there. Why is it a beginning, if the letters start from the top? Hmm...”
“Maybe he was making fun of me or wanted to confuse me.”
“We must consider every option. We can't discard any version until we prove it wrong...”
Suddenly, Rick froze in place. Just before, he had glanced aside and noticed a huge sitting human figure with its head lowered in the gloom that filled a large niche. The figure was five levels high and Rick would have barely reached its ankles. Maya also noticed the figure and suddenly went quiet. They stood there for a minute, trying to understand what this giant signified. The figure remained still.
For some reason, Rick remembered the bust of the Red King at the top of the column. Everything was different here, but... The fear had gone, and Rick was now looking at the armored giant with great curiosity. There was a helmet on the giant's head. The metal gave off a midnight blue shine. Time passed, the giant never moved and Tommo calmly approached it, stood by its feet and waved to his companions.
Rick pulled Maya by the hand, saying, “It's just a metal statue. Don't be afraid.”
They stood before the sculpture, looking up from below. The face of the giant was hidden behind a visor, with a narrow slit in place of eyes. Its hands were covered in fingerless gloves, making the hands into claws.
“I know!” Maya said, and smiled. “I know what this is.”
She fearlessly climbed up the leg onto the giant's knees and started to read the words inscribed on its chest.
“EXOMECH C30010Z. It's an ancient machine. A man used to get inside and control it to carry heavy loads.”
Rick imagined a monster like that coming to life and shuddered. On the other hand, it was logical—the walls surrounding them could only have been built with the help of machines such as that one. He helped the girl get back down to the floor. They stood there a while longer, and continued on their way.
“The ancients were as powerful as gods,” Maya said. “There's yet more proof.”
“Maybe they actually were gods,” chuckled Rick.
They saw piles of trash ahead and quietened down. The place that they entered reminded them of an abandoned camp or settlement belonging to the mutants. The bonfire had long gone out. Bones, pieces of cloth, furs and other garbage was strewn around everywhere. Rick dug into one of the piles with the point of his boot and came upon a pale hand sticking out from under a piece of sackcloth. He almost retched...
They were looking for something that looked like food or weaponry. It was all in vain. All Rick managed to find was a bent steel rod, sharpened at one end. It was a rather poor find, but still a weapon.
Soon after, they had looked through it all and continued on their way. The Chorda was coming closer. Its fragment grew in size ahead, piercing through space.
The travelers finally reached the end of the tunnel and stopped. Far below, they saw flickering lights, heard a cracking sound and then a rhythmic knocking which faded into silence. Rick got out the cables and hooks which Cornelius had given them and looked upwards. Maya was observing him expectantly.
“We
have two options,” Rick said. “The first is to climb the walkways along the walls and then we crawl around under the ceiling looking for an exit. I doubt we will be successful as Omicron would have been taken over by guys like Yarg a long time ago. The other option is to look for a way through the well of the Chorda. What I mean is that we find some way to go upwards along the Axis.”
Maya was examining the well, lost in thought. Powerful and very wide radial beams stretched from the segments to the axis of the world, but the Axis itself looked smooth and unscalable.
“Maybe we shouldn't have come to the center. We could have looked for a way in at the periphery...”
“I am not going outside,” Rick abruptly cut her off.
They sat on the edge and started to think. Rick played around with the cable in his hands.
“What was it that was written on the plaque below the Red King?”
The girl frowned, trying to remember.
““Archimedes”, and then something else. I can't remember.”
“What is it for?”
“The Red King or the plaque?”
“Both. Why make an idol's head?”
“It's a sign of remembrance that such a man once lived. Idols, as you called them, are created in honor of famous and exceptional people. This Archimedes did something important.”
Rick gazed into the chasm, deep in thought.
“Tell me something about your world,” Maya asked.
“What?”
“I don't know. Something. How did you become a soldier?”
“I'm not a soldier. We have no army,” Rick explained. “We have a Patrol, and internal and an external one. Only the strongest, bravest and most agile get in—those that complete the Spring Run around the Circle of Life.”
“How interesting. And what does it all mean?”
Rick started to patiently explain the nature of the trial when a new level of life was reached.
“Life levels. Your society is organized in such a complex way. Not a life, but a constant series of trials.”
“Just five. So what,” he snorted. “Once every ten years.”
“And what are the following trials?”
“Well, upon the third circle, a man goes through the Ides of Summer,” Rick replied. “For men, it is a fight. It is something like the dispute about the right to be a man where I managed to overcome Cornelius. Two people fight each other. Weapons are forbidden. The result can be different and it does not have to be fatal, it depends on the choice of the participants. You can surrender at any time, but the loser always has to go to the worst level of the sector that have bad heating, food and lighting. Which is why everyone fights until the end. And it does not matter what was your place in the previous circle.”
“And what about women? How do they go through this trial?”
“In different ways. It can be a trial by cold, by hunger, or by darkness.”
“Please continue.”
“What, do you want to hear about the fourth and fifth trials? Doesn't the tale sound too barbaric to you?” he glanced at Maya. “Well, all right then. The fourth trial is the Autumn Harvest. This is when a person passes from the fourth circle to the fifth. The point of this trial is to find something valuable for the Commune in the outer Expanse. The hunters go beyond the barrier and search. And the last trial is the Winter Night. This is a group trial. People split up into teams and compete in riddles, puzzles, charades and other intelligence based tests.”
“Hey, wait, so what is the very first test?”
“It is the passage form childhood to the second circle. Nothing special happens there.”
“But still?”
“Hey, look!” Rick got distracted, pointing at the Chorda.
They took a closer look. At first, it seemed that nothing was happening, but then the Axis started to fill with a soft, but brighter light. The blue reflections that fell upon it first changed to purple, which changed to shades of red. The blueness finally disappeared, and was replaced by a pale magenta shine. Then they heard a deep sound—a rumble coming from the depths of the world. This rumble kept sounding on the same note and then Maya showed Rick the part of the Chorda where vertical white stripes quickly ran across it closer to the right edge—they were so thin and quick that it seemed that the stripes distort the pillar of light in those places. Then, a similar stripe flashed on the left edge. And in the center a moment later.
“What is this?”
The question hung in the air. Neither of them knew the answer. They sat around a little more, observing the Chorda, until Rick felt that he was getting hot. He took off the top half of his jumpsuit, tying it around his waist. Maya followed his example. Tommo just stood by their side and silently looked ahead. Rick was surprised that the prole was being so still and quiet that they forgot about his existence for a while. He moved his eyes from Tommo to the beam leading towards the Axis. Tommo followed his gaze and suddenly walked over to the beam, nonchalantly stepping on it and walking towards the Chorda.
A minute later, the prole calmly approached the Chorda—it seemed that if he took a step further he would burst into flames, without even leaving a pile of ashes. However, the prole kept walking, and once he had reached the end of the beam he froze for a moment, stretched out his hand and touched the Chorda. He did not burn. Nothing happened at all. Then, Tommo put one leg on the Chorda, lifted himself up, put another leg on it, grabbed on with his hand, straightened his back and began to climb upwards.
“By the Machine God and the Great Expanse!” Rick exclaimed, so excited he nearly fell off the edge. “How could I forget about his abilities? Tommo!”
The prole looked back and signed that all was fine.
“How do you do that?”
It was a stupid question—Rick had seen the way proles moved along the walls and ceilings like spiders.
The prole pointed up.
“Will you return?”
An affirmative nod. Tommo continued his ascent, and Maya and Rick held their breath and watched him, until the figure in the orange jumpsuit disappeared behind the lower edge of the third aeon. They continued looking up for a long time, not knowing what they expected to see there.
“You know, he might not come back,” Maya pointed out.
“Let's not think about that. I propose we sleep a little. We can take turns standing watch. You lie down first, and I will sit down nearby.”
Maya nodded and they moved over to the wall, further away from the edge of the platform. Maya laid her head on his knees and quickly fell asleep. Rick was watching the Chorda and the way that its light changed everything around him.
The hoarfrost and snow melted away before his eyes. Water dripped from the ceiling... Spring had come to the world.
13
RICK AWOKE with a scream. His nightmare had been so realistic that he spent a while thinking that the space around him was filled with water, that fish-men with bulging eyes were swimming away in fear and that Croesus was a monster with pimpled, violet skin and tentacles for arms. Croesus' body was also bloated to the size of a sector and his vile belly filled the main assembly hall, while his tentacles stretched through all the corridors to grab people and drag them into the beast's maw. While this was going on, Rick had somehow managed to get out of the sector with Aurora under his arm and swam upwards, higher and higher past the other sectors until he reached the surface. Some air still remained at the top, and Rick rushed headlong towards it, not knowing why, like a moth flying towards the light of a lamp. He saw a hook and grabbed onto it, only understanding that it was a trap when it was too late. There was no way to get off the hook now, he jerked from side to side, but it made the cold steel sink further into his flesh. And when he was taken out on the surface, he saw the fisherman, the mutant dwarf that knew how to dig around in the thoughts of others. The dwarf was smiling and it was this smile that made Rick wake up from feeling the presence of another.
Rick jumped up, without immediately working out where he was
and almost fell into the chasm off the platform. It was only then that he looked around and assessed the situation. Everything was calm, Maya had just fallen asleep at her post. He decided that he would not wake her and decided to keep watch himself for now—he doubted he could get back to sleep.
His stomach growled, irritatingly. Well then, he did not know what was best—to sleep and go through the nightmare or to fight off hunger? Rick walked along the wall, looking at the seams between the segments where the fur of the mold could be seen. At last, he found what he was looking for—mushrooms, which he brought back to Maya's sleeping place and started to carefully cut up with his knife. He had seen mushrooms everywhere he had visited in the Expanse—the main thing was to have sufficient heat and moisture. Not all of them were edible, of course, but some were not bad at sating hunger even if they were watery and bitter to the taste. Risk would not risk to look for firewood to start a fire as he did not want to leave Maya alone. In the end, he ate a couple of mushrooms raw, knowing that his stomach would ache in the future.
Two or three hours passed. Maya started to move, stretching herself with pleasure. Rick waited. The color of the Chorda became light magenta with a dose of orange. Now, the bright lines of the discharges jumped through the Chorda all the time. It kept emitting a low, energetic rumble.
“What's the time?” Maya roughly got up, realizing that she fell asleep on her watch and things could have ended badly for them both.
“I think that it's the evening. Don't worry, I didn't sleep and stood the watch for you. Here you are.” Rick offered her some mushrooms. “I already tried them. As you see, I'm still alive.”
He smiled weakly. Maya nodded and started to eat.
“I dreamed a strange dream,” she said after a minute.
“Me too. But I don't want to talk about it.”
“Hmm,” she looked back at him. “I don't think I want to either.”
It seems that they were thinking about the same thing. The Expanse had somehow affected their minds and consciousness. Rick did not know whether that was good or bad.