Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  Steve said, ‘That’s the definition of a heretic.’

  ‘Shut up, Steve.’ Ann pushed past him and began to say something to Eleanor, but she broke off when a blast of wind shook the scaffolding. They all lurched and swayed. When it was still again, Ann said, ‘I just want to talk to Gorgon. Ask her why she’s doing this.’

  ‘Gorgon doesn’t answer to you.’

  The scaffolding shook again. Eleanor dropped her syringe. She reached for it, but Sophus darted forward and stepped on it. Eleanor reeled back, eyes flashing. She gave each of them a glance of pure hatred and then ran through Gorgon’s front door.

  ‘Look.’ Ann pointed at the buildings further down the valley. Some of the Cartographers below had seen what was happening on the scaffolding and they were running up the slope, yelling and pointing. ‘We’d better get out of here.’

  Sophus glanced around. ‘Back down the steps. We’ll make for the fence.’

  But Steve knew that running for the fence was a terrible idea. Ann and Sophus might make it, but Steve was chained to the bath, which was too heavy to lift over a high fence. Their plan would put Sophus and Ann in the uncomfortable position of having to abandon Steve, and he didn’t want to subject them to that. So he blocked the scaffolding and said, ‘We can’t leave now. This is our chance to capture Eleanor and Gorgon. They’re trapped inside that house and we outnumber them.’

  Ann and Sophus paused. They looked uncertain. Typical intellectuals, Steve thought, trying to think things through, to consider consequences and risks. But he would not give them the chance. ‘Quick!’ He rattled his handcuff. ‘Sophus—grab that syringe. Move in. Secure the first room. Ann! Help me shift this bathtub over to the doorway.’

  He was thrilled to see them obey his orders without question. Eleanor took the other end of the tub and together they progressed along the scaffolding, heading for Gorgon’s front door. The Cartographers were coming closer, but they were still minutes away. By the time they arrived, Steve and his allies would be blockaded inside Gorgon’s house. Gorgon would be his prisoner, and Steve could question her. Finally, he’d get some answers.

  The scaffolding trembled again; Steve gripped the rail to brace himself against the gust but, in the midst of his glee, he noted that the wind had died down but the structure was still shaking. That was odd, he thought. Then the entire scaffolding broke away from the side of the building, its steel framework screaming as it broke apart.

  44

  The great escape

  Danyl twisted the last bolt from the cross-section of the scaffolding and tossed it aside. The entire structure swayed back and forth. It was ready to fall.

  It was a desperate, crazy plan, but it was all Danyl had. He couldn’t abandon Steve and Ann to Gorgon. But he was unarmed and alone. There was no way he could take on Eleanor and her Cartographer thugs. Collapsing the scaffolding was the only way. With luck, Ann and Steve would tumble gently to the ground and not be horribly injured by the fall or the crashing poles and huge wooden planks.

  He stepped backwards to shelter beneath the overhanging second storey of the house. He should be safe there. His plan might be insanely dangerous, but there was no sense putting himself at risk. He pressed his back against the wall and took a wide stance. He raised Lightbringer and swung, and in the space before connection with the supporting beam, between the action and the consequence, he heard Steve’s voice high above him, shouting orders. He said something about Gorgon and Eleanor but the rest of his words were engulfed by the shattering thunder of Danyl’s escape plan as the crowbar knocked the beam loose and the scaffolding came apart in a howling orchestra of steel on steel and splintering wood and terrified screams.

  When Danyl conceived of his plan he’d imagined it much like a scene in a cartoon. The scaffolding would fall in a brief rain of debris and collapse in a cloud of dust, and the survivors would stumble out of the cloud coughing and dazed. Danyl would grab his friends, they’d thank him for saving them, and they’d all flee amidst the confusion.

  But it wasn’t like that at all. Instead of disintegrating neatly into its components, the scaffolding broke in half and sagged away from the wall, producing a hideous groaning sound as the poles twisted and bent against each other. The people on top of the scaffolding also screamed, and slid back and forth across the planks. The noise rolled down the hillside. Further down the slope, the Cartographers gaped at this spectacle while more doors in the townhouses opened and more Cartographers poured out. All of them began to run towards Gorgon’s house.

  Danyl muttered, ‘No. No. No.’ But he couldn’t run away. Bits of steel and wood were breaking and falling to earth directly in front of him. A pole impaled itself in the mud, and Danyl tried not to think about what it might have done to his internal organs. Half of the structure tipped forward and crashed to the ground. He thought he glimpsed a bathtub in the rubble. Should he rush into the danger zone and drag his friends free? Or kneel down, close his eyes, tuck his head between his knees and cover his neck with his hands and repeat his own name over and over again?

  Definitely the second option. Danyl cowered for about a minute, waiting for the worst of the din to die.

  When it did, he opened his eyes again. His face was pressed against the brick wall that made up the lower storey of Gorgon’s house, and he found himself looking through a ventilation hole in one of the bricks into the dim subterranean room beneath it. Gorgon’s basement.

  This was a mostly empty space with bare rock walls and a clay floor. It was lit by tiny beams of light admitted through the wall. They illuminated a wooden flight of stairs and a cot, made up with blankets and an old patchwork quilt, in the centre of the room. There was someone in the bed.

  Was it Gorgon? Was this where she slept? The face was just outside one of the light beams. Danyl angled his nose and eye socket into the hole in the brick, straining to see …

  A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him about.

  It was Ann. She was bleeding from a cut in her forehead and holding up Sophus with one arm. The young mathematician wore a dazed expression on his face that Danyl immediately diagnosed as concussion, a side effect of many of his escape plans.

  Ann demanded, ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I saved you from Gorgon.’ He gave a jaunty grin and added, ‘I scaffoiled her.’

  Ann didn’t laugh at this hilarious joke. She stared back with disbelief and said, ‘We saved ourselves, Danyl. Sophus switched sides. We were about to storm Gorgon’s house and capture her. Now …’ She pointed at the door high above their heads. ‘We can’t even get to her. You almost killed us.’

  ‘Let’s not argue about who almost killed whom,’ Danyl replied. He pointed at the mob of Cartographers rushing up the hill towards them. ‘We need to get out of here. Quick.’ He took her arm and pulled her through the rubble. Sophus stumbled along behind them.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve thought it all through.’ He led them to the bathtub, which lay top-down in a pile of rubble. ‘We’ll escape in this.’ He flipped it onto its side. Steve lay beneath it, unharmed and smiling.

  ‘Oh, hey buddy. Can you put the bath back where it was? I’m hiding in here.’

  Danyl turned the tub onto its back, flipping Steve onto his side with a startled squawk, and waved at Ann. ‘Get in.’

  Ann frowned at the mob of Cartographers. They were now gathered at the bottom of the path that led from the driveway up to Gorgon’s house, and they were looking up and pointing, not at the ruined scaffolding or Danyl and Ann, but over their heads.

  Danyl looked up. The ruined house loomed. The front door opened into empty air and a small figure appeared: it was a female with long, tangled grey hair and a scarf tied around her head, covering her eyes. She held something in her hands: a recorder. A child’s musical instrument. Danyl watched, bewildered, as she raised it to her lips and played a tune, the same haunting song the children of Te Aro sang. Hide me, blind me or Gorgon will find m
e.

  ‘Get down!’ Steve pulled Danyl into the bathtub. It clanged as a dart ricocheted off it and landed in the mud.

  ‘The darts are tipped with DoorWay.’

  Another dart embedded itself in a broken piece of wood beside them. Danyl said, ‘Into the bath!’

  Steve lay in the bottom of the tub. They shoved Sophus on top of him, then Ann and Danyl pushed the bath down the muddy slope, aiming away from the mass of Cartographers. The bath gathered speed and began to move by itself. Ann jumped inside and held out her hand to Danyl. ‘Get in!’

  But they weren’t going fast enough. Danyl kept pushing: the bath slid through the mud. They reached a steep section of the slope and the bath sped up so quickly it was difficult to keep up; he tripped in a patch of weeds.

  As he stumbled he took Ann’s hand and she pulled him onboard. The bath wobbled and righted itself as the slope and weight of its cargo drove it onwards. The Cartographers had moved to intercept them, but the bath was moving too fast, and their enemies scattered before them. Danyl screamed with joy as they hurtled towards freedom.

  45

  Danyl’s plan works perfectly for several seconds

  The tub flew down the slope, its prow throwing up sheets of muddy spray. Its non-concussed occupants all cheered as they left the mob of Cartographers far behind, but their cheer turned into a scream when the bath hit a large stone and tipped over on its side. It was still travelling downhill at a thrilling speed, but now Danyl’s face was millimetres from the ground. Specks of cold mud and gravel strafed his cheeks and forehead while blades of grass lashed at him like a cat-o’-nine-tails. He lost his grip on Steve’s crowbar and it slipped into the mud. Steve lunged for it, crying out, ‘Lightbringer!’ The others held him down as the crowbar cartwheeled out of sight.

  Gradually the slope levelled out. The tub passed over the gravel driveway and came to rest not far from the culvert. Danyl crawled free. He wiped the mud and blood from his face and looked back up the hill. A long, bath-shaped trench led directly from Gorgon’s house, now far above them, to their current position. A horde of Cartographers were running down the hill, following the trench.

  Ann said, ‘What now?’

  ‘We flee,’ Danyl replied.

  ‘How? Sophus can’t walk, and Steve’s chained to the bathtub.’

  ‘Relax. I’ve got everything all figured out.’ Danyl glanced around while he said this, trying to figure things out. He pointed and said, ‘Thataway. Down the culvert and into the catacombs.’

  It took them several minutes to wrestle Steve, Sophus and the bathtub into position and to make their way down the steps at the base of the culvert, into the darkness of the stormwater drain. By the time they reached the bottom they could hear the tread of boots behind them.

  But Danyl wasn’t worried. They passed through an antechamber filled with supplies: stretchers, planks, torches. He grabbed a torch and lit up the tunnel, which was narrow and twisting. The edges of the bath scraped against its walls. They grazed their fingers trying to force it through. The footsteps behind them grew louder.

  And then the walls were gone; the roof curved away into darkness. They were in the accessway. A narrow plank stretched to the platform on the far side. The black Waimapihi surged beneath them, its torrents flecked with white foam. They’d made it.

  Danyl called to Ann, ‘Quick! Toss the bath into the stream then jump in.’

  ‘You want us to jump in there? That stream must be teeming with bacteria. That’s your plan?’

  ‘At least I have a plan.’

  ‘I had a plan,’ Ann snapped. ‘A rational plan, which you ruined.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Danyl stuck his hands on his hips, ready to snap back, ready to put Ann in her place, when he realised she was right. He had ruined her plan. He couldn’t admit to that though. He’d look like an idiot. Instead, he reached out and pushed her. She stumbled backwards into Steve, who toppled, dragging the bath with him, into the stream. Sophus, still half dazed, had been leaning against the bath, and he fell too, and Ann gasped and clutched at him, and then she tipped and fell. Danyl switched off his torch and jumped after them. As he hit the water he heard the Cartographers burst into the accessway. They poured across the narrow bridge, shouting and waving torches. Danyl and his companions bobbed away from them, calm and unseen in the familiar safety of the ice-cold deadly black stream.

  He floundered about in the darkness until he found the bath and Steve bobbing beside it. He held it in place against the current while he located Ann and Sophus. Once they were all inside the bath, they floated downstream. The shouts of the Cartographers echoed through the lightless halls.

  Eventually they came to rest in a tributary that diverted off the main stream. The bath was dangerously low in the water. The stream lapped at the rim and they lay together, soaked and cold, drawing heat from one another’s bodies.

  ‘We made it,’ Ann said. ‘What do we do now?’

  Sophus spoke up groggily. ‘There’s an exit near here. It comes out behind the sub-station on Epuni Street.’

  ‘That’s near my place,’ Ann said. ‘We can hide there. My goodness, listen to them.’ They paused to take in the remote howls of the outraged Cartographers.

  ‘We’d better wait down here for a while,’ Danyl said. ‘We can’t fall into their hands again. Gorgon won’t give us a second chance. Then we need to go to ground. To think. To plan. And then—’

  Steve asked, ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then we need to go back.’

  ‘Back to Threshold?’ Ann asked.

  Danyl nodded.

  ‘To stop Gorgon?’

  ‘To rescue Lightbringer?’

  ‘Partly,’ Danyl said to Ann. ‘Not really,’ he said to Steve. ‘I have to go back because just as the scaffolding came down I saw inside Gorgon’s basement. There’s a bed there with a person in it. Someone with a blue-stained mouth and wide-open eyes.’ He paused, then said, ‘It’s Verity.’

  PART IV

  46

  The council of Danyl

  ‘The Real City is a conduit,’ Ann explained. ‘The Spiral leads to another universe. Any questions?’

  They were sitting around Ann’s dining-room table. They were warm and safe and dry. They’d made it to her house—a sunlit bungalow on Marama Crescent and the cleanest place Danyl had ever seen—by creeping through the catacombs to the exit behind the abandoned sub-station, then dashing across the empty street and through the gardens of deserted houses to Ann’s backyard.

  She’d found some bolt-cutters in her toolshed and cut Steve free of the bath. Then they’d all stripped off their sodden clothes and formed a miserable queue for the shower.

  When they were clean, Ann lit the fire in her lounge. They sat around it drinking tea, dressed in whatever clothes she could find that would fit them. They talked about their dazzling escape, with a minimum of recrimination and blame, then lapsed into a comfortable silence, until Ann suggested they make a plan to defeat Gorgon and protect reality from what lay behind the Real City. That’s when Danyl, dressed in pale purple trackpants and a tight low-cut T-shirt advertising a numerical analysis software company on the back, asked what the Real City was and received her brief but confusing answer.

  ‘But,’ he asked her, still confused, ‘how can there be other universes? They talk about alternate universes in science fiction, but this is reality.’ He knocked on the table. ‘Isn’t the universe everything there is? Isn’t it infinite?’

  Ann and Sophus exchanged glances, amused by Danyl’s naiveté. ‘Our universe appears infinite to us,’ Sophus explained. ‘True, our observable universe is limited to about 46 billion light years in each direction, but outside that perimeter it extends forever, repeating every possible combination of matter infinitely, including infinite identical replications of ourselves sitting around this table right now, and an even larger infinity of copies of ourselves with minor variations, all separated by unthinkably vast gulfs of space-time. But to outside
observers, our universe is finite and quite small. It’s obvious once you think about it.’

  ‘So there is something outside our universe?’

  ‘Not to us,’ Sophus said. ‘But yes, of course there’s something outside it.’

  ‘What?’

  Ann sighed. ‘We’ll have to go back to basics,’ she said to Sophus. ‘Let’s start with the beginning of time.’ She pointed at the table. ‘Let’s say this tablecloth is the universe.’

  Everything in Ann’s house was either black or white. The tablecloth was white and made from fine linen. She scrunched a section of it into a ball and said, ‘At the beginning of time the universe was just a false vacuum with no matter or radiation in it. But the vacuum was filled with a powerful, repulsive gravitational energy, and that caused it to expand very quickly to a space far larger than our universe in less than a billionth of a second.’ She smoothed out the scrunched-up section of tablecloth. ‘This inflationary vacuum was highly unstable, so almost every point in the vacuum’—she pointed at the countless tiny gaps in the tablecloth’s weave—‘collapsed into stable universes, each of which expanded at the speed of light and appear infinite to observers inside them.’ She pointed to two adjacent black teacups and stirred them both. The detritus of tea leaves swirled around in spirals. ‘But not every point in the inflationary vacuum collapses. Some tiny points of it remain, and of course those points expand at a rate many times faster than the speed of light, so all the countless infinite universes become impossibly tiny remote islands in the vast sea of the vacuum.’ She moved the teacups apart, their tea still swirling, and pointed at the gaps in the weave between them. ‘And then almost all the points in that new vacuum collapse into more infinite universes, which then fly apart. And so it goes, on and on, forever and ever, worlds without end.’

  She shrugged. ‘That much is trivial. Here’s where it gets interesting. Each universe will have different properties inherited from random quantum fluctuations in the inflationary void. Different particles. Different fields. Different physical constants. A different value for the fine structure constant. Most of these universes will probably be voids. Nothing. Eternal darkness, clean and beautiful and perfect.’ She sighed wistfully and picked up a black china sugar bowl filled with cubes of white sugar and set it down next to her teacup. ‘Others will be seas of plasma. Incompatible with biological life and even atomic structure, but they may have other stable structures we cannot imagine. Or,’ she said meaningfully, ‘structures we can imagine. Points, lines, integers, rational numbers. In our universe we have atoms and they combine to form structures: gas, suns, planets, organisms, eventually intelligent life like ourselves. A mathematical universe would be capable of similar complexity. At least some of its structures would be intelligent. Self-aware. Perhaps all of it. The entire mathematical universe could be one infinitely vast sentient being that’s entangled itself with our universe, somehow, across the vast abyss of the inflating vacuum. Mathematicians perceive tiny fragments of it and think they’re glimpsing eternal truths. Their insights transform our world. But they’re seeing what the sentient mathematical universe wants them to see. If true, then our entire technological civilisation is based on secrets whispered to us from another universe by an incomprehensible being.’