Ann picked up a sugar cube from the bowl and dropped it into her tea. It dissolved.
‘What is the Real City? As I said, I believe it is a conduit. It’s like an airlock: a way for signals to pass between our universe and that of the sentient mathematical reality. I suppose there are many such conduits, that the mathematical universe trails them through higher dimensional spaces, like strands from a spider’s web, hoping to hook some sentient bait and gain access to another reality.
‘Why?’
Ann picked up her teacup and looked at Danyl. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Maybe it’s an old universe and is moving towards thermodynamic heat death, and it’s figured out a way to save itself by outputting its entropy into our reality. Or maybe we can’t know. Its motives might be incomprehensible. But we do know that it’s not working in good faith. Its engagement with our species is covert. Disguised. We know that it tempts us with the promise of truth, of insights into the nature of reality, but behind each truth is another mystery. It wants us to enter the Real City. It wants us to reach the Spiral and open the way. And that will happen very soon. According to the Ogilvy-Day equations, the Gaussian curvature of the Real City is almost at its maximal value. If Gorgon and the Cartographers imprison a few more pilgrims in the City, the way will open. The sentient mathematical universe will have direct access to our reality. And then …’
She raised her teacup to her lips and drank, emptying the cup with a soft sipping sound.
47
The plan
‘What’s in here?’
Steve had been sitting at the table, half listening to Ann talk and bicker with Danyl and Sophus about what to do next. Rescue Verity? Rescue the pilgrims? Raid the Threshold development? Save the universe? It was all so boring. So he got up and drifted out into the hall. He liked to know the layout of whatever building he was in, in case of attack, so he tried all the doors. One led to Ann’s bedroom. Another to the toilet, a windowless room which was also a laundry. Another to a study which was mostly empty except for a small wooden desk with a laptop on it. And a fourth door at the end of the hall, which was locked.
Steve rattled the handle and called out, ‘Ann? This door won’t open. What’s inside it?’
He heard Ann’s chair scrape on the floor. Her footsteps. She stuck her head into the hall. ‘That’s the spare room. That door is stuck.’
‘Help me get it open.’ Steve pressed his shoulder against the door and pushed. The wood creaked.
‘Stop that. Excuse me. Don’t do that.’ Ann hurried across the hall. ‘That carpentry is original. Late nineteenth century. Made by skilled artisans at a time when people cared about hygiene and individual freedom.’ She took Steve’s arm and tugged him back towards the lounge. ‘There’s nothing in that room. And we need your help. We’re drawing a map of Threshold. It must be precise. An exact representation.’
Steve allowed himself to be led. He did have a very powerful spatial memory. If they tried to map Threshold without him they’d be lost. He glanced back when they reached the lounge and noticed that there was a gap between the locked door and the wooden floor. In the gleam of the highly polished floorboards, Steve saw tiny flashing lights: red and green, reflections from the interior of the locked room.
Sophus said, ‘An attack on Threshold is hopeless. Unthinkable.’
The completed map of the development lay on the table. It showed the fenceline. The culvert leading to the catacombs. The driveway and the gate leading to Aro Street. Gorgon’s house, and a shaded area where Steve believed his lost crowbar had fallen from the bathtub.
‘Just tell us everything you can about Gorgon and the Cartographers,’ said Danyl. ‘Let the rest of us do the thinking about what is and isn’t unthinkable.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Start from the beginning,’ he replied, then added quickly, ‘Not the beginning of time, just your involvement with Gorgon and the Cartographers.’
‘You already know most of it,’ Sophus said. ‘It started one night after Ann and I fought, bitterly, about incompleteness and incomputability. Each of us was so sure the other was wrong. I stormed out and walked the streets of Te Aro, and I stumbled across the clues the Cartographers had laid about the valley and followed them to Ye Undergrounde Bookshoppe. The archivist was there. He offered me the DoorWay compound, promising me answers, revelations. I refused so he punched me in the belly and squirted his syringe into my mouth. I passed out and woke up in the Real City.
‘When I woke some weeks later in a disgusting hovel, I convinced Eleanor—Gorgon’s so-called Apostle—not to send me back. I told her I could find the way through the City to the Spiral.
‘Eleanor led me back to the bookshop and through the catacombs. They were filled with Cartographers carrying boxes filled with books through the tunnels to the Threshold.
Ann asked, ‘Where did they take them? What do they do with the books?’
‘They take them to his building here.’ He pointed at a rectangle on the map. ‘Gorgon’s laboratory. The books are the raw material used to synthesise DoorWay. Something to do with the wood pulp. The acid in the paper. This is where DoorWay is manufactured. They’ve been working non-stop to synthesise a new batch ever since Steve stole most of the last one. I know what you’re thinking.’ He glanced at Danyl and Steve. ‘Destroy the batch, and the pilgrims in the Real City will wake. But the lab is guarded by armed Cartographers. Gorgon knows that’s the first place you’ll strike.’
‘What about the pilgrims?’
‘They’re here.’ He pointed to more rectangles lower down the slope. ‘And here. These buildings weren’t guarded before, but they will be now. And all of the Cartographers have phones. Alert them and the rest will come running.’
‘Who are the Cartographers?’ Danyl asked. ‘How many are there?’
‘There are about thirty,’ Sophus replied. ‘Mostly workers from Gorgon’s bookstore. Others are former waiters and bartenders from Eleanor’s café, or just postgraduate students and drifters. They sleep here, in shifts.’ He tapped the map.
‘Not tonight,’ Ann said. ‘Gorgon is close to her goal. She’ll have the Cartographers finish their batch, administer it to the captives and bring new pilgrims in through the bookshop.’
‘Tell us about Gorgon,’ Danyl said to Sophus. ‘What does she look like? What happened when you met her?’
Sophus continued his story. ‘Eleanor led me up past the other buildings to Gorgon’s house. We climbed up to the front door, knocked and waited, while that gigantic dog sat on the scaffolding, watching us. Then someone called for us to enter. We opened the door and found ourselves in a living room filled with junk. Two Cartographers with tasers sat in this room, guarding the entrance.
‘Eleanor motioned for me to sit on a threadbare couch. I obeyed. She opened a door in the far wall, revealing a second room. It was dark in there. A creaking sound came from inside. I dimly made out a figure in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth. I had the sense there was a second person in that room, behind the chair. Neither of them spoke.
‘Eleanor told me to talk about the Real City. So I did. I explained that it was a planar graph. That you could eventually visit every plaza by taking a bridge you hadn’t taken before, which meant that the City was solvable, and a pilgrim to it could eventually reach the Spiral. I postulated that the City was a sphere, and that if you travelled far enough you’d travel around it and arrive at the Spiral, which is visible from the entrance plaza. When I was finished Eleanor thought for a moment, then got up and entered the dark room.
‘There was a murmured conversation. Two voices or three? I couldn’t tell. I could only make out a few stray words. Adversary. Spiral. Universe.
‘Then Eleanor returned. “You’ll join us,” she said to me. “You’ll work in the bookshop, helping to bring the pilgrims across each night. Afterwards you’ll make the journey to the City itself. Map it. Observe it. Report your observations back to me.’ Then she gestur
ed to one of the guards and said, “Take him to the archivist.”
‘That’s how I became a Cartographer. By day I helped my fellow Cartographers hide spiral dollars and blue envelopes around the valley. By night we accepted pilgrims into the bookshop and drugged them, and the rest of the Cartographers took them to Threshold. You all know the rest.’
‘You must know more,’ Danyl said. ‘Why is Gorgon doing all of this? Does she really want to destroy the universe?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sophus admitted. ‘I only glimpsed her that one time. She never leaves her house. And I was just a hired hand. A mathematician they thought might be useful.’ He thought for a moment, and added, ‘They talk about an Adversary. Someone evil and dangerous. Someone who wants to stop them. They’re terrified of this person.’ He thought for another minute then said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know who Gorgon is. I wish I knew more.’
He indicated the map again. ‘You can see it’s hopeless. There are only three of you. You can’t hope to raid the laboratory or rescue enough pilgrims to make a difference. And you can’t rescue Danyl’s ex-girlfriend. You’d have to go in through the tunnels or over the fence, then make it to Gorgon’s house without being seen. Then you’d need to get inside, even though Danyl tore down the scaffolding. Then get past the guards and Gorgon herself. Get into the basement and carry Verity all the way out again. It’s impossible.’
‘Difficult,’ said Danyl, ‘but not impossible. We can rescue Verity and defeat Gorgon—if we have a plan.’
Ann looked at him, surprised. ‘And do you have such a plan?’
He hesitated. Danyl did, actually have a brilliant and intricate plan. It had come to him while Sophus was talking; it had simply unfolded in Danyl’s mind as if it had been there all along, waiting to be discovered. Where did it come from? His brain, obviously—but Danyl didn’t entirely trust his brain. And it acknowledged this: I don’t trust you either, it thought to him, giving him a gentle zap to emphasise its point. But if you want to rescue Verity and save the universe, this is the only way. You have no choice.
So Danyl picked up the pen and began to make markings on the map, and said, ‘Listen carefully.’
48
Combinations
Friend! Neighbour! Dreamer!
Are you afraid of radiation? Do you oppose secret government plans to build dehumanising superhighways through your community? Do you think advertising and the mainstream media are manipulating your thoughts to make you paranoid?
If you answered YES to these QUESTIONS then YOU are one of the rare freethinkers LEFT alive on GAIA and you MUST attend:
The global people’s WORLDWIDE moment of TRUTH.
To be held: In Ye Undergrounde Bookshoppe at 10 pm tonight. (Please follow attached map, enter the code 137 to gain admittance, give the attached spiral dollar to the person who greets you and do not attempt to discuss these issues with anyone, for reasons of operational security. Do not deviate from these instructions. Take extreme precautions. Bring a friend.) FREEDOM!
‘Do you really think this will work?’
Danyl rolled up another leaflet, bundling it with a copy of the map to the basement and some spiral dollars, and slipped it into the letterbox of the first house on Ohiro Road. ‘It’ll work.’ He continued on to the next box and repeated the task. ‘People see the residents of Te Aro as pot-addled, new-age dreamers. But that’s just a lazy stereotype. Only about sixty or seventy percent of the population falls into that category. They’re the people Gorgon has captured. The rest of the people in the valley have jobs, families, lives. They probably haven’t noticed anything strange has happened at all. The streets seem a bit emptier, that’s all. These notes will grab their attention.’
‘But why do we have to lie?’ Ann demanded. ‘Why don’t we just say there’s an evil group at work here, drugging people and trying to destroy the universe?’
‘These people don’t really care about the universe,’ Danyl said, ‘but if you tell them someone’s building a road through their community, they’ll riot.’
Ann accepted this. She crossed to the opposite side of the road and began leafleting.
It was early afternoon. The sun made occasional, indifferent appearances through the clouds. They had half an hour to deliver leaflets before meeting Steve and Sophus for the next phase of the plan. It felt good to just wander along the roadside engaged in a simple, routine task for a few minutes and not have to escape from anyone or worry about the fate of reality.
The slope on Danyl’s side rose into a hill too steep to build houses on, so he crossed the road and walked with Ann. ‘What will you do when all this is over?’ she asked. ‘If we succeed, I mean? Will you stay here in Te Aro?’
‘I don’t think so. This valley isn’t good for my mental health. No, I’d like to live in the country, or maybe by the sea. Write another book. Grow vegetables.’
‘Vegetables are a big responsibility.’
‘I know. I want chickens, too. I feel comfortable around them. But I’m not sure I’m ready.’ He looked at her sideways. What will you do?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t go back to mathematics. Not after all this.’
‘Maybe you can join me in the country and count my chickens.’
‘That sounds nice.’
They were silent for a moment; they walked on to the next cluster of letterboxes. Ann asked, ‘And what about Verity?’
‘Things ended awkwardly with Verity. What with my breakdown and her stealing my book and vanishing, we never got the chance to talk things out. I don’t know if we have a future together.’
Ann said nothing. The steep unoccupied slope on the other side of the road was replaced by a row of modern houses built into the hillside. She crossed over to them and the two of them distributed the rest of their fake leaflets in silence.
Te Aro Archive was deserted. The shelves destroyed during yesterday’s brutal confrontation still lay where they’d been thrown. Papers and files soaked with congealed DoorWay lit up the floor in pools of glowing blue. The giant lay where he fell, sprawled inside the door, his eyes wide open.
‘He’s in the Real City,’ Sophus said. ‘We shot him full of darts tipped with DoorWay. But we couldn’t move him. So …’ He gestured. ‘Here he is.’
‘How long will he be out?’
Sophus shrugged. ‘He’s been here for roughly eighteen hours and a typical dose of DoorWay sends a captive to the Real City for two days. He got more than an average dose, but we’ve never drugged anyone this size before. He could wake up right now.’
They all took a step back. The giant did not move.
‘OK. Let’s get to work.’ Danyl clapped his hands. Everyone started at the sound. ‘I’ll watch the door. Steve, you search the giant’s pockets and find his house keys.’
Steve considered this then replied, ‘No.’
‘Why not? You’re not scared of a little giant, are you?’
‘Why don’t you search him?’
‘Me? I came up with the plan.’
‘So you’re the best person to execute it.’
‘We don’t have time to argue about who is the best person to do what,’ Danyl said. ‘We’re here to save the universe. Step one is to get inside the giant’s house. The longer we stand here and argue, the greater the chance the giant will wake and kill us all. So let’s stop squabbling and just search his pockets and get his keys. The fate of all existence relies on us working together as a team.’
Danyl and Ann stood behind the giant’s house. Danyl pointed at a window and said, ‘Let’s break that one.’
He picked up a large rock and approached the window. He covered his face with one arm and used the rock to break the glass in the window leading into the giant’s bathroom. Next, he went around the frame tapping at the remaining shards.
Ann said, ‘This makes me uncomfortable.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m a public servant. I’m supposed to uphold the law. If we break into someone’s hous
e and steal their stuff, then what makes us any better than Gorgon?’
Danyl took off his jacket and laid it over the window ledge. ‘You can’t save the universe without breaking a few windows,’ he said. ‘Help me in.’
The giant’s house was empty. Someone had tidied it up since Danyl had booby-trapped the bedroom and fled out the front door.
Danyl crawled under the bed and over to the lock box fixed to the floor beneath it. The lid was down. He tried to open it, then crawled out from under the bed and returned to the bathroom window. ‘Climb through,’ he told Ann.
Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley Page 25