Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley (24 page)

‘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 gestured 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.'

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 house 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.

‘Why?'

‘There's a problem with the lock box.'

‘What?'

‘It's locked. I didn't anticipate that.'

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘To open it, you need to type in a code on a numeric keypad,' Danyl explained.

‘So?'

‘Numeric. As in, numbers.'

‘I know what numeric means. What do you want me to do?'

‘You're a mathematician,' Danyl replied. ‘Can't you do some mathematical stuff to figure out the code?'

Ann frowned. ‘Like what?'

‘I don't know. Just come and look.' He tugged on her arm. Ann allowed herself to be pulled through the window.

They lifted the bed and moved it to one side, revealing the box. It was made of steel and was the size of a hardback book. Ann knelt beside it. ‘I can't tell you how to crack the code,' she said. ‘You'll have to do that by trial and error. But I can estimate how long that'll take.' She pressed a few numbers at random. The keypad made a soft beeping sound. She pressed the UNLOCK key. A red light flashed and a lower, harsher beeping sound rang out.

She pressed a few more numbers and hit UNLOCK again. A harsh beep, and the red light stayed on longer this time. She pressed some numbers on the keypad and it didn't beep.

‘OK,' Ann said. ‘It takes about one second to press each key. Let's assume that this box has a four-digit PIN. It might be longer but let's start there. That means there are ten thousand possible combinations. If each combination takes five seconds, then it'll take just under fourteen hours to try them all. But there's a problem. Each time you enter an incorrect sequence, that red light flashes and the keypad times out. With each subsequent incorrect sequence, the timeout period is exponentially longer. So to try all possible four-digit combinations would take about'—she paused for a second, calculating—‘one times ten to the seventeen seconds.'

‘How long is that?'

‘Long enough for our sun to have exhausted its fuel then expanded and enveloped the Earth.'

‘The giant will have woken up by then.' Danyl stared at the keypad, thinking. ‘What if the code was just one number?'

‘A one-digit combination?'

‘Yeah.'

Ann shrugged. ‘Well, then the number of sequences is just one times ten.' She looked at Danyl's curious, expectant face and explained to him, ‘That equals ten. So twenty seconds to type them all in, plus the exponential time-outs add up to about 400 seconds. Six point six minutes. But—'

‘That's more like it.' Danyl knelt down and pressed 1 and then UNLOCK. He looked disappointed when the red light flicked on, but waited, hopeful and patient. When it went off after a few seconds he looked hopeful again. He pressed 2, then UNLOCK. The red light came on and he deflated.

‘Danyl.' Ann's voice was gentle. ‘The combination isn't going to be one digit. We need another plan.'

He grimaced. She was right. He ran his hand around the edge of the box. It was bonded to the wooden floorboards with some sort of glue. Maybe they could saw through the floorboards, take the box and force it open back at Ann's house? That would be faster than waiting for the sun to envelop the Earth.

He said, ‘You're right,' just as the red light went out again. He pressed 3 anyway. The red light came back on.

Ann's phone rang. She took it from her pocket, glanced at the screen and said to Danyl in a worried voice, ‘It's Sophus.'

Sophus and Steve were back at the archive, keeping a watch on the giant's body. Their job was to phone and warn Ann and Danyl if the giant woke. Ann held the phone to Danyl. He took it and answered.

‘Hey, buddy.' It was Steve. He sounded happy.

Danyl asked him, ‘What's wrong?'

‘Do you have the drugs yet?'

‘No. We've hit a small problem, but we're making progress.' The red light went out. Danyl hit the number 4 and pressed UNLOCK. The red light went on again. ‘Why?'

‘Because the giant is moving.'

‘OK.' Danyl rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘We need a few more minutes. Try and stall it.'

‘I'll be honest here, buddy. By moving I mean he's moved. He got up and left.'

‘What? When?'

‘Hard to tell. I wasn't super-awake when it happened.'

‘You were sleeping?'

‘Of course not. I was power-napping.'

‘Where was Sophus?'

‘I sent him to buy soup. He's back now though. He says hi.'

‘How long since you last saw the giant? How much time do I have before he gets here?'

‘I'd say you've got at least ten minutes,' Steve said confidently. A key rattled in the giant's front door. ‘Maybe five minutes,' he conceded. ‘Absolute worst-case scenario.'

Danyl hung up.

Ann hissed, ‘Let's go.' Danyl started to stand but then the red light on the keypad blinked out. Danyl instinctively pressed number 5, and then UNLOCK. The light flashed green. The lock clicked. The box opened.

Ann whispered, ‘No way. Five? Their secret code was five?'

Danyl flipped open the lid, revealing a trove of pills and vials and sachets of powder.

The front door opened. The floor shook and the pills rattled in their cases as the giant entered the building.

‘Stay low,' Danyl told Ann, shovelling drugs into his pocket. ‘Move fast. Now! Run!'

They ran. Around the bed. Towards the bathroom door. They passed the entrance to the lounge and a roar broke out. The giant had seen them.

Ann reached the bathroom first. She climbed up on the toilet and pulled herself through the window. Danyl was right behind her. He skidded a little on the broken glass but caught himself. He stepped on the toilet bowl, gripped the sides of the window, and hauled himself through head first. He was out! Free!

And then a mighty hand closed around his kicking leg and dragged him back inside. Ann reached for him. She gripped his hand for a second, and the giant tugged him back, and Danyl was gone.