Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley (27 page)

Steve hung suspended in mid-air, the laboratory beneath him. He held the vial of Ragnarok between his teeth.

The makeshift laboratory was in a large room on the ground floor, but the ceiling had long since rotted away, so it extended up into the second storey of the crumbling Threshold townhouse. The space was lit by lamps mounted on tripods, like on a film set. They lit up six workbenches laid lengthways across the room, where dozens of Cartographers dressed in pale green lab coats, red latex gloves, surgical masks and oversized plastic eyeglasses busied themselves at a complex biochemical assembly line.

The benches were crowded with glass beakers, benchtop water baths, centrifuges and dozens of other glowing, beeping, bubbling devices and things. The first bench groaned under the weight of a large vat filled with books soaking in a vile-smelling translucent yellow liquid. Steve watched as the Cartographers pulped the books and spun them dry, diluting the run-off with a boiling hot black paste. The paste was subjected to a series of concentrations, washes and tests, then poured into large beakers and left to cool on the final bench in Styrofoam containers filled with ice, where it slowly changed colour into the pure, radiant blue that Steve knew and hated.

Sophus had described what he knew of the DoorWay synthesis process to Steve, explaining which stage should be tampered with if their plan was to succeed. But Steve was running a little late. The Cartographers had already brewed up four beakers of DoorWay. Steve needed to contaminate both the process and the finished batch.

That's why he'd climbed into the rafters high above the lab. The tripod-mounted lamps cast bright lights but also deep shadows. Like a large, brilliant spider, Steve clambered above the bustling, oblivious heads of the lab-workers. He positioned himself above the beakers at the end of the table, distributing his weight across a number of intersecting beams. Next he took the jar of Ragnarok from his mouth and unscrewed it. He estimated the distance to the beakers, the wind speed of the drafts and eddies in the laboratory, the mass and aerodynamic qualities of the flakes of Ragnarok. He positioned the vial and tipped it over and tapped its base.

The flakes separated into a fine silver dust, which drifted down into the light, twinkling like cheap computer-generated special effects. It settled over the beakers. Steve watched as the dust dissolved into the blue liquid, vanishing without a trace. He repositioned himself over another workbench and repeated this procedure, emptying the last grains of dust into a bubbling water bath, where tubes filled with steaming book-pulp run-off were bobbing about. As he did so, the empty vial slipped from his fingers, but it landed in the clutter of equipment beside the beakers.

He'd done it. Another triumph for Steve. Soon Threshold would be his. He crawled back through the rafters and climbed down onto the mezzanine overlooking the laboratory.

A door opened below. The archivist entered, his goat-eyes gleaming. He was flanked by two burly Cartographers wielding tasers. One of the lab-workers stepped forward to meet him, removing her mask and goggles. It was Eleanor.

The archivist said, ‘I've just come from the bookshop. Something's wrong.'

‘Do we have any new pilgrims?'

‘We have dozens of new pilgrims. Hundreds. They're queueing up the stairs and down the alleyway.'

‘Do they have spiral dollars?'

‘More than we've ever printed. Someone is forging them. Do you think it's the Adversary?'

Eleanor made a clicking sound with her tongue. The sound rolled around the room, echoing through the darkness to where Steve lay.

‘Maybe,' she said. ‘But maybe this is just the Tao of the Spiral. We're close now. Very close. This could be enough people to open the path.'

‘So we bring them all across? Do we have enough compound?'

Eleanor smirked. ‘We've been working hard.' She gestured. A trio of Cartographers were decanting the beakers of contaminated DoorWay into plastic tubes and stoppering them up. ‘We have enough compound for every pilgrim in Threshold for at least a week. How many doses do you need?'

‘Fifty?' the archivist guessed. ‘Maybe a hundred?'

Eleanor raised an eyebrow. ‘The Spiral provides,' she said, gesturing to a lab-coated Cartographer, who loaded a briefcase with glowing vials and handed it to the archivist.

‘Guard them well,' Eleanor commanded. ‘Gorgon thinks the Adversary will try to seize our stocks of compound again. Be alert and prepared for ambushes. Call me when you make it through the catacombs.'

‘Aren't you coming?'

She shook her head. ‘Gorgon wants me here. Close to her.'

Steve waited for the archivist and his bodyguards to leave. Eleanor supervised the distribution of more vials of compound, and teams of armed Cartographers marched out into the night, bound for the different buildings scattered across Threshold and the hundreds of pilgrims held captive in the Real City.

Steve still had business to attend to. He made his way through the darkness of the upper storey, through unfinished walls, over black pits and gaping stairwells to the far side of the building.

He still had the second vial from the giant's stash. It was filled with sedative, and it was bound for the meal currently being cooked in the Cartographer's kitchen. They would eat just after 10 pm, and by glancing up at the stars through a ragged gap in the clouds Steve determined that it was 9.47 pm. He had plenty of time.

He made his way through the windswept darkness, heading for the building where the kitchen and communal dining area were. He was halfway there when he noticed a lone figure trudging up the road, parallel to his own path.

Eleanor.

He checked the stars again. 9.53 pm. Taking out Eleanor wasn't part of the plan, but if Steve could incapacitate Gorgon's most trusted lieutenant then Danyl would have a much better shot at defeating Gorgon herself and rescuing Verity. And Steve felt generous. He felt like helping out his friend. He drew his taser from his pocket, switched it on, and closed in on Eleanor.

Eleanor. Danyl had to get to Eleanor. If he could make it to the bookshop and tell the Cartographers there to phone her and warn her that the new batch of DoorWay was contaminated, then everything would be fine.

Things weren't hopeless. But they weren't great, either. He took an indirect route from Ann's house to Aro Street, climbing over fences and crawling through backyards and along muddy ditches. When he reached the bottom of the hill, he saw a car crawling along Ohiro Road with its headlights off and its windows wound down, and Ann's sharp eyes peering out into the darkness.

He needed to stay out of sight. Unfortunately he also needed to cross Aro Street. He reached a house adjacent to the street and crept through the garden, using a bed of flowers to muffle his footsteps. He crouched behind a fence and peered through its ricketty rails.

It looked good. The street was clear, and there was the alleyway leading to the bookshop, just across the road and down a little.

Danyl was about to vault the fence and sprint for the alleyway when he noticed a huge black shape beneath a shop awning. It was the giant, lurking in ambush. Danyl shivered as its head swivelled and those impossibly huge eyes swept over him. But nothing happened. Danyl was hidden in the shadows. The giant's gaze travelled on.

There was a bus stop halfway between Danyl's hiding position and the alleyway. It was just close enough for him to make it there before the giant turned his way again. He readied himself, waiting until the giant's gaze passed over him; then he vaulted the fence and sprinted for the bus stop. He threw himself to the ground behind the bench and waited, listening for the sound of the giant's feet crashing through puddles. The sound never came.

Instead, Danyl heard screaming. Faint, distant. It was a mixture of male and female voices: no words, just wild, inchoate yells growing louder.

What now? Life wasn't difficult enough, what with Ann and the giant and his mental illness and maybe an alien universe —now there had to be a bunch of people screaming? Danyl peeked around the bench.

The giant had emerged from under the awning. It stood in the middle of the street, staring towards the alleyway, which Danyl now realised was the source of the screams. It had its back to Danyl and it was talking on its phone, probably to Ann. Danyl snuck across Aro Street and crept through the shadows, closer to the entrance of the alleyway. He paused in the darkness, watching the giant. Then, just as it tossed its head and spoke into the phone, Danyl slipped around the corner and into the safety of darkness. The screams were very loud, echoing out of the stairway that led to the bookshop. They drowned out Danyl's footsteps, his thoughts, the sound of the rain.

The door at the bottom of the steps was open. Danyl hesitated. He had to go in, but something about a crowd of people screaming insanely in an underground space unsettled him.

But he had no choice. Ann and the giant might enter the alleyway at any second. He descended the steps then fell backwards when the archivist burst through the door. His clothes were torn, his shirt hung from his shoulders in rags. He ran straight into Danyl's arms and flailed about in panic. ‘Don't go in there,' he neighed. His yellow eyes strained towards the end of the hall. The door was swinging shut. Danyl had a vague impression of movement beyond it, then it closed. ‘Don't go in there,' the archivist moaned again, his breath hot on Danyl's face.

‘Call Eleanor,' Danyl urged him. ‘You have to warn her. Ann might be the Adversary. We have to stop Steve.' But the archivist was hysterical; deaf to Danyl's commands. So Danyl patted at his muscular, furry body, trying to find a pocket to see if he had a phone on him.

The screaming beyond the doorway ebbed for a second, and Danyl heard footsteps on the steps. Voices. Ann and the giant were coming.

He found the archivist's phone hidden in the damp warmth of his shirt pocket. He pressed a button on the screen to bring up the list of recent calls. Eleanor's name was at the top. He pressed it.

Eleanor's phone rang. She took it from her pocket and lifted it to her ear but before she could speak Steve struck her from behind with his taser. She cried out and fell to the ground, stunned.

Steve rested his foot on her inert body. He took a moment to savour his victory.

When the moment was over, he wondered what he was going to do with Eleanor, now that he'd defeated her, utterly. Put her on trial? In Aro Park? Presided over by Steve, dressed in a judge's elaborate black robes? Lit by flickering torches? Watched by jeering crowds? Yes, that was the simplest option. He'd tie her up, conceal her body, defeat Gorgon, then come back for her.

Eleanor's phone lay in the mud. A tiny disembodied voice squawked from the speaker, calling her name, warning her that the new batch of DoorWay was contaminated. The fool on the other end was too late. Danyl's plan had worked, and that wretched creature babbling into the mire was powerless to stop it. Steve hung up and tossed the phone onto Eleanor's comatose form. He picked up her legs and dragged her through the mud, heading for a silent, unlit townhouse nearby. She groaned, and he shushed her. He pulled her up the path to the front door. He was just about to open it when the screaming started.

It was coming from one of the buildings further down the hill: a single man's voice bellowing into the night. What was he saying? Was he crying out in fear? Pain? Joy? Steve couldn't tell.

Then another scream joined the first. A woman this time. Steve closed his eyes and triangulated the sounds. They came from different buildings. One down near the lab, another higher up the hill. He used his photographic memory to recall Sophus's sketch of the development. The screams came from two of the buildings where the Cartographers kept their pilgrims, drugged and blinded, trapped in the Real City.

Only now they were waking. They'd been administered doses of the contaminated DoorWay compound, and they were waking and screaming, presumably out of joy at returning to life, and outrage at what had been done to them. The Ragnarok was working!

More and more cries rang out. A chorus. A symphony! Steve pumped his fist in triumph, but as the screaming grew louder and more horrible, more animalistic, his fist-pumping slowed and then stopped. Something was wrong.

He decided to investigate. He gave Eleanor another gentle stun with the taser then made his way down the hill to the next row of townhouses. The windows were lit up. Muted white light shone through the plastic covers. He made out dim shapes flitting about inside.

He crouched beneath a window, reached up and tore a hole in the plastic. He stood and looked through.

No! Steve whipped his head away from the window and staggered backwards. He knelt again in the wet grass, hyperventilating, trying to erase the scene inside the townhouse from his brain. But he couldn't. Steve's memory was too powerful. It remembered everything. So he concentrated on his breathing, calming it, taking control of his autonomic nervous system.

That was better.

Then something inside the building slammed into the wall. Steve jumped with fright, tripped over, then stumbled to his feet and ran back up the hill.

What should he do? He checked the stars. He still had time to execute the second stage of Danyl's plan: infiltrate the kitchen and drug the Cartographers' food. But after seeing what the Ragnarok had done, he wasn't sure he could go through with it. Maybe he should meet up with Danyl? Talk about what to do next? Yes, that would be best.

But first he'd deal with Eleanor. He hurried up the hill towards her body, but tripped over something and fell. He cursed as he landed in the mud and weeds. Then his fingers closed around something cold and hard. He picked it up. A flame of steel gleamed in the starlight.

Lightbringer. It must have landed here when it flew from the bathtub during their escape. Steve thought it was lost forever but now, against all odds, he'd found it again. It was a good omen. A sign. Luck was on Steve's side. Whatever foes he faced—Cartographers, Gorgons, sentient mathematical universes—Steve would overcome them.

He tucked Lightbringer under his armpit and returned to Eleanor. He dragged her over to the door of the townhouse. He unhooked the handle of the front door with his foot and it swung open. There was a snarl; a sudden flurry in the darkness. Claws clicking on concrete.

Dog leapt into the air, slamming into Steve, knocking him to the ground.