But they backed away, and the light flowed forward. April’s eyes widened. “Max,” she said, “can you get us back to the grid?”
Max was already consulting his map. “I don’t think so. The only way I know of is back the way we came.” He looked toward the approaching light.
“That’s not going to work,” said Arky. They set off again in the direction they’d been traveling. The lawyer took a position in the rear. “Try to find a way around,” he said.
They went left at the first cross-passageway, hoping to find another place to turn again and get behind the thing in the corridor. (For Max had now begun to think of it as a thing. Every horror movie and vampire book he’d ever digested bubbled up in his psyche.)
“You know,” said April, “I keep thinking that everything connected with the ports seems to be laid out for visitors. Tourists. People riding a boat around a lake. The Horsehead. They’re vacation stops. Maybe this place is, too.”
“Is what?” asked Max. “A maze?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a funhouse.” They were moving at a quick walking gait. The change in illumination behind them was keeping pace. Finally April slowed and turned around, letting Arky draw abreast. “Hello,” she said with nervous cheerfulness. “Is anyone there?”
Max was behind April, watching the thing advance, backpedaling, fighting down an urge to run, when his vision blurred. Suddenly he was looking at her from the front. She blinked on and off, like an electronic image, and his head swam. His stomach turned over and he went down on one knee, fighting faintness. He closed his eyes, tried to shake it off, and saw her face, saw her lips moving, hands outstretched, eyes riveted. He was looking down from near the ceiling.
“Come on, Max,” said Arky. “Get in the game.” He pulled Max to his feet, then caught April by the shoulder and drew her back. Now they were in full retreat.
They ran through a wedge-shaped room into another passageway and turned left and then right. Max’s head cleared quickly, probably from the adrenaline he was pumping.
“I think we lost it,” said Arky.
They were retreating across a wide chamber and around a shaft. They paused at the exit on the far side. When the lights didn’t change, Max tried to put his thoughts in order.
The way he did that was to assign the distorted perspective he’d experienced to his momentary weakness and to concentrate instead on getting them back to the grid. He’d always been proud of his directional sense. Even in this labyrinth, he was confident he knew which way they had to go. He showed them on the map. “We’re here,” he said. “And we’ve got to get here.” Roughly a mile away.
He took them out through the exit and into the passageway. A moment later they turned left and walked into the room with the grid.
A chill ran through Max’s stomach. “This can’t be right,” he said.
But Arky looked immensely relieved. “Max,” he said, “you’re a genius.”
Max was shaking his head. “Not possible. It can’t be the same room.”
They crossed the chamber, anxiously eyeing the other entrance, which was the one by which they’d left. Max looked at the triggers. They looked like the same set he’d seen earlier. The room looked identical.
April waved it away. “We’ll figure it out later. What bothers me is that this isn’t the way to handle first contact.” But she kept her voice down. “Running home is not going to look good when they write the history books.”
“To hell with the history books,” said Max. “The history books will only know what we tell them. Let’s go.”
“You really want to stay?” Arky asked her in a tone that challenged her to do it if she meant it. Otherwise, don’t waste our time.
“We’re going to have to come back,” she said. But she stepped onto the grid.
“Next time we’ll write.” Max punched the stag’s head and joined them.
The countdown was interminable. Max remembered having visited an empty house once as a boy and being frightened out by noises in the attic. It was like that, and when the light folded over them and the Roundhouse formed, he recalled how it had felt to escape back into the sunshine.
23
The business of America is business.
—Calvin Coolidge
JOHNSON’S RIDGE EXPLORERS OPEN SECOND WORLD
Walhalla, ND, Mar. 22 (AP)—
A team of explorers passed through a second port today and entered a world that was described as being “pure indoors.” No evidence of recent occupancy was discovered, according to press spokesman Frank Moll, who added that visitors will not be permitted until the exact nature of the terminus can be established.
There was no indication of danger, so they reopened Eden to the press and to researchers on the twenty-third. Groups crossing over were accompanied by a guide and a member of the security force. The tours went every two hours. People were fairly nervous about the method of transit, and some in fact backed out. But those who went invariably came back elated.
Everyone signed a release, although Arky warned darkly that such documents rarely influenced liability judgments.
Blood tests for April, Max, and all the security people who had been across came back negative.
April was pleased that Eden was finally a going concern, and she loved showing it off to the world’s academics. (As to the second terminus, which they had begun to refer to as the Maze, they decided to postpone further investigation until they had a chance to think things out. Max could not believe he’d got so completely lost and began to suspect that the second terminus was a sphere.)
She held informal conferences, and arranged special field trips when the requests seemed justified. She was beginning to think of herself as the Steward of the wilderness world, and she confessed to Max that she enjoyed being famous. They were all showing up on the covers of the news weeklies. A movie was being rushed into production, and early reports had it that she would be played by Whitney Houston.
Andrea Hawk was tending the port when two geologists came back through the system from the Eden terminus. They were bearded and gray-eyed, and both were talking. They seemed so deeply involved with each other that they did not even notice her. But one word caught her attention: “Oil.”
An hour later, it was the number one story on the wire services.
The main item during the plenary session of the General Assembly was to have been a motion by Tanzania suggesting a further weakening of global trade barriers. But the newspapers, which had been full of speculation about the star bridge in North Dakota, now carried stories that oil had been found in Eden.
If the delegates in attendance at the United Nations had found all the talk about other worlds and dimensional intersections confusing and largely irrelevant to real-world politics (they perceived themselves as, if nothing else, hardheaded realists), they did understand oil.
Brazil was scheduled for opening remarks on the trade policy initiative. But everyone in the building knew where the conversation was going that morning.
The Brazilian minister was a portly woman with black hair and a thick neck and quick eyes. “The question before us today,” she said, “goes far beyond the issue of tariffs. We are looking at a new world, located in some curious way beyond, but not in, the United States. We do not have any details about this world. We don’t know how extensive it is or how hospitable it may be. So far, it appears to be very hospitable.” She looked directly across the chamber at the U.S. delegation. “Brazil wishes to submit to the members the proposition that this discovery is of such supreme importance to everyone that no single nation should claim sovereignty over it. The port should be open to all mankind.” The minister paused here to listen to a comment from an aide, nodded, and sipped her glass of water.
“Brazil is confident that the United States, which has always been at the forefront in arguing for human rights, will recognize the essential human right to explore and ultimately occupy this strange new place. We urge the United States to declare itself accordingly.”