“This is the censor?” she asked nervously.
“Yes. And before you ask, we don’t know how it works. All we know is that we can only push certain things through it. Other things… it either rejects or destroys, depending on what kind of mood it’s in.”
Auger examined the edge of the frame, which was set into the rock. Clearly this was a human add-on, bolted on to whatever had been here before. The portal had presumably been installed at the same time as the hyperweb connection, long before Skellsgard’s people had reopened it.
“What’s on the other side?” she asked.
“The rest of the world. Another chamber, actually, but one that’s connected directly into the tunnels under Paris.”
“Can’t you just bypass the censor? Dig through the rock on either side?”
“Doesn’t work,” Skellsgard said. “Nothing we’ve tried gets us out of this chamber. We’ve tried blasting and cutting through on either side of the portal, but it’s like chewing through diamond. The builders must have reinforced this chamber for exactly that reason, to make everyone use the portal.”
“But you’ve been through it. You can cross the censor.”
“We can,” Skellsgard said, “you and I, but not someone like Niagara. His body’s so full of machines that the censor would cook him alive. Nanotechnology’s one of the big no-nos. No matter how well we try to hide it, the censor always detects it and always fries it.”
“Then no nanotech weapon can reach Paris. That’s good, isn’t it, if it means the Slashers can’t get through?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t stop with nanotech. Any complex manufactured object is blocked, no matter how innocuous its function. No guns. No comms gear. No watches or clocks. No cameras, sensors or medical equipment.”
“What does that actually leave?”
“Not much. Clothes. Paper. Simple tools, like spades and screwdrivers. Basically anything it deems safe. We actually managed to fool it, once, but in a very trivial way. It won’t let a gun through, not even a replica of a twentieth-century weapon. But we were able to dismantle a weapon and smuggle through its component parts—that worked. But what was the point? It’s easier to find a real gun on E2.”
Auger reached out towards the beguiling yellow surface. “Can I touch it?”
“Hell, yes. You can put your hand through it. Going to have to put your whole body through it anyway, so there’s no harm.”
Auger pushed her finger towards the eerie yellow membrane. It took longer than she had expected for her finger to encounter any surface. Then she felt a prickle of sensation in the very tip. She pushed harder, and the yellow surface began to visibly deform, puckering inwards from the point of contact. She was reminded of surface tension on water, the way it formed a skin that resisted gentle pressure. A rust-brown discoloration appeared in the yellow, radiating away from her finger in a concentric pattern.
“Are you absolutely sure this is safe?” she asked again.
“We’ve all been through it hundreds of times,” Skellsgard said. “Bodies aren’t a problem. It discriminates between complex biological processes and nanotech pretty well.”
“Pretty well?”
“Just push.”
Auger increased her pressure. There was a snapping sensation and suddenly her hand was engulfed in yellow up to the wrist. The surface had flattened itself again around her limb. There was no pain, merely a chill tingle. She wriggled her fingers. They all seemed present and correct. She withdrew her hand and checked by sight—still all there.
“See, simple,” Skellsgard said.
“I still don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll go on ahead and show you how safe it is. There’s a trick to this, so watch me closely. When I’m through you can pass me your hat.”
Auger stood back. Skellsgard reached up and grasped the horizontal handrail above the censor firmly with both hands. With a gymnastic fluidity, she pulled herself up off her feet and swung her body towards the yellow surface. By the time she reached it she had gained sufficient momentum to push through in one movement. The surface puckered, then swallowed her with a snap. Auger’s last glimpse was of the back of Skellsgard’s head disappearing into the censor.
A moment later, a hand pushed through and snapped its fingers. Auger recognised the blunt fingernails. She removed her hat and offered it to the hand. Hand and hat vanished back through the censor.
Auger reached up and took hold of the handrail. She pulled herself from the ground, muscles screaming at the unaccustomed effort. She pulled her legs as high as they would go and swung herself into the yellow. It was almost certainly less elegant than Skellsgard’s effort, but she supposed everyone had to begin somewhere.
The moment of transition, the passage through the yellow, was like an electric shock without the pain. She felt every atom of her body flooded with a sharp, inquisitional light. She felt herself being scrutinised, rummaged through, turned this way and that like a cut gem. It lasted an eternity and an instant.
Then it was over, and she was lying in an undignified heap with the hem of her skirt somewhere around her hips and one shoe off her heel. Someone had thoughtfully arranged a padded mat on the other side of the censor.
“Here’s your hat,” Skellsgard said. “Welcome to Paris.”
Auger picked herself up, straightened her clothes and placed the hat back on her head. The chamber in which they had arrived was much smaller than the last one, but it was crammed with a similarly bewildering assortment of machines and lockers. None of the contents looked quite as advanced, however: from what Auger could judge, almost everything here must have been sent through in tiny instalments and then reassembled (which naturally precluded anything really complicated) or—more likely—had been purloined from the outside world of E2 and then adapted to serve some new function. There was a lot of electrical equipment, ungainly humming things in grey or green metal cases, connected together with tangled rubberised cables; flickering monochrome screens, showing wave traces; black things like typewriters, but which clearly weren’t. A generator chugged away in one corner.
“You feeling all right?” Skellsgard asked.
“More or less. Shouldn’t I be?”
“There was a small risk that some of Niagara’s machines might not have been flushed out before you came through. Didn’t see any particular point in alarming you unnecessarily.”
“I see,” Auger said tersely.
“There’s something else as well. Usually when we go through that thing, we don’t feel anything. It only takes an instant and it’s all over. But every now and then, something else happens. Maybe once in a hundred trips through the censor, it’s different.”
“Different in what way? Different as in painful?”
“No—not like that. It’s just that sometimes it seems to take longer. Much longer—as if you’re in that yellow limbo for a lifetime. You learn and feel things you can barely articulate. When you come out of it, you almost remember what it was like. It’s like waking from a beautiful dream, clutching at threads as they fade away. You sense something of the minds that made this place. You feel them looking through you, vast and ancient and long dead, but still somehow aware, and curious as to what you make of their creation.
“Have you…”
“Once,” Skellsgard said. “And that was enough. It’s why I don’t go through that thing any more often than I need to.”
“Jesus,” Auger said, shaking her head. “You might have told me this when I was on the other side. Now I have no choice but to go through it again.”
“I just wanted you to know that if it does happen… which it probably won’t… you shouldn’t be afraid. Nothing bad will happen, and you’ll come out of it in one piece. It’s just a bit more than some of us can take.”