The pull resumed, and Burgess joined the others on the chill upper slope. The mountain continued unabated. But when he floated cautiously to the next boundary, the feeling changed; the path had no support there. The mountain had been scooped away, as if hivers had sucked out the dirt. Now Burgess appreciated the problem.
Darius explained that when he had traveled the Virtual Mode with another person, Provos, who had later terminated her anchor so that Burgess could establish his anchor instead, they had encountered pits like this, and fallen to the bottom of one, and had difficulty getting out of it. There had been creatures made of metal excavating the pits. Colene called them robots. They looked and acted like living creatures, but they were not alive. It seemed best not to get captured by such creatures, because they might choose to render living folk dead, to match themselves.
Burgess agreed. The assorted odd living creatures he had encountered (no offense to present company) were sufficient. Odd dead ones might be an experience best left for some other adventure. But how were they to get past the mine pit?
They would have to try to get around it. Unless it happened to be only a single Mode wide, in which case they might bridge it.
Nona went ahead, flying above the slope, disappearing as she passed the boundary. In a moment she returned: the pit was indeed only one Mode wide.
But Darius was not satisfied. The pits he had encountered before had been many Modes wide, with different robots in each. It seemed that there were likely to be similar species in adjacent Modes, who could indulge in similar activities. So it would be better to verify whether any of the Modes beyond had pits.
Nona flew across again, and this time was gone for a longer period. There were two pits: the one in the next Mode, and another three Modes beyond. That seemed to be all. She had not flown up the entire mountain, but had noted that the nature of the rock changed, so that once they were beyond this stratum, there would probably not be any more pits. It was not clear what they wanted from the one type of rock. Colene said it could be anything from gold to uranium.
Nona expanded Burgess’ two paths, so that each was more solid. Then they put each across the next Mode, so that one end was anchored in this Mode, and the far end in the third Mode. The humans crossed, and then Burgess floated along, drawn by the rope Darius held, out of sight in the next Mode. Burgess found the sudden chasm awesome and had to retract his eyes and trust Nona and the rope to guide him blind. Finally Seqiro crossed, his right hooves on one path, his left hooves on the other. It seemed precarious, but with Colene leading him he stepped along confidently enough, not looking down.
They were safely across, but Burgess concluded that he was not comfortable with this region. A broad flat plain would be much more to his liking.
They continued up the slope, then crossed the next pit Mode in similar manner. Now all they had to worry about was the jagged icy ridge of the mountain pass ahead. Burgess did not like that prospect much better than the chasms.
In one Mode there was a snowstorm in progress. The humans bundled up further, and covered the horse with more warm padding. Nona took metal nails from their supplies and enlarged them into pitons to provide firm anchorage. They hammered these in, and left them behind, just in case they had to return this way. The storm was uncomfortable, and it rendered visibility bad, but in a moment they were through it and back in sunlight. That was one thing about the Virtual Mode: if they did not like the weather in one Mode, they could readily change it by going to the next.
There was one benefit of the snowy reaches: Burgess no longer had to use the portable path, because the snow leveled the surface. Now all he needed was the rope. Nona diminished the path segments for easy portability, and they continued.
Burgess began to feel fatigued. But as with the swamp, there was nowhere to go but on, so he did not express distress. However, he could not conceal it, because Nona touched one of his contact points frequently, and soon realized his situation. “Once we pass the ridge, you can slide down on the snow, with no further effort,” she said encouragingly.
They did pass the ridge, braving the cutting wind which crossed it, and started cautiously down. Burgess did relax as he slid, and Nona continued to heat the air around him with fire, but his fatigue increased. He began to feel negative, as if his system were functioning imperfectly. His eye stalks, already cold, worked poorly. His air lost power, and he dragged in the snow.
Then Colene was with him. “Burgess, what’s wrong? You were tired on the bog—we all were—but not like this.”
Burgess did not know. He seemed to be suffering a malady, perhaps occasioned by the effort of the climb and the cold snow. He had not felt this way before in his life. Perhaps when they reached the foot of the mountain, where it would be warm and green and level, he would recover.
“Level,” she said. “I wonder—you could be suffering from disorientation. You’re a creature of level land, but you’ve been at a tilt for hours now. Like motion sickness; we can get real sick from that, sometimes.”
Burgess did not know.
“I can make a level sledge,” Nona suggested. “It will vary some as the slope changes, but it should be an improvement.”
She made it. They put Burgess on it, and now he was level though the slope remained. They let him down on the rope, and he did not even have to float. That helped. He withdrew his eyes and let himself sleep, as his energy was low and there was nothing he could do to assist his own travel.
In time they reached the warmer depths, and finally they were on warm, relatively level land again. In fact it became a series of plains which extended as far as they could see. But Burgess did not feel better. Perhaps it would be best if they left him on a Mode and went on without him, as he seemed to be dying.
“No way!” Colene exclaimed unreasonably. “Listen, Burg—we’re coming onto my anchor Mode. I can tell; the terrain’s starting to look like Oklahoma. I never wanted to go back there again, and there could be some real complications, but you’re sick, maybe the way I was when the mind predator laid siege to me, and I think we’d better just get you onto an anchor Mode and see if that helps. We aren’t going to just let you go.”
Burgess would have appreciated that, if he had had more energy. As it was, he couldn’t even float, despite the ideal terrain. It was all he could do to pump enough air to sustain his gills.
Nona put her hands on his contact points and concentrated. He knew that she was exerting her magic power of healing. She had used it to fix the scrapes and bruises they had incurred along the way. But though he felt her magic passing through his body, and it was a warm and comforting thing, it did not make him better. He seemed to be too alien for her to heal.
They reshaped the sledge and put him on it. Then Seqiro hauled it, and Burgess went with them though he did nothing on his own behalf. He regretted becoming such a burden to the hive, but lacked the energy to protest.
Time passed. He was aware of this because once when he extended an eye stalk and looked around it was dark, and another time it was light again. Now that he was using very little energy, he was not growing worse at the same rate as before, but neither was he improving. Colene’s efforts had merely extended the time it would require for him to die.
They came to the oddest region of the Virtual Mode yet. It had paved paths which were straight and wide, ideal for floaters to float on. But there were no floaters. Instead there were monstrous hurtling things traveling the paths at extreme velocity. Burgess would have been terrified, if he had had sufficient energy. Colene was careful to keep them to the sides of the broad paths, so as to be clear of the metal monsters, but each time they crossed a boundary into a new Mode, more of the things appeared. Sometimes they came to sudden halts, screeching their protests, then after a brief pause they lurched forward again. This was a region of ferocious madness.