Tiaan scrambled into the tunnel. Just as she put a foot on the shelf a rock went straight through the bottom of the basket. It began to wind back up. She rang the bell rope furiously. It stopped but jerked up again. Snatching out her knife, Tiaan hacked at the tough rope. She hung on with one hand, going up with the rope, but after sawing through three-quarters dared go no higher. She leapt free, onto the landing of the ninth level.
The rope moved, stopped, jerked again, then with a twang it broke. The short end whipped down, lashing the water into foam. The other end zipped up. Cries echoed down and she heard a threshing noise that must have been the wheel-housing stripping the baskets off. The rest of the rope, a couple of hundred spans, sizzled into the water. Silence came from above.
No way back. Tiaan gathered her pack, started to head up the tunnel, then realised that a length of rope might mean the difference between survival and death. She sawed off a length, looped the heavy stuff over her shoulder and set off down the tunnel to nowhere.
Tiaan walked all day, through the labyrinth of tunnels and cross-passages, many flooded, of the ninth level. Finally, when it must have been well after dark and she had heard no sign of pursuit, she could drag her weary feet no further. Probably she would starve down here. Missing Joeyn terribly, she spread out her coat, lay on the floor with her head pillowed on her pack and tried to sleep.
That did not work either. Her body was worn out but her mind kept turning on the possibilities, none of which were pleasant. The luminosity of the crystal swirled in front of her. Its brightness had not changed in the days she’d had it. Surely that energy could not be coming from within or it would have run dry by now. Not only was the crystal awake, it must be drawing power from the field without human intervention. If it was, it was different from any hedron she had ever heard of. Maybe stronger, too.
Placing the hedron inside her wire sphere, Tiaan adjusted the beads into a pattern that pleased her and put the helm on. She sensed nothing at all. She rotated the beads on their wires. Still nothing, which was strange. From any hedron she could pick up the field. With the power of this one, focussed by globe and helm, she should be able to hear the ticking of the earth.
Perhaps it was too strong; too raw. Or maybe it worked in a different way. How little she really knew about the forces she’d been tinkering with for the past eleven years.
Putting it away, she began on the other crystal, which required a good bit of work with her toolkit before it would fit the bracket. She snapped the crystal in, took it out again and inserted it the other way round, made sure the brackets were tight and lowered the helm onto her head. Brilliant colours exploded in her mind: swirling, twisting, running back on themselves, vanishing and reappearing. They became brighter, more lurid, until everything went a brilliant white in which she could see nothing at all. Tiaan lost the capacity to think, to see, to be.
The next thing she knew, she was picking herself up off the floor. The helm lay beside her. There were cramps in her belly. The glow of the hedron seemed brighter and a tiny spark now drifted down one of the central needles, vanishing as it came to the bubble.
What had happened? She could not think straight. Tiaan leaned against the tunnel wall. It took ages for the cramps to go away. Had the crystal always been that way? Had it lain in that rock cavity for a million years, waiting? She felt a deeper chill. How could she hope to control a device that had been its own master for so long? Those patterns would be crystallised into its very matrix. Such a thing was not for her.
Her stomach felt awful and it could only get worse. Freedom no longer seemed so precious. Freedom for what – to starve to death in the dark? Was this really better than being pampered in the breeding factory, pleasuring the clients and being pleasured by them in turn? Tiaan had overheard enough talk about the business from her workmates – they seemed to enjoy it.
Her life was out of control and she hated it. That was why she’d worked so hard at her craft. It offered control over her existence. As soon as she entered the world of emotions Tiaan floundered. Relationships were like a blueprint where the lines had faded, leaving only a jumble of meaningless symbols. Now Joeyn, the only person she’d really cared for, was gone.
The cramps faded. Leaning back against the wall, she slipped imperceptibly towards sleep. One hand groped across the floor until it found the helm. Tiaan slid it onto her head, where it perched rakishly over her ear. Her hand dragged the globe toward her. Clutching it against her chest, Tiaan’s fingers moved the orbital beads on their wires. It felt good to be using a hedron again. Very good. She could never be parted from it.
Volcanoes exploded. Congealing lava bombs wheeled through an acid sky, slowly fading to nothing.
Her slender fingers found new positions, rattling the beads back and forth faster than a merchant’s abacus. The scene flashed into view – a colossal lava fountain, achingly beautiful. It vanished too.
Again she worked the beads and all at once the scene locked in, tuned perfectly to the man of her dreams. The balcony was white marble, stained ruddy red by flames not far off. His dark fingers gripped the rail and he stared at the distant mountains as if seeking an answer in eternity.
Help! he mouthed.
An age later the cry came to her, or its echo. Help!
‘I’m coming!’ she cried aloud, still in her dream.
His head snapped around. Who are you? Where are you?
‘I’m Tiaan,’ she said softly. ‘I’m on the ninth level of the mine.’
Mine? He sounded uncomprehending. What mine? He spoke in a rough, attractive burr, though with a speech pattern she had never come across before. He articulated every letter – m-i-n-e; h-e-l-p.
‘The one near the manufactory, not far from Tiksi.’
What is Tiksi?
In her dream, Tiaan wondered how intelligent this young man really was. But after all, it was only a dream. She knew that.
‘Tiksi is a city on the south-east coast of Lauralin, on a spur of the Great Mountains.’
Lauralin? His astonishment could have been no greater if she’d said the surface of the sun. Lauralin? He let out a great roar that made her hair stand up. Are you speaking to me from SANTHENAR?
Goosepimples broke out all over her scalp. ‘Yes, of course I’m on Santhenar. Where else could I be?’
Abruptly he disappeared from the balcony. She heard him say, Be praised, uncle, an answer! From Santhenar!
The dream ebbed away, to Tiaan’s regret, and she did not get it back. She woke shortly afterwards, having tossed so hard that she’d cracked her head on the wall, leaving a painful bruise. She spent hours of frustrated wakefulness, turning the globe over and over in her hands, moving the beads into a thousand positions, but could not tune him in again. The young man was gone.
Tiaan slept, finally, and when she woke the dream was still there. It was definitely not a crystal dream for she could remember every instant of it, even replay it at will like one of her blueprints. It was seared into the fibres of her brain.
The young man was real, not some fevered hallucination. And that meant … Recalling her previous, sensual dreams, her cheeks grew hot. What if her dreams were also going to him? What would he think of her? Somehow that mattered more than anything.
EIGHTEEN
