“The doors!” yelled Peri, jumping over the bar and hurling herself against the left door to try to force it shut. Gus jumped for the right door. Glancing back, he saw that Amanda was shouting in pain, an ankle trapped under the bar, and Troy had taken a blow to his head that left him dazed. Gus eyed the dog sitting calmly behind them all.
“Tash!” he shouted. “Come and help! Throw your weight onto this door!”
“No.” The dog’s reply shocked him. That it was audible, rather than telepathic, also surprised him.
“What are you thinking?” he yelled. “Come on, Tash!”
“What’s in it for me, Gustav?” asked the dog. “Come on, what’s my incentive?”
“Tash! Help us, please!”
“Nah, don’t think so.”
“What do you want, dog?” Peri all but screamed.
“Opposable thumbs,” said Tash. “That’s all. It’s not much, really, is it?”
There were a series of ominous thuds against the doors, and Peri and Gus struggled to hold them closed.
“No,” said Gus, firmly.
Troy was back on his feet. He tried to lift the bar off Amanda, but without success.
Seeing him struggle, Peri spoke up. “Gus, I’ll move to the middle and hold both doors, if you grab the bar and get Amanda out.”
“No,” he replied. “You cannot hold it alone. Tash will help. You will, Tash!”
“Opposable thumbs,” said the dog again.
Peri shuffled sideways, towards the centre of the doorway, her back against the door and her feet pushing, hard. “We’ve got to get her out, Gus. Now, go!”
She moved sideways another foot, and now she was pushing against both doors. With a grunt of frustration, Gus pushed off from the door and joined Troy. The two men heaved the bar up at one end, and with a sob of relief Amanda rolled free.
There was another crash against the door. Peri was jolted forward. The door opened. A black tentacle lashed out and wrapped round Peri’s middle, its sharp spines digging in. She yelled with the pain. A second limb flashed out from behind the door and whipped around her leg. Blood sprayed the air as a barb hit an artery. Troy jumped forward and slammed against one leaf of the door, slamming it shut, but a third tentacle slapped across Peri’s face. She screamed. The creature hissed and whistled in triumph from behind the door, tightening its grip and dragging Peri toward itself, the knife-like spines slicing into her flesh, and contracting muscles breaking bones with a sickening sound. Someone – it might have been Troy – grabbed her wrist to try to hold her back, but slippery blood was everywhere now. Peri felt rather than heard a roaring in her ears, the sound of screams, shouting – and then her world blacked out.
Chapter 24
Peri suddenly blinked awake. She instantly knew something was wrong, because the clamour, the shouting and the screaming had faded into silence. Strange.
She sat up, and was surprised to find that her wounds no longer ached. She looked around herself, confused, but could see nothing but fog.
She poked a finger into the gaping rent in her abdomen. It sank in and she felt warm, wet blood and slimy viscera, but no pain. When she pulled the finger back out, it was clean and dry. Strange, again. She wondered if she was dead.
“I thought we should talk,” said a soft voice.
Startled, she looked up and saw a tall, slender, white woman who seemed to exude a bright white light. The woman was completely white from top to toe – alabaster skin, flowing white gown, long white hair, eyes so pale they seemed to consist of nothing more than pupil and sclera. She was astonishingly, breathtakingly beautiful, but with a delicacy of features that was ethereal. The proportions of her face hinted at an other-worldly nature. Come to think of it, her slender figure was quite androgynous, but Peri decided to think of it – her – as female.
“Is this a good time? In the middle of…” She stopped abruptly. “That’s not important. Tell me, am I dead? What is this place?”
The woman smiled. “The answers are, ‘Not yet,’ and, ‘We stand – well, to be accurate, I stand and you lie – on the floor of a cave in the rocks beneath Anifail Island.’”
“Then where has the fight gone?”
“It remains around us.”
“Can you just tell me plainly, what has happened!”
The woman looked thoughtful, as if trying to find a good way to explain. “Think of it like this… Time is a river, ever flowing by, and you and I have stepped away to stand on the bank for a few moments.”
“What?”
“Or perhaps… Yes, this will work: consider that we occupy the space between the tick and the tock of the universe’s clock.”
“You’re saying that you just stopped time.”
The woman smiled again. “Not precisely. We have moved aside from time’s flow.”
“So you yanked me – somehow – out of conventional spacetime,” Peri tried. “Time has flowed on, beyond us. What are the others experiencing? Have I just… vanished in front of their eyes?”
“You are acquainted with the concept of the universe’s many dimensions,” the woman said, with an approving tone. “That is good. When I reverse the process and restore you to the universal coordinates from which you were translated, the time coordinate will be restored. Your companions will not observe any discontinuity.”
“Okay,” said Peri. Then a look of horror crossed her face. “No – wait – not okay! Wasn’t that thing in the cave just killing me? You put me back, I die. That doesn’t sound good! What’s going on, lady? Who the fu – er, who the heck are you? And why am I here?”
The strange woman waved a hand and a pair of white armchairs emerged from the white fog. “Please,” she said. “We should be comfortable while we talk.”
“Ah, I’m not sure I can stand without my insides falling out,” said Peri. The woman merely smiled again. Peri stood and sat without spilling anything. She noticed that her blood did not stain the furniture. “Hmm. You seem to have a thing about white, don’t you. What’s that about? Symbolic of something? I hope it’s not purity and innocence, ’cos I don’t have much of those any more.”
“Your sense of humour is returning,” she replied. “That is good. No, what you are perceiving as white is an absence of colour. Without time there is no motion, and without motion, photons cannot arrive at the receptors in your eyes. You are experiencing artificial neural stimuli designed to lessen your anxiety. The effect operates monochromatically, because colours would draw too much energy and reduce our time together.”
“But I can see my own red blood,” objected Peri, holding up a sticky hand.
“I take no credit for that,” the woman said. “You know it is blood, you know what colour blood should be, and so you add details of your own devising to the neural experience.”
“But if there’s no time dimension, how does cause and effect work? How can we be talking?” asked Peri. Then abruptly she held up a hand. “You know what? I don’t understand much of what’s going on here, and I don’t really think I care anyway. Let’s get back to questions I do care about. Who are you?”
The woman smiled. “In a sense,” she said, “I am your true mother.”
Ah, definitely female, thought Peri.
“And your true father.”
Okaaaaay, maybe not, Peri thought.
“My function is that of your planet’s Servator. You may use that title, if you wish.”
“Okay, three things, really quickly. One, that isn’t your name; two, I clearly remember my mother and father, who didn’t look anything like you; and three, what’s a Servator?”