It suddenly became clear to me, the rushing loss of pavement and architecture as it eddied away into twisters of dust and then into nothing. Beyond the quickly diminishing steps of the stairs, there was only blue sky. Her rooms were unquestionably gone, and it was clear that the green liquid from the Fetch should instantly be dropped from the plan. The island was a rapidly diminishing circle, and the advance of the nothing moved inexorably toward the Panopticon like a noose tightening around a neck.
Anotine led the way to the doors at the base of the tower. The weight of the Delicate's head in addition to the outlandish exertions I had already suffered through the night combined to reduce my running speed to an uninspired pace. I had run like this before in nightmares—filled with fear, giving my all, only to make a snail's progress. As I staggered up stairs, across terraces, through alleyways, the nothing howled in pursuit, less than a hundred yards behind.
At one point, after reaching the top of what was to be the final set of stairs, I tripped and fell under the weight of the head. It was lucky that Anotine chose to look back at that moment, because if I had had to rely on calling her to my rescue, she never would have heard me. I struggled to get to my feet, but even with the threat of annihilation, I could no longer lift the weight. She understood my predicament, and without speaking pulled the head off my back and slung it across her own. With the drag of the hideous cargo gone I was able to continue. Whatever time we lost to my mishap we made up by the speed with which we now proceeded. I could run, and she stayed a few steps ahead of me, advancing with incredible stamina. I remembered the Doctor telling me, "It would be a mistake to underestimate Anotine's strength"
The journey to the gate seemed so inordinately long with so many twists and turns, I thought more than once that Ano-tine had forgotten the route and we were lost. Although the Panopticon was readily visible from every point of our approach, it never appeared to get any closer. Just as I was considering catching up to her to get her attention, we rounded the corner of a building and our destination was in front of us. At the end of the long corridor we had entered stood the two massive doors that gave entrance to the tower that loomed immense and unsympathetic to our frantic efforts.
When we finally stood in front of the doors, it came to me that I really had no reason to believe that merely holding the Delicate's head up would cause the mechanism in the emblem to allow us to gain entrance. Though I searched my memory, I couldn't for the life of me remember why I thought something so simplistic would work in such a complicated world. At this point, though, there was no alternative. I helped Ano-tine remove the head from her back. Setting it down for a moment, we each took a side. Then, on the soundless count of three, just my reading her lips, we hoisted the thing high and held it up to the emblematic eyeball, one-half of which had been rendered on each of the separate doors.
We waited for something to happen, and in that stretch of time it was all I could do to prevent myself from considering how we would save ourselves even if the doors were to spring open and we were immediately to discover the antidote. There was an extremely slight possibility that Misrix might appear and swoop me away to our reality, but either way, Anotine would soon cease to exist.
After it was clear nothing was going to happen with the current position in which we had situated the head, we began lifting it and lowering it to different heights in order to find the exact place where the Delicate's eyes might have been had I kept the body intact. The process we went through, though frustrating, was clear proof of the connection Anotine and I shared, because without the power to speak, and at that point not even bothering with speech, we remained always in synch with our movements, as if sharing one mind.
Eventually my strength gave out, and we were forced to rest. As we placed the head on the pavement, I turned and noticed that the disintegration had just entered the corridor that led to the doors. We now had mere minutes to find a way inside the tower. Along with the onrushing nothing came an incredible wind caused by the violence of all that memory matter being forgotten. The fear was instantly upon me, and I could not take my eyes off the wave of disaster and the calm blue sky behind it.
That was when Anotine struck me on the shoulder in order to get my attention. When I looked over to her, she had, still supporting the head, stepped around to the front of him, and with her thumb and middle finger lifted the closed lids of the creature's eyes. The nothing was twenty yards away when we hoisted the Delicate's head again to a place just a few inches above my own. Instantly, a green light similar to that which had emanated from the Fetch shot out of the emblem on the door. The gradually widening beam struck the open eyes of our trophy, and the doors slowly began to part.
Once it was possible to gain access, we lowered the head and, with a coordinated heave, tossed it behind us. So close were we to the dissolution that the last remnant of the Delicate did not land on pavement but went over the ever-diminishing edge of the island in a mile-long fall toward liquid mercury. We did not stop to watch its descent, but ran forward into the dark opening of the Panopticon.
23
"It's as empty as the Fetch's head" I cried, as my eyes adjusted to the shadowed interior. The light that streamed in through the portals set intermittently along the vertical length of the tower was enough to show me that there were no objects waiting to be deciphered. The inner base of the Panopticon was merely a round floor, in the exact middle of which began a spiral staircase that wound its way toward the dome a hundred feet above.
"What now?" asked Anotine, breathing heavily.
As soon as the words had left her, the circular wall around us began to dissolve. Tiny holes were forming and light shot through them in a confusion of bright beams. It was clear that soon these holes would join together to form the absence of a wall.
"Up," I shouted, and we made for the stairs. As my foot touched the bottom step, the doors we had worked so hard to breach disappeared, and the nothing began to creep across the floor toward us.
The fatigue that had earlier slowed me in our retreat to the tower was now thoroughly forgotten. If we were to rest for a moment, the world would slip away beneath us, and the glorious dive into the silver ocean that I had once imagined would become a reality.
We scrabbled ever upward around the twirling metal beanstalk that was the stairs while beneath us we could see the nothing climbing just as quickly, negating the steps we had trod only seconds before and vanishing the walls of the tower as it followed us toward the dome. Beneath all this was an unobstructed, breathtaking view of the glimmering ocean a mile away. The wind was so fierce at times that if there hadn't been a banister along the outer edge of the steps, I might have been blown off like a handkerchief.
The climb seemed both endless and pointless, and I could hardly catch my breath as we turned the tight circles in our ascent. Anotine was a few steps ahead of me, and I had the feeling she could have gone faster, but was regulating her speed to make sure I was safe.
As we approached the halfway point, I looked above and could see that there was a small landing illuminated by light from one of the portals. We came up through a hole in the floor of the landing, and Anotine didn't stop. I had no intention to, myself, but as my eyes came level with it, I noticed that on a circular shelf, which defined the edge of the landing, were positioned a series of hourglasses, each separated by only a few inches. Without thinking, I leaped off the stairs, bounded over to the closest one, and grabbed it. The entire procedure took less than five seconds. I turned and headed back for the stairs, and then with a sick feeling realized that the nothing was upon me. The landing was coming apart. I lunged for the steps, trying to grab the banister in order to pull myself back on course, but I missed. Instead, I felt a hand clutch tightly to my wrist. I don't know how she managed it, but with one powerful tug and a fluid swinging motion, Anotine placed me back on the next step just as the twenty or more hourglasses fell away toward the ocean.