"Central hallway or not," Festina said, "this is obviously the heart of the city. Designed to catch attention." She glanced up and down the river. "It’s visible quite a distance along both shores… and from the skyscrapers on either side."
"So what is it?" I asked. "A temple? A royal palace?"
"Go-cart track," Tut muttered.
"I don’t know what it is," Festina replied. "But it appears to be where Team Esteem spent a lot of time." She gestured toward the trail we’d been following. It led up the nearest of the two cross-bridges, heading for the white building above the water. "Let’s see what our friends in the Unity found."
She started forward again. Tut and I trailed silently behind her.
The path worn in the mud did indeed lead to the white, arched building. We followed the tracks to the middle of the nearest supporting bridge, then turned onto an access ramp that faded seamlessly from the bridge’s gray stone into the pearl-like alabaster of the building before us. The doors to the place were made of the same material as the walls: so glossy I could see my face faintly reflected in the surface.
I looked scared.
Tut, however, showed no signs of fear. He went to the door, grabbed its oversized handle, and yanked the thing open. As he did, I noticed Festina’s hand dart to the butt of her stun-pistol — but no EMP cloud or pseudosuchian hurtled out at us. The building’s surprise was more subtle than direct attack. For a moment, I didn’t even realize there was anything amiss… till it dawned on me the corridor beyond the entrance was perfectly, levelly flat.
A ridiculous instinct made me want to step back to see if the building still looked arched from the outside. I fought the urge; I didn’t want to act like some bumpkin unable to believe her eyes. Besides, I could count on Tut to do the honors. As soon as he saw the flat corridor in front of us, he ran to the side of the access ramp where he could get a clear view of the building. "Looks all curved from here," he called. "Does it still look level to you?"
"As straight as a laser," Festina said. "Either it’s a visual illusion, or the Fuentes had hellishly good spatial distortion technology. Looks like this building’s interior is a pocket universe that can lie level inside an arched shell."
"Bastards," Tut muttered. "Now there’s no point go-carting down the hall."
At that moment, the hall in question flickered — like a fluorescent light that’s malfunctioning. In this case, however, it wasn’t light that cut in and out; it was geometry. The flat floor jumped to the sort of curve one expected from an arched building… then back to a level surface… then bent, then flat again, fluttering rapidly back and forth till it settled down once more to a perfectly even keel.
Tut looked at Festina and me. "You saw that too, right?"
Festina nodded. "The building is losing its horizontal hold. Whatever technological trickery keeps the place level, it’s not going to last much longer." Her eyes took on a distant look. "This isn’t the first time I’ve come across Fuentes technology nearing the end of its life. Maybe their equipment uses some standard component, like a control chip or power supply… and that component has a working lifetime of six and a half millennia." She turned her head to the sky. "Maybe all over the galaxy, there are abandoned Fuentes settlements we haven’t found; and in each one, lights are flickering, machines are stuttering, computers are crashing… because they all use the same crucial part, and that part is so old, it’s become erratic."
The corridor flickered again. A single leap this time: like a skipping rope when someone snaps one end. The floor jerked precipitously, then dropped again to placid rest.
"If we were inside," I said, "would we have felt that? Like an earthquake tossing us around?"
"I doubt it," Festina replied. "If it had the force of an earthquake, it would have shaken the building apart. Even the few jumps we’ve seen should have caused major structural damage… and who knows how long the interruptions have been happening? Months? Years?" She shrugged. "Once we’re inside, we likely won’t notice the fluctuations. It’s only while we’re here, on the outside looking in, that we can tell weird shit is happening."
"What about when things finally die for good?" Tut asked. "Will that wreck the place?"
"Probably not," Festina said. "If flicking back and forth doesn’t bounce everything to pieces, shutting off and staying off shouldn’t either. But what do I know? This stuff goes way beyond anything I’ve learned about physics."
"I hope the place flies apart," Tut told her. "When the flatness finally goes, I hope the building can’t stand its new shape and just goes kerflooey! Wouldn’t that be great? Especially if you were inside and the floor under your feet just shot up, boom. Wouldn’t that be better than riding office chairs down the halls?"
Festina stared at him a moment, then turned away. "Let’s get in and out fast, shall we? Before anything dramatic happens. I’m allergic to excitement."
Once we’d stepped into the building’s central corridor, we saw no more flickers in reality. We didn’t hear or feel disturbances either — to our normal five senses, the building was as solid and unmoving as an ancient mountain.
But to my sixth sense, the place felt like a trampoline.
Every fluctuation sent my mental awareness skittering. It reminded me of age fourteen when I’d caught an inner-ear infection: the normally stable world seemed subject to swoops and staggers, movements made more disturbing because they didn’t jibe with the rest of my senses. Being on a real trampoline wouldn’t have been half so bad; at least then, all my senses would have agreed on what my body was experiencing. But having perceptions at odds with each other produced a sort of motion sickness — or nonmotion sickness — that left me dizzy with nausea after every bounce. I tried to hide my queasiness, but Festina noticed almost immediately.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Uhh, sure…"
"Don’t lie to me, Explorer! Are you all right?"
"Uhh…" I tried to gather my thoughts. Fortunately, the fluctuations only lasted a few seconds, after which tranquillity returned. I’d never mentioned my sixth sense to Festina… and was afraid to do so now, for fear of the way she’d react if she learned I’d been keeping secrets from her. At the same time, I didn’t want to tell an absolute lie. "It’s the Balrog," I said, swallowing back my disorientation. "I think it can sense when the building bounces. It’s… it’s making me seasick."
Festina took the Bumbler and gave me a head-to-toe scan. "No obvious change in your infestation," she said. "No, wait. Your foot. The spores have spread."
"Which foot?" I asked. As if I didn’t remember shattering the bones when I kicked down the door of the storage building.
"Your right," Festina said. She lifted her head from the Bumbler’s display. "You don’t feel any different?"
"In my foot? I don’t feel much of anything."
"I imagine that’s true." Festina stared thoughtfully at me. Her life force showed a growing mistrust — mistrust of me. Probably she was remembering how I’d smashed the door, then pretended to be all right. She realized now I must have been hiding what actually happened… and she had to be wondering what else I might have hidden.
The building flickered: a shudder so strong I almost threw up. Turn the sixth sense off, I thought fiercely to the Balrog. I can’t handle it here.
"You’d better go back outside," Festina told me as my stomach heaved. Her aura showed concern for my health… but she was also glad for an excuse to send me away, at least till she decided how to handle an alien-infested stink-girl who’d obviously concealed important facts.