Mischa scrambled up a giant-step, a petrified waterfall. Her shadow sprang ahead across a narrow rift. She slid into the fissure and out again. 'We can get through. But, Jan—'
He climbed up beside her, hardly able to understand her for the chiming. 'Just go on.'
In the narrow passage, the wind and the singing combined like the elements of a ghostly storm, pulling Jan's breath from his throat, confusing his hearing, dimming his sight. He slid sideways with his raw fingertips hard against stone, welcoming the solidity. The volume of the music increased.
The passage opened abruptly into a wide fan-shaped chamber. Mischa turned back; he knew what she had tried to tell him.
His light glanced from edge to point of a great multicolored glass blade, and beyond to a thousand more. They shivered; the wind, swirling from constricted passages to irregular cavern, stroked their tips and excited them, an alien lover.
Jan approached the hanging garden. The spikes were crystals within crystals: one shape, in one transparent color, overlaid by another geometric form, like the experiment of some gigantic child. They were a hundred times the size of the crystals he had fallen through, but he knew his blundering must have destroyed a place of nearly equal beauty. He took another step forward, lifting his hand, drawn to reach out for the brilliant
spires.
'Jan—'
But he already knew that no natural deposition of mineral could have formed these constructs; their beauty was that of danger, their attraction that of disaster. Jan let his hand drop in a gesture of acceptance, denial.
'I'm all right now,' he said. 'Let's go.'
In places they could move between the glittering blades, and their passing changed the melody of the crystal song, introducing discord, as though the inanimate growths were beings, resenting the intrusion.
Farther on, they had to crawl, and the wind sucked more strongly, for the crystals grew so close together that there was no room to pass between them. The tips of the glass shivered visibly, moving in rapid, minuscule vibrations. Then, just to Mischa's left, a delicate shaft shuddered and broke with a high, sharp note, and shattered on the stone. Jan saw Mischa fling up her arm to shield her eyes; his own reflexes pulled him around and away. When the bright music stopped, he looked back at her. Her face was unmarked, but she slid rapidly toward him through fragments of crystal so small they swirled in the air, sparkling. 'Hurry up,' she said. 'It's bad to breathe the dust.' As she spoke he smelled the acrid odor and felt the drifting chemicals dissolving in the back of his throat. He pushed himself on, hearing Mischa behind him. She started to cough.
The crystals they passed grew progressively shorter and thinner, until Mischa and Jan could stand, aching, and run beneath a glittering ceiling of natural semiprecious stones. Human laughter suddenly laced the music, and abruptly the wind-chimes changed from a song of solitude to one of destruction, directed by human voices. The blades broke and shattered, with a shriek nearly animate, of splendor and delicacy reduced to nothing. Entropy over all. Jan almost understood the strength of his own anger.
In the wide cone of his flash, Jan could see ahead to a cross-tunnel, where the mixing breezes spun wind- devils of dust. A scattering of black sand scratched against the soles of his boots. His throat burned. For a moment he thought that was the reason for a new smell that seemed to surround him, but it grew stronger as they continued. It was totally unlike the bitter chemical odor: it was the dreadful sick-sweet smell of decay.
It permeated the tunnel, even against the air currents, until, when Jan and Mischa reached the junction of passages, it was almost overwhelming. Jan saw Mischa clench her jaw tight, rigid, and he fought the same rising nausea.
The tunnel behind them they could not use again. To their right, the wind funneled upward to the surface, whirling through an unclimbable vertical shaft. Jan could not see its end, nor even a hint of daylight, but he could hear the whining of the storm.
From some other source to his left, the miasma emanated. There was no other choice. Jan said nothing, and Mischa did not break the silence.
The stench thickened, until Jan felt he should be able to put up his hands and push it away. He was breathing in tiny shallow gulps, his mouth slightly open, throat tight. His eyes watered.
The texture under his feet changed, softening. A gray mat of hyphae spread across the stone, up the walls, finally across the ceiling to join itself. At first it seemed dry and soft, but when it thickened, Jan's boots sank squishily into the growth, and rose as though from thick porridge. He looked over at Mischa, walking barefoot, and shuddered.
'It's—' Her voice was hoarse, half an octave lower than normal. She coughed and tried again. 'It's just lightcells.'
He turned out the flash; instead of darkness, he was surrounded by a blue-gray twilight. The flash had washed out the glow. Mischa was a shadow. Jan glanced over his shoulder: the two sets of footprints stretched away clear and black. His eyes began to adjust to the dim light.
'Are you all right?' The gravelly quality of her voice worried him.
'I will be.'
They spoke no more; they needed what breath they could draw, and the air grew thicker, warmer, like the brightening growth of cells around them. The passage began to tilt downward again. Jan and Mischa moved more cautiously, for the footing became increasingly precarious as the pitch of the slope grew steeper. There was nothing to hold to, nothing to brace against. Jan's boots began to slide, with each step a little father, as the friction between him and the slimy floor became insufficient to hold him steady against gravity.
Mischa cried out. Sliding, she threw herself backward to counteract her forward momentum, landing hard on elbow and hip. Jan lunged for her, felt the rough material of her jacket beneath his fingertips, and lost her and his balance as well. He fell sideways down the slope; his palm slid through the mushy growth and he clawed for rock, but lightcells squished out between his fingers and he began to tumble and slide. He felt the mass piling up before him like snow, like surf; it washed over his head and he threw his arms across his face, sickened by the thought of its covering him, like grave rot. He abandoned any attempt to check his fall.
Jan felt the blow when he stopped: felt it but did not react to it; he was too dizzy, too sick, too confused. The atmosphere was so oppressive that he thought he could not open his eyes. A hollow breathlessness emptied him of strength. He thought he would faint: there could be no room for oxygen in the chemical soup he breathed.
He dragged himself up, using as support the rock that had stopped him. His ribs ached where he had struck.
The great vault into which they had fallen was suffused with the glow of life-surviving-on-death. Jan heard small sounds of animals, then, low at first, rising to a scream, the cry of something large and feline. He shivered.
The scar of Mischa's fall passed beyond the boulder. She lay a few meters farther on, face down, her hand submerged in murky, fetid water. She did not move. Past her, in the water, Jan saw other forms, some dark, shrouded, and new, some old and decomposing, overgrown with light. The shore of the pool was jagged and irregular with piles of bones: skulls; entire, articulated hands; shattered, fang-marked leg bones. This was the final resting place of Center's dead. The sour taste of bile rose in Jan's throat. He gagged and his reflexes overcame him; he retched drily, falling to his knees. Afterward, he knelt, breathing heavily, drawing the products of corruption into his lungs, accepting, knowing that he was their past, as they were his future.
He rose again and walked slowly to Mischa. She appeared so limp that he was afraid, imagining that she might have joined the luminous multitude. But as he knelt, she stirred. His relief was greater than any horror he had felt. He helped her up. Her hair clung in glowing strands to her cheek. She looked out over the water.
'Gods,' she said. 'So this is where they come.'
'Yes.' But for all Jan's acceptance, he did not look again. He was afraid he would see a shroud of black silk, embroidered with bright figures. 'Let's get out of here.'
Searching for an escape, they found a door. They almost passed it, but Mischa noticed the regular rectangular indentation and began to scrape away the lightcells. After a moment Jan helped her. They bared a featureless slab of gray plastic, the first evidence of construction Jan had seen since leaving Center. He recalled the three symbols of warning. They had survived the crystals, and the pool.
Mischa reached out and pushed the door. It swung open slowly. The musty air that flowed across them seemed incredibly, sweetly, blessedly fresh.
