octo continued to face Ellie and flash his colored messages. Another pair of octospiders started moving slowly in the direction of Tammy and Timmy. “No,” Ellie said. “No, you can’t.”
But it was too late. The pair of octospiders wrapped many arms each around the hatchlings and then, oblivious of the jabbers and shrieks, carried the two avians away. Galileo Watanabe raced out and attacked the octospider that had three of its tentacles wrapped around Timmy. The octo simply used a fourth tentacle to lift the boy off the ground and hand him to one of its colleagues. Galileo was passed among them until he was put down, unhurt, in the far corner of the room. The intruders allowed Nai to rush over to comfort her son.
By this time three or four octospiders, the avians, the melons, and the sessile material had all disappeared out into the hallway. There were still six of the aliens in the room. For about ten minutes they talked among themselves. All during this time, according to Robert (“I wasn’t paying close attention,” Nai said. “I was too frightened and too concerned about my children”), Ellie was watching the colored messages the octospiders were exchanging. At one point Ellie brought Nikki over to Robert and put their daughter in his arms. “I think I understand a little of what they’re saying,” Ellie said (again, according to Robert), her face absolutely white. “They intend to take me as well.”
Again the lead octospider moved toward them and started speaking in color, seemingly focusing on Ellie. Exactly what happened during the next ten minutes was a subject of considerable argument between Nai and Robert, with Benjy siding mostly with Nai. In Nai’s version of the story, Ellie tried to protect everyone else in the room, to make some kind of bargain with the octospiders. With repeated hand gestures as well as speech, Ellie told the aliens that she would go with them, provided that the octospiders guaranteed that all the other humans in the room would be allowed to leave the lair safely.
“Ellie was explicit,” Nai insisted. “She explained that we were trapped and did not have enough food. Unfortunately, they grabbed her before she was certain that they understood the bargain.”
“You’re naive, Nai,” Robert said, his eyes wild with confusion and pain. “You don’t understand how really sinister those creatures are. They hypnotized Ellie. Yes, they did. During the early part of their visit, when she was watching their colors so carefully. I’m telling you, she was not herself. All that malarkey about guaranteeing everyone safe passage was a subterfuge. She wanted to go with them. They altered her personality right there on the spot with those crazy colored patterns. And nobody saw it but me.”
Patrick discounted Robert’s account considerably because Ellie’s husband was so distraught. Nai, however, agreed with Robert on two final points: Ellie did not struggle or protest after the first octospider enwrapped her, and before she disappeared from the room, she calmly recited to them a long list of minutiae about caring for Nikki.
“How can anyone in her right mind,” Robert said, “after having been seized by an alien, calmly rattle off what blankets her daughter hugs while she is sleeping, when Nikki last had a bowel movement, and other such things? She was obviously hypnotized, or drugged, or something.”
The tale of how everyone happened to be on the landing beneath the sealed exit was relatively straightforward. After the octospiders left with Ellie, Benjy ran out into the corridor, screaming and yelling and vainly attacking the rear guard of the octos. Robert joined him and the two of them followed Ellie and the alien contingent all the way to the cathedral room. The gate was open to the fourth tunnel. One octospider held Benjy and Robert off with four long tentacles while the others departed. The final octospider then locked the gate behind itself.
The subway ride was exhilarating for Max. It reminded him of a trip he had made to a large amusement park outside of Little Rock when he was ten years old. The train was suspended above what looked like a metal tape and touched nothing as it sped through the tunnel. Richard conjectured that it was powered in some way by magnetism.
The subway stopped after about two minutes and the door quickly opened. The four explorers looked out at a plain platform, creamy white in color, behind which was an archway about three meters high. “I guess, according to Plan A,” Max said, “Eponine and I should exit here.”
“Yes,” said Richard. “Of course, if the subway doesn’t move again, then Nicole and I will join you shortly.”
Max took Eponine’s hand and stepped gingerly down on the platform. As soon as they were clear of the subway, the door closed. Several seconds later the train sped away.
“Well, isn’t this romantic?” Max said after he and Eponine had waved good-bye to Richard and Nicole. “Here we are, just the two of us, finally all alone.” He put his arms around Eponine and kissed her. “I just want you to know, Frenchie, that I love you. I have no idea where in the fuck we are, but wherever it is, I’m glad to be here with you.”
Eponine laughed. “I had a girlfriend at the orphanage whose fantasy was to be all alone on a desert island with a famous French actor named Marcel du Bois, who had a mammoth chest and arms like tree trunks. I wonder how she would have felt in this place.” She looked around. “I guess we’re supposed to go under the archway.”
Max shrugged. “Unless a white rabbit comes along that we can follow into some kind of a hole.”
On the other side of the archway was a large rectangular room with blue walls. The room was absolutely empty and there was only one exit, through an open doorway into a narrow, illuminated corridor that ran parallel to the subway tunnel. All the walls in this corridor, which continued in both directions for as far as Max and Eponine could see, were the same blue color as in the room behind the archway.
“Which way do we go?” Max asked.
“In this direction I can see what looks like two doors leading away from the subway,” Eponine said, pointing to her right.
“And there are two more this way as well,” Max said, looking left. “Why don’t we walk to the first doorway, look into it, and then decide on a strategy?”
Arm in arm they walked fifty meters down the blue corridor. What they saw when they came to the next doorway dismayed them. Another identical blue corridor, with occasional doorways along its length, stretched in front of them for many meters.
“Shit,” said Max. “We are about to enter some kind of a maze. We damn sure don’t want to get lost.”
“So what do you think we should do?” Eponine asked.
“I think…” Max said, hesitating, “I think we should smoke a cigarette and talk this over.”
Eponine laughed. “I couldn’t agree with you more,” she said.
They proceeded very carefully. Each time they turned into another blue corridor, Max made marks with Eponine’s lipstick on the wall, indicating the entire path back to the room behind the archway. He also insisted that Eponine, who was more adroit with a computer than he was, keep duplicate records on her portable—”In case something comes along that removes my marks,” Max said.
In the beginning their adventure was fun, and the first two times they backtracked to the archway, just to prove they could do it, Max and Eponine felt a certain sense of accomplishment. But after an hour or so, when every turn kept producing another identical blue scene, their excitement began to wane. At length Max and Eponine stopped, sat down on the floor, and shared another cigarette.
“Now, why would any intelligent creature,” Max said, blowing smoke rings into the air, “create a place like this? Either we are unwittingly undergoing a test of some kind—”
“Or there’s something here that they don’t want anybody to find easily,” Eponine finished. She took the cigarette from Max and inhaled deeply. “Now, if that’s the case,” she continued, “then there must be some simple code that defines the location of the special place or thing, a code like one of those ancient combination locks, second right, fourth left, and—”
“Straight on until morning,” Max interrupted with a grin. He kissed Eponine briefly and then stood up. “So what we should do is assume we’re looking for something special and organize our search logically.”
When Eponine was on her feet, she looked at Max with a furrowed brow. “Just exactly what did that last statement of yours mean?”
“I’m not certain,” Max replied with a laugh, “but it sure as hell sounded intelligent.”
Max and Eponine had been walking up and down blue corridors for almost four hours when they decided it was time to eat. They had just started their lunch of Raman food when off to their left, at a full intersection of corridors, they saw something pass. Max jumped to his feet and ran to the intersection. He arrived not more than a few seconds before a tiny vehicle, maybe ten centimeters high, made a right turn into the next nearby hallway.
