'You, too. Good luck.'
We made our way over the dark smooth floor, toward the archway that led to the ramp, walking past some extremely bizarre vehicles. They were composed of various geometrical shapes shoved together at odd angles. Farther along there were more vehicles, these more comprehensible but very alien in appearance.
Liam was first through the archway. He looked up and stopped in his tracks. 'Mother of God,' he said quietly.
We joined him at the bottom of a huge cylindrical shaft that shot straight up through the mountain, its vanishing point lost in darkness. Running straight up the middle of the shaft without visible support was a vertical ramp, a wide ribbon of some metallic substance, its color a pale blue, its bottom end curling outward like a length of tape. It touched the floor at a perfect tangent to form the ramp we'd seen from the truck.
We walked around it, keeping our distance. I walked around it twice, then again. The damn thing wasn't even three centimeters thick.
'It's a laundry chute,' Carl ventured.
'Yeah, for express laundry,' I said.
Carl nodded. 'Well, the way it really works is, you're supposed to get this really good running start, see… like this.' He backstepped, then ran up the sharply curling end of the ramp to a point where it became nearly vertical. He pivoted sharply and began to run back down
But he didn't. Couldn't.
His grin disappeared. 'Hey!'
He began to glide up the ramp. He was still facing down, his body perpendicular to the ramp and now horizontal to the ground, held fast by some mysterious attractive force. He could move his feet, though. He tried walking back down, but the upward drift was too rapid. He started to run, clumsily, his steps slow and heavy.
'Holy hell!' he yelled. 'I can't-'
We all stood there gawking. I couldn't think of a thing to do to help him. It was the strangest thing, watching him being borne straight up on this impossible vertical treadmill. As his ascent speed increased, he gave up running and turned slowly until he was facing up the shaft.
'Hey!' he called over his shoulder. 'I guess this is the way up!' He laughed mirthlessly, the smooth walls of the shaft carrying his echoing voice down to us. 'Anyway, I sure as shit hope so.'
'Carl!' Lori screamed after him, her eyes round with fear and disbelief. 'Carl, be careful!'
'I think he's right, girl,' Sean said. 'That's the way up.'
I stepped forward and tentatively put my right boot on the ramp, testing it. I felt no pull, no quasimagnetic attraction. I inched my foot forward. Someone grasped my arm-Darla, stepping up onto the ramp with me.
'Going up?' she said, smiling.
'I'm with you, kid.'
We climbed the steep incline. We hadn't taken more than a few steps when it began to happen. The world tilted. My sense of up and down rotated about forty-five degrees. Suddenly the ribbon of metal was no longer vertical but merely steep, and we rode upward as if on an escalator in a department store. I could move my feet, but it was like walking in sticky mud. It was a little disorienting, but not unpleasantly so.
I turned until I faced down the ramp. Everybody was just standing there.
'Hey,' I called, 'it's okay. Hop aboard.'
They exchanged shrugs and reluctantly approached the ramp.
I shuffled back around again. Carl, a good distance ahead, was waving and shouting something I couldn't hear. I waved back.
'Don't get too far ahead!' I yelled.
He cupped his hand to his ear, so I yelled louder. He heard, nodded, and tried walking back down again. But he was still gaining speed. He finally gave up and threw out his arms in despair.
We were accelerating, too. I looked at my feet. It was hard to tell whether we were sliding over the surface or being carried along by some mysterious movement of the surface itself, as if it were a conveyor belt. The ramp was seamless, featureless, and the shaft around us was dark. I finally decided that we were sliding-and I was almost sure that the soles of my boots weren't actually touching the ramp but riding a few millimeters above it.
It was a quick trip up. A disc of light grew at the top of the tube, and we rushed toward it. Our speed was hard to judge, but we were moving right along, and the sensation was exhilarating. The experience recapitulated my recent recurring dreams, my fantasies-plunging headlong through a dark tunnel toward a source of brilliant light. I'd read something somewhere about that image-about it being a recapitulation of the birth experience. I considered it. I'm not one to set much store by armchair psychology, but there was an undeniable feel of truth to the notion.
We suddenly decelerated. My sense of orientation did a double flip as the ramp leveled off, shot through an opening into a large green chamber, and became one with the floor. Darla and I slid to a gradual halt, took a few jogging steps, and walked off the end of ramp onto a polished black floor.
'Where's Carl?' Darla asked.
I looked around. We were in a large circular room. Arched openings were cut into the walls at regular intervals. Ramp ends came out of them, converging and terminating on the circular black area where we stood.
'Darned if I know,' I said.
4
'Where's Carl?' was the first thing John Sukuma-Tayler asked as he stepped off the magic escalator.
'Good question,' I said. 'He seems to've misplaced himself.'
John scowled and shook his head. 'That damn fool. If he gets us into more trouble-'
'I'm more worried that something might have happened to him.'
The scowl dissolving, John nodded dourly. 'Oh, I suppose you're right. Any idea where he might have gone?'
'No. I didn't want to go looking until you'd all come up. How far behind you were the others?'
'Um… when I looked back, Susan seemed to be having the most trouble getting on the thing. I don't know what possessed me to go first after you two, but I did. I think-oh, here they are.'
Out of the oval opening in the green wall came Lori, Yuri, Zoya, Ragna, and Oni. Following close behind was Sean, hand in hand with Winnie and George. There was a moderate delay before Liam and Roland came through, propping up between them a slightly gray-faced Susan.
Susan stumbled off the strip, moaned, and put a hand to her stomach. 'Oh, my God.'
'You okay, Suzie?' I said,
She heaved a sigh, then burped. ''Scuse me. Roller coasters always made me sick.'
Roland laughed and slapped her on the back. 'Oh, come on, Susan. It wasn't that bad.'
Susan winced and rolled her eyes. 'I don't believe we went straight up… straight up! It was the worst… ooh, I can't stand it.' She belched again.
'Carl is missing,' Darla told Sean, who had been glancing around the chamber.
'We lost sight of him on the way up,' I said, 'and he wasn't here when we arrived. I suggest we start looking.'
'The boy's got the devil in 'im for sure,' Sean said, 'but he wouldn't run off like this. Something must have happened.'
'Whatever happened,' I said, 'it was fast. We couldn't have been more than thirty seconds behind him.'
'D'you think Prime had something to do with it?' Liam asked me.
'Could be.'
'Odd thing,' Sean said. 'I thought Prime would be here to greet us.'
'And I am. Welcome.' The voice filled the domed chamber.
'Hello?' I said, whirling to find the source.
