'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.
I didn't need any extra incentive at that point to move faster. With the hourglass cradled in my arm, I bounded two steps at a time. When I thought my heart was about to explode, I looked up and saw an aperture in the floor of the dome, like an open trapdoor.
Anotine reached it and jumped through, and I was no more than a second behind her. As I hit the floor inside the dome, I rolled over and kicked the trapdoor shut. I let the
We waited and we waited, and my obvious expectation that the floor would dissolve beneath us did not seem soon to be fulfilled. The howling wind of disintegration suddenly died, and there was complete silence. I opened my eyes and saw Anotine open hers.
'Well?' she said.
I shook my head.
Then we dropped, not through the floor, but with the dome intact around us. The fall seemed to have been slowed by some force, for we did not plummet the way the Doctor's winch had, but instead dropped with the lightness of a feather. Still, we held tightly to each other for a long time until there came a modest collision with the surface of the ocean, the impact of which bounced us a few inches off the floor. The dome settled on the surface like a boat, and the hellish roar of the wind was replaced by the thick liquid sound of rolling mercury. The motion of the waves rocked us gently and, dismissing my fears that we would soon sink or the dome would be melted, I reveled in this moment that did not call for physical exertion.
'We should get up and see what predicament we have gotten into now,' said Anotine.
'Why?' I asked.
She smiled and closed her eyes. I did the same and found myself falling yet again, this time into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion.
I was delighted eventually to awaken in that it was a good sign we had not been consumed by the ocean, but at the same time, my entire body ached so thoroughly from all of the punishing work I had required of it that existence was now barely preferable to the alternative. My knees cracked as I straightened them, and even the simplest movements elicited a groan. It soon became clear to me that Anotine was gone. As I rolled onto my stomach to find a position from which I could use my arms to push myself up, I heard her call my name.
'Cley,' she said, 'you've got to see this.'
With a good deal of effort, I rose to my feet, staggering somewhat in the process. I stretched and rubbed my eyes before turning around and getting my first true look at the inside of the dome. Of course, it was circular to match the cylindrical form of the tower. The trapdoor, which I stood next to, seemed to be the central point of a wide space. There was a short wall, no more than four feet all around, and then the dome began, some kind of crystal or glass that arched upward at its center at least twenty feet. I fully expected to see some kind of beacon or light source, remembering the way the structure had glowed at night, but there was nothing. Instead, the substance that the dome was made from generated its own luminescence. The glow of it lit the interior more efficiently than even spire lamps might have.
'Come here,' said Anotine, waking me from awe at the architecture of the marvelous place. When I turned to find her, she was off to my left, standing next to a chair whose back was to me. As I approached, I could see that it was no ordinary chair, but more like a black, leather throne without legs. The seat hovered two feet off the floor and appeared connected in front to a low metal rail that, I just then noticed, ran the entire circumference of the inner dome.
All of this was interesting, but the sight of Anotine standing there, still alive, diverted my attention and almost brought tears to my eyes. Her clothes were torn and there were scuff marks of grime on her cheeks and arms, but she was beautiful. The fact that we were now prisoners in this structure, adrift on a seemingly limitless expanse of silver ocean, did not faze me as long as I was with her.
I moved close in order to touch her, but as I approached, she put her hand on the back of the chair and pushed. It remained stationary, attached to the device that connected it to the rail, but it spun around so that the seat faced me. Sitting in it was an old man with a white beard. He was bald on top, and the same white hair grew at the sides of his head. His eyes were closed and his lips were drawn into a subtle grin. If I had any doubts that it was Below, the blue silken pajamas he wore erased them. It was the exact outfit he had been wearing back in the other world.
'The sentinel,' said Anotine, and laughed horribly. 'The judge of our lives on the island. I knew he must be sleeping.
It was all for nothing.' She began to cry, then turned and slapped Below across the face, screaming for him to wake up.
She brought her hand back to strike him again, but I caught it and restrained her. 'It won't do any good,' I said, trying to put my arm around her. She shrugged it off and stepped away.
'This isn't even death, Cley. I should have given myself up to the Delicate. Where are we? What are we? This is forever.'
'Easy, easy,' I said to her. 'We'll find a way out of this,' but as I spoke, I could feel the crushing weight of loneliness that she was feeling. We had each other for the moment, but beyond us, there was nothing. I fought back my desire to tell her everything I knew.
'Look here,' I said, noticing that the device that connected the chair to the rail also had another part, a console that, when the seat was turned toward the outside, could be controlled by the occupant. It was a black board with switches and dials and two long levers.
'This reminds me of your black box,' I said. 'Perhaps you could figure out what its purpose is.'
She refused to take the bait I hoped would divert her attention from the deplorable state we were in. Turning her back, she moved away to the opposite side of the dome. I left her alone for the time being, knowing there was nothing I could say that might change our situation, and anything I could tell her would only serve to reveal greater depths of hopelessness.
The fact that Below, or some mnemonic representation of Below, was there in the dome did not surprise me all that much. From the beginning of my journey, I always expected that I would find the Master. And why not? It was his world. We were breathing his imagination. I only wished he had been in a condition that might have allowed me to reason with him. 'If only I could awaken him,' I thought, 'I could simply ask him what the antidote is.' At that point, though, I was uncertain if Misrix would be able to bring me out. It became clear to me as I stood there above the old man, staring down at him, that the demon had lost me.
I reached over to the console and slowly turned one of the knobs. As it spun, the light thrown off by the dome diminished in brightness. The more I moved the knob, the more the darkness of night outside became evident, and I realized then that my nap had lasted for an entire day. Wanting to see the extent of the device, I brought the glow to a bare minimum, then turned it out altogether.
'Cley,' Anotine called.
'It's all right' I said. 'I'm making it happen.' Looking up through the clear crystal of the now extinguished dome, I could see a multitude of stars above. They shone with fierce clarity, and I wondered what they were in relation to Below's mnemonics. The absence of the light made the inner dome seem more still and quiet than before. Straight ahead, out through the transparent membrane, I saw the ocean rolling—shadowy hills on the move, glistening here and there in the wash of light from a half-moon that hung low, off to our left.
'It's pretty,' said Anotine, who had found her way back to my side.
'Yes,' I said.
'I suppose this is Below,' she said, nodding toward the chair.
'I'm afraid so,' I said.
'I have only one question, Cley. What is the point of all of this?'
I don't think she could have faulted me had I admitted that I had no idea, but I thought hard for an answer. After a long time of watching the waves moving in the night, I said, 'It has something to do with Below's fear of uncertainty.'
'I can taste that fear right now,' she said.
'Rather bitter,' I agreed, 'but, believe me, I know from experience, not half as bad as the taste of its opposite.'
She took my hand, and, leaving the light of the dome extinguished, we moved to the middle of the floor. I understand how impulsive it sounds given the circumstances, but there we undressed and lay down on the floor. We worked at finding the moment with all our might, as if trying to assert our reality. In the midst of making love, there was at least the
When we were finished, Anotine rolled over next to me, and whispered sleepily in my ear. 'Do you still believe in me, Cley?'
