Farr loosened the harness. Released, the pigs fled away into the shadows of the corridors, caroming from the walls like toys.
They reached the junction of the artery-street and the Mall. Adda rested at the street’s rectangular lip for a moment, then prepared to launch himself out into the main shaft. But Farr grabbed his arm and held him back. The boy pointed downward. Adda stared into his face, then squinted down, blinking to clear his good eyecup.
The lower end of the Mall — the huge spherical Market — was filled with light. Too much light, which glinted from the guide rails, stall sites, the huge execution Wheel… Yellow Air-light, which flooded into the heart of the City from a new, ragged shaft that cut right through the Mall itself, just above the Market.
So here was the cause of the shock they had experienced with Ito.
The edges of the shaft were neat — so neat that Adda might almost have thought it was man-made, another avenue. But the cross-section of this shaft was irregular — formless, nothing like the precise rectangles and circles which defined Parz — and it was off-center, askew, too wide.
Adda drifted out into the Mall a little way and stared down at the gash.
The inner skin of the Mall had been sloughed away, shops and homes scoured off as cleanly as if by a blade. And within the gash itself he could see the cross-sections of cut-open homes, shops. There were splashes of broken flesh. He heard human voices, but no screams: there were groans, and low, continuous weeping.
Farr joined him in the Air. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“A Sea-fragment,” Adda said grimly. “The City has been hit. Looks as if the berg passed straight through… We’re lucky the City wasn’t smashed wide open… Come on, Farr. Let’s see if that damn Hospital is still working.”
They dropped down the wide, almost empty shaft of the Mall, searching for a way to get to the Hospital.
24
Hork ran his thick fingers around the seam of the door. Then, impatient, Waving to give himself leverage, he laid his hands flat against the door and shoved.
The door swung back on invisible hinges, heavy and silent; Air hissed.
Through the doorway Dura caught glimpses of another, larger chamber, walled by more of the featureless gray material.
For a moment Hork and Dura hesitated before the doorway.
“Let’s get on with it,” Hork growled. He grasped the edges of the doorframe. With a single fluid movement he hauled his bulk through; his small feet, Waving gently, disappeared into the frame.
With a sigh, Dura took hold of the frame. Like the rest of the wall material the frame edges were cool to the touch, but the walls seemed knife-thin and the edges dug into her palms. She laid her hands carefully on the outer surface of the wall, beyond the frame, and pushed herself through.
The outer chamber was another tetrahedron — and constructed of the ubiquitous gray-bland material — but perhaps ten times as large, a hundred mansheights across or more. This room would be as large as any enclosed space in Parz City. The chamber from which she had emerged floated at the heart of this new room, its vertices and edges aligned with the chamber within which it was embedded. Dura wondered vaguely what was holding the smaller chamber in place; there were no signs of struts, supports or ropes.
Perhaps they were in a nest of these tetrahedral chambers, one contained in the other, she speculated; perhaps if they went beyond these walls they would swim into a third chamber, ten times larger again, and then onward…
But there was no door in this outer chamber. The walls were featureless: unbroken even by the map device which had adorned the inner cell. There must be no way out; maybe this was the end of their journey.
Hork came Waving toward her. “Dura. I’ve found something.” Taking her by the hand he half-dragged her around the inner cell. He Waved to a stop, causing Dura to bump against him, and pointed to his find. “There. What do you think of that?”
It was a box, irregularly shaped, about half a mansheight across. Dura circled the thing warily a few microns from where it hovered in the Air. Sculpted of the familiar gray wall material, it consisted of a massive block from which a thinner rectangular plate protruded; smaller cylinders stretched forward from the sides of the rectangle…
Its function was unmistakable.
“It’s a seat” she said.
Hork snorted impatiently. “Obviously it’s a damn seat.” He prowled around the object, poking boldly at its surfaces. Levers — thick stumps apparently designed for human fists — protruded from the end of each of the chair’s arms. A swiveling pointer was inset into the left arm.
Dura asked, “Do you think it’s meant for us… I mean, for humans?”
Hork groaned. “Of course it is.”
Dura was offended. “There’s nothing obvious about this situation, Hork. If that map was right, we’ve traveled across space — away from the Star itself. Why should we expect anything but utter strangeness? It’s a miracle we’ve found Air to breathe, let alone… furniture.”
He shrugged; the fat-covered muscles flowed under his coverall. “But this is obviously meant for humans. See how the back, the seat have been molded?” And, before Dura could protest, Hork swiveled his bulk through the Air and settled into the chair. At first he wriggled, evidently uncomfortable — he even looked alarmed — but soon he relaxed and assumed a broad smile. He rested his hands on the arms of the chair; it seemed to match the shape of his massive body. “Perfect,” he said. “You know, Dura, this chair must be three hundred generations old. And yet it looks as good as new, and it fits my bulk as well as if it had been designed by the best Parz craftsmen.”
Dura frowned. “You didn’t seem so happy when you got into the seat.”
He hesitated. “It felt odd. The surfaces seemed to flow around me.” He grinned, his confidence recovering. “It was adjusting to me, I suppose. It was disconcerting, but it didn’t last long… What do you think these levers are for?” His massive fists hovered over the rods protruding from the seat-arms.
“No!” She laid her hands over his.
After a moment he relaxed and lifted his hands away from the levers, leaving them untouched. “Interesting,” he said mildly. “These look just like the control levers in the ‘Flying Pig.’ Maybe there are some basic commonalities of human design, a certain way things just have to be…”
“But,” she said firmly, “unlike with the ‘Pig’ we don’t have the faintest idea what these controls are for.”
Hork looked like a reprimanded child. “Well, as you told me earlier, we’re not going to make any progress unless we take a few chances.” He glanced down at the arrow device inset in the left arm of the seat. “What about this, for instance?”
Dura Waved closer. The arrow was a finger-thick cylinder hinged at its center; it lay at the heart of a small crater gouged out of the chair. The crater’s rim was marked by a band divided into four quarters: white, light gray, dark gray, black. The arrow was pointing at the black quadrant. It seemed obvious that the arrow was designed to be twisted by the occupant of the chair.
Hork looked up at her. “Well? This seems harmless enough.”
Dura suppressed a manic giggle. “You haven’t the faintest idea what it is…”
“Damn you, upfluxer, we didn’t come all this way to cower.” And with a convulsive movement he grabbed the arrow and twisted it.
The device clicked through a quarter of a turn.
Dura flinched, wrapping her arms around her body. Even Hork could not help but wince as the arrow came to rest, pointing to the dark gray quadrant of the scale band. Then he exhaled heavily. “See? No harm done… In fact, nothing seems to have happened at all. And…”
“No.” She shook her head. “You’re wrong.” She pointed. “Look…”