“What did he mean about — Bluebeard?”
“He meant, ‘Really don’t open any doors.’ ”
“Oh.”
Given an unlimited choice of direction, they chose to follow Brennan over the hill. They did not catch sight of him again. Kobold had the sharply curved horizon of any small asteroid, at least from the outer curve of the toroid.
But they found the garden. Here were fruit trees and nut trees and vegetable patches in all stages of bloom. Roy pulled up a carrot, and it brought back a memory: he and some cousins, all about ten years old, walking with Greatly ’Stelle in the small vegetable garden on her estate. They’d pulled carrots, and washed them under a faucet…
He dropped the carrot without tasting it. He and Alice walked beneath the orange trees without touching them. In fairyland one does not lightly ignore the command of the resident warlock… especially as Roy was not sure that Brennan understood the power of the temptation to disobey.
A squirrel darted into a tree as they came near. A rabbit looked at them from a row of beets.
“it reminds me of Confinement Asteroid,” said Alice.
“It reminds me of California,” said Roy. “Except for the way the gravity bends around. I wonder if I’ve been here before.”
She looked at him sharply. “Do you remember any thing?”
“Not a thing. It’s all strange. Brennan never mentioned the kidnappings at all, did he?”
“No. He… may think he doesn’t have to. We must have it all figured out, because we’re here. If Brennan thinks in pure logic, then he’d just be covering old ground, as if we’ve already talked it all out.”
Beyond the garden they could see the topmost tower of a medieval castle, almost on its side from this perspective. Brennan’s laboratory, no doubt. They looked, then turned away.
The land grew wilder, became a stretch of California chaparral. They saw a fox, ground squirrels, even a feral cat. The place was lousy with wildlife: like a park, except for the way it bent.
On the inner curve of the toroid they stood beneath the grassy sphere, looking up at their ship. The great tree pointed its branches at them. “I could almost reach those branches,” said Roy. “I could climb down.”
“Never mind. Look there.” She pointed around the curve of the donut.
Where she pointed was a flowing stream, and a waterfall that fell up out of the middle, fell from the major section of Kobold to the grassy sphere.
“Yah. We could get to the ship, if we wanted to take that fall.”
“Brennan has to have a way to get from here to there.”
“He did say, ‘Swim in any water you find.’ ”
“But I can’t swim. You’d have to do it,” said Alice.
“Okay. Come on.”
The water was icy cold at first. Sunlight glittered blindingly off the water… and Roy wondered again. The sun was hot and bright overhead. But they’d have seen an atomic generator that size.
Alice looked down at him from the bank. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Pretty sure.” He laughed partly because he was shivering. “If I get in trouble, get Brennan. What do you want from the ship?”
“Clothes.” She was naked under the transparent pressure suit. “I kept wanting to cover myself with my hands.”
“From Brennan?”
“I know, Brennan’s sexless. Still.”
He asked, “Weapons?”
“No point.” She hesitated. “I tried to think of some way to check what Brennan’s been telling us. There aren’t any instruments on the ship that would do it. Still… you might try pointing the solar storm warning toward Saggitarius.”
Roy swam toward the waterfall. There was none of the sound of wild water. It could not be as dangerous as it ought to be.
Something brushed his ankle. He twitched and looked down. Silver flashed away from him through the water. A fish had brushed his leg. That had never happened to him before.
He came to where water was falling up. He rested, treading water, letting it draw him in. There was a moment of disorientation, and then…
… he was in a smoothly flowing stream. Alice stood watching him with concern. She stood horizontally out from the side of a sheer cliff.
Currents around his feet made him wonder. He ducked under, into turbulence, and came out the other side of the stream, headed back. He ducked again, and rode the current to where it emptied onto the green ball in a kidney-shaped pond. The ship was just a few yards away.
He pulled himself out of the water, laughing and blowing. A stream that flowed two ways through the air!
The ship’s solar storm warning showed no sign of a disturbance in Saggitarius. It proved nothing. He didn’t know how much activity it took to set the instrument off.
He stowed clothing for both of them in another pressure suit, and added a couple of handmeals because he was hungry. He brought them back in the sealed suit. He had never looked at the weapons.
There was a Mobius strip forty feet across and six feet broad, made of some silvery metal, suspended almost horizontally in the air with part of the edge embedded in bare dirt. They studied it for awhile, and then Alice… tried it.
Gravity was vertical to the surface. She walked around the outside, negotiated the twist upside down, and came back along the inside. She jumped down with her arms raised for applause.
There was a miniature golf course. It looked absurdly easy, but Roy borrowed a putter from a rack and tried it anyway. He got several shocks. The ball drew strange curves in the air, sometimes bounced higher than it had fallen, and once it came back at his head as hard as he had hit it. He stuck with it long enough to realize that the gravity fields were changing from minute to minute, and then he gave up.
They found a lily pond studded with water sculptures, gentle shapes that rose and flowed out of the surface. By far the most detailed shape was a large sculptured head in the center of the pond. It changed shape as they watched, from the hard face and swelling skull of the Brennan-monster to — “I think that must be Brennan too,” said Alice.
— to a square face with deep-set eyes, and straight hair in a Belter strip cut, and a brooding look, as if the man remembered some ancient wrong. The lips curved in a sudden smile, and the face began to melt…
Kobold had turned. It was dusk in that region when they returned to the castle.
It stood up out of a rise of ground, a structure of rough-hewn dark stone blocks, with windows that were vertical slits, and a great wooden door built for giants. “Frankenstein’s castle,” said Roy. “Brennan still has a sense of humor. We might just bear that in mind.”
“Meaning his story could be a put-on.”
Roy shrugged. What can we do about it?
It took two hands to turn the knob of the great door, and both of them pushing to open it.
Vertigo.
They stood at the edge of a vast open space. All through it was a maze of stairways and landings and more stairways. Through open doors they could glimpse gardens. There were faceless dummies, a score of them, climbing up and climbing down and standing on the landings and walking into the gardens…
But they stood at all angles. Two-thirds of the landings were vertical. Likewise the gardens. Dummies stood unconcerned on vertical landings; two dummies climbed a flight of stairs in the same direction, one going up, one down…
Brennan’s voice boomed, echoing, from somewhere above them. “Hi! Come on up. Do you recognize it?”
Neither of them answered.
“It’s Esher’s Relativity. It’s the only copied work on all of Kobold. I thought about doing The Madonna of Port Lligat, but there wasn’t room.”
“Jesus,” Roy whispered. Then he shouted, “Had you thought of setting up a Madonna of Port Lligat at Port Lligat?”