And then I thought, How long am I going to be away?
I had no idea.
But at least I would be carrying only one copy of the information I had: the copy in my mind. And, although I knew I'd be too much of a coward, I could always kill myself if the men got too close. That was my theoretical last resort. I got a chair to stand on to relieve myself of the second copy of the information I held: the page in my shoe.
Perhaps it was stupid of me; perhaps I hadn't thought it through—but I could not imagine anyone going through all the books on my shelf and shaking them until a mysterious page fell out. I thought that by doing this I was preserving an important page of an important book. Why Zoonomia? I wasn't sure exactly, but something in my mind told me this was the right book. Ariel Manto wouldn't be using it: I'd told her not to. And who else would be interested in Zoonomia? I inserted the page somewhere in the middle of Volume IV and replaced it on the shelf.
I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I did it anyway rather than destroy the page. Was this my fatal flaw? And perhaps I thought that anyone who knew Zoonomia—an academic, definitely—and who also had the wherewithal to make the connection between the page and the book ... Well, good luck to them. Perhaps that's how I justified it to myself. Knowing what I know now, I would never have left the page behind. But I can't get it now. All I can hope is that it's been destroyed.
So the next thing I had to do was disappear. But how to disappear in a building full of people in a university campus full of people in a world full of people? Where could I go? Where could I go that no one else would go? Where could I be unseen?
The railway tunnel.
In two minutes I was out of my office and in the photocopying room, with the door locked behind me. It was surprisingly easy to lift the hatch, now I knew it was there. I had no torch; just a small key ring light. But it was enough for me to see a thin metallic ladder. Had I lost my mind? I wasn't at all sure. But, as I lowered myself into the gloom below, and carefully replaced the hatch above my head, I heard the sound of furious banging, and a male, American voice shouting, "Professor Burlem!" They were at my office door across the corridor. But I was gone. No one had seen me go into the photocopying room. I felt as though I'd broken some loop; some chain of seeing and cause and effect. If I didn't emerge, no one would ever know where I was. If no one could see me, did I even exist?
The tunnel was dark and cold, with a persistent drip, drip, drip noise. It was much bigger than I had imagined—but then, of course, a railway tunnel is big: big enough for two trains to go through. It was too dark to see any detail, but I got the impression of size from the way sound travelled through the space. I walked in a direction I believed to be south, towards the underneath of the Newton Building. My feet crunched on something that felt like gravel, but I couldn't see beneath my feet. I used the wall to guide myself, and hoped that I was moving far enough away from the Project Starlight men that the sleeping one wouldn't simply chance on me in the Troposphere. I imagined something like a dawn raid: If the men knew I was at the university, could the sleeping one just burst into all the dwellings in the Troposphere until he found mine? This was the thought that bothered me as I walked farther into the tunnel. I already knew that so much about telemancy and Pedesis had to do with proximity. But then again, there'd be so many consciousnesses here on campus, and the men couldn't even be sure I was anywhere near here. I didn't know what to do next. As if some vengeful god had decided to play a trick on me, the next thing that happened was that I came to a halt before what felt like a pile of bricks and rubble. I knew I would have to clear a path to get through to the exit. Did I want to get to the exit? I sank to the floor and began to think about what I would do next.
Ah. Enough reminiscing. There's the church. I'll tie Planck up outside.
I'm...
Oh fuck. That's it. I'm out in the Troposphere: bounced out by Burlem going into the church. So Adam was right about that, then.
Chapter Twenty-one
I'm standing on a long, metal bridge over a vast river that rushes below me. It's still nighttime here, but everything is death-kissed with a silvery glow that seems like moonlight (although I can see no moon), and every structure, including this bridge, seems to be strung with lights that are reflected in, and then slashed up by, the violent black water below. In the real world I'd feel vertigo immediately, but here in the Troposphere it's just that syrupy nothingness. You have to get a lot more emotional than this for anything to register in the Troposphere (or, as it seems to have been termed in Project Starlight—MindSpace). Yet I can feel some things. I'm disappointed about being bounced out here when I was surely about to discover exactly where Burlem went after he emerged from the tunnel. But that's it: mild disappointment. Outside I'd feel a lot more.
Outside. How do I get out, exactly? Presumably I have to find my way back to the place I started: the end of the street with the doll's houses and the crazy mannequins: the Tropospherical (is that a word? It is now.) representation of the Hertfordshire village where my physical body is now still lying, crashed out in the pub.
How long have I been in here?
Console?
It appears. Where am I?
Your major coordinates are 14, 12, 5, –2, 9 and 400,340.
For fuck's sake. What does that mean? What's a major coordinate?
Coordinates tell you where you are in the Troposphere.
Yes, but ... What do they relate to?
All points in the Troposphere are calculated relative to the position of your living consciousness in the physical world. I can provide the coordinates in binary notation instead if you require.
No thanks. OK. So I'm not far from where I should be? Or am I?
Distance is time, as you know.
I have a feeling this thing only tells me what I already know. Go on, I tell it, anyway.
You have travelled a great distance, relative to your previous journeys.
So how do I get back?
You return to coordinates 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, and 1.
How do I do that?
You travel across the Troposphere.
Is there any other information you can give me?
You now have three hundred choices.
Great. Can you give me any actual directions?
The screen flickers. I see something that looks like a ring doughnut made into a giant spiral, with lines and cubes hanging off it. But in less than a second this has gone and I am instead presented with something like an ordnance survey map with a blue dot and the legend You Are Here. I ask the console to show me where my target location is and a red dot appears, miles and miles away.