Adam finishes the last of his coffee.
"Mice," he says, suddenly.
"What?"
"Why don't we use mice?"
"For what? Oh ... I see. Go back to Abbie Lathrop using mice. Wouldn't that take ages? I mean to get back a hundred years using Pedesis we'd really need to be crossing continents every few jumps. Remember that time is distance in the Troposphere. The more distance we can cover in the physical world, the more time we can jump through in here."
As I say the phrase I feel something like déjà vu. That expression: Time is distance in the Troposphere. I keep hearing it and I keep saying it, but I don't know what it means. The Troposphere is made from thoughts. Distance in the Troposphere is just the arrangement of thoughts. What do I already know?
Distance = time.
Matter = thought.
So what if there's another equation to add:
Thought = time?
Then, I guess, thought really is everything. And it makes sense: Time isn't measured in anything other than thought. The only thing that separates today from yesterday is thought.
"What are you thinking?" Adam asks.
I laugh. He can see what I'm thinking: It's all around him.
"What?"
"I'll tell you on the way," I say.
"Hang on. We don't even know where we're going yet."
"Oh. Yes. You're right. OK—do you understand about the distance thing?"
"Yeah. I think so. If I'm in someone's head and I can see all their ancestors, I can jump to any of them. If one of them lives in Norfolk, and I'm in Kent, I'll go back maybe a couple of weeks at the same time as I do the jump. But if one of them lives in Africa and I'm in Kent I could maybe go back a couple of years."
"That's right," I say. "So maybe we find a well-travelled family to go back through."
"Look up," Adam says.
I do. I can see the black sky hanging there like something I just clicked on, with the moon like a big digital button. But its light is still real, draped over the buildings and the street. Just beneath the sky I can see the gray tower blocks that seem to be everywhere in the Troposphere, just rising out of the ground and pointing upwards.
"What am I looking at?" I ask.
"The tower blocks," he says. "Where the animals live."
"Why do the animals live in tower blocks?"
"I don't know: This is your metaphor."
"Oh. I suppose I wouldn't think of them as shops. People are shops. People are part of an economy in a much more direct way..." I shake my head. "Oh, I don't know."
"Well, let's find some mice."
"But the time ...?"
"We'll see how far we have to jump before we get into a lab mouse, and then it should be just millisecond jumps all the way back to Abbie Lathrop, surely?"
"I don't think all lab mice are descended from her stock," I say. "I can't remember what Apollo Smintheus said. Damn."
Console? It comes up.
"Can you see that, too?" I ask Adam.
"Yeah," he says.
"Hmm. I wonder if it's possible to send messages on this thing?"
But we don't have to. There's the broken sound of a small engine struggling to fire, and then a red scooter comes around the corner.
"Good plan," says Apollo Smintheus, getting off. "Mice. I like it."
"So where do we start?"
"I'll take you to a descendant. But that's all I can do."
I want to say thanks, except that I'm doing this for him, anyway.
But I do owe him.
"Thanks," I say.
We all walk towards an office block. There's an entry phone, but Apollo Smintheus manages to get us buzzed in by saying something I don't understand in that unfamiliar language of his. While we walk up a set of concrete stairs, I try to plan this, but there isn't too much time. But surely what Adam said is right. Apollo Smintheus said before that all of these mice are inbred. We should be able to go back to Abbie Lathrop directly. We should ... Apollo Smintheus has stopped outside a door. And Adam is opening it.
You now have one choice...
You ... I... We're walking quickly over bare floorboards and our claws are going click-click-click as we move. It's like the sound of Lura's knitting needles, but in a much larger, more bare space.
"Adam?" I say.
"Yeah."
"I don't think we're a lab mouse."
"I know."
I become aware of the mouse registering our voices—or, actually, only my voice—and I immediately know that we shouldn't communicate with each other like this. The mouse... I can hear sounds in my mind and I try to run away from them. Faster, along the wood. I haven't eaten for several hours and I remember that if I run down here and then follow my own scent through the large gap in the wall I will probably find something.
Console!
It appears. I can see lots of images. Most of them are moving, but one is still.
"I'm going to let you do all the choosing," Adam says. "I'm not even going to look."
"OK. But shhh. I think we're disturbing the mouse."
"Sorry."
Voices, voices. I can hear a person but I can't see her. I remember another time when I heard voices like this and there was pain. And then hands on my back, but hands gloved with something that wasn't shiny and smooth, and then sickening movement in the dark, and then freedom: Something I had never known before.
This new voice sounds like that one, a little. But all voices are danger.
I fix my mind on the static image in the console. Something tells me that this could be the lab animal. The mouse we're in now was freed. I can sense that from his memories. But...
We switch. And...
You now have one choice.
You ... I can hear something muffled and distant.
"No!" It's Adam screaming. "Ariel, no..."
But I can't hear him because I am screaming, too. But I can't even hear that properly because the pain stops me registering anything very much. I want to die....I don't know what death is, but there's something in my mind that does, and understands that I should be able to move and that there shouldn't be metal spikes in my eyes, that if they weren't there I would have less pain in my head, and maybe I'd be able to see. What is seeing? The world is a black slab and I have never known anything apart from this. Each day it takes an effort to draw air into my lungs, and that's what I spend my life doing, just trying to breathe....
"Jump again," Adam's saying. "Oh God..."
The pain is like nothing I have ever felt before.
The console is still there, faintly.
I don't think I've got any legs. I don't think I have ever walked.
Everything is black. I pick an image from the console: any image.
You now have one choice.
You ... I... We are standing at the entrance to a maze. A new world! How exciting. Maybe this is finally going to be the way out. I've been down this passage before. And this one. I can smell the food at the end. It's the same stuff again, but it keeps me alive, and it keeps me doing this. I'm only halfway down an unfamiliar passage when a gloved hand picks me up, and the feeling of the material against my fur smells the same as the walls of my world, and all my life I have been comforted by these smells. Now I am being placed down again: my feet touching the glass. Where's my reward? This is the wrong tank. Where's the sawdust? This doesn't smell like my tank. I can see the same symbols on the ground (and which I can now read, and which say HappiMat™) but something is terribly wrong. Fear pierces me like the needles my carers use on me every day. My brothers and sisters are lying around me, but they're not trying to fight me or mount me. They smell different. I walk over and look at them. I nuzzle one of them with my nose: He's cold. They are all just lying there like the wet cloths our carers sometimes leave in the tanks when they have finished wiping off some of the smell. I walk over and sniff them.... They're not right. They're... Ow! Get off. Another gloved hand takes hold of me, but this one isn't gentle....