Adam is being a little kinder than I feel, but she can't hear him: I'm the one they can hear. I'm the one who can change minds. Of course, now we're in this woman's mind we understand exactly why she's doing this. But that doesn't make it right, and it's going to take a lot more than a little bit of empathy for a lonely, miserable woman to cancel out the crushing waves of torture we had to surf to get here.
"Do you know what happens in a lab, Abbie?" I ask her, inside her head.
"Oh, shut up." I clap my hands over my ears. "Go away. Demons!"
"Let the mice free and we will go away. Otherwise we will stay here forever, telling you what a worthless piece of shit..."
"Ariel!"
"Do it for God, Miss Lathrop."
"You're not a demon?"
"We are not demons. We're your conscience."
"My conscience?"
"Let the mice go. Let the mice go. Let the mice go."
And then Abbie Lathrop gets up and, with a shaking hand, re-leases the wooden catches on all the cages.
That could have been more subtle, but it worked.
The console is still up. I look at the Quit button and then we're out on the Troposphere. Adam and I fall into each other's arms immediately, knowing we don't have to say anything about the experience we've just had. I feel as though something has been lifted from me because I don't owe Apollo Smintheus anything anymore. But the weight of what I know about suffering makes that lifted weight feel like a speck of dust I have just brushed off myself. And I still feel haunted: not by Apollo Smintheus, of course. Something has replaced that, but I'm not sure what it is.
The Troposphere looks exactly the same as usual, except that when I bring up the map in the console we seem to be thousands and thousands of miles from where we started. There's something different about the map now and I realize what it is: There are little yellow circles dotted here and there, and I understand that these represent train stations. These are the way I could get out of here, if that was what I wanted to do.
We only have to get back to the early 1890s to find Lumas, and we're already in 1900. We cross from Massachusetts into New York via a travelling salesman, and then we find a newspaper editor whose grandfather still lives in England. Once we're in his mind, we don't have to make too many more jumps to get to London in 1894, a year after The End of Mr. Y was published. We make the next jumps quite steadily. First we cover most of the time and then we do the last of the distance, working our way across London until we are standing outside Lumas's publishing house. And the person whose mind we are inside is a Mr. Henry Bellington, age twenty-two. He is holding a thick manuscript under his arm.
We've agreed not to talk when we are inside people's minds, so I am left to make my own impressions of the things around me. The first thing I notice about Victorian London is how wonderfully quiet it is. Mr. Bellington doesn't agree. He finds it chokingly oppressive, with the beggars and thieves and all the thick black smoke. But then he isn't used to a world of air traffic, car engines, mobile phones, and the constant thick drone of electricity in the background.
Bellington is shown into the publishing house.
And then it's only two jumps into the mind of Lumas's editor.
I only need his address. Do I know it from memory? Yes I do.
And then it's out of the building via a pigeon on a window ledge, and then into a hansom cab with a young accountant, and then off again once we're on the Strand. And then I simply hop from person to person until I'm standing outside Lumas's front door. But the people whose minds I am inside don't want to stop and after I've jumped a couple of times simply with the purpose of standing still, I choose Quit in the console and end up on the Troposphere again with Adam.
"That was good," he says.
I look around. My mind has done something odd—and rather tacky—to this part of the Troposphere. Although it still feels like a futuristic city, this district is like the film set for a Hollywood film that needs to briefly depict 1890s London. Everything seems to have the volume turned up. Abandoned hansom cabs lie everywhere, just as in Burlem's version of the Troposphere, but these seem hastily drawn, as if I want them here but don't really know what they look like. There's a Dickensian fog everywhere, although I've never properly read Dickens, so it only seems to halfheartedly hang over everything, set in an uncertain state somewhere between actual fog and coal dust and the smoke from all the London chimneys. There's also a pennyfarthing leaning against some wrought-iron railings.
The street is cobbled and all the buildings are made out of red brick. There are lots of shops here, all with ornately designed frontispieces. On one side of the street they seem more familiar than on the other. There's something called the Musical Bank, and a vegetarian restaurant, among various other things. I recognize these buildings: They're from stories and novels I've read. The Musical Bank shouldn't be in London, though: It's from Erewhon. But the vegetarian restaurant is from Conan Doyle's The Red-Headed League. The other side of the street has shops with just as extravagantly designed signs, but these are places I don't recognize. There's an ironmonger, a jeweller, a bank, a tobacconist, and a bookshop. Farther down on the fictional side of the road is a pub that's glowing in the console in the same way that Apollo Smintheus's mouse holes glow, and all the various coffee shops. I've never seen a pub on the Troposphere before.
I point it out to Adam.
"Shall we take a break before doing Lumas?" I say.
He shrugs. "OK."
But I'm stalling for a reason, and I think he knows what that reason is. Once I convince Lumas not to write The End of Mr. Y, everything is going to change. And I'm not even sure I want to change Lumas's mind.
The pub doesn't look that different inside from the dives I used to drink in when I was a student in Oxford, or even from places I've gone on a Sunday afternoon in London. The place is done out in bottle green and brown, with a long curved wooden bar, and plush green seats. All the fixtures and fittings seem to be familiar, except that there are oil lamps instead of electric lights, and the tables seem more polished. There is no one behind the bar, and there are no customers, although there are half-finished drinks on one of the tables, along with a book of matches, a packet of playing cards, and what looks like a manuscript for a book. What's that all about?
Adam and I sit down at a table in the corner.
"If we think of alcohol, do you think some will appear?" Adam asks.
"Let's try it," I say.
A couple of minutes later we have a small glass bottle of vodka and two glasses.
"Were you thinking of vodka?" Adam asks.
"Yes," I say. "How about you?"
"Yes. It's my 'trauma' drink."
I laugh. "Mine, too. I thought yours would be Communion wine."
"No. I've discovered vodka since then. It's the only thing my father refused to drink, which gives it a special sort of appeal."
"Yeah." I nod and look down onto the table.
"I'll open it then," he says. He picks up the bottle. "Ow, it's cold."
"Good," I say.
He pours a glass for each of us. And when I put mine to my lips I find it smells of bison grass: my favorite sort of vodka. I knock it back in one gulp. I'm trying to drink away the mice, and I'm trying to drink away what's happened to Adam, and most of all I'm trying to drink away the responsibility of being here, and being able to change things. But I'm not sure that Troposphere alcohol actually gets you pissed. Mind you, I do feel a little more relaxed. I pour another glass and drink it slowly while Adam keeps sipping his first one.
"I can't stand this," I say.