Planetfall (27 page)

THE TUNNEL IS
longer than I appreciated and every step is filled with thoughts of Suh's death. They're no longer laced with the fear that I'll die the same way. I'm finding that I can think about it calmly now, without the threat of being overwhelmed by pure emotion. Perhaps I'm still keeping it at bay. No, I don't really think that. There's a relief I've never felt before, now that the secret is out. I worry briefly about what will happen to her body now but only in the most abstract way. In here, it seems that all those things are much further away than they've ever been before.

I want to find a way to that topmost room, the one in which Suh said God was already dead. I didn't believe her then and I don't now. I was willing to follow her so far, but not to that place without hope. She saw something on the other side of that veil that made her lose belief in everything. I want to face whatever she did and see what is left behind. I've lost so much in the last few hours I need to see what is left.

I reach the valve and press my hand against it, trusting that whatever I'll come into contact with won't kill me. The valve opens and another stretch of tunnel lies beyond, this time curving upward. There's a pungent scent that reminds me of burned toast mixed with the taste of aniseed and I realize I'm breathing in a different kind of chemical mix. I pause, waiting to see if there are any side effects, but all I feel is light-headed. That could be from the exertion and lack of food and water for a few hours. I step over the threshold and wait for the valve to close behind me.

When it shuts, the color of the tunnel shifts to a deeper blue. A variation in the shading slowly becomes apparent, revealing what seems to be a pathway up the right-hand side of the tunnel. Is that the right way to interpret it? I move over to the right with a couple of steps until I'm aligned with it and tentatively put a foot at the start of the darker color.

Nothing happens. I breathe out and take another step, then another. My feet sink into the surface as if there are steps below it, hidden beneath a spongy slime-covered material. I pause and prod the area to the left of the path. There are no depressions there and the incline is getting steep enough to make it impossible to climb without these hidden steps. I climb a little higher before I realize I didn't see any difference when I was prodding the floor, as if my foot was invisible.

I stop, jarred out of the excitement of finding a path by the thought that my understanding of what happened to me in the previous tunnel was wrong. I hold up my hand and press it against the wall next to me, feeling the slight sticky depression form in its surface. I can see the dent but not my hand. It's like I'm not there.

It makes me shudder. I'm certain I would have noticed that before. Has another chemical entered my brain and altered my perception further?

I slip and fall to the bottom of the tunnel, my back hitting the valve door.

“Focus,” I say out loud, half to chastise myself and half to see if I can still perceive my own voice. It's a welcome sound.

I stand up, my clothes now damp and clinging to my skin, clogged with the mucus. I try not to think about that and instead concentrate on the way ahead. The darker line I saw before has gone, and when I try to step where I did before there's no depression to a step beneath.

Doubting my memory, I stare at the tunnel until the darker line coalesces again. This time it's stretching up the middle with a slight curve to the left. I don't question it. I walk and feel the steps there as before.

This is the beginning of being tested. I start to remember early immersion games from my childhood but pull myself back into focusing on the path. I mustn't overthink it. I look. I follow. I climb.

Toward the end of the tunnel I have to use my hands, still repulsed by the way my fingers sink into the stickiness, but it's getting so steep I need to use the hidden steps like a ladder. A new valve comes into view above me and I go through. There is a tangle of possible ways onward, instead of the interior of another pod, as if several tendrils have partially merged with one another and formed an internal junction.

I don't remember climbing down the outside of any such tangle and feel horribly disoriented as I try to match what I have found with what I remember of the outside; then I remind myself that it's not important now. I breathe in and out, studying the different tunnels, hoping that there will be some sort of shift to indicate the route on.

Just as I'm starting to doubt my idea, a flash of light ripples along the interior of a tunnel stretching off to the left.
Instinctively I go to activate the goggles I'm not wearing and swear. Another tunnel starts to flicker with a different rhythm and any moment now I expect the migraine and vomiting to begin.

I lean back against the door, taking care not to touch its center and accidentally open it. There are six possible ways to go and now all of them are pulsating with different-colored lights. Thinking that these lights are the ones picked up by my goggles on previous occasions, I raise my hands hopefully, thinking I might be able to see them now. I don't see anything and feel that lurch in my stomach again at my own invisibility. An awful sound like a screeching animal breaks me out of that worry and I press myself against the door harder as all the lights stop.

Did I do something wrong?

I take a moment to steady myself, letting the memory of the sound fade. I try not to think about where it came from and the possibility of some alien creature bounding down the tunnel to eat me. Instead, I try to remember what I was doing before. Yes. That was it. I was looking for the way on.

The lights begin again. Different colors in different tunnels, pulsing at different rates. Which one do I choose?

I pick a tunnel and try to study the light to see if there is a pattern, but it keeps shifting and seems random. I try with two more and suspect I'm taking the wrong approach. I try to think of a way to interpret the different colors, but there's no reason to suggest that the meanings my European upbringing have associated with each one have any validity here.

At least the migraine hasn't started yet. I focus on my breath, trying to relax and step back from the puzzle, like I do with any engineering problem that foxes me for more than a few minutes.

My gaze settles on one of the tunnels without my realizing it. Something about the pulsing light seems familiar. As the
thought occurs to me, a sound gets louder, a steady, rapid beat. It's my heart, sounding as loud as if it were being amplified down the tunnel. The pulsing light has fallen into phase with it. I confirm my theory with a minute of my hand on my chest, feeling the beat through my palm. That's the way on.

As soon as I step into that tunnel, the other lights stop. The light in this one fades to a pleasant, soft red, moving in the direction I'm walking now as if to confirm I've made the right choice. Soon enough it starts to curve upward and I'm filled with same elation as defeating a gaming puzzle.

I CLIMB. I
listen to the sound of my heartbeat. I follow the direction of the pulsing light. I haven't been so absolutely present in such a long time. When I reach the next valve, I have no idea how long I've been walking or how high I've climbed relative to the place I entered.

I've reached my first pod. When I did that with the first team, we'd all been sick—apart from Suh—and were feeling pretty wretched. I feel fine. Even my shoulder has stopped hurting. As I step through the opening, I remember Sung-Soo, but it's a fleeting fear, part of
out there
and feeling so distant now as to seem like a memory of a bad dream.

I'm not afraid of him now.

I've been here before. Or, at least, a room very similar, filled with the roughly hewn pots and tools. I can't see any spaces that my thieving would have left, so I decide it's a different room. It feels more like a museum display, something to be looked at passively on the way to somewhere else. As soon as
I think that, a path appears through the center of the room, this time a bold neon purple. I follow it.

It leads me through a succession of rooms and the museum feel of it all intensifies. The pots and tools get more sophisticated with each collection, leaving me with the idea of technological development. Some of the items aren't familiar to me in the later rooms, but there are universals throughout relating to basic survival needs and then higher needs such as art and written language. If I had access to my files, I'd match some of the latter to the things I saw in the top room. Instead I'm left in ignorance.

Each room is higher, housed in individual pods reached by a short climb up steps revealed by the guide path. No wonder we couldn't progress before.

By the time I reach the eighth pod I'm feeling relaxed and gently inquisitive. There's a pleasant scent that reminds me of vanilla. I'm even looking forward to the next rooms, hoping they'll join up the simple things I understand from the early displays and the massively advanced synthetic biotech I'm walking through and interacting with. But when the valve opens, I step into a room that breaks the pattern.

There are many pedestals, but only a handful are topped by objects. Each one is so very different from the next that there's no sense of a collection, not like the previous rooms. All the items are small. None of them are familiar in design or function. There's no path to guide me through the room and I can't see a way out.

I start to walk around the boundary, but that screeching sound begins again and I stop, returning to the entrance quickly.

I move from one pedestal to the next, trying to fathom a connection between the objects displayed upon them. As I walk the screeching stops, and even though I feel I'm moving toward the right action, I have no idea what to do next.

The only thing each one has in common is being well used. A piece of metal that could be a bracelet has chips in its decoration. A rounded piece of stone on the next pedestal is smooth with a groove in it, perhaps made by frequent use. I get to the end of the filled pedestals and stand in front of the next empty one.

I have a thought that I immediately discard. It returns, like a dog that's been kicked but still loves its owner.

Perhaps I need to leave something here too.

A soft blue glow spreads up the pedestal and I know it's what I need to do. But I have nothing that seems right. The rope is hardly worthy of such a place and my clothes are damp and covered with drying mucus.

Then I remember the doll tucked into my waistband. I pull her free. Even though I can't see my hand, somehow I can see her in the glow from the pedestal. It looks like she's floating there, buoyed up by some celestial force. The urge to keep hold of her fills every part of me. I look at her little stitched eyes and the arm I knitted for her. I feel my own warmth held in the wool. I know that I have to give her up.

But she's the last thing I have. All my treasures are gone now. All those beloved pieces of my life are now dumped outside my house and left to the mercy of the elements. I can feel tears running down my cheeks. I know I have to let it all go. I can't go back there. I have to let her go too. I put her on the pedestal and think of my child in the box at the end of the Parisian church, of my father's words trampled beneath the feet of our attackers, of my mother's painting buried under a pile of things I spent years collecting. I release the doll from my fingers, see her rest on the stone and take a step back.

The purple color deepens on the floor until it coalesces into a path again. I see a way out now.

THERE ARE A
few more rooms. There is more art, and more artifacts that look like they could have many functions, none of which are fathomable from looking at them. But the message is clear enough. This is human development. I see more stylized representations of human forms. This place is showing me our tendency to evolve and discover and create.

I don't know if these have been collected from different planets or if they're just theoretical or just a story being told in a universal language. But I'm left with the feeling that whoever put them here expected people to come from places other than Earth. I think of the seed again, the real one, and how the thought of it being one of many sent to bring the right person here seems more likely.

It makes me pause. Suh was the one it called here. Not me. Should I progress even though I'm not much more than a stowaway in this scheme?

The light and the path fade. My concentration has drifted and the doubts are creeping in.

“It's not for me to decide,” I say. “If I'm able to progress, I will.”

The path is restored with my resolve. I have faith, not in God but in this city and the fail-safes put into place here. Suh hacked this system even though she was the one called here. She said she understood when we were in that topmost room, but I'm not sure she could have. This city is changing me, preparing me in ways I don't understand. I can't see how she could have changed enough without contact.

I'm climbing all the time now and feeling lighter than I have in so long. I think back to my house, to the things I stuffed between its walls and how much energy I wasted keeping it all hidden. It seems so strange to me now, so long ago. I was a different person then. Who I am now . . . I can't tell.

Through another valve and I'm in a narrow tunnel. Is this the last one? The one we all squeezed through exhausted and despairing?

The room is unchanged. I look at the place Suh died and can almost see her there in front of me. Mack and Winston, Lois and Hak-Kun, all dead now. Only I remain, the one least likely to survive.

There is no path marked on the floor to guide me. It's of no concern to me as I want to pause here and see if the markings mean anything to me now.

I walk along the walls, not caring if they are lit or if I can see myself anymore. I let myself trace the shapes and the colors, sometimes trying to find meaning, sometimes stepping back and waiting. Neither yields results.

Thinking of Suh before she went through the wall, I stand
in the same place and try to read the symbols the way she did, moving from the bottom to the top at speed.

They are still unfathomable.

She said that she knew what it all means. Was she even telling the truth? Or is my poor, normal brain simply incapable of interpreting all of this without the seed's influence?

But I got here. I passed the city's tests. I turn and look at the central wall. There is a sense of someone waiting. Is it me or someone else?

“If you think I'm ready, I'm here,” I say to it. Then I shake my head. “I know I'm ready.”

The wall fades and I walk through.

•   •   •

I
have no expectations. I feel empty but not hollow. As I cross through the translucent wall I become aware of my body again. I feel blisters on my feet and tongue, the pain in my shoulder and a gnawing hunger. My head is aching, and my clothes are uncomfortably damp and have chafed my skin in places.

It's the most human I've felt since I left the first tunnel.

At first I think the room is open to the sky, but then I see a slight distortion in the air suggesting a barrier of some kind. It's a full circle, rather than the other half of the pod, and even though I don't understand it, I don't try to work it out. It's not important.

There is nothing else in the room except a slab of stone and on it lies a body. Not obviously male or female but most definitely human. The limbs are long and delicate, the hair gray and hanging down to the floor in soft curls, the jawline square but not heavy. The skin is painted with symbols and artwork I recognize from the rooms below and the one on the other side of the wall that's now solid behind me. Blues and greens and golds and black.

The chest isn't moving.

“Are you the one who made all this?” I ask but there's no response.

Did Suh think this was God?

The floor is pale gray and bright in the morning sunshine. Through the haze of the barrier I see Diamond Peak and the clouds scudding across the flawless sky. I look down at my hands and see liver spots and wrinkles and strength and potential.

That person isn't God.

This isn't the last room.

I don't know why I think that—no—why I know that.

I go to the slab and kneel beside it. There's a decorative edge carved into the stone so delicate that it's easy to miss. In the center of the length I'm looking at there's a tiny spike of stone. I press my forefinger against it without thinking and watch as a bead of blood rolls down it to collect at a groove around its base. I suck at the little wound as the blood thins and begins to run along the carved grooves as if the slab were on a slope.

Soon it's as thin as cotton threads and they reveal something I can understand. First an image of Diamond Peak. Then something that looks like lots of people. Then only one figure, alone, throwing something depicted as tiny dots upward.

I crawl around the edge, following the pictures as they're revealed, interpreting a story that is so simple anyone could understand it. After the others left, the lone figure sent the seeds out into the stars and then a long time passed. The sender created the city and then people came from lots of different places to enter it, all much smaller than the sender. A segment shows the tiny people inside stylized tunnels and pods, each one showing the person getting bigger until there's one of the topmost pod with a symbol that has to be the sun above it. The sender is above the city now and the little people who have
grown during their passage through the city are reaching up. The next shows this room, seen from above, the visitor lying on it and then—

The body on the slab begins to crumble as if it has been formed from powder all along. The dust left behind is repelled by the material the slab is made from and slips off to plume in the air briefly, leaving it pristine.

I haven't decorated my body. My clothes are filthy. It doesn't matter. I lie down on the slab.

It feels soft beneath me, like I'm lying on a cushion of air. I feel all the tightness in my muscles flow out of me. I look up at the sky and I know that I'm ready and that it's time to go. I've worn this body long enough.

And as I lie there I think of those I've loved and those I've hurt. Sometimes they were one and the same. I think of the ones who have hurt me and see them as I see myself. We were all just little broken things, trying so hard to protect ourselves when all we were doing was keeping ourselves blind and alone.

There is something beautiful happening above and below me. My body is between and will be left behind when I go on. I know that soon I'll be with the one who built the city to prepare those who make it this far, so they too can reach that higher place.

And in time another will come and will trust the city and will find my body. And if they are ready, they'll know what to do.