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Pitr pointed out into the void. ‘Across that? How?’
‘It didn’t go into detail.’
‘You can’t be taking that seriously. It can’t know what’s happened here. You have to tell it.’
‘I can only talk when it wants to talk to me,’ I said.
‘But this is stupid,’ Pitr protested.
I agreed, but didn’t see that there was a lot I could do about it. I just had to make a decision. It wasn’t about should I go forward, or try to find a way around. It was about whether I trusted the voice or not. I mean, it hadn’t lied to me so far, or told me to do anything dangerous or stupid. At least, as far as I knew. Maybe it didn’t know about this great hole, but then perhaps it did. I looked out into the void again. I could just make out ribbons of something hanging out from some of the other holes, but none of them connected to anything. Except this one. Maybe the voice did know what it was talking about.
I took a step, then another, and I was outside the corridor and standing inside the void. I heard Pitr cry out, then I took another step. Then I bounced up and down, flexing my knees. Nothing moved. Whatever the grey stuff was, it was solid and static. It didn’t even wobble.
‘Pitr, its fine,’ I called. ‘Try it.’
Moving very gingerly, Pitr joined me about five metres out from the edge of the wall. He was as white as a sheet and I could see him trembling.
‘Calm down. Its solid and nearly three metres wide. How could you fall off?’
Pitr didn’t say anything. He just pointed ahead to where the ribbon twisted around on itself. I had to admit he had a good point. Still, the voice had been right so far.
‘Wait here,’ I said. ‘I’m going to go a bit further.’
‘No,’ said Pitr. ‘This is crazy.’
I ignored him and started to walk. It was about forty metres to the other side of the void. For the first ten metres and the last ten, the path was reasonably flat. The bit in between rippled and twisted a quarter-turn each way from level. I kept walking until I was at the end of the first even section. The path still felt like it was solid ground, not hanging unsupported some crazy distance in the air. I turned and waved to Pitr.
‘Come on. It’s OK.’
I turned back straight away, studying the mess in front to me to see if I could find the safe way across the voice implied. Whatever it was that was making up the path seemed to be about ten centimetres thick, so I wondered if I was supposed to balance along the edge. I took a few steps closer to get a better look, then nearly fell over when I looked back up. Everything had tilted. My balance told me I was perfectly level and upright, but my eyes were telling me that the whole void had somehow rotated.
I stood up looked back at Pitr. Even he, and the corridor we had just come through, had somehow rotated. Then it hit me. The only thing that had twisted was the path. I took a few more steps, and the whole void turned even further. I heard Pitr scream something and, when I turned back to look at him, he was sticking out sideways.
‘Pitr. Trust me. Just look at the path. Don’t look up.’
He hesitated for what seemed like forever, then stepped out onto the path. I waited until he reached me, then put out a hand and stopped him. He kept his eyes firmly downward.
‘Everything will be OK,’ I said. ‘Just keep looking at the path and follow it until we get to the corridor again.’
I didn’t follow my own advice, though. I looked up and all around as I walked, terrified by every step as the void spun from side to side in front of me, and enjoying every second of it. When I got to the other side I started to laugh, and couldn’t stop for ages. Pitr just stood and scowled at me. When I had wound down to sporadic chuckling, he burst my bubble.
‘That was really stupid.’
‘I got us here, didn’t I?’ I said, all the fun suddenly fading out of the situation.
‘You could have got yourself killed,’ Pitr replied. ‘You have a job to do. You can’t just do things for fun like that.’
I started to protest that the voice had implied everything was all right, but I suddenly couldn’t be bothered. Pitr was in a sensible mood again and nothing I could say was likely to shift him.
‘Whatever,’ I said, and started walking.
The voice in my head started giving more regular directions. We travelled in another room with changing numbers, and the corridors gradually got more basic again. Eventually, we came up against one of the metal walls that many of the corridors at home ended in.
‘Well, that’s that,’ said Pitr, looking disappointed. ‘We can’t go any farther.’
I felt let down. All this, all the adventures, and we come up to a dead end. The lack of a keypad on the door we had come through suddenly looked less of a good thing. How would we ever find our way home? Was this what had happened to the others? They had got this far, failed, and never found a way back? I wanted to kick the wall, but soft sandals were not ideal for that. I still needed to be able to walk afterwards. Pitr wasn’t as controlled. He went up to it and hammered on it with his fists.
And it opened. Or started to, anyway. Pitr stumbled backwards and I caught him just before he fell over. We were both shocked. It had never occurred to us, or anybody else I know of, that these things were doors. We thought they were just the end of the corridor. After all, we had always been taught that there was nowhere else, so what point would there be in a door? Then it struck me. If they were all doors, where did they go?
Part of me wanted to squat down and look through the gap as the door rose, but I made myself wait until it was level with Pitr’s head before I ducked down. I saw a short corridor ending in a clear plas panel. The room on the other side of the panel seemed to have nothing in it but chairs. Most of them were arranged in a semi-circle, and had slanting tables in front of them. Three bigger chairs were on a raised platform and all the other chairs faced away from them. They looked different to the others, more like couches. I grabbed Pitr’s arm and pulled him forward. A part of the plas panel slid aside and we walked into the room. As soon as I let go, he stopped and gaped, and the hiss in my head switched on.
‘Welcome, Garret. Please take the centre command position.’