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Many of the other machines had been damaged. It had taken me a while to notice, but the majority of the stalls had a litter of panels and debris scattered in front of them. Machines that had blades seemed particularly vulnerable. I started to wonder if the forest had gone wild because the machines had broken down, or if people had broken the machines and caused the wildness themselves. Then there were the other, smaller machines that looked as though they had been wrecked for the fun of it. This wasn't a happy place, and I began to wonder if it was the Go-yen that had inflicted all this damage or Alyssa's people. Part of me didn't want to ask.
My stomach rumbled and reminded me that we had started out that morning without taking breakfast. I called the other two over to an empty stall, and I leaned against the wall as I sat and dug out my breakfast. I found another brick for Alyssa, and searched around for a flask of water.
‘I think we might have a problem, or we're about to have one,’ I said.
Alyssa looked at me and raised one eyebrow. Neat trick. I concentrated and managed not to try copying it.
‘Pitr, how many bricks do you have? And how many full flasks?’
He looked surprised for a moment, then nodded slowly. Putting his half-eaten food brick down carefully so that it rested on its torn wrapper, he also explored the depths of his pack.
‘Not good. Three bricks and two flasks, and I'm not sure one of those is full.’
‘So that makes seven and four with mine.’
‘Where did it all go?’ Pitr protested. ‘Our packs were full.’
‘Sixteen bricks over four days, and 2 flasks a day on top of that.’
Pitr sighed. ‘What can we do?’
‘Is there water here?’ I asked Alyssa. ‘Or a food dispenser?’
‘There might be water,’ she replied, looking doubtful, ‘but I'm sure there are no food machines.’
I looked at my half eaten breakfast, then reluctantly re-wrapped it and put it back in my pack. Pitr did the same with his, and Alyssa - who had so far taken only two ladylike nibbles - took two impressive bites and handed the brick back to Pitr. He wrapped it and put it in an outside pocket of his pack. We were equally frugal with the water.
‘But we still haven't decided where we're going to go,’ said Pitr. ‘If we can't get in here, which of the other portals should we go to? And how are we going to eat on the way. We only have enough for a day, maybe two.’
‘And not enough water,’ Alyssa added.
‘What about the drone?’ said Pitr. ‘Maybe it knows something.’
‘Why don't you two look for water while I fiddle with it and see what I can find out?’ I suggested. They looked at each other sceptically, but each picked up a pack and they headed off. And in the same direction, surprisingly. They would be arguing by the time they got back. I made myself comfortable against the wall and pushed my mind out to the drone.
‘Show me.’
The arrow appeared in my vision and, after figuring out which direction I was facing in, I could tell it was pointing at the broken portal. And then I ran out of ideas. I didn't know what the language of this device was, or how to use it properly. I knew it could do more than Noah had said, and I was mad that he had not told me more about it. What I really needed right now was some help, but I was on my own. When I had tried to be too clever, the drone had ignored me, but when I had told it simply what I wanted it to do, it had managed to figure out what I needed and do it. I closed my eyes and concentrated. Right now, at this moment, what was it that I needed?
I needed to get to the other side of the door, without spending four or five days on a round trip via another portal.
The word 'Searching' started to flash at the top of my field of vision, and in the centre a complex map started to construct itself. Flickering lights shot along branches of the path then died out, but occasionally one would flash brightly and a small section of the map would light up more brightly than the others. The brighter thread got longer and longer, then started to flash. Words underneath said ‘Search Complete.’
This was great, but the little map didn’t tell me where the path started and where it ended, and it seemed to be going up and down, which didn't make any sense. Pitr and Alyssa came back to the stall, packs swinging triumphantly and big grins on their faces.
‘Well at least we won’t have to worry about water for a while,’ said Pitr.
‘All the flasks are full,’ Alyssa elaborated unnecessarily.
‘Do we know where we’re going now?’
‘Yes, but I don’t know how to get there. I mean, the drone showed me a map, but how can we be sure it’s not like the tunnel we nearly fell out of.’
‘You mean you nearly fell out of.’
‘Whatever. I just need to know if the route is clear.’
The drone, lying on my chest attached to its lanyard, gave a twitch and there was a distinct click. The pencil thin part of the drone disconnected from the ball-shaped top and hovered in the air in front of me. More words flashed in my eyes.
‘Verifying route.’
The pencil darted soundlessly between Alyssa and Pitr, generating a pair of startled cries, and headed off towards the far end of the building. A few seconds later I got a new message.
‘Access Blocked.’
My heart sunk until I saw a red light flashing at the end of the building, where the probe had gone. I got to my feet and set off towards the light, breaking into a run and calling for the others to follow. At the end of the hall we hadn’t explored yet was a door and that was where the drone was stuck. There wasn’t a handle, so there was a moment’s confusion as we all searched for a way to open it. I ended up kicking it open.
‘Wonder what this was?’ Pitr asked.
The room wasn’t an office, but nor was it a store room. There were some boxes, but most of the room seemed to be big switches and boxes mounted on the wall. The drone had followed us in and was bobbing and weaving over a small stack of boxes on the floor. Pitr and I cleared them out of the way, and underneath was a hatch cover. The drone dropped and started tapping against it.
‘Why would it want to go down there?’ Alyssa asked.
‘How do I know,’ I replied as I squatted down on my heels and curled my fingers into a handle. I heaved. It moved, but it didn’t move enough.
‘A little help here,’ I grunted. Both Pitr and Alyssa joined me at the hatch, grabbing the handle on the other side, and we managed to lift it enough to drag it aside. As soon as there was enough space, the drone dropped into the cavity beneath and disappeared. The words hovering in front of my eyes changed back to ‘verifying route’.
‘What does it want down there?’ Alyssa said again, apparently to herself, as she peered into the hole.
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Pitr, and pointed at me. ‘He’s the one controlling it.’
I looked down the hole too. ‘Looks like some kind of maintenance duct.’
The hatch was big enough for any of us to get through, and underneath was a square metal tunnel slightly bigger than the hatch. There were no pipes or cables, just the square tunnel. I thought about the map the drone had drawn, and half expected it to pop up in front of my eyes. I started to get a bad feeling. I looked at Pitr, and he shrugged. He looked at Alyssa, and she spread her hands out to her side. I thought she looked worried, or maybe scared, and was trying not to show it.
‘How long are we supposed to wait?’ she asked.
‘How do I know,’ I said again. ‘I don’t know how fast it can go.’
‘Pretty fast, by the looks of it,’ said Pitr as the drone shot out of the conduit and popped up through the hatchway. I was impressed. That was a couple of kilometres there and the same back, through a twisty conduit, in about three minutes. Then a message flashed in front of my eyes and I knew why the drone had been so fast.
‘Access Blocked.’
So it hadn’t been able to get to the other side of the door after all. I wondered how far it had got, and the map popped up in front of my eyes again, this time with the red path replaced by green. As far as I could see, the drone had got all the way through. Then I fell forward into the map as it zoomed out around me. There was a false feeling of motion at great speed as the map got more and more detailed and focused on the far end, where there was a small dot of red light. We got closer still and I saw it could be a hatch cover like the one we had needed to move here. I frowned, then told the others.
‘So do we try it,’ aske Pitr.
‘I think we should,’ I said.
‘What if we can’t open the cover at the other end?’ Alyssa asked. ‘Would we be able to come back here? Would we have to go backwards all the way?’
‘We’ll get the cover off,’ I heard myself saying, and I was surprised by how confident I sounded. Inside, I was thinking she had a very good point. Then I realised we were taking something else for granted.
‘You don’t have to come with us, you know,’ I said to Alyssa. ‘You got us to the door like you promised.’
‘I’ll hang around a bit longer,’ she replied, not meeting my eyes.
‘Are you sure?’ I pressed the point. ‘There’s a chance you might not be able to turn back. That’s what happened to us, remember?’
She shrugged. ‘I said I wanted some fun before I get married. You two still seem to be the best option for that at the moment.’
‘So, when are we going?’ asked Pitr. I heard the reluctance in his voice and shared it. This didn’t seem like it was going to be much fun. The drone was hovering in front of me, so I reached out and took hold of it. As soon as I did it stopped doing whatever it was doing to keep itself in the air and became a pencil in my hand. I looked at the ball on the lariat, saw a small hole in the underside and stuck the drone into it. There was a click and the drone locked in place.
‘It could take a while. Anybody want to eat?’
A shaking of heads.
‘So who gets to go first?’