The stairs continued to the roof. That was a railed platform. From it the surrounding landscape could be seen, forest, field, and houses.
Provos smiled, acknowledging a compliment.
"Oh, I like it!" Colene exclaimed. "This is a nice world." She was not being facetious; she wished her own world were more like this.
Then they returned to the storage room, where Provos fetched what looked like red potatoes and green eggs. Down to the kitchen, where she prepared something like a cross between a green omelet and red mashed potatoes, with pale orange milk. The food was served on square blue wooden plates, and the milk was in a yellow cup which appeared to have been fashioned from a thick, glossy yellow leaf. The stuff looked weird, but tasted good, and Colene ate heartily.
But with this relaxation came fatigue. Colene had known she was tired, and now realized that she had underestimated the case. She was starting to feel at home here, a little, and that meant she could become aware of lesser things. Such as fatigue. She was ready to drop.
Provos smiled. She did not seem as tired. She was old—about sixty—but tough. Maybe because of living in a house like this, with all the climbing, and walking around the farm. Or maybe she just concealed her wear and tear better.
As they finished, Provos took the plates and cups. "I'll wash the dishes," Colene offered unenthusiastically, trying to do her part.
But Provos was already shaking her head. She set the dishes in the sink and stepped back. From the screen behind the sink a vine entered. It curled down among the dishes, dripping glistening sap and stroking them with little tonguelike leaves. It was the dishwasher!
They went upstairs. Colene used the toilet facilities, then followed Provos up to the bedroom. Then she remembered that there was only the one bed, and had a horrible thought. Provos had never expressed any interest in men. Maybe she was too old. But was it possible that her interest was in women? Like maybe fresh clean young women? Colene had some scores to settle with men, who could be crude, brutish, and perpetually sexual, while women were in general more refined and decent. But that did not mean she had any desire to—
But Provos was already shoving her hanging clothing over to the center. It slid along wooden rods, making a space beyond. Then the woman fetched cushions from somewhere and threw them down. Colene had a separate bed.
"Thank you," she said, for more than just the bed, and flung herself flat. In an instant she was asleep.
OF course her green tunic was sadly rumpled in the morning; she hadn't thought to remove it. But she found clothing laid out for her: a gray sweater, black blouse, brown knit wool skirt, and knee-length black boots. Also green underwear: a kind of loose corset extending from breast to rump. Surely the kind of clothing worn by girls of this world. She remembered that Provos had worn similar, and that was reassuring. It wasn't exactly a familiar outfit, but neither was it totally alien.
Colene shrugged and put the stuff on. It fit her reasonably well. The sweater was actually a bit tight, because Colene was fuller in the chest than Provos. This gave her perverse pride; she had been feeling somewhat inferior compared to Nona. The skirt reached all the way to her ankles, as she was shorter than Provos. The boots were loose on her, because her feet were smaller than the woman's, but she laced them up tight and it was all right. It wasn't as if the soiled and rumpled green tunic and slippers were any better; that was Oria clothing. She would have to get to Earth to get her own kind of dress.
She went down the odd stairs, winding around to the bathroom, which she used. This time she was more observant, and saw that the toilet did not actually flush; it fed into a chamber which seemed to contain some kind of gray moss. Another hungry plant.
When it came to environmental responsibility, this was one savvy world.
That made Colene think. Provos seemed to have a good life here. Why had she left it? Darius had needed a woman, Seqiro had needed to escape and explore, and Colene herself had needed both the man and the horse. They all had had reason to risk the rigors of the Virtual Mode. But Provos seemed to need nothing. Why should she have taken such a step? It hadn't been just accident; she had sought her anchor, and had been prepared for it. Oh, she had told Darius that she had remembered a mysterious blank in her future, but there had to have been simpler ways to fill that in. A piece of her puzzle was missing.
Colene wound the rest of the way down to the kitchen. There was Provos, with breakfast just ready. Remarkable timing? No, the woman simply remembered when Colene had come down.
This time the meal was a greenish pudding with blue sauce. The blue turned out to be blueberry syrup; the green tasted vaguely like cornmeal mush. It would do.
After breakfast, Provos produced knapsacks and hats. The knapsacks were functional and capacious. The hats looked like insect heads; they were shiny black with two long antenna-like projections that wavered when the hats moved. Colene would have worn such a thing only on a dare at home. Here she knew it would be standard conservative attire.
Provos nodded affirmatively.
"We have to go shopping?" Colene asked. It was mostly rhetorical; she had picked up that message from the woman's mind.
They walked out along the path. Colene's legs were a little stiff from all the walking in the Virtual Mode, but that was working out. They followed a winding, almost invisible path to the woods, and then no path at all, except that Provos knew where to go.
They came to a canal through the forest. It was only a few feet wide, and the trees overhung it; it would not be visible from above. As they arrived, something rushed along it. A monstrous serpent!
But Provos seemed unalarmed. She stood right by the canal as the thing slid up. It stopped, its huge body almost filling the trench so that the water level rose. There was some sort of framework associated with it, a network of wooden bars and fiber cords.
Then the woman stepped onto the snake's back. Colene realized that this was transportation, the equivalent of a boat or bus. Feeling Provos' certainty, she joined her on the creature. There were four seats suspended by cords between side-bars, in tandem. Provos took the first, so Colene took the second.
Provos snapped her fingers. The serpent slid forward. Its coils didn't loop up; instead it nudged the canal on either side, and though the touches hardly seemed strong, it immediately accelerated. Colene had to hang on to the bars as her seat rocked with the swaying motion. They were moving at what seemed like a phenomenal pace, though probably it was only about fifteen miles an hour.
Colene looked around. The trees of the forest were passing swiftly behind, the more distant ones seeming to move more slowly because of the perspective. This was a fun way to travel!
The serpent swung around a turn, and the seats swung out. "Like a roller coaster!" Colene exclaimed. But not exactly; this was smoother, and all on the horizontal.
Then the snake slowed. Two more people were waiting at the next stop, a woman and a boy. The woman had the same kind of outfit that Provos and Colene wore; the boy had shorts and a cap that resembled a squished slug. Slugs and snails, that's what boys are made of, Colene thought, smiling.
The new woman said something to Provos, and Provos replied. Maybe it was the other way around, the reply coming before the remark. Colene gathered from Provos' mind that she did not know the woman, and that she preferred it this way. Because Provos did not want to have to explain her future absence.
Future absence. Of course—these people did not rememher the past, so had no old friends. They had new friends, folk they would associate with in the future. Maybe Provos had known this other woman for decades before, but this was at the end of their acquaintance, so it counted for nothing. And it was reassuring to know that Provos would soon be leaving again; that meant that Colene would be too.
It was a bit scary to realize that at this point, Provos did not remember what had happened in the past. The adventure on Oria was lost to her, just as the coming visit to Earth was lost to Colene's memory. Provos knew Colene only from what was t
o come. Perhaps to the woman it seemed odd to think that Colene knew her only from what was past. Colene depended on Provos to have an accurate memory of that coming excursion, and Provos depended on Colene to help her with past memories. They were a haphazard but feasible team.
Meanwhile the woman and the boy got on the serpent. They had of course remembered that it would arrive at this time with two seats available. Had that not been the case, they wouldn't have bothered.
The snake moved out again. This time the ride was longer, and took them out of the forest and into a town. The buildings were similar in cross section, but much taller; they reached up twelve or eighteen stories, and had stronger guy lines. They just didn't take up any more ground space than they had to.
The serpent halted at a convergence of canals, and they disembarked. There were many people here, all in the outfits of this realm. This seemed to be a shopping center, for the houses had transparent screens on the sides facing the central street, and their interiors had many goods and items laid out.
Provos headed up a ramp suspended between buildings, one floor, two, three, four. Colene followed, content just to watch. When they took a level hanging walk, the open faces of many buildings were available. These had foodstuffs sealed away in packages. There were breads, and jars of spreads, and tubers and bundles of herbs and eggs of all types. Everything packed for traveling.
Colene nodded. Provos knew what she was doing. She probably remembered a need for certain quantities of a number of items, and knew what Colene's needs and tastes would be. Darius had thought or mentioned—hi the presence of Seqiro it didn't make much difference—how Provos had intercepted him near her anchor, well prepared for the journey. It had taken him some time to catch on that she remembered the future, but it had turned out to be a literal lifesaver for him. It would probably be the same for Colene.
Provos made purchases. Her money turned out to be beads on a string. Colene thought of wampum, supposedly American Indian money, though it was doubtful whether the Amerinds used money before the white man came. At any rate, it seemed to work here.
When both their packs were full, they returned to the ground, and to the canal. A snake was just arriving with just the right number of seats for those who needed them. Colene reminded herself that this was really like people getting off a full bus on Earth: there was no coincidence that they got off together and went their separate ways, the ride a memory. Here, people came to fill the bus in the manner they remembered.
The serpent coursed out of the town and to the forest. The day was waning; they would make it back just about dusk. Again, no coincidence; Provos probably remembered finishing promptly then.
And so it was. They stepped into the house as darkness closed, and had supper. Colene realized that they had never had lunch; they had been so busy shopping that she had never noticed. She had not gotten hungry; that green pudding had stayed with her. If that was the kind of food they would have while traveling the Virtual Mode, it was good.
They slept. Colene dreamed of Darius, of being in his arms, of tempting him with her body and not succeeding, but managing to frustrate him something awful. It was a fun dream. The time will come, Seqiro thought to her.
She woke. Had she really received the horse's thought? Probably not; they were now on different realities, with a slew of intervening realities. She had thought she received him once before, when they had been separated by thousands of light-years in the super-science Mode, but that had turned out to be her own dawning telepathic ability.
Or could it have been some of both? Her just-barely-developing power of mind, and his expanding mature power? How could they be sure of the limits of it? They weren't separated by light-years now, but by realities, with the anchors connecting them. Maybe his telepathy could pass through the one anchor, and cross the realities, and cross the other anchor, and reach her. It was a nice thought.
She smiled in the darkness. That was a pun, maybe: a nice thought of hers, and a very nice and powerful thought of Seqiro's, if it had reached her across those realities.
She drifted back to sleep, satisfied.
THEY wasted no time in the morning. They ate a solid breakfast and headed out to the anchor. They passed through it without difficulty; this one had no animus magic bollixing it. They were back on the Virtual Mode.
Provos lost her certainty. She had remembered the events of the prior day, but now it was past and she had forgotten them. She had no memory of the realities they passed in seconds, and had to enter a reality in which they were going to remain before her memory came. Before, she had known she had to go home for supplies; that had perhaps not been memory so much as common sense. Now she had only memory, and it wasn't enough.
It was time for Colene to take the lead. She knew where she was going: Earth. It was her home, and she could orient on it more readily than Provos could. She had no memory of the trip there, because it was in her near future, but her knowledge of her purpose guided her.
She oriented, and felt the faint Tightness that was the direction of her anchor. "This way, Provos," she said, assuming command.
But almost before she took the first step, she paused. If they went directly to Earth, not passing Go or collecting $200, they would walk smack back into that sea that had balked them before. They couldn't go that way.
Colene pondered. There was more than one way to go. They could move to the side, seeking to get around the sea. Or they could circle the Virtual Mode the other way. Any Virtual Mode, Darius had explained, was like a circle, or rather a pentagon, anchored by five connections. The lines of awareness tended to follow the edge of it; maybe it was the edge she sensed, rather than her home reality. If she followed the edge the opposite way, eventually she could complete the circuit and reach Earth. It was inevitable. It might take longer, but it made sense, because there should be no sea. Maybe. She hoped.
She reoriented. She felt a fainter rightness in the opposite direction. "No, this way," she said.
Provos had already shrugged, accepting it. She lacked the memory to argue. Colene had not argued when they were in Provos' world, for similar reason.
They set off, marching through the changing forest. At times animals flicked into view, spooking at the sudden presence of the two human beings, and flicking out of view again as the two strode on across the next invisible boundary. This was a weirdness to which Colene had become accustomed; in fact she rather enjoyed it. But she knew it could be dangerous, and kept alert.
The landscape changed. The hills and valleys became ridges and furrows, crossed by right-angled ridges and furrows, as if some giant cookie-cutter had shaped the terrain. The trees became lumps of colored protoplasm. When some developed tentacles, Colene got increasingly nervous. She had them pause to take out knives they had bought, and they held them in their hands as they walked. The thing was that if a tentacle grabbed a person, that person might not be able to escape it by stepping across the next boundary. Because the tentacle would hold that person right there in that reality. So they needed to be sure they had at least five feet of freedom, so they could reach the boundary forward or behind. A quick cut at a tentacle might make tfie difference.
The tentacular trees faded, replaced by blocks of wood which then became metal. Colene did not feel easy about these either, remembering what Darius had said about machine realities which had almost trapped him and Provos. Provos would not remember, because that was in her past. Damn!
But the metal lumps diminished in size, and the landscape became a kind of plain, not quite level, with lines crisscrossing it, like a sheet of graph paper or a diagram of stress vectors. Suddenly cubistic creatures appeared—and disappeared as Colene and Provos hastily stepped into the next reality. Nimble feet were a great asset on the Virtual Mode.
They stopped to have lunch. It was safe, because Provos remembered that it was, and the meal was good. The woman might remember backwards, but she was competent. Colene wondered again why the woman had left her home to risk the Vir
tual Mode, and wished she possessed the ability to ask. But that concept was too complicated to convey. Provos just seemed to be here because she was here.
The graph paper humped and distorted, becoming more normal hills and valleys. Moss appeared, which grew by reality stages into shrubs and small trees and then full-sized trees and then giant trees reminiscent of those on Jupiter in the Julia reality. Then these twisted into tentacular monsters, making Colene nervous again. But they remained trees, not grabbing at anyone, and there were birds' nests in their heights. Big ones. In fact something frighteningly large appeared, with a wing span of perhaps a hundred feet. A reality in which the fantastic roc birds existed? Why not; anything was possible, in some reality.
Colene was interested in the way realities seemed to be contiguous. Adjacent ones were similar to each other, changing by small stages. Such changes might seem rapid when a person was crossing a reality every two seconds, but that meant about thirty realities a minute, and a lot could shift by then. So they had the partial security of seeing new things coming, and if the trend seemed bad, they could go another way and try to avoid it, or slow down and proceed very carefully. So far they had been lucky; the terrain had been mostly innocuous or avoidable.
Then something sinister started. It wasn't anything in the scenery, which was reasonably ordinary. It was something in Colene's feeling. Something ugly was festering. Was she turning suicidal again?
She glanced at Provos—who was already looking at her. Then Colene realized that the ugliness was being transmitted from the other woman's mind.
Provos put her hands to her head as if to squeeze something out. Colene picked up the woman's alarm. This wasn't something in Provos, it was something being forced on her. Something mental, like a nightmare.
Colene took the woman's arm and urged her across the next boundary. It didn't help. Now it was plain that some mental thing, perhaps like a telepathic horse, had fixed on Provos and was turning her mind into horror.