‘And Loki?’ Kara interrupted. I was pleased of it. I thought that the professor must be a teacher in addition to his other duties – few other people are so in love with the sound of their own voices.
‘Loki is the copy of me that I projected. Only I didn’t die. That’s not a necessary part of the equation – although the effort involved, and the pain of it, are such that without the threat of imminent death to spur you few people are ever likely to undergo the process.’
‘Loki is you?’ I asked unnecessarily – my lips just wanted something to say.
‘Not me, a copy of me. I don’t control him and we have … grown apart. But we share the same core and many of the same goals. His power to influence events is both enhanced and constrained by the trap into which he has fallen though.’
‘Trap?’ Becoming a god was a trap I would happily step into.
‘The myth of Loki. It pre-dates me by a very long way, however old I may appear to you, young man. I fear my … let’s call it my “spirit-echo” may have fallen into that particular trap owing to something as puerile as word-play.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘My contemporaries at school used to call me Loki. I suppose I might have been somewhat of a joker back in those days, but really it was just how my name appeared on the register. Lawrence O’Kee. You see? L. O’kee. Simple as that.’
‘So your spirit copy thinks he’s Loki…’ Kara said.
‘Yes.’
‘And he isn’t.’
‘No. But because he’s trapped in stories that a great many people believe, he has access to the power of their belief, which in turn is backed by what you call the Wheel. The changes our machines here have made to reality allow the belief of all those people to give Loki real power. Just as immediately above us those changes allow each of you to summon fire or fly or accomplish whatever it is you wish to accomplish. Before your imagination creates monsters to kill you of course.’
‘What about the key?’ I asked, holding it up.
The professor tapped it with a finger. For an instant it became a small silvery key of peculiar design and no more than an inch long. I nearly dropped it. By the time I stopped fumbling it the key was back to its usual black glassy appearance, reaching from the base of my palm to the tip of my index finger.
‘It’s the authorization key for the manual control panel on the central processor complex. I gave it to my projection – to Loki – as a kind of back-up plan if my efforts to terminate the IKOL project didn’t succeed in the time available. To be honest it started off as more of a joke than a serious attempt to solve the problem. At that point I thought it might take me six months to close down the accelerator ring. I hadn’t imagined that I would spend the next ten years of my life working at it … and run out of time before the damn thing went critical.’ The old man ran a hand through his thinning white hair. Exhaustion lurked in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. ‘Now the key looks as if it’s our only hope. I sent the key out with Loki to gather belief. The idea was to weave it into stories, to make it part of mythology. The more deeply it became embedded in the consciousness of the people the more strength it could draw from their collective will, from their sleeping imaginations. So, you see, the key has become a symbol that indirectly draws on the Wheel’s own power. If it works, the Wheel will effectively turn itself off.’
‘Give him the key, Jal.’ Snorri stepped up close, looking down on both of us. ‘The professor will know what to do with it to turn the machine off.’
My hand closed of its own accord, fingers clenched about the coldness of the key. Giving up the key at this point felt like having my options taken from me. Turning the Wheel’s engines off now would supposedly give Snorri’s family a chance to slip into the unknown that awaited dead people in Builder times. Snorri wanted that … but an afterlife on this Holy Mountain didn’t sound so bad. And turning off the engine wouldn’t stop the Wheel turning, only slow it. Without the engines at Osheim the only thing to turn the Wheel and keep changing the way reality works would be us – every time a mage used magic it tore at the fabric of the world. The cracks would spread, the Wheel would turn, more slowly than before, but turn none the less, carrying us all toward the end. The world would still shatter – just in a few years’ time rather than a few weeks. Turn the key the other way and those last few weeks would compress into a last few seconds and, according to the Lady Blue, I’d face the end of the all things standing in the single most secure place, guaranteed safe passage into a new world, poised to rule not as a king or emperor but as a new god. The Blue Lady might have lied: I didn’t trust the bitch further than I could spit her, but she had made this her last hidey-hole for a reason.
‘Jal?’ Snorri smacked my shoulder.
‘Sorry – drifted off there.’ I uncurled my fingers, eyes on the key. ‘Well—’
‘Access to the central processor complex is rather awkward.’ The professor pressed both palms against his chest as if to preclude the possibility of anyone placing the key in his hand. Perhaps when he poked it the thing bit him back. ‘The real work was always done remotely in the control room.’ He nodded toward somewhere high above us. ‘But for the super-fine control we need it’s best to be right there where the main processors are.’
I nodded as if any of that made sense.
‘To reach the right chamber requires climbing seven or eight ladders and several tight squeezes. If I were a younger man… Besides, I’m not sure I could last long enough out of my slo-time to reach it.’ His gaze fixed on a point over my shoulder. ‘I’m rather afraid it’s already started.’
I turned, following the professor’s stare, and found myself looking at a large black rat which was perched on a ledge on the side of the engine, a few yards above us. It watched us, unmoving, its eyes gleaming.
A loud thud behind me drew my attention from the rat.
‘Shit.’
Cutter John uncurled from the hunched ball into which he’d been compacted by the fifty foot drop from the tunnel edge. I backed into the alcove, hauling Hennan with me by the shoulder. The professor moved to join me. Larry took a few paces forward and stood guard before the alcove. Kara drew her knife, sliding to one side as Snorri stepped forward to intercept. Cutter John ran straight for me at a flat sprint.
The Viking waited, perfectly still, until in the last split second he spun aside, bringing Hel round in a rising arc to take the monster beneath the chin.
The shout of triumph died in my throat as instead of hitting the floor in two pieces Cutter John was simply lifted by the force of the blow, the axe blade failing to bite into him. He landed heavily, but rose even as Snorri brought Hel overhead for a second chop.
‘Larry is very reliable, but I would feel safer if…’ The professor reached over to a nearby panel and tapped a glowing square. ‘There.’
I didn’t have time to say, ‘There what?’ Immediately the scene outside accelerated to a pace that would have seemed comical if the contents weren’t so disturbing. With blinding speed Cutter John fended off a flurry of blows and struck one of his own that sent Snorri sprawling boneless across the floor. Somewhere in all that Kara must have come in from behind to have her own stab at Cutter John. I spotted her lying in his wake as he blurred toward us. The fight with Larry lasted a while longer, fists flying, neither man giving an inch. For a second, that must have been a minute or more outside, the two were locked together in a test of strength. Suddenly, in a blaze of sparks, Larry’s arm flew across the chamber. Cutter John backhanded him into the metal wall of the engine, and there he was, the torturer, his face pressed against the wall of our slo-time bubble.
I had been holding Hennan back. Now I didn’t have to. Cutter John’s face held an ugliness in it that would unman anyone.
‘Oh this is bad,’ the professor said. ‘Very bad.’
‘Can’t you do anything?’ Hennan yelled. ‘We need to help them!’
I echoed the sentiment – though it was mainly me I was
thinking of when it came to help. I couldn’t speak, though. Fear had stolen my voice. And I couldn’t look away.
‘Well,’ the professor said behind me. ‘There’s always this…’
‘A stick?’ Hennan said. ‘How will—’
Something cracked around the back of my head. I saw two pieces of splintered walking stick fly by, one to either side of my face. After that it was all falling.
31
‘Ouch!’ Something hit me in the face. And again. ‘God damn it!’ I lifted my head and another metal rung passed within a finger of my nose. ‘Where the hell…’ I appeared to have been slung over someone’s back. ‘Put me down!’
‘If you want.’ Snorri’s voice, very close to my ear. ‘But it’s probably better if I wait until we’re at the top. It’s a long drop from here and you might damage something important.’
I looked around, immediately regretting moving my head. When the white flashes of pain faded I could see we were in a vertical metal pipe, dimly lit by a glowing strip running its length. Below me Kara and Hennan were climbing, and below them the shaft ran perhaps another ten yards. I tightened my arms around Snorri’s neck, despite the fact that my wrists already appeared to be tied together.
‘That old bastard hit me!’
‘He said it was the only way to get rid of the one-armed man you keep conjuring up. Well, he said killing you would work too.’
‘You don’t even recognize him, do you?’
‘Who?’
‘The one-armed man!’
‘Should I?’
‘Well, you’re the reason he’s one-armed!’
With a grunt Snorri heaved himself over the top of the ladder and shrugged me off onto the floor of a small chamber. I lay groaning as Kara and Hennan joined us. Screens and access panels dotted the walls, the remaining space being thick with pipework. Three narrow tunnels ran off, one vertically.
‘Where are we?’ What I really meant was where was Cutter John?
‘Inside the machine,’ Kara said. ‘The professor gave me a map to the place where we can use the key.’ She peered down the shaft we’d just come up. ‘He said that the shielding is stronger in here, so your friend might take a bit longer to find us.’
‘Except where it’s not,’ Hennan added.
‘Sorry?’ I had a quick glance over the edge myself. Nothing.
‘The shielding is stronger in most places. But there are unshielded areas too,’ Kara said. ‘They’re marked with yellow warning signs.’
I clambered to my feet, using the wall for support, and pulled my hands free of their bindings. ‘Let’s get on with it then.’ I gestured for Kara to lead on. She consulted the paper in her hand and led off down the passage to the left.
I walked at the rear, rubbing the back of my head. If having a walking stick broken over my skull hadn’t given me a headache then the pulsing of the dim lighting and the pervasive throb of the hidden machinery would have. The cramped conditions were claustrophobic on their own but it managed to be much worse than that. The still air held a sickly-sweet stink and the walls pressed close, as if at any moment the Builders’ engine might flex its muscles, snapping shut the already-tight voids within it.
Up ahead the passage opened into a chamber just big enough for the four of us to stand together, then led on. As I squeezed in Kara had just set her fingers to an irregular-shaped mirror panel set into the wall. The reflection it offered seemed fuzzy at the edges and several smaller reflections of Kara jumped into being where her fingers made contact. Without warning her face vanished from the mirror to be replaced by the professor’s.
‘Ah, I see young Jalan has recovered! Let him be the one to use the key. An imagination as overactive as his has … drawbacks … as we’ve seen, but it should allow a strong bond with the key and enhance the effects of—’
‘What is this thing?’ I interrupted.
‘What thing?’
‘This!’ I leaned past Kara and jabbed at the professor’s image. ‘It was a mirror.’
‘Well.’ The professor puffed himself up like a tutor about to dispense wisdom. ‘It would take very long time to list all its functions, but it serves a variety of important uses in the main analysis suite, perhaps communication being the most minor. You’ll see numerous such panels as you follow the route to the central processor, but they’re all actually the same object. It’s very difficult to explain … we call it a fractal mirror—’
‘Break it, Snorri! Quick!’
Convinced by my tone, for once Snorri did as he was told, and with a violent thrust drove the horns of his axe into the professor’s face.
‘You can’t break it!’ The professor favoured us with an indulgent smile as the axe slid over his image, leaving no mark. ‘Why would you even want to?’
‘The Lady Blue is going to use the mirror to come here … if she’s not here already. She can watch through mirrors and if she sees us, well, we’re in trouble: she doesn’t want the Wheel stopped.’
‘If you break the mirror the magnetic confinement will become unstable. All manner of processes may drift beyond their designated bounds…’
‘We’re here to turn the engine off. It doesn’t matter if we damage it a bit beforehand.’ The Lady Blue could glance our way at any moment. The mirror was her last escape route from her tower in Blujen: she would hardly ignore it. The panic that had been bubbling away in me, up to about chest height, ever since I regained my senses now started to rise toward my eyes.
‘Well…’ Professor O’Kee pursed his lips. ‘You would have to go down to the original mirror in Hall E. It’s marked on the map. But if you break the prime image you might only have minutes left.’
‘Before?’
The professor knotted his fingers into a single tight fist. ‘I would hurry.’
‘Kara?’ I turned to the völva, cold in my sweat.
She looked up from the map. ‘Follow me.’
I kept close to her heels, urgency nipping at my own. Three tight corridors, one left turn, two right, a ladder up, a ladder down. We passed facets of the mirror at three points, each time with the professor’s nervous face watching us pass. Each time my heart beat out the rhythm of my panic against my chest. Each facet was a window through which any number of horrors could be watching.
‘We’re close,’ Kara said, crouching to edge beneath another of the mirror facets.
‘I need to see,’ I said.
‘What?’ Kara’s mouth was a tight line.
To be observed and not know whether you are being studied or not is to be prey. The predator stalks from cover. ‘I need to see,’ I repeated, taking the key. I moved to the mirror. For a moment it showed scattered images of Prince Jalan shimmering about the main reflection, each as pale with fear as the next, vanishing down the scale into insignificance. The professor’s face reappeared, frowning. Before he could speak, I set the key to the mirror. ‘Show me.’
The scene changed, from the alcove at the base of the engine and the bare stone floor beyond, to a luxurious room deep with woven carpets, lined by elegant sideboards, an inlaid box on one vomiting strings of pearls and golden chains across the polished top. And on every wall, mirrors, dozens of them, all sizes, all shapes, framed in silver, in wrought iron, elaborately carved timber gilded and gleaming, in bleached pine, splintered with misuse … nearly all of them shattered, their shards hanging like broken teeth, littering the floor.
‘That’s her tower. Now we can see her too, if she comes in to spy on us.’ I felt a little better. Not much.
Kara grabbed my arm and jerked me past the mirror. ‘Come on.’
Another corridor and a short descent brought us to a locked silver-steel door. I tapped it with the key. Nothing happened.
‘What’s wrong?’ Snorri stepped off the last rung, cramming himself in behind us.
‘I don’t know.’ I looked for a keyhole. Normally the key made its own.
‘Try again.’ Hennan hissing from behind me.
‘Re
ally?’
‘Yes.’ Sarcasm is wasted on children.
I pressed the key against the door, flat between my palm and the steel. ‘Open!’
The portal shuddered and a noise like a giant grinding his teeth started up beneath us, vibrating through the soles of my boots. ‘Open, damn you! In the name of Loki!’
I felt a sharp pain deep between my eyes and somewhere in the thickness of the wall an unbreakable something broke. The door grated back into a recess in the wall.
‘Builder locks were made to hold,’ Kara said and pushed me forward.
The room beyond lit as I stepped over the threshold. A great mirror dominated the far wall. I say it was a mirror, though it showed only the Lady Blue’s sanctum, and nothing in that room moved, so one might think it a painting. It stood maybe nine feet tall and as wide across as my spread arms. The edges fractured in strange patterns, breaking into tendrils of mirror and finally into a peculiar sparkling dust or smoke.
I took one more step before stopping, arms pinwheeling as I tried not to take another – not easy with the others crowding behind me. ‘Stop!’
‘Why?’ Kara at my shoulder.
I swept my arm around in answer, index fingers extended to point at the bright yellow crosshatching painted in a band across the floor, following up each wall and across the ceiling. ‘It’s not shielded.’
‘How bad can that be?’ Snorri grabbed my shoulder and thrust me forward.
In a heartbeat I found myself face to face with Cutter John, his face broken by his skull-grin that was far more terrifying than rage. Iron-hard fingers closed on my upper arm and collarbone. Snorri jerked me back and I came free with a scream, flesh torn and bruised where Cutter John’s grip had almost got a proper hold.
Snorri and I both fell back, the Viking stumbling into the wall while managing to slow my descent to the floor. Cutter John threw himself forward … and flattened against the invisible shields, spreading and dissipating like a liquid against glass.