William Wu - Perihelion

He closed his eyes and slept.

Ariel felt her way forward slowly with her hands as she crawled, not making any move until she knew what was ahead of her. She was still in absolute darkness in some kind of giant tube that was so far stretching straight ahead on a level course. With Derec unable to move, she was painfully aware that she was the last of their group to have a chance at finding Dr. Avery.

She was not exactly in top condition herself. Her hands and feet were painfully cold and she was drenched from the sprinklers. She was worn out, too, though not sick like Derec was. The climb up the mountainside and down into the valley had taken a lot of energy out of her.

She hoped, with guarded optimism, that her memory was growing stronger. Those weird memory fugues had grown less frequent and she wished fervently that none would strike while she was alone in this thing, whatever it was.

She began to find branches and intersections in the passageway. Without any way to pick one direction over another, she attempted to go as straight as she could. Going in roughly one direction would at least prevent her from wandering hopelessly in circles. She suspected that the intersecting tunnels represented those other openings on the surface they had seen.

After a while, she thought she had picked out a pattern. From what she could feel, smaller tunnels seemed to converge more often and become larger ones consistently to her left. She began to move leftward and discovered that the tunnels were now high enough for her to stand if she bent over.

Now that she was moving in this direction, more tunnels converged around her all the time. Then they started branching out again, some of them splitting off above her. Finally she realized that she could see hints of shapes: dark spaces that represented openings one way, a faint reflection of an inner surface another way.

The traces of a light source shone from just one direction.

She dropped to all fours again to pursue the light source, now more concerned with making noise than with the height of the tunnel.

Around a curve, she reached something recognizable: a covered opening into a room. Barely daring to breathe, she moved as quietly as she could toward it until she could peek through the opening.

It was nearly opaque.

The room was lit, but she couldn’t see much. It was carpeted in brown. Nor could she hear anything.

After the silence had continued, she decided that she would have to risk entering the room. She began studying the edge of the covering to see if she could get it loose. In a moment, she found that pressure on the covering itself caused a hole to appear in the middle. The substance, whatever it was, receded from the hole to fade outward into the surrounding wall until the vent was entirely open.

She let out a sigh of relief that the room was deserted. It was still silent, as well. After shifting around to get her feet out first, she dropped to the floor of the room and looked around.

It was a small room, perhaps only three meters cubed. The brown carpeting went all the way up the walls and covered the ceiling as well. The light came from a globe floating just under the center of the ceiling.

She looked again at the ceiling, then at the walls. The room was not built on right angles. The corners were slightly askew.

A couple of computer tapes were piled on the floor. In one corner, a small stuffed animal of unrecognizable type lay on its side. The room was not being used for anything that she could see.

This was not what Ariel had expected from Dr. Avery.

The door was closed. She held her breath and pushed the stud on the wall next to it. It slid open silently.

She remained where she was, waiting. When nothing happened, she stuck her head out slowly. She found a hallway extending maybe six meters one way and four the other. The hallway itself was oddly shaped, but familiar-then she recognized it. It was a hollow three-dimensional rendition of the Key to Perihelion.

She stepped into the hallway. The closed doors at each end of it were also shaped like the Keys. She chose one and walked toward it.

This one opened as she reached it. She hesitated, then edged through. Her mouth dropped open in surprise.

This room reminded her of some ancient historical paintings she had seen. The high vaulted ceiling was at least two stories high and hung with curtains of burgundy velvet. Imitation Renaissance paintings in garish gold frames seemed to fit what she remembered of that period…or did they? Yet that furniture…was classic Auroran design, developed many centuries later. She looked up again, trying to orient herself…and shuffled quickly to one side to catch her balance.

This room was also askew. Worse than that, she guessed, it was not built on angles at all. Though the corners of the ceiling and walls were partly hidden by curtains, the whole room seemed oddly rounded, even twisted out of shape, as though the room had begun as a rectangle, had started to melt, and then had frozen again.

She started across the room to look more closely at the furniture. After four steps, the floor gave out beneath her and she fell, sliding this time down a short, twisting chute. She heard the trapdoor above her hiss closed again as she landed somewhere else with a thump.

This room was tiny, with just barely enough room for her to stand up. It, too, was in the shape of the Keys. There was a door in each wall that was big enough, and nothing else. The walls glowed with light, as in the Compass Tower. She pressed a stud by one of the doors.

The door slid open to reveal a solid glowing wall. She opened another one. This door opened to reveal a dark, narrow hallway. Before trying it, she pushed another stud.

A weirdly sculptured face stared at her from an archaic red brick wall. It had pointed ears, a long pointed face, and was laughing. Grimacing, she closed that one and tried another.

Another dark hallway stretched in front of her.

She had to go somewhere. With a glance at the other open doorway, she edged inside. The walls here didn’t glow, and she slid her feet carefully along the floor before committing her weight forward. After a few steps, the corridor began to curve.

A moment later, she had followed it right back to the same little room again. Ariel closed the doors to the circular hallway and stood inside the room. It might not have an exit, of course; this was the work of a paranoid who’s tendencies had been openly revealed. The room could just be a prison.

“Well, now what?” She said aloud.

A muffled response sounded behind one of the doors. She pressed the stud and found herself looking at the grotesque sculptured face again. All its features were exaggerated.

“What did you say?” She demanded.

“Pull my nose,” it said.

“Who are you?”

“Pull my nose.”

“What happens when I do?”

“Pull my nose.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“Pull my nose.”

She watched it for a moment. “One, two, three.”

“Pull my nose.”

She figured it out, then. This was a function robot without a positronic brain. It had one line to say, triggered by any sound of human speech.

Holding her breath, she pulled its nose.

The long, narrow nose stretched toward her and then suddenly snapped back, out of her grasp. On impact, the entire sculpture collapsed into itself, inverted, and pushed itself out the other way. Then the brick wall broke into quarters and each piece receded sideways, carrying the inverted face with it.

She was looking down a short ramp into another corridor, this one lined with glowing stones cut in the shape of the Keys but not in a smooth surface. Their corners protruded irregularly out of the wall to create a jagged, textured wall. The entire shape of the corridor as she faced the opening was in the shape of the corridor as she faced the opening was in the shape of the Keys, as well.