Tony Ballantyne - Recursion

Alison tossed the coin. “Left,” she said, and they were all relieved to take that path. Walking would be a lot easier.

“If we don’t come to a junction in fifteen minutes, I toss the coin again,” she said. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Katie and Eva.

“Nicolas?”

There was a long pause.

“Agreed,” Nicolas said finally.

It was easier following the road, but not that much easier. They had to run along the edges of it, jumping from wet, swampy patches of mud to other less firm footings in an attempt to keep their feet dry. Nicolas jumped onto what looked like a firm patch of ground and his left sneaker sank deep into the mud. He pulled his filthy, sopping foot out of it and swore.

“I told you sneakers would be no good out here,” Alison commented unhelpfully.

“Some of us can’t afford proper boots,” Nicolas snapped. “And anyway, not all of us would think to bring them to the Center with us.”

Dawn had broken above them: the edges of the clouds picked out in pale lemon light. On the ground, in the narrow strip of land between the trees, it was still dark enough for them to need to use the flashlight. They walked two abreast, Alison swinging the light back and forth so they could all see where to jump. Occasionally she swung it ahead of them and they saw the seemingly endless road vanishing into the distance.

“Do you get the feeling we’re being watched?” said Nicolas.

“That’s just paranoia,” Alison said. Eva shivered. Alison was making sense, but Eva had the same feeling. She kept quiet, however. Katie gave a yelp of surprise.

“What is it?” called Alison.

“Up ahead. Something flashed at us.”

They stopped dead. Water was soaking through Eva’s shoes, oozing slowly through her socks, but she felt too frightened to move. Alison shone the flashlight back and forth. Two eyes flashed back at them. Perfectly circular eyes, about a meter apart, just above ground level. Eva felt her pounding heart shudder at the sight of them.

Katie gave a sudden laugh. “It’s a car. It’s just an old car.”

They all laughed nervously as they crowded forward. It was an old car, abandoned in the woods. The light beam had been reflected from the headlights.

“What’s it doing here?” Eva wondered.

“It’s watching us,” muttered Nicolas. “It’s the Watcher. It knows where we are. So much for tossing a coin. We should have hitched a lift into town and lost ourselves there.”

Alison spoke with ill-concealed disgust. “It’s just an old car in the middle of the woods. You’re being paranoid.”

Nicolas gave a high-pitched laugh. “I’m being paranoid? Well, golly! There’s an inspired psychological insight if I ever heard one! Of course I’m being paranoid! It’s what I do. It’s why they locked me up! I’m good at it! Hey! Maybe it’s paranoia that makes me think that you don’t escape a highly intelligent super-being by tossing a coin a few times.”

He was pointing his finger at Alison. She shone the flashlight in his face in retaliation; he ignored it.

“Look, it’s got all the exits watched. It knows exactly what we’re doing and where we are going. We may as well give up now. If nothing else, it will save us getting any colder or wetter!”

Alison took a deep breath, trying to be patient. “Nicolas, we’re all cold and wet…”

“Some of us more than others. Or don’t you agree, Miss Hiking Boots?”

“Can anyone else hear something?” interrupted Eva.

They all fell silent, listening.

“Nothing,” Alison said eventually.

“I thought I heard something, too,” Katie whispered.

They stood in silence for a little longer, but heard nothing more.

“Okay,” Alison said, “time to toss the coin again. Heads straight on or back, tails left or right.”

“This is stupid,” said Nicolas. “Let’s go left and head back to the road. We’re bound to hit it eventually. After that we’ll just head for town, like we should have done all along.”

“No!” Alison snapped. “We agreed on this method. We can’t go back now.”

She tossed the coin.

“Tails,” she said. She tossed it again. “Okay, we’re going right.”

“I’m not going,” said Nicolas. Katie and Eva exchanged glances. They could see the other two glaring at each other in the dim light.

Alison’s voice was low, almost a snarl. “Don’t be so childish,” she said.

“I’m not being childish,” Nicolas said. “This is common sense. It’s onto us, face it. The Watcher is so good it can probably see the way the coin lands. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was even able to predict it.”

Alison sighed. “If it’s that clever, then it makes no difference what we do. We’re going this way. Follow us if you like, I don’t care.”

She turned and climbed up a steep bank, heading back between the regularly spaced trunks of the pine forest. After a moment’s hesitation, Eva and Katie followed her. When they looked back, they could see the dark shape of Nicolas stamping angrily along behind them.

A warm autumn morning was waking around them. They came upon another logging road and followed it for some distance until a toss of the coin sent them marching across a large area of freshly cleared forest. They made slow progress, jumping over tree stumps and wide water-filled pits. Katie tore her anorak on the sharp edge of a broken branch sticking up from the ground.

“I was lucky,” she muttered. “It could have been my leg.”

“Toss the bloody coin, Alison,” Nicolas said. “Get us out of here.”

“After another ten minutes,” Alison replied grimly.

“Look at those.” Eva changed the subject. “Aren’t they old?”

The tops of a line of electricity pylons could be seen just above the trees ahead of them. They were of an old-fashioned design, constructed of a lattice of weak-looking metal, rather than being formed from an elegant curve of stronger stuff. They looked strangely appropriate in their surroundings, as if they had grown there naturally.

They entered a patch of older woodland. The trees here were not planted in such good order. Oaks and sycamores fought for space, while tangles of glossy rhododendrons had infiltrated the forest clearings where trees had fallen. The land began to slope downward; they could peer out through the trees to see a valley cutting through the land before them.

“Let’s stop for a moment,” Eva called. She halted and began to pull off her anorak. Alison and Nicolas did the same.

“It’s too hot now that the sun is up,” she explained. “I’m thirsty, too. How much water do we have left?”

Nicolas was carrying the group’s entire supply in a couple of two-liter milk containers tucked into his shoulder bag. He unzipped it and checked.

“Just over a bottle’s worth. We weren’t expecting to be wandering around here in the woods for so long, were we? I thought there was nowhere in the country that was more than five minutes from a burger restaurant.”

He gazed at Eva, silently pleading with her to help. Eva felt as if she should say something. Katie wouldn’t, Nicolas wouldn’t be listened to. It was down to her.

“Alison?” she said.

“What?” Alison stood with hands on hips, gazing out over the valley.

Eva tied the anorak around her waist.

“This walking is exhausting. I know we need to evade the Watcher, but it will do us no good if we die of thirst in this forest.”

“Yes?” said Alison.

Eva sighed. Alison wasn’t being very helpful.

She pressed on. “Well, we’re spending a lot of time walking across very rough terrain. It’s exhausting. I think we should think a little bit less about randomness, and a little more about putting some distance between us and the Center. We must be barely two kilometers from the place as the crow flies.”