“I’m not certain,” Max replied with a laugh, “but it sure as hell sounded intelligent.”
Max and Eponine had been walking up and down blue corridors for almost four hours when they decided it was time to eat. They had just started their lunch of Raman food when off to their left, at a full intersection of corridors, they saw something pass. Max jumped to his feet and ran to the intersection. He arrived not more than a few seconds before a tiny vehicle, maybe ten centimeters high, made a right turn into the next nearby hallway. Max scrambled forward and was barely able to see the vehicle disappear under a small
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archway, cut into the wall of another blue corridor, about twenty meters away.
“Come here,” he yelled at Eponine. “I’ve found something.”
Eponine was quickly beside him. The top of the small archway in the wall was only about twenty-five centimeters above the floor, so both of them had to drop down on their knees, and then bend over some more, to see where the vehicle had gone. What they saw first was fifty or sixty tiny creatures, about the size of ants, climbing out of the buslike vehicle and then scattering in all directions.
“What the hell is this?” Max exclaimed.
“Look, Max,” Eponine said excitedly. “Look carefully. . . . Those little creatures are octospiders. . . . You see. . . . They look just like the one you described to me.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Max said. “You’re right. They must be baby octospiders.”
“I don’t think so,” Eponine replied. “The way they’re going into those little hives, or houses, or whatever. Look, there’s a canal of some kind, and a boat— ”
“The camera,” Max shouted. “Go back and get the camera. There’s an entire miniature city here.”
Max and Eponine had taken off their backpacks and other gear, including Eponine’s camera, when they had sat down on the floor to eat. Eponine jumped up and raced back for the camera. Max continued to be fascinated by the complex miniature world he saw on the other side of the archway. A minute later he heard a faint scream and a cold shiver of fear coursed through him.
Max immediately cursed himself for having left his rifle back where they had been eating. He jumped up and ran in the direction of Eponine’s scream. When Max turned the last comer, he stopped sharply. Five octospiders were in front of him in the corridor. One had enwrapped Eponine with three of its tentacles, another had seized Max’s rifle. A third octospider was holding Eponine’s backpack,*into which all her personal items had been neatly placed.
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The look on her face was sheer terror. “Help me, Max . . . please,” Eponine entreated.
Max stepped forward but was blocked by two of the octospiders. One of them sent a stream of colored bands around its head. “1 don’t understand what the fuck you’re telling me,” Max shouted in frustration. “But you must let her go.”
Like a football halfback, Max darted past the first two octospiders and had almost reached Eponine when he felt tentacles coiling around him, pinning his arms to his chest. Struggle was useless. The creature was unbelievably strong.
Three of the octospiders, including the one who had captured Eponine, began to move down the blue corridor away from him. “Max . . . Max,” the terrified Eponine cried. He could do nothing. After another minute Max could no longer hear Eponine’s cries.
Max was enwrapped for about ten more minutes before he felt the powerful muscles that were holding him relax. “So what happens now?” Max said when he was free. “What are you bastards going to do next?”
One of the octos pointed toward his pack, which was still leaning against the wall where Max had left it. He slumped down beside it and pulled out some food and water. The octospiders talked to each other in color while Max, who understood very well that he was being guarded, ate a few bites of his food.
These corridors are too narrow, he thought, thinking about trying to escape. And those goddamn things are too big, especially with their long tentacles.
The two octospiders did not move from their post for hours. At length Max fell asleep on the floor between them.
When he woke up, Max was alone. He walked cautiously to the first corner and looked both ways down the blue corridor. He saw nothing. After spending a minute studying the lipstick marks on the wall and adding a few scribbles describing the location of the city of the tiny octospiders, Max returned to the room behind the subway platform.
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He had no clear idea of what he should do next. Max spent several minutes wandering the blue corridors and yelling Eponine’s name periodically, but his effort was wasted. He eventually decided to sit on the platform and wait for the subway. After more than an hour, Max was almost ready to return to the miniature octospider city when he heard the whoosh of the approaching subway. It was coming from the direction opposite the spiked vertical corridors.
As the subway drew near, he saw Richard and Nicole through the windows. “Max!” they yelled simultaneously, even before the door opened.
Both Richard and Nicole were wildly excited. “We have found it,” Richard exclaimed as he jumped down onto the platform. “A large room, with a dome maybe forty meters high, in rainbow colors. It’s on the other side of the Cylindrical Sea—the subway goes right through the sea in a transparent tunnel. . . .” He paused as the subway whooshed away.
“It has bathrooms and beds and running water,” Nicole added rapidly.
“And fresh food, believe it or not. Some weird kinds of fruits and vegetables, but they’re really great for all—”
“Where’s Eponine?” Nicole said suddenly, interrupting Richard in the middle of his sentence.
“She’s gone,” Max replied tersely.
“Gone?” said Richard. “But how? Where?”
“Your nonhostile friends have kidnapped her,” Max said dryly.
“Whaaat?” said Richard.
Max told the story slowly and accurately, without omitting anything important. Both Richard and Nicole listened attentively until he was finished. “They outsmarted us,” Richard commented at the end, shaking his head.
“Not us,” Max said in frustration. “They outsmarted me. They lulled Ep and me into believing we were solving some kind of puzzle in that maze of blue corridors. . . . Shit. Just shit.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Nicole said quietly,
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touching Max on the shoulder. “You had no way of knowing.”
“But what colossal stupidity,” Max said, raising his voice. “I bring along a rifle for protection, and where is that rifle when our eight-legged monster friends show up? Leaning against the fucking wall.”
“We were initially in a similar place,” Richard said, “except all our corridors were red instead of blue. Nicole and I explored for about an hour and then returned to the platform. The subway picked us up again in ten minutes and then took us through the Cylindrical Sea.”
“Have you looked any for Eponine?” Nicole asked.
Max nodded. “Sort of. I wandered around and shouted her name a few times.”
“Maybe we should give it another try,” Nicole suggested.
The three friends returned to the world of the blue corridors. When they came to the first intersection, Max explained his lipstick marks on the wall to Richard and Nicole. “I guess we should split up,” Max said. “That would probably be a more efficient way to search for her. Why don’t we meet at the room behind the archway in, say, half an hour?”
At the second corner Max, who was now by himself, found no lipstick map. Puzzled, he tried to remember if he could possibly have failed to make a map at every turn. Or maybe, he never even came this way. While he was deep in thought, he felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Whoa,” said Richard, seeing his friend’s face. “It’s only me. Didn’t you hear me calling your name?”
“No,” said Max, shaking his head.
“I was only two corridors away. There must be fantastic acoustic attenuation in this place. Anyway, neither Nicole nor I found one of your maps when we made our second turn. So we weren’t certain—”
“Shit,” said Max emphatically. “Those clever bastards have cleaned the walls. Don’t you see? They have planned
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this entire affair from the beginning, and we have done exactly what they expected.”
“But Max,” Richard said, “there’s no way they could have accurately predicted everything we were going to do. We didn’t even know our strategy completely. So how could they?”
“I can’t explain it,” Max said. “But I feel it. Those creatures deliberately waited until Eponine and I were eating before they let us see that vehicle. They knew we would give chase and that they would have a chance to seize Eponine. And somehow they were watching us all the time.”