Carys had been in this Nowhere before. She’d tasted its flat, futile air. But in the past few hours she had glimpsed something beyond its aridity. There had been victories today; not large, perhaps, but victories nevertheless. She thought of the way Marty had come, his eyes with more than lust in them. That was a victory, wasn’t it? She’d won that feeling out of him, earned it in some incalculable way. She would not be beaten by this last oppressor, this stale beast that smothered her senses. It was only the European’s residue, after all. His sloughings, left to decorate his bower. Scurf; dross. It and he were contemptible.
“Marty,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Nowhere . . .” came a voice.
She followed it, stumbling. Desolation pressed in, insisting on her.
Breer paused for a moment. A long way off, he heard voices. He couldn’t make out the words, but the sense was academic. They hadn’t escaped yet, that was the important thing. He had plans for them once he got out: especially the man. He would divide him into tiny pieces, until not even his loved ones could tell which part was his finger, which his face.
He began to hack at the wood with renewed fervor. Under his relentless attack the door finally began to splinter.
Carys followed Marty’s voice through the fog, but he eluded her. Either he was moving around or else the room was somehow deceiving her, echoing his voice off the walls, or even impersonating him. Then his voice called her name, close by. She turned in the murk, utterly without bearings. There was no sign of the door she’d entered by-it had disappeared, as had the windows. The pieces of her resolve began to unglue. Doubt seeped in, smirking.
Well, well. And who are you? somebody asked. Perhaps herself.
“I know my name,” she breathed. It wasn’t going to unseat her that way. “I know my name.”
She was a pragmatist, damn it! She wasn’t prone to believing that the world was all in the mind. That’s why she’d gone to H: the world was too real. Now here was this vapor in her ears, telling her she was nothing, everything was nothing; nameless muck.
“Shit,” she told it. “You’re shit. His shit!”
It didn’t deign to reply; she took the advantage while she had it.
“Marty. Can you hear me?” There was no answer. “It’s just a room, Marty. Can you hear me? That’s all it is! Just a room.”
You’ve been in me before, the voice in her head pointed out. Remember?
Oh, yes; she remembered. There was a tree in this fog somewhere; she’d seen it in the sauna. It was a blossom-laden freak of a tree, and under it she’d glimpsed such horrid sights. Was that where Marty had gone? Was he hanging from it even now: new fruit?
Damn it, no! She mustn’t give in to such thoughts. It was just a room. She could find the walls if she concentrated, even find the window maybe.
Careless of what she might stumble over, she turned to her right, and walked four paces, five, until her outstretched hands hit the wall: it was shockingly, splendidly solid. Ha! she thought, fuck you and your tree! Look what I’ve found. She put her palms flat on the wall. Now; left or right? She threw up an imaginary coin. It came down heads, and she started to edge along to her left.
No you don’t, the room whispered.
“Try stopping me.”
Nowhere to go, it spat back, just round and round. You’ve always gone round and round, haven’t you? Weak, lazy, ridiculous woman.
“You call me ridiculous. You. A talking fog.”
The wall she was moving steadily along seemed to stretch on and on. After half a dozen paces she began to doubt the theory she was testing. Perhaps this was a manipulable space after all. Perhaps she was moving away from Marty along some new Wall of China. But she clung to the cold surface as tenaciously as a climber to a sheer cliff. If necessary she would make her way around the entire room until she found the door, Marty, or both.