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the slight puglike snout below her eyes, she looked relatively normal. She was
also sitting behind a table that looked like a mixing board, and she was
wearing, of all things, a monocle.
We kept walking, but we were suspended nonetheless, unable to reach the next
panel no matter how we tried. I felt Brandy tighten her grip as she realized
what had happened even she could see that far and I watched as the woman saw
us, frowned, and looked at her board. I got the distinct impression that our
looks, even our nudity, didn't faze her in the least, but that the fact that
we weren't on the timetable was simply not done.
She was a lot younger and, I suspect, a lot less experienced than the old guy
we'd hit on the way out who'd sent us to the Garden, and I could tell she was
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stopped walking, as did Brandy, sensing my intent, and we stood there
patiently and waited for her to make up her mind.
She looked up and saw us standing there, and I gave her a disgusted look and
shrugged. I could sympathize with her problem, but how she solved it was of
vital concern to us. We weren't supposed to be there, but we were acting like
we were, and not at all scared or withdrawn; nor did we, as we were, exactly
look like major threats to the organization. We weren't, after all, totally
black-clad individuals trapped in the system. Finally she activated her
intercom speaker.
"Glifurtin sworking on ka pau maw?" she asked in a low, guttural growl, or at
least it sounded something like that.
I hadn't the slightest idea what she said, but, what the hell, if she expected
me to speak her language I had every right to expect the reverse. "G.O.D.
Western Distribution Center, McInerney, Oregon, United States of America," I
shouted back, surprised that I could hear my own voice.
She looked at her board and fiddled with a couple of dials. "Oh, English. How
jolly quaint," she growled. "What line number? I don't have you on my board
set."
"Beats me," I responded. "You people were supposed to take care of that. We
just use this thing, we don't know how to run it."
She cleared her throat, which really sounded menacing. I now had a new
definition for calling somebody a real dog. "Terribly sorry, there's been a
mistake somewhere along the line," she replied. "I'll take a stab at it with
what I see and what you gave me, and if it's wrong you can get them to reroute
you." She pushed some levers and turned some dials and we were back off into
the revolving doors of blue rectangles again.
Some of this network of whatever it was, was obviously on all the time, but
not between all the right places. Of course, the Garden hadn't any machinery
at all, or at least I didn't think so, but it might have been buried deep
underground.
The fat hairy man and the silver girl from what seemed so long ago had
obviously gone in to turn their station on, either because it was needed as a
way station to send somebody further, or because they were going to send .some
of that trainload of stuff somewhere else.
We stepped out of the pattern not really of our own accord any more than we'd
exited into the Garden where the girl with the monocle had sent us. It was
quite dark, and we were clearly inside a large building, but I knew almost
immediately it wasn't our warehouse. The floor of the warehouse had been
poured concrete;
this floor was very rough stone, maybe stone block. "We're not home," I
whispered to Brandy, "but the thing's still going. Want to get back on?"
"Why bother? She said she was sendin' us where they spoke English and where
people looked like us. So what if it ain't home? What we got that we hafta go
back there for, anyway? Let's see if we can get outta here before they find
us."
"You're sure?"
"Nope, but so what? They ain't gonna send us back and just let us go. Next
time might be someplace a hundred times worse, or maybe back to the Garden."
"But we have nothing!"
"And we got more back home? Come on."
It was nearly impossible to see in the place, so we ran into a wall before we
knew we were at it. It seemed made out of even rougher stuff than the floor,
more like natural stone. A cave or something like that. We went along it, away
from the still-twisting display, until we came to a large double door. It was
locked, and so were a number of doors we also found. There didn't seem to be
any way out of the damned place.
We looked back at the transport display, but it seemed to be slowing
noticeably now, more or less reversing its previous contortions, until, very
quickly, it was the simple cross, then the single screen, then just a tall
blue line, and then there was only darkness. The vibrations and rumbling of
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the great machine died down, then all was silence.
A strip of light suddenly came on at the far end and far up the wall, and I
could see a little. It appeared to be a balcony cut out of the rock wall, and,
moving a bit, I could see that there were stone stairs cut in that side,
leading
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place we'd left, but it clearly served the same purpose. I could see no other
stairs, although there were massive doors cut into the side where we'd tried
to exit doors clearly locked and barred now.
"It looks like that stairway or nothing, babe," I told Brandy. "They got this
one designed for an exit up top. Stay with me against the wall, and let's get
over there so we can find it in case they turn the lights out again."
The funny thing was, there was just enough light to see the whole expanse of
the place, and there was nothing really to see. The whole floor looked as
barren as the unadorned meadow back at the Garden. Wherever the machinery was
that worked that thing, it was well hidden.
"I think we got to chance those stairs and that door now," Brandy said
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