The Seventh Tide (29 page)

‘For the G brat –’ shoving one handful of the horrible whiteness near Adom’s face, taking pleasure in the way
he strained helplessly to get away. ‘And this is for the human girl.’

All the while, the music kept nagging for Adom’s attention, trying to tell him something, remind him of something, but he was so far gone that it was like listening to someone calling down from the sunlight to the bottom of a deep well.

Then, abruptly, something happened inside his head.

There was one of those sudden shifts that come sometimes, when out of nowhere a picture leaps into your mind, stronger and more vivid than anything your actual eyes can see. Adom drew his breath in sharply, overwhelmed by a powerful vision of his home, his childhood, his mother humming that tune in the sunshine in front of their house, turning, smiling
at him
, with a look of not just fondness or familiarity on her face – with a look of
belief.

Belief in him.

He remembered how that felt, and started to feel it again. And there was more. He remembered the tune from another time, on a hillside above the sea, with the people gathered to see Columba, the
real
Columba, and Eo was there and Hurple, and he, Adom, had said to them,
You don’t convert demons.

That was it. He could feel heat rushing to his face and hands and feet and the blood pounding in his head.

‘You don’t convert demons,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ The creature was focused on the scent of souls – it wasn’t paying attention to him.

‘And you don’t let them convert
you
either
!’ Adom’s voice rose to a shout.

The Kelpie had only just started to turn round when the ghastly, swollen, salt-encased arm smashed into him, throwing him off his feet and into the wall so hard, the sound of his head cracking open was like a gunshot. Adom didn’t stop. He lifted the shameful weight high over his head and brought it down, again and again, till the Kelpie was pulp, and the casing cracked and fell away in great jagged chunks that splintered on to the floor…

In the silence that followed, Adom became aware of a rasping, panting sound. He swung round, like a threatened bull – but he was the only one there. It was his own laboured breath he was hearing. The Kelpie was undeniably dead, and the music of the pipe had stopped, and he was alone.

Adom let himself crumple down the wall and sat, head hung down. He didn’t even know he was crying again until the salt bars on his cheeks began to hit the ground, sliding off like icicles from a roof. He was too tired to notice when the walls of the maze moved again, leaving an opening on the far side of the chamber.

Eo and Jay rushed in.

Adom!’

Are you all right?’

They jumped carelessly over the river of salt.

‘Ngggg,’ said Adom, so appalled he could barely speak.

‘What’s wrong?’Jay said, seeing the expression on his face. ‘What’s happened?’

Adom pointed with a shaking hand at the white flow.

‘That’s weird. It looks like
salt
!’ Before he could stop
her, Jay turned back, stuck her finger into the river and gave it a lick. ‘Yep. Salt.’ She made a face. ‘Very
salty
salt! Well, there’s our river with no water, or one of them anyway. So, tell us all about it. Hey what’s
thafi
! She’d caught sight of the mangled corpse.

‘It’s dead,’ said Eo unnecessarily.

As they watched, the Kelpie’s remains started to steam and then dissolve.

‘It’s the acid,’ explained Eo. ‘Like the stuff that burned me. I think we got taught about how it’s in all their internal juices. When they’re alive they somehow manage to control it, but when they die…’ He shrugged. ‘It’s tidy, anyway.’

‘Eugh,’ said Jay, unconvinced. ‘Let’s get out of here. Back over the brine, eh?’

Just don’t let it touch you!’ Adom warned, finding his voice again. ‘I know you touched
it
, just now, but
don’t do it againl
’

‘OK, OK!’Jay took his hand. ‘Come on, Hero Monk Man!’ and she grinned at him. ‘We’ll jump it together.’

Eo grabbed his other hand and they all backed up as far as they could.

‘On three, then… one… two… THREE!’

With a whoop, they ran forward and leapt the river, clearing it with room to spare.

It was Jay’s turn to lead. Nobody was talking much. Adom was still shaky, and Jay was mulling over the shifty thing with Eo, and Eo was just… quiet. After a while, though, Jay came back to other unanswered questions.

‘You haven’t really said, yet, Adom, what happened
to you back there,’ she said tentatively, speaking over her shoulder. The passage was narrower here and they were walking in single file.

‘I don’t think I can tell you.’ Adom had a strange expression on his face, as if trying to work out a puzzle in his mind. Then he shook his head, defeated. ‘I really can’t.’

Jay frowned. ‘You mean you can’t remember?’

He shuddered, and swallowed hard. ‘I can remember. But it seems it’s the nature of this place that I can’t tell somebody else what I remember. I’m not trying to be difficult – you’ll understand when it’s your turn.’

Jay stopped so fast the others piled into her. She swung round and grabbed Adom by the front of his habit.

‘What do you mean, “my turn”?
!’ she squawked. ‘There isn’t going to
be
a “
my turn” I
I’m here for technical advice only, remember? I’m not here to kill things. Tell him, Eo. One of
you
can take my turn. Look, I’ve got loads of good stuff left you can use.’ She began rummaging frantically through the pockets of her belt, spilling the contents on to the stone floor. ‘See? There’s still the Water Purifier, and the Portable Generator, or at least most of the pieces for the Generator, and the Hull Pressure Gauge –’ The thing came apart in her hands. ‘
I can’t kill anything
!’ she wailed. She covered her face and leaned back against a part of the wall that suddenly wasn’t there any more – and, with a shriek, she disappeared from sight.

‘JAY!’

Eo already had his head stuck in the gap. ‘It’s goes down, like a slide.’ He pulled his head out. ‘To the next level, maybe. Let’s go.’

Adom was trying to gather up Jay’s things.

‘Leave it!’ barked Eo. ‘There’s no time!’

Adom hesitated, a piece of broken kit dangling from one hand.

‘Come ON!’ yelled Eo as he grabbed hold of Adom and threw them both head-first into the chute. The bit of wall that was already closing over the hole again almost caught their heels.

The ride from the outer ring to the next level had taken Jay completely by surprise. She landed in a heap, winded but unhurt, in a new gallery.

Staggering to her feet, she stumbled into the first corridor she came to, which also closed itself off behind her the moment she was inside.

If Jay had still been lying at the bottom of the slide-tunnel when Adom and Eo arrived, they could have done her some serious damage. As it was, they slid out unimpeded and bashed into the far wall of the empty gallery in a tangle of arms, legs and colourful language.

As they scrambled to their feet, it seemed as if a shadow passed over them, as if something had jumped across the open top of the corridor, from one wall to the next. They both crouched instinctively, but whatever it was, it was too fast for them to see.

And whatever it was, it wasn’t them it was interested in.

‘It’s a fair guess it’s after Jay. We need to find a way round
that.
’ Eo pointed at the blank stone wall in front of them. ‘But which way from here? Your turn to choose, Adom. Right or left?’

The gallery they were in stretched away in both directions without a discernible break.

Adom sighed. ‘That way’ he said.

They headed off at an anxious jog.

The passageways and corridors all looked the same. After a while, the one Jay was in made another ninety-degree turn. With a sigh, she hurried round the corner – and skidded to an abrupt halt. There was something there that made no sense.

It was a Guardian, standing no more than half a dozen metres away, blocking the corridor.

The faceless, eyeless mask was turned directly towards her, but there was still that split second of uncertainty – had it,
he
, seen her? There was nothing to read, only the blank membrane giving no clues. She tried to locate a way out, moving only her eyes, trying not to breathe, trying not to draw attention to herself.

Nothing.

Part of her brain told her sternly that it was impossible for a Guardian to be there, that the thing she was seeing wasn’t real. Unfortunately, everything that had been happening to her over the last few days was
also
pretty thoroughly impossible, and
also
couldn’t be real. And she had memories – and bruises – to tell her just how real the impossible could be.

She also had fifteen years, give or take a few when she was a baby, of being terrified of Guardians. Of Guardian authority. Of Guardians’ guns. A lot of years…

Are you ready for your test, girl?’

The voice burrowed straight into the fear centres of
her brain, before she could even sort out the individual words or what they meant.

What? Wait
!

But the Guardian wasn’t waiting. He was already speaking again.

‘As you were told –’

Told? When was I told? I don’t remember – wasn’t I paying attention
?

‘– you are to be tested and weighed today. Follow me.’

He turned and walked off down the corridor, not needing to check to know that she would follow. She didn’t even hear Eo and Adom calling from somewhere else in the maze. She just whimpered and did as she was told.

‘Stand there.’

They had entered a strange space. Up till then, things in the maze had been, well, organic. Obviously, rock in the wild didn’t move the way the walls did, and salt didn’t tend to flow a great deal, but still, you could certainly
find
stone and salt in the natural world. But here, Jay was faced with an array of objects made of what looked like synthetic fibres, steel and glass.

The sound of the wall closing up behind her, however, was entirely stone on stone.

On the floor in front of her was a set of large, old-fashioned scales, the kind with two hanging dishes and a fulcrum. The Guardian produced a small black weight and showed it to her.

‘This is what the world has had to spend on your life, so far.’

It looked pretty insignificant, but when he placed it on one side of the scale, the dish clunked to the floor.

Overhead, there was a tangled mess of ropes and pulleys and gantries that blocked out the stars. They were connected to a wall of square doors, all different sizes, all made of some sort of opaque glass.

‘Behind each door is a weighed measure, according to the value of the person described on the tags. You must find the tag which gives a fair description of your abilities, pull that rope and that particular door will open. Then we will know
your
value. Then we will know if you have been worth the outlay.’

Jay peered wildly about, unable to see how the system was supposed to work.

‘What?’ she dithered. ‘I can’t reach…’

Then the other ends of the ropes dropped down in a line, right in front of her face. Each had a label attached to it, with words printed on it.

Jay stepped closer to one, squinting at the writing.
‘Athlete and mathematical genius, D-class
,’ she murmured.

‘You have begun,’ the Guardian rasped. ‘Fifty-five seconds remaining.’

‘WHAT?! No, wait! I was just…’

The Guardian paid no attention. He was focused on the timing device he held in one grey-gauntleted hand.

Jay dropped the tag and grabbed another, and then another, searching desperately for one that described
her.

Musician and hydroponicist, D-class

RD-class epistemologist

Engineer and plankonologist, D-class

‘No… no… no…’

She worked her way along the line, becoming more and more frantic with each unsuccessful match.

‘Ten seconds.’ The Guardian’s voice cut across her panicked brain like a whip.

Computational cartographer, RD-class

D-class physicist and animator

She grabbed hold of the final rope. The tag said just one thing:
O-class.
Nothing more.

‘I must have missed it!’ she muttered, looking wildly back along the line, then down at the tag in her hand again. ‘This can’t be
it?
!’

The Guardian looked up from his timing device.

‘Time’s –’

With a despairing wail, Jay pulled the last rope.

‘– up.’

The elaborate pulley system lurched and one of the doors, a small one on the left-hand side, flipped open. A dribble of tiny shells spurted out and, making an incongruous tinkling sound, trickled down to the scales. As the shells dropped into the container, Jay stared hopelessly at the other half of the scale.

It didn’t budge, not even when the Guardian walked over, fastidiously retrieved one final minuscule bit of mollusc and dropped it into the dish.

And that’s the best you can do,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.

Jay threw herself into a frenzy of rechecking all the labels on all the ropes, but nothing had changed. The tags slipped through her fingers. She just stood there, head drooping, defeated.

Which is when the little packet of leaves flew over the wall, landed on the rock floor and burst. Immediately the chamber was filled with a pungent, overpowering scent that made the Guardian snort and choke. There
was a moment of displacement in Jay’s mind and then the memory clicked into place: Love’s Truth, and Circe’s cool, considering voice.
I thought you might be unusual, but after all… just arrogant and ignorant… never push hard enough to find out…

And suddenly it was all
too much.
Too much scorn and being dismissed and deemed valueless and a waste of space. If there hadn’t been all that from Circe, the Guardian’s weighing and testing would have got it just right, just the right amount of dis, but coming on top of what the Fifth Tide had given her… inside herself she hit a wall – and rebounded.