“And the makeup!” Silverman said. “Every five minutes, it’s More makeup, more makeup! What’s with that?”
“I’ve got theories.” I looked at the schematics for the fourteenth floor. Some big suites. Easier to handle. Could I take the thing without even wiring the thirteenth? Squeeze it between twelve and fourteen? Was that even possible? I talked it over with Angel for a moment. Then, to Silverman, I said, “You want to help out? Like before?”
“Big Hollow . . . ?”
“Yeah. Good fun, eh? Enjoyed yourself?”
“Chris,” he said, “I think it was the single most completely terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my whole life.”
“Till now,” I said.
Chapter 61
Holes in Reality
I went up alone to fourteen. I had to think, to get the feel of it—something that’s hard to rationalize in a report, but can make all the difference between a smooth ride and a total balls-up.
Inspiration, empathy.
Gut-instinct.
I set the control box in the elevator lobby, then spooled the cable out along the corridor. There were guest rooms either side, some recently vacated—I found suitcases under the beds, clothes in the wardrobes, toothbrushes in holders on the sinks. It baffled me how anybody could have slept there, stayed there. How or why. The place was jumping. I could feel it, like someone scraping fingernails around the inside of my skull. I was conscious of the god on the floor below—not just a shiver in the air here, but a potent, willful presence, and if I let it, it would twist my thoughts till I lost track of where I was, what I was trying to do, all sense of purpose and identity.
Was that why people came here? Because their own lives were so bad, they wanted to forget them? Lose all memory, all consciousness of who they were? To be absolved, in some way? Shriven?
I’d been up there maybe twenty minutes when I realized what was happening to me. That’s why some guys work in pairs, or groups. It’s safer. The trouble is, you miss things, doing that. Just having someone else around, you lose your focus. Sometimes you need to be alone. To know exactly what you’re dealing with, to face it, full on.
The first thing was, the floor dissolved.
I didn’t see it quite like that, though. It was slow, and subtle.
The carpet had a pattern of long, colored stripes, running lengthwise down the hall. I started to get careful where I put my feet. I didn’t even notice I was doing it at first. But I’d stick to all the brighter-colored lines—the yellows, pinks, mint-greens. Keep off the purples and the browns. It didn’t strike me as unusual. The dark colors began to look like shadows. Then like gaps—places where the floor just didn’t cover. Spaces in reality. I could sense the abyss down there, an emptiness that would drop and drop forever, the same void that had been under me my whole life. The space beneath the world . . .
I was in the hallway. I was reeling out the cable. And at the same time, I was high up, perched above the abyss, terrified to fall.
I jerked back into consciousness. I saw the corridor, stretched out ahead of me. How long had I been standing there?
Hours? Minutes?
I’d laid just twenty feet of cable.
There was carpet under me. Solid floor.
I picked one of the darker bands of color, a deep, rich purple, felt a little thrill of trepidation as I put my foot on it, rested my weight there, risked the fall.
No fall.
I pushed down, hard.
I grinned. I danced a little, two steps forwards, two steps back.
Then I went back to my work, unspooling cable, room to room.
Soon after that, I saw a man.
He was waiting there, in one of the guest rooms. I didn’t see him when I first walked in, but looking up, I realized he must have been there all the time, sitting in the armchair—a small, portly fellow, with white hair and a goatee; he looked a bit like Colonel Sanders. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t make out what he said. His gaze passed over me.
I started to apologize, then stopped myself. There was a reason why I hadn’t seen him. He’d not been here. It was my arrival triggered him. I’d brought him into being. He gripped the chair arms, much as old men do, and pulled himself onto his feet. He shuffled to the door, and as he did so, a second figure rose up from the same chair, almost an after-image, following the same path; and a third, and fourth, each within a moment of the last. They passed into a patch of sunlight, and they instantly winked out. Beyond that, there were only shadows, odd shapes that flickered without definition.
Warily, I laid the cable, and I left.
I covered, close as I could, the area that matched the god’s room on the floor below.
Then I heard Angel calling, “Chris?”
“I’m here. I’m fine.”
“You’re overdue.”
“Yeah. Don’t worry.”
She was waiting for me by the elevators, looking round, as if she’d missed something; like somebody who hears a wasp nearby, but can’t tell where it is.
“You feel it, don’t you?”
She had a flask and a second control box.
“I thought you might want these.”