The Weight of Knowing

The corridor between Spaces was longer than it looked.

It was a plain white passage, perfectly straight, perhaps ten feet wide and twelve high. The walls were smooth and pale and faintly luminous, as if the whole thing had been carved out of frosted glass. The floor was cold underfoot. There was no door at the far end, no end at all, only a soft white vanishing point where the walls closed in on themselves like a held breath, and a smell of snow, and, very faintly, of pine.

Archie stopped ten paces in. The others stopped behind him.

"We should wait," he said.

"For what?"

"For all of us to agree on something." He turned. The hatch to Meridian-7 still stood open at the corridor's mouth, a gray rectangle of light, and in it a heavy figure in a naval jacket was leaning in the frame with his arms folded. "Commander. Can you hold that door?"

"As long as I like, son," called Gregor. "That's how it works. It stays open for as long as I'm standing in it."

"Then stand in it a while."

"I'll stand in it till my feet fall off."

Archie almost smiled. He drew a long breath and turned back to the others. They had formed a loose circle in the middle of the white, Venn leaning on the wall, Jin with his bandaged hand tucked into his coat, Zoe sitting cross-legged on the floor with her chin on her fist. They were watching him. It occurred to him again how strange it was, to be watched so; and how much less strange it had become.

"All right," he said. "What do we do about William?"

…

Nobody answered at first.

"We can't do anything," said Jin finally. He said it unhappily, like a man reading out a diagnosis. "That's the trouble. We're in here. He's out there. He controls the Gate. If he decides to shut it down, we'll be stranded. If he decides to cut the power, we die." He rubbed his temple. "I've been going round and round it for an hour. We can't reach him. We can't stop him. We can't even tell anyone."

"He'll have a second move," said Archie.

"What?"

"A man like that always does. He won't have staked everything on one little black box." He looked down at the folded paper in his hand. "He's the sort who plans for the day it's found."

Zoe uncrossed her legs. "If he's got a second move, then he's expecting us to find out. He's planned for it." She chewed her lip. "Which means he doesn't mind us knowing."

"He doesn't think it'll matter."

"Because we can't tell anyone."

"Because he thinks there's no one to tell."

"There's Luca," said Venn.

"Luca's blind to him. He's too tired. Too guilty. He trusts him." Archie shook his head. "I'd have trusted him, too. He's good."

"There's Otis," said Venn.

They all looked at him.

"Otis." Venn straightened off the wall. "Think about it. He's the one who set up the feed. William fooled him into it. He doesn't know what it's for. But he's in the room. He's got his hands on the controls. He's got access. And he's—" He hunted for a word. "He's Otis. He's a good guy. He's the sort who'd listen if someone told him the truth."

"Otis doesn't know," said Jin. "He's naive. He believes whatever he's told."

"Then let's tell him something else."

Jin stared at him.

"It's the oldest trick there is," said Venn, with a slow, wicked grin. "You don't fight the guy with the gun. You go around him. You find the person at the next desk, and you say, Hey, man. Look at this."

"How?" said Zoe.

Silence.

Then Archie said slowly: "Gregor."

…

It took them an hour to work it out.

It was Jin's idea, in the end, though it was Gregor who made it possible. He stood in the doorway with his arms folded and listened, and when Jin had finished, said, "Yeah, that'd work," in a tone of gruff approval, and then, "Probably."

"Probably?"

"I've sent messages through that channel before. Not many. The Guardians can reach the Gate, in a way, the way a prisoner can tap on a wall. It's a lot of noise, and not much meaning. But a short message, a few words, if you put your whole will behind them..." He lifted a shoulder. "It's like shouting down a well. You never know who's at the bottom."

"Could you do it?" said Archie.

"I can try."

"What do you need?"

"A few words," said Gregor. "Short. As short as you like. I'll put them in the signal, and I'll push." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I can't say what it'll do. If William's watching the Gate, he may catch it. If he doesn't—"

"If he doesn't, Otis sees it," said Jin.

"If he's looking."

"He's always looking."

"Then it's a chance."

They settled on the words together. It wasn't easy. Jin wanted a long message, a warning, full of detail; Zoe wanted a shorter one. Venn kept adding jokes. In the end they cut it down and cut it down again, until it was no more than a handful of bare lines, a note passed hand to hand in the dark.

Archie wrote them out on the back of Matteo's paper with Thomas's red pencil. His hand was steady. He had noticed that, with a distant surprise, as one notices the weather changing.

> OTIS.

> WILLIAM CROSS IS STEALING THE DATA. HE IS SELLING IT TO CORVITAE.

> CHECK HIS TERMINAL. DO NOT TELL HIM.

> TRUST LUCA. — ARCHIE

He held it up. They read it, one after another.

"It's short," said Zoe.

"It's all he needs."

"It's a lot to put on a boy."

"It is." Archie lowered the paper. "He'll be frightened. He'll be alone. He'll look at a man who's been kind to him and wonder if it's a lie." He swallowed. "I'd give anything not to ask it of him."

"We have no choice."

"No."

"We're asking him to be braver than he knows how to be."

"I know." Archie looked at the page. "I think that's what everyone has asked of us."

Jin let out a long breath. He reached out, very gently, and squeezed Archie's shoulder. It was a rare gesture. He did not say anything. He did not need to.

…

Gregor sent it from the doorway.

He stood very still, with his hands at his sides and his eyes closed, and the four of them watched from the corridor. At first nothing happened. The white light of the passage hummed. Then the hatch frame began to glow, pale at first, then brighter, a fine white thread of light running round the metal, and Gregor's broad shoulders went rigid. A vein stood out on his temple. His lips moved, soundlessly.

"Is it hurting him?" whispered Zoe.

"I think it's the effort," said Jin. "He's pushing."

"What if it—"

"Don't."

Gregor's whole body shuddered. The light around the hatch flared white, so bright that they had to shield their eyes, and a thin high sound pierced the corridor, like a wet finger run round the rim of a glass. Then it snapped. The light went out. The sound stopped. Gregor swayed, put one hand on the doorframe, and let out a long ragged breath.

"Done," he said, hoarsely.

"Did it go?"

"Went." He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. "Don't ask me where. But it went."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet." He grinned, faintly, with gray lips. "I haven't the least idea whether it worked."

…

In the lab, a single sheet of paper fluttered out of a printer.

It was a small thing. Nobody was looking. It slid out of the little gray machine in the corner, the old dot-matrix thing that had been there since before the Gate, whose sole function was to print the weekly maintenance log. It was not supposed to print anything else. It was not even supposed to be switched on.

It lay in the tray, curling at the edges.

Otis Brennan found it at half past two, on his way back from the break room with a plate of cold pizza. He saw the paper. He frowned. He picked it up and read it, standing in the middle of the floor with the plate in one hand, and the pizza, in a slow comic arc, slid off and landed on the tiles.

He did not notice.

He read it three times. His lips moved. His face went through a long series of changes: bafflement, disbelief, a flicker of something like amusement, then a creeping gray horror. His hand began to shake. The paper rattled.

WILLIAM CROSS IS STEALING THE DATA.

"No," he said, to nobody.

CHECK HIS TERMINAL. DO NOT TELL HIM.

On the far side of the lab, behind the glass wall of the observation suite, a tall man in a gray suit looked up from his tablet and smiled.

Otis folded the paper in half. He folded it again. He put it in the breast pocket of his lab coat, over his heart, and patted it flat. Then he picked up the pizza from the floor, carefully, and put it in the bin, and washed his hands at the sink for a very long time, and went back to his desk.

He did not look at the observation suite.

He sat down and began, in a quiet, steady, painfully ordinary way, to do his job.

…

In the white corridor, Archie stood a moment longer.

He looked at the hatch, at the broad shape in it, at the tired kind face of the Navy man. He looked at the three people beside him. He thought of Matteo's note, folded against his ribs. He thought of what Elena had said: Remember I was here.

We will.

"Commander," he said.

"Yeah?"

"We'll come back for you."

Gregor smiled. It was a slow, crooked, unbelieving smile. "I'll be here," he said. "I've got a rowing machine to fix."

"Take care of the hens."

"Take care of yourself, son." He raised a hand to his brow in a crisp salute, and held it. "Fair winds."

The hatch swung slowly shut behind him.

The white corridor was still. And at the end of it, where the walls closed in, a gentle wind had begun to blow, carrying with it a smell of snow and woodsmoke and distant, faint, tremendous music: a horn, a long way off, calling over the mountains.

Zoe took Archie's hand. Venn took Jin's elbow. They walked on together, toward the sound.