Surface Detail

“Yes,” she told him. “You’re not the avatar of one of them, are you?” He’d said he was the avatar of the Armchair Traveller; that hadn’t been a name she’d recognised, but for all she knew these ships changed their names, or had several different names they used as it suited them.

“No,” he said. “Humble General Contact Unit, me, going about standard Contact business, honest. Nothing to do with SC.” He squinted at her (she thought – it might just have been the water).

“You sure you want to talk to SC?”

“Yes.”

They pirouetted slowly, caught by a localised rush of uphill-headed water. Jolicci looked thoughtful. He nodded to the side. “It seems I have no skill in this. Enough. Let’s try another sort of surfing.”

“What is this?” Lededje asked. They were standing in a short, broad, carpeted corridor one wall of which was punctuated by five sets of plain double doors. Jolicci, back in his colourful dressing gown, had pulled the central set of double doors apart with some effort and was stopping them from sliding back by wedging the left one with his slipper-shod foot. Lededje was looking through the opened doors into a dark, echoing space laced with vertical cables and cross-beamed with girders. She heard rumbling noises, sensed movement, felt a draught on her face. The air smelled oily, half familiar.

She and the fat little avatar had been whisked here by the usual slick process of traveltube with only minute-long walks at either end. What she was looking at here felt somehow much older, much cruder.

“Re-creation of a tall building elevator shaft,” he told her. “Don’t you have these?”

“We have skyscrapers,” she said, holding on to the right-hand door as she leant in. “And elevators.’ There was the rather grimy-looking top of an elevator car reassuringly close beneath, only a metre or so down. Looking up she saw the shafts and cables climbing into the darkness. “I’ve just never seen inside a lift shaft before. Except in a screen, I suppose. Then there’s always just the one, you know, shaft.”

“Uh-huh,” Jolicci said. “Jump on; I’ll let go the doors. Careful, though; no safety net.”

She jumped onto the roof of the car beneath. Jolicci followed her, making the roof’s surface quiver. The doors above hissed closed and the car started to ascend immediately. She held on to one of the cables – it was greasy with dark, gritty oil – and looked over the edge. The great dark shaft held space for ten elevators, five on each side. The car accelerated smartly, the slipstream tugging at her hair and making Jolicci’s dressing gown flap as they whizzed upwards. She looked down, leaning a little further out as they shot past sets of closed double doors, almost too fast to count. The bottom of the shaft was lost in the darkness.

She was grabbed from behind by one shoulder.

She heard herself yelp as she thudded into Jolicci’s surprisingly solid body. An instant later a dark shape plunged past her in a storm of disturbed air. She had narrowly missed getting decapitated by a rapidly descending car. Jolicci released his hold on her. “Like I said; no safety net. This is a dangerously faithful physical re-creation. No sensors on the cars to stop them hitting or crushing you, no AG down the bottom if you fall. Nobody to see you fall, let alone stop you. You backed-up?”

She found she was shaking a little. “You mean my, my self? My personality?” He just looked at her. She suspected it was just as well it was so gloomy it was hard to tell precisely what his expression was. “I’m only a day out of a… a thing, a jar, a body tank.” She swallowed. “But no.”

The car was slowing, drawing to a stop. Jolicci looked upwards from the far side of the car. “Right. Here comes the fun bit.” He glanced at her. “You ready?”

“What for?” she asked.

“Get over here. Jump when I say. Don’t hesitate. You’ll need to let go of that cable first.”

She let go of the cable, stepped to stand beside him at the other side of the elevator roof. Looking up, tentatively, she saw the bottom of another dark car descending quickly towards them. She heard some sudden, distant whoops and then laughter from further down in the great depth of shadows; the sounds echoed and re-echoed. Their car was still slowing. “Okay, steady, steady…” Jolicci said as their car and the one above approached each other.

“Should I hold your hand?” she asked.

“Do not hold my hand,” he said. “Okay, okay, steady…”

Their car had come almost to a stop; the one coming towards them from above whooshed past.

“Jump!” Jolicci shouted as the car’s roofs were almost level.

He jumped. She jumped too a moment later, but found that she’d jumped as though to land where the other car’s roof had been when she’d leapt, not where it was going to be as she dropped after it. She landed awkwardly and would have fallen against the car’s cables if Jolicci hadn’t caught her. Lededje heard herself gasp.