RAINBOW RUN (2 page)

Whatever the equation was, the solution had to be a number more than zero and less than eight if I was right. I was trying to figure out the equation when a stocky man with close-cut gray hair came through the door. He quickly fell flat on the floor and spread out his arms and legs to minimize the danger of the holes. He looked at me and, pointing to the dead woman, asked, "What is she to you?"

"A stranger. I think she’s dead. I've almost figured out the equation that determines which tiles collapse next. Do you know it?"

He said, "No," as he crawled to the woman, avoiding the holes in a practiced way that showed he was familiar with the tiles. When he reached the woman’s side, he lifted her right wrist with his left hand. I thought he was checking for a pulse until his right hand came out of his waist pouch with a knife.

I watched in horror as he pressed his knife against her wrist just below an emerald green bracelet she wore. I turned away as he began a sawing motion with the knife. I pressed my hands against my ears to block out the screech as the knife cut through bone and gristle.

When the noise stopped, I looked at him as he removed the green bracelet from her severed wrist. He put both bracelet and knife back in his waist pouch. I saw that he wore a gray bracelet of the same kind on his right wrist.

There was no longer room for me to stand on the ledge. The moving wall was pushing me onto the tiles. I jumped down to my knees, avoiding the open holes. Then I quickly imitated the stranger’s spread eagle position, carefully avoiding the holes and slowly moving toward the door. The stranger said, "Move quickly, blanc, if you’re going to get out before the drains open."

I looked at the display and read the numbers:

As fast as I could think I tried finding an equation that would give me answers from one through seven. On the third try I got one that worked. The first number in the first row was multiplied by the first number of a pair. The second number in the first row was the power to which the second number of the pair was raised. The third number was added to the sum of the first two calculations.

I mentally plugged the numbers into the equation and got the answers, six and five which meant the colors indigo and blue. I looked around and saw that the indigo and blue tiles had collapsed. I’d done it. I’d figured it out!

As I moved toward the door, the display changed to read:

I solved the equation twice and got the answers orange and green. I got up from my prone position and began running toward the door. The stranger was ahead of me. I shouted, "The orange and green tiles are going to disappear. Watch out!"

By the time the orange and green tiles had collapsed, the stranger and I both made it through the door.

He looked at me in awe, saying, "You did it! You figured it out."

The door shut. I looked around. To the right was an open portal marked by a circle around a rainbow. That must be the winner’s circle that the woman told me about. I started toward it.

The stranger grabbed me by the wrist and said, "Don't go in there or you’ll be punished. The winner’s circle is for players with wristlocks, not blancs."

He pointed to the gray bracelet on his wrist. "Where’s yours?"

My right wrist was naked. I shook my head. "If I'm not a player, what am I?"

"You’re a blanc. Do you remember anything that happened before you found yourself in the room with the colored tiles?"

"No. Nothing, nothing at all. Do you know me? Do you know my name?"

He shook his head no. "If you need a name, why don’t you call yourself Rathe?"

I tried the name by saying it aloud. It sounded all right but what name wouldn’t to a person with no past and no memory. "Thanks, I’ll be Rathe. What’s your name?"

"Errox."

It was completely unfamiliar. "If I can't go to the winner's circle, where do I go?"

Errox said, "Follow me, if you want to get out of here alive."

I followed him to the left into a small passageway that sloped down. I pondered just what he’d meant by his comment about getting out alive—we had already survived the room of collapsing tiles. What other dangers were there inside this labyrinth.

Errox's manner was brusque and didn’t invite questions. We walked through the passageway, made another turn until we reached a solid wall with a metal panel. Errox bent down and opened the access panel, pushing it to the side. He stooped down and entered, while I followed. We emerged in a room full of spheroid machinery.

"Errox, I need your help! I can’t remember anything. I don't know who I am or where we are."

He motioned for me to be quiet. I listened hard and heard a faint noise coming through the walls. It sounded like the distant murmur of conversation but I couldn’t make out any words. Errox appeared to know where he was going and led me to another access panel. He opened it, using his still bloody knife, and we entered a room with a wide sloping chute at one end. I heard the sound of running water.

"Get ready to swim," he said. Water poured into the room. Soon it was up to my waist. Something jostled me—a dead body! It wasn’t the dead woman I’d watched die in the first room. The body was male, its mouth and eyes wide-open; it looked like the personification of death. The hair on the back of my neck rose and my skin prickled. Errox studied the body. When he removed the knife from his waist pouch I turned my head so I wouldn’t have to watch him mutilate another corpse for its wristband.

Errox cursed loudly as he wrestled with the body in the water that had now become level with my chest. He was having trouble severing the corpse’s wrist. He took hold of the hand and ripped it off the partially severed wrist. As soon as he removed the band and let go of the mutilated corpse, it quickly swirled away in the rising water.

I saw other bodies and body parts floating into the chamber. The water level kept rising. Now it was up to my shoulders. Errox was no longer trying to salvage the colored wristbands from corpses. He was bobbing up and down in the water.

The water level rose and swept me off my feet. I tried to regain my footing and failed. I didn’t know how to swim!

My mouth filled with water and I sank like a stone.

Choking and sputtering, I fought my way to the surface. Something bumped me and I opened my eyes; I was face-to-face with the body of the woman who died in the first room! I tried to scream and swallowed more water in the attempt. I went under again with my heart beating like a drum. My lungs cried out for air. I was drowning!

Something or someone grabbed my tunic at the back of my head and pulled me to the surface. I gulped huge mouthfuls of air, coughing and sputtering as I bobbed up and down in the water. Only Errox’s firm grip kept me from drowning.

"Take a deep breath."

I filled my burning lungs with air just as the wall at the narrow end of the room swung up out of sight. I felt the swift current as the water flowed toward the opening. Just as I started to go under again, I heard Errox cry out. "Don’t fight it!"

I closed my eyes to keep out the water and something slammed hard into my face, loosening my teeth and turning everything into a whirling black vortex.

I came to coughing and sputtering. I felt a hand lift me out of the water. My gradual return to consciousness was accompanied by a burning soreness in my throat and a throbbing pain in my left hip. Someone was pounding me on the back and shoulders.

"Breathe, damn you! Get up!"

Nausea shook my stomach as I stumbled to my feet. Errox stopped thumping my back and pushed me toward a small stream of water running in the center of a wide channel. I would have drowned if he hadn’t helped me. I fell to my knees and felt the hard pressure in my stomach erupt through my throat and out my mouth. The stream carried the vomit away.

When the spasms stopped, I cleaned my face and mouth with the fresh smelling water. I only drank several mouthfuls, but something warned me against quickly filling my stomach. It was obvious I knew
things
; what I didn’t know was my identity or where I was now.

I tried to organize my thoughts, but my memory was like an almost empty bottle holding only the recent horrors. I turned away from the stream and saw the oval face of Errox with high cheekbones, yellowish skin and eyes like black pools, so dark that there appeared to be no separation between pupil and iris.

"Thank you, Errox! You saved my life."

Errox eyed me like a diner examining an unidentified morsel, not sure that it was worth eating. "What do you remember?"

"I don’t remember anything before waking up in the room with the colored tiles. Can you tell me anything? Who I am or why I was there?"

"No." His voice was steady and hard, like his limbs.

"What is that place called?"

"It’s the Rainbow Run."

"What is its purpose?"

He shook his head. "We don’t have time for questions now. Keep quiet, and follow me." His manner was stern and decisive with a hint of menace.

The confidence that breaking the color codes had given me had been eroded by the rushing water that almost drowned me and now by Errox’s bluntness. I followed him meekly as he led me down the channel to a spot where the wall was lowest. He went over it in a single, smooth leap. I scrambled after him, shivering in my wet tunic. We climbed up a grassy bank. I looked around; the horizon was dominated by a nearby mesa of gray buildings without obvious doors or windows. The megalithic structures covered both sides of the bank as far as I could see in either direction.

Although my legs were longer than Errox’s stout limbs, I had to walk quickly to match his brisk stride. As we neared the buildings, there was a loud hum that I heard and felt. I pressed my hand against the wall of the first building we reached and felt my bones vibrate.

There were no people. Every thousand paces or so there were narrow corridors which revealed only more mountainous structures. I lingered briefly near a hot air vent.

While I was trying to dry my still wet tunic, Errox turned into a corridor and vanished from my sight. My heart hammered as I hurried to catch up; I needed my guide despite whatever reservations I had about his behavior inside the Rainbow Room and his indifference to my plight. I turned the corner and saw Errox ahead, motioning impatiently for me to hurry. By the time I caught up with him I was winded. He waited for me to catch my breath. Then he led me down a narrow passageway.

I needed all my concentration to keep my weary legs moving. It seemed like an eternity passed before he stopped to let me rest. He didn’t appear to be the least bit tired. I gave him a thankful nod and leaned against a wall.

"We’ll be through the autofactory sector soon," Errox said.

Questions filled my mind but I was unwilling to ask them because I was dead tired and unsure whether I would get meaningful answers—or any answers at all. Why had Errox been in the color room? Why had he wanted the dead woman’s green wristlock? Did he have some ulterior motive in saving me from drowning?

We made two more rest stops before reaching the end of the corridor where there was a large slideway with ten slidestrips moving in each direction. The slow moving slidestrips were on the outside.

As we stepped onto one of the slow-moving slidestrips—a motion my body made automatically as though from long practice—Errox said, "Walk beside me and stay on the same slidestrip. Keep your right hand in the folds of your tunic so no one can see that you aren’t wearing a wristlock. If anyone speaks to us, I’ll answer."

I noticed that everyone we passed wore a wristlock on their right hand. They were of many hues, although the majority were gray. I stayed alert for the first dozen blocks, expecting to be challenged at any time. The people I saw were a variety of shapes and colors but all wore the plain brown tunics. All of them worecolored wristlocks. No one even noticed me. I avoided direct eye contact but scanned every face looking for someone, something, anything familiar. I didn't find it. I was lost in a world of strangers.

We passed huge pyramidal structures, built with steep, receding blocks, separated from each other by wide walkways. I had to crane my neck to see the peaks. The pyramids were different colors, like the slidestrips, with one wide portal on the bottom floor. All the windows were opaque and I wondered if they were made from one-way glass to conceal peering faces.