“What?”
The woman smiled grimly. So it was just a mutie thing. She tried to explain, but the words came out halting and vague. It was like trying to capture a wisp of smoke borne away on the breeze. If she had but known it, she wasn’t the only one having such problems in explaining what was happening to her.
“Can you shut it out for long?” Ryan asked with a calm he didn’t feel. He was worried for Krysty, sure. But he had the others to think of, too, and the safety of all his people was at threat unless she gave an honest answer.
Her twisted grin—half humor and half agony—was all the answer he needed.
“I can try, but every second is a battle. And I don’t think I can win the war, Ryan.”
He nodded grimly. “I know we’re exhausted, people, but we need to get past this obstacle as soon as we can.”
“For what, I wonder?” Doc mused. “Just what lies on the other side? Is it worth our effort, or should we perhaps just leave well enough alone and turn away? After all, do we really need the money?”
As he spoke, he could feel the waves of pressure recede slightly, so negligible as to barely be noticeable, and yet it piqued his curious nature, and he got to his feet and walked toward the rock.
“Perhaps it would be best if we just gave this up as a bad lot and walked away from it, maybe head off in another direction altogether,” he continued with all the conviction he could muster.
Krysty, who had been kneeling as she tried to gather her strength, leaned forward. “Ryan, look.”
Doc was walking toward the rock face as he spoke, and the sheer wall seemed suddenly to shimmer in front of him. For a moment, it became semitransparent. As though through a veil, they could see flat land beyond. A land that seemed to extend beneath a wall of rock that was, bizarrely, still there.
To each of them, it was apparent—if not clear why—that the rock wall was little more than an illusion, and one that it would now be easy to simply walk through as though it wasn’t there. It was as if the consciousness that had created it was somehow impeded or lessened when they considered turning back.
Which, Ryan figured, kind of made sense if the mind behind this was building it as a defense. Why waste the energy it needed if the enemy was no longer a threat? Suppose it could see inside their heads, but had no way of physically seeing what they were doing? If it only locked onto consciousness, then perhaps it might be able to fool it for long enough to pass through.
Ryan stood and followed Doc on his steady progress toward the shimmering rocks. “Fireblast, we don’t need this crap, Doc! You’re right, mebbe it’s about time we gave this shit up as a bad idea. It’s not our fight, after all.”
Krysty held back, unwilling to enter the fray as her psyche might betray the actions that Ryan and Doc were seeking to further. Mildred and J.B. looked on, uncertain as to how either of them would stand up to such scrutiny of conviction. But while they hesitated, for their own reasons, Jak walked forward to join Doc and Ryan.
“Screw this shit. Say we get fuck out, leave ’em to it,” Jak agreed, his impassive visage giving away nothing of the inner turmoil as he sought to convince himself that he should walk away from a fight. It was something that he had never done, and in truth he had no intention of doing so now. Whatever had constructed the illusion of the rock wall didn’t have to know that, though.
The three men advanced on the rock, their self-imposed conviction making the opaque now transparent.
Doc was the first to the surface that now shimmered and flickered like a light that was defective, there and gone in a strobe that was as fast as the blink of an eye. He indicated to the other two that they should stay, as with his other hand he stretched out and tried to touch the surface.
It gave in front of him like a pool of liquid that inexplicably remained on the vertical plane without flowing over him. His hand penetrated the surface without the kind of rippling that he might expect, for although it looked like an illusion of light, it felt as though he was actually plunging his hand into a wall of fluid. There was some resistance and give, and it felt as though the light was flowing and closing around his hand like a dense, viscous fluid.
“We cannot head back to Baron K and tell him that we have reneged on his mission,” Doc said calmly. “I guess we shall have to proscribe a pretty big circle if we are going to avoid him on the way back, seeing as we’ll be without his precious cargo.”
As he spoke, he could feel the fluid grow lighter around his hand and arm. He was able to penetrate it with greater ease. Past the elbow now, and it seemed to be giving him less resistance with each moment. He had almost convinced himself that they would be turning back, so it was little wonder that the so-called rock was giving way. Indeed, so much had Doc convinced himself in his quest to break down the illusion that he had to remind himself to actually move forward: first one foot, then another, so that he was moving within the confines of the illusory rock face.
A moment of panic almost overwhelmed him as the strange semisubstance of the illusion hit his face. It was like plunging his head into a pool of molasses, thick and gloopy, sticking his hair to his head yet not actually making him wet. It felt dry and hot against his skin, which seemed the opposite of how it should feel, and for a second that panic was reinforced by the sudden fear that he may not be able to breathe. Yet, despite the feeling of being closed in by this elusive thing that was not, he was still able to suck air into his lungs. Dry and hot, but still oxygenated.
Doc felt confidence well in him as he took in a breath. He had it beaten, and he would be able to get through to the other side with ease. If he could do it, then that should break the illusion and allow the others—even Krysty—to follow with ease.
And yet, paradoxically, even as he thought this he knew that it was a major mistake. If whatever powered this illusion fed on their received thoughts to know how much power to put into the defense, then to think such a thing was to reveal that it was being deceived. And that way lay disaster.
Even as these thoughts flashed across his mind, he felt the illusion start to regain a kind of solidity that swiftly passed beyond the point it had been fixed upon when his hand first pushed into it. Now it passed from feeling like a dry mist around him to being like molasses again, and then to a state where it was more alarming. It began to increase in pressure around him, constricting his chest and making breath hard to take—not that this mattered, as the hot dry air became like dust that began to choke in his lungs. He felt his arms and legs become encased in something that was, bizarrely, both clinging and also hard around him. It stopped him from moving back to where the others were watching in mute and frozen horror. He could feel that, although it was impossible to see as he was now unable to turn his head.
Around him, the sky and land beyond the end of the illusory wall, which had previously been clear through the transparent and fading defense, was now disappearing as the air around him grew gray, shot through with red streaks of iron ore and sandstone as the rock started to attain the consistency of the land that it sought to copy. Even this was soon lost to him as the opacity grew to such a degree that it began to block out any light around him.
What would be worse? To choke on the air that had become dust, or to be unable to take breath because of the rock that hardened around you so that your chest was constrained, and the space around your mouth and nostrils became filled with the hard substance, allowing no breath to be taken, or even that which remained in your lungs to be expelled, so that they felt like they were exploding?
Perhaps it was the panic of the situation that flung Doc into such a place, but he felt strangely calm as he pondered this fate. If he was going to buy the farm this way, it would at least give him a conundrum in which to pass his last few remaining seconds.
But if Doc had resigned himself to his fate, the same couldn’t be said of his companions. For a moment they were all frozen to the spot, stunned at what they were seeing. The rock seemed to darken and take shape around the old man, encasing