Recursion

eva 4: 2051

“Heads we walk down the drive, tails we try to cut through the woods.”

Eva wrapped her arms about herself and shivered as Alison tossed the coin. The night wasn’t that cold, she told herself. A low layer of cloud brooded above, pushing the dampness back down into the stretch of grass between the sleeping Center and the silent woods.

“Tails,” said Alison, peering at the coin with the faint light of her phone’s screen. “Through the woods.”

“Are you sure the positioning chip in that thing is disabled?” Nicolas asked suspiciously.

“Positive,” said Katie. “Anyway, they’re top of the range stealth phones. Even the military can’t track them.”

“I still don’t think it was a good idea bringing them.”

“It would look suspicious if we didn’t have them with us,” said Alison. “Who doesn’t carry a phone nowadays? Now come on. Into the woods. Eva, get the trees to help us.”

Eva strode across the wet grass, her sneakers slipping on the slick surface, and she wondered again if she should have put her boots on.

The woods looked impossibly dark, the sky above them lit with a faint orange glow from the vast Northwest conurbation.

“Are you there?” she muttered to the night in general.

“I’m here,” said her brother. “Keep going in a straight line. It looks okay.”

“Good. We need to keep going in a straight line.” Eva whispered the instruction to the others and they walked on in silence. Nicolas kept glancing nervously back toward the dark outline of the Center. Katie gazed at the sky; Alison walked on with an expression of grim determination. She didn’t seem happy.

“Something’s up with her. Watch her, Eva. Whoah! Stop. Just ahead of you. Can you see it?”

“Stop!” called Eva. The group froze. Ahead of them a faint ghost hung on the night air. Almost invisibly thin lines criss-crossed the space at the edge of the tree line.

“Motion sensors,” Katie whispered, “but so old. You’d have to cross the beam to sound the alarm. Why not just use radar? It’s a lot harder to detect. Why these old light beams?”

“I don’t know,” Alison muttered. “Come on, let’s go around them.”

They walked along the perimeter of the trees for some distance, conscious of the blank windows of the Center to their left. It was easy to believe they were being watched. They quickly came to the circle of limes. Eva’s brother spoke.

“It’s clear here. There’s a path right through the wood that will take you to the main road.”

“This way,” Eva said. “It’s clear.”

“This isn’t right,” said Nicolas. “Weren’t we supposed to be traveling at random? We should be tossing the coin, not listening to her brother.”

They all looked toward the dim outline of Katie. Her whispered reply was loud in the silence of the dew-muffled night.

“It can’t be helped. Better to be a little predictable at the beginning than to be caught before we even start.”

“Good point,” said Alison. “Eva, you go first. We may as well make use of your brother while he’s still here.”

She fumbled in a pocket for a moment, then pressed something into Eva’s hand.

“You’d better use this,” she said.

It was a flashlight. Eva turned it on and a circle of light appeared on the damp leaf mold covering the ground before her. Pale, heart-shaped lime leaves were scattered all around. Autumn was coming.

“Take a handful of leaves,” said her brother. “It may be enough to remember me by.”

Eva bent to scoop some leaves from the ground, dipping her head into the rich smell of the wet forest floor. Nearby, the dark trunk of a lime rose into the black sky, an untidy collection of young twigs sprouting from its base. She took hold of one and bent and twisted it until it snapped, and then folded it up into a springy circle that could be stashed in one of the large pockets in her anorak.

“Have you finished yet?” Alison hissed angrily.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

They pushed their way on into the darkness of the woods, Eva leading the way, picking out the path with the flashlight, Alison just behind her, then Nicolas and Katie bringing up the rear. The wood was silent and incredibly dark. Eva, like most people, had lived all her life taking streetlights for granted. To have her vision reduced to a circle of light, to a picture of low roots with traffic-blown litter wrapped around them, to thin branches reaching out to snag her face, and to a shifting pattern of darkness where the light could not reach-this was almost too frightening.

“We should have reached the road by now,” whispered Alison. “I think we’re lost.”

“No, this is right,” whispered Eva.

“In that case, why can’t we hear the traffic?” Alison snapped.

“I don’t know.” That had been worrying her, too.

“It’s the woods,” Katie murmured. “They muffle the sound.”

“Good point,” said Eva, although she was sure she detected a note of uncertainty in Katie’s voice. She pushed her hand into her pocket to feel the lime twig.

“What do you think?” she asked, but there was no reply. Her brother had gone. She almost turned around at that point, but just then there was a sudden blaze of light before them and a roar of noise that sent a wind dancing through the surrounding twigs and branches.

“Shit!”

Eva didn’t know who had shouted; she rather thought it might have been her. She felt incredibly relieved and foolish at the same time when she realized that she had just seen a truck rushing past on the main road before her. There was another whoosh as three cars zoomed past in rapid succession.

“I think we’ve found the road,” she whispered, then started to giggle.

The four of them clustered at the edge of the forest, just hidden from the occasional traffic that roared past in a blaze of lights, their nerves jangled. Alison held her coin in one hand.

“Okay, heads we go straight on into the woods on the other side, tails we take the road. We’ll toss again for left and right if appropriate. Fair enough?”

“Yes,” Nicolas said.

“No,” said Katie. “That choice favors the road unduly. If it’s heads, we should toss again to see whether we go forward or back.”

“Go back? But that’s ridiculous,” Nicolas spluttered.

“If we are going to try to fool the Watcher, we have to follow the coin,” said Alison. “Every time we ignore the toss, we’re allowing our personalities to shine through, and the Watcher can read our personalities. We need to hide them from it as much as we can.”

“Alison is right.” Katie gulped, then continued quickly, almost without pause. “Anything that we decide for ourselves can be deduced by the Watcher. It set the motion sensor at the edge of the wood in case we came this way. Who knows what else may have picked us up? If it can guess our next move, it may set more traps. We have to try to be unpredictable. If the coin says go back, we go back.”

She gasped for air. They all waited a moment for her to get her breath back, then Alison spoke.

“Okay, you heard Katie. Are we agreed?” she asked.

“Agreed,” said Nicolas, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Agreed,” said Eva.

A truck rushed past, sending old burger wrappers spinning around them in a gust of apple-scented fumes. Alison tossed the coin as silence slowly resettled on the wood.

“Heads,” she called. “Okay, we’re not going to follow the road. So, heads we go forwards, tails we go back.”

In the dim light, Eva could just see Nicolas’ silhouette shake its head slowly.

Alison spun the coin again. “Heads again. Okay, straight across the road and down into the deeper woods.”

“This is stupid,” Nicolas said. “What can we do in there? We can’t travel very fast and we’ll get lost. In a couple of hours they’ll be out with IR detectors looking for us. They’ll have us back at the Center in time for lunch.”

Alison sighed deeply. “Nicolas, I thought we agreed?”

Nicolas was obstinate. “So what? It’s stupid. We should head along the road, lose ourselves in a town.”

Eva pushed a hand in her pocket and began to fiddle with the springy piece of twig. She was tempted to just turn around and walk back to the Center. What was she doing, out here in the middle of the night with a bunch of loonies tossing coins to see where they were going? She could be back at the Center, receiving help while she talked to the ghost of her brother. She laughed a little at the absurdity of the thought.

Katie was speaking now, trying to be reasonable, but her voice sounded high-pitched and nervous.

“Nicolas, how do you know we would lose ourselves in a town? If the Watcher expects us to go there, it will have senses already waiting. We may think that we have escaped, but all the time the Watcher could be leading us closer to itself. There may be an empty building with a loose board over the window inviting us inside. Or maybe we’ll see a truck just ahead all parked up for the night with the back open, waiting for us to stow away inside it. How do we know it wouldn’t be a trap?”

Nicolas sighed, exasperated.

“I know what you’re saying, but we’d be stupid to fall for something like that, wouldn’t we? If we saw something as obvious as a truck with the back open, we’d ignore it. Or maybe toss the coin then. But not now. This is ridiculous. This is leading us nowhere. What do you say, Eva?”

The question took Eva by surprise. She guiltily pulled her hand from her pocket and stared into the darkness.

“I don’t know,” she stammered. “I take your point, Nicolas, but I think we should listen to Katie. This was her plan. She knows what she’s doing.”

Alison spoke up.

“Anyway, Nicolas, I want you with us.” She used her little girl voice. Eva wasn’t sure, but she thought there was something there, right at the edge of her vision. Was Alison touching Nicolas?

Nicolas’ voice was grudging. “I want to stay with the group,” he said. “But this is stupid.”

“Do it for me,” said Alison. “Just this once.”

He’s never going to fall for that, Eva thought, but Nicolas spoke and his voice was strained. Just what was she doing to him? Eva didn’t want to know.

“Okay,” Nicolas whispered. “I’ll come with you. But just this time.”

They waited for a lull in the traffic before running across the road. There was a ditch at the far side between the road and the trees, then the rusted remains of a wire fence. Alison took the flashlight from Eva and swung the beam left and right.

“There’s a gap this way. Come on.”

“Shouldn’t we toss the coin?” Nicolas said petulantly, but he followed anyway.

They stumbled through the ditch until they came to a point where a rotten wooden post originally holding up the wire fence had fallen. Alison held the torch to form a path of light and they skipped across it, the wires twanging beneath their feet. Alison threw the flashlight to Eva, who caught it and then used it to illuminate the path for her companion. There was a roar of a truck approaching, headlights washing onto the road, and Eva turned off the beam. She turned it back on to find Alison picking herself up and rubbing her knee. The metal lace grips on her boots were tangled with the wires. Alison angrily pulled her foot free.

“Are you okay?” Eva said.

“I’ll be fine,” muttered Alison, taking the flashlight from her. “Come on.”

They walked on through the woods, following her.

The smell of leaf mold gave way to that of pine, the ground became springy and clear of other obstructions, the trees regularly spaced. The land began to rise and fall in regular waves and walking became a lot more tiring.

“We’re in a managed forest,” said Katie. “There will be roads. They will be easier to follow.”

“Only if the coin says so,” Alison said grimly.

Glancing up through the gaps in the trees, Eva could see pale morning light creeping over the world. A gentle rain was falling above; around them they could hear the steady drip and splash as it made its way through the canopy to fall to the ground. They came to a narrow forest road, a long scar of mud churned by heavy tires into water-filled ribbons.

Alison tossed the coin. “Left,” she said, and they were all relieved to take that path. Walking would be a lot easier.

“If we don’t come to a junction in fifteen minutes, I toss the coin again,” she said. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Katie and Eva.

“Nicolas?”

There was a long pause.

“Agreed,” Nicolas said finally.

It was easier following the road, but not that much easier. They had to run along the edges of it, jumping from wet, swampy patches of mud to other less firm footings in an attempt to keep their feet dry. Nicolas jumped onto what looked like a firm patch of ground and his left sneaker sank deep into the mud. He pulled his filthy, sopping foot out of it and swore.

“I told you sneakers would be no good out here,” Alison commented unhelpfully.

“Some of us can’t afford proper boots,” Nicolas snapped. “And anyway, not all of us would think to bring them to the Center with us.”

Dawn had broken above them: the edges of the clouds picked out in pale lemon light. On the ground, in the narrow strip of land between the trees, it was still dark enough for them to need to use the flashlight. They walked two abreast, Alison swinging the light back and forth so they could all see where to jump. Occasionally she swung it ahead of them and they saw the seemingly endless road vanishing into the distance.

“Do you get the feeling we’re being watched?” said Nicolas.

“That’s just paranoia,” Alison said. Eva shivered. Alison was making sense, but Eva had the same feeling. She kept quiet, however. Katie gave a yelp of surprise.

“What is it?” called Alison.

“Up ahead. Something flashed at us.”

They stopped dead. Water was soaking through Eva’s shoes, oozing slowly through her socks, but she felt too frightened to move. Alison shone the flashlight back and forth. Two eyes flashed back at them. Perfectly circular eyes, about a meter apart, just above ground level. Eva felt her pounding heart shudder at the sight of them.

Katie gave a sudden laugh. “It’s a car. It’s just an old car.”

They all laughed nervously as they crowded forward. It was an old car, abandoned in the woods. The light beam had been reflected from the headlights.

“What’s it doing here?” Eva wondered.

“It’s watching us,” muttered Nicolas. “It’s the Watcher. It knows where we are. So much for tossing a coin. We should have hitched a lift into town and lost ourselves there.”

Alison spoke with ill-concealed disgust. “It’s just an old car in the middle of the woods. You’re being paranoid.”

Nicolas gave a high-pitched laugh. “I’m being paranoid? Well, golly! There’s an inspired psychological insight if I ever heard one! Of course I’m being paranoid! It’s what I do. It’s why they locked me up! I’m good at it! Hey! Maybe it’s paranoia that makes me think that you don’t escape a highly intelligent super-being by tossing a coin a few times.”

He was pointing his finger at Alison. She shone the flashlight in his face in retaliation; he ignored it.

“Look, it’s got all the exits watched. It knows exactly what we’re doing and where we are going. We may as well give up now. If nothing else, it will save us getting any colder or wetter!”

Alison took a deep breath, trying to be patient. “Nicolas, we’re all cold and wet…”

“Some of us more than others. Or don’t you agree, Miss Hiking Boots?”

“Can anyone else hear something?” interrupted Eva.

They all fell silent, listening.

“Nothing,” Alison said eventually.

“I thought I heard something, too,” Katie whispered.

They stood in silence for a little longer, but heard nothing more.

“Okay,” Alison said, “time to toss the coin again. Heads straight on or back, tails left or right.”

“This is stupid,” said Nicolas. “Let’s go left and head back to the road. We’re bound to hit it eventually. After that we’ll just head for town, like we should have done all along.”

“No!” Alison snapped. “We agreed on this method. We can’t go back now.”

She tossed the coin.

“Tails,” she said. She tossed it again. “Okay, we’re going right.”

“I’m not going,” said Nicolas. Katie and Eva exchanged glances. They could see the other two glaring at each other in the dim light.

Alison’s voice was low, almost a snarl. “Don’t be so childish,” she said.

“I’m not being childish,” Nicolas said. “This is common sense. It’s onto us, face it. The Watcher is so good it can probably see the way the coin lands. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was even able to predict it.”

Alison sighed. “If it’s that clever, then it makes no difference what we do. We’re going this way. Follow us if you like, I don’t care.”

She turned and climbed up a steep bank, heading back between the regularly spaced trunks of the pine forest. After a moment’s hesitation, Eva and Katie followed her. When they looked back, they could see the dark shape of Nicolas stamping angrily along behind them.

A warm autumn morning was waking around them. They came upon another logging road and followed it for some distance until a toss of the coin sent them marching across a large area of freshly cleared forest. They made slow progress, jumping over tree stumps and wide water-filled pits. Katie tore her anorak on the sharp edge of a broken branch sticking up from the ground.

“I was lucky,” she muttered. “It could have been my leg.”

“Toss the bloody coin, Alison,” Nicolas said. “Get us out of here.”

“After another ten minutes,” Alison replied grimly.

“Look at those.” Eva changed the subject. “Aren’t they old?”

The tops of a line of electricity pylons could be seen just above the trees ahead of them. They were of an old-fashioned design, constructed of a lattice of weak-looking metal, rather than being formed from an elegant curve of stronger stuff. They looked strangely appropriate in their surroundings, as if they had grown there naturally.

They entered a patch of older woodland. The trees here were not planted in such good order. Oaks and sycamores fought for space, while tangles of glossy rhododendrons had infiltrated the forest clearings where trees had fallen. The land began to slope downward; they could peer out through the trees to see a valley cutting through the land before them.

“Let’s stop for a moment,” Eva called. She halted and began to pull off her anorak. Alison and Nicolas did the same.

“It’s too hot now that the sun is up,” she explained. “I’m thirsty, too. How much water do we have left?”

Nicolas was carrying the group’s entire supply in a couple of two-liter milk containers tucked into his shoulder bag. He unzipped it and checked.

“Just over a bottle’s worth. We weren’t expecting to be wandering around here in the woods for so long, were we? I thought there was nowhere in the country that was more than five minutes from a burger restaurant.”

He gazed at Eva, silently pleading with her to help. Eva felt as if she should say something. Katie wouldn’t, Nicolas wouldn’t be listened to. It was down to her.

“Alison?” she said.

“What?” Alison stood with hands on hips, gazing out over the valley.

Eva tied the anorak around her waist.

“This walking is exhausting. I know we need to evade the Watcher, but it will do us no good if we die of thirst in this forest.”

“Yes?” said Alison.

Eva sighed. Alison wasn’t being very helpful.

She pressed on. “Well, we’re spending a lot of time walking across very rough terrain. It’s exhausting. I think we should think a little bit less about randomness, and a little more about putting some distance between us and the Center. We must be barely two kilometers from the place as the crow flies.”

Alison reached up and brushed some hair from her face. “So what are you suggesting?” she asked. Eva noted that she did not sound entirely unhappy at this suggestion; Alison must be hating this as much as the rest of them. Eva took a step closer to her.

“Look. We’ve come to the valley now. Why don’t we toss the coin to decide which way to go? Cross it, go back, or head up or down the valley itself? Once we’ve made that decision, we choose the best possible path. We don’t change direction until another path suggests itself.”

Alison sighed. “It’s cutting down options.”

“I know. But we’re exhausted. A good leader knows when to cut her losses and change the plan.”

“I’m not the leader,” insisted Alison, but she smiled a little as she said it.

The coin sent them scrambling down to the floor of the valley. The going was easier than it had been, but still not without difficulties. They slid down earth slopes, clutching at branches to slow themselves, or stumbled down the hill at a half run from trunk to trunk, grabbing at them to stop themselves plunging down too fast. At one point Katie stumbled and slid about thirty meters on her side before finally coming to a halt. Alison screamed; Nicolas and Eva watched how pale her face got. When they came to Katie, she was clutching her arm and crying. There was blood on the tattered arm of her anorak and they now realized why she had not taken it off in the warmth of the morning. Her arm had been more badly injured than they had thought when she had tripped on the broken branch earlier.

“We’ve got to get that seen to,” Nicolas said grimly.

“I’ll be okay,” Katie whimpered.

“If you’re sure.” Alison gazed down the slope. “Not much further.”

“She’s not okay,” Nicolas said.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Look,” Eva said, pointing upward, forestalling another argument.

Three airplanes flew overhead, their white contrails forming a triangle high above.

“They’re too high to see us,” Alison said dismissively. She began to scramble downward again.

“We wouldn’t see them if they were stealth planes,” Nicolas said. He looked at Katie. “Do you want a hand?”

“I’ll be okay,” she said, and moved slowly down the hill again.

They scrambled further down. Just as they were nearing the bottom, they came up against a wall of rhododendrons. Tangled brown branches and glossy green leaves choked the bottom of the valley, completely blocking their path.

“We’re trapped,” Nicolas said flatly. “There’s no way through that.”

Katie gazed at the tangled mass of vegetation in silence. Her eyes were filling with tears.

“We’ll never get back up that hill,” Eva whispered.

Alison turned to face them, her face resolute.

“We’ll carry on downwards,” she said. “There’s bound to be a way through.”

They trudged disconsolately downward, feeling thoroughly miserable. The sun had risen high enough to shine in their faces, making them hot and bad-tempered. Tree roots lay hidden beneath the brown debris of the forest floor, tripping them or sending them slipping toward the crowded green bushes below. On the far side of the valley the old pylons they had seen earlier marched downward, too. Eva looked at the cables that looped down and up, down and up as they were passed from arm to arm.

“There’s no end to this,” Nicolas muttered angrily.

Just when they thought the rhododendrons would never end, a path revealed itself.

They stood gasping beside the sudden gap in the glossy green barrier, sweat dripping from their faces and trickling down their backs. Walking along the steep slope was extremely tiring; their water was almost finished.

Nicolas shook his head in resignation. “It’s found us, hasn’t it? It knows where we are.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Alison said stubbornly.

The path was formed by a tall ash tree that had fallen, giving them a walkway over the tangled bushes it had crushed. Katie and Eva glanced at each other, and Katie shook her head almost imperceptibly.

Alison picked her way forward through the cage of broken branches and kicked the trunk.

“It looks natural enough to me. The roots could have been washed away by all the rain we’ve been having lately. Trees fall over all the time.”

“Does it make any difference?” Nicolas asked. “Whether it was an accident or arranged by the Watcher, we have to go that way. What other choice do we have?”

He pushed past Alison and climbed up over the trunk.

The path led them down to a yellow stone road running along the valley floor. Eva slithered to the ground to find Alison and Nicolas already deep in argument.

“It’s been cut. You can see it’s been cut! And recently!” Nicolas shouted.

There was no denying it. The severed base of the tree shone white and smelled of sap. Piles of clean white sawdust lay in the brown mud around the stump.

“So what?” said Alison. “We’re in a forest. They cut down trees all the time.”

“Not individually! And they don’t just leave them to rot. It’s the Watcher. It’s reeling us in.”

He was blushing red with heat and anger, sweat dripping down from his curly red hair, mud cracked and dried on his jeans. He was a mess.

“Fine,” Alison said coldly. “All the more reason to toss the coin. Heads we go up, tails we go down.”

“Why? There’s nothing up there in the hills. We should head down and try and get to civilization. The Watcher already knows where we are.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Katie interjected quietly. She blushed and looked down.

“She’s right,” said Alison. “We can’t give up now. Maybe the Watcher has covered all the bases. There must be a finite number of paths leading away from the Center. Maybe he’s laid signs on all of them, just to dishearten us.”

“No! This is too much. Alison, think! What were you in for? Not being able to face up to the real world. Don’t you see: that’s what you’re doing now. It’s beaten us. Why don’t you admit it?”

“We don’t know that.”

Slowly, deliberately, she pulled the coin from her pocket and spun it in the air. She caught it deftly, smacked it on her wrist, and looked.

“Heads,” she called. “We go up.”

Nicolas shook his head. “No. Not this time.”

“Suit yourself,” Alison said. She turned on her heel and began to march up the loose yellow stone of the road. After watching her walk twenty meters or so, Nicolas turned to face Eva and Katie.

“What about you two?” he said. “You must see that she’s wrong.”

Katie looked down at the ground. “We don’t know that. We agreed before we set out to follow the coin.”

Nicolas stamped his foot petulantly.

“I might have known you’d follow Alison. What about you, Eva? You know I’m right.”

Nicolas was burning red with anger; his face was twitching. Eva suddenly realized that, whether he was right or wrong, she didn’t want to go off on her own with Nicolas.

She shook her head gently. “I’m sorry, Nicolas. Katie is right. We agreed to follow the coin.”

“Fine. Suit yourself.”

He turned and began to stamp down the road in the opposite direction. Katie began to trail up the hill after Alison, who was making good progress with her angry, determined stride.

Eva sighed in resignation, and as she did so an enormous weight dropped from her. A realization was slowly dawning. Here she was, trapped in a long valley, hemmed in by overgrown rhododendron bushes, too hot, thirsty and hungry and with nothing to look forward to but a hard climb up a steep stone road, but…

But she wasn’t in South Street. She wasn’t part of the endless grind of days without purpose. Her friends might be argumentative and bad-tempered, but at least she had friends and she was walking for a reason. The South Street Eva would have just taken the first opportunity to lie down and die. It was what that Eva had secretively worked toward for months.

But not this one.

This Eva wanted to live.

The end was drawing near.

They climbed the long road into the hills, Eva occasionally turning to check Nicolas’ progress. He remained in sight for quite some time, an obstinate figure in orange marching into and out of view between the choking rhododendrons-and then he was gone.

Their climb was a long, hard drag. Yellow stones skidded and skittered beneath their feet; they kicked them, watched them bounce over the raised edge of the road to fall into the wide ditches on either side.

“It’s a quarry road,” Katie explained.

“How do you know?” asked Eva, but there was no reply.

The hills began to play games with them. They would climb in silence, putting their all into one last effort to reach the top of an incline, expecting finally to reach the road’s summit, only to see a gentle dip and then the road resuming its ascent further on.

“Not again.”

Eva thought she heard the whisper as they reached their third virtual summit. It sounded like Alison’s voice.

The pylons to their left marched steadily closer. As they climbed higher she thought she saw a second set of pylons off to her right. They appeared to come marching out of the next valley along.

“They’re heading to the same place as we are,” she muttered to herself.

“What’s that?” asked Alison suspiciously, and Eva jumped. She hadn’t realized that Alison was walking so close. She had been watching Eva as she looked at the pylons, an odd expression on her face. It was almost as if Alison had been caught out.

Eventually they reached the real head of the valley, from which the road descended to a natural bowl among the wooded hills. Below them they could just make out a space that had been cleared.

“A quarry,” said Katie. “I knew it.” She looked at Alison, but Alison just looked away, as if embarrassed.

“It’s very big for a quarry,” Eva replied. “Look at all those buildings.”

The second set of pylons now marched clearly over a hill to their right and picked its way down a steep slope to converge with the lines of the first set. Eva looked up at the sun. It was halfway down the sky, heading toward evening. The earlier heat had vanished. Eva knew that when they stopped walking they would feel cold. Her skin already felt cool to the touch.

The stone road sliced its way through a deep cutting in the hills and they walked in the shade for a while. Looking up, Eva could see an old grey pylon perched immediately on the cutting’s edge, thick brown branches of rhododendrons wrapped around its legs and spilling out over the lip of the earth. Higher up, cables looped down from the heavy brown ceramic disks anchored to the pylon’s arms. They were humming.

“It’s live,” Eva whispered, suddenly halting. “I don’t like this, Alison. I think we should go back.”

Alison turned to her impatiently. “What? After we’ve come all this way? Don’t be silly.”

Eva looked on down the road. At the far end of the cutting, a few hundred meters ahead of them, stretched a rusty chain-link fence. The road ran through a rusty gate set in the center of the fence. The gate was propped open invitingly. Eva felt a shiver of fear. The gate looked like a trap, waiting to be sprung. Involuntarily, she took a step backward.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “It feels all wrong. We shouldn’t go in there.”

“What? Should we just turn around and go back then?” The other Alison was coming back. The nasty, bad-tempered Alison. And as she did, Katie was becoming more and more nervous and shy.

“So? Are you really saying we should go back?” Alison laughed nastily.

Eva took a deep breath and forced herself to speak calmly. “Yes. There’s obviously nothing for us here. No food or water. We can’t stay here.”

“Of course we can,” Alison said derisively. She shook her head and turned away, stamping down the road a little, kicking stones before her as she did so. She took a deep breath, kicked another stone so hard that it bounced from the scrubby walls of the cutting, and then suddenly turned and walked quickly back up to Eva. She wore a nasty smile.

“You haven’t figured it out, have you?”

“Figured what out?” Eva felt a shiver of fear. She could guess.

Alison laughed.

“Katie has. She’s not stupid. Are you, Katie?”

“No,” Katie muttered.

“No. I never thought you were, either, Eva. Don’t you realize? You’ve been tricked. All that nonsense with me tossing the coin and none of you ever thinking to check which way it was really landing. I’ve been leading you here all along. The Watcher wants to meet you.”

She laughed again, and her voice echoed from the walls of the cutting, reverberating up into the sky to be lost in the late afternoon hills. Alison resumed her march back down the road toward the invitingly open gates.

After a moment’s hesitation, Katie began to follow.

After another moment, Eva did too.

There was nowhere else to go.