Page 141 of Katabasis
“How do you know where you’re going?”
“You don’t have to know,” said Elspeth. “Everywhere you sail leads to the same place. Like a bowl overflowing, like water spilling out the sides. The forces push you outward, to the end of the world, and there’s nothing to do but follow.”
“The pizza anus,” murmured Alice.
“Thewhatnow?”
Alice drew a circle in the air, though she wasn’t sure how much it helped. “We had disagreed over our maps of Hell. Peter and I. I liked the linear map. He liked this wonky pseudosphere thing, something that only worked in hyperbolic space. He thought you could track away from the river, access the peak of Hell through the center. Two-dimensionally, it looked like a pizza anus. And now you’re telling me we’re in a pizza anus.”
“You’re both right.” Elspeth laughed. “Well, Peter was more right. We’re indeed in hyperbolic space, love. Bounded by the river on the outside and infinity on the inside. When you’re right next to the Lethe, it does look linear. But once you start sailing across—well, then it’s out of your hands.”
“What happens at the end?”
“I don’t know.” Elspeth said again, “I’ve never been this far from shore.”
They were gliding faster and faster now. Alice felt cold air on her cheeks; not wind, but speed. They couldn’t turn back now even if they tried; the attractive force was too great. There was an urgency to their movement; that of a boat by a waterfall, hurtling toward the edge. Archimedes sat utterly still at the prow, pupils narrowed into pinpricks.
“There,” Elspeth whispered.
Alice sat up straight, peering over the prow.
Her mind could not make sense of what she saw. There was the island. But when her eyes alighted on that plane, and followed it outward, she registered a curvature that made her stomach twist. Somehow, when she followed that curve, up and up and around, she found her gaze right back on theNeurath, floating still in their little patch of river. It was like tracing an Escher staircase. There was no beyond.
She had to look away; the looping made her head hurt.
And yet this made perfect sense. Lewis Carroll had theorized this—how else did you conceptualize life and death, the membrane of passage, except as continuity?—but no one believed him. Take a strip of paper, twist it in the middle, and connect the ends. Very good. Now you have a ring, a three-dimensional object you can hold in your hand. But it only has one side. The inside is continuous with the outside. Now do the same thing with a four-sided handkerchief. Twist the edges, line them up, and stitch it all together so that the inside is continuous with the outside. All is external to the bag, which means all is also internal to the bag, and so the bag holds the world.
Impossible to draw, impossible to even conceive. But here Alice was looking right at it.
“The projective plane,” Elspeth murmured. “Astonishing.”
The black sands were so close now. All Alice could see on that shore was a single golden braid of light, stretching from the bank to the unknown beyond.
Alice’s fingers curled around the True Contradiction, and she pulled it close against her chest. Now that the moment approached, she was suddenly afraid. She felt that same drop in her stomach before an interview, when she promptly forgot how to walk or breathe or talk, and feared that when she walked through the conference room’s doors she might burst out singing, or slam against a wall. She had struggled mightily to get here. Yet now at the end she realized she had no clue what awaited her, and no clue what to do.
“It’s all right,” said Elspeth. “The Lord of Death is kind. He’ll know what you want.”
“What if I fudge it?”
“You won’t fudge it. Just keep your wits about you, and stay the course, and—oh.”
TheNeurathstruck land. They jolted in their seats.
Elspeth rose. “Time to go.”
Alice stood and, with Elspeth’s help, stepped gingerly off the boat.
“Alice.” Elspeth’s grip tightened round her fingers. “Kiss me, would you?”
“What?”
“It’s been so long.” Elspeth turned her cheek, so pale in the throne’s reflected light. “I haven’t felt—another touch, I can’t even remember...”
“Oh,” said Alice. “Of course.”
Elspeth closed her eyes. Alice leaned forth and pressed her lips to Elspeth’s skin. The gesture felt foreign at first. She, too, couldn’t remember the last time she’d kissed anyone. She expected Elspeth to be icy cold, but though Elspeth could contain no warmth, all Alice perceived was a delicate softness. Satin skin over hard bone. Human bodies were so singular, astonishing. There was no texture in the world like this.
Elspeth sighed, and it seemed something was restored to them both.
