New data received from the system.
They followed him before he disappeared.
The gray wanderer lifted his foot, and a patch of ground formed beneath it, large enough for him alone. The moment he shifted his weight to the next step, the patch returned to mist.
No path extended behind him. No trace remained.
Adam rushed toward the next foothold. He arrived late and sank to his ankle.
Moka pulled him up by the sleeve.
«Are you planning to test every surface by falling through it?»
Adam freed his foot.
«I was making sure the rule still worked.»
«It does.»
«Thank you.»
«You’re welcome. Consultation fees later.»
Moka carried Layan’s broken vessel beneath his other arm. With every leap, the key struck its side and made a small sound, not entirely metallic, more like the residue of metal heard long ago.
Adam opened his other sight.
He saw Moka’s fist gripping his sleeve. He saw the thread between them, the vessel, and the key.
He could not see inside the wanderer.
The man appeared as a closed boundary moving whole. No detail leaked through it, no thread extended behind it, and there was nothing Adam’s sight could seize.
He closed it.
«I can’t follow him with the other eye.»
«Use the ordinary one. They invented it for this kind of problem.»
The wanderer continued.
Whenever a new patch formed beneath him, Adam and Moka tried to reach it before it vanished. They never drew closer, but they did not lose him.
The details of the Commons thinned around them. Things did not disappear; they simply stopped forming. No ropes, no seats, no remnants of the line they had left behind.
Only mist.
Adam said, «Did you see Mike or Raf during the attack?»
«No.»
«Neither did I.»
Moka said, «Selim once told me they never appear when you need them.»
Adam waited for the rest.
«So I learned not to need anyone.»
Adam understood the thought and did not answer.
The wanderer lifted his foot.
This time no ground formed ahead of him.
He vanished.
Adam and Moka stopped on the last patch they could reach.
«We lost him,» Moka said.
Two voices came from somewhere ahead.
«Your tray is over my boundary.»
«I didn’t move it.»
«Then I’m imagining the brass on my foot?»
The mist opened slightly.
Adam knew what his mind did with places that resembled nothing: it dressed them in the nearest image it could endure.
A roadside rest stop appeared before him, the kind where strangers sat near one another, each with a table and a destination of his own.
But there was no road here. No waiter. No one waiting.
It was not one room. It was a collection of separate spaces, each with its own floor, furnishings, and light. No roof joined them, and they did not agree on a single level of ground.
At the edge of one space stood a woman behind a complete door: frame, threshold, brass handle, but no wall around it. The door looked like the only thing she had permitted to remain close to her.
Across from her sat a thin, shaven-headed man with two cups before him. He drank from the first. The second stood beyond a line his hand could not cross.
Between them stood a broad-shouldered man carrying a round tray and three cups. Half the tray remained inside his space. The other half extended across the thin man’s boundary.
«Pull it back,» said the thin man.
«You’re holding the other end.»
«I’m not touching it.»
«That’s worse. If you were touching it, we’d have someone to blame.»
The woman opened her door.
The panel passed between the tray and the table, separating their spaces. The tray returned entirely to its owner.
«Finished,» she said.
The man lifted one of his cups to make sure it had not cracked.
«Not finished. My spoon is with him.»
The thin man looked into his cup.
A small spoon turned slowly inside it.
«It is in my cup.»
«It was on my tray.»
«Now it is in my cup.»
«That is not a transfer of ownership.»
The tray man looked at Adam and Moka.
«You see? This is why I serve no one.»
Moka asked, «Are you the waiter?»
The man raised the tray against his chest as if insulted.
«No.»
«You have a tray and three cups.»
He looked at the vessel in Moka’s hands.
«You have a container. Are you a cupboard?»
Moka considered it.
«Fair objection.»
In other spaces, a man sat upon a piece of ship’s beam, his left shoulder pale as if light had passed through it and left part of him behind. On three steps leading nowhere sat a figure with folded legs.
At the edge, Adam saw the man of geometric shapes.
He recognized him immediately.
Circles, triangles, and short lines moved around him, tested distances, then rearranged themselves. He was absorbed in measuring something only he could see.
The wanderer Adam and Moka had followed was already seated at the far edge, returned to his own concerns as if their arrival meant nothing.
«We found you,» Moka said.
The wanderer did not answer.
Moka stepped toward him.
A circle formed beneath his foot, and a separate space formed beneath Adam. The gap between them began to widen.
Moka pulled Adam by the sleeve.
The two spaces tilted toward one another.
The stone table trembled.
The woman’s door opened by itself, its panel swinging toward her shoulder. The second cup moved a finger’s width, then stopped. One of the seated figure’s steps tilted before returning to place.
The tray man sighed.
«Ten moments without visitors. Is that an unreasonable request?»
«Stop,» said the man on the beam.
Adam stopped.
The gap continued to widen. Every time Moka pulled at the sleeve, the boundaries around them shifted.
«Release him,» said the woman.
«No.»
«The place separates those who enter.»
«We did not arrive separately.»
«You entered on two feet,» said the man on the beam.
He looked at the disturbed gap between them.
«The place does not understand a third.»
The geometric shapes moved.
Their owner pushed a triangle beneath Adam and a circle beneath Moka.
The spaces stabilized.
Moka tightened his grip.
One side of the triangle extended toward the circle. The circle warped, and the triangle leaned. The second cup moved again and did not return completely.
The geometer reset the shapes.
The same thing happened.
This time one side of the triangle broke in the air and dissolved.
The man raised his head toward Moka’s hand, as if he had witnessed an error his calculations did not permit.
«The place will not settle while you are connected,» said the woman.
«Then it will not settle,» Moka replied.
The edge of his circle pressed into the woman’s space. Her door swung inward and struck her shoulder.
The second cup began sliding toward her.
The thin man reached for it.
«Do not touch it,» she said. «It crossed into my space.»
«It is mine.»
«It is here now.»
«Are we doing this?» Adam asked.
«You enter as one object,» said the man on the beam. «This place holds only independent things.»
The geometer drew a third, narrow space between Adam and Moka. It belonged to neither of them.
The woman stepped back with her door. The thin man pulled in the edge of his space. The man on the beam lifted one end of the wood.
Together they opened a narrow passage that belonged to no one.
«Stand there,» said the man on the beam. «And stop pulling the place apart.»
They entered.
Moka kept hold of Adam’s sleeve.
The geometer closed the triangle and the circle but left a short line between their former positions.
The line remained bent.
He looked at it and did not erase it.
Moka raised Layan’s vessel.
The key shifted inside.
At last, the wanderer looked at it.
«You were beside Layan when he disappeared,» Moka said.
«I occupied the same position.»
«Did you take him?»
«No.»
«Did he cross with you?»
«I do not know.»
Moka stepped closer and stopped at the edge of the shared passage.
«How can you not know? You were beside him.»
«I was inside my step.»
«He was in front of you.»
«Perhaps.»
«Did you see him or not?»
«I did not.»
Adam said, «The passage that appeared after you was clean.»
«The passage was mine. I opened it for myself.»
«That proves he opened a space,» said the woman. «It does not prove your friend used it.»
«And the absence of a trace does not prove he took a gray path,» said the man on the beam.
«At the Harbor, they marked him missing,» Moka said.
«Because they did not find him in the places they know how to search.»
«Is the word wrong?»
«No.»
«Then what do you add to it?»
«Nothing,» said the man on the beam.
«And remove nothing from it,» said the woman. «It means they do not know where he is. That is all it means.»
«I already know that.»
«Then you do not need a better word.»
Moka looked at the wanderer.
«Where were you going?»
The wanderer raised his eyes toward a deeper place in the mist.
«Where I was going.»
«Where is that?»
«Outside your question.»
«Put it inside my question.»
«I cannot.»
«Or you will not?»
«Both.»
The woman’s door began to tremble.
She tried to close it. The panel stopped a finger’s width before the frame. She pushed again. It closed, then opened to the same width.
The geometer watched the door. Every line around him shifted toward the center of the region, then bent away from a point where nothing was visible.
«You must separate or leave,» the woman said.
«We will leave when we know whether there is a path,» Adam answered.
«Your presence prevents me from closing my boundary.»
«Only a few moments,» said Moka.
«You are asking moments from something that is not yours.»
«Open the path for them and end this,» said the thin man.
«The path does not carry two.»
Moka looked at her.
«It carries one?»
She did not answer.
Behind the wanderer’s space, small patches of ground began forming one after another, extending into the mist.
«That is the path,» Moka said.
«A path for one person,» said the woman.
«Where does it go?»
«I do not know.»
«Could it lead to Layan?»
«It could.»
«And it could lead nowhere near him,» Adam said.
Moka stared at the path.
«I’m going.»
Adam seized his arm.
Every boundary shifted at once.
Moka’s circle drove into the shared passage. The door flew open. The second cup moved toward the center. The beam trembled, and the upper step sank.
Layan’s vessel fell.
The key flew out.
It dropped into the gap between the spaces.
«No!»
Moka leaned after it with his full weight and nearly fell into the opening.
Adam caught him and pulled him back.
«No one moves,» said the woman.
She opened her door.
Not toward the inside of her space. She pushed the threshold beneath the falling key and extended it across the gap like a small bridge.
«You will cross your boundary,» said the man on the beam.
«I can see that.»
«Leave it.»
«It is not yours.»
She was looking at Moka.
The key reached the threshold.
She pushed farther.
Moka caught it.
The threshold split.
The entire door shuddered. The woman tried to close it, but it stopped a hand’s width from the frame.
She pushed again.
It would not close.
«The hinge,» said the tray man.
«I can see it.»
She held the panel in place by force.
The thin man rose.
He looked at his second cup, the one that had remained beyond the line.
He crossed his boundary and took it.
Then he placed it beneath the door.
The panel rested upon it, still open by the width of a hand.
«You kept it for a long time,» said the woman.
«That is how I know it can bear weight.»
«The entire place is beginning to behave disturbingly,» said the tray man.
«Release my arm,» Moka told Adam.
«No.»
«The path is closing.»
«We do not know where it leads.»
«We do not know where Layan went.»
«That does not make every path his.»
«And standing here does not count as searching.»
Moka tried to free his arm.
The boundary of the shared passage trembled.
«Stop,» said the woman.
Adam lowered his voice.
«I cut your transmission when you called Layan’s name.»
«I know.»
«If I hadn’t, they would have reached you.»
«I know.»
«Then why do you speak as though I stopped you?»
«Because you decided alone.»
Adam went still.
«And now you are holding me and deciding alone again.»
«What do you want me to do?»
«Let me choose.»
«Even if you choose to disappear?»
«Even if I choose to know.»
«You may learn nothing.»
«I may learn that he did not come this way. That is more than we have now.»
The geometer pointed toward the path.
«It stabilizes around one reference.»
«What does that mean?» Adam asked.
The man pushed a circle beneath Moka.
The steps straightened.
Then he pushed a triangle beneath Adam.
The path split, and its distant sections vanished.
«If one enters, it remains. If you enter while connected, it closes.»
«Then remove the connection,» Moka said.
The geometer looked at Adam’s hand.
«I cannot.»
«Why?»
«Because the connection is not in the hand.»
Adam opened his other sight.
He saw the thread between them. It did not begin at the sleeve or the arm Adam held. It extended deeper and altered the spaces around them.
He saw the waiting path.
If Moka entered alone, the circle would straighten and the steps would continue.
If the thread remained between them, the path would bend until it closed.
Adam closed his sight.
He released Moka’s arm.
The path straightened.
One step formed before Moka.
Then another.
Moka looked at Adam.
«I cannot tell you not to go,» Adam said.
«Good.»
«And I cannot tell you this is Layan’s path.»
«I did not ask you to.»
«But I am asking for something.»
«What?»
«I am afraid of losing you.»
Moka did not look toward the path.
He kept his eyes on Adam.
«I did not hold you because I know better,» Adam said. «I held you because I do not want to return to the Harbor carrying another vessel.»
Moka looked at the broken container.
The key shifted inside.
«And if Layan is at the end of the path?»
«I do not know.»
«And if we close it now and no other path appears?»
«I do not know.»
«Then what are you offering me besides your fear?»
«Myself.»
Moka was silent.
«I am not saying that is enough. I am not saying it matters more than Layan. I am saying I am here, and if you go, I will no longer know whether I am searching for him or for you.»
A third step formed.
Moka placed one foot on the first.
It held.
The second cup trembled beneath the door.
The geometer’s lines leaned toward the center, then bent away.
He raised his head.
«The passage has connected to something.»
«To what?» Adam asked.
The man did not answer.
The tray began to move.
At first it slid only the width of a finger beneath its owner’s hands.
He pulled it back.
It moved again.
Then the cups upon it began sliding toward the center of the region.
«No,» said the tray man.
He seized it with both hands.
His table moved with it.
The thin man’s first cup slipped from his hand. The ship’s beam shifted. The upper step sank again and did not return.
The cup supporting the door began sliding toward the center.
«The path opened a passage through the boundaries,» said the woman.
«To the empty position,» said the geometer.
The tray slid faster.
Its owner planted his feet.
He slid with it.
«I may require assistance of a non-social kind.»
The man on the beam seized the back of his coat.
Both continued sliding.
The figure on the steps grabbed the beam.
All three steps leaned.
Moka looked back at them from the first step of the path.
«You have made a chain.»
«We have made nothing,» said the tray man.
«I am holding your coat,» said the man on the beam.
«This is restraint, not cooperation.»
The key inside Layan’s vessel moved.
It slid toward the rim.
Moka caught it.
One of the tray man’s feet slipped outside his space.
The tray moved ahead of him and pulled him toward the center.
«Moka,» the woman said. «If you leave the path, it will close.»
The wanderer stood at the final step.
Behind him lay mist that revealed nothing.
«Could Layan have passed this way?» Moka asked.
«He could have.»
«And he might not have,» Adam said.
«I know.»
The man on the beam lost his grip.
The tray man shot forward.
Moka jumped from the path.
He caught the man by the wrist.
The first step vanished.
Then the second.
The path closed behind him.
It did not collapse or explode. It simply stopped offering new ground, then erased what it had already offered.
Moka pulled the man toward him.
Adam caught Moka’s arm, and the man on the beam caught the tray man’s back. Together they dragged him into his space.
The movement of the objects stopped.
The thin man’s first cup remained at the edge of the center.
The woman knelt and extended her door toward it, while the geometer pushed a line beneath it. Together they returned the cup.
The tray man lay flat upon his floor.
«For the record, I did not ask for help.»
«For the record, I did not think,» Moka replied.
The man counted his cups.
There were two.
He searched for the third.
«The cracked one is gone.»
«It was cracked,» Adam said.
The man looked up at him.
«That is how I knew it.»
Moka looked toward the vanished path.
The wanderer remained at the last position.
«If you see Layan, tell him we are looking for him.»
The wanderer considered this.
«If I see him.»
«Tell him.»
«If he asks.»
He lifted his foot and disappeared.
The residents restored their boundaries slowly.
The geometer repaired a circle that had tilted out of place. The man on the beam raised the wood to its former level. The figure on the steps rebuilt the upper step, then sat upon the middle one as though nothing had happened.
The tray man gathered what remained of his equipment.
«You do not cooperate, correct?» Moka asked.
«Never.»
Moka pointed toward the man on the beam.
«He was holding your coat.»
«He was preventing me from leaving.»
«You were falling,» said the man on the beam.
«That is your interpretation.»
«And that was my floor you nearly fell onto.»
«Further evidence that boundaries are an excellent idea.»
«And an idea that is not always enough,» said the woman as she examined her door.
The tray man looked at her.
«You are beginning to sound like the Harbor.»
«And you are beginning to hang from other people.»
«Difficult times for everyone.»
Adam said, «You do not trust the Harbor.»
The thin man raised his first cup.
«I trust them when they say a pier is going to collapse.»
«They saved many people today.»
«Yes.»
Adam waited for the objection.
None came.
«Then what is the problem?»
«The Harbor knows where it can hold you,» said the man on the beam.
«That does not mean it knows why you remained,» added the woman.
«It prevents people from falling.»
«That is not a small thing.»
«No one said it was,» said the thin man.
«But you live away from them.»
«Because the ability to save me does not grant them the right to define me.»
Moka looked at Layan’s vessel.
«I never asked him why he chose the vessels.»
«I thought he only used them,» Adam said.
«We all did.»
«Perhaps they used him as well,» said the woman.
Adam asked her, «How do you know when someone is ready to leave?»
«I do not.»
«Then who does?»
«Why assume anyone does?» asked the thin man.
A voice came from the steps.
«Have you asked those who measure you how they found what holds them?»
Adam thought of Mike, of the weight that made the pier firmer. He thought of Raf, who spent part of himself making arrivals clearer.
He had never asked either of them.
«No.»
«Ask.»
«But do not assume their stories resemble yours,» said the woman.
The geometer was still repairing the damage.
He pushed a circle back into place.
Then a square.
Then a straight line.
Every shape that approached the middle of the region bent away from one empty point.
Adam opened his other sight.
He saw the residents’ boundaries, each independent from the others.
At the center was a position that belonged to no one.
There was no seat there, no light, no ground. Yet every boundary stopped at the same distance from it.
Even the woman’s door had bent away from it when she extended the threshold toward the key.
«What is there?» Adam asked.
«Nothing,» said the thin man.
«Nothing does not usually steal my cups,» said the tray man.
«It did not steal them,» said the woman. «The two of you connected the path to it.»
«Whose position is it?»
Some of the residents began closing their boundaries.
«It is not ours,» said the man on the beam.
«Then whose?»
The wanderer’s voice came from somewhere distant.
«The one who taught the first boundary.»
«Where is he?»
Every channel closed.
Even the tray man raised his hands.
«I speak often, but not that much.»
The geometer looked at the line curving around the absent center.
He did not erase it.
He left it turning.
«Leave,» said the woman.
The residents opened a short passage between their boundaries.
Adam and Moka moved toward it.
Neither held the other.
At the edge, the geometer placed a triangle beneath Adam and a circle beneath Moka.
They stood straight.
He brought them closer.
They bent.
He separated them.
They straightened again.
«Did you prevent him from being lost?» he asked Adam.
Adam looked at Moka.
«I did not prevent him. He came back.»
The geometer looked at Moka.
«Why did you return?»
«Someone was falling in front of me.»
«Then he did not bring you back.»
He indicated Adam.
«No.»
«I did not,» Adam said.
«Do not make this too comforting,» said Moka.
The geometer pushed the triangle and circle together.
They bent.
He tried to merge them into one shape.
It broke.
He left them separate and placed a line between them.
The line held for a moment, then curved.
«What does that mean?» Adam asked.
«That the question does not have only two shapes.»
The man lifted the curved line and left it turning beside him.
The first shape he made afterward carried the same bend.
The mist formed beneath their feet as one surface, unstable, but wide enough for two.
Moka walked beside Adam.
He did not take his sleeve.
«You were going to enter,» Adam said.
«Yes.»
«Then you came back.»
«A man was falling.»
«Someone else could have saved him.»
«No one else was on the path.»
They walked for a while.
«Are you angry?»
«Yes.»
«Because I tried to stop you?»
«Because I stopped.»
Adam looked at him.
«I wanted you to be wrong enough for me to go,» Moka said. «Then you said you were afraid.»
«Was that enough?»
«No.»
He raised the vessel.
«This was enough.»
«What do you mean?»
«If I had gone, I would have left you carrying another one.»
«I did not ask you to stay for me.»
«And I did not stay for you alone.»
They continued in silence.
Then Adam said, «When we return, I want to ask how you found the thing that holds you.»
Moka raised an eyebrow.
«I already told you what it is.»
«You told me what you chose. You did not tell me how it became enough.»
Moka walked several steps before replying.
«That is a better question.»
«Will you answer?»
«After you ask yourself first.»
«Ask myself what?»
Moka looked at the space between them.
«Why you did not let me go.»
Adam did not find one answer.
For the first time, he did not try to invent one.
They continued toward the Harbor.
Behind them, the geometer kept measuring a line that curved whenever he tried to determine where one person ended and the other began.
From farther away came the tray man’s voice.
«I found the third cup!»
A pause followed.
Another voice said, «That is not a cup.»
A third said, «Leave it.»
«It entered my space.»
«That does not make it yours.»
Moka laughed.
He did not take Adam’s sleeve, but he continued walking beside him.
End of Chapter Four