He ran his hands over the blue walls. The material was warm, slightly yielding -- disconcertingly skinlike. He thought of stroking his wife's belly through a soft leather blanket.

He pushed the image away.

He took his coil of rope from Orange's pannier. He tied one end round his waist. "Here," he said. "Don't let go of this. If you don't hear from me... after a while, try to pull me back. Do you understand? And whatever happens, go back and tell my grandmother what you've seen. All right?"

The great head dipped. He stroked her trunk, once.

He turned to the door opposite the entrance to the cube. Orange shivered as she watched him. Now then, he thought, logic tells me there's nothing beyond this door. Only another way out, to the snow.

Right?

He pushed at the door. It swung back smooth as a muscle.

There was another room beyond. It was like a mirror-image of the first: bare walls, single light pendant, doors all over it--

Maybe it really was a reflection.

No, that was stupid. He looked back at the trembling brown hulk of Orange. There was no Orange in the second room... and no Teal, for that matter.

He stepped through the door.

Well, the floor felt solid enough... and the air was just -- air.

All his intuition told him he should have been hovering at waist-height somewhere outside the boxlike structure. Instead, here he was...

He laughed. So Allel's old song had been wrong. The wonder of the second room wasn't in what it contained, but in the fact that it was there at all.

Pulling the rope of twisted leather behind him he pushed at the door in the left-hand wall of the second room. Beyond was a third room, another copy of the first.

He decided he wasn't surprised.

More confidently he walked through the third room and pushed at the door to his left. Beyond this he'd presumably find a fourth room, making up a square array of rooms, and then he could turn left again to find his way round the square back to Orange--

The fourth room wasn't empty. It contained Orange. He was looking at her left side; she held a grubby rope that stretched forward through an open door.

She turned her head to him, eyes wide with astonishment.

He jumped back, trembling. Could he have miscounted the rooms?

His mind racing, he took Allel's knife from his belt and placed it gently on the floor inside Orange's room. Then he walked back through the third and second rooms.

In the first room, Orange was facing him. "Take it easy," he murmured abstractedly to her. "It's all right..."

The door to her left was ajar. A stone knife lay on the floor, just inside the first room. He walked across to pick it up, tucked it into his belt.

Well, it felt real. Were there two knives now?