Yashim slid his feet through the water, one hand trailing against the wall of the tunnel, the other outstretched in front of his face.
He tried not to think. All his life he had had a horror of confinement. Even as a little boy he had fought like a wolf if his playmates tried to pin him down. He never followed them, either, into the caves they used to explore around his home on the Black Sea coast: there were rockfalls sometimes; tales of miners, trapped underground, used to visit him at night. Once had he been trapped himself. Confined, unable to move, staring wild-eyed at the men and the knife. The horror had risen in his gorge-and his life was changed.
He tried not to splash; it seemed to him that the level of the water had risen, that it was by his ankles, but the cold was so intense that he could not be sure. All that mattered was to get deep into the tunnel, away from the torchlight.
If only the pipe would curve.
A few steps farther on, his hand came up against a curved edge. He stopped and groped around. As far as he could tell in the dark, the channel forked; he was between two openings, both the same size, both carrying the current. He squatted down and glanced back.
For a dizzying moment he felt that he was staring at a solid wall, as if the tunnel had sealed itself behind him, and he reached out in a panic. The movement of his hand revealed to him the existence of a faint glow, which seemed to hang in the air in front of him. As he watched, it grew brighter, an aureole of faint light surrounding a pinprick of flame in the darkness.
The waterman was coming down the tunnel.
Yashim felt sick. He squeezed his eyes shut and fought the panic, fought the thought that he was being pressed deeper and deeper into the ground.
It’s a maze, he murmured to himself. Only a maze. In a maze, you must follow a rule.
Two tunnels. One bore to the left: it might descend the hill toward the Fener. The other, tending to the right, presumably took a line to the south. Yashim tried to picture the shape of his city, the rise and fall of its hills. One or both of these pipes might lead to another siphon, where the water pooled at a lower level than the tank it came from. Sooner or later, if that were the case, the pipe would start to grow full of water, like a curving reservoir, and he would have to stop moving.
Left or right?
Which way would the waterman come?
Yashim was right-handed.
The rule, in a maze, was to keep turning the same way at every bend. Trail his left hand on the wall and reach forward with his right.
That was the way.
Yashim put out his hand and groped for the opening on his left.
He started down. He felt the floor of the tunnel sloping. His hand trailed along the wall. It was no longer rough to the touch, but slimy and knobbled: he imagined it caked in calcareous lumps, dripping with shiny algae.
He advanced several yards. He almost missed the first turn, because he was swaying as he scuttled forward, and his hand missed the wall for a foot or two. When he reached out again he felt a hard corner; groping back, he discovered the opening he’d missed and turned into it. He thought of the horror of losing his way back.
Now he leaned his shoulder against the wall on his left. Like that he was in less danger of missing a turn, and from time to time he could pause and rest.
He wondered how much farther he needed to go. Three turns already, the chances of discovery were increasingly remote.
He decided to make one last turn, and then he would wait.
He shoved himself along, spreading the weight between his legs and his left shoulder, and that is when he found the turn.
He swiveled into it.
Something hard caught his foot as he slid around the corner.
He put out his hands, and fell into the void.