Caereh soon tired of interrogating a brick wall and turned sulking to a crystal for amusement. A pleased grin spread across her face as she sat in the window embrasure Tieran had occupied earlier, gazing into the crystal in the palm of her hand.
Abruptly she stood up and addressed Hadrian. "Now. It's time. Send me to the tunnels."
Hadrian obliged, waving her away without much care.
"What is she doing now?" Tieran asked Hadrian.
"Hmm?" Hadrian asked, rousing out of his reverie. "I sent her to the tunnels near the oubliette. You remember them from the movie, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Here watch yourself." Hadrian tossed Tieran a crystal ball.
Tieran caught it and wondered what accounted for Hadrian's suddenly pleasant mood. As he looked into the crystal, Cara was disagreeing with Caereh. Caereh gestured theatrically to a point in midair.
"I believe that was your cue," Tieran told Hadrian as Caereh snarled something he could not hear.
Hadrian only smiled and a clock appeared where Caereh pointed. Time began spinning off stopping at several minutes past eight. Caereh threw a crystal down the tunnel and his companions turned and ran.
Knowing what came next, Tieran looked up at Hadrian, who sat impassively slumped in his chair, attention concentrated out of this room. Then a sly smile grew on his lips.
"Watch this," he told Tieran.
Tieran turned back to the crystal, dreading the sight of the Cleaners chasing Alia and her companions. Instead he saw nothing and then Caereh standing by herself, looking down the tunnel in the direction she had thrown the crystal.
"What is she looking for?" Tieran asked.
"Oh, you'll see." Hadrian sounded very pleased with himself.
Tieran could just make out slow movement in the darkness beyond Caereh. What was it? It did not look big enough for the Cleaners. Had he missed them?
Then he saw it clearly. Two average sized goblins, one a little taller and thinner, the other shorter and fatter, worked their way toward Caereh, meticulously sweeping the very nearly nonexistent coating of dust on the tunnel floor.
Tieran smiled. He had to admit the cleverness of Hadrian's ploy, following the letter of Caereh's request, but still disobeying her. Caereh, on the other hand, did not appreciate the cunning involved.
"I think she missed your joke, Hadrian."
"No sense of humor at all. There, that will please her," he said as the Cleaners she had intended appeared in the tunnel. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other things to attend to." Hadrian vanished as Caereh reappeared.
"Where is he?" she demanded.
"He just left," Tieran answered, surreptitiously dropping his hand with the crystal Hadrian had left with him, out of sight.
"No matter," Caereh said after a moment, convincing herself that Hadrian left out of fear of her wrath at his pranks.
"That went splendidly. They ran just like in the movie. You should have seen it." She paused again. Obviously she assumed that Tieran had no idea of what had really happened. "This calls for a celebration. Come here. I have something to show you."
Tieran remained seated on the throne as she walked toward the archway at one side of the room.
"Are you coming?" Caereh asked as she turned to check that he followed her.
"Not without good reason."
"How's this one? If you don't, I guarantee that you'll never get out of here, even if your friends do make it here in time."
"Where are we going?" Tieran asked as he walked across the room. The cat emerged from its retreat under the throne to follow Tieran.
"You'll see. Close your eyes," she told him as she covered them from behind with her hands. "This is going to be so much fun."
Tieran was beginning to regret it already.
"Turn to your right. Go up the stairs."
Tieran balked. "This will not work. Aside from climbing the stairs blind, I will not be able to climb them at all with you covering my eyes."
"Why not?"
"You will pull me over backward trying to reach my eyes."
"Oh." Tieran could imagine her pouting as she considered. "Then you'll have to promise not to peek."
He sighed. "All right."
"Good. Up the stairs."
Tieran took a step and nearly tripped over something soft. He involuntarily opened his eyes and looked down. "What was that?"
"That was your precious cat," Caereh said aiming a kick at it to move it out of the way. "You're not bringing it with you, are you?" she asked as he bent to pick it up.
"Yes, I am. There is only one way to keep a cat out from underfoot and that is to carry it." Tieran closed his eyes and started up the stairs.
Caereh guided him up the stairs, through a turn to the right, down another short flight of stairs, another turn, to the left this time, and finally up another long flight of stairs. She stopped him in the middle of a large room, judging by the echoes.
"Okay. Look."
Tieran opened his eyes and had no idea where she had brought him. The cat jumped down while he stood and stared at the room.
Directly in front of him a crystal chandelier hung in a window across his field of vision, not up and down, but from left to right, and behind it, along the right side of the floor to ceiling (or should that be wall to wall?) window, he could see the Labyrinth. As he followed the horizon upward to the ceiling, his gaze passed gauzy ivory curtains (also falling left to right) draped in front of a pale marble column. Above him a giant owl sat perched in another window, sitting on a sill where the ceiling joined the right hand wall.
The right wall repeated this scene at the proper orientation. The curtains behaved themselves and fell to the floor, as straight as gauze could, around a window showing the Labyrinth lying docilely at his feet in its proper position.
He checked to the left. This was the worst yet for his equilibrium. The Labyrinth took the place of the sky and a second owl hung from the ceiling. He turned around to look behind him.
They had entered the room through a door between two more windows with chandeliers, one hanging from the ceiling and the other sprouting from the floor.
"What do you think? Isn't it great?"
"It reminds me of the room with the stairs."
"I know. It's from another Escher print. Only instead of the moon and space in the print I used the Labyrinth. And I combined it with the ballroom. That's the chandeliers and the curtains. The chandeliers look much better than the horns Escher used. It's not like this is some hunting lodge."
"What do you use this room for?"
"It's a dining room, of course." She pointed to the table loaded with food that Tieran had missed in his first shock at the view.
"Of course," Tieran answered dubiously. "Why are we here?"
"To eat, obviously," she said as she walked toward the table.
"But we do not need to eat. We are computer animated."
"So is the food, so it all works out nicely, doesn't it? Sit." She pointed to the table.
Tieran carefully chose a seat that looked out at the normally oriented panorama with as little view of the other windows as possible. The computer may have drawn him, but he saw no sense in tempting fate.
Caereh began serving various dishes to their plates at her whim.
Tieran pushed her choices around his plate before trying a few bites. The food seemed to work for his tongue, but his mind would not let it pass unchallenged, trying to find something, some nuance wrong with it. He stopped after a few bites and tried to think about something else.
"Why are you going to all this trouble? Why not just animate me the way you want me?"
"Because that's not you. Besides, I already have that. Watch."
She concentrated somewhere else for a moment, her expression vacant for a few seconds. As her attention returned one figure, then another appeared standing in front of the window across the table from him.
Tieran recognized the first figure as himself dressed as Jareth. The other was Jareth dressed, of course, as Jareth.
"I brought him along for the heck of it," Caereh explained. "You see I already have you to do with as I please." Caereh sighed and walked over and sat on the arm of his chair. For once she had not calculated the movement, she simply sat there to talk. "The problem is, it's not the same. I have them programmed perfectly to interact, even be spontaneous, but they're still not alive."
"Neither am I in my current state. You said that before when I asked about the food. Everything here is computer generated."
"But it's different. I can change what you're wearing, just as I can with them." She demonstrated by changing Tieran's evening dress for the opera to red and white striped pajamas like Toby's in the movie. Then she changed both the imitations to match. "Hmm, I'd never considered Jareth in stripes. Cute isn't he?"
Tieran frowned in answer when she looked at him and she changed the clothing back, this time she dressed Tieran's imitation to match his current clothing instead of Jareth's. "Might as well make him authentic. Like I said, I can change your clothing – that's part of the programming for the game – but I can't tell you what to do. You're a human character interacting with the game. I can always override their programming, no matter how they've been told to act."
Caereh approached Tieran's double and turned on her charm for it.
"Have you missed me, darling?" she asked it, standing close.
In answer it put its arms around her waist and smiled. "Yes, you would not believe how much. Where have you been?"
"Here and there." Caereh snuggled closer and put her arms around its neck to kiss it. It responded wholeheartedly and its hands began to roam across her animation-emphasized curves.
The kiss dragged on and the whole thing made Tieran uncomfortable. It was one thing to watch two other people act like this, but to watch what looked like yourself with someone you disliked took it to a completely different level. In an effort to stop things before they went any further he asked, "Where did you get its voice?
Caereh pulled away from the simulation and answered, "From the outtakes of your recordings for the cartoon. It requires very little sampling to put the voice together." She shooed away the Tieran simulation and walked over to where the Jareth had sat down and put its feet up on the table. She sat down in its lap and began to play with its hair. "For Jareth I just use your recordings and the movie. If I want him to sing, I lift it from Bowie's albums of course."
"If this is your idea of celebration," Tieran said as he watched her flirt with the simulation, "I would like to be excused, please. Lock me up in a closet somewhere and you may celebrate all you like," he added disgustedly.
Caereh started to answer him when another giant owl flew up and landed on the window ledge.
"I was wondering where that owl was," Caereh said as she slipped off the Jareth's lap. "There was supposed to be one in every window. But they weren't supposed to fly." She stared at the bird in consternation, hand upon her hips. "They were supposed to just sit there. I'll bet Hadrian is behind this. Now what is he up to?"
.….
After a few minutes of running Jareth and Alia realized that the goblins no longer pursued them.
"Jareth! Wait! We've lost Cara. We have to go look for her."
"We'll never find her now. We have to keep traveling toward the castle."
"But what if they captured her or she's hurt?"
"We would have heard something from her if they did. We can't take time to stop and look for her. We do have a deadline, if you'll pardon the expression. Remember?"
Alia looked back the way they had come, hoping Cara would run around the corner.
"Come on. She's able take care of herself. We're saving Tieran, remember?"
Alia nodded and turned and followed Jareth.
Later, Alia caught herself humming and stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing, but Jareth noticed her doing it again a few minutes later.
"Just because Cara isn't here, doesn't mean you have to take her place singing that infernal song."
"I'm not singing, I'm humming and I can't help it. I tried stopping before. I guess I just miss the noise."
"You never thought you'd say that, did you?" Jareth asked as he considered which way to turn at an intersection.
"No, but humming hardly compares with singing it in full voice, either. Maybe I can try humming something else."
"Don't start with the bottles of beer either. At least try a real song," he requested as he selected the path to the left.
"I'm not sure I could carry a real tune. Not the whole song anyway."
"Then don't try. The same piece of tune over and over is as bad as bottles of beer and ants."
"You could do something, you know. You're the one with the singing scenes in the movie. And the fanfics, too, right? That's lots of practice," Alia tried cajoling him.
"No, thank you. I decline. If you want music you'll have to supply it yourself. I only request that you vary it a little."
"I'm not that desperate. It's about time we came to something other than hedges," Alia said as they reached a wall patchily covered in vines. Set into the wall was a small gate of iron bars, partially overgrown by the vines.
"Do we go through here or keep going in the maze?" Alia asked as she peered between the bars at the dim forest beyond.
"The forest should be the shortest way to the castle," Jareth replied.
"Then it's through the gate. I hope the Fireys are somewhere else. I'm too tired to fight for my ears."
"There's little chance of that. The Fireys are never somewhere else. Perhaps, if we're lucky, Caereh didn't include them," Jareth told her as he ripped the vines away from the gate. Once he had it cleared, he pulled on the gate. It did not move.
"Is it locked?"
"I don't see a lock. Maybe it's only rusted."
"As clean as Caereh has made this place I find that hard to believe." Alia joined him at the gate and pulled at it with him. They gave it a few good yanks and it came free suddenly with a screech.
It protested even louder as they pulled it further open, with a noise that Alia felt in her bones and set her teeth on edge. They squeezed through the narrow opening.
"Do we close it again?" Alia asked.
"You can if you like. I'm not going to bother."
"But, what about the Fireys? Won't they get into the Labyrinth?"
Jareth laughed. "The Fireys could get out of the forest any time they liked by climbing over the wall. More likely the gate is to keep the creatures of that part of the Labyrinth out of the forest. What does it matter anyway where the creatures of Caereh's Labyrinth end up?"
Alia rubbed the rust from the gate off of her hands onto her jeans, leaving red-orange smears on the backs of her thighs, and followed Jareth as he set off into the forest.
The forest lay deadly still around them. Alia heard no birds singing, no insects calling, no creatures rustling in the undergrowth.
"It sure is quiet," she whispered.
"Thinking of singing again?"
"It was humming and no, definitely not."
"Good. The silence is bad, but it would be worse with your tunes. Come now," he said after a long pause. "I expected a snappy rejoinder or at least a loud protest after that insult. You must be getting soft, Alia. Alia?"
He turned to look behind him. She was not there. He started to go back to look for her, thinking that perhaps something distracted her and she had wandered off, but then he remembered the movie.
She had not wandered off. Something had taken her.