Julia hurried away without a backward glance.
I sat down in confusion.
There was no continuity in my experiences here or rational progress from one event to another; it had all the anarchic qualities of a dream sequence, but I could not convince myself that I was dreaming, no matter how hard I tried. If this was an illusion, somebody was in control, and there was a purpose to it all.
What should I do next? Should I act on impulse or wait for direction? I was beginning to lose control of my thoughts, and I jumped to my feet, determined not to give in without a fight.
I looked down from the stage and saw that water was now seeping through at the base of the door, and the frame was bulging as it tried to hold back the main body of the flood. I had to get to higher ground, but first, I had to try and revive Jack and take him with me. He still sat on the throne with his head lolling on his chest like an inebriated king in a fairy tale. I shook him hard, and he responded with a groan.
"Jack, wake up."
I slapped his cheeks with my hand.
"Come on, Jack, you must wake up. We are in great danger if we stay here."
Jack moaned, but then he opened his eyes and muttered.
"Reckon, this version of reality doesn't suit either of us, Peregrine. A portal is arriving as we speak, and we exit stage left, quick as you like."
"No!"
That was a word-for-word repetition of what he had said to me in Tony's room.
"Not you, Jack, please not you," I pleaded, but he was unconscious again.
I looked down on the familiar features of my trustworthy companion, who had guided me through the mean streets of Victorian London. I just couldn't leave him.
Down below, the door was still holding, but the water had reached the level of the stage and was lapping gently across the floor. Racked with indecision, I stood with my hand resting on the back of the ornate throne.
"Don't just stand there, Peregrine; give us a hand. I can't stand up on my own."
"Jack!" A surge of relief spurred me into action, and I bent down and pulled him up.
"Leave me sitting on the edge, if you would, Peregrine, while I get some feeling back into my legs."
I shifted him into position, and once he was comfortable, I asked him why had suddenly lose consciousness. Who was behind it?
"Albert," he said. "He lost his fix on our location but managed to get a last message to me that he would trigger a reaction in my brain as a sort of homing device. He put me in a state of unconsciousness so that nothing would interfere with the transmission."
"Did it work?" I asked anxiously, "This could be our way out."
"I reckon it did, and we won't have to wait long."
It suddenly occurred to him that I was alone.
"Where's Julia?" he said, looking around the stage.
"Gone," I said dully. She was an automaton, Jack, an Android."
"No, she isn't," Jack said in agitation. She is an alternative Montana, the same as Agnes. She had a life separate from this illusion, a life as real as mine and yours; now, where did she go?"
I gestured vaguely up the stage. "Some place up there."
"We have to find her and take her back with us, Peregrine."
"But she was speaking repetitive lines, like the others, and I assumed…"
"She was pretending, don't you see?" Jack said angrily. "She must have thought the portal would only hold a maximum of three. That is the way they design portals in her world; their technology is far behind that of Earth Minor, and their travel portals are little more than prototypes compared to ours. Julia knew that you identified her with Montana and would never leave her here alone in the disintegrating sub-world of the theatre."
My judgment error sickened me.
"Where can she have gone?" I asked Jack.
She would have tried to leave this sub-world and get back to her own. I would guess that she jumped down into the auditorium and headed for the main doors, thinking that was the border."
"I have to try to find her and bring her back," I said.
"I'll come with you," said Jack.
"No, stay here; you are too weak. When Albert arrives, ask him to stay as long as he can, but if it comes to it, leave without me."
"Peregrine!" Jack protested.
I jumped from the stage onto what once must have been a continuous stretch of carpet. The surface now resembled soggy red marshland, and the ooze slopped over the top of my boots. The water was coming up from below, and I splashed forward, hoping to reach the exit doors before it broke through and flooded the auditorium.
I reached the outer fringes of the artificial light that still emitted from the fixtures in the ceiling, and I saw a short area of carpeted floor leading to the open exit door. On the ground was the body of a woman, her outstretched arm reaching out into the dim twilight that lay beyond. Her elbow rested on the boundary like the remnants of an amputated limb. The part of her forearm and hand that had crossed the barrier to the outside world had vanished. The limb no longer existed, but then it had never existed outside the boundaries of the theatre.
I turned over the body, my heart pounding, and I saw the blurred features of Janine, the girl whose hand I had briefly held in the rehearsal room. She must have tried to follow me and somehow found her way into the main body of the theatre.
She was trying to escape.
When I entered the rehearsal room for the second time, Janine was aware of my conscious presence and knew that I was different from the rest. She may have thought of herself as a fellow conscious being, but she was only partially correct.
A sufficient level of complexity in a closed system, can generate a form of conscious awareness, superficially similar, but not the equivalent of human consciousness.
However, Janine, even if only partly conscious, was capable of feeling emotions and possessing hope for her future life.
I bent down beside her. Her face had hardly any visible features now; it was just textured skin stretched around whatever doubled for a skull, and I could see that it was already beginning to fade away, to dissolve into nothing.
I turned Janine over onto her back and crossed her arms respectfully across her chest. I looked at her for a moment, then leaned down and kissed her where her mouth had once been. There was nothing more I could do, and I needed to deal with more pressing business.
Where was Julia? Had she walked out into the void?
Her body would have vaporised if she were of the same substance as Janine, but what if Jack had told the truth, and Julia was human? I could only find out by putting myself to the test, and it must be soon. The water level of the marshland between me and the stage was rising steadily; if I was going to do it, it must be now.
Which part of my body would I miss the least?
Not a foot. That would prevent me from getting back. It had to be my hand, but not my entire hand; maybe I could get away with just the tips of my fingers.
I crawled to the boundary on all fours.
I had an irrational fear that the void would somehow pull me in or that I would fall over the edge in shock if I were standing up when my fingers vanished.
What a coward I was, but humans have an instinct for self-preservation, and at least I did not turn back. I was as near to the edge as I dared go, and I stretched my hand forward, inch by inch, into the darkness.