“Whoa.” I held up two flat palms in a T shape—the time-out gesture. “Hold up, hold up. Magic? You mean like ‘abracadabra’? ‘hocus-pocus’?”
Jay’s body language indicated annoyance, but his tone was patient. “Well, I’ve never actually heard one of them say ‘hocus-pocus,’ but, yeah, that’s the general idea.”
I felt like my brain was leaking out of my ears. “But that’s not—”
“Possible? You sure looked like a believer to me when I pulled you off the Lacrimae Mundi.”
I opened my mouth, then decided to shut it again when nothing came out. Jay leaned back with an attitude of relief. “Good. For a moment I thought you were going rational on me. Always remember: In an infinity of worlds, anything is not only possible, it’s mandatory.
“To continue: The Binary and HEX are locked in struggle, both overt and covert, for the ultimate control of the Altiverse. They’ve been going at it for centuries, making real slow headway because of the sheer magnitude of the task. I think the last census we intercepted indicated somewhere in the neighborhood of several million billion trillions of Earths—with more of ’em popping out of the vacuum faster than bubbles in champagne.
“There’s a Council of Thirteen that rules HEX, and the Binary is run by an artificial intelligence that calls itself 01101. Each of them wants only one thing—to run the whole shebang. What they refuse to accept is that the Altiverse functions best when the forces of magic and science are in balance. And that’s where InterWorld comes in.”
“You mentioned it—or them—before.”
“Right. That’s who I work for—that’s where you’re leading us.”
He stopped for a breath. I had more questions than there were Earths, but before I could ask them and before he could resume speaking, we heard something roar.
It was a distant sound, unlike anything I’d ever heard before—but it was definitely the sound of a hunting beast, and probably one big enough to look at both Jay and me as blue plate specials. Jay hopped to his feet. “Come on.” Even with the mask on he looked nervous. “This world is still on the cusp of the In-Between, and that’s way too close for me.”
We started walking at a brisk pace across the baked and cracked valley floor. What baked it? I wondered. The temperature was comfortable, even a little bracing—I estimated in the mid-sixties or thereabouts. I glanced up at that crawling sky, and it didn’t look fascinating anymore. It looked like those colors could come pouring down on us at any moment, like boiling lead cascading from battlements. I shuddered and walked a little faster.
One good thing about where we were—nothing could sneak up on us. But I still didn’t like it. We were as exposed as a couple of field mice in a hockey rink. We walked and walked, and those mountains didn’t look any closer.
Then I noticed a flicker of color out of the corner of my eye.
I looked over to one side and saw something that brought me to a stop. At first glance it looked like a huge soap bubble—I mean big, the size of a basketball—drifting out of a large ground fissure. But it only drifted so high, and then it stopped and bobbled around like a balloon trying to escape its tether.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Jay turned his silver-coated head toward the bubble. I was standing far enough away that I could see my whole body reflected along the curve of his cheek and jawline. “Beats me. Never saw anything like it. Got to be a mudluff of some kind, though—which means we assume it’s dangerous and walk away.” He started to walk again, and, after a last glance at the bubble—It almost looks alive, I thought—I turned to follow Jay.
There was a rattling noise somewhere in the distance. It made me think of rattlesnakes or of someone dragging a huge length of chain over rocks.
I turned around and looked, because that was where the sound had come from. I didn’t see anything that looked capable of making that kind of racket. What I did see was the little bubble straining frantically this way and that, as if trying to escape something. Its spherical surface pulsed rapidly with variegated colors—mostly dark reds and oranges shading to purple.
It was scared. I’m not sure how I knew, but it was real clear to me that the little thing was in some kind of distress.
I turned and headed over toward the crevasse.
Behind me I heard Jay shout, “Joey! No! Come back!”
“I think it’s in trouble!” I called back. “It’s not dangerous.” And I kept going.
I came to a stop near the crevasse, which was closer and bigger than I’d thought it would be. The bubble creature, I could now see, was somehow tethered to the rocks at the edge of the chasm by a thin line of protoplasm or ectoplasm or something.
“Joey! That thing’s an In-Betweener! A mudluff! Get back here right now!”
I pretended I couldn’t hear him.
The strand was clear and thin, like a line of saliva. It didn’t look like it would take much more than a mean look to sever it and free the little bubble creature.
“It’s been tied up!” I called to Joey. “I think I can free it.”
He was coming toward me. If I was going to do this, I was going to have to do it fast. I reached out and tugged on the line. It was stronger than it looked.
“Hey,” I called to Jay. “Have you got a knife? I bet we could cut this.” He didn’t reply. Even through the silver suit I could tell he was mad.
The little bubble creature above us seemed agitated. I let go of the line. It was slightly sticky. I found myself thinking of a spider’s web.
“I know he’s harmless,” I told Jay. “Look at him.”
Jay sighed. He was maybe five, six feet away from me. “You may be right,” he said. “But there’s something about this whole thing that seems wrong. How do you think the little guy got stuck there? And why?”
The strand of web began to vibrate. Then there was a roar so loud that it nearly shattered my eardrums, and I realized that I’d summoned something by pulling on the strand of web. I thought I’d been trying to free the little mudluff, but I’d actually been banging a dinner gong.
A monster reared up out of the abyss.
“Monster” is an overused word, I know, but nothing else applies here. It had a head that looked a bit like a shark’s and a bit like a tyrannosaur’s, mounted on a centipede-like body as thick as a delivery van. I don’t know how long it was, but it was long enough to rise out of what looked like a bottomless chasm; and as each segment came sliding up the rock, it rattled and echoed through the gorge like a huge length of chain. In a lot less time than it takes to tell this, it had risen to a good thirty feet above the edge. It stared down at me with enormous compound eyes, each as big as my hand.
Then it struck.
Its head was the size of my dad’s cab; and its mouth gaped open, revealing jaws lined with multiple rows of teeth, each as long as a steak knife. For all its size it dropped toward me like an express elevator. I was just about to become an hors d’oeuvre when I felt someone smash into me from behind, hurling me forward to sprawl on the edge.
I twisted onto my back and stared—stared at Jay standing in the spot where I had stood just an instant before. Then the huge gaping maw of the beast enveloped him, started to close—
And then that little soap bubble came shooting in from over my shoulder. I realized I must’ve broken the strand that had anchored it when I fell. It hit the monster’s muzzle, splattering over it like translucent goop.
The monster reared back with a roar of rage, dropping Jay’s body. Its mouth was still open—those deadly jaws hadn’t had time to close fully on him, and now it had to keep its jaws open to breathe, because the mudluff had covered its nose with the clinging translucent substance of his body. The monster thrashed about, roaring in frustration as it tried to shake the amoebalike mudluff loose. It succeeded in flinging blobs of the thing’s substance, tethered by elastic tendrils, a few feet away, only to have them snap back and replaster themselves around its nose. Hard as it was to believe, that
blob of transparent Silly Putty was actually keeping the Midgard serpent from chowing down on Jay and me!
The monster dropped back below ground level and, from the sounds and the way the ground shook repeatedly, was trying to scrape the In-Betweener off by battering its scaly snout against the rocks. I didn’t wait to find out which one would win. Instead I ran over to Jay, grabbed his arms and dragged him, stumbling and leaning on me, away from the action. I figured that overgrown soap bubble wasn’t going to last long.
I stopped a good five hundred yards away. Jay sat down hard on the sand. The roars and tremors from the now-unseen monster continued. I could see clouds of dust and occasional rock fragments being hurled into view. It would have been funny except for one other thing I now noticed: a trail of blood, thick as paint and wide as my hand, stretching unbroken from the edge of the chasm back to Jay’s body.
I gasped and knelt quickly beside him. The silver suit had been pierced through on either side of his body—two brutal punctures on his left side, three on his right, just above his hips. The monster’s teeth had each left holes over an inch in diameter, and Jay’s blood was pumping from them. There was no way to stop it, and I don’t know if it would have done any good anyway—he’d already lost so much blood.
Weakly he held up a hand, which I grasped.
“I’ll get you back to InterWorld,” I said, not knowing what else to do or say. “We’ll go through the In-Between—it won’t take long—I—I’m so sorry—”
“Save it,” Jay whispered. “It . . . won’t work. I’m bleeding . . . like three . . . stuck pigs. And I think the thing is venomous. You wouldn’t believe . . . how much it hurts. . . .” His voice was muffled and dull.
“What can I do?” I asked helplessly.
“Put my hand on . . . the sand,” he said. “Got to show you . . . how to go . . . the final distance. . . .”
I put his hand down on the ground. He drew something in spastic, jerking movements in the sand.
Then he stopped and seemed to be resting. I felt utterly useless.
“Jay?” I said. “You’ll be fine. Really, you will.” I wasn’t lying. I was saying it, hoping that by saying it I was somehow going to make it so.
He surprised me by shoving himself up to rest on one elbow—his other hand grabbed my shirtfront and dragged me with surprising strength down until my face was only an inch away from his mask. Once again I looked into the wavering reflection of my own features, grotesquely mirrored in the suit’s surface.
“Tell . . . the Old Man . . . sorry . . . made him . . . short one operative. Tell him . . . my replacement . . . gets my highest . . . recommendation.”
“I’ll tell him, whoever he is,” I promised. “But will you do me one favor in return?” He feebly cocked his head at a questioning angle.
“Take off your mask,” I said. “Let me see who you are.”
He hesitated, then he raised one hand to his face, prodded the suit material just under the chin with a finger. The material covering his head changed from reflective silver to a dull gunmetal gray and sort of shrank back into a ring around his neck.
I stared. It hadn’t made any difference. The mask was still in place. At least, that was my initial thought, brought on by the shock of seeing Jay’s face.
It was my own face, of course. But not exactly. Jay looked to be at least five years older than me. There was a splotch of scar tissue across his right cheek, and the lower part of his ear was knuckled with keloid growth as well. But there weren’t nearly enough scars to hide who he was.
He was me. That was why that voice had been so familiar. It was my voice. Or rather, it was what my voice might sound like in five years.
I wondered why I had not known all along, and I realized that, on some level, I had. Of course he was me. Cooler and braver and wiser than me. And he’d given his life to save me.
He looked at me with eyes dulling. “Get . . . moving . . .” His whisper was barely audible. “Can’t lose . . . a single operative now . . . too dangerous. Tell him . . . FrostNight . . . comes. . . .”
“I will, I promise,” I said. But his eyes had closed. He was unconscious.
It didn’t matter. A promise was binding, whether Jay heard me make it or not. I had heard me make it, and I didn’t want to live the rest of my life trying to justify to myself why I hadn’t done the right thing.
I lowered his body and rocked back on my heels, feeling a sudden lump in my throat. I’m not sure how long I stood there, just breathing.
Then I looked down at the figures he had drawn in the sand.
It had to be important. But when I looked closely at the characters, they made no sense. It seemed to be some kind of mathematical equation:
{IW}:=Ω/∞
I didn’t understand what it meant, but the symbols seemed to take root in my brain, glowing in my mind’s eye.
It was quiet in that rocky place. I could hear Jay’s gasping breaths and the hiss of the windblown sand and nothing else. I didn’t know how long it had been that way, but I knew that unequal battle between the dinomonster and the little mudluff could have ended only one way. I felt sorry for the little soap bubble thing: first bait in a trap, then killed trying to save Jay and me from a monster.
I stood, turned and looked back. There was no sign of either critter. I took a few cautious steps forward, trying to get a better view.
Nothing but settling dust . . .
Jay’s skin was changing color, taking on a bluish tint. There must have been venom on that creature’s teeth, like he’d said. And if I’d listened to him, and not been stupid, he would never have put himself into the jaws of death, trying to get me out of them. I’d rushed in where angels probably really did fear to tread—and Jay was dying because of that. Because of me. It was my fault. There was no one else to blame.
I looked up at the sky, and I made another promise, to anything that was out there, anyone who was listening, that if Jay lived, if he pulled through this, if I got him medical attention and he was fine, then I’d be the best, hardest-working, nicest, coolest person anyone could ever be. I’d be St. Francis of Assisi and Gautama Buddha and everyone else like that.
But his eyes were closed, and he was not breathing, or moving, now, and it didn’t matter what I promised or how good I was going to be in the future or anything.
Nothing mattered.
He was dead.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I COULDN’T LEAVE HIM there.
You’re going to laugh at me, but I couldn’t. It might have been the sensible thing to do—maybe if I could have dug a grave or something, I would have felt okay about leaving Jay in the desert at the borders of the edge of the In-Between. But the ground was baked, hard red mud with a thin layer of sand over it.
So I tried to pull him. He didn’t budge. I knew that he outweighed me, but even so, I’d helped him drag himself away from the chasm’s edge not ten minutes ago—and probably used up every ounce of adrenaline in my system doing it, I now realized. Now that the danger was over, I had about as much chance of moving him as I had of raising the Titanic with my teeth.
I wondered if it was the metal suit that weighed him down so. I examined it, looking for a catch or a zipper or something.
Nothing.
There was a hushing noise beside me and I turned. It was the little In-Betweener. The mudluff creature was hovering in the air beside me, floating in space like an amoeba the size of a cat, glittering with all the colors of a rainbow.
“Hey,” I said. “Well, at least you’re okay. But Jay’s dead. Maybe I ought to have left you there with that tyrannosaurus thing after all.”
The soap bubble color changed to a rather miserable shade of purple.
“I didn’t mean it,” I said. “But he was . . . my friend. He was me, kind of. And now he’s dead, and I can’t even get him back to his home. He’s too heavy.”
The purple color warmed up until the thing glowed a gentle shade of gold. It extended something that wasn?
??t quite a limb and wasn’t really a tentacle—a pseudopod, I suppose, if that means what I think it does—and it touched the metal suit just above the heart.
“Yes,” I said. “He’s dead.”
It pulsed gold—a sort of frustrated gold—and tapped exactly the same place on the suit.
“You want me to touch it there?”
It changed color once more, to a serene blue, a pleased sort of blue. I put my finger where the pseudopod had been, and the suit opened to me like a flower to the sun. Jay had been wearing gray boxer shorts and a green T-shirt underneath it. His body seemed so pale. I dragged the suit out from underneath him.
It weighed a ton. Well, maybe a hundred pounds. The amoeba was still hanging around, as if it were trying to tell me something. It extended a scarlet-tipped pseudopod toward the silver mass of the suit, which lay crumpled on the red earth. Then it pointed at me, and twinkling silver veins appeared across its balloon body.
“What?” I asked, frustrated. “I wish you could talk.”
It pointed at the silver suit, now faded to a dull, battleship gray, and then back at me once more.
“You think I should put it on?”
It glowed blue, the same shade of blue it had gone before. Yes. I should put it on. “I’ve heard of speaking in tongues,” I said. “I’ve never heard of speaking in colors.”
Then I picked up the suit—now something like a starfish-shaped overcoat—and draped it over me. It hung there heavily and made my back hurt. It felt like a lead-lined blanket. It was cold and dead. There was no way I could walk more than a dozen steps in any direction wearing this.
“Now what?” I asked the amoeba. It turned a puzzled shade of green, and yellows and crimsons chased across its surface in rapid succession. Then it pointed, hesitantly, to a spot on the middle of the suit, over my chest. I touched it.
Nothing happened.
I touched it again. I banged it. I rubbed it. I squeezed it between finger and thumb as tightly as I could—and suddenly the lead blanket that was covering me came to life. It flowed and oozed and ran over my body, covering me from legs to head. My vision went dark when it flowed across my face. I felt a moment of pure, suffocating panic—and then I could see once more, better than before, and breathe as well.