… the indication is that some primordial catastrophe, of which no record survives, or perhaps garbled as myth, disorganized the genetic and intellectual structure of early man, causing a rapid degeneration from the robust features and larger brain of the Neanderthal, and other transitional forms…
The back flap of the book was a folding chart, like a map, of the linguistic tree, showing the descent of all the dead languages in the world.
It was yellow with age, and brittle, and I unfolded it very carefully, while the librarian stared at me, looking like she wanted to hiss. I did not tear it.
The sheet, unfolded, covered most of the table, and was covered with hundreds of spidery branching lines, like a family tree, or like a nervous system would look, if you just picked it up out of someone’s body by the upper spinal column, and let the nerves dangle.
At the lowest root of the tree was a strange word: Ursprache.
This was the name assigned for the hypothetical common ancestral tongue of the Cauco-Sinitic, Euro-Asiatic, and Austric language groups; the languages of Son I, Son II and Son III.
If it had been spoken at all, it was spoken thirty-five thousand to sixty million years ago. The diagram showed the first major division into three language families appearing in the Tigris-Euphrates valley: that was the day the pan-human Ursprache language died. An explosion of languages followed. According to this chart, it had occurred as suddenly, on the geological scale, as the extinction of the dinosaurs and the explosion of mammalian varieties of life. But what was the disaster?
Something fluttered to the floor like a dry leaf. It was a folded scrap of paper. I dropped my pencil, bent over, and palmed the scrap of paper before the librarian saw me.
I did not dare look at it until I was outside, just in case the librarian was peering at me through a slatted window, around the corner. I didn’t know what the penalty was for stealing material from the library, but even if the cops were not involved, the librarian knew my family, as well as knowing my boss, since both Dad and the Professor were pretty frequent visitors.
The little scrap was in Professor Dreadful’s handwriting.
WE is right! The Cuneiform is Ursprache!! An application of the Law of Semantic Drift, following an analogous genetic drift, to the earliest possible ur-words of the CS, EA, and A linguistic groups reveals common signs.
Parallel worlds use the common oldest language found on all versions of Earth as their Lingua Franca: the one semiotic form older than all others, the central stem predating the earliest division of offshoots.
On the other side of the scrap were questions.
What world is my daughter from?
Not mine, nor the Incarnation Earth. Hidden world?
How many universes are there?
At that time, that day when the Professor was first committed, I had not had the courage to ask my Dad that question.
7. Unspoken Words
I knew there was more.
To be sure, the globe of the earth and the reach of the skies, from amoeba to the great nebula in Andromeda, all the cosmos is fearsomely and wonderfully made. You have to be dead inside not to be awed, or stupid to pretend to be so cool as not to be. You cannot just be a scientist to learn it all, not just an explorer to see it, not just a poet to praise it, not just a priest to bless it. You also have to be a hero to protect it.
But there are also clues in the Earth, hidden things, overlooked, half-whispered things; clues that there is something more. Our world is mostly civilized these days, mostly tamed: but I knew there was wildness and weirdness out there. Where? Hither or thither or somewhere or somewhither: In elfland or outer space or beyond the walls of the world.
And it was as if I could smell the wild hint of that somewhither clinging to my father like woodsmoke, like the musk of bloodshed.
Whenever I caught the scent, my happy life turned into a beartrap I would have gnawed off my leg to escape. Some universe larger than this one was meant for me.
And then there was the girl. (Maybe she was meant for me, too? But that was a thought I dare not think or else my brain might explode.) So I had to know if her peril was real. Not everything madmen say can be trusted.
So I had to ask. My words gushed out in an angry rush.
“How many worlds are there? And where do you go on your business trips? What business requires you be armed to the teeth? And don’t say it is dangerous missionary work—”
He said, “It is. Missionaries sometimes have to enter other — I mean, enter other places that are a little, ah, wild, and with my background in the service — it’s not illegal, but it is not something the Council of Bishops wants any public, ah, outcry —”
“— Where do you go? Name the spot on the globe. Give me the longitude and latitude, can’t you? You can’t. And you can’t tell me who am I really, can you, Father? Can’t or won’t! Why don’t I look like you or like my brothers? And tell me where Mom is!”
“You mother cannot be with us.” His words were sad and slow. “She is no longer in this …”
“In this life? In this world?” My words were hot and quick. “So you’ve always said. Until today, I thought you meant she was dead and gone to Heaven. But you want to lie to me without actually lying. What world is she in? Is it one the Professor’s machine can reach?”
But I had said too much. The moment of weakness, of truth, had passed. Dad was stony-faced again. Mentioning the machine snapped him out of it.
He rose to his feet and looked up at me. Ever since I turned fifteen, I have been taller than him, taller than my older brother. And yet, somehow, he managed to loom.
He said, “What machine? What does it look like?”
I wanted to argue. I could not.
I took my phone out of my pocket, snapped it open with my thumb, and brought up the text message, and handed it to him.
Dad had his face bent over the tiny phone screen. Dad said, “Why did he call you Marmoset?”
“It auto-corrects Muromets. Professor Dreadful, uh, sometimes has trouble working the spelling-check.”
Dad grunted and turned his eyes to the tiny screen. “You would think he would learn that in symbology school. How to spell words, I mean. They are symbols.”
8. The Hither Shores of Uncreation
Marmoset
My daughter is in danger and needs your help.
I have escaped the asylum: those fools cannot begin to understand my power. And yet I cannot save her. Only you.
You recall our last talk, when we spoke of Many Worlds? It is all true.
A working model of a Moebius Field Coil, just as described in the Disaster Cuneiform, is even now in the basement of the Haunted Museum. The cuneiform instructions on how to build and power it were precise. But the power is still running. I was not able to shut it off before they took me!
Penny is on her way to the Museum now. She left from Tillamook about two minutes ago. You must get there first. She is a foolish and headstrong girl, and does not realize her peril.
The Moebius coil can be used as a casement, to see what lurks on the hither shores of the Deep of Uncreation, beyond the Unborn Ocean.
I have seen the shadows that thirst for human blood, and heard the hunting cries of the Arch-Beasts that are above man in evolutionary scale. There are Giants in the Other Earths whom this Earth drowned, and fallen gods are their fathers. Deadlier far the Architects of the Tower of Utter Night, that hideous strength, for they are restrained from nothing they have imagined to do.
Woe to the inhabitants on Earth! Woe when the Dark Tower opens the dreadful gate! For the casement through which I peered is also a portcullis!
I know why you are not like your brothers.
Trust in me, only me, and fear nothing. The exodimensional radiation will do you no hurt. Only you. Bring no one else, lest he die. Do not be afraid of the fog.
Go into the basement. Break open the door if you have to. The Moebius coil Solenoid is upright on the breadboard stand. It is a hoop
of twisted gold over a foot wide, woven with naked copper wire. You cannot mistake it. You must shut the power OFF.
Box the Coil and the three Penrose Triangle antennae, and bring all to me. Make special note of which cables and plugs are fixed where, and bring them and the cable adapters, the rheostat and the dry cells.
I am in the same place.
Remember what you swore! I trust you. Tell no one. They will lock me up again. I am not insane! Believe in me!
Especially do not tell your Father!
He is the Ostiary of the Templars.
9. The Door into Twilight
Now Dad looked at me with eyes that bored like twin lasers, and no trace of tiredness was in his face. “Is this the promise you mean to break? What did you swear?”
“To help him. To help his daughter.”
I did not mention that the Professor, during that last afternoon before his hearing, in that hot and airless motel room where he was holed up, had taken the Gideon’s Bible out of the drawer and made me put my hand on it, just like I was in a court of law or something. It was not the kind of oath a boy makes, afraid to cut his thumb and his friend’s with a pocket knife and vowing to be best friends forever. It was the kind of oath a man takes. Or a champion.
“What else?”
“Not to — not to tell anyone.”
“Anyone? Or not to tell me?”
“Not to tell you.” I mumbled.
“Why did you swear such a foolish oath? And once you bound yourself by it, why in the world did you break it?”
“Dad! Are you asking me to hide things from you? Hide the truth?”
His voice was oddly gentle. “Ilyusha, it would break my heart if I found you lied to me, and that includes the lies of omission. Your word is your word! Breaking your word is worse than breaking my heart, boy. My heart will recover. What you do now defines the kind of man you will one day be. One day very soon.” Then there was that odd look in his eyes again. “Not very soon —now. Today.”
My eyes kept being pulled toward my feet, but I forced myself to straighten my spine and look him in the face.
And I saw the fear again. Fear of the father wolf for his cub.
Fear for me.
He had raised me to be Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient… you know the drill. Those are the virtues a boy has to practice to become a man. Dad was afraid he had not prepared me well, had not raised me right.
He closed his eyes a moment, his lips moving. When he opened them, the fear was gone, and something firmer, something like iron, was there instead. Of all the lessons I want to learn from him, that was the one I most wanted. Brave, Clean, Reverent.
Dad spoke. “When he says I am in the same place; what place is that?”
“The Motel Eight on Straight Street. He was in Room 222 before. He likes the number for some reason.” Now I raised my eyes and raised my voice. “Dad! He trusts me! I swore! We can't turn him in to the police.”
“No one is turning anyone in! When did this message come?”
“While I was making the cocoa. Ten minutes ago. Less.”
He jumped to his feet, took me by the shoulder and began marching us out from the den and toward the garage. “Why didn’t you leave the moment you got the message?”
Why? That was a good question.
There was a confused tangle of reasons inside me. One thread of reasoning said that if my father knew there was only one world, the one reality all sane people live inside, then the insane Professor was not only insane, but wrong. If there were no extra-dimensional worlds, then there was no Moebius coil, and no danger, and no damsel in distress to save, and no need to leave.
Another thread said if there were many worlds, and my dad knew that and never told me, then I could trust the Professor (who had told me the truth) rather than Dad (who hadn’t) and then, with a clear conscience, I could leave without asking, knowing whose voice to follow.
Another thread, this one even more tangled, said that if there were other worlds, and Mom was in one, and alive and watching over us, she would not want me to leave the house without welcoming Dad home, even if the cocoa was only instant.
So everything in the snarl was somehow caught up in the one question of whether this was the only world there was, and therefore I could not leave without asking it.
Why had I not left? No way I could tell him. It would have sounded stupid. Stupider. Instead I said: “Gosh, Dad. I can't drive the car! Was I supposed to jog?”
“Don’t get smart with me. You’re allowed to drive the Jeep.”
“During daylight, with an adult. Sun’s not up yet. And you told me not to—”
“Son, different rules apply during the End of the World.”
I did not know what to say to that.
10. Dancing Maiden
We did not cut through the kitchen to get to the garage, which would have been the shortest route. Instead we went through the tiny, windowless utility room, not much bigger than a closet, which Dad calls his office, because his rolltop desk is there, with a hardwood armchair. The desk is metal and bolted to the concrete floor. He opened the rolltop with a key. There is a small safe built into the drawers of the desk. Inside he kept legal documents in manila envelopes and accordion files, a tarnished silver box of Grandma’s jewelry, stocks and bonds, things like that.
He pulled out a large yellow envelope with my name on it. He shut the safe and spun the dial.
Then we were at the garage door. The car keys hang on a little plaque of pegs, neatly labeled, beneath a picture of Mom. I mentioned there are pictures of her all over the house. She is in her wedding dress and behind the wheel of the world’s ugliest jalopy, made beautiful with well-wishes painted on the windshield and boots and tin cans tied to the tailpipe, and a snowfall of flung rice. She is standing on the seat, her long veiling frozen in mid-float of a long-ago gust of wind, and flings the bouquet toward some blurred figures out of focus at the edge of the frame. Dad in his Midshipman’s uniform, sword and all, is in the passenger’s seat, scowling at whoever was wielding the camera. Someone wrote DRIVE CAREFULLY in red on the glass of the picture in one corner of the frame.
Dad picked up the key to his gas hog, and pushed the little button that starts its engine. I heard the quiet roar of the big V-10 engine before he opened the side door into the garage. The engine was built into the frame of a Chrysler Crown Imperial. Huge car, a real beauty.
The car he started was for him. For me, he flicked the keys of the Jeep off the pegboard and tossed them my way.
“It’s early yet,” he said. “Turn on the antiradar gear, the police band scanner, and run any red lights. If the police see you, crack the nitro tank and outrun them. Or just run on nitro the whole way. Here, take my night-vision goggles, and drive without your headlights on.”
I have always wondered what a person looks like when they completely lose their minds. They look normal.
My dad looked entirely normal, just like he did when he was serious. It is the sane people who tend to look crazy when the weirdness starts. I cannot imagine what my face looked like. Watch yourself carefully in a mirror while having a good friend slam you over the head with a two-by-four, maybe you can tell me what it looks like.
I stammered out, “D-Dad?! You want me to lose my license before I even get a license?”
“Saving lives is more important. And keeping your word is more important. Get to the Museum just like he said, and shut down the equipment just like he said. If you see Miss Dreadful, warn her out of the area. Or anyone else. If the Coil is active long enough to condense a dark fog, there is an influence — think of it as a type of radiation — there will be radiation present that her cell structure will not be able to withstand.”
“Radiation? And what about me?” He was not answering. So I said, slightly louder, “Well, Father? What about my cell structure?”
“You will — uh — be okay.”
“How interesting! You know, Dad, when I wa
s younger you let me ride without a helmet. Skydive, too. But not my brothers. Why is that? Didn’t care if I broke my head?”
“Because I knew you would be — uh — be okay.” He looked embarrassed. “We don’t have time to talk.”
“Don’t we? Because I ain’t moving a darned inch unless you give me some answers, Dad! What happens if I don’t move?”
“You’ve read the Revelation of Saint John?”
“Yes. But what does that have to do with — uh? What?”
“Ilya, this is serious. I’ll keep talking if you keep walking. Into the garage.”
“I'm wearing sweatpants and a bathrobe!”
“Take my jacket.”
The jacket was heavy and black and a little small on me. My wrists stuck out. I think it was Kevlar, but whatever it was, it was darned heavy. I am a little broader in the shoulder than my dad, so I couldn't zip it all the way up. I clipped the collar shut, although it kind of choked me.
Great. I was wearing a bulletproof coat that did not cover my centerline ribcage, where I keep things like my heart and lungs. Maybe he just wanted me not to be cold.
He said, “Grab that flashlight there.” (This was a six-cell black Maglite as long and heavy as a billy club.) “And—this. Here! There may be trouble.”
He unlocked the garage weapon cabinet. We don’t keep the firearms there, just blades. He handed me the katana Grampa Mikhail had brought back from Japan after World War Two.
In the last days of the war, the Japanese government produced a lot of cheaply made samurai-style swords called shingunto to give to officers, because the military government was trying to enflame the populace with the romance of bushido, and devotion to the Imperial Family.
This was not one of those.
Forged in 1913, a twenty-five inch blade, the tang was signed by Sadakazu, the Imperial Court Artist under the Meiji. The temper line pattern was ko-notare, or ‘billowing wave’, characteristic of the Soshu school. The hilt was ray-skin wrapped in white silk, the tassels were red and gold; a sixteen-petal Imperial chrysanthemum was engraved on the tang of the blade; the fittings, guard and pommel were decorated with a cherry blossom motif, a symbol of the beauty and brevity of life. It was called Shirabyoshi — the White Dancing Maiden. It was named for the dancing girls, garbed as men and bearing white-sheathed swords, which performed for the Heian emperors before their downfall.