Nightmare's Edge

  “They’re not random,” Solomon said, his voice sharp. “They’re the foundation points, the anchor loci that brace the triad structure.”

  “That’s irrelevant.” Dr. Gordon pulled the gun’s hammer back and pressed the barrel against Solomon’s forehead. “I want the musical key to their world, and I want it now.”

  A slight tremor shook Solomon’s legs. Keeping his head perfectly still, he swallowed. “If you murder me, you’ll never get it.”

  “True enough.” Dr. Gordon turned and aimed the gun at Simon Yellow. “First him, then the other Simon.”

  Simon Yellow grabbed his chair arms and shook violently.

  “I find it quite rational,” Dr. Gordon continued, “even virtuous, to sacrifice a couple of hesitant scientists in order to save billions of innocent lives.”

  “I am on your side,” Simon Yellow said. “I just want to save lives.”

  “And we will.” Dr. Gordon pushed the barrel against the bridge of Simon’s nose, bending his glasses. “What do you say, Solomon Shepherd?”

  Solomon uncrossed his arms. “Look, if I give you the right music . . .” As his voice trailed off, his gaze wandered toward the far side of the room.

  “What?” Dr. Gordon looked all around. “What’s wrong?”

  “We have company.” Solomon folded his hands behind his back. “Very important company.”

  Amber’s image walked into the room. She glided toward Dr. Gordon, her hand raised and her voice thundering with authority. “Put down your weapon!”

  Dr. Gordon staggered backwards. The gun fired. Simon Yellow flailed and spun toward the desk, then slumped back. Simon Blue pushed Dr. Gordon to the floor, kicked the gun away, and ran toward the exit. His image disappeared in the darkness.

  As Dr. Gordon crawled toward the gun, Solomon grabbed a cell phone from his belt and hurried away, shouting into the mouthpiece, “Francesca! Where are you?” He, too, vanished.

  Nathan balled his fists. The coward! He didn’t stop to check on Simon Yellow. He didn’t try to get the gun. He didn’t even stay to protect Amber.

  Just before Dr. Gordon’s fingers reached the gun’s butt, Amber picked it up. She swung out the cylinder and spilled the bullets into her hand. Then, without another word, she turned and walked away, dropping a bullet behind her.

  Dr. Gordon climbed to his feet and shook his fist. “I know who you really are!” he screamed, pushing back his hair. “You’re one of the stalkers! The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and your fruit is just as rotten as your father’s!”

  After taking a few deep breaths, Gordon staggered over to Simon Yellow and checked his pulse. He patted the corpse’s hand and quietly said, “I am truly sorry. I know you had our best interests in mind, and I never intended to shoot you. It was only a ploy.”

  With that, he sighed and stalked away. Soon, all was quiet.

  Daryl studied the data. “Looks like there’s not much else until we show up.”

  Nathan shuddered. His mouth was so dry he could barely talk. “If everything’s in the log file, why didn’t Dr. Gordon play it back and find out how my parents transported?”

  “He couldn’t.” Daryl nodded at the screen. “I started from the beginning. Everything before that’s been erased.”

  Kelly bent over Daryl’s shoulder and looked on. “So Solomon Yellow covered Patar’s tracks.”

  “Pretty much.” Daryl turned off the hologram. “But we have an auxiliary backup.”

  “A hidden log file?” Nathan asked.

  “No.” Giving him a wink, Daryl touched one of the computer speakers. “A hidden eavesdropper. Dr. Gordon was probably listening in.”

  “Oh, yeah. Can you get him on the ceiling?”

  “I’ll see.” She pulled the keyboard close and squinted at the monitor. “I haven’t done this in digital mode before.”

  While Daryl worked on the computer, Kelly lifted herself onto the edge of the desk, her shoulders low. “Too many delays.

  At this rate, we’ll never get to the foundation points in time.”

  “Right,” Nathan said, “and we still have to translate the code.”

  Kelly pressed her finger against the desk’s surface. “Translate it here? Even though Mictar might be lurking? And what about Gordon Yellow? We don’t know where he went.”

  “I think we’re as safe here as anywhere else.” He leaned over the desk and spoke to the computer. “Dr. Gordon, we’re going to try to get you on our ceiling mirror. In the meantime, do you know what’s up with the music they played to transport Patar and my parents to the stalkers’ world? Was it ‘The Moonlight Sonata’?”

  After the usual delay, Dr. Gordon replied. “Yes. I’m quite certain I heard it. Someone played it exquisitely on the piano.”

  “You mean it wasn’t Francesca’s violin from the iPod?”

  Nathan drummed his fingers again, this time more loudly. He glanced at Kelly and Daryl. Both girls rolled their eyes, apparently sharing his frustration.

  Finally, the speakers came on. “I couldn’t tell from here. All I know is that I have never heard it played with greater passion.”

  Nathan glanced at the piano near the wall and imagined Patar sitting at the bench, playing the keys with his long, narrow fingers. From what he could tell, Dr. Gordon had tried to play ‘The Moonlight Sonata,’ but, being a violist, he probably wasn’t adept enough on the piano to perform it with the passion Patar had mentioned earlier, back when they first entered the telescope room.

  “I think I found the converter,” Daryl said. “Ready to see Gordon?”

  Nathan shook his head. “Better not bother. It’s just too slow.”

  Dr. Gordon’s voice broke through again. “Daryl, your father asked me to send his love. He’s not here right now, but he will return soon.”

  “Soon?” Daryl’s ears turned redder than her hair, and her voice cracked. “That might not be soon here.”

  “No,” Dr. Gordon said.

  Pulling in her lip, Daryl nodded slowly. “I haven’t seen him in years.” She opened her mouth as if to continue, then lifted her fist and bit it.

  Kelly rubbed her back. “Don’t worry. This’ll be over before too much longer.”

  Daryl buried her face in her hands, nodding as she wept.

  “What’s next?” Kelly asked.

  Nathan raised a pair of fingers. “Two options. We can either check on my parents in the misty world, or we can figure out the foundation points from the card and that report page.”

  Kelly raised her hand. “I vote for figuring out the points. Even if we call up that world, we’ll probably just see the long hall and a lot of fog.”

  “I can monitor the interfinity forecast,” Daryl said, wiping her reddened eyes. “If your parents pull it off, I’ll be able to tell.”

  “That’s true.” Nathan nodded toward the piano. “Could you play the sonata if you had to, Kelly?”

  “It’s been a long time, but I should be able to remember some of it. Whenever my parents had a fight, I’d sit down and play the first movement over and over.”

  Daryl tapped at the keyboard. “If you give me the symbol correspondence, I’ll translate the codes into notes — that is, if I remember them.”

  “If you remember them?”

  She turned and winked. “Just kidding. I remember.”

  “Okay, let’s try to get this done quickly.” Nathan looked at the screen. Daryl had already typed several strings of base twelve numbers into a word processor. He pointed at a zero, the first character. “Those should all be middle C.”

  “Right.” She switched to the computer’s music generator program and entered the note. “I knew that one.”

  He moved his finger from the zero to a numeral one farther down the line, then to a two, and so on as he spoke. “Then it goes C-sharp, D, D-sharp, E, F, F-sharp, G, G-sharp, A, A-sharp, and B.”

  “Okay. Makes sense.” Daryl continued typing, her gaze locked on the screen. “Just tell the interpreter
to get ready. I’ll play a violin synthesizer over the speakers in a few seconds; first the notes from the card, then from the report.”

  “Great.” Nathan peered at the doorway. No sign of Mictar or Gordon Yellow yet.

  Daryl turned, narrowing one eye. “Whole notes, you think?”

  “Probably. Where will the music play? From the desktop speakers or from the wall units?”

  “I’ll pipe it to the big ones. If El Gordo comes back, this might be our only shot.”

  Nathan walked Kelly to the center of the room, guiding her with a gentle hand on her back. “Ready to give it a try?”

  “Sure. Uh . . . what exactly am I doing?”

  He set his hands on her forearms and looked into her eyes. “Just concentrate on the music and use your gift, just like when you could pick words out of music when the stalkers’ choir sang. This time, it might not be words, so just say whatever comes to you, and we’ll record it.”

  “Right,” Daryl called. “I’ll be the transcriptionist.”

  Kelly closed her eyes. “Okay. Ready when you are.”

  “One minute!” Daryl said, raising a finger. “Last line.”

  As the keys continued to click, Nathan looked back and forth between the two amazing young ladies, both exercising their extraordinary talents. Daryl, a spunky technowizard who always seemed to dance to an offbeat rhythm, and Kelly, a pensive, quiet artist. With her eyes closed and her head tilted slightly upward, she seemed to be in prayer, ready to communicate with the music — the breath of God, as his mother called it.

  Nathan pushed a hand into his pocket, again feeling the sting in his palm. If only he, too, could dig deep into his soul to unearth his gift. Now with his hand so maimed, it might be weeks before that could happen, but he didn’t have weeks. The time was drawing near when he would have to try.

  He searched the room again, his gaze lingering at the tourist door, then at the small elevator on the opposite side. Still no sign of Mictar or Gordon Yellow.

  “Here we go!” Daryl struck a key that echoed in the huge room. Notes played from hidden speakers; a violin, mechanical at best.

  Nathan grimaced at the poor quality. It sounded like his own playing when he was about six years old. Would it be good enough to transmit the codes properly to their interpreter?

  For a few seconds, Kelly said nothing. Her brow wrinkled, but she showed no other reaction.

  Nathan identified some of the notes and translated them to numbers in his mind. The early codes were designed to program Kelly’s mind, preparing her for the coordinates, so her silence made sense. But would it work? Could this impossibly strange code really provide three obscure pinpoints on a world map?

  Finally, Kelly took in a deep breath and spoke, loud and clear, each word separated from the next by a pause as if guided by a rhythm. “Red . . . north . . . five . . . one . . . five . . . zero . . . zero . . . west . . . zero . . . one . . . four . . . six . . . yellow . . . north . . . two . . . seven . . . one . . . seven . . . four . . . east . . . seven . . . eight . . . zero . . . four . . . two . . . blue . . . north . . . four . . . two . . . four . . . four . . . four . . . west . . . eight . . . eight . . . eight . . . eight.”

  With a click, the music ended. Opening her eyes, Kelly blew out a long sigh. “And one more eight.”

  “That’s five eights in a row,” Daryl said. “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what I heard. It sounded kind of strange to me, too.”

  Nathan walked with Kelly back to the desk. “Do those look like GPS coordinates?”

  “You tell me.” Daryl rolled away from the desk and nodded at the screen. “I’m not a travel geek like you.”

  He pointed at the first number. “If they’re all three decimal places, then that one could be fifty-one-point-five degrees north of the equator, and zero-point-one-four-six west of the prime meridian.”

  “Got it.” Daryl rolled back to the desk. “I’ll put in the decimal points for all three worlds.”

  “Does that computer have a way to look up GPS coordinates?”

  “It’s easy at home,” Daryl said, “but I don’t think Google Maps was around sixteen years ago.”

  Nathan nodded toward the ceiling. “Can you send them to Dr. Gordon? Maybe he can find them.”

  “Good idea.” Daryl typed madly for a moment, then turned back to Nathan. “Let’s hope they still have Internet there.”

  “Right. And even if they do, it could be a long wait.”

  Kelly walked across the room, scanning the floor in front of her. “In the meantime, I’ll look for that bullet Amber dropped.”

  Nathan hustled to join her. “What are you thinking? She left a trail?”

  “Exactly.” Holding her hair back as she looked down, she took slow baby steps. After a few minutes, she pointed. “There it is!”

  Nathan stooped and picked up the brass-colored bullet. “She was heading for the smaller elevator.”

  “Think we’ll find another one where she got off?”

  “That’s my guess.”

  “Incoming email!” Daryl called.

  Nathan pushed the bullet into his pocket and hurried back.

  “Did he find the locations?”

  “Yeah. Kind of strange, that’s for sure.” She read the message out loud. “The Earth Yellow point is on the front walkway to the Taj Mahal. Blue is very near the radio telescope site on that world, which should be only a few miles away from where you’re standing now, if you were on Earth Blue, that is, and Red is the back lawn at Buckingham Palace.”

  “Buckingham Palace? That was one of the photos we developed back when — ”

  “I know,” Kelly said. “So was the Taj Mahal.”

  “My father said he experimented at some sites. He must have been real close when he went to London. He just didn’t have the exact coordinates.”

  “So what now, boss?” Daryl asked. “Are you heading home for a world-saving performance at the palace?”

  “Eventually, but since this is the fastest-moving world, we’d better coordinate from here. We have to get Francesca Yellow to India. She’ll be our Earth Yellow player. I guess we should call Tony, since she took off with him.”

  “And your mom has to go to a telescope site?” Kelly shook her head. “That could be dangerous, especially if they have to be there at night while you’re ready to play in London in the daytime.”

  “Good point, except that in the three worlds, we can’t count on the time zone differences to work the way we expect. Maybe if she and Dad did a good job in Sarah’s Womb, we’ll have some extra time, and we can work it so that we’re all in daylight.”

  “I’ll check the collision status.” Daryl’s fingers went into action once again. A graphical representation of the three worlds appeared on the screen, each one moving along a color-coded line. Earth Red had pulled well in front of Earth Blue, and Earth Yellow seemed to be catching up with both at a rapid pace.

  “That’s the relative time speed,” Daryl said. “Now I’ll switch it to a multidimensional view.”

  The graph warped, gaining depth and shading. Now the three planets traveled on curved lines, two of which merged at the far right side of the screen.

  Daryl pressed her finger on the intersecting point. “That’s the big kabloowie for this world and Earth Blue. Interfinity is about five days away.”

  “Five is better than two.” Nathan bent closer to the screen. “Mom and Dad probably did the best they could. At least they bought a little more time.”

  “I can run the simulator through the projected path. It’ll give us a graphical representation of what will happen.”

  “Sure. If it’s quick. We need to get going.”

  “Right. Old Scarface still wants Kelly’s eyes.” Daryl tapped a few keys and pressed her finger near the center of the monitor. “That’s the impact point, an hour or so less than five days from now. Although the movement on the horizontal scale is based on Earth Yellow time, the distances between the spheres are
n’t based on time differences. What you’re seeing is a representation of metaphysical proximity, so the collision doesn’t mean their calendar dates have come together.”

  Three rotating spheres drifted toward Daryl’s finger, each one seeming to float on an undulating surface. The sphere farthest away in the screen’s perspective, shaded blue, and the closest sphere, shaded yellow, pulled ahead of the third Earth. They arced toward each other and melded together directly in front of Earth Red, then disintegrated into a scattering of green pixels that slowly expanded from the collision point. Earth Red continued on its course and passed through the debris.

  Daryl lowered her finger. “I suppose that splash at the end is just animation. I don’t think anyone really knows what will happen to the planets once they collide.”

  “Earth Red passed right through the collision point,” Nathan said. “Does that mean it’s not out of the woods? If the combined worlds somehow survive, won’t Earth Red just plow right into them?”

  Daryl shrugged. “Could be. It’s just a simulator. I’ve never seen a three-world metaphysical collision before, so I can’t help you there.”

  “Whatever happens, we have less than five Earth Yellow days to stop it, so the first priority is to contact the players.”

  “Think your parents will come back here?” Kelly asked.

  “Maybe, if they’re able. But we can’t wait around. We have too much to do, like hopping a flight to England and hoping we can get there in time.”

  Daryl opened the drawer containing the IWART devices and picked up one of two lying inside. “If you’re going to play a concerto, you’ll need these to conduct your orchestra.”

  Nathan took it from her and clipped it on his belt. “One’s missing.”

  “I’ll bet Solomon Yellow took it for Francesca,” Kelly said. “I noticed he had two devices hanging from his belt.”