A Million Worlds With You

  If anyone knows about what nearly happened with the plasma venting, nobody gives any sign.

  The Astraeus has a large enough staff for there to be a resident shrink, Dr. Singh, who has me lying down for an exam within seconds. Her black hair is cropped short and a bit spiky, and she looks like she’s no older than Josie. Yet I find myself trusting her instantly. “Are you experiencing depression?” she asks.

  “No.” I mean, I guess not. There’s no telling what might be going on in this Marguerite’s mind, since she’s now been inhabited by two trans-dimensional visitors in a row. “I’ve been really stressed out, though.”

  Dr. Singh nods. “Have you had suicidal impulses?” Mom and Dad look at each other, stricken. The doctor notes their reaction and leans closer to me. “If you’d rather speak to me without your parents in the room . . .”

  “No, no, it’s okay. They should hear this.” I take a deep breath. How can I keep this Marguerite safest? “I’m not suicidal. But some of the stuff I’ve been doing during these, uh, blackouts—it’s dangerous. I don’t know why, and it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s happening and I’m scared.”

  “Okay,” Dr. Singh says, laying one hand on my shoulder. “I agree with your parents—you should be taken off duty immediately. You need sleep, rest, and relaxation. Exercise, too. The logs say you haven’t been keeping up with the requirements. You’re not at the reprimand stage yet, but you will be soon. And if your body is out of whack, sometimes the mind follows suit. Maybe this would be a good time for you to concentrate on your art.”

  They really need to understand the key point here, so I say it out loud: “I should be watched.”

  Again, the three adults in the room exchange glances. Dr. Singh says, “You reported no hallucinations, no violent impulses—”

  “But what if that changes?” Which it will, if Wicked ever returns to the Spaceverse. “What then?”

  “There’s no reason for us to assume that’s going to happen,” Dr. Singh insists. “The psychological strain of space duty affects many people adversely for a while, but the vast majority of them get over it. If I put everyone who’d ever acted strangely on the Astraeus into lockdown . . . well, we wouldn’t have much of a crew left.”

  “Can you do a brain scan?” Mom straightens and folds her hands in her lap. Her posture looks almost laughably prim, but I’ve learned that’s how Mom gets when she’s scared. “If Marguerite has developed a brain tumor—”

  “Sophie, no.” Dad puts his hand on her shoulder and gives her a little comforting squeeze. “Don’t let your worries run away with you. You’ll upset Marguerite.”

  But my mother won’t budge. “I’m not upsetting Marguerite. I’m trusting her judgment. Our daughter has told us something is seriously wrong with her. She’s hurting, and she’s frightened. We need to obtain as much information as we can through every possible diagnostic test. Only then can we form any meaningful hypothesis about Marguerite’s condition.”

  I wanted a guard at my door, not a battery of medical tests. Still, I can’t help smiling weakly at Mom. It feels good to know she’d go to bat for me, even when I’m behaving weirdly, even when the doctors are telling her to let it go. Not all parents support you that much; Paul’s never have, never would. I got lucky with Henry Caine and Sophia Kovalenka.

  Dr. Singh capitulates with a small smile. “I suppose it can’t do any harm, and I don’t have any physicals to run until tomorrow. Lie down, Marguerite. This won’t take a second.”

  Obediently I take my place on the medical table. Instead of the paper covering I’m used to, here the table is sleeved in clear plastic, which must be sterilized after each use. What kind of tests are they about to run? I’ve never been a baby about shots or blood draws, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy getting poked with needles. Or maybe they’ll do something more dramatic. Would a space station have an MRI machine?

  But Dr. Singh simply takes out what looks like a metal headband, thick and elaborate, and slides it over my head so that the two points press in on my temples. The band itself doesn’t quite touch my skin. I feel a warm, electric sort of prickle—not pleasant, but not painful either—and readouts begin to stream along nearby screens. Dr. Singh watches them, nodding and at ease, until she gasps.

  “What do you see?” Dad says sharply. “Dear God. When Sophie talked about a tumor, I thought—”

  “It’s not that.” Dr. Singh steps closer to the screen, looks back at me, then stares at the screen again. “There’s no tumor. Body chemistry is largely within normal parameters. But Marguerite’s brain activity, particularly in the precuneus—that’s a section of the parietal cortex, the core seat of our consciousness—well, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Mom rises to stand by Dr. Singh as my father’s hand closes reassuringly over mine. My mother says, “Can you draw any conclusions? Even speculate?”

  Dr. Singh shakes her head, not in negation but in wonder. “The levels of activity in the precuneus are higher than I’ve ever seen. Higher than should even be possible.”

  “Is that good or bad?” Dad squeezes my hand tighter.

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Singh says. “It looks like—almost like—no. That can’t be.”

  “Things are only impossible until they’re not.” Mom’s tone goes firm. “Say the first thing on your mind, doctor. The first conclusion you came to.”

  After a moment, Dr. Singh sighs. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was more than one mind at work inside Marguerite’s brain.”

  Holy crap. They found me.

  9

  FOR A SPLIT SECOND I CONSIDER TELLING THEM THE TRUTH. Hi. I’m a visitor from a parallel dimension, an alternate version of your daughter hitching a ride in her body for a while. I’m here to protect you from yet another version of your daughter, who just tried to kill her. See? It’s a very simple explanation, really.

  Yeah, no. For now, I’m playing it safe.

  “What could that mean?” I ask Dr. Singh, trying to sound natural.

  She gapes at the readouts. “I have no idea. This is completely unlike any results I’ve ever seen. Nobody’s even theorized something like this before.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Dad has wrapped both of his hands around one of mine, probably meaning to comfort me, but I think he’s the one who needs reassurance.

  “If you’d shown me these readings on their own, I might have said yes.” Dr. Singh looks back at me and shrugs. “But Marguerite is awake, alert, apparently healthy, and displaying no stranger symptoms than some short-term memory loss. So while this clearly has some deleterious effects, and we need to keep an eye on her . . . her mental function is more or less intact.”

  “I take it monitoring is the next step.” My mother is trying very hard to act impartial about this, but her hand trembles slightly as she tucks a loose curl behind one of her ears. “We wait to see whether this activity—spikes, or diminishes, and so forth.”

  “Exactly,” the doctor says. “We keep her under observation, twenty-four/seven.” Then she frowns. “I keep using that phrase even though it doesn’t apply up here. . . .”

  That makes Dad chuckle, and even Mom smiles a little. Good—I don’t want them to be too frightened. The weird activity in their daughter’s brain will resolve itself as soon as I take off with the Firebird. If Wicked ever returns for a second murder attempt, they’ll cue into her weird behavior right away.

  Mission accomplished.

  Except—how do I get back down to Earth?

  The answer is obvious, in one sense. I return to the sweet, sweet ground I will never take for granted again the next time I use the Firebird. Chances are that whatever dimension lies ahead, I’ll find myself back on terra firma. But I’m trapped here until I get a moment to myself to try to leap away.

  Part of me wants to obsess about what Wicked might be doing in the next world over. She nearly launched me into the absolute zero of space this time, so how could I even guess what might be waiting ahead?
But I’m too freaked out by memories of the world I left behind.

  Theo killed me.

  He strangled me with my own scarf, his body on top of mine, so he had to have felt every convulsion, heard every choking sound, and eventually felt the other Marguerite go limp beneath him as she finally died. As awful as I feel about what happened to my Londonverse counterpart, the death my other self faced in the Egyptverse was even more terrible. Every time I let my mind wander for even an instant, memory jerks me back to that moment, to the visceral sensation of Theo’s fingers tightening around my throat. It’s like an adrenaline shot to the heart or an electric shock, every single time.

  Sometimes the memory of horror is worse than the horror itself. You only live through the trauma once, but a memory can last forever. Memory never has to let you go.

  I think this one’s going to keep its hold on me for a very long time.

  How am I supposed to beat Wicked? I can never catch up to her. Do I have to just chase her endlessly, fixing the disasters she created?

  Yes. I do. Until we have another plan, the best I can do is help to save these other Marguerites. I couldn’t rescue Londonverse or Egyptverse . . . but Spaceverse is fine.

  Well, if “under psychiatric observation” counts as fine.

  Dr. Singh decides I should rest in my own room, so Mom and Dad take me there. My quarters turn out to be private, which is nice. They’re also small, which I guess I should’ve expected. In here the walls are covered with some white resin, and decorated with my own charcoal drawings, which are kept in place by magnetic metal corners. The bunk is hard-molded into the wall and comes complete with a safety harness, just in case we lose gravity in the night, I guess. No window, thank God. I open a few drawers, looking for something more comfortable to put on, but apparently in space it’s all jumpsuits, all the time.

  “Do you need anything else?” Mom gently pats my shoulder. “Anything at all?”

  “Maybe something to eat?” I’m not hungry. But my parents need something to do, to feel like they’re helping. They nod and hurry into the corridor, which gives me my first moment of privacy in this universe.

  I slump onto the bunk and rub my head with one hand in an attempt to massage away a headache before it begins. If I think any more about what happened to the last Marguerites—the two Triad killed, the two I lost—I’ll lose it completely. The flashbacks shake me up too much to think straight. Concentrate on something else, I tell myself. Anything else.

  The charcoal drawings interest me the most, so I focus on them. Sometimes analyzing the artwork of another Marguerite tells me how she’s different from me, or a little more about what her life is like. Here, Marguerite either isn’t as motivated by color as I am or she doesn’t have as wide an array of art supplies to choose from. The more I study her work, the more I think it’s the latter, because I see energy in her work. Vitality. Every stroke is bold. Josie’s eyes are as vivid in black, white and gray as I’ve ever painted them in color.

  This Marguerite lives under tight constraints, I think. The rules for living in space must be strict on every score, from the exercise regulations to the infinitesimal amount of private space. So she finds ways to be creative within those boundaries. It helps me to connect with her, get some sense of the life she lives, because she’s the only one I’ve been able to save so far.

  That’s as long as it takes for my parents to return with my meal (a fairly ordinary sandwich and juice, though everything is bagged and sealed). Then they make me lie down under the covers as if I were a little girl again, running a fever. “You should rest,” Dad says. “Rest helps everything.”

  I smile up at him. “I thought that was tea.”

  “Tea solves everything. So I’ll bring you a cuppa later on.” Dad leans down and kisses my forehead, something he hasn’t done in years.

  “We’ll restrict access to your room,” my mom promises, “and there’s an electronic sentry on your door. You can leave whenever you want, but you’ll be tracked when you do. I realize that’s a high level of surveillance, so if you’d rather we didn’t—”

  “No. Keep on tracking me. This isn’t something you can leave up to my mood on any given day, all right?” My parents have to understand. “I’m going to be fine, as long as you keep watch.”

  “Then watch we shall.” My father smiles at me, though worry has dulled the usual twinkle in his blue eyes. “Call us if you need us.”

  Then they’re gone, and for one moment I simply lie there, indulging in the luxury of stillness. But then I put my hand to my Firebird. Lucky thing medical exams in space don’t require you to strip down; while people native to each dimension find it difficult to see a physical object from another—i.e., the Firebird—they can spot it if they look hard. A doctor performing a physical would be looking hard. The automated instruments ignored the Firebird completely.

  Obviously I should attempt to leap out of the Spaceverse immediately—but after two terrible deaths, it’s hard to brace myself to dash into yet more mortal peril. The first time I tried in this universe, I was almost relieved not to move on. Not only will I have to face danger, but I’ll also take on the responsibility for saving another life . . .

  You saved this one, I remind myself. Now try to save another.

  One deep breath, I hit the controls—and nothing. Wicked still hasn’t moved on. I slump back down on the bed, suddenly so tired I think I could sleep for days. Maybe that’s the best thing I could do, for now. Let this Marguerite rest, take what comfort I can in my dreams.

  Then the door chime sounds as the door swooshes open automatically. My parents had promised to seal my quarters, so whoever this is has permission to enter. Probably it’s Doctor Singh . . .

  Instead, I look up to see Paul, clad in his own Astraeus jumpsuit. He’s with us in space, too. Before I can say anything, he reaches his thumb under the neck of his jumpsuit and reveals his Firebird.

  “Paul.” I want to jump up, to hug him, to bury myself within his strong arms and imagine he can protect me from everything. That’s a lie—but the illusion would be so comforting right now, like the warmest, softest blanket in the world.

  Yet I remain on the bed. He’s pushed me away so many times that I don’t think I could bear another rejection. Besides, right now Paul looks even more shell-shocked than he did when he first appeared in the Egyptverse.

  For a long moment, neither of us speaks. Finally Paul says—very quietly—“Was it me?”

  “Was what you?”

  “Was it me who hurt you?” Paul’s voice shakes. The only other time I’ve ever seen him so close to the brink was when I told him my father had died. “No. Am I the one who killed you?”

  “No. No!” I scramble up from the bed to stand in front of him, close enough to touch—even though we don’t. “It was Theo. The Triadverse’s Theo. He followed me there.”

  Paul slumps against the plastic wall, like he couldn’t have held himself up one moment longer. “I was between reminders—I didn’t know. When I came back to myself, I saw you dead again.” He breathes out heavily, like someone struggling not to cry. “Again.”

  “Hey.” I step toward him and put my hands on his shoulders. “I’m here, okay? I’m your Marguerite, and I’m all right.”

  His gray eyes search mine, and I wonder whether I’m still his Marguerite.

  “Your parents found the body,” he says quietly. “Theo had left on some kind of errand—nobody knew who had done it—but when Theo doesn’t return, I guess they’ll realize who the murderer was.”

  I wonder about the Egyptverse’s Theo, who might have been a dandy and a flirt but wasn’t a murderer. He’ll come to in Cairo or some other Egyptian city, completely unaware of what he’s doing there. If he’s caught, he’ll go to prison or be executed for a crime he didn’t commit. Wicked’s destroying more lives than just mine.

  “Why did you think you could’ve killed me?” Is that a question I really want the answer to? I’m not sure.

&nbs
p; Paul crosses his arms in front of his broad chest. “Why did you think I couldn’t have?”

  “Even the worst version of you I met”—the Mafiaverse Paul (we both know this; no need to say it out loud)—“even he wouldn’t have done that.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like in here.” Paul’s gesture indicates his head, his mind. “I can’t describe it. It’s like . . . like the pathways between my thoughts and my actions have all been ripped apart, or rerouted. Emotions I could set aside before—anger, jealousy, or even hate—now it’s as if they take over my brain. I could have made a mistake, Marguerite. I could have done it.”

  A chill traces its icy fingers up my back, but I refuse to give in to paranoia. Somehow I have to help him to believe.

  “You didn’t. Okay? You weren’t the person who hurt me. So let’s stop freaking out about what could’ve happened and concentrate on what did.” But now I can only think about the Egyptverse—one of the most beautiful worlds I’ve ever visited—and how it’s just been ruined for so many people I love.

  “When the reminder brought me back, I heard Sophia screaming, and the sound of it . . .” Paul winces, shuts his eyes. “I knew you were dead just from that. Just from the sound of her scream.”

  “I’m one for three.” My voice sounds hollow in my own ears. “Wicked tried to throw this one into outer space—but I made it back in. At least this one is going to be okay.”

  Paul looks at me, gaze hard, as if he might spot some injury I’d missed. “If I can create the device that would help the Firebirds to increase the asymmetry and strengthen this universe, then we can keep her safe. The technology should be at hand here. This could be the first world we have a real opportunity to save.”

  Which is absolutely true. Yet to my bruised spirit it sounds a little as if he’s saying, You obviously can’t protect anyone, but I can.

  I force myself to stay positive, to think constructively. “So. We’re in outer space. Wow.”

  “I used to think I’d like to go into the space program,” Paul says. “When I was small.”