City of Ports

by Jeff Deck

  I know the guys she’s referring to. None of them are good cops. Dirty, I can believe. But accomplices to murder, or even murderers themselves? That’s going to take me a minute to process. “Then why keep doing this, if you could get killed at any moment?”

  “Hm,” Nadia says. Her intense gaze is on me. “Why didn’t Jeanne d’Arc just throw her sword down and move to Poland? Why didn’t Magellan just turn around and head home at the first thundercloud?”

  I choose not to reply to this rather self-aggrandizing line of questioning.

  She goes on: “An infinite number of other dimensions and universes are waiting for us. Some are scary, yes, as you’ve experienced—but a far greater number of them are beautiful. Revelatory, even. We can advance the human race by finding these other places, and traveling to them.”

  “What if you open the wrong door? And can’t close it again?”

  Nadia’s eyes narrow. “That’s always the objection and the fear. But we can’t let ourselves be ruled by fear if there’s a chance for transcendence. Look at what our government does: develop horrible weapons out of its own self-interest, weapons that if used against our own country would cause its utter destruction. And yet the government doesn’t hesitate to keep researching new weapons of ever greater magnitudes of horror. What if we could commit to fearlessness in the pursuit of peace and spiritual ascension, instead of war and dominance?”

  Sol is nodding along. But of course this is the same guy who says he can literally hear Portsmouth talking to him when he goes for a walk.

  “I’d love to see the beautiful and transcendent places in the multiverse, or whatever,” I say. “But not if it means releasing a bunch of monsters into our world before you find those places. You know? Just because the U.S. government takes insane, deadly risks, doesn’t mean the rest of us need to.”

  Nadia breathes a sigh through her nose. “Just—let me show you. Don’t interrupt this time.”

  She’s finally worn me down. If this is what it’ll take to understand what happened to you—and what motivated you to get entangled with these zealots in the first place—then I ought to shut my dumb mouth and give Nadia a shot. I show her my palms and step backward, and she begins the opening ritual once more.

  Soon a furious rushing stream of water circles a patch of the air, and a window to another place comes into being.

  I hear a car driving over the bridges behind us. Headlights sweep over and past us. “Not worried about witnesses?”

  Trig clucks his tongue in dismissal. “People see what they want to see.”

  Suddenly I remember the night fisherman sharing the little beach with us. I turn back; he’s still focused on his task, or at least it seems that way. Then he nods at me. “Ah,” I say. “I’m sure your sentry helps, too.”

  Trig smiles and pushes his glasses up his nose.

  “Detective Allard,” Nadia says. The young woman extends her hand to me. Behind her, the Port roils, and—I don’t know what I see beyond. It feels as wrong as the temple of the giant slug did.

  OK. It was a mistake to think of Graham’s World. I feel my limbs freezing in place. I shake my head.

  “This one won’t create a copy of you,” she assures me. “It won’t harm you, or the good people of Portsmouth, in any way. Trust me.”

  Met with my silence, she adds, “Please.”

  I haven’t forgotten the terror of dislocation and the menace of those twinned serpents. But neither have I forgotten how I crossed through the last Port with you in my mind and heart. I’ll look to you for strength once again.

  “Okay,” I say finally to Nadia Chopin, “but you first.”

  Nadia leans through head first rather than stepping through. She somehow pulls herself the rest of the way, with her legs dangling curiously in mid-air before crossing. Sol goes next, using the same method.

  When I approach the Port myself, I see why they’ve chosen this awkward method of crossing: there’s nothing to step onto on the other side. I see a curved far wall of gleaming metal but not much else. Cautiously, I stick my head through the Port, closing my eyes as if I’m about to plunge underwater. I feel an unpleasant tingling in my head and shoulders, similar to the experience of crossing through the warehouse Port.

  I dare to open my eyes. A wave of disorientation hits me immediately because I’m facing forward when I should be facing down. I’m looking at the concavity of a shiny steel(?) wall—floor?—that just goes on and on, above my head and sheer to the other side of the large room. Nadia and Sol are picking themselves up to stand on the wall or floor. We appear to be inside a big, hollow sphere. But my now-upright companions are standing parallel to my body, which should not be possible in relation to my legs and feet still perpendicularly planted on the sand back on Earth.

  I snatch my head back into the world I know, treating myself to another gate-crossing brain zap, and I fall back on my ass in the sand, breathing heavily. Durmaz 1N looks down at me kindly. “You don’t want to do that for too long at a time. Hang between two universes. It’ll break your head.”

  I nod, still unable to speak.

  He walks over with curiously heavy steps and offers me a hand up. I accept. Then Durmaz adds, “So are you in or out? Just so you know, I was planning on heading in after you. Have to catch up with my family.”

  I let go of the man. I can tell he thinks I’m going to wuss out, and that pisses me off. I snap at him, “Hold my beer,” and I put my head down like a bull and I launch myself through the Port at a charge.

  Another zap and then I’m flying up, up above Nadia and Sol’s alarmed faces, with far more momentum than I would have expected. I’m soaring toward an object floating in the center of the sphere. It’s a statue, made of a similar metal to the sphere itself, but cast in blue—but what it’s depicting, I haven’t the faintest idea. Some kind of smaller sphere with a few dangling things at the bottom of it. Somehow I haven’t stopped moving: gravity doesn’t seem to have much of a say here, wherever here is. As I get closer, I can discern that the sphere of the statue is grated, allowing a look inside at a messy nightmare of sea creatures squashed together around a ravenous-looking, toothy mouth. The part that’s dangling from the bottom of the statue sphere depicts a clownish, unsettling face set onto a neck of eels or lampreys, with two large fish opening their mouths to reveal human-like hands.

  I slow to an unwelcome proximity to the weird statue and fling out my hands, though I’m loath to touch it.

  “Allard!” Nadia calls up. “Launch yourself off the statue, to the far wall. That’s where the door to the city is anyway. We’ll meet you there.”

  City?

  My fingers grasp the statue’s grating. The merry face at the bottom seems to be leering at me. I ignore it and will myself to hand-over-hand my way to the backside of the statue. Then I let go and steady my feet firmly against the statue, half-expecting the contact to send the statue spinning in the opposite direction, toward the Port. But somehow it remains anchored in the air. I launch with violent force from the “artwork” and sail through space, approaching the curved wall, where I do indeed see the outline of a closed door or hatch now.

  Too much force. I collide with the sphere wall, banging my shoulder at the point of impact. Sol heads for me in a series of light, deft leaps along the wall. He helps me, groaning, to my feet. “You okay, chief?”

  “Good, I’m good,” I say quickly. For whatever reason, I’m blushing as Nadia approaches in similarly lunar fashion, with Trig and Durmaz close behind. She gives me a sly smile.

  “Never took you for an acrobat,” Nadia says.

  “You could have warned me about the—gravity here, asshole.”

  She takes my insult in stride. “Didn’t want to spoil any surprises for you. The biggest one’s coming right up.”

  “Wait,” I say, as the woman tugs at the small handle on the door. “What is that thing in the middle?”

  “Spirit of water,” Nadia announces. The door pops open, letting in a su
rprisingly refreshing breeze. “We came through a water Port to get here.”

  “Doesn’t look like a spirit,” I say. “Looks like a monster.” I think back to the Port to Graham’s World. It was ringed with fire, and on the other side . . . “I saw a different monster in the place Graham found. Big slug. That supposed to be the ‘spirit of fire?’”

  She nods. “They’re not monsters, though. They’re, like, religious symbols. You’ll understand all this, in time.”

  “Then . . .” I take a last look around the metallic sphere. “This is a temple, too. Just like the building that those twin serpent things destroyed in their attempt to get at me, in Graham’s World.” The religious connotations of cult strike me anew. “Who built them, then?”

  Nadia waves a finger at me. “Try to focus your full attention on what’s behind this door.” She gestures for me to go through.

  I frown at her. I think I’ve earned the right to be suspicious of everyone at this point. But I do go through, and I gasp at the fantastic city that meets my eyes.

  Great towers and bridges and domes rise above me in shining abundance, all in gold like Durmaz’s earpiece. But they aren’t what immediately catches my gaze. No, it’s the fact that out here, we seem to be inside another sphere: a titanic one, like a city-sized bubble, through which I see surging cerulean in all directions. Rising in front of me, in the middle of a kind of city park, is a great wheel-like mechanism enclosed in its own protective dome, with pipes and gears emerging from the dome and snaking to every corner of this metropolis—or so I assume, as I realize I’m only looking at part of the city, and that it is curved in a way to match the bubble sphere that encases it.

  I step out into the park. Here gravity’s much more like what I’m used to, though with still a barely detectable lighter touch than Earth’s 1G. I take a couple of delightfully graceful strides and then look back. Above the metal sphere I see more skyscrapers and other proud urban phalluses reaching in the direction of the bubble.

  From the curve of this city, I’m shocked to realize that it’s anchored in the center of its bubble in much the same way the “spirit of water” was in the metal sphere, and that all the buildings are growing outward like a ball of golden spikes. Impossible.

  “The Axle,” Nadia says, gesturing at the mechanism in the dome. “It’s why this place is called Stroyer’s Axle. They use it to travel the world sea.”

  I barely hear her. I bounce along on the park grass, the crush of my excitement overtaking the slight gravitational boost and causing me to stagger. This isn’t just some relic of a lost civilization, like the temple in Graham’s World seemed to be. This is a living city. Durmaz is no fraud, no exception. There are many people here: walking through the park, moving in the windows of the towers, zooming around on scooter-like vehicles. All in lovely tones of brown, all of them far more attractive than little old me. And none of them seem to be paying us any particular mind, except for the two stationed outside the metal sphere I’ve just exited.

  These two clasp hands with Durmaz, exchange a few words with him, and then talk with Nadia and Trig—and Sol, who, while appreciative of his surroundings, does not look surprised by this city. Clearly he’s already been on this magical mystery tour; maybe it’s the standard procedure for newbies. I turn my attention to examining the two locals—guards, if that’s what they are.

  Like Durmaz, the two men could pass for height- and beauty-advantaged humans. Their uniforms are azure and close-fitting, with an unfamiliar star-shaped logo over the heart. But they have the same point to their ears, the same weird ear-hanging device Durmaz does, and there’s one other detail that would definitely draw stares if they were walking through Market Square: a kind of scope covers (or has replaced?!) their left eye, a circular, red-glassed device that would look right at home sitting on a sniper rifle.

  “These visits really should be cleared with the navigator first,” one of them says to Nadia. Again in English. It occurs to me the earpiece thing is a translator.

  “We have an understanding . . .” Nadia begins to reply. My attention drifts back to the city itself, the sea pressing against the bubble, and the Axle in its dome. I walk toward the Axle with unsteady steps. And I can almost sense you walking beside me.

  Had you been here?

  If so—good gods, why didn’t you tell me?

  My mind is exploding right now with the implications of . . . this. This city. This world. Graham’s World. People, civilizations, territories beyond everything I ever thought I understood. No wonder once someone crossed through a Port, they thirsted for more. How deeply did you thirst?

  “They want to take this from us,” says Nadia. She glides in front of me and takes my hand gently. In a daze, I don’t resist. “There are hundreds of Ports in the city—in Portsmouth—and those are just the ones we know about. Trig estimates there may be thousands left to uncover. Think of the universes, the multiverses, waiting for us. It’s the greatest discovery humanity has ever made!”

  “Who’s they?” I say numbly.

  Nadia’s already wound up; there’s no stopping her. “But they don’t want us to visit these places, and explore and learn. They want us—they want us all, including themselves—to be steeped in ignorance. They kill us to protect the status quo. They’re rich and powerful and they like things just the way they are.”

  “Nadia,” I snap. I know she’s not talking about the police this time. I squeeze her hand harder until she draws it away. “Nadia. Who? Who’s killing you?”

  “You should know by now, Detective,” she says, scowling at me and nursing her fingers.

  I know she’s manipulating me at least a little here. Making me speak the answer she’s leading to—well, that just makes it seem like my idea, doesn’t it? Classic. But it doesn’t mean her answer is wrong. Portsmouth is full of wealthy stakeholders. Gates to other universes opening up willy-nilly in their city would certainly complicate their investments. Particularly if some of those universes are as dangerous as Graham’s World proved to be. But there’s only one group of stakeholders who could hold the police chief in the palm of their hands.

  I was right all that time to suspect a vile conspiracy to cover up your death. I was simply wrong to think that it ended with Chief Akerman.

  “The city council,” I say, with the horrible weight of truth threatening to drive me into the ground. Lighter gravity be damned.

  “Almost all the councilors have drenched their hands with blood,” Nadia says, nodding. “But it was Councilor Stone who killed Hannah that night.”

  Stone. I think back to the elegant woman at the podium in front of the Seafare Estates. I have a hard time imagining her committing murder. But I don’t doubt that she’s capable of it. “How? Why?”

  Nadia’s gaze pierces through me. “I don’t know exactly what Hannah was up to that night. But I believe she found a new Port. At the excavation site. I think she was going to open it when Stone killed her.”

  “Hannah used her wrist device to locate it,” I say.

  Nadia looks at me grimly. “That’s right.”

  “How would Stone have known she was there at that moment?”

  “I don’t know,” she admits. “The councilors have been trying to track us down. They must have ID’ed Hannah as a member of our organization. At first I assumed that you had found out, through your relationship, and ratted on her to your police chief. But you showed me pretty quickly how wrong I was. Getting yourself suspended and all.”

  I realize I’ve missed asking the obvious question. “How do you know Stone was the killer?”

  “Because I saw her,” Nadia says softly. “I was there that night.”

  I see tears brimming in the woman’s eyes. The harsh façade she’s built is finally crumbling. My heart lurches, and I take her hands again. “I—promise I won’t squeeze this time.” No matter how desperate I am for her to continue.

  She accepts my comfort. She takes a hitching breath. “Hannah invited me to that spot
, that night. I believe, I believe she wanted to show me a new Port. What else could it have been, out there? Hannah arrived first. But someone else got there before I did. It was dark and I don’t think either of them saw me as I walked toward them . . . This other person, this woman, crept up behind Hannah. She was wearing a red coat with a hood, but she pulled the hood down just before she attacked Hannah.”

  Red coat. Oh shit. That detail never made it into the Porthole. I find I’m stroking Nadia’s solid hands obsessively, and I force myself to stop. Nadia was there.

  “It was Grace Stone. No doubt about it. She—” Nadia lets out a choking sob. “No, my god. Hannah was your fiancée. You don’t want to—”

  “Goddamn right I want to hear it,” I murmur, though my own cheeks are wet now too. “I need to. Please.”

  She swallows. “Stone picked up a rock and she, she beat Hannah with it. First in the head, and then all over her poor body. Hannah was surprised and she never had a chance. When Hannah stopped moving, Stone shoved on her body until it rolled down into the pit. Then she pulled her hood back over her face and walked away.”

  “And so did you,” I say.

  My tone was flat, bereft of accusation, but Nadia flinches anyway. “Yeah,” she whispers. “I was afraid. I’m—I’m sorry. I wanted to come to you and tell you what happened to her. So many times, I almost did. But I knew it would open up so many questions, and—and I couldn’t. I didn’t trust the police. I’d seen several of my friends disappear already. So what good would it even have done to tell you?” She pauses. “That’s what I thought then, anyway. Now I know . . . I should have told you. I am so sorry.”

  The old Divya Allard might have judged Nadia more harshly for her actions. She had, after all, contributed to me spending months in a vortex of mental anguish and uncertainty. If Benazir were here, she’d surely urge me to slap this kid upside her pretty face.