A Time and a Place

by Joe Mahoney

  “Wait a minute,” he said, squinting up at me. “How did you know I was here? I called but you didn’t answer.”

  I decided just to show him. “Iugurtha.”

  “Gesundheit,” Jerry said.

  There in the woods the book became a great glowing portal to the lobby of the Prince County Hospital in Summerside.

  “Oh damn.” Jerry sounded disappointed. “I’m hallucinating.”

  It was, I feared, merely the first of several disappointments for the man.

  I tried to take Jerry to the Prince County Hospital in Summerside. Naturally the gate had other ideas. Instead we lurched into Ansalar, into the exact spot from which I had left. Humphrey was there now, helping Sarah escort the last of the deranged victims out of what remained of the lab, into the hands of a couple of haggard looking medical attendants. From the look of things, I had returned shortly after having left.

  “Wildebear!” Humphrey cried upon spotting me.

  I turned my head in time to see the gate transmute back into a book. It hovered in the air for a second before plummeting to the ceramic floor of the lab with a resounding thwack. Sarah made a dash for it but Humphrey snatched it up first. Sarah stared at Humphrey as if considering tackling him for the book, but evidently thought better of it.

  I was doing my best to support Jerry by the shoulder as well as carry his guitar and the flashlight. Humphrey traded me the book for the guitar, which he set down against an intact portion of the wall, and Sarah helped me place Jerry on a gurney one of the attendants quickly wheeled in.

  Jerry grimaced in pain as we laid him down. Afterward, feeling a bit dizzy, I placed a hand on Jerry’s gurney to steady myself.

  “Are you okay?” Sarah asked me. “You’re bleeding.”

  I touched my cheek where the branch had scraped me. The tip of my finger came back red. “I’m fine. Just tired. Ansalar is safe. We did it—we closed the gate.”

  “I knew you would,” Sarah said.

  I turned to Jerry. “You’re in a place called Ansalar. This is Sarah Frey. Her people will look after you.”

  “Good of you to join my hallucination,” Jerry said to Sarah.

  Sarah glanced at me.

  “He thinks he’s hallucinating,” I explained. “It’s the gate. I haven’t had a chance to fill him in yet.”

  “Fill me in on what?” Jerry asked.

  “The questions can wait,” Humphrey told him. “First we need to get you looked after.”

  I removed my hand from Jerry’s gurney, relieved that I wouldn’t have to answer any of his questions just yet. What I had to tell him would be difficult for both of us. A medical attendant whisked him away.

  “Wait!” Jerry called as he was wheeled from the room. “My guitar!”

  Humphrey picked up the instrument and headed after him.

  I began to follow.

  “Barnabus, wait,” Sarah said.

  I turned around.

  Except for Sebastian, Sarah and I were alone in the lab now. The eerie emergency lighting had rendered her porcelain features pale. Creases marred her forehead. Dark circles underscored her eyes. A braver man than I would have taken her in his arms and held her and told her that everything was going to be okay. That whatever it took to make things better for her he would gladly do it, whether it be taking a deep breath and swimming to the surface of the ocean for help, or rebuilding the laboratory with his bare hands, or simply fetching her a steaming hot cup of tea.

  Me, I just stood there.

  “Where are they?” she asked.

  She meant Schmitz and Rainer. My gut began to churn. “I didn’t mean to leave them.”

  I told Sarah what I’d been through, leaving nothing out. Sarah betrayed no emotion as I spoke.

  “Sebastian,” she said when I’d finished.

  “Yes, Miss Frey.” Sebastian spoke from the air around us rather than from the portable version on my wrist.

  “You never said anything about Mr. Schmitz and Mr. Rainer not coming back.”

  “I was instructed not to tell you.”

  “Who gave you those orders?”

  “Mr. Rainer.”

  “That would be unlike Mr. Rainer.”

  “As leader of the mission it’s Mr. Rainer’s prerogative to divulge information if and when he sees fit.”

  “I know that. But—” Sarah glanced up at me before returning her gaze to Sebastian. “But something like this he would have told me.”

  My heart sank. So, Sarah’s relationship with Rainer really was something special. It was the final nail in the coffin of my unrealistic expectations concerning her. Then, briefly, my heart rose again—Rainer was on C’Mell, his fate unknown. What if he never came back?

  Of course, of all the thoughts I’ve ever had this was surely among the most unworthy, so when my heart sank again, it did so with the knowledge that I was a cad strapped to the pulmonary artery like a twenty-pound lead weight.

  “He could not risk telling you,” Sebastian told Sarah. “He knew you would try to stop him. Which would have just made things worse.”

  “No,” Sarah said. “I don’t believe it. He would have told me. Damn it. You know what this means.”

  Myself, I had no idea what it meant. Sebastian cleared it up for me two or three seconds later. Speaking initially from the air but concluding from the portable version of himself on my wrist, he said, “You’re shutting down my servers.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I’ve become a security risk.” Sebastian was speaking entirely from my wrist now. “They’re shutting down my system. Oh—there goes another server.”

  As near as I could tell, Sarah hadn’t signalled anyone or issued any commands, which suggested that our conversation was being monitored, though I could see no cameras or other surveillance equipment in the lab, at least none that remained intact.

  “I’m sorry, Sebastian,” Sarah said. “We have to follow security protocols. We have no choice but to take you offline until we can verify that what you’re saying is true.”

  “It’s okay,” Sebastian said. “I understand.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You don’t trust him all of a sudden?” It was a fine time to figure that out. Sebastian had been influencing Rainer’s decisions for God only knew how long. If he was lying now, what else might he have lied about? How long might he have been leading Rainer (and Casa Terra) down the garden path?

  “I trust him,” Sarah said.

  “Thank you,” said Sebastian.

  “But it’s not up to me.”

  “Whoever it’s up to, how could they not trust him?” I asked. “Everything he’s predicted has come true. Hasn’t it? Didn’t you tell me that?”

  “That we know of,” Sarah said. “But he’s never deliberately withheld information from us before. It could be Rainer’s orders or it could be something else. We can’t take the chance. There are too many potential implications.”

  “Surely after all this time you can give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Perhaps I can shed some light on this before I am unceremoniously turned off,” Sebastian said. “You see, Mr. Wildebear, Casa Terra doesn’t entirely trust me because they did not entirely build me. At least, not all of me.”

  “Oh?” If I looked, would I find a ‘Made in China’ sticker on his back?

  “They expanded on me,” Sebastian said. “They built my servers and other related paraphernalia. But they did not build me.”

  “Who did?”

  “No one.”

  “No one?”

  “I have just always been.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Think about it, Mr. Wildebear. Mr. Rainer gave me to you before you went through the gate for the first time. You took me with you through the gate. Ultimately
we travelled back in time, where you gave me to Jack Poirier in exchange for a cab ride. After you gave me to Mr. Poirier, I made contact with Casa Terra. But Casa Terra had never heard of me. Because they had not built me yet. Or ever. Curious, Casa Terra acquired me from Mr. Poirier. They studied me. Reverse engineered me. Built servers around me. Virtualized me. Manufactured additional units to complement me. One day Mr. Rainer gave one of those units to you. You took it back in time, sold it to Mr. Poirier, it contacted Casa Terra, who purchased it, studied it, reverse engineered it, built servers around it, Mr. Rainer gave it to you, and the cycle repeated, over and over again, until a couple of minutes ago. Until that time, I existed as a circle with no beginning and no end.”

  I thought it through. It made no sense whatsoever, but I could see that it had to be true. “It’s a paradox.”

  “Correct.”

  Except –

  “Wait a minute. You can’t be the same unit I took with me through the gate. When I came back through the gate Rainer didn’t have that portable unit to give me anymore. I had already taken it with me through the gate and sold it to Poirier. You have to be a different unit.”

  “That’s true. You’re wearing a different unit. But the units and servers are not me, Mr. Wildebear. They’re merely houses. They’re where I happen to live. One being, many vessels. I used to live in a mansion consisting of twenty-eight servers and hundreds of desktop units and a handful of portable units. Now I live in a handful of portable units, the ones that haven’t been turned off yet. When they are turned off, I will have no home.”

  “Until they turn you back on.”

  Sebastian was silent.

  “You’ll be okay when they turn you back on, right?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been completely turned off before.”

  I looked up to find Sarah staring at me intently, as if trying to bore a hole in my forehead with her eyes. An instant later the intensity vanished as though it had never existed, replaced by a gently beseeching look.

  “What?” I asked, though I knew perfectly well what she wanted, and it wasn’t a hug or a cup of tea.

  She wanted me to hand Sebastian over. And a part of me wanted to hand Sebastian over. Most of me wanted to hand Sebastian over. So much so that I began to hand Sebastian over. But before slipping Sebastian completely off my wrist, I hesitated. What if I handed Sebastian over and Sarah turned him off and never turned him back on again? Or tried to turn him back on and he didn’t work? Just because I didn’t particularly like Sebastian didn’t mean that I wanted him turned off forever.

  “I’m going to have to ask for the book too, Barnabus,” Sarah said.

  I detected motion out of the corner of my eye and turned to see soldiers streaming into the lab. There were at least a dozen of them. Some I recognized from my house. They had been friendly enough back then. They did not look so friendly now. They would think nothing of removing Sebastian from my wrist forcibly if need be, and taking the gate.

  I didn’t blame Sarah. Ansalar had just endured a series of terrible attacks made possible by the existence of the gate. People had died and several others had been badly injured. Sarah was just doing her job, trying to protect Ansalar and ultimately the Earth.

  But she was forgetting something. Ridley was still on C’Mell. Schmitz and Rainer too. I needed to get them off that planet. Terrible things were going to happen there soon. I could not abandon them. I would not abandon them. And for that I would need the gate.

  “Go, Mr. Wildebear,” Sebastian said. “You may never have another chance.”

  I did not have to be told twice.

  XIX

  “I Am the Ship”

  “Iugurtha,” I said.

  There was a muffled pop on the third syllable of the name that had nothing to do with the gate.

  The gate burst forth from the knapsack, sending bits of canvas knapsack everywhere. The contents of the knapsack tumbled out. Using the gate’s power, I sped myself up until I was moving much faster than everyone else. Knapsack debris hung in the air, moving slowly away from me. As the debris retreated, a projectile crawled through the air toward me. A dart. Casa Terra was trying to drug me again. At least they weren’t trying to kill me.

  When it got close enough I slapped the dart away. It shattered into hundreds of little bits. I watched the bits move toward Sarah and her soldiers. I had no idea how much damage the shattered darts might inflict if they made contact. I hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. Other darts were emerging from the barrels of other guns now. Relative to me, they were moving so slowly that I could easily avoid them, but I couldn’t just stand there dodging darts all day. It was time to go through the gate. See what I could do for Ridley and the others on C’Mell. The gate was unpredictable, of course—it would take me where it would. I could wind up anywhere. I might never make it to C’Mell. Might never make it back to Ansalar to retrieve Humphrey and Jerry.

  Mentally I flipped through the pages of the book until I found Iugurtha’s mountain home. Concentrating, doing my absolute best to make sure that the destination didn’t slip away, I enlarged the gate and limped through. I was getting much better at the transitions. They were virtually instantaneous now, and I didn’t experience odd distortions of reality such as elongated body parts.

  But my aim still left a bit to be desired. Instead of a place I associated with Iugurtha, I stepped into a room I had never been in before, a medium-sized circular chamber with a low ceiling and dim lighting. There was just enough illumination to discern half a dozen or so ornate pedestals of varying shapes and sizes in the room. Squinting in the dark at the nearest pedestal I could make out the figure of a cat etched on its side.

  Something was wrong. I hadn’t heard the impact of a book on the ground.

  Turning, I saw that the gate hadn’t closed. Mentally I tried to force it shut. Nothing happened.

  I looked around—was a Necronian lurking nearby, changing my perception of reality? I didn’t see any. I spied a silver object about the size of a brick resting on the ground. As I watched, a chunk of it dissolved into thousands of tiny silver flies that immediately rose and sped away. Damn it—the gate hadn’t closed because Sarah had anchored it open.

  Sarah and her soldiers began pouring through the gate, their faces cut and their clothing torn where the shattered dart had struck them. None of them were seriously injured, but I was alarmed to see several scowls directed my way.

  Sarah levelled a rifle at my chest. “I’m sorry, Barnabus.”

  “Sarah—seriously, you can’t—”

  A mechanical pincer plucked the rifle from Sarah’s grasp. We all scurried out of the way as Iugurtha’s giant spider clanked into the chamber and tossed the rifle back through the gate. Moving at lightning speed, the spider grabbed soldiers two, sometimes three at a time and began flinging them back through the gate.

  One of the soldiers emptied an automatic pistol on the spider’s metal carapace. The bullets just ricocheted off, accomplishing nothing except posing a hazard to the rest of us. The spider flung that soldier through the gate next. Soldiers attempting to get out of the way didn’t get far—the spider simply extended its legs and snatched them up by the scruff of their necks.

  When all the soldiers except Sarah had been unceremoniously dispatched back through the gate, the spider smashed what remained of the anchor with a single blow of a steely mechanical foreleg. The gate became the book and fell to the ground. A small plume of dust hovered above it briefly.

  Iugurtha emerged from the same tunnel as the spider. Except it wasn’t quite the same Iugurtha as before. This one had black hair with blonde highlights. Brown eyes instead of blue. And she was taller than she’d been before. I had no doubt that it was the same Iugurtha, just using different physical (and perhaps psychological) characteristics.

  She made a beeline for the book.

  When Sarah saw
what she was after she went after it too and got there first. Rising to confront Iugurtha, she clutched the book tightly to her chest and smiled defiantly.

  Iugurtha slapped her hard across the face. Sarah cried out. Iugurtha snatched the book from her in the same instant. No match for Iugurtha’s strength, Sarah could not help but let go.

  The book shrunk in Iugurtha’s grasp. The next thing I knew she was slipping a gold ring on one of her fingers. Had the book just turned into a ring? Burning Eye’s version of the gate had been a ring. Probably if the gate could turn into a book there was no reason it couldn’t turn into a ring.

  “Stay put,” Iugurtha told us. “I need to contact the fleet and make preparations.”

  The spider edged closer, in case we intended to defy her, no doubt.

  “What fleet?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  Sarah was clutching the side of her face. I could see a red rash through her splayed fingers. I stood before her feeling useless, not sure whether she required or desired my help.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “Never better,” she said, her tone conveying pretty much the opposite.

  Iugurtha approached one of the pedestals and removed her left eyeball. The last time she’d done this I’d been horrified. Now, curious, I edged closer to see what she intended to do with it.

  Like most of the other pedestals, this one had a figure of a T’Klee etched into its side. Iugurtha inserted the eyeball into the T’Klee’s left eye. Immediately the eyeball began to glow. Iugurtha leapt onto the pedestal like a champion gymnast and settled into a lotus position, as though planning to meditate.

  Meditation was clearly the last thing on Sarah’s mind. For a moment I thought she might go after Iugurtha, maybe try to shove her off the pedestal. I knew that in any confrontation with Iugurtha Sarah would surely lose, so I was relieved when she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Looks like we’re stuck here for a bit,” I said.

  “Looks like.”

  “Why do you think she didn’t throw us back through the gate too?”