by Dakota Rusk
But for the moment the Institute’s evil board members were hamstrung, and the university’s administration had solved the worst of the students’ fiscal distress; everyone now received a weekly allowance to clothe and feed themselves. Yet as the summer wore on with no relief from the burden of being stranded on campus, unrest inevitably broke out again—this time even accelerating into riots. A group of especially hardened students, led by our old foes Gunther and the Hyena Girls, actually set fire to Heisenberg Hall, which was the administration building. A large section of it was destroyed, and one counselor was badly burned and had to be evacuated to a Greenwich hospital.
That’s when my friends and I were first called on to become student leaders, and to go public with our knowledge of the situation. Yes, we told everyone, the Terminus Engine could no longer be safely used; but there was another way to transition between the parallels, and if everyone would just be patient we could make that available to them. It all hinged on when our friend Eddie Mason, who invented the technology and possessed its only prototype, returned to help us out.
But summer drew to a close and Eddie hadn’t returned. And the anger and panic, which we’d reduced to a barely perceptible simmer, came to a boil again. There were even some students who wanted to turn the Terminus Engine back on, just long enough for them to return to their home parallels. My friends and I had to be trotted out to explain that this absolutely could not be allowed: at exactly the moment we’d shut down the Engine, it had been gearing up to eliminate this parallel—the very one in which it existed. If we turned it back on, the probability was that we would all die.
In fact, we’d worse than die; we’d be erased from the multiverse—retroactively expunged from Creation. It would be like we’d never even existed.
And it was at that critical moment that the witches showed up.They just appeared one day…a delegation of eighteen people who announced that they’d come from Parallel 17—which is the one where magic, not science, was the predominant technology.
The head of the group was a sleek, jet-haired woman named Jocasta Foxglove. She explained to the administration that the mages and wizards of their world had discovered a means of transitioning between the parallels—hence, their sudden arrival, apparently out of thin air—and they were willing to implement it at Parallel U.
That was the key word: “implement”—not “share.” Because there was a condition attached to the offer: Parallel 17 would take over the university.
The entire board of regents and many of the higher administrative offices would be replaced by Parallel 17’s own people…who would then go on to make bold, decisive changes to the university’s core curriculum.
After all, they argued, they were living proof that magic had succeeded where science had failed; so science was obliged to do the honorable thing, and step aside.
That all this happened just as the academic year was getting under way was doubly unfortunate. Many students were deeply frustrated at having lost an entire summer of their lives to being stranded on campus, and were averse to beginning another fall term as though nothing at all was the matter. So there was an immediately groundswell of support for Jocasta Foxglove and her people—who began wandering around campus, mixing with the students, and doing their best to bring them over to their side.
The result was chaos. Many students simply chose not to attend classes. A few of the faculty chose similarly. A crisis was looming; and so the president, after conferring with the U.N. task force, settled on a course of action: the university would hold a referendum on the offer from Parallel 17.
It was scheduled for November 30. That gave the administration time to carefully consider all the ramifications of the offer and to set in place processes by which a transfer of authority could be accomplished, if it came to that.
It was a stalling tactic, clearly. They were hoping that somewhere in that time, the witches would trip themselves up…reveal some weakness, or maybe even be persuaded to compromise.
But what the decision really did was offer the witches just that much more time to reach out to every single student on campus, and insinuate themselves into their thinking processes.
Which is exactly what had happened with me. A witch had sought me out and told me that my home parallel was still there, and persuaded me to let her prove it.
I’d thought I was safe from her; after all, I’d seen so much during freshman year. I’d witnessed the murderous greed of the Terminus Institute, I’d stood before the Terminus Engine itself, I’d stared into the fiery, screaming heart of the Veil. How could a few parlor tricks influence me?
And yet here I was, sitting among my friends with doubts stinging me like a swarm of hornets. And worse, I was harboring a secret. I’d met with a witch. I’d let her put me into a trance. I’d surrendered my body, and my mind, to one of them.
Yes, it was foolhardy. We really knew next to nothing about Parallel 17. Only one student from its version of Earth had ever enrolled at Parallel U.—in fact, she’d been Merri’s first roommate; a girl named Rowella—and she ended up dropping out during the first semester. Her magic-based learning simply couldn’t accommodate even the most basic principles of science.
The University had offered to transfer Rowella’s scholarship to a replacement student from Parallel 17, but none had ever been put forward; and in fact Parallel 17 had, after that, restricted and eventually cut its ties to the Terminus Institute.
Now here they were again. Why? And how? What exactly was their game? My friends were deeply suspicious.
“They must be up to something,” Merri said. “There’s got to be a reason they want to assume control of the university. I mean, it’s a lot of work to take on.”
“It’s a lot of power to take on,” Gerrid said.
“Maybe,” said Darius. “But not at the moment. Right now, the university is basically a lead weight. We’ve been essentially taken away from the Terminus Institute—not that I’m complaining—but we don’t really have a purpose anymore. The school is an albatross around the international community’s neck. We’re needy orphans. Why would Parallel 17 offer to rescue us?”
“Are you kidding?” said Merri. “We’re a repository of minds, remember? Right here, on this campus, are the only sources for information on the technologies, cultures, and histories of more than six dozen parallel Earths.”
“But if the witches have access to those other parallels,” I said, “then why would that matter?”
“They don’t have access,” said Merri, shaking her head. “They can’t.”
“Well…they’re here,” I said, treading carefully. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to bring my friends around to the witches’ point of view, or whether I wanted them to lead me away from it.
“They must have come before the Terminus Engine was shut down,” Gerrid said.
“Then why wait all this time before making themselves known?”
“To establish their story,” Merri said. “To make it seem credible that they just appeared from Parallel 17 by magic.”
“Which…is impossible,” I said, watching their faces.
“Of course it’s impossible.” Darius stood bolt upright and strode about the room. “We know objectively that magic doesn’t work. The manipulation of power sources has to be triggered by a burst of energy—whether that’s the movement of bicycle pedals by the pumping of human legs, or the ignition of the fuel in an internal-combustion engine.”
I thought about the way Olwen had ignited the bowl of herbs and oils to make the vapor that had wafted me home. “Maybe magic can do that—just in a way we don’t understand.”
Merri shook her head. “We’re talking about sufficient power to pierce the Veil, Fabia. There simply isn’t any source in nature capable of doing that, without the application of advanced mechanics. You can’t just…I don’t know. Throw some sage leaves into a pentagram, and jump through it to Parallel Whatever.”
“We don’t know that’s what the witches do,
” I protested. “We don’t know anything about their practices.”
Gerrid nodded. “And that’s what makes them dangerous.”
I sat back, frustrated…half convinced they were right, half frustrated that they weren’t listening to me. I dawdled with the fringe on my sleeve so that I wouldn’t have to meet their eyes, and said, “So, the way you see it is this: the delegation from Parallel 17 came here before the Terminus Engine shut down—for some reason we don’t know yet—and when they found themselves stranded here like everyone else, they kept themselves hidden until the time they could come forward and pretend to have just arrived through a parallel-crossing technology of their own. With the ultimate aim of taking over the university and having access to all the minds enrolled here.”
Merri grimaced. “Something like that. I admit, as a theory it’s got some holes in it.”
“The major one being,” I said, impressed by my own analytical prowess (clearly, hanging around these three had started to rub off on me), “why would they want to overhaul the curriculum, dumping science classes in favor of magic ones, if they know magic doesn’t work?”
Gerrid shrugged. “Maybe they don’t know. Maybe all the evidence against magic just makes them more determined to prove it does.”
Merri sighed. “That sounds depressingly plausible. Good old human nature at its most obstinate.”
Darius sat back down again and shook his head. “At times like this, I’m glad I’m not your kind of human.”
Merri pulled out the pillow she’d been resting against, and threw it at him. He dodged it easily.
Everyone laughed; a little of the tension had been broken.
But Gerrid laughed less robustly than the rest of us…partly, I suppose, because he’s such a pallid, waif-like thing; I could snap him in half between two of my fingers. But also because any interaction between Merri and Darius was a little worrisome for him.
I might as well just spell it out for you right now, because there’s no getting around it: our little friendly foursome—the well-oiled “superhero” team that had toppled the Terminus Institute and shut down its murderous Engine—well…we were a bit of a soap opera, these days.
See, I was completely mad for Darius, who was the most perfect male specimen I’d ever met (of course he was; he was designed to be). He was beautiful, articulate, brilliant, witty…
…and mad about Merri. He always had been. And I couldn’t blame him; because while Merri wasn’t all that much to look at—she was a mousy little thing, with a big forehead and flat, limp hair—she had such tremendous heart, such ferocious courage, that all you had to do was know her for a few days, and suddenly when you looked at her, what you saw was some blazing goddess.
Merri, for her part, was in love with Gerrid. They’d had a rocky start to their romance, but the attraction had been there right from the start—and when all the trouble hit during freshman year, they’d been there for each other in ways no lovers in lore or legend could equal. It cemented them.
Except…and here’s the big thing; the thing I sometimes forgot, even when we were all together:
That was a different Merri.
The original—the one who’d burned like a comet through freshman year—ended up giving her life to shut down the Terminus Engine. She’d made the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the entire time-space continuum.
Kind of hard to live up to. And yet that’s what we expected from this Merri, who was the direct counterpart to the original, from a parallel almost entirely identical to the one the first Merri had come from. Our friend Eddie, who invented the Hopper, had brought her here, and she’d soon taken the place of our lost friend.
In fact she was our lost friend in almost every respect. Looks, speech, gestures, attitudes—even the corny jokes she told. And she was familiar with everything that had happened between her and Gerrid, and all the rest of us, because of the detailed journals kept by her predecessor. She’d even spent the summer using the original Merri’s many, and very thorough, notes to fast-forward herself through her freshman studies (which she, of course, hadn’t been here for) and was now, amazingly, joining us as a full sophomore in the new term.
But…while she knew about those adventures with us, and about how she and Gerrid had gone through hell together and come out the other side, she didn’t remember them the way he did. Which worried him. He confided in me about it one sweltering summer night when we were out on the dorm patio trying to cool off. I hadn’t liked Gerrid much when I first met him; I was kind of repelled by the way he slithered around in the underground tunnels connecting the campus buildings in order to avoid direct sunlight. But all it took was for me to see him as a creature in pain, and I had a change of heart. (Probably because I was a creature in pain, too.)
“Merri doesn’t feel our history the way I do,” he said as he reclined on a deck chair, his shirt open and his pale neck and chest beaded with sweat. “She feels it the way you feel a favorite story; and yes, I know, that’s not inconsiderable. You can build a whole philosophical point of view, a whole life’s direction, on the back of a story. But I feel our history in my bones,” he continued, and his voice actually broke a little. “I lived it; I bear the bruises. And Merri…well, she’s definitely my Merri, in every respect that counts. She’s absurdly smart, insanely brave, and maddeningly principled. It’s so easy to forget, until some tiny gesture, some barely perceptible flicker in her eye, will remind me that she’s not the Merri who stood beside me, at the crux of the world, covered in my blood and bound to me by death.”
You have to understand: for Gerrid, that was an incredibly romantic thing to say.
So my point is, anytime something happened—like this little playful outburst between Merri and Darius—I could see in Gerrid’s eyes a gleam of dread as he wondered whether this was the moment when our new Merri became her own Merri, and made her own, very different choices.
But so far that hadn’t happened. Still, I kept watch…because I loved her. I loved them both; and Darius, too, of course. And because, from the moment I’d first met her—first met the original Merri, I mean—I’d made it my duty to protect her. And I wasn’t going to stop now.
Even if that meant protecting her from herself.
4
As we walked to class, Merri made it clear she wasn’t entirely happy with me.
“What was that, back there, exactly?” she asked, a little sharp edge to her voice.
“What was what?” I asked, though I knew exactly what she was talking about.
“All that playing devil’s advocate. I mean, come on, Fabia! Almost everyone on campus has lost their minds over this insane ‘magic doorway’ business.”
“No one’s ever said anything about a ‘magic doorway,’ ” I protested.
“See?” she said, whirling on me. “You’re doing it again!”
“No, you’re doing it,” I shot back, feeling my anger rise in me. “You don’t win an argument by belittling or mocking it—like calling Parallel 17’s proposal a ‘magic doorway.’ You win an argument by taking it on its own terms and refuting it point by point. You should know; you’re the one who taught me that.” I was suddenly derailed by a disturbing thought: had she taught me that? Or had it been the other Merri? I shook this off and said, “All I’m doing when I’m playing ‘devil’s advocate,’ as you call it, is forcing you to hone your arguments…getting you ready for the battle ahead.”
Merri fell into a visible sulk. “I know, I know. It’s just such a waste of energy. I mean, there shouldn’t even be an argument about this…not in an institution founded on scientific inquiry.”
“There’s always going to be an argument about basic principles,” I said. “That war is never over. Just because you’ve won it—”
“Not me,” she interjected, “us. The world—the worlds—the entire human community—”
“The witches of Parallel 17 are part of the human community. And as I was saying, just because you’ve won that war, that d
oesn’t mean people aren’t going to argue whether you should have.”
She shook her head. “But Parallel 17 isn’t arguing. Or at least, they’re not open to argument. They’re trying a classic back-door move…bribery, is what it amounts to. They’ve got something nasty up their sleeves. I just feel it.”
“You talk an awful lot about ‘feelings,’ lately,” I said, trying not to sound too critical.
She sighed, then tried to laugh it off. “Well, we’re all a little stressed.”
“My point exactly. You’ve got six thousand students on this campus, all of whom are stranded here, cut off from the only homes they’ve ever known. They’re angry and upset and emotional.” As if to prove my point, we rounded the corner at the Gell-Mann Library, and there on the steps was a demonstration. There were still a lot of these going on—not as many as at the peak of summer; most people were placated by the coming referendum. But this particular demonstration—which was led by a small group of African students in brightly colored robes and headdresses, and punctuated by a lot of infectious drumming—was protesting the long lead time to the vote; November was two whole months away. “What’s preventing us from holding the referendum next week?” the spokesman blared into his cordless microphone. “What’s to prevent us from holding it tomorrow?” And several dozen students shouted their agreement. And it was fairly clear by the look of dizzy expectancy on their faces, which way they intended to vote.
“See?” I said, when we’d passed out of range of the noise. “They’re grasping at straws! They’re not thinking rationally. That’s what I mean when I say there’s always going to be an argument about basic principles. Because sooner or later those principles are going to come up against human nature.”
