A Million Worlds With You

by Claudia Gray

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” I say softly. “Otherwise we’d never have met.”

  Paul doesn’t reply. He has withdrawn even deeper into himself.

  I try again. “Want to hear something interesting?”

  Paul gives me a look. “As bad as the past few weeks have been, they weren’t dull.”

  “I guess not. But listen. When the doctor looked me over here on the station, she ran some kind of futuristic brain scan, and they could tell there were two Marguerites in here.”

  His eyes widen. “They realized you were visiting from another dimension?”

  “No. But they did figure out that this Marguerite’s brain is, like, twice as busy as it should be.”

  “Intriguing.” Paul sounds almost like his beloved Mr. Spock. His science-genius brain seizes on this new information, and he’s distracted from his troubles, at least for now. “I want to see those test results for myself. The data might help us come up with a device to detect unwanted visitors.”

  “That would definitely come in handy.” If only we could’ve ID’d Triadverse Theo when he first came into our world. We all would have been spared so much trouble.

  Paul adds, “And maybe we can see how badly the splintering has damaged me.”

  “Hey. Come on.” I can’t stand to hear Paul like this. “It’s an injury. You’ll heal.”

  “You don’t know that. We have no template for this. No idea how badly splintering affects the psyche—or whether ‘healing’ is even a possibility.” He stares down at his boots. “Maybe a soul can be broken, just like a destiny.”

  “Our destiny isn’t broken,” I snap, before catching myself. We’re both exhausted, we’ve been through experiences we haven’t had any chance to recover from, but we shouldn’t take it out on each other. So I calm myself as best I can before adding, “You walked right through my door, even though it was supposed to be locked to everyone except a few people my parents approved. So we must be together here too, right? If destiny brought us together in outer space, then it has to be pretty powerful.”

  “Destiny has led me to hurt you. It’s led you to hurt me. It brings Theo back to us over and over, sometimes so you can love him instead.” Paul looks uncomfortable. His height and his powerful musculature mean that the world often seems slightly too small for him. In this tiny room, he might as well be in a cage. “If our destiny is nothing more than a prediction of a collision, an intersection between two paths, then we don’t have a destiny at all.”

  Can that be true? As often as we find each other—as often as we love each other—is it only a matter of chance if we end up together? I don’t want to believe that.

  But whatever Paul and I have, it’s not a story with a single happy ending.

  “I guess this wrecks your thesis,” I say dully, “about fate and mathematics.” He winces as if in pain. Never joke with a PhD candidate about their thesis, especially not when it’s a stupid time to make a joke. But I don’t know what to do. I wish for magic words, for a spell, for a script. I’d pay all the money I have or ever will have for the right words to say at this moment. Instead, I am powerless and silent.

  “There are parallels in the equations.” Paul’s voice sounds as flat as it did back in the days when I was first getting to know him, and his awkwardness was so extreme that I called him the caveman. “But they didn’t mean what I thought they meant. Maybe I believed in destiny because I wanted to believe.”

  “We’re more than a set of equations, you know.” I reach for all our best memories, even though they seem so far away. “The night we made lasagna, or the time we went to Muir Woods, or Valentine’s Day—that’s all real.”

  “You fell in love with me in another dimension,” he says without looking me in the face. “Maybe it was only ever Lieutenant Markov after all. Maybe, instead of being your destiny, I’m only a . . . stop on the way.”

  Okay, I know we’ve both been through a lot, and Russians are fatalistic, et cetera, but this has to end. “Don’t say that! This is just the splintering talking, don’t you see? You’re ignoring everything we’ve done together. Everything we’ve been. Or was I never anything more to you than a math equation?”

  That was supposed to be a rhetorical question. Apparently it isn’t.

  “Math doesn’t lie,” Paul says. “Our emotions do.”

  I’m too flummoxed to argue. Without some grand cosmological destiny tying us together, Paul . . . doesn’t believe in us.

  He continues talking, staring at his own shoes. “We deceive ourselves into believing we can have what we want most in the world. But it doesn’t always work out that way. We know that now.”

  “Stop talking about us like a physics experiment!”

  “You’re not being logical about this,” Paul replies.

  When a scientist tells you you’re not being logical, you have to get out of the argument immediately, because they’re recalibrating the scales to make sure you lose. I hug my knees to my chest as I curl in the far corner of my bunk. “Don’t you have some experiments to run with the Firebird?”

  Paul looks like he wants to say something else, but instead he heads out, unhappy even as he has a chance to save the world. As soon as the door slides shut behind him, I grab my own Firebird and try to leap out of this miserable dimension.

  No such luck. I’m stuck here, adrift in space, hopelessly far from home.

  Valentine’s Day was only a few months ago. Lots of people, including my parents, say it’s a stupid fake holiday to sell greeting cards, and if you’re only reinforcing your relationship one day a year, you’re in trouble. I thought I agreed right up until the moment Paul brought me red roses and chocolate.

  “I thought those were the right things,” he said as we snuggled together on the back deck, near the small fire in the cast-iron fire pit. We’d draped a single quilt around both our shoulders, bundling us together. That night, even the blue-and-orange glow of Josie’s tropical-fish lights on the deck railing seemed vaguely romantic. “That’s what they always show in movies. But on the way over here, Theo told me it was cliché.”

  Paul had never had much of a love life before me, which is why he put so much stock in Theo’s advice. “Theo would probably give somebody craft beer and a trucker hat.” With relish, I plucked another candy from its crinkly wrapper. “And there is never, ever a bad time to give me chocolate. Remember this.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Forever.”

  “Do you like your books?” I was more worried about my own presents. Growing up surrounded by scientists, I had more or less absorbed the entire geek canon before I turned twelve. Mom and I had watched our way through Star Trek: The Next Generation together on Netflix, and Dad and I do a mean version of Monty Python’s dead parrot skit. But Paul—always grades ahead, without any kind of social life and surrounded by people older than him—had missed a lot of the fun stuff.

  “I’ve heard of Dune,” he said, his gray eyes glancing toward the novels stacked at the edge of the firelight. “And I always meant to read Ursula K. LeGuin. But the compendium—what is it, the hitchhiking guide?”

  “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Essential reading. And hilarious.” I leaned my face even closer to his, so that our noses almost touched. “You need to laugh more.”

  “Never had as much reason to laugh before.” His broad hand weaved through my curls. “Nobody else ever made me this happy.”

  “Same here,” I whispered. But loving Paul—it was as if he had lit a candle inside me, and that inner glow seemed to illuminate the entire world.

  Paul drew me closer, kissed my temple, and whispered, “The firelight reminds me of the dacha.”

  Our one night of passion. Back then I didn’t know the price it had cost. Back then, I reveled in the memory as pure hours of bliss. “Me, too. Let’s pretend we’re back there.”

  His eyes brightened. I wasn’t suggesting we have sex on the deck—ugh, splinters—but he knew how much I wanted him to kiss me, and once w
e began kissing, it seemed like we’d never stop.

  Valentine’s Day wasn’t even three months ago. Not long after, here I am, broken-hearted, unsure whether Paul and I will ever get back together, miserable. And in geosynchronous orbit. Yay.

  My parents suggest that I have breakfast in the “mess,” under the theory that socialization is a good thing. I go early, just because I don’t think I can stand another second of moping around in the plain white box of my room. When I arrive, a breakfast shift seems to be just ending. Half a dozen jumpsuited people file out, talking to each other about solar flares and the breakup between people called Min-Ji and Cedric. One of them waves at me, and I wave back. Are we friends? Acquaintances? I guess everyone here must know everyone else.

  One flash of blond hair makes me freeze. My brain whispers Romola—Wyatt Conley’s henchwoman in half a dozen worlds so far, including the Home Office. But no, this is someone else. The Spaceverse is one dimension where I don’t have to worry about her.

  Looks like that’s the only lucky break I’m going to catch for a while.

  As I sit alone at the cafeteria table, pushing reconstituted scrambled eggs around my tin plate, Paul comes in. His night must have been as sorrowful and lonely as mine, but his expression is so closed-off. Anyone who didn’t know him better might call him cold. Paul no longer expects to find any comfort with me, but I can’t help wanting it from him. My torn-in-two heart only knows that its other half is near, and yearns for him so desperately my chest aches.

  Are we . . . broken up? The term sounds so childish for the terrible rift that has opened between us. When I think of it literally, though, it sounds closer to the truth. We have been broken. We are in pieces. We can’t be put together again.

  He slides onto the nearest plastic bench. “How are you?” The way he says it makes it clear this is bare minimum politeness, period.

  If he wants to talk about irrelevant stuff, then fine. “Well, this morning I found out that the exercise requirements on the space station demand three freakin’ hours of workout per day. Apparently it has something to do with bone density, not that I cared after an hour on the treadmill.”

  Paul opens his mouth, probably to explain the bone-density thing. I give him the no science now look. Thanks to my parents, I’m pretty good at that one. At any rate, he stays quiet.

  “So.” I keep poking at my food. “Any progress?”

  “I think so,” he says, surprising me. This is the first good surprise I’ve had in a while. Paul continues, “Your theory about the slammed doors—that they’re convinced you won’t help and trying to shut you out of universes marked for destruction—I think that’s correct.”

  “That means the Egyptverse and Londonverse are toast, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe not. I can return to either of them. So could Theo, or even your parents could travel to the Egyptverse if they could create a new Firebird in time, and use the materials on hand to build a stabilizer.”

  “Are you going to be able to show me how to build a stabilizer on my own?”

  “The term is inadequate, really—since stabilizing is only part of . . .” He gets this look on his face whenever he realizes he’s gone off on a scientific tangent and left me behind. “I’m afraid the device is fairly complicated. We protect a universe by increasing the asymmetry of its matter-antimatter ratios. The Firebird can do that if we enhance its power enough. What we’re calling a stabilizer would really enhance the Firebird’s power so it can operate as a stabilizer. A more accurate scientific term can be developed at a later time.”

  Mom and Dad will love coming up with some funny acronym, or maybe choosing something else from Russian mythology for the proper name. But at least I know we’re on the right track. “Okay. We’re on the verge of being able to undo Triad’s work.”

  Paul nods, but then he adds, “We have to assume that at some point, Triad may consider creating another perfect traveler.”

  “But they don’t want to bring anyone else in on the conspiracy. Conley sent me around to sabotage other dimensions that might create the Firebird technology, remember? Triad doesn’t intend to share its power.”

  “You’re assuming they would act in good faith, which is an unreasonable assumption.” When Paul’s uncertain about how to act, he gets like this: hyperprecise, scientific, almost icy. It used to irritate me, before I realized that he does this to cover up his sense of isolation. Behind that rigid facade, he feels as lonely as I do. “The most likely scenario is that Conley would recruit a potential traveler, use that person to do some of the dirty work he had for you, then betray that traveler and destroy their home dimension.”

  Now that Paul has said it out loud, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. “Damn,” I mutter as I let my fork drop onto my plate. “We’ll never be able to stop them.”

  “Maybe not. If they were creating other travelers already, I doubt they would still be so focused on limiting your influence. But we have to act fast.”

  “Okay.” I can do this. It helps to focus on the big picture, on the countless lives who are relying on Paul and me to get this right. “How is the work on the stabilizer going?”

  “I think I’ll be able to start construction today. This dimension—the Spaceverse—it’s our trial run. In another several hours, I should have the data I need to set up the trial device.” He makes a gesture with his hands suggesting that the device is roughly circular, something the Firebird will fit into. “Then I’ll give it a try, and if it works . . .”

  “Then you and I run around through the multiverse, saving lives and shutting Triad down.” If I have nothing else, at least I might get the satisfaction of permanently wiping the smirk from Wyatt Conley’s face. “You’d head back to the Egyptverse and the Londonverse right away, wouldn’t you? I want you to.”

  Paul frowns. “The order is probably irrelevant. Why do you want me to prioritize those two?”

  “Because I failed those Marguerites. I had chances to save them, and I didn’t.”

  “It’s not your fault.” His voice gentles, and for a moment it sounds like he still believes in me. Somehow that hurts more than his coldness did—the momentary illusion that he’s back, we’re back, and our schism is no more than a nightmare. “You were put in situations you couldn’t escape from.”

  Maybe he’s right, but that doesn’t keep guilt from pressing down on me every second, every breath. “I just feel like it would be a way of . . . paying tribute to them, at least. If we save their dimensions, we keep them from being completely erased, you know? They’ll still have people who remember them. They’ll still be real. And they’ll matter, because they played some part in protecting their entire universes.”

  Paul weighs that, then nods. “Those two first.”

  “Thanks.” I take a deep breath and focus on the task ahead. “And the Spaceverse is going to be taken care of, because you’ll fix things here, and I already saved this Marguerite. This is one we can cross off the list right away.”

  As the word away leaves my mouth, red lights start to flash. An alarm begins blaring and the computer voice says, “Overload imminent in plasma venting mechanism. Overload imminent. All hands to escape vessels. Repeat. Overload imminent.”

  Plasma venting? As in, the place where Wicked left and I leaped in?

  Fear floods into me—pure, horrifying mortal terror, as if Theo’s hands had closed around my throat again. Wicked had a backup plan. She created a second trap, sabotage that could take out this entire space station at any moment.

  We’re about to be thrown into outer space, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  10

  “OVERLOAD IMMINENT,” THE COMPUTER VOICE CHANTS, like everyone wasn’t panicking already. “Prepare to abandon station.”

  Paul and I run from the mess hall to see astronauts hurrying every which way. Everybody else knows what to do, where to go. We have no idea. “Escape vessel,” I say. “If we follow the others, we’ll find one.”

&n
bsp; “Come on.” He grabs my hand, and we start to dash in what looks like the main direction of the crowd. But then the speakers whine and the computer voice snaps off.

  Instead, I hear my mother. “This is Commander Kovalenka. Only nonessential personnel are to abandon ship. We have a chance to localize the decompression, but only if the rest of you return to your posts, now!”

  Mom must be a really good boss, because almost everyone immediately heads back to their posts.

  “I’m nonessential,” I say. “Probably.”

  “I’m essential here,” Paul answers. Which is no doubt true, but he still sounds arrogant as hell. But then he turns to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Get out of here while you can. Save this Marguerite. Save yourself.”

  As much as I’d like to be on an escape vessel right now—which is a whole lot—I don’t know if I can leave with my parents and Paul still aboard. Would this world’s Marguerite evacuate and leave them behind? Somehow I doubt it.

  To Paul I only say, “Go. See if you can figure out what they need you to do.”

  He runs. While he has no memory of what to do in this situation, maybe his genius brain has a chance to figure it out. Or maybe his reminder will lose power soon and let this universe’s Paul back in, just in time to do his job.

  For me, the path is even more uncertain. I’m not sure whether to escape or remain and be useful, but the fact is, I don’t even know what to do to make either one of those things happen. Finally I keep running in the direction Paul and I had chosen, hoping I’ll see a new flow of traffic, figure out where it’s going, and be able to decide.

  I turn the corner and there’s Mom, frantically working on a computer panel. They must have rerouted primary controls to her nearest interface. Even as she types at supersonic speed, she spies me from the corner of her eye. “What are you still doing here?”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” I say, which is the truth. Whatever she orders me to do next, though, I’ll do. As much as I hate the idea of leaving the others, I came here to save this Marguerite, not to put her in even greater danger.