by Pam Uphoff
Running footsteps, fading.
Peter bit his lip, then stuck his fingers out and scooted the rods back to the edge of the driveway, where a few scrawny bushes sticking out would make it less obvious.
We’re just a stick, ignore us!
He shifted his arm to hopefully block sounds. Except I couldn’t hear anything until I practically stuck my ear out. But does that work both ways?
So he kept his voice low anyway. “So, umm, sorry. Introductions. This is Fire—spelled F Y O R—Neartuone Casablanca Morocco. Fire, these are my parents, John and Susan Rhodan, Miss Kia Zeynep, Mrs. Chloe Winters, Mr. Daniel Daiki, Mr. Kaito Lee, and his wife Mary, Mr. Preston Mu and his wife Laura, and Mr. Jack Metz his wife Harriet. And . . . you kids have grown so much since I’ve seen you . . .”
Fire straightened from where she’d been trying to look through the finger width slit.
Looked at them wide-eyed. “Oh my! I am so pleased to meet you all! Four of the Prophets! And two more Tellies!”
They stared at her. ”Prophets? Tellies?”
Peter laughed. “They don’t know about parallel worlds. Give them a history lesson!” He listened to the rest of the introductions and the history lesson with one ear. And got his other ear out to listen to the agents yelling back and forth while sirens approached, a small fire truck pulled into the driveway, running feet, hoses sliding by and filling with water.
Water pouring off the garage roof . . . he let the bars closed, then in a panic, scrambled . . . opened them a slit and heaved a relieved breath. It would have been quite awkward to have trapped ourselves in here!
The ground was wet, but the flood of water had been amazingly brief . . . and they were rolling up the hoses already? The fire truck backed out of the driveway. Peter could see the back of the house. Smoke stains on a few windows, but not too much damage.
Wheels rolled up, doors slammed.
A peeved voice. “You didn’t get any of them?”
“No sir. All of Rhodan’s books, and a lot of the furniture are gone. They had enough warning to smuggle half their goods away, no idea how. And we know there were at least four people in the house, after the three that attacked us made it inside. We’re checking the basement for secret passages.”
“Dammit. I need to get back to that other cluster fuck across town. Everything seems to be going tits up today!”
Peter and Fire swapped glances. He widened the crack and craned his head . . .couldn’t see anyone, and they were right by the back bumper. He slipped his fingers out the left end and dragged the bars out, swiveling them so they were parallel to the bumper. He reached up, for a solid two handed grip and pulled them up and through the space between the bumper and the body of the car.
Fire reached past him, and pushed on the body of the car, shoving the bars back into the hollow bumper. Angled a bit, because of a brace. Peter felt around the brace, several straps welded together, and triangular gap . . . he got one end though the gap and the bars all the way into the bumper before the car started. He could only spread one end, but that was enough to reach through and grab the brace at the other side of the bumper, and keep them in place.
I don’t want to find out what would happen if we fell out on the highway and turned into road debris!
A snort from Uncle Daiki, as he peeked past them. “Interesting things you’ve picked up since I last saw you. Two years? Three?”
Peter snickered. “The last month has been amazing.”
Daiki turned to Fire.
“So you were saying that all the Number One Kids escaped to a parallel world, and took over?”
“Yes, sir. And back on Earth, the rest of the Tellies, one way or another, also escaped. Umm, all these parallel worlds, when they split, they zing off with different, umm, velocities of time. So since the split point with your world, you’ve experienced less than a century, but the world I’m from has had over fourteen centuries. So . . . well, even though you guys are really long lived, your . . . equivalents on our world have all died. Emre and Nicholas are alive on another split off of my world.”
“Who?”
“Oh . . . Umm, when did they stop doing genetic engineering, stop making you guys?”
“2093. When it looked like the Genie laws were going to pass.” Zeynep sighed. “Maybe that was the split point.”
“Or the year before, that plane crash that killed half the board of directors of New Gene.” Uncle Kaito called from the back.
Fire nodded. “Well, anyway, what we’ve got right now is a whole world where there’s no people. So a very powerful magician named Xen Wolfson has gotten almost every contacted world to build an embassy there, and now we finally talk instead of fight. And that’s where we’re headed.”
They swapped uneasy looks around.
“Son . . . we’re hoping to escape from a tyranny, not just swap to a new one.”
Fire shook her head. “It’s not like that. Xen is powerful, not power hungry. And there are so many worlds, with so many different types of governments. Independent colonies that measure their populations in the thousands. Lots of them will be trying to recruit you. Or you could probably have a World all your own.”
Through the tugs on his arm, the vibration, Peter could feel when they left the expressway.
How many turns to the strip center where we found the portal? Just four? And then the turn into the parking lot . . .
A bump over a curb, turn and stop.
He pulled his hand in and stuck an ear to the slot.
“. . . no word, sir.”
“Dammit. I’ll go ruin the rest of their day.”
The car jerked back into motion, and Peter made a fast grab as the bars slid. The view tilted as one end of the bars dropped. Bump and twist and his grip was slipping . . . A turn and he lost it.
The bars hit the grass.
Peter put his ear to the grass, picked up a mumble of voices, the slam of a car door.
He waited a long moment, then spread the bars a bit more, lifted one to get a better view. A familiar looking camp, but messily scattered among oak trees. Soldiers all over.
“This is the first world across from ours.” He whispered. He scooted the bars around, and spotted a couple of cars, parked. He finger walked the bars between them, and stuck his head out.
No one looking. He eeled out staying low between the cars. Fire was on his heels, but he shut the bars in his dad’s face. “Soldier illusion?”
“You got it.” She stood up, and now she looked like a raw recruit, young and skinny. “And unnoticeable, so we’re good.”
He looked from the gate to . . . that was the corridor to the gate to the desert world, and over there, the corridor that led to the gate to the grasslands with the elephants. And over where the corridor should have been, that would take them to the gate to the world with the swamp . . . there was nothing. Peter swallowed. “Except that I don’t see the corridor we need to get back.”
***
“Do you have any idea how far it was to the gate?”
He pointed. “It was up in those mountains. I guess we’d better start hiking.”
“Right.” They marched purposefully away. No one noticed.
It was shady, the ground clear of brush under the trees, but the sun was bright, shining through a hole in the thick canopy . . . Peter slowed, staring up in the tree. Was the “sunlight” swirling?
“Fire, do you see bright sunlight up there, through that tree?”
“What? No, I mean a few specks, but . . . They wouldn’t actually put a gate up in a tree, would they?”
“Well, it’s a pretty good way to guarantee no one will find it. Unless they have dimensional abilities.” Peter walked around the trunk to the lowest branch. “Need a boost?”
The tree was very climbable, and the gate balanced a short step in front of a broad limb just where it branched.
“Oh, from this close I can see the ground over there.” Fire stepped toward the gate.
“Take th
e illusions off!” Peter called.
She laughed. “All right. Because sooner or later someone’s going to shoot us.” She jumped into the vortex and Peter told himself he was not stepping off the branch to plunge to his doom and jumped too. Onto leaf litter covering the ground in front of young oaks that no doubt blended in to the tree canopy from the other side.
Wolfson grinned. “We were starting to get worried . . .” he eyed the bars. “I see you found a lot of people.”
“Yep. Family and friends, some of them duplicating Prophets, and all their spouses and kids, which isn’t actually very many people. If, umm, if there’s a problem?”
“Only if you kidnapped them. Let me close this gate, then we can drive home and let them all out in a spot where we can feed them all.”
***
It was morning when they got back to Embassy.
Peter blinked at the rising sun. “Right, we left after dark last night, and . . . Okay, I guess that’s about right but I think I’m going to take a day off to catch up on my sleep. Not to mention finding someplace for everyone to sleep.”
He pulled the wooden bars apart. “Well. Welcome to Embassy. C’mon out and meet everyone.”
***
It was an interesting breakfast. Not the food, the food was excellent, but pretty standard breakfast fare.
But as introductions circled, ancestors started getting mentioned. The three wives were all daughters of other Genies, since deceased. Three of the older kids had different mothers—also Genies, now deceased—than their father’s current wife, and two were adopted with both parents dead. One from a car crash, the other’s parents had simply disappeared.
Wolfson was frowning. “Lots of deaths and disappearances, for a small group with genes designed for long life.”
“Well, none of us believed they were accidental.” Uncle Kaito stabbed a pancake, angry, but tears in his eyes.
“And this is all of you?”
“All that we know of. There were a hundred and twenty-nine of us made, but most of us were sterilized early. And the men—Ninety-four of us—generally joined the army. They threw us into a lot of nasty situations. Not many of us came back. And even then, a lot of us just wouldn’t bring children into the world.” Uncle Daiki shrugged. “Especially when the government caved, and joined the Union rather than risk another war. Not that there aren’t some halfbreeds out there. We just haven’t ever found them.”
Peter took it all in quietly. They never told me that Dad was both Fatma and Isak’s grandson. I can see why they wouldn’t tell a little kid, who might say too much when angry . . . and we were all indoctrinated in school. Told that Genies were evil, violent, dangerous, subhuman.
They told me just enough, told me about Gramma Chloe, once I was old enough to understand. I used to come home with stomach aches every day, from the hatred. At least no one knew I was one of the subhumans. They weren’t deliberately aiming the hatred at me. But I felt it, and I had the shreds of the earlier years, when I believed the teachers, even while my parents preached tolerance. Even though I loved Gramma Chloe. They couldn’t trust me until I was grown enough to realize that all these aunts and uncles were also Genies.
The survivors all clung together. Very few out-marriages, after the first years. After North America joined the Union. Look at us, now. Fourteen kids—if you count me. Eleven adults—seventeen if you count the deaths of some of the parents.
And that’s not considering the deaths of non-parents. I sort of remember some more courtesy uncles and aunts when I was a toddler.
Lots of uncles. Have they all died? In war, or did the government hunt them down?
He shook off the morbid thoughts. No need to be grim. In a weird twisted way Fire is one of us, even if she’s fifty generations removed from her Genie ancestors. There are Worlds full of people like us. We can be what we are, and not cower in terror.
He looked around as more people entered the restaurant. His stomach knotted as the strangers headed their way.
Wolfson stood, and shook hands with the newcomers. “Ambassador Ashe from the Empire of the One, and Ambassador Ipit from Whirlpool One.”
And after polite introductions, the Ambassadors of both One Worlds (eyeing each other) both made offers of anything they wanted, at all.
Fire winced, and once they’d left, told them they would probably prefer the old One World. “Our church is having issues, just now.”
Wolfson nodded. “There’s no need for haste. I can set you up with a place to live . . .”
“And what do you want for it?” Uncle Kaito glared.
“Peaceful coexistence. If you want to call it a loan, fine. However we do have public schools here, with two elementary schools and one high school geared for children with magical potential.”
All the old people bristled.
Wolfson shook his head. “They teach them how to control it, and how to use it. We encourage magic. In fact, you adults might want to join the morning classes. I get up and run at five, and afterwards teach classes. We rotate between martial arts, sword fighting, and magic. We’ll start the magic classes in two days. Peter, do you know where everything is?”
Peter nodded. “Not that I’ve ever felt a need to get up and run every morning.”
“Give it a try. All of you. Take your time, learn whatever you want. Do whatever you want. Live wherever you want.” Wolfson grinned. “Unless someone already lives there, or it involves violence.”
He sobered. “From what I’ve read about Russian style socialism, you’ll find it hard to trust. Give it time. You’ll find a place where you can be free, and proud of who and what you are.”
Peter nodded. Right. Five in the morning. For magic.
Epilogue
Inevitably, people started reading the now transcribed reports.
Peter was heading for Xen’s office and paused in the hall when he heard Inso’s raised voice.
"Comet Fall trained those women? Comet Fall trained those women!"
"Yep.” Xen sounded amused. “And then I trained some hapless Oners in how to fit into Purple society. I was surprised when you closed that down. What happened?"
"None of your business." Inso stomped back out. Stopped. Turned back around. “And don’t think I didn’t catch that bit in Malder’s report about recordings! I refuse to believe they bugged our post!”
Xen grinned. “You mean that big green warehouse across the alley from the Earthers’ post?”
“Across the . . . !” Inso flapped his arms. “And who the One hell trained you to infiltrate us?”
“Ambassador Time?” Xen sounded amused.
“You mean you with a few minor morphs? Rael twigged to that the first time she saw our recordings. Huh. You sure were an ugly elf.”
Xen laughed. “Oh, okay, we had to wing it. Still can’t believe it.”
“Neither do we.” Inso stomped out past Peter.
Peter edged in carefully. “ I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t transcribe this report on, umm . . .”
Xen leaned and looked at the thin report. “Oh. That. Yeeess. Why don’t you put that one at the bottom of the low priority stack?”
Excerpt from an upcoming release
It was a fairly expectable city scene. Buildings of various ages, from the graceful marble cathedral on the hill that probably measured its age in centuries to the glass and chrome skyscrapers of an advanced tech civilization.
Xen strolled up to a sidewalk newspaper vendor and looked over the headlines. The West Bay Sentinel informed him that the President was threatening to veto a health care bill due to pork. The date was the twenty-third of August, 3531. All right, that anchored things a bit better. This World had split recently enough that there was only a few years temporal drift. Or it had been colonized, and the gates had equalized the time rate. The language of the paper was close enough to the dialects he was fluent in that he hadn't noticed a difference. He reached mentally for the coin box, to take a look at the currency, and met his first
obstacle. The coin box was blocked, magically. Interesting. He strolled on, there would be plenty of other opportunities to see coins . . . he leaned down and picked a small copper off the ground. One cent. He stepped into the shade of a small tree and stopped to study the visage stamped on the coin. It was quite definitely his father.
After a long moment he nodded to himself. It was only logical that Comet Fall would have split multiple times, the number of impacts it had experienced. If the civilization had kept track of the Earth calendar, then perhaps the Comet had not fallen here. At home his fourteen centuries old father had retired from public view a long time ago. Here, he was apparently famous enough to wind up on a coin. I wonder if he's alive or dead?
He stepped out and looked around with a fresh eye. It would be interesting to see how his home world had developed without the worst catastrophe in its history. He worried down his normal automatic barriers, and listened to the World. Quite a few people were 'private', magic users with habitual shields up, but most were about like home—barely magical, with no power behind their thoughts. He strolled through the streets, heading for the cathedral as a first goal. It sat in the center of a block of parkland, well manicured lawns, flowerbeds in bloom. A wrought iron fence kept the lawns pristine and the flowers untouched. The big gate in front was manned, and Xen tried to look uninterested as the two men stood up and stepped out of their marble box with a machine in hand.
They pointed it at the passing people, and then down the sidewalk. A detector of some sort? The people around him were just ordinary . . . He pulled his awareness in tight, closed down completely. The men were frowning and looking down the street. He walked right past them. One scowled at him and muttered ". . . tall as a god . . ." and pointed his machine at him. Turned away. "It was registering something. Some damned witch walking at the end of the block maybe."
"But it was so strong. It had to be closer than that."