Nica of Los Angeles

by Sue Perry

  Lose Twenty Pounds of Worry in Twenty Days made a sweet little chirp. That this murderous beast could be cute! It was Pixar from hell. "No!" I said without thinking. "Stop it!"

  Lose Twenty Pounds made a dip like a bow and veered away, plunging into a knot of other books. It killed three books before it was itself destroyed, sliced to pieces by dust cover edges. I hadn't intended to send it on a suicide mission.

  Anwyl said, "Do not dispatch the others."

  At the same time, Hernandez pointed and told Miles, "You can get to them before the books do."

  Them meant two young boys, crouched beside the body of a woman. Lose Twenty Pounds had killed her killer before it reached her kids. Miles translated over to them and Hernandez jumped down to boost the boys up to safety on Miles' frame. They didn't understand to hold on, fell back to the ground, and crawled to their mother. Hernandez grabbed them again and I showed them how to cling and brace themselves. When we all had a good grip on the Towers, they moved out. The refugee children did not cry or fuss, instead watched their mother recede from view.

  I studied the boys clinging to the Towers and got hit with a big dose of amazement, a brief tonic for the horror. The children looked human but had a spectacular advantage. Their bones could bend. Their legs and arms were stiff enough that they could climb and run. Yet now, for a better grip on Miles, their legs and arms wrapped around girders such that elbows touched wrists, ankles touched knees. I poked Hernandez to show him. "Gumby people," I whispered, and we shared an amazed grin before he resumed scanning the ground for more survivors.

  That rescue was the only good news. The books dispersed as we moved deeper into the killing field, but that wasn't to avoid us. They were running out of victims.

  Anwyl produced two nets, which he cast to catch some books. He suspended these just outside the Towers' protective burn zone, tethered with a net of threads as sticky as spider webbing. The captives flailed and tangled themselves trying to escape. One of the captive books dropped text, which sliced through the netting. However, before the books could fly through the hole, the net healed itself. The captive books gave up their struggle and hulked on the bottom of the nets, dust covers glinting.

  The library self-help books continued to pace us as we translated to the Santa Monica Pier, where the merry-go-round spun, empty. In this Frame, the pier's wooden pilings dropped into an alien ocean. The water sparkled as though it suspended a billion needles; and it was as blue as only a July afternoon can make it - however, it was not afternoon, it was long past dark. At the far end of the pier, a few remaining refugees jumped off the pier to escape a hail of text. They hit the water, stood suspended on the surface for an instant, registered shock, and sank rapidly without trace. The water remained glassy and undisturbed by their passage.

  More refugees ran to the edge of the pier and Anwyl shouted, "Stop! Do not jump!"

  "But they'll die if they don't jump!" I said. We could not get there in time to incinerate the books that menaced them.

  "A rapid death is not the worst fate," Monk replied.

  Miles said, "Whatever happens, whatever it takes, never go in that water."

  "You convinced me," I assured them.

  Incinerating books as we approached, we got to the pier in time to save another dozen Gumby people. The survivors climbed deep inside Miles and Monk, yet the remaining books kept up their attack. Some dived too close and burned, others flapped circles around the Towers, until one of the captive books issued a multi-syllable squawk. At this, the free books flew up and shot away, a meteor shower in reverse. My four minions, the self-help library books, continued to flap just outside the incineration zone, as close to me as they could get. The same captive book issued another squawk and my minions launched into the stratosphere. At a third squawk, Anwyl swore and grabbed at the nets, but he reacted too late to prevent what the book's third order from being carried out. The captive books rose from the bottom of the nets and jetted toward us, which pushed the nets and the captives into the incineration zone. They burst into flaming ash. No prisoners.

  "Why did they do that? And why did you capture them?"

  "We would test them to learn their allegiance." Anwyl glared at the book ashes as he pulled in his nets.

  "You mean who sent them here to kill these folks."

  "That is correct. These soldiers died to preserve that secret." Anwyl folded up the nets and they disappeared inside his tunic.

  "Maybe you can use their weapons to identify them?" I pointed to text and photos embedded in the sidewalk.

  The Towers rumbled, Hernandez looked up from ministrations to a refugee, and Anwyl gave me a funny stare.

  "I mean, maybe the text has DNA that will identify the books."

  "Such a test might yield information. That is a good idea, Nica."

  "Don't act so surprised!"

  The Towers chuckled, Hernandez twitched a smile, and Anwyl dropped to the ground. He filled a pouch with text of various fonts and sizes.

  We retraced our steps to transfer the surviving refugees across the killing field to our Connector. We learned their story en route. It took me a while to realize the Gumby people spoke English to us - they had that thick an accent, a Slavic drawl like Russian immigrants who had settled in Mississippi.

  Their Frame was sparsely populated and survived through the earnings of its subsistence farmers, master crafts folk, and a modest tourist industry. Recently, men came to offer surprisingly large quantities of money to buy most of their land. The natives would retain their homes, only. Most residents accepted the offer. The refugees here today were the minority who had declined the offer, because the deal required them to relocate for one year so that the buyers could renovate and build more easily. The relocation Frame was completely isolated. Most Frames have many Connectors, but the relocation Frame has only a single Connector, the one that connects to their home Frame. The buyers planned to close that Connector during much of the remodel, which made the relocation sound like imprisonment.

  The holdouts who declined the offer could not stay at home - life would be too hard with so few people, and inconvenient during the remodeling. So they decided it was time to move closer to a center of civilization. The men who purchased their Frame gave them generous relocation funds and the émigrés left their Frame with the intent to roam until they found another Frame they liked. However, as soon as they entered this Connector hub, their adventure became a pogrom, when the books appeared, intent on killing all.

  The survivors didn't know the identities of the men who had bought their Frame. The buyers paid well and said they intended to convert the Frame to a playland with resorts, to make it a recreational Frame with broad tourist appeal. Previous visitors had been limited to those seeking a rustic getaway. The buyers said they wanted to keep the development secret for one year, until it was ready for business. But these survivors had mistrusted the men and this attack confirmed their suspicions that the developers hid their real intent all along. Who would murder thousands as a business development plan?

  Apparently they were unfamiliar with corporate America.

  Whatever the purchasers' secret plan had been, surely it would be exposed now. If the Towers had not appeared, all these refugees would be dead. But the Towers had appeared, and now there were hundreds of witnesses who had managed to flee through Connectors. Surely the purchasers must abandon their plan and hide.

  "Disagree," I said. "Witnesses are a complication that might make them move faster instead of run away. Whatever their real plan was, it was slated to come to fruition in a year. Maybe they will speed up the implementation instead of scrapping the plan."

  Again I earned surprised approval.

  "Well reasoned, Nica," Anwyl said.

  "Our haste grows," Monk added.

  We had reached the Connector that would lead the refugees to the Largo, one of the first of many Connectors they would walk. Miles gave them instructions to reach a safe Frame where they could rest. The survivors vowe
d perpetual servitude to all of us, then with the orphans in tow, they moved into the Connector that would take them to my Frame and beyond.

  "Know that you are in grave danger. Try to remain alive, as your survival is important to all the free Frames." Anwyl's parting words underscored the refugees' risk and his limited people skills. The few survivors who were not now crippled by fear led the others into the Connector.

  21. Here Is A Tumor

  We went back into the killing field to search for evidence of where the books came from and who controlled them. "There!" I pointed to elaborate curlicue letters stuck in a concrete wall. "Those are not from any language in my Frame."

  "Well done, Nica, your worth grows anew." These became the first of a few dozen meaningful samples. Based on the letters we found, most of the books in this attack could be from many Frames, but a few were published in rare languages used in scant few Frames. Two had potential significance: the Frame of the refugees, which Anwyl said is [named something that sounded like] Halcyon; and the home Frame of Warty Sebaceous Cysts. Our money was on the Cysts as perpetrators, of course, although we didn't understand the reason for this carnage.

  "More hints, no proof," Miles lamented, which launched debate about what evidence would convince the Framekeeps to imprison the Cysts again.

  I listened to the debate but kept my focus on a hunt for alien letters. I had to. Enough focus just might keep me from passing out. Focus, and the realization that if I fainted I would fall among victims. I looked around in sorrow and outrage. "Why did these souls need to die?"

  "We been talking about that," Miles said.

  "You have? Wow." They had grown quiet and I hadn't realized they had continued their discussion without words. "Can you teach us to talk without words?"

  "He needs no teaching, he has already joined us," Monk said about Hernandez.

  I gaped at Hernandez. “You can do that? Talk in your head with them?" I notched down the accusatory tone and wound up sounding hurt.

  "I thought you were listening," Hernandez mused, "but you could not hear. That would explain your silence."

  "So catch me up on what got discussed."

  "It is likely they died to keep secret the sale of their land. But we cannot understand the secrecy or the purchase. Their land is not valuable."

  "Still, it can't be a coincidence that somebody took their land right before they died - can it?"

  "A coincidence is a sign of limited vision," Monk agreed.

  We looked for an explanation as though the answer was written on the corpses. And maybe it was. "We know where the refugees came from. Would it help to know the direction the books flew in from?"

  "What do you see, Nica?" Anwyl encouraged me.

  "The way the bodies fall. It changes. Over here, the bodies lie every which way. When they walked out of the Connector from their homeland, they fanned out in various directions, giving each other space and in no big hurry. By the time they get over here, they all face the same direction - and they all clog this one street like they were running away from something."

  "Something that cut them down while they ran." Hernandez was with me.

  "They ran from the west." Anwyl mused.

  "Anya's voice in the cloud mentioned 'west'", Hernandez reminded us.

  "So what is in the west?" I asked.

  "One fourth of the universe." Anwyl shook his head. Not a way to reduce possibilities.

  We headed for the Connector that no one had wanted to use, which took us back across the killing field to the pier. The bright pale ocean surrounded the pilings like poured glass and at the horizon, white ocean met cobalt sky in a line of razor sharpness. On the pier, Anwyl laid out the letter weapons he had collected; I got the sense that he and the Towers continued to discuss them mentally throughout their external conversation with Hernandez and me. Anwyl nodded, half in agreement and half in distraction, when I said, "Let's talk about the land grabbers. Why would they evict the Frame's residents for a year and only a year?"

  "The time limit might be a lie, to trick them into moving." Hernandez noted.

  "Excellent point. Okay. If the Frame itself has limited value, then maybe its location matters. Or its connectedness. What Frames does it connect to? What Frames does it not connect to? Maybe isolation is important."

  A charged silence followed. I was on the right track and we all sensed it. From that moment, our relationship changed. I became a partner and ally rather than a cute but annoying novice - which made me prouder than Chuck Berry's guitar.

  "Show her the map," Monk suggested to Anwyl.

  "And then we gotta split," Miles warned. He and Monk stared at the ocean's horizon as we spoke.

  "What do you see?" I asked them.

  "Something comes," Monk said cryptically. And yes, Monk said cryptically is redundant.

  "This wise blue has got something going on," Miles agreed. And now I sensed it too. The ocean looked the same but something about it was different. Change was brewing.

  "The map," Hernandez prompted.

  Anwyl led us to the Connector entrance. He swept his hand over a wooden emblem and the side of the entrance contorted to form or reveal an alcove. We stepped inside the alcove to stand and gape. Suspended around us was a fantastic hologram, which, as Anwyl demonstrated, we could move and rotate to view from any angle. Imagine a 3-d subway map with Connector tunnels rather than train lines. The Frames were the negative space between Connectors. Our current location radiated orange in a customized "you are here" symbol that included three glowing sticks, grouped as Hernandez, Anwyl, and I were grouped, with the longest stick - Anwyl - in the center.

  Zoomed in, I could see the breaks between the short segments of individual Connector tunnels. At each break, a Connector intersected a Frame. If I tapped the break, I selected the Frame, and illuminated the Connectors to that Frame; all other Connectors went dim. The number and locations of Connectors varied greatly from Frame to Frame.

  Zoomed out, the Connectors appeared as sinuous tubes that stretched, curved, interwove into infinity. The map was a 3-d mandala of Celtic knots, intricate as a whole yet simple in its components. It was as though the Frames were incidental to the larger pattern of the Connectors, as though the pathways - not the worlds - defined the universe.

  Following Anywl's example, I pinched and swirled fingers to adjust the view and explore a path. The map edges changed as I ploughed along a Connector line, jumping over break after break. I looped up and over, back and around, following that line - yet for all the changes, the path never became confusing. The focus and the color intensities shifted and rescaled to show the increasing distance and changing orientation from our current location, which glowed like a winter hearth in the map's distance.

  I felt Anwyl watching me and cast a quick glance his way. He almost smiled, acknowledging and allowing me to pursue my wonder. Hernandez watched with slack-jawed awe as I explored the far reaches of the universe we had so recently discovered. Who knew a map could deliver a religious experience?

  Monk hailed Anwyl to come outside, where the Towers kept watch on the ocean. I knew that when Anwyl returned, it would be time to move on. Until then, I hurried to explore more of the map, which was brilliantly designed - I didn't need instruction or a legend to understand it. If I touched our position then tapped a location, the map traced a route to show me how to get there from here, and numbers appeared next to certain Connectors to show the locations and order of transfers I would need to complete the trip. Small rectangles adjoined about half the Connectors, including this one, and the rectangle at our location glowed the same burnished orange as the alcove we stood in, so it was an easy guess that those rectangles indicated other map alcoves. I was disappointed but not surprised that the Connectors at the Largo lacked map alcoves. When the natives don't know a Connector exists, you don't want Travelers lingering there to read a map.

  There appeared to be hundreds of Connectors to and from my Frame, but none had alcoves. "How come Connector
s in my Frame don't have maps?" I tested my theory as Anwyl rejoined us.

  "There are no maps when the host Frame is Neutral, because the hosts lack awareness of the Frames," he said, which confirmed my guess.

  "How many Frames don't know they are Frames?"

  "For each Frame with awareness, there is a Neutral Frame without.” It made me feel less deprived to learn that 50% of the universe was as ignorant as my Frame.

  "How do I scroll to the end of this map? I keep scrolling and I keep seeing new stuff - the map never seems to end."

  "There is no end."

  "It's infinite? Wowza. Are you sure? Have you ever tried to find an end? Hey, okay, I'm not doubting you, I'm just wondering. Also, I notice that when I scroll using two fingers, a counter and a dial appear; and the longer I scroll, the higher the number gets on the counter. Is this showing me elapsed time? It is? Cool! - got that right, too. Also, the longer the time that elapses, the more things change. See? As I keep going along here, those Connectors move and that one fades. Is this map actually four dimensional - does it show time as well as space?"

  "That feature is of no importance to you. Your journeys must all be short, you are not suitable for time-evolution Travels," Anwyl said with impatience. "It is time to set aside your curiosity. Have you looked for answers to the question at hand?"

  Time-evolution travels. I loved the sound of that! But if Anwyl was ever going to teach me how to make such travels, it wouldn't be now. "I have looked for answers. I think this might be one here," I pointed. "The refugees' Frame, Halcyon, is here and it's just about a dead end, like they said. This Connector that we are standing in now is the only one that links Halcyon to the universe of Frames. Halcyon has one other Connector - this one over here - which goes to the Frame targeted for relocation for one year. That relocation Frame is even more isolated, it only has the one Connector to Halcyon. Which is all like they told us. But look. The refugee Frames, old and new, stand at the edge of this funny dark space, see what I mean?" I zoomed out to show how the knotted interwoven flows of Connectors were distorted around a dark mass. "It's like, if Connectors are hair, then this is a bald patch. No, that's a 2-d example. It's more like, if this map is a catscan of a brain, then here is a tumor."