They’d decided to tell everyone that he was sick, and to do this at home to avoid awkward questions. He figured the job owed him a little sick time, as he’d worked almost every day since the Collapse.
There were some practical issues to worry about.
“Ready for this?” Keera held up a smooth plas catheter.
Aaron shuddered. “Sorry, not so thrilled about that part.”
“You said you didn’t want to be interrupted in the middle of your little quest, just to get up and go to the bathroom.”
“You sure you’re good at this?” He eyed the catheter suspiciously.
“Yes. I’ve been volunteering at the clinic, remember? The nurses have been giving me training courses. I’ve done this at least ten times.”
“Ten times,” he grumbled. “All right, let’s get this over with.” He pushed back the covers and pulled off his pants.
Keera whistled.
“Hey, enough of that. It’s bad enough that I have to be subjected to this indignity, but the derision of a beautiful woman too?”
She grinned. “You’ve been so busy lately. It’s been a long time—”
“When this is over, we’ll take a nice vacation, go out sailing on Lake Jackson.” He lay down on the bed, getting comfortable.
“Promise?” She pulled on gloves and disinfected him.
It was cold. “Yes. You sure you’re good at this?”
“Hey, don’t squirm.” She coated the catheter with lubricant. “Here it goes. It’s worse coming out.”
What followed wasn’t exactly pleasant, but he managed.
“All done.” She kissed him on the cheek. “But humor me. If you don’t wake up, what should I do?” She stripped off her rubber gloves and pulled the sheet up over him. She sat down on the bed next to him, taking his hand.
“Find Andy. Or talk to the world mind.” He squeezed her hand. “And don’t worry. It’s vee space. It’s not real. Nothing can hurt me in there.”
“Okay. I’ll see you tonight for dinner?”
He grinned. “Any chance of some apple pie for dessert?”
“If you make yourself a virtual one.”
Aaron laughed. “Love you.”
She pecked him on the lips. “You too. Travel safely.”
He put his hand on the cross that hung around his neck, the one Ana had given him. The one that had been his father’s. I’m coming for you, Dad.
He closed his eyes and put his hand on the interface.
The world shifted, and he was standing in a wide valley in front of a stone tower. Around him, a breeze blew through the grass, which didn’t glow.
Lex was waiting for him. He was in his masculine form. “Welcome to Earthsea.”
ANDY AND Colin disembarked in the foothills on the far side of the Anatov Mountains from Darlith.
The train departed, sliding down the rails toward Micavery far below. It was a lovely day, the air fresh and clean after the previous day’s rainfall. Everything looked shiny and new.
The land there rolled down in stages toward the settled part of the Verge. It was still growing, as more families moved out of Micavery and took up a farming and ranching life.
Shandra was waiting for them with the traxx, as promised.
“You must have left pretty early this morning to make it out here by now.” Andy loaded her things on the back of the low, sturdy transport vehicle.
Shandra nodded. “I left about three this morning. Colin said it was urgent. I’m so sorry about your grandmother. It was a lovely ceremony.” Her hazel eyes were a startling contrast to her brown skin.
“Thanks. I miss her.” It was sweet of Shandra to think about Glory.
Shandra shrugged and turned back to the traxx. Shandra always had been on the shy/serious side. She checked to be sure everything was properly tied down.
The traxx had been fitted with several extra seats. Good, we won’t have to sit on our luggage.
“Any trouble on the way up?” Colin asked, taking his seat and buckling himself in.
“Not at all. It was well before the commute hour.”
Andy looked to see if she was smiling, but the woman’s face was as serious as ever. Shandra was two years older than she was, if she remembered correctly. She had a hard time imagining the woman giggling.
Shandra helped Andy up onto her seat, her hand lingering for just a minute on Andy’s. Or had Andy imagined it?
It reminded her of Delia. In truth, she hadn’t been able to get her girlfriend out of her mind all morning. Three fucking years. What the hell was that?
Shandra climbed over the treads and up into the driver’s seat of the heavy-duty hauler. “Everyone ready to go?”
“Yup.” Andy managed a smile, pushing her anger at Delia down deep inside. This time Andy got the slightest grin back. It transformed Shandra’s somewhat average features into something beautiful. Then it was gone like a cloud shadow. “Here we go.” Shandra put the traxx in gear, and the vehicle lurched forward, making its way across the foothills.
The vehicle rumbled under their feet. Andy hadn’t ridden on one for years. It was kind of fun. “My father said he rode a traxx through here once.”
“Yes, he did.” Colin laughed ruefully. “Against my direct orders, if I remember correctly. He was off on a mission to rescue Dr. Anatov.”
“Did he succeed?” Shandra glanced back at him.
Colin and Andy shared a gaze. Shandra didn’t know about her and her father’s abilities, or about the world mind’s split personality. Very few did. “He made it there in time to be with her when she died,” Andy said carefully, and Colin nodded. “It’s really beautiful up here.”
It was a wide-open country, with few trees to block the view. Ahead, the sweep of the world bent toward the sky, and to her left, the Anatov Mountains provided a stark backdrop that climbed to the sky like a dragon’s maw.
“This area was a barren wasteland then.” Colin’s vision was unfocused. “I remember when we found him and his companions—your mother and Devon. That was the week they met, if I remember correctly.”
Andy tried to imagine her father at seventeen—three years younger than she was now. She failed miserably. “Did you know my uncle?”
“Jayson?” He shook his head. “I met him once, when your grandmother brought him and your father to see Jackson off on one of our supply runs on the Dressler. What made you think of him?”
“My dad said he was thinking about him at Glory’s funeral.” She glanced at Shandra.
“Death tends to remind us of others we’ve lost.” He lapsed into silence.
Andy wondered who he was thinking of.
They made steady progress. Andy closed her eyes and hopped into vee space, working on her studies. She was taking a course in astrophysics from Ana, and she had a set of exam questions to complete that were proving hard for her to solve.
Someone touched her shoulder.
She opened her eyes and looked around. The traxx had stopped. They were perched on the top of a large hill that looked strangely familiar. “What…?”
“We’re here.” Shandra offered to help her down. “You kinda zoned out there.” Her hand was warm in Andy’s.
“Sorry. I was just… thinking about some homework that’s overdue.”
“Hey, you made it!” Eddy appeared and gave her a big hug as she stepped down from the traxx. He looked good. The whole Nottingham Sherriff thing worked for him. She missed tri dee, sometimes.
“I wouldn’t have missed it. Anything new?”
Eddy shook his head. “Just waiting for you.” He let her go. “Hey, Colin. Good to have you along! Come on. I’ll show you where it happened.”
EDDY WAS glad to have company. He loved the outdoors, but being so close to the place of his near-demise was making him extremely uncomfortable. If things could come out of the ground over there and attack you for no good reason, who was to say it couldn’t happen over here?
Andy was staring at the gully below, her br
ow furrowed.
“Good to see you, Eddy.” Colin gave him a bear hug, halfway crushing the wind out of him. “This is Shandra, our traxx driver.”
Eddy shook Shandra’s hand.
Andy strode down the hillside toward the gully.
“Careful,” Eddy called after her, then shut his mouth. She was far better equipped for world mind weirdness than he was, but still….
“Got it.” She strode right into the midst of the battlefield from the day before.
Nothing happened.
She knelt, touching the earth and closing her eyes.
“What happened here?” Colin asked while they waited.
“I was following the trail of a group of people who had slaughtered almost a dozen sheep on one of the ranches. The trail dead-ends there.” He pointed to the rock face. “Damned strange, as if they’d walked right through the rocks themselves.”
Colin frowned but didn’t say anything.
“Then something… roots, I think? They attacked me, winding around my arms and legs and pulling me down to the ground. Andy saved me.”
Shandra was looking at him, her eyes narrowed. “Andy was here yesterday?”
“Not exactly….” He looked at Colin to help him. Here he wasn’t in Andy’s company more than five minutes, and he was already blurting out her secrets.
“WHAT HE means is that I was inside his head.” Andy strode up the hillside, frowning.
Colin frowned. “Andy, are you sure…?”
“She may as well know, if she’s going to be spending time with us. Save us a lot of dancing around the fact.” She turned to address Shandra directly. “You probably know I can manipulate parts of the world, like my father.”
Shandra nodded. “I’ve heard rumors.”
Andy laughed. “I’m guessing not all good?”
Shandra shrugged. “People are idiots. So what’s the big secret?”
I think I like you. She grinned. “I can ride inside people’s heads if they are connected to the world mind. And if they let me.”
“Oooh, the possibilities.” Shandra’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe you could show me sometime.”
Andy laughed. “Not the reaction I expected.” She’s definitely hitting on me. Andy wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She was still entangled with Delia, after all.
She imagined Delia in the arms of another woman, or maybe a man, and growled.
Shandra frowned. “You do have to have permission, right?”
“Yeah.” Damn you, Delia, for messing with my head.
“So you jumped into Eddy’s head and helped him? That’s cool.”
“Thanks.” She pushed Delia out of her head again. She had more immediate things to worry about.
“So, what did you find?” Eddy asked. “You don’t look happy.”
“It’s hard to explain. As near as I can describe it, that area where the attack happened—it’s dead.”
“Dead? Like… how do you mean?”
“Inert, maybe? I tried dipping there, reaching down to touch the world mind. I can do it here.” She knelt, closed her eyes, and touched the ground. She opened them again and looked toward the gully. “But back there? Nothing. It’s almost like the trap that caught you was set to self-destruct.” She shook her head. She’d never seen anything like it before.
“What does it mean?” Colin asked, scratching his beard thoughtfully.
Andy frowned. “Either the world mind has it in for Eddy personally, or there’s someone on Forever who is better at manipulating the world mind’s subroutines than I am. I had no idea there was a way to leave a delayed command like that. It was probably triggered when you walked over the spot by the rock wall.”
“This all sounds like something I’ve seen before but hoped we’d never have to deal with again.” Colin stared at the gully.
Eddy nodded. “They meant to cause fear.”
“We’ve long suspected there were some people living up here in the mountains, pulling off the occasional petty crime. But this feels different. That sheep slaughter was meant to have an impact.”
Eddy looked toward Micavery. “I thought it was strange how clear a path they left across the hills.”
Colin snorted. “They wanted to lure someone here. To kill them, if possible. Up the ante.”
“Why?” Andy was puzzled by the whole thing. Why would someone act that way?
“To stoke people’s fears.” Colin shook his head. “But where are they hiding?” He looked up at the mountains, as if they would reveal their secrets to him if he glared at them.
“Come look at this.” Andy led them all down to the gully. Eddy was a little gun-shy. “The rock here. It looks different than the rock around it.”
“I saw that.” Eddy ran his hand along it. “It’s smoother than the rest.”
“Almost like it was melted and then reformed.” Andy had never seen that either. The bones of the world—the “roots” and the other living parts of Forever—responded to her coaxing. But not the rocks.
“So you think they went through a rock wall?” Colin looked incredulous.
“I do. Look.”
He knelt to see what she was pointing at.
She’d seen it when she completed her inspection earlier. “It’s sheep’s wool. Embedded in the rock.”
“Well I’ll be damned.”
“I found this too.” Eddy held out the knife.
Andy looked it over. “Nice workmanship. Not as polished as what Zach makes at the Knife’s Edge, but still.”
“I thought so too. So, can you get us inside?” Eddy asked, frowning at the wall.
“Yes. It’ll be messy, but I think I can.” She looked at her three companions. “Should we? Or should we head back to Micavery for reinforcements?”
“They already have a day’s lead on us,” Colin said.
“Let me send Cassie home, then.” Eddy climbed the hill to where his horse was contentedly chewing up the glowing grass. He untied her and gave her a good slap on the hindquarters, and she took off toward Micavery.
“Do you think you can follow their trail?” Colin asked Andy.
Not if what was in there was as dead feeling as it was out here. “I can try.”
AARON LOOKED around at the beautiful valley. “What is this place?”
“It’s something I created a long time ago.” Lex spun around, dancing through the tall grasses. “It’s an island. Beyond the forest, there are many more.”
Aaron grinned. Such playfulness wasn’t something he expected from the world mind.
“I come here when I need to relax or work something through.”
He glanced at the stone tower in the middle of the valley. “Is this where my father met you?”
Lex nodded. “When he saved me from the wreck of the Dressler. He was my knight in shining armor.”
“He always spoke highly of you.” It was weird, talking about Jackson Hammond as though he were dead. Which Aaron supposed, in a way, he was. “So how do we find him?”
Lex took his hand. “Each of us has our own worlds in here. Places we can go to escape the claustrophobia. I don’t feel it so much. This world is natural to me. But the other Immortals… sometimes they need wide-open spaces.”
Immortals. Jackson and Ana. He nodded. “I get that. Humans like to wander.”
“Jackson built himself a series of interconnected worlds. I have access to certain ‘public’ parts of his creations. But to reach the others, we have to follow his rules.”
“Rules?”
“Each of our worlds has its own internal sets of rules. We’ll start in Frontier Station where he first met Glory. But from there, we’ll have to find our way to him on our own.”
“Got it.” He was still a little confused. He’d had a lot of experience dipping into biominds of various types, but this was sure to be a qualitatively different experience. “I’m glad to have you along as a guide.”
“This is only an avatar of me. It will stay connected to me, and I can
offer you suggestions as we go. But you have to make the decisions.”
“Ah.”
“Ready?”
He nodded. “Ready as I’m going to be.”
He took Aaron’s hand, and they slipped through into the gleaming halls of Frontier Station.
Chapter Five: Into the Mountain
ANDY SUMMONED up roots like the ones that had almost killed Eddy. He stood back, giving her a wide berth.
She’d had to work off to the side of the dead zone, as she called it.
The roots crawled up the rock face, sinking into it as if it were made of butter. They traveled across the surface in the shape of an arched doorway, and the rock groaned like a living thing.
“Stand back.” Andy took a step or two away from the wall.
With a sharp crack, the wall disintegrated, showering the immediate vicinity with pebbles and dust.
The roots withdrew into the ground.
“Nicely done,” Eddy said as the open doorway emerged from the dust. He coughed a little as the dust spread and settled.
“Just so we’re clear, we go in and see what we can find. Then we go back and report to Aaron, right?” Colin glared at Eddy and Andy.
“All right, all right.” Poor guy must have had some issues with people flouting his authority before.
Andy nodded. “I should tell my dad what we’re doing, before we go on.” She closed her eyes and then opened them wide in surprise. “He’s not responding.”
Colin frowned. “Try your mom.”
After a moment, a look of relief passed across Andy’s face. “He’s holed up with the world mind. Something about Jackson. I’m not to tell anyone but you three.”
“That’s odd.” Eddy glanced in the direction of Micavery, invisible behind the hill. “He didn’t mention anything when we spoke yesterday.”
“It’s a long story.” Colin brushed dust off his shirt. “His mother’s funeral was the day before yesterday.”
The Rising Tide Page 5
