Mobius

by Garon Whited

  “Yes. Although such use is regarded by most magicians as too dangerous and impractical.”

  “It is?”

  “Indeed it is! The power requirements are enormous. The destination is unpredictable, as well. Usually, the destination is weak, with little or no magical energy. Why would any magician have an interest in such a place? We would be vulnerable to even the most basic of predators, to say nothing of any random peasant with a knife.”

  I got the impression the magicians of Arondael didn’t do much exploring. Then again, they were generally studying spells in their specialty, not getting out and doing things. The ones not in Arondael were the exceptions, not the rule.

  “I see your point. Well, the power requirements are about to be less of a problem. I’ll rig something on both gates to help you aim for magically-powerful places. You’ll need to assign people to explore, checking out multiple worlds until you find one you can bail to. Okay?”

  “It is… an unsettling idea,” he admitted. “If it were not for the fact this world is going away, I would not do it.” He shivered. “In the face of the facts, however, I agree.”

  “Thank you. And, once you find somewhere for everyone to emigrate, everyone else should thank you.”

  “I doubt it, but we shall see. Now, do you wish to respond to any of the other requests for audience?”

  “Who else wants to see me?”

  “The Queen, Tianna and Tymara—on behalf of Amber, I believe—Dantos and Nothar, Rendal, and Seldar.”

  I gripped my temples with one hand. As an item of interest, an undead can have a tension headache. Those aren’t fixed by regeneration. We have to relax to make them go away.

  “I’m glad I got the technical stuff out of the way first, then. Go do your thing. The chaos wall will hit here a couple of hours before it hits Tamaril, so I’ll be here to evaluate the survivability of the city before I leave.”

  “I am comforted. I would not like to be aboard a sinking city in a sea of chaos.”

  “You’re welcome. Send in whoever’s next. Oh, and as much as I hate to do this, I need to send out for snacks. Would you see who we have in the dungeons?”

  “Ah? Ah. Of course. I shall speak to Dantos.”

  “Thank you.”

  T’yl bowed—not as gracefully as real elf, of course, but still with a certain amount of flair. It bothered me. He seemed to mean it. He’s bowed before, but usually he has a sort of… how to describe it? A sort of reserve. It’s the difference between, “Okay, fine, you’re a king and protocol says you get a Grade Two gesture of respect,” and “You are my King, and I accord you the honor you are due.” When he bowed this time, it was the second one.

  I’m oversensitive. I know it. If I had an extra brain—or a better one—I would wonder about it.

  Lissette was next. Of course. As Queen, she can trump pretty much anybody as far as line-jumping is concerned. The door pivoted open and there she was, wearing black and red and green and gold, with a diadem-like mini-crown instead of a full-sized hunk of gold. A pair of bodyguards—one of them Malena—stopped outside the door and swung it shut behind her, leaving us alone.

  I stood up, smiled, and extended both hands to take hers.

  “I’m so pleased to see you,” I lied. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to anyone not connected with the nuts and bolts of the city’s survival. Worse, she would likely want to talk about Us. Therefore, I have to paste a Perfectly Believable Smile on my face and pretend. It’s one of my few social defenses. “Come in. Come in. Have a seat. Have the Big Three briefed you?”

  “They have,” she agreed, taking the seat I held for her. I moved to my own and plopped unceremoniously down in it. At least I found time to unshell from my armor. Unless it’s specially made, furniture is always more comfortable without armor plating.

  “Wonderful. I have to try and undo this mess, but I’m hoping I can. If not, T’yl has instructions on finding a world and I’ll bolt some guidance ideograms onto my gates to narrow the possible results.”

  “I feel certain you are doing everything you can to preserve and defend the kingdom.”

  “I think I am. I sense from your tone you may have some reservations?”

  “No… not about that.”

  I tried to look relaxed. I totally called it. Significant Discussion of Feelings.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Let me know what it is and I’ll try to help.”

  “You always do. Try, I mean.” She worked her fingers together, lacing and unlacing them, and wouldn’t look me in the eye. “We sit upon the brink as the edge of the world marches ever-nearer, and—if I am told correctly—you plan to escape through the Gate of Shadows in Tamaril.”

  “I wouldn’t put it like that. I’m going to try and prevent what’s happening from happening. I plan to undo it so it doesn’t happen at all. I’m working diligently here to make sure you’re in a safe zone, so even if I fail to undo it, you can still continue.”

  “It does not feel as though you are working to preserve us,” she stated. “It feels… I feel as though you are abandoning me.”

  “Never. But I do have to go run an errand. I will be away for a bit and out of touch—or, no, come to think of it, if I survive, I should be in touch almost immediately. So, I do have to run an errand, but it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. If I survive, I’ll be right back.”

  I did not elaborate on any of the weird possibilities and how they might affect her perspective of events. If I succeeded, we wouldn’t have this conversation, so it wouldn’t matter.

  “I want you to know,” she told me, “how much I appreciate what you have done.”

  “Oh?”

  “You have made a ruling Queen of Karvalen. You made me, the unwanted daughter of a lesser noble, into that Queen. You have always been there when I needed you… even when I did not call for you.”

  “I tried not to interfere,” I replied. “Sometimes I had to get all nosy and butt into your business. I should have kept out of it.”

  “No, no! You were right to interfere. I didn’t… I should have requested your presence more often.” She twisted her fingers together hard enough to make knuckles crack. She smiled mirthlessly. “Look at me. I can command as the Queen without hesitation or doubt, but we sit here and I find it difficult to speak.”

  “Public face versus private face. I know the feeling.” I wanted to use the incident in the throne room as an example, but I refrained. While it is a good example of the difference, it doesn’t have a lot of positive karma.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t call for you. I was afraid, and proud, and… and…”

  I stopped her before she could go any further. Whatever she was trying to say, it was too much for her at the moment. Instead, I moved in front of her, took her hands again, and smiled—keeping my lips together.

  She knew I was going away to do something and, with the world ending, she was afraid she would never see me again. Thus the sudden need to tell me things she wasn’t ready to tell me. This might be her last chance, and if she didn’t say it, she would regret it forever. Most people have this problem when a loved one dies. Grandpa has a heart attack, a sister never comes home from a party, something. Then they wish for a chance to say what they should have said in life.

  Lissette was a sharp customer. She knew what she was trying to do. I wasn’t as sharp, but she gave me extra clues. I reassured her.

  “I tell you what. I’m going to say my goodbyes to other people, as well, just in case. But I’ll tell you something most people don’t understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you miss me, go down to the Temple. Tell Beltar you have something to say to god. I’ll be there to listen.”

  “It’s not the same if I cannot see you, hear you reply.”

  “Lissette?”

  “Yes?”

  “Trust me?”

  She looked at my face for a long time. It’s the face of the Demon King, but her
head knows better. Her heart is still not entirely comfortable with it. Changing how you think is easy. Changing how you feel is a challenge. She visibly made a decision.

  “I will.”

  “Good. And, if I may make a suggestion about the succession?”

  “You are the King. I think that entitles you make suggestions, at least.”

  “Pick the one most likely to do a decent job. I don’t care who the father was. Take the prince or princess most likely to do it well.”

  Lissette stared at me with wide eyes.

  “Yeah, I know,” I admitted. “Don’t worry about it. They’re your children. That’s all that matters. Is that clear?”

  “It is clear, but it is—”

  “Trust me?” I repeated. “Take me at my word? Don’t read into it, don’t assume, just do it? Please?”

  She bit back a response. I will wonder until my dying day what it was. My last dying day.

  “Very well,” she said, finally. “I accept your advice.”

  I stood up, drew her to her feet. I hugged her and she stiffened for a moment. She relaxed into my arms and slid her hands around my ribs as though feeling her way along my body. It’s like she expected spines or wings or something. She eventually put her arms around me. She sobbed into my shirt, only one time, and squeezed me for all she was worth. She let go and I let her go when she stepped back.

  “Thank you… my lord.”

  “It is, as always, my pleasure… my lady.”

  I held out a hand and she took it. We moved to the door and I pushed it open for her.

  When she was gone, I closed the door and took a minute for myself. It’s always stressful to deal with the estranged wife, but maybe I should have devoted more effort to reducing the strange. She does care about me, and I care about her, but we’ve got baggage. Hell, we’ve got a luggage carousel. Was it ever possible we could get past the Demon King, Thomen, and a brood of bastard children? It’s not the sort of question I’m good at.

  Things I am good at include magical circuitry and Boolean logic.

  The gates in the mountain are going to be used to search other worlds for someplace everyone can retreat to. Hopefully, they can take their time about it, bringing along everything they have, rather than rush headlong into a strange universe.

  Diogenes and I came up with a number of protocols for random-dialing worlds. Most of them were safety measures, backed by a ton of precautions in the facility on Apocalyptica. Obviously, I couldn’t implement all of them here, but I could make things a little easier, a little safer, for everyone doing the dialing.

  First off, there’s the question of power. In a matter of hours, the mountain won’t need four reactors. Without the Eastrange, a road network, and several cities connected to it, it’s about to be considerably smaller. One of those reactors is dedicated to maintaining the Firmament. Reactor #2 keeps the mountain alive and, incidentally, powers a lot of the spells—the day-dome, the air movement, the water pumps, and so forth. #3 will feed the gates during the search. #4 is in reserve. Eventually, they’ll want to open up a gate and march people through—along with any horses, carts, luggage, materials, supplies, and whatever else. It’ll take power, and lots of it—more than a battery charge in the gate-room crystals. Reactors #3 and #4 should manage to keep a full-sized interuniversal gate open indefinitely.

  In the meantime, how do they explore? If interuniversal gates are so expensive to open—and, without an enchanted receiving gate on the other end, they are!—how do they open it up multiple times a day to look around?

  Smaller gates.

  The mountain doesn’t have a lot of iridium. It’s rare on Earth, but it’s ridiculously rare on Rethven. It has all the components for orichalcum, though. I used my Annulus of Assassination and turned the materials into two small gates, each about two inches in diameter. This is not a good way to get a view of a whole world, but it does give T’yl a window for looking through, casting spells, and so on. I mounted these in the wall behind each of the main gates. If they found a world they liked, they could transfer the connection to the larger gate and send a survey party through.

  Which raised the question of accurately targeting a world. If they send someone through, how do they reliably hit the same world to get him back for his report?

  So I added some save slots to the wall. Technically, each slot is a crystal to “save” the signature of a world. If they don’t like a world, they can save a new world over it.

  But, back to the problem of safety. What are the most dangerous things they might encounter in universe exploration? New plagues? Invisible radiation? Horrific monsters? People?

  People.

  True, the exploration crew might find a society of happy, helpful people with open arms and generous dispositions. But I grew up in a world with H.G. Wells and J.R.R. Tolkien. If a happy, helpful race like that exists, I’d be on the lookout for morlocks or Melkor. Besides, it’s more likely we’ll find suspicious people who wonder where all these strangers came from, what they want, and why they’re so determined to stay. Those are, arguably, even worse.

  So, as an addition to the gate spells, I added some search parameters. What do we want in a world? We want a moderate to high magical flux. Wizards and magicians demand it. We want the correct atmosphere, sunlight within certain tolerances, and a whole host of molecules matching various types of food. It doesn’t have to have apples and oranges, but it has to have things they can eat!

  But, again, people. I don’t have a good way to include a NOT operator. Oh, it could be done, but not cheaply or easily. Once we find a world matching all the positive criteria, the gate-tunnel locks on to it but doesn’t open. It then starts forming the ball-of-twine around the lock-on point, searching for the NOT criteria. If it finds one, it disconnects. Simple enough. But how long does it search for the last criteria? How long does it take to ball-of-twine a whole world? How much power will it require to have it run an unopened gate connection for so long? And how long do we want to wait at each possible world before looking at it? This is a no-good way to do a search for an escape world!

  So, it’s hard to tell a gate, “Find a world with apples, oranges, and chickens, but not people.” The first three are easy. Just copy the characteristic signature from a sample and it’ll only go ding! when it finds them. The last one, though…

  I figured out a workaround.

  Rather than hunt only for worlds without human beings, we can hunt for worlds with other characteristics. Suppose we find a world with a bundle of flint-tipped spears? It implies a technology suitable for flint-tipped spears. If you pop in for a visit with the primitives, the problem of surviving first contact is minimized.

  Minimized. Not eliminated. General Custer could explain.

  We can expand this by adding more criteria. Say, the gate only connects if it finds people wearing skins and people carrying spears. This implies a primitive culture, one without significant metalworking technologies.

  Even so, it’s not perfect. It could still connect to a world with ten thousand tribes of Neanderthals who are willing to band together against the strange invaders. If we find some sort of extended clan groupings with an us-or-them mentality, it might not end well. But a gate can’t do all the work. It can only narrow the search. The rest is solved by scouting the place!

  On the other hand, I didn’t want them accidentally landing on an Earth world. Given the existing possible paradoxes, I didn’t know what sort of trouble this might cause for them. Fortunately, there are some pretty obvious things I can do to prevent it. Whenever the gate gets a hit, it does a second search, but not for anything physical. I know the basic… I don’t like calling it a “quantum signature,” but I don’t have a better name for it…the basic signature of the Earth timelines. If the lock-on has a matching signature, it goes off and searches again. This doesn’t prevent it from locking on to an Earth, but it does make it auto-reject those connections.

  There might be an Earth timeline so far out,
so wildly different from the ones I’m familiar with, its signature is sufficiently different. If so, fine. But part of the search parameters include a high magical environment, so I’m not overly worried. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do in the time available.

  While I worked on the gates, Dantos and Seldar made arrangements for me to eat things. They didn’t ask, merely sent trussed-up human snacks over with a short note on their crimes. I wasn’t so concerned with the actual crimes as much as I was concerned about the stains in their souls. The local justice system is pretty good about spotting the dirty ones.

  They might have problems if the local gods don’t go with them to wherever they wind up. Still, that’s trouble for later, not right now. I have more immediate things to panic about.

  The advancing edge of chaos rolled steadily in from the southeast, like a stormfront. People streamed in along the canals, racing it to the perceived safety of the city. During a break to check on things, I noticed a small but consistent trickle of orku and galgar from the west, out of the Eastrange. Vathula. The mountain range. They were permitted entry, too. I wonder who decided that. It could have been ordered by any of several people—Lissette, Nothar, Dantos, Rendal, Beltar… even one of the Big Three, although they would be more likely to carry out an order of that sort than to give it.

  Interesting. Kind of gratifying, too, in a way. Still, in coming days—assuming coming days—would they be treated as second-class citizens? Would they be brought along to a new world only to be ostracized, sent away to form their own communities? It’s nice they’re accepted well enough to be welcomed, and even better they feel they can ask. Or were they desperate enough to risk demanding? Or did they come because of me? I’m their… king? They might have come on that basis.

  I’m cautious about how it’s going to go.

  Rethven isn’t known for what I think of as traditional racism. Colors don’t seem to matter too much when the “other guys” are, quite literally, not human. And I mean “not human” in the objective sense, rather than some pseudo-aristocratic quasi-intellectual claiming “Oh, they’re a lesser breed of men.” I think it’s a unifying thing for humanity to have other species arguing about ownership of the world. It makes me hope there are alien races in the Earthlike universes.