The Omega Egg [A Fictionwise Round Robin Novel]

by Mike Resnick;Various Authors

  Carol was gone, replaced by an odd memory that hadn't been there before, of her being mad at him after one of his missions because he took her from her shower. It had caused a huge argument between them because he had claimed he hadn't done it. The argument had ended up with passionate sex and the conception of their first child.

  So because he was standing here in this meadow, looking for answers, their first child had been born years earlier. If the purple guys would have killed him earlier, would he not have sired that kid?

  He forced himself to focus back on his present problem. Thinking about time paradoxes always gave him a headache.

  It seemed that traveling between dimensions, through folds in the fabric of space, also meant that time could be traversed and changed as well.

  And, it seemed, he could do it.

  Somewhere, in the back of his head, he heard a faint voice.

  Well, duh.

  He ignored the sarcasm and tried to focus on the problem. He still wasn't sure just how he would get answers, besides shouting into a slight breeze. There had to be another, more efficient way.

  Maybe that distant small voice in the back of his mind that had caused him to bring Carol here had a few answers.

  “What dimension am I in?”

  He knew, without hearing the words, the answer.

  There was no way to number or name the dimensions because there was no starting or ending point as humans liked to think of such things.

  Before the egg and strip had melted into him, that kind of abstract thinking would have given him an even larger headache than time travel questions. Now he half understood, at least as much as he thought he might understand.

  It was a damn big universe.

  No kidding said the distant voice in his head.

  He suddenly felt silly just standing in the middle of a meadow having conversations with himself. He needed something to sit on, to give himself time to think.

  “Chair.”

  As he said that, he thought of his favorite bar stool back when he was just an underling working his way up through the service.

  The bar stool appeared. No bar. Just the stool in the middle of the grass-covered meadow.

  He made sure it was secure on the rough ground, then climbed on and sat down. He was starting to feel godlike with this ability to make people and things just appear.

  Oh, great, human ego.

  He ignored the voice in the back of his head and allowed himself, to think about all the amazing things he could do with such power. Finally, he pushed those thoughts away and focused on the task at hand.

  Glad that's over. Ughhh.

  He needed to migrate up the shells of the universe, to stop everything from falling apart, to save the life of every being in his and many other dimensions.

  Oh, yeah, sure. He could do all that, then have lunch.

  Not likely, the little, distant voice in the back of his head said.

  “Aren't you getting bored just sitting out here by yourself?” a real voice said from behind him.

  Spencer spun around and fell off his bar stool, catching himself on his hands and knees in the soft, warm grass. Above him stood a large, yellow-robed man with a white beard and mustache that seemed to go out in all directions, giving his face a cat-like look. The robe was stained with green and red, as if the man couldn't eat without spilling his food.

  Spencer sprung back to his feet, keeping the bar stool between him and the being that had suddenly appeared. “Who are you?”

  “My name, in your language and dimension, would be Galahad. I'm what you and most other races of beings would call a Guardian.”

  Well, this guardian really needed a tissue. He had dozens, if not hundreds of white hairs growing out of his nose in all directions, some of them up to two or three inches long. And a lot of the nose hairs were covered with all kinds of green and red slime. And more slime was coming out of his nose with every breath.

  The little voice in the back of Spencer's head said clearly, Don't mess with this guy.

  Spencer couldn't tell if the voice was his or coming from his new golden ball residents.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, oh Supreme One,” Spencer said, nodding in his most formal manner. He figured there was no point in not giving this guy all his due and playing along for the moment, even if he did look like the reincarnation of Snot-man, a super-hero of Spencer's wild, youthful imagination.

  “Wow!” Galahad the Guardian said, laughing. “What a crock of ho-haw. Lucky I don't have a body in this dimension or your nose would be dark brown.”

  Spencer opened his mouth and couldn't think of a thing to say that didn't involve the Guardian's nose hairs and green snot. The voice in the back of his head kept repeating, Don't fool around with this guy.

  Finally Spencer laughed and said, “Sorry.”

  “So,” Galahad said, “what can I do to help you? You only get me once and then I'm out of this story and you're on your own. I'm only here as a favor for an old friend anyway. I find these dimensions in this neighborhood boring and smelly.”

  The Guardian licked his upper lip with a bright red tongue that caught a large number of the things crawling from the Guardian's nose. A few dropped onto his robe.

  “How about a few answers?” Spencer asked, trying to keep his stomach from rebelling. “Like what exactly is this ball that's melted inside me?”

  “It's a gateway, built by who-knows-who that allows you to fold time and space and dimensions at your will. It's an artificial way of helping lower beings such as yourself do what comes naturally for my kind. But the power supply is limited, so make sure you're where you want to be when it runs out.”

  The long speech caused even more green slime to come from the being's nose and the guy took another lick.

  Spencer looked away at the trees, trying to take in what he had just heard without thinking about what he had just seen.

  Finally, Spencer managed to take a deep breath and ask his next question. “So, what does it mean by migrating up the shells of the universe?”

  Galahad shrugged as if the question was almost below him. “Universes inside every time line, when described in a simple three-dimensional way, look like rounded bowls stacked upside down on one another. By many races at different levels of advancement, they are called shells.”

  “How do I migrate up them?” Spencer asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Galahad said. “With that artificial device inside you, you can go just about anywhere, or any time, you want. You have been given amazing, godlike powers.”

  “So, who is messing up the universes around where I originated?” Spencer asked.

  The Guardian looked at Spencer with round, yellow eyes. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Why would I not want to know?”

  “Because this being is the leader of a very large group that intends to merge a number of dimensions. His name is feared by billions of different beings.”

  Spencer just shook his head and made the mistake of again looking at the Guardian's nose hair.

  “Bob.”

  “Bob?” Spencer asked.

  “Bob,” the Guardian said. The name sort of echoed around the meadow and the Guardian almost shuddered. “He's not a very nice being.”

  “Fine,” Spencer said. “So I have to stop this Bob in some way or another to save my dimension and all the beings in it.”

  “You go it,” said the Guardian.

  “So how do I find this Bob?”

  The Guardian pointed to his right. “Go that way, migrate to your heart's content along the bowls, or plates, or shells. But you're going to need a lot of help to get there and after you find Bob.”

  With that, laughing harder than before, the Guardian vanished, taking every spot of snot with him, including the one that had stuck to Spencer's chest like a big, ugly garden slug.

  Spencer again found himself alone in the peaceful meadow with the slight breeze and the bubbling stream. Far in the back
of his brain, he could feel a large sense of relief. It seemed that the golden ball that called his body a home was afraid of the Guardians.

  The faint thought reached him. Too stupid to be afraid.

  “I resent that,” Spencer said out loud.

  Now even the back of his head was as silent as the meadow around him. He climbed back onto the bar stool and sat thinking. Ignoring the man's nose issues, Spencer had managed to get a few questions answered. But the last words of the Guardian were stuck in his mind. He was going to need a lot of help.

  So, help he would get.

  If he was going to go on a quest, travel up the shells to find Bob, he needed a team around him, the best team he that ever lived.

  “Patsy!” he shouted into the wind, making sure he had the image of her the last time he saw her in his mind. “Come to me.”

  She appeared in front of him and without an instant's hesitation had a weapon in her hand faster than he could see it happen.

  “Spence!” she said after scouting in every direction around her. “What is going on here? And just where is here? And how did you do that?”

  Spencer held up his hand and motioned her to move a few steps to her right. “I'll explain it when everyone gets here.”

  “Ramon,” Spencer said again into the wind, “come to me.” Again, Spencer made sure he was thinking about Ramon the last moment he had seen him so he would get the most current dwarf, not an old copy.

  The Black Dwarf appeared, laying on his back, naked. Clearly he had been in the middle of a very compromising situation that he was enjoying immensely, if the state of his body was any indication.

  It took Ramon a moment to adjust to his new reality. Then he stood quickly, not bothering to cover himself from Patsy's wide-eyed stare and large smile.

  “Sorry,” Spencer said, not sure what to make of what he had just seen. It seemed that all his friends had more sexual assets. “Clothes and weapons for Ramon.”

  A pile of clothes, and knives and guns appeared beside the Black Dwarf.

  “How are you doing that?” Patsy asked.

  Spencer ignored her.

  “I assume that before I kill you for this,” Ramon said, “you're going to tell me what's going on and where we are at.”

  “When everyone is here,” Spencer answered.

  Then he focused on the last moment he had seen Plibix's mother on Goldmeadow, the moment before she died. “Fairy, come to me.”

  The little green fairy appeared in the air, fluttering. She bared her teeth and hissed at Spencer.

  “Now I'm impressed,” Patsy said. “She was dead.”

  “Still is at this point in time, whatever this point is,” Spencer said. “Let me get Plibix here and we can all talk.”

  He thought about the dragon the last moment he had seen him, then said, “Plibix, come to me.”

  The large dragon appeared, still in a killing mood.

  The dragon spun around, saw Spencer and started at him, then suddenly stopped as the green fairy darted in front of him.

  It was like a bad romance story as the two locked gazes, then went for each other in ways that fairies and dragons are not supposed to go at each other.

  “Oh, get a hotel room,” the dwarf said, clearly disgusted as he finished dressing. “At least I started in one.”

  Like the nose hairs on the Guardian, Spencer tried not to look at what the fairy and the dragon were doing.

  After a moment, Patsy stepped forward to face Spencer on his bar stool. “All right, you want to tell us what this is all about?”

  “Our mission to save our dimension,” Spencer said. “It's going to take all of us working together to make this happen.”

  “And what happened to the egg?” Plibix asked, stroking the fairy perched on his arm. “And the gateway you took from me?6”

  “I didn't take them,” Spencer said, staring at his old friend. “I kept them away from you. Their power was eating at your brain.”

  “I know it was,” Plibix said. “But you didn't answer my question. What did you do with them?”

  “They merged and then flowed inside of me before I could take them to someplace safe.”

  All four of his team stared at him like he had just lost his mind.

  “You have the egg and the gateway, the thing of power we had all been looking for on Leonardo?” Patsy asked. "Inside you?"

  Spencer nodded.

  “And you are controlling their power?” Ramon asked.

  “I am,” Spencer said. “And my control is only just beginning. I hope to get better. But in the meantime, I think I have found a few answers as to who is causing our problems and how to find him.”

  “So, who's doing this?” Patsy asked. “And how did you learn about this? Through your new powers?”

  “My new powers are good only as long as the power source that was in the egg lasts,” Spencer said. “And I learned about all this from a Guardian.”

  “They say no one has seen a Guardian,” Ramon said.

  “What's a Guardian?” the dragon asked.

  The fairy hissed at him and Plibix nodded, then said nothing more.

  “How did this Guardian appear to you?” Patsy asked, her voice almost in a hush, like she was standing in a big church and afraid to talk too loudly.

  “An old cat-like humanoid with a nose hair problem.”

  Patsy nodded. “Okay, you talked to a Guardian.”

  “I know I did,” Spencer said, annoyed.

  The little voice from the golden ball in the back of his head said, If this is your help, the universe is doomed.

  “So, who does this Guardian say is causing the problems?” Plibix asked.

  “And how do we find them?” Ramon said.

  “We go that way up the shells of the universe,” Spencer said, pointing at a spot between the dragon and Patsy.

  “Shells?” Patsy asked.

  “A term that Carol used. I'll explain later. But I think we'd better get started.”

  About time, the voice in his head said.

  “You still haven't told us who we are trying to stop.”

  “Bob,” Spencer said.

  In unison, the dragon, the dwarf, and Patsy Klein said, “Bob?” The fairy just hissed.

  “Bob,” Spencer repeated. “Now, is everyone ready? We have shells to migrate before we sleep.”

  Without waiting for an answer or more questions, he opened a fold of the universe with his mind and slipped them all up a shell in the direction the Guardian had indicated, leaving his favorite bar stool sitting alone in the middle of a meadow on some unknown planet in some unknown dimension.

  Their journey to save the universe from Bob was starting.

  Or continuing.

  Or just about to end, depending on which time, which dimension, and which planet you were looking at it from.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Chapter 13: The Search for Bob

  by Jody Lynn Nye

  Spence could find only one phrase that would effectively describe the situation in which his band of galactic defenders found themselves: a cocktail party.

  In his long experience as an agent, and in the years that followed, cocktail parties could be as dangerous as other assignments, if not more so. The friendly semblance of one's fellow guests, even one's hosts, could conceal malign or fatal intent.

  He had seldom, however, wandered around a venue like this one. The room, into which he and his group had emerged with a spectacular burst of light, drawing the temporary attention of the inhabitants, stretched out into a visual infinity. The walls, if they were walls, were midnight blue, dotted with tiny silver stars. If this were indeed a cocktail party, it must be considered a successful one, because it was so dark he could see only the silhouettes of the other guests, and only those who were relatively close to him. They clustered in small groups. Each bobbed gently up and down in the animated fashion of beings everywhere making polite conversation. Occasionally, one wo
uld break away and move to another group. There was one difference to cocktail guests on Earth: a matter of scale.

  “They're enormous!” Ramon hissed, somersaulting to Spence's side.

  And so they were. Spence squinted at them with his cryoptic eye. He estimated that they averaged over a hundred and fifty meters in length, but massed no more than the dwarf beside him. They were shaped rather like an Italian Renaissance artist's rendition of the clouds representing the four winds, but translucent to the point of ghostliness. Their substance was suggested by a golden shimmer here, a gleaming line there, etched upon the dark canvas of their surroundings.

  “Let's see if we can make contact.” Spence kicked in the air as though swimming, thrusting himself forward until he was within a few meters of one of the beings. He reveled in the freedom of movement he enjoyed. Gravity in the gigantic room was almost nil, but the atmosphere was a pleasant-smelling mix of gases that contained more than sufficient oxygen for the Earth-dwellers to breathe. The creature gave Spence a surprised glance as it noticed him beside it. Spence looked down at himself, and realized he was glowing like a neon beer sign. Spence kicked again to close the distance. He had no real idea how to be suave to a being that was hundreds of times larger than he, but he would try. He had had experience with dozens of life forms, and had access to a memory-chip containing polite phrases and gestures from the hundreds of intelligent creatures with whom the Space Service had made contact. He was formulating how to open a conversation with the cloud creature when it jerked away hastily before he made contact with one of its thick, translucent pseudopods.

  “Back off, Spence. You're scaring the hell out of it,” Patricia ordered, her voice tinny in the vast room. “We don't want them to attack!”

  Spence obeyed her instructions, windmilling his arms so that his momentum carried him upward and away in a wide parabolic arc. The creature he had been close to took fright at his sudden change of direction, and shot away toward a group of the luminous beings as if taking shelter with it. Small bursts of lightning passed between them, the local equivalent of conversation. Spence regretted alarming the being.

  “What are we doing here?” Ramon asked, as the group huddled into a small knot as far from the other party-goers as they could get. The dark-skinned dwarf floated eye to eye with the others. For once his lack of height offered him no disadvantage.