Patricia shivered, the veil of light that was her vastly outspread body shimmering like a bead curtain in a windstorm. “That was five days of my life I'll never have back again. When you put it that way, I have had worse things happen to me. But is this the only way we can save the galaxy?”
“It's worth a try,” Plibix said, after confering silently with the fairy.
“I'm game,” Ramon said. “But the rest of you might end up addicted to coffee as badly as I am.”
“It's a risk I'm willing to take,” Spence said. “Let's try it. I think the best course would be to layer ourselves together, like an onion. I'll be at the core, with the egg-and-strip, powering our transit. I'll be inside Patsy...”
“Watch it, fellah!” she snapped.
“In a purely professional sense, of course,” Spence added smoothly.
“Then stop calling me Patsy,” she said.
“If you insist, Patricia,” Spence said, pointedly. “You'll handle communications for our combined selves. We'll have to put the fairy outside of Patricia, because I want Ramon next, since I freely admit that he's better with armaments than the rest of us, and, I noticed when we went cloudlike, far more heavily armed than the rest of us put together.”
“Ah, you peeked,” the dwarf said, with a grin. “This is dangerous. It's crazy. I like it.”
“And Plibix, you'll be the outermost layer. I want you to guide us, since you're the most experienced in negotiating between dimensions.”
Plibix shot a look of regret at the fairy, but he agreed.
Spence rolled his substance around the nebulous mass that represented the glowing blob of the egg. Radiating obvious reluctance, Patricia curled around him like a blanket. The contact felt good to Spence, for a moment, then he was bombarded by Patricia's inner thoughts. First came the insecurities. She had always done a good job of shielding them, but he was literally under her skin, bones, nerves and marrow in this state. She was afraid of screwing up, much as he himself was. She wasn't particularly afraid of death, but she hated the unknown. He had to deal with her pride, which buffeted his own insecurities backwards like an incoming tide, but he was struck by her intelligence, drive and courage. He had the comfort of discovering that she didn't really think he was as stupid as she frequently suggested—not quite as stupid, anyhow. She had real respect for some of the missions he had accomplished in the past, but she, like the others, were full of doubt about the inevitable confrontation with Bob. He wished that she had been more like the false Patsy. He missed the feel of her body, and her enthusiasm in their sexual encounters. He immediately got a wave of mortification and shock from her consciousness, and shamefacedly damped down his memories.
His fellows would also be able read his thoughts when he did that, so he had to school himself to keep the extraneous thoughts that always ran through his mind buried as deeply as he could. Patsy—Patricia—knew everything that he was thinking or feeling, too. The shock of assimilation would have been too much for them to deal with if they weren't on the most important mission of their lives. They were still arranging their emotional furniture in their shared mental apartment when the fairy's consciousness joined them. To Spence's surprise it had a simple and orderly mind. Its emotions were tied up in devotion to Plibix, flower-arranging, and dirt-track motorcross. Ramon was more easily accepted yet. He was a creature of appetites ruled by a strong intelligence. Spence immediately felt a craving for coffee that overrode every yen he had ever felt, including those of sleep or sex. Plibix threw a calm blanket over the whole, like healing skin covering nerve endings. True, Spence had to deal with the petty jealousy, lust, and a host of other intrusive elemental parts of the dragon's personality, but on the whole he was glad to have him there. Spence's confidence rose. They could do it. Just what ‘it’ would turn out to be, he wasn't sure, but he knew that they could. He sealed them all together with the power of the egg.
The Plibix mentality stated, “That being is nearly at the exit point. It is ascending to another level of the universe.”
“Can we follow?” Spence asked.
“We can try,” Ramon's consciousness said. “We've got to be careful not to touch anyone else before we get there. We can't tip anyone off what we have done, or that we're following that cloud-creature. Distance is our only protection.”
Throughout, the Patricia mind kept passing pleasantries, benevolent proton energy that passed for compliments, spun off with some force, that gently repelled approaching ‘guests’ and kept them out of immediate reach, crackles of pleasurable static wrapped around a molecule or two of solid matter. For the first time Spence was able to understand the murmurs of sound the cloud-beings were emitting.
/Strange people/
/Yes. Hardly said a thing, and now they're going./
As they sailed upward toward the singularity, Spence found the synthesis to be exhilarating. Folding himself into the substance and minds of the others made him stronger than he had ever been. He felt smarter with the addition of the others’ expertise at his fingertips. Now that they were also ‘one who is many,’ as the prophetic Pooperanian in the pseudo-Stonehenge had told them to watch out for, he thought, clearing the spit from his mental lips, he hoped it would give them an advantage that they had not had before. Together, they must find the meme that preserved their galaxy. He felt doubt, fear and resolve from his companions.
“Here we go,” Spence thought, as they crossed the event threshold that separated the inner star of the cloud-beings from whatever came next. They all braced themselves against the whiplike force, concentrating their combined attention on what lay before them.
A shame that they never thought to look behind them.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter 14: The End of Some Things, The Beginning of Others
by Jane Yolen
Behind.
The rear.
The End.
It all begins with ending, Spence suddenly thought, before mentally chastising himself: You're sounding like a Pooperanian oracle! He had a brief vision of himself lying on an altar, long tail shivering, mouth already swollen with bellflower poison. It was difficult to get that image out of his head. And with five of his colleagues in his brain as well, it was getting mighty crowded in there.
And now random thoughts began peppering his gray matter, and he was having trouble sorting them out. Little dark flash points that were more questions than answers.
“Coffee,” his inner Ramon said. “Where can we get coffee?”
Pliblix snarled. Probably meant, “Why did we decide to cross this event horizon?”
The fairy, unaccountably, giggled, which was disconcerting.
And Patsy ... well Patsy was the one asking most of the questions. They all had to do with travel arrangements. Thank God he'd never married her. Honeymoon logistics would have been a nightmare.
Spence was on his fourth or fifth iteration of those questions and snarls and arrangements, looking forward, scanning the passing starstreams, when something struck him on the back.
He looked behind for the first time.
Bad move.
Behind him there was a deep rip opening up, blood red, like a dueling scar on God's face. Redness, blackness, nothingness, yet an opening. What had struck him was a flap of that opening.
He had forgotten—they had all forgotten—the first rule in their business: Always cover your rear. Or maybe they'd been made to forget it. Spence tried to remember what they'd been eating at the giant cloud party. Maybe the hors d'ouvres had been soaked in betany from Asher 7, or lovelace from Califunny's second moon.
Stop thinking, do something! Spence told himself. He tried to shout, to let the others know that the shells of the universe were exploding or imploding or falling apart behind them, but all that came out was a whimper.
Patsy's voice in his head whispered, “Oh shit, Spence!”
He turned back. Looked at what was in front of them. Boy! Was she right! They
were being exploded out the anus of the universe and into somewhere else. Floating into the great cesspool that was unknown space. A black hole. Images of kaka-ness closed about him.
Spence shuttered his eyes and let go. It was the only sensible thing he could do.
Swirling ... eddying ... he was spun around and around; soon he was dizzy with it all. He could only concentrate on one thing—not losing his lunch. He wondered how the others were faring, hoped to hear Patsy's voice again with a somewhat more upbeat message, but the only sound that he could distinguish was a crazed beating at his temples.
Temples. Altars. Pooperanians. The asshole of the universe. Somehow it all fit. He drifted with no sense of time. A minute, an hour, a day—the swirling seem to go on and on and on.
And then suddenly he landed, spongy earth beneath his feet. He counted to three before opening his eyes.
“Hell's bells!” he said aloud.
It was true. He was in a meadow of bellflowers, about 40 klicks across and thirty long. Acres of blue flowers. A small wind puzzled through the meadow which set the flowers ringing. It was like being in the center of a change-ringing contest. If eight bells could ring 40, 320 changes, he thought, wondering where the figures had come from, how many changes could this huge field ring?
He knew at once that he wasn't on MacDougall II. Above him, in a blue-green sky, three moons swung like a badly designed backdrop for Swan Lake. None of the MacDougals had three moons. Certainly not in an isosceles formation.
The wind suddenly stopped and the bells fell silent.
Spence took a deep breath and turned to look in the opposite direction. Another formation of moons, five in a dipper configuration edged over the horizon.
Nothing made sense. The one thing he'd been sure of was that bellflowers only grew on MacDougal II. And here the stupid ground was covered with them.
The wind swept through the bellflowers once more, and the ringing started up again. Spence put his hands to his temples. It was enough to drive a man mad.
“Where are you?” he called to his cohorts, the ones in his head and their actual bodily counterparts which were nowhere in sight. “All come to me!”
He waited, then waited some more till the bells fell silent again. Then he called a second time. And a third. But whatever had worked before no longer had the power to command. Not a one of them appeared, and his head was as silent as the bells. If Patsy and Pliblix, the savage fairy, and Ramon were inside, they weren't saying anything.
He figured that before any new wind took up permanent residence in the bellflower meadow, he better get as far away from it as possible. Otherwise he'd go mad. Turning to his right, he sprinted toward the nearest edge, thinking: Now I know how that damned cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz felt going across the poppies. Though he knew he was hardly a coward. Just a working operative trying to make ends meet. And to meet the end of this particular puzzle.
Of course as he ran across the field, he created a small wind of his own and the ringing bells followed him all along the way.
It took a good—actually a bad—fifteen minutes to run across the damned meadow. What he thought he could see hadn't taken in the dips and bumps and gullies, all hidden beneath the blue flowers, and all of which managed to make the end of the field a good deal longer than 30 clicks away. Neither of his legs seemed to be working quite right, and as he ran he developed a horrible stitch in his side. A slipstitch, he thought, because it keeps slipping up and down my side. But finally he made it, though he was gasping for breath when he reached the end of the flowery carpet. There he tripped over something—a rock, a root, he was never to be sure—and found himself sliding down a muddy slope. Bellflowers, he recalled, grow mostly in mud. He landed unceremoniously on the mucky bank of a dark river.
He bent down, put a hand in. The water was icy cold. His fingers immediately cramped.
“I'm not hell then,” he told himself.
“Don't be too sure of that,” someone close said. Someone close.
He knew that voice. He distrusted that voice. Turning, he looked to see Admiral Ktonga leaning against a rock under a willowy tree that wept leaves into the dark river. The admiral looked very much as he had when Spence had seen him last: black, burly, his crisp uniform festooned with medals and ribbons. In the fading light Spence could make out the blue collar and five-point gold star of the American Congressional Medal of Honor. He wondered briefly if the Admiral had gotten that for living through the plasma bomb explosion. He certainly hadn't been wearing that particular medal before. Suddenly shuddering, Spence remembered that the US had stopped giving the Medal of Honor out after World War IV.
“Admiral,” Spence said, as casually as he could under the circumstances. The circumstances being ears that were still ringing from the bellflowers, a still-aching stitch in his side, a hand that was half frozen from the cold river, and an increasing sense of disorientation. “Or should I call you Jim. Though I thought you were dead, Jim.”
The Admiral smiled slowly, his teeth whiter than any human's should be in the gathering dusk. “Not dead enough. And actually,” he said, “you can call me Bob.”
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter 15: Mr. Spencer's Blues
by Pat Cadigan
Well of course Ktonga would show up now, and of course he would be Bob. Who else but Bob? Didn't see that one coming, no sirree—you should pardon the expression—Bob. Spencer closed his eyes briefly. “And the significance of this development is ... what?” he asked Ktonga/Bob wearily.
Ktonga/Bob's smile disappeared, replaced by an expression of mild bewilderment. “What the hell kind of a question is that?”
“It's—well—” Spencer floundered for a moment and then glared at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“What I mean is, after everything you've experienced since leaving my office, you're still talking like you think—no, believe—there's some inherent reason at work in the universe. Hello? Haven't you been paying attention?”
Spencer shrugged. “OK, I'll concede there's absolutely no rationality here. But the next shell could be different. And even if every shell is irrational, that doesn't mean you personally don't have some sort of intention. So, spill it—why does everyone believe the universe needs to be saved from you? Are you planning to impose something nefarious on this reality—like, say, coherence?”
Ktonga/Bob straightened up; there was a twinkle in his eye. “You got a problem with coherence?”
“If you have to ask me that, then you don't know me at all. Which, considering how this started out, shouldn't surprise me, I guess.”
“Oh, horseshit. You're the one who manipulated me into recruiting you in the first place. You're the one with the agenda—or you were. Didn't lose track in all the excitement, did you? Gotta watch out for that sort of thing. As a wise man once said, ‘If you can keep your head when those about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you—'”
“Oh, spare me—what do you think this is, a greeting card? Don't answer that,” Spencer added quickly.
Now Ktonga/Bob looked offended. “Hey, that was a classic poem—”
“Yeah, yeah, but it was also on the front of the card my kids gave me last Father's Day.”
“Means nothing here. This is a universe without greeting cards.”
Spencer looked around. “OK, that's something in its favour. But that in itself doesn't make me want to stick around any longer than I have to. And I sure don't want to stand around here in the dark. I don't suppose there's a five-star restaurant within walking distance?”
“No, but fortunately, I brought my car.” Ktonga/Bob made a follow-me gesture. Too tired to hesitate or even ask any more questions, Spencer did so.
* * * *
Using a small but intensely bright flashlight, Ktonga/Bob led him along a path down a grassy slope. Spencer could see more bellflowers growing here. There weren't many mature ones yet and not all of those budding were going to blossom
. But a lot of them would, apparently enough of them to make their cultivation worth the effort to someone.
“Tulip madness?” Spencer said, speaking aloud without really meaning to.
“Pardon?” Ktonga/Bob glanced back at him. “Oh, right. Seventeenth-century Holland. Interesting, isn't it, all the various things that humanity felt was worth getting excited about, down through the ages. Fire. Tulips. Big Brother. Original recipe. The Beatles. Cosmetic surgery. Celebrity Big Brother.”
“And now bellflowers?” Spencer asked, deciding not to ask about any references he wasn't familiar with. Ktonga/Bob could probably give him a five-hour lecture on beetles and their importance to the rest of the insect world but he didn't need to hear it. And he certainly didn't want to hear about any family stories about Ktonga/Bob's big relatives, celebrity or otherwise. Especially if Ktonga/Bob thought they rated as something that all of humanity would get all excited about. What an ego.
Ktonga/Bob glanced over his shoulder at him again; despite the dark, Spencer could see the twinkle in his eye. “The bellflower was the first naturally-occurring instance of sound-generation in the plant world. Which is to say, not something produced by genetic modification. Did you know that?”
“I figured that was what you meant by ‘naturally-occurring,'” Spencer said, a bit testily.
“Good for you. Ah, here's my car, right where I left it. That's what I love about this world—absolutely no GTA.”
Spencer stopped short, staring at the vehicle in the circle of Ktonga/Bob's flashlight. “That's not a car. That's an egg.”
“Don't be ridiculous, eggs don't have wheels.” Ktonga/Bob tugged at his arm but he wouldn't budge. “Come on, man, it's just aerodynamic design.” He made a motion over the smaller front end to indicate airflow.
Spencer refused to be moved. “If I didn't want to carry the goddamned thing around with me, you can be damn sure I don't want it to carry me around, either.”
Ktonga/Bob raised an eyebrow at him. “But you are carrying it around, inside yourself.”
The Omega Egg [A Fictionwise Round Robin Novel] Page 15
