How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge

by K. Eason

  High-velocity projectiles left holes in a hull, if they got past the shields. They didn’t set it on fire. Fire wasn’t even supposed to happen in void. There was no phlogiston. Fire didn’t, couldn’t, happen without phlogiston. Never mind that fire didn’t burn through metal, either.

  And yet, clearly, some kind of fire did.

  “Is that—what could’ve done that? Plasma? Some kind of battle-hex?”

  “I don’t know,” Zhang said softly. “Neither does Rory. But she wants to find out.”

  Thorsdottir pitched her voice low. “What’s this about a transmission?”

  “She said she heard something and she wanted to investigate. You know everything I do, right there.” Zhang flicked a worried glance over her shoulder. “Rory’s told me to stay here. Please tell me you’re taking Jaed.”

  “I am. If I can’t have you, I need someone else to hold a ’slinger.”

  Zhang took a breath and swallowed. “He will watch your back effectively. I can’t predict his value if you meet resistance.”

  “I can. A third target for an angry Tadeshi marine,” Thorsdottir muttered. She was sorry the moment she said it.

  Zhang’s voice dropped somewhere between whisper and breathless. “I told Rory that I don’t think anyone should board that ship. Whoever did this, did that”—and she thrust her chin at the scorched ship outside the porthole—“may still be out there, and Vagabond is no match for a warship.”

  Thorsdottir squinted past G. Stein, at the velvet void beyond. There were a lot of places a ship could conceal itself, beyond the reach of Vagabond’s instruments. It was wise, for some version of the word, for Zhang to remain on board. Thorsdottir still hated it.

  “Be careful,” said Zhang.

  “We will,” said Thorsdottir. “We’ll go quick as we can.”

  That was certainly true. But Thorsdottir did not add, we’ll be back before you know it, or we’ll be fine. She and Zhang demanded honesty from each other, too.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Void-stations, Rupert reflected, were all very much alike. He supposed it was a convergence of necessity, in the beginning; there were only so many ways to construct void-proof, orbiting edifices in which one expected people to live and work. The older models had all relied on spin to produce gravity, and so had been versions of a spoked ring rotating around a central spindle. Even after gravity-hexes, the shapes of the stations had not changed overmuch, with down being feet toward the rim. Lanscot’s station was no different.

  The beanstalk through which people traveled to and from the station stretched down to the planetside capital city like the tether to an orbiting ring-shaped balloon. From this vantage, the city below was a blur of light, and the beanstalk looked impossibly fragile.

  Rupert traced his fingers along the bulkhead. The paint was pristine, new, of a shade meant to sooth an observer, blandly pastel and warmly organic. It was a valiant effort if, to Rupert’s eye, not especially successful. He had thought himself prepared for a return to void living, and in the first twenty-four hours of resuming it, he had been too occupied with meetings to pay much attention to his surroundings. But the past two days of relative inactivity had reminded him how very much he disliked bulkheads and deckplate and confined horizons.

  People got into patterns of thought, of engineering, of politics. Seeing beyond those patterns was difficult. Breaking those patterns was almost impossible. Dame Maggie of Lanscot, former farmer, then local parliamentarian, then leader of a colonial rebellion that cracked the Free Worlds of Tadesh, was a woman capable of both identifying patterns and of shattering them when necessary. She had not disbelieved him when he had reported what the green fairy had said (though he had mentioned neither fairy nor Ivar as his sources). She had visibly weighed the likelihood of his information. (With her face concealed by the head-to-toe woolen wrap, this was mostly a shifting of eyes.) She had then invited him—and Grytt, who, true to her word, had accompanied him—to stay a few days on the station while she made inquiries about xeno contacts. The end of those few days was almost nigh, with a meeting scheduled this afternoon. During the endless several hours remaining, Rupert had elected to traverse one end of the station to the other.

  Lanscot’s station, like Urse, had an arboretum. But unlike Urse, the arboretum here had a second tier and a dome of clear polysteel which rose out of the otherwise smooth profile of the station like a blister. A person possessed of sufficient desire and stamina could climb a rather daunting spiral of transparent steps from the arboretum’s second tier along the interior skin of the dome, until they reached a small platform, on which one might sit and observe the void, the planet, and passing ships from a single vista.

  He supposed it was meant to be a place of reflection and peace. When he reached the top of the steps, he instead found himself sweaty and out of breath and, when he looked down and back, filled with despair. He had to get down again, didn’t he? There were a great many stairs.

  Still, up here he was far from the bulkheads with their aggressively appealing paint, and if he could not imagine that the star-spangled dark out there was Lanscot’s sky as seen from his back garden, he could at least discern familiar constellations, and enjoy the absence of the intervening clouds.

  So taken was he with the view that he did not immediately notice the other visitor to the observation platform. She stood where the platform abutted the dome, hands clasped behind her back, chin level, watching the slow dance of a docking ship and its guide mecha ten levels down. Rupert noticed her and jerked, surprised. The platform was made of the same transparent substance as the dome and the steps, and he was certain that it had been unoccupied when he began his ascent. Even the most cursory, fleeting glance would have revealed her. Nor could she have passed him during the climb. She had simply appeared.

  Then he took a closer, more complete look, and understood how she had evaded detection. Rupert had been the Vizier of Thorne when last he had seen her, and that had been twenty years and a lifetime ago on a distant planet, but one does not forget a fairy. He was as impressed by the fairy’s demeanor as Ivar had been, though he recovered from his surprise more eloquently.

  “I was under the impression you did not enjoy travel,” said Rupert.

  She cut him a sour look, sidelong and from beneath lowered eyelids. “I think we have that in common. And yet here you are, Vizier.”

  Rupert opened his mouth to object that the title was no longer applicable and to assert himself as a private citizen. Then he considered that the fairy might know something he did not (yet) know, about decisions made by Dame Maggie and whomever she had consulted about his report, and said nothing.

  The fairy was watching him more openly now, one eyebrow quirked, the corners of her lips pulled tight. Daring him to argue with her, Rupert thought. Viziers did not argue. They advised. They cajoled. Sometimes they engaged in diplomatic chicanery, which involved knowing when to remain silent.

  He moved up beside the green fairy as carefully as if he were approaching Grytt’s large, orange, temperamental cat. He was prepared for a metaphorical toothy hiss, so was surprised by her actual toothy unsmile. Her teeth, he noted, were very white, in the otherwise unbroken verdancy of her, and as sharp as the cat’s. All of them. Then she turned her attention back to the vista. The stars spangled distantly on the black. Much closer, Lanscot’s curve glowed below in the reflected light of the little yellow sun. Clouds swirled over the landmass like the wisps of grey hair. Rupert resisted the urge to press his nose to the transparent alloy and stare down at the planet in a vain attempt to identify familiar landmarks beyond his home continent and the glittering carbuncle that was Eden’s Burg, Lanscot’s capital city and voidport.

  “I imagine you know that I have passed your warning on to the appropriate parties,” he said finally, when he had decided she was not going to begin the conversation.

  “Mm.” She put the unsmile aw
ay and continued to look out the porthole without blinking. She appeared to be considering something, and Rupert briefly entertained an idea of trying to read her aura.

  Auras were only electromagnetic manifestations of a being’s emotional state, whatever the biology at the root of it. Just as each chemical produced its own unique spectrum, so did each emotion. While doing so brought an advantage in negotiations, it was also a risk, if the target was at all versed in arithmancy. Whether fairies knew about arithmancy, he did not know, but it seemed best to assume that any creatures capable of crossing great distances without voidship or tesser-hex and climbing to the top of a spiral staircase unseen might be able to detect someone sniffing around their electromagnetic emotional emissions.

  Or they might be able to read someone else’s. Rupert quickly assembled a concealing hex for his own aura, which would return bland unconcern to a cursory glance, and which would be obviously a shield to any arithmancer of skill, who would then have to decide whether to allow the shield to remain or try a counter-hex to break it.

  The fairy cut him an amused, sidelong glance. “Why do you think I’m here?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps because we are not moving quickly enough for your preferences on the task to which we’ve been set. Perhaps because there has been a new development.” He paused. “Has there been?”

  “Are you worried about Rory Thorne?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “So am I.”

  “Why? It been quite some time since she was your concern.”

  “And how would you know that?” The fairy turned, propping her shoulder against the polysteel.

  Rupert flinched. He knew very well that the polysteel was the same stuff as the opaque parts of the hull, hexed for transparency, no more likely to disintegrate and cast everyone into aetherless void. But it still looked as if she were leaning on nothing at all, and that if she tipped too far, she might fall into the void and down toward the docking ships near the center of the station’s ring.

  He closed his eyes briefly to banish that image. It was only when he reopened them that he remembered she’d asked him a question, and one for which he had no rational answer except you haven’t seen her since she was an infant.

  “Why would she be important to you? One human girl.”

  “A princess is not just a girl.”

  “She’s renounced the title.”

  “Rory Thorne can no more renounce what she is than you can renounce what you are.”

  “And I am a Vizier, you say.”

  The fairy quirked an eyebrow, one shade darker green than her skin.

  Rupert chose to take that as an affirmative. “Is that why you came to Ivar first? Because he is a prince?”

  “Ivar was never a prince. Ivar was, and is, a person who prefers to pass unnoticed. No, I came to Ivar because I knew you would ask too many questions. Which you are doing, as expected.” The fairy’s eyes flickered like sunlight through leaves. “To answer your first query: yes. Circumstances are proceeding rather more quickly than we anticipated. You need to leave now.”

  “Then it is Dame Maggie to whom you should speak. I have no influence over how quickly she makes decisions about political appointments and forging new alliances with people she’s never heard of before, or arranges passage to distant, unaffiliated systems.”

  “Oh. She’ll have heard of those people by now.” The fairy pressed one hand against the dome, and then, after a moment, both her forehead and her nose. “Look down there.”

  Rupert told himself firmly that the polysteel would not betray him, and then took a moment to reassure himself that the hexwork was, in fact, intact: no missing variables, no wobbling, only the rigid interlace of equations. Then he moved up beside the fairy and laid his own palm on the dome. The alloy felt neither warm nor cold, which was unsettling, but it was at least reassuringly hard and solid when he leaned against it. The fairy herself radiated heat, or reflected it, a little bit like standing beside a mirror in sunlight; where his elbow and shoulder came closest, he felt small spots of warmth on the edge of discomfort.

  He looked obediently where she indicated. Down, in this instance, meant the station’s docks. A ship of unfamiliar design was just nosing its way into a berth. There were characters stenciled onto the hull, numbers—which Rupert recognized—and a set of symbols he did not. Clearly some sort of alphabet, however.

  He felt the tiny thrill he experienced every time he encountered some new thing he might learn. An alphabet meant a language, a language meant a people, and that ship therefore must belong to one of the new xeno species.

  “Before you ask,” said the fairy, “That’s an alwar vessel, from the Harek Empire. There’s a tenju clanship on the other side of the docking ring. Either one of them will do for your transport, but I think you’ll be happier riding with the alwar.”

  Did that mean Dame Maggie’s investigations were finished, and she’d decided to take his advice? Or was this Samur’s doing, this first contact? Rupert took a bite of air, and chewed it up, and swallowed it. His meeting with Maggie would almost certainly be delayed, with two xeno ships arriving, unless she had known they were coming.

  The questions kept piling up. Rupert set them aside in favor of the most important. “You said circumstances were proceeding more quickly than you had anticipated. What circumstances?”

  “There are rules about how forthcoming we can be and how much we can interfere.” The fairy’s tongue flicked out between her sharp triangle teeth, as if tasting the dry station air. “I am already a few toes over that line.”

  “All right.” Rupert eyed her feet surreptitiously. They possessed the customary number of toes and they were bare, though she gave no indication of discomfort. “I could attempt to read your aura while I asked questions. You would need to say nothing, and I—”

  “Would go blind. You cannot even see some of the colors in my aura. But I will confirm that your guesses have not so far been wrong.” The fairy spiked a long glance through the dome, as if consulting a set of notes only she could see. “Time is so linear on this plane. We warned you, I warned you, so that you could forestall events and create a new future, but those events are happening now. Or will be happening. Or have already.” She squinted and shook her head. “Time is linear, but it is also in flux. Just hurry, Vizier. Find Grytt, and get to Rory, and to that weapon.”

  Rupert swallowed glass and sand. His chest hurt from the rapid beating of his heart.

  “Thank you,” he said, because courtesy was important.

  Then he went to do the fairy’s bidding.

  * * *

  —

  Grytt, meanwhile, was having her own adventure. She would not have considered it that, having a rather high bar for what she considered hazardous and stimulating, and that bar tilted toward things involving violence. Dealing with bureaucrats qualified in that category, which was why Rupert had been handling negotiations with Dame Maggie. He seemed certain he could both convince Dame Maggie to name him some kind of ambassador or legal something in the Confederation and, once having done so, secure an assignment to Samtalet, where he could avert the fairy’s disaster.

  Grytt thought Maggie’s several-days’ delay for “conducting investigations” was a diplomatic stalling tactic that would result in disappointment for Rupert. Maggie had personnel more instrumental to the running of a government and an insurgent war and making first contact. Grytt would have raised that argument with Rupert, except she did not believe in magic, and it would take magic to change Rupert’s mind when he set himself on something. Grytt preferred practicality, and so when Rupert had gone off before his meeting (to pace the corridors, Grytt knew, though he’d call it taking a walk), she had taken herself down to the transportation center. Maggie was going to say no, and then Rupert would be glad that she’d gotten tickets to Samtalet the conventional way, by waiting in a line and purch
asing them.

  Grytt had passed her time in the queue engaged in watching passersby and attempting to guess their political affiliations and, from there, their purpose on the station. She had seen a set of matched suits—business, not environmental—in the Sons of John colors, a mirri with her orbiting daughter-buds, and a pair of k’bal who between them had five heads, and whose cranial vents hissed continually as they navigated the swirl of humanity. She had not yet seen evidence of these so-called alwar or tenju, although the station’s extranet had declared there was a delegation on board right now, and was that not exciting?

  Grytt supposed it was, for all shades of that meaning. She also supposed that the xeno visit was the reason that the voidport’s normal ticketing windows were closed, and all civilian traffic was coming through here, where there should be only cargo, which explained this ridiculous queue which had been unmoving and twenty persons deep for—she glanced at the chrono-display hanging over the administrator’s station—eight minutes and forty-seven (eight, nine) seconds while a florid man in expensive clothing made his case for why time, space, and interstellar vessels should adjust to suit his particular need for a direct tesser-hex flight, instead of requiring two transfers along the way.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the clerk in a tone that suggested he was neither sorry nor saying it for the first time (fifty-one seconds, Grytt noted. Fifty-two). “But as I have said, there are no direct flights. I can book you on the Miracle One, which will take you to Hennesh, and from there you can—”

  There came a collective sigh from the queue, as twenty separate people heaved out the contents of their lungs through clenched teeth and flared nostrils. Everyone had heard this part of the conversation before.

  Grytt just hoped he would not purchase one of the last pair of tickets on the shuttle going to Hennesh, which was a shorter journey to Samtalet than either the three-stop itinerary through Thorne (where Grytt did not especially want to go, even if she remained on the void-station and did not descend the beanstalk to the planet) or the connection through the Larish Point, which was little more than a Merchants League waystation and not where Grytt wanted to be stuck with Rupert for a day’s layover. Even if Dame Maggie granted Rupert his title and his mission, Grytt was not counting on official transportation. The Confederation was in its infancy, and the majority of its vessels were supporting the war effort. She reckoned they would be lucky to get reimbursed for the travel.