“No, Ellis Rogers. There’s no such thing as marriage. My relationship with Vin is…unusual. People don’t live together anymore. Everyone has their own home. Two people never share the same living space—well, they do, but not permanently, you understand.”
“Why? Don’t people like each other? Fall in love, that sort of thing?”
“Certainly, but people also need time to be alone to work, to reflect, to think, to rest. We can always be with someone simply by opening a portal. Hollow World is like one big house where everyone has a private study or office separated by a single doorway. The rest is the shared space. Didn’t people in your day ever spend any time by themselves?”
Ellis thought about his garage. He’d spent more time in it than with Peggy. He also remembered some absurd statistic claiming that married couples actually spent no more than seventeen minutes a day with each other.
“People come together all the time. But with Vin and me, it’s…well…it’s complicated.”
Ellis knew he was missing something. Pax meant more than was said, but he couldn’t figure it out. Everything was hard to understand even when there was no pretense at diversion. Making guesses was almost useless. All he could do was draw on the past. There weren’t men and women anymore, but that didn’t mean relationships didn’t have the same dynamics. Maybe Pax was like one of those impressionable young girls who moved in with a prominent older man whom they saw as worldly. The way Pax spoke in such awe of Vin’s profession, maybe artists made the big bucks these days. Pax had certainly appeared subservient.
“Is this—” Ellis wanted to say his place, because Vin seemed like a man, and Ellis found it annoying to dance around the pronouns. “Is this Vin’s home?”
“We share it.”
“But it was originally Vin’s place, right? Vin took you in? That’s why you need permission to—”
“No—no, this is my home.” Pax chuckled. “Vin would never tolerate a vox like Alva.”
“Really? It’s huge.”
“There’s never been any restriction on size in Hollow World. That’s one of the benefits.”
“Well, it’s very nice.”
“Thank you.” Pax beamed. “Vin helped a lot, of course.”
“Oh—so he paid for a lot of it? Or do arbitrators make a lot of money?”
“Money? What’s money?”
“What’s money?”
“Alva?” Pax called. “Can you explain money, please?”
“Money is an old English word that referred to anything used to represent a standardized object of agreed value that was traded for goods and services.”
Pax looked stumped. “Could you simplify that?”
“You want something someone else has, so you trade something you have for what they have. You understand that, right?”
“Not really.”
“This was before the Maker was invented. It made it easier for everyone to agree on relative values of things. Trading becomes a matter of math—so many of one thing equals so many of something else—understand? Historically shells, salt, metals, and paper promissory notes were used before digital currency was adopted in the twenty-first century. Of course, the whole monetary system was discontinued in the late twenty-third century with the advent of the Three Miracles, which is why you sound so dumb right now. Didn’t they teach you anything at Bingham?”
“Oh wait.” Pax thought a second. “Gold was once used, right? And silver? They made little round disks with them. I saw some at a museum once.”
Ellis nodded. “Coins.”
“Okay, yeah. Wow, being with you is making me wish I paid more attention to ancient history. Who could predict I would need to know all that stuff?” Pax’s head shook. “No, we don’t have money anymore.”
“You don’t have money?” A fly buzzed his pasta and Ellis waved it away, wondering if it, too, was part of the illusion, and if so, why it had been added. There was such a thing as taking realism too far. “How can you not have money? How do you get things you need?”
Ellis had hoped to pay for medicine, or surgery, or whatever he might end up needing with his grandmother’s earrings, but he began to doubt that would be possible. He was getting ahead of himself, he knew. There was no guarantee they could help him. The future might have eliminated death for them—for the genetically altered—but could they do anything for the sick? Was it possible that medicine was just as obsolete as money?
“I don’t—”
“Excuse me, Pax,” Alva interrupted.
“Alva, Ellis Rogers was speaking. You shouldn’t—”
“It’s an emergency.”
Pax looked worried. “Please tell me it’s not another murder.”
“It’s not. It’s a white code message.”
“White?” Pax appeared stunned. “What the core is a geomancer contacting me for?”
“Do you want to hear it or argue?”
“Play it.”
A new voice boomed over the open field that sounded just like Pax’s except with a more confident, more formal tone. “Pax. I directed my vox to contact you right away with this prerecorded message in the event that someone other than myself has stolen my identity and falsely entered my home. Please visit immediately and speak to my vox for more information. Abernathy will allow your portal. Two things you need to know: First, the thief who stole my identity is in my home at this very moment. Second, you should be careful, for this thief has already killed me. Geo-24.”
CHAPTER SIX
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Technically this was Ellis’s second trip through a portal, but the first he was fully aware of. He asked to go with Pax, pretending it was because he was bored, and that he didn’t want to be left alone in the house with Vin. He also told himself he was interested in seeing more of the world and was curious about the message. All of that might have contributed—did contribute—and those were the answers Ellis would have given if anyone asked. But the real reason was strange, unlike him, and hard to imagine, especially given the circumstances. The fact was the trip sounded dangerous, and Pax didn’t strike him as a superhero. Ellis wasn’t a hero, either, but he had a pistol and the Y chromosome to use it.
Pax hesitated only a moment before nodding and taking out a small device. Ellis thought it might be a pocket watch, because it was gold and linked to a chain. Pax fussed with it for a few seconds; then a shimmering hole appeared.
Alva said, “Pax, be careful!”
The trip was instantaneous, no different from passing through a normal door separating two rooms. Looking back the way they had come, Ellis could see the Big Sky country and the picnic table, empty except for their abandoned plates. The portal closed, winking out like televisions used to when they had vacuum tubes.
Ellis and Pax stood in the center of a Zen-garden living room. A perfect square, the room contained two equal-length white couches on a white carpet. A square white coffee table stood in the exact middle, and on it were three stones of different types cut to form a pyramid. A narrow strip along the baseboards and one near the ceiling illuminated the room, but most of the light entered through glass doors of square latticework, beyond which lay a real Oriental garden. Only the bonsai tree gracing the little table provided the room with color. The temperature was cooler than Pax’s dining room, and Ellis felt a cough coming on.
“Excuse me! What are you doing barging into my home? Who are you, and how did you get in here?” The speaker entered from an archway at the far side of the room near the terrace doors. This one, like the first two he had seen, was naked except for a delicate necklace and looked identical to everyone else except for a scar on the left shoulder and two missing fingers on the right hand.
“I’m Pax-43246018, an arbitrator of the Tringent Sector. Who are you?”
Pax hadn’t moved since they stepped through the portal, so neither did Ellis. There wasn’t much space anyway. The living room was tiny compared to Pax’s social room. Geomancers apparently didn’t live as l
arge as arbitrators and artists.
“Who am I? I’m Geo-24. Who else would I be? This is my home!”
“He’s the killer,” Ellis told Pax, staring at the missing fingers. “This is the one I saw in Greenfield Village.” His chest tightened. Breathing was harder.
Pax looked worried.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who—or what—is this with you?” Three-fingers asked Pax.
“This is Ellis Rogers,” Pax said without looking away. “Who is helping me investigate a murder that took place yesterday on the North American Plate. Now please, once again, I know you are not Geo-24, so who are you really?”
“I am Geo-24! How dare you!”
“Look at the right hand,” Ellis said, breathing slowly through his nose and trying to suppress the growing urge to cough. “This is the same three-fingered butcher who was cutting into the murder victim’s shoulder when I arrived.”
“Geo-24’s vox, can you hear me?” Pax asked.
“I can indeed.” The reply came from a decidedly male-sounding voice, a deep baritone with enough of a British accent to sound like Christopher Lee, and just as in Pax’s home the sound came from everywhere.
“Can you identify this person in front of me?”
“No, which is why I contacted you. Geo-24 left instructions that I was to ignore the identification chip and ask three questions of my own choosing that only Geo-24 could answer. When this person arrived bearing Geo-24’s identification, I asked the three questions. Incorrect answers were provided. Following the rest of my instructions, I forwarded the prerecorded message to you.”
“This is ridiculous,” the impostor said. “I have a malfunctioning vox. Have you declared me to be a fake to the whole of Hollow World, vox?”
“Please note, Pax-43246018, that Geo-24 had all the expected digits on both hands and that this impostor doesn’t even know my name.”
Off to the left, Ellis noticed another square table in the corner with something round on it. He might have ignored it in any other home, but this place was as spartan as a desert. A peanut on the floor would have screamed for attention. On the table was something much bigger and far more attention getting—a construction hard hat.
“I don’t wish to call you by name. You’ve upset me,” the three-fingered suspect defended. “Now answer my question.”
“Given that you are not Geo-24, I need not comply with your demands, but, nevertheless, I have only informed Pax-43246018 as per previous instructions.”
“I see,” the impostor growled. “Well, that’s something at least.”
Holding a hand over his mouth, breathing through his fingers, Ellis took the three steps needed to pick up the hat. Inside he found safety glasses and gloves. “Pax,” he managed to say. “Look at this.” He held up the glasses.
Pax nodded and looked about to cry.
“You killed Geo-24?” Pax said just above a whisper; a wavering tone of disbelief filled the accusation with a haunting quality. Pax’s expression was disturbingly familiar, as Ellis had lived with it for almost two decades. It was the look Peggy had worn each day after Isley’s death. “Are you going to tell me who you really are?”
“I don’t have—”
Pax lunged forward at that moment and tore the necklace from around the impostor’s neck. “I can’t let you leave just yet,” Pax said, quickly stepping back.
With barely checked anger, the impostor stared for a long moment, then, after a controlled breath, walked out of the room into the adjacent hall. Ellis took a step to pursue.
“Don’t!” Pax almost gasped.
“Isn’t there a door Three-fingers can escape out of or another one of those iPortal things in this house?”
The baseboard and ceiling illumination died. Only the falselight spilling through the glass wall allowed them to see.
“Pax? Pax? What’s going on?”
“We’re in trouble,” Pax managed. “I don’t think—”
The muffled sound of bare feet on carpeting grew louder as the killer returned, all three fingers wrapped around what looked to be a butcher knife.
At the same time, Ellis began to cough. The chest-ripping whoop felt as if it were scraping his insides from his stomach to his tongue. He bent over as one cough became a cascade of harsh body-shaking eruptions.
No one else in the room noticed.
“No—don’t!” Pax cried as Three-fingers advanced. “Here! Here! Take it!” Pax took a step back and threw the little iPortal device so that it bounced off Three-fingers’ chest.
“Too late for that,” Three-fingers said.
Ellis was trying to grit his teeth, demanding that his body obey, even as it drove him to his knees as if a demon were trapped in his chest and determined to get out. He could only watch through blurry eyes as Three-fingers closed on Pax.
Their faces might have been created from the same sequence of genes, but looking at them, Ellis saw two distinctly different people. Three-fingers grinned with an eager malevolence, closing the distance between the two like a shark after a drowning swimmer.
No aggression my ass.
Like a caricature in a horror film trying to find the key to a car, Pax retreated around the table, struggling to pull out the pocket-watch-style portal device. Catching the edge of the table, Pax fell backward.
Three-fingers skirted the coffee table to where Pax lay.
The coughing fit reduced to a sputter. Ellis drew his pistol. “Stop!” he managed to croak. He had both hands holding the gun, his thumbs lining up like puzzle pieces, arms extended but not locked, just as he was taught. “Don’t you fucking move!”
A portal appeared to Ellis’s left. “Go, Ellis Rogers! Get away!”
Three-fingers only hesitated a second, quickly dismissing Ellis.
Guns. They don’t understand guns!
Ellis didn’t have time to explain. He held his breath just as they had told him at the gun range—he had to stop coughing—and squeezed the trigger gently.
Shit! The safety was on.
Pax screamed, warding off the attack with raised palms as the knife came down.
Ellis flicked the lever and pulled the trigger. At such a short distance it was impossible to miss.
The gun was a lot louder without the earmuffs. In the seconds afterward, he couldn’t hear a thing. He smelled smoke and gunpowder, which made him cough again. His ears rang, hands vibrating from the aftershock. The barrel went up, shoving his arms with it. He hacked, eyes closed. Blood was in his mouth again, he could taste it, and when he opened his eyes he could see it.
The white wall and part of the glass door were splattered red.
Pax was on the floor, crying in a ball. Three-fingers had come within inches, but lay still. A dark puddle of blood grew, spreading out, seeping through the white carpeting that acted like a giant sponge. Three-fingers wasn’t moving.
Ellis crawled to Pax. “Are you stabbed? Are you okay?”
Pax reverted to a series of hitching breaths, unable to speak. Pax’s head shook. Ellis wasn’t certain which question was being answered, then realized it was probably both. The gun was still in his hand. Another look at Three-fingers confirmed the threat was gone, but it took three tries for Ellis to put the pistol back into the holster. Once there, he remembered the safety was still off. Glancing at the wall, at the tracks of blood-tears, he pulled it out and gently engaged the safety before putting it away again.
“That’s a gun, isn’t it?” Pax asked, staring at his hip.
“A pistol—yes.”
Pax didn’t say anything else, just stared as if the metal at Ellis’s hip was alive.
“You aren’t hurt?” Ellis asked again.
Pax’s cheeks were slick, hands shaking. “I almost died.”
Pax looked over at the body and the spray of blood. There were splatters even on the ceiling. They dripped, leaving little dots on the white coffee table and the stone pyramid. The once perfect room of Zen-like serenity traded for the violen
t confusion of a Jackson Pollock painting.
With a gasp, Pax seized Ellis, hugging him tight. Fingers clutched him around his waist like talons, as Pax sobbed into his chest. Ellis reached out with his own arms, returning the squeeze, and the two shook together.
Ellis wasn’t one for shows of emotion. He wasn’t raised that way. They were good old-fashioned Protestants. By the age of nine, hugging his mother had already become awkward, and if they’d had fist-bumps back then, the two would have been early adopters. He hadn’t shown much more affection toward his own wife, even early on, and later…It always felt more like work, when it should have come naturally.
But Ellis had never killed anyone before.
He told himself that if it hadn’t been Pax, he would have hugged the couch. He just wanted to hang on to something. Pax was bawling into his shirt. He could feel the wetness and knew he wasn’t too far away from a good cry himself. Hanging on helped. Feeling that he was taking care of Pax made it better. He just wasn’t sure who was really helping whom.
Pax stopped crying and pulled away, still shaking a bit. “Sorry, I think I soaked your shirt.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t pass out from the smell,” he offered, trying to sound tough and not sure why.
Getting up, Pax retreated from the room, and Ellis followed. They slipped around the corner into the corridor, which was just as empty of color as the living room. Pax stopped, flopped to the floor, and backed up against the wall.
“We need to call someone?” Ellis asked.
“In a minute,” Pax said, struggling to speak clearly, blurting words out in a rush. “No hurry at this point…I’m still trying to…remember how to breathe right. I really am sorry…I suppose that wasn’t very professional of me. Homicide cops in your day didn’t run away from blood and cry like that, did they?”
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