“Vell, here’s news. Dis vun doesn’t. So scram!” The man made shooing motions, then let out a scream when she stepped on the green stuff that resembled grass. “No, no! Qvit destroying de moss!”
“I’m going already. Jeez.” The girl rolled her eyes at Carlos.
“Don’t come back!” Bjorg watched until she vanished behind a bush covered with bulbous turquoise blossoms. “Dat idiot! Ve should haff security. My poor plants.” He knelt to caress the injured moss.
According to project records, the university used to post guards around the intersect zone, but lengthy dormancies had lulled the powers that be. Also, despite initial interest by a small cadre within the military, the pirisma had virtually dropped off the Pentagon’s radar screen.
Forty years of research had found that it presented little direct danger to Earth One. The thing never carried more than two individuals at a time, and it sterilized surface microbes, with no apparent harmful effects on those who crossed inside. It avoided buildings, motorized vehicles and large electrical installations, and reacted violently against attempts to transport advanced technology.
Even the proximity of small gadgets was known to irritate it; hence the prohibition on electronics. A major insult, such as an explosion or quantum anomaly, sent it into a lengthy funk. Its most recent decade-long hiatus resulted from a Level 3 disrupt that had occurred when a lightning flash struck the pirisma as it opened. Luckily, there’d been no one inside. No telling where he might have landed if there had been.
Bjorg finished communing with the moss and turned his attention to Carlos. “Vat brings you here, professor?”
“There was a rainbow.” He mouthed the word with almost childlike reverence.
“Vell, of course, a rainbow!” grumbled the arboretum director.
“You mean you’ve seen others?”
“A couple yesterday, maybe vun on Vednesday.”
“You didn’t report them?” He bloody well should have informed both Carlos and the chancellor.
Cheeks flushed, Bjorg regarded him guiltily. Finally, he said: “So vat? Maybe it’s nutting. Don’t vant dese damn scientists stomping on my specimens.”
Few things put Carlos into a rage. This came close. “They are not your specimens and this is not your decision!” he snapped from his height of six foot three.
Bjorg shifted as if mulling whether to argue. In a rare concession, he backed down. “Dat’s true. So. Vich vorld, do you tink?”
“Earth Two.”
“Ja? So.” His lack of enthusiasm reflected the fact that this was the world about which they knew the most and which therefore offered little scope for discovery, botanically speaking.
Students of alternate history, however, would have a field day.
On Earth Two, history had diverged since 1924, when a young Adolphus Hitler died in prison. Without a World War II, the United States—as of ten years ago--remained isolationist, the Soviet Union had expanded and a military government ruled Japan. But there were also many similarities, right down to a comparable Grovener University.
Only one other world, Earth Three, had been explored to any extent, but that information had been sealed by the military, apparently due to extreme threat. Anecdotal evidence, much of it little better than speculation, accounted for perhaps a half-dozen more universes.
There might be millions. Not infinitely many, according to theory, but enough to stagger even Carlos’s imagination.
“Ach! Who did dat?” Bjorg pointed at a patch of bare ground a few yards off. “More peoples clomping around.”
The dirt bore the fresh imprint of a shoe. Carlos wandered over. On closer inspection, he figured it to be a small boot, flat and square-toed.
Bjorg halted alongside. “I didn’t see dat ven I came by last hour.”
Had someone arrived through the pirisma? Carlos struggled to maintain objectivity. “That might be Andie’s.” In retrospect, though, he recalled her wearing flip-flops.
“I don’t tink you find dat on her shoe.” The botanist indicated a symbol in the impression. “Dat’s not normal.”
Carlos stared at it. What in the world? Or, rather, in what world did people walk around with swastikas embedded in the soles of their footwear?
Earth Two’s handful of neo-Nazis were regarded by their fellow citizens as harmless kooks. Or they had been, as of a decade ago.
Carlos found this discovery unsettling.
He surveyed the area. Was the crosser still here? While the pirisma repulsed gunpowder and high-tech weapons, it didn’t block knives or arrows.
“I never seen nutting like dis before,” Bjorg admitted, quickly adding: “Not dat I seen much of anyting.”
Carlos’s chest squeezed. “We might be overreacting.”
“Or ve might not.” The guy sounded tense. “My uncle died in Vorld Var II resistance. Dis is not funny.”
It struck Carlos that whoever had decided to stop posting guards might have made a serious mistake. “I’d better report this to the chancellor.” He lifted his cell phone, then decided to play it safe by calling from outside the zone.
Carlos took off running. For once, Bjorg didn’t remind him to stick to the paths.
Thank you for reading this excerpt from
Jacqueline Diamond’s science fiction thriller Out of Her Universe
Touch Me in the Dark Page 27
