by Ned Rust
“And how can we do that?” asked My-Chale sadly. “What would proof be?”
“I don’t know, maybe if I could be awake on Earth so I could remember all of this and realize it wasn’t just a regular dream…”
“Yes,” said My-Chale. “It still might not work, but that’s what we were thinking, too. We will send you back to Earth.”
“You’re going to send me back to Earth?!”
“Skwurl told you about transubstantiation,” said Oma.
“We have just enough transcence for a round trip,” said My-Chale.
“A round trip?”
“So you can return, too,” he replied. “If you wish to.”
Patrick found himself staring at Oma’s enormous eyes. She seemed as surprised at all this as he was.
“So the plan is you’ll send me back to Earth and then I get to decide if this is all real and then, if I want to, I can come back? You’d let me go just like that?”
“It has to be this way,” she said, the situation dawning on her. “It has to be your decision to come back, Patrick.”
The griffin inclined his head and, without a trace of smile in his voice, said, “Patrick, we’re sending you home.”
CHAPTER 55
Point of Some Return
Patrick was lying on the floor of the abandoned building’s boiler room. The door was closed (the griffin said it was important that transcense be trapped in a nearly airtight area so that it could achieve suitable concentrations).
He reviewed the transubstantiation preparations Oma and the griffin, My-Chale, had made him memorize:
One: Lie down on your back.
Two: Hold close any items you wish to bring with you.
Three: Close your eyes and relax.
Four: Do not struggle—let your impulses run free.
Five: Hold fast to your mantra.
Well, he could check off the first one. Oma had found a somewhat clean rug, and he was definitely lying upon it, on his back. He looked over at the burbling censer, the metal cylinder that contained the transcense, a half dozen paces away on the floor. Scary, squid-like tendrils of inky vapor were already snaking their way across toward him.
He shut off the binky and clutched it, and his return ticket—a second censer My-Chale had given him—to his chest. It contained nearly all of the Commonplacers’ remaining stockpile of transcense. In other words, there would be nobody coming after him to help and, if he didn’t use it come back to Ith, he’d never see My-Chale or Oma or anybody from Ith again.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on his relaxation exercises. My-Chale had told him to flex and loosen his toes, then his feet, then his ankles, and so on up to his forehead.
It seemed to be working pretty well and, having managed to get through the full course twice, he was nearly at the edge of sleep when he was racked by the world’s most massive sneeze, a blast so forceful his ears rang and his muscles went all crampy and sore.
“My mantra!” he whispered to himself. Oma had explained it as a combination of familiar words or sounds that would help him focus; something nostalgic was good, she said, but it absolutely had to be something he knew by heart. He ended up deciding to go with a nonsense rhyme that his father used to read to him and Neil before they went to bed when they were little.
It was called “Song of the Stuntman” (even though it was a poem, not a song) and it went,
All right
All set
All fright
No net
He whispered it to himself, once, twice, then partway through a third time before a familiar keening tone filled his ears.
CHAPTER 56
Fosse aux Lions
“You’re getting close,” said Rex. He was teleconferencing with Victor Pierre, the highest-ranked of all his novitiates. A rainy suburban scene was visible through the car’s rear window behind the man’s angular face.
“Yes, Your Awarenence. Estimate three terts to the insertion point.” Victor’s voice betrayed nothing but cold-blooded mastery.
“Good, very good,” said Rex. “Now, don’t let me distract you. Report back as soon as—what’s that?! What’s going on?”
Victor was checking his mirrors and appeared to be slowing his car. Red and blue pulses of light stained the teleconference projection.
“Nothing significant, Your Awarenence,” replied Victor. “Just a local law enforcement vehicle.”
The sound of sirens rose and faded.
“They’re dealing with a missing-person report,” the aspiring Deacon continued. “Still no reports they’ve discovered the enemy combatant’s arrival.”
Rex knew this already. He hadn’t been fomenting a telecommunications revolution on this planet so that he would not be able to tell what was going on in any corner of it at any moment in time.
And especially so if it had anything to do with a transubstantiation event. He’d been studying the transubstantiation process for close to a hundred years and he knew everything that there was to be known about it—how to initiate it, how to control it (at least to the extent it could be), and certainly how to detect it.
This was how—two days ago—he had almost immediately known about the arrival of the first Commonplace agent in and the simultaneous disappearance of the Griffin boy from a small town in suburban New York. And this is why he now knew of the arrival of yet another Commonplace agent—this time in rural France—and, from the ensuing police broadcasts there, the sudden, inexplicable (at least to the locals) disappearance of one Lilian Carruth, a retired secondary school language teacher.
“Well then, I’m going to leave you to it, Victor,” continued Rex. “You know the desired outcome.”
“I do, Your Awarenence.”
“Report back as soon as your objective is achieved.”
“Of course,” replied the stone-faced man.
Rex shut off the teleconference application. He was distinctly annoyed, but not very worried. Of all the places for an enemy to have arrived—for it to have landed within a thirty-tert drive of Victor Pierre’s residence—it was, if not quite in the den, at least just about at the lion’s doorstep.
Now Victor’s colleagues on the east coast of North America had just to finish taking care of the other visitor, the rabbit creature, and Rex could fully turn his attentions back to the final preparations for Earth’s cleansing and rebirth.
CHAPTER 57
Surreptitious Returns
Cold rain jolted Patrick awake—really, really awake. His eyelids fluttered open and left him staring up into the gray, drenching sky.
He rolled over and sat up. He was in a muddy, weed-filled lot surrounded by low stucco walls and a rusted chain-link fence.
He was light-headed and disoriented but was struck that this place just felt, well, real somehow. He was in the rain and he wanted to go inside and get dried off and warmed up. This was not the sort of thing you dreamed about—it was too boring, too normal, too usual, wasn’t it? This was not an experience filled with big-eyed people, giants, sky-cars, or griffins. This was being outside on a rainy day. Which was weird in itself but … He let the thought trail off and started to sit up. But as he went to place his hands on the wet ground he realized that each was clutching something: his right held his binky, his left the transcense censer.
And the fact of these two things he could see in his own hands meant that the dream, or nondream, was still going on.
And that meant Rex Abraham was quite possibly a real person in this dream or nondream. And that meant, as My-Chale the griffin had warned him—whether dream or not—he didn’t have much time.
There was a road nearby and he decided it was probably best that he get out of sight. He staggered across the lot, reached a low row of just-budding fruit trees, and dashed to the overhang of a doorless one-car garage. A rust-spotted white van was parked inside.
Patrick breathed deeply, taking in the loamy smell of the rain-damp air. After pocketing the return-trip censer, he reached dow
n to grab a handful of wet brown dirt. He supposed at least it seemed like Earth. What exactly had not seemed Earth-like about the dirt or the rain or the plants of Ith he couldn’t quite say.
He also couldn’t say quite where he was, although he was pretty sure—judging from the skinny, white, black-lettered license plate on the van, and from the small stucco houses with the flower-pot-tiled roofs—he had not landed in Hedgerow Heights. My-Chale had warned him that there was no controlling a transubstantiation in terms of where one would arrive.
He looked down at his binky.
“Location and time,” he whispered.
The rain-beaded screen promptly displayed:
Mauléon-Licharre, France, EU local time 2:46 p.m.
Monday, March 14, 2016
So he was in France. Sure, why not? He could call his Uncle Andrew from there as well as from anywhere on Earth—his binky just needed to be able to find a cell tower or satellite. It was just, of course, between the worlds that calls were physically impossible. An electromagnetic signal doesn’t have any more ability to travel through the fabric of reality than a thrown rock does, My-Chale had explained.
And then he would call his parents, too. Afterward.
The reason for calling Uncle Andrew first was that—probably even in a dream and definitely in real life—his parents would be freaked out and would only confuse things. Uncle Andrew, on the other hand, was a scientist; he’d care about Patrick’s situation, but he was more likely to keep his head. He’d help Patrick actually figure things out and decide what to do, rather than—as he was sure his parents would do—insisting he call the police and get home. He’d talked all this through with My-Chale (who nevertheless felt he needed to call his parents and tell them he was okay—they’d have been missing him for almost two days now), and they’d agreed that talking to Uncle Andrew first made the most sense. Unless something else happened first to convince Patrick this wasn’t—or was—all a dream.
“Current time Washington, DC,” he whispered next.
8:47 a.m. Monday, March 14, 2016
“All telephone listings for Andrew Lancaster Meyer, Washington, DC.”
Uncle Andrew’s telephone numbers and address appeared on the screen. Patrick took a deep breath and placed the call to his cell number. It rang once, twice, three times, four times, and then went to voice mail. He tried Uncle Andrew’s work and home numbers next but, again, no answer.
They’d talked this possibility through, he and My-Chale, but disappointment and worry still gnawed at his stomach. It was always possible Uncle Andrew would be away from his phone—in the shower, out for a jog, commuting to work, asleep with the ringer turned off, whatever. Patrick jabbed his sneaker toe into the ground, dislodging a divot of muddy earth in frustration.
The seesaw sound of sirens came to him through the rain. He popped his head out from around the side of the garage and saw four little police cars coming off the main road and zooming down the lane that bordered the far end of the scrubby lot. They stopped in front of the multi-level gray house at the far corner of the field.
Probably, he guessed, they were investigating a report of a missing person, and a mysterious cloud of transcense smoke. My-Chale had reminded him about how his transubstantiation was going to cause somebody from Earth to go back to Ith in his place. Whenever somebody goes to one world, a replacement comes back for him or her. Again, this was why when My-Chale had sent the agent BunBun to Earth, Patrick had been swapped out to Ith.
He tried Uncle Andrew one more time, but still there was no answer. He was starting to feel some real panic now. What if this whole thing was true about Rex unleashing a plague on Earth? And about his Deacons on Ith meaning to finally kill all the Commonplacers including My-Chale and Skwurl and Oma? And about him, Patrick, actually being able to make a difference about any of it?
But now a new dark thought entered his head. My-Chale had said Rex—who for years would have been plugged into everything happening on Earth—would know Patrick’s name. Would know that he had been the person who had counterbalanced. He’d have intercepted the police reports. And he’d have detected the transubstantiation itself—both the Commonplace agent BunBun’s arrival and Patrick’s disappearance.
And My-Chale and Skwurl had also said he would not have much time. When Rex—if there really was a Rex—detected Patrick’s current transubstantiation, he’d doubtless think the Commonplacers had sent another trained agent. And he’d send his own agents to try to kill it.
But what occurred to Patrick now was something he and My-Chale and Skwurl hadn’t discussed—what would happen if Rex somehow had figured out that it was Patrick who had come back? And suspected he was working with Rex’s enemies, the Commonplacers of Ith? What if the reason Uncle Andrew hadn’t answered the phone just now was that Rex had gotten to him? What if Rex had gotten to his entire family? If he was as bad as everybody said he was, might he not hold Patrick’s entire family hostage? Or even kill them?
He tried calling Uncle Andrew a third time and still there was no answer. This time he left a message, “Hi, Uncle Andrew, it’s Patrick, your nephew. Um. I’m calling from, uh, well, I guess you can’t call me back because I don’t think I have a number on this phone but anyhow, and I’m not sure how long I’m going to be around, but I’m okay. I’m going to call my parents now but in case I don’t get through, please tell them I’m okay, all right? Okay, love you. Hope I see you soon.”
He lowered the binky. Had that been a mistake? My-Chale and Oma had said his phone was secure but might Rex be able to hear Uncle Andrew’s voice mails?
He was starting to feel really sick to his stomach. Dream or not, this was all too crazy and complicated to figure out.
One thing he knew, though, was he had to call his parents and make sure they were okay, and knew he was okay.
Not doing that—even if it was just a risk that all this was happening and wasn’t a dream—would be inexcusable.
He’d dial the house first. Somebody should be home. It would be about nine in the morning there. But before he could say the phone number his binky vibrated. There was a message on his screen, written in regular English:
Dear Patrick,
I had your binky programmed to send a message to the agent we sent to Earth. Again, his name is BunBun. I just wanted to let him know that you were here. I hope you don’t think I’ve taken advantage, but it was complicated to explain and we have so little time. I’ve asked him to get in touch with you. If he doesn’t, we will assume that Rex got to him. I wish you great wisdom and strength in this moment. We all trust that whatever you decide, it will be the right thing, and for the best.
Gratefully yours,
Michael
“Michael,” said Patrick aloud even as he realized it was another stupid pronunciation issue. One said Ith, not Eye-th. Irth, not Ear-th. And, at least on Eyeth/Ith, one said My-Chale, not Michael. Then he scolded himself for even thinking about something so stupid and small when he had so much more important stuff to deal with—like calling his family.
The phone buzzed again and a new message scrolled down the screen.
The griffin told me to send you greetings, Mr. Griffin! Ha! BunBun here. Gather you know who I am. I think I met some of your siblings the day before yesterday—Cassie and Paul, is it? They are charming children, and well. From all I can tell, your entire family is well. But I am going to go make sure of that again before I go off on my mission. Anyhow, can’t dawdle, much to do—hope all is well on your end.
P.S. Here’s a picture I took with your brother and sister and their friends. Truly adorable. And smart, too.
The screen filled up with a picture of Cassie and Paul, together with the Tondorf-Schnittman twins, and in the middle, apparently the one taking the selfie, a very large rabbit with antlers on its head. A giant jackalope, basically.
Head spinning, he texted thanks, good luck in reply.
Something didn’t feel right. Was the photo even real? Even if it wasn’t
a dream, couldn’t somebody have faked an image like that? Couldn’t it be that somebody was trying to fool him? Of course using a jackalope wasn’t exactly the most believable thing in the world, so if somebody was trying to fool him into going along with something then probably that wasn’t the smartest thing to do. But maybe that’s what made it a smart thing to do.
This was all so confusing. Maybe he should just walk away from it. Go talk to those French police and see what would happen. France was a civilized country, after all, they surely wouldn’t throw him in jail or anything.
He looked down at the reply he’d just sent to Agent BunBun and was struck that it was totally lame. He was not texting a friend about an after-school event here—those two happy kids next to the jackalope were his little brother and sister. And no matter what—even in a dream—he couldn’t bear the thought of something bad happening to them. Of Rex happening to them.
PLEASE TAKE CARE OF MY FAMILY, OKAY?! he wrote.
He stared at the screen, half expecting that he was going to be told it was going to be hard to protect them if he stayed around and Rex found out he had come back. But the reply was simply, Of course I will do everything in my power to protect your family.
Patrick turned to the van parked in the garage behind him and looked through its streaky back window. The floor was scattered with tools and lumber scraps—it wouldn’t be very comfortable, but it would do the trick. He gently tried the handle on the right-side door. It yielded with a rough scraping sound but, fortunately, no alarm. He clambered inside, re-closed the door, and got to work. If there was a chance any of this was really happening, then Rex’s killers might soon be here and he’d better be prepared to escape back to Ith. Once he’d taken care of that, then he’d call his parents. And say goodbye for a long time, and maybe forever.
