by Pam Uphoff
Xen hid a smile as they headed for the nearest gate. Oh Q! I hope that man is really open minded, not to mention resistant to archetype effects.
The three Oner princesses got up and dusted off their pants. He suppressed a smile at Rael's bright blue and deeply plunging blouse—and heavy canvas pants tucked into the orange socks that folded over the top of her army boots. Bunny had acquired almost-suitable-for-the-field pants but Qayg's were probably not going to survive much more sitting on the ground. Even though this world was more grassy than rocky.
He grinned at Ux and Icks, scurrying about to get the witches drinks and sandwiches. Caught Scar's speculative glance.
"You might warn your buddies again that all witches are not love'em and leave'em types. These are all Halfmoons, which means that they've given birth, which is a huge step up in abilities. Double powered so they're stronger than hell. They can damage men during sex. Jacana and Lapwing, due to an incident in their past are especially dangerous."
"How about your sister?" Scar frowned out across the prairie as Ohhe walked into a circle of rock and disappeared.
"Hell quivers in terror of the thought of her landing there. Yes, she's a Halfmoon. Her daughter Destiny is, umm three now? Something like that."
"Losing track, with these bags, bubbles, whatever, and you slow them down and then speed them up?"
"Yes. I suppose it sounds odd . . . well, even inside our magic community Q's eccentric, and not just for her child rearing practices. She gave birth six months ago, and has been spending time with Destiny in a fast room. Mainly to give herself time to work on the Helios models."
Scar grinned. "Language shift, there. In the Empire eccentric is not a synonym for spooky. Can most of you just . . . look around and see other worlds?"
"It takes a little more effort than that. And a lot more effort to peek inside to see what kind of world it is. And I have lots of trouble finding the same one again. So being able to see them isn't all that special."
By the time they'd moved and Xen had set up the Great Stone Inn, Q and Ohhe had caught back up with them.
"Plenty of Earthquakes on Helios as well. And it's very odd. Looking back from there, I could see that this World has a permanent gate attached over in North America. I've never been here before, and I don't generally leave gates open."
"Hmm, the Smuggler sisters or the Hors de Combat?"
"Could be either . . . but why either of them would want a gate here defeats me. Maybe next year I'll have time to check it out."
"I'll check it next month just to make sure the Helios don't have a permanent gate."
She shook her head. "It goes from here down into the main Earth branch."
"That's . . . odd. I'd better check that it's not the Hors. I don't need to be blind-sided with a major rape and pillage raid in the middle of this crisis.”
They spent four more days of increasingly strong earthquakes placing gates, then gated back to the barren world they were using as a staging ground.
Another month and we'll know if it worked.
Xen closed his eyes, and pulled back to look at the Miniverse. Those planets around the Alpha Centauri stars. I wonder if gates between them and their targets would have an effect . . . and whether I could test that, without telling Q and risking her neck as well as mine.
***
As spaceships went, it was pretty basic. A sphere of metal and glass, a long cable and a big chunk of rock. The amenities consisted of a net of food and drink and a gadget that used the heat of the air to turn carbon dioxide into solid Carbon powder and gaseous Oxygen. The carbon went into a jar, the oxygen was released into the sphere.
He had some meters that claimed to measure air pressure and CO2 levels.
He looked around at the lake, the pine forest slowly recovering from a forest fire. One of his favorite worlds in the maze, before the fire.“What was that I was saying about what could possibly go wrong?”
Xen popped the bubble he’d used to carry the sphere-and-rock here, climbed in and dogged the hatch. As far as he knew, no one had any satellites up around this world, so he didn’t have to worry about messing up their orbits as he carefully bent the local gravity field and . . . fell upward.
The pressure gauge held steady. The CO2 was climbing a bit. He pulled power from the sunlight coming through a section of glass and heated the air around his gizmo. Loose powder floated into the jar beneath, and the CO2 meter reversed course.
“Right. So, Xen, let’s see if you can manage something . . . interesting.” His voice echoed around the sphere and he bumped his head on bare mental. “And pad this thing next time.”
He closed his eyes and sank into the fizzing blue. The hundreds of gates between the Paleogene World and Helios were immediately obvious.
But he didn’t want that world . . . he wanted that smaller planet around Alpha Centauri A. In the Paleogene World’s membrane. So . . . just how far away from “here” could he make a gate over “there.”
“Q can do thousands of miles, surely I can do four and a half lightyears.”
He looked through the inbetween at the Paleogene’s Alpha Centauri system. Spotted the smaller planet and zoomed in , chased it, trying to keep his attention on it . . . it has a very different velocity than anything in the Solar System . . . can I place a gate from there, to the Helios equivalent? Can I put a bit more spin on the Miniverse? Get it past that frightening matchup before it gets close to the One World?
He grabbed a cone, chased down the little planet, and stuck it down blindly as it whizzed by.
“I dub thee Planet Xen!”
He snatched the tail and held on as it streaked away. He crashed into the wall of his sphere, was pressed hard up against it as the tail pulled . . .
Quick, Helios! Where the heck is that planet? Not that it matters . . . I can stick it on anything right? He spotted gas giant, grabbed a cone and threw it at it, twisted the tails and let go.
The pressure snapped and he floated away from the wall, gasping from breath. “Well, that was an interesting effect! Whew!” He checked the CO2 meter, collected sunshine and heated it up again. Heated the hull around it.
Floated over to the net of consumables . . . First, the other experiment.
He reached out mentally and released the magical attraction that was holding the rock to the sphere. Or perhaps, since the rock is both larger and heavier, the sphere is attached to it . . . I think I need some boost, I’m a little unfocused here . . .
The sphere moved beneath him, and he floated to the side . . . gently this time . . . and carefully edged down to the bottom of the sphere. As artificial gravity went, it was quite . . . minimal.
The rock’s at the end of the cable, and the little bit of spin we had is now swinging us around it. I think. I’ll speed it all up in a minute. He wormed a bottle of boost out of the net and cracked the lid. Good stuff, even if it is messy.
He got good at throwing cones. Gas giant to gas giant worked well. His space sphere was awesome. Twenty-four hours. Thirty gates, and he headed home.
He did not burn up on reentry.
Q punched him.
“You idiot! I could see the gates going up but I couldn’t find you! Are you trying to make me explain to Mom and Dad how you managed to kill yourself! And you’d better write up a report about it, so I can do better!” Glare. “You went to Alpha Centauri and you didn’t take me!”
Xen climbed back to his feet. “Actually I did it all from Lakeside orbit, the velocity was too great for . . .” He ducked this swing. “Actual travel. Now we need to see if that helped the . . .” He caught up with his mouth in time to shut it in front of the rapidly enlarging audience. “Uh, Q we really shouldn’t discuss this in public . . .”
Glare. Growl. “So what idiocy are you going to do now?”
“Umm . . . I’ll take a few day off and . . . work on my landscaping.” He turned and strode off.
“They have the best family fights.” Chris Hanger’s voice followed Xen
as he headed around behind the Disco building.
***
Rael finally escaped from her office.
Two weeks straight of writing and reading reports and attending meetings! I need my two days off!
Her little red car started up like a champ, never mind three weeks of dust from sitting in the parking lot at Versalle.
She stopped for gas and a car wash, and relaxed as she turn onto her street . . .
There was a tree in her yard.
Much larger than anything she ever seen at the nursery the few times she'd thought about landscaping. Probably ten meters tall, branching gracefully.
And that infuriatingly irresistible man was standing out on the sidewalk beside her grumpy neighbor, the pair of them looking at the tree. No doubt half the rest of the neighbors were watching from the presumed safety of their homes.
Rael pulled into her driveway and joined them. "So . . . what kind of tree is it? And . . . what are those?" Two big stone bowls now bracketed her front door. Big viney things . . . "Grapes?"
"Yep. A merlot and a chardonnay. I'll move them to the back or get rid of them altogether if you don't like them."
The grumpy neighbor snorted. "Fancy schmancy. Get the whole neighborhood's taxes raised."
Rael clutched her head. "Sorry Mr. Keric. But I probably did that already by getting this guy to fix up the worst house on the block. And . . . I'm not going to start making wine, either."
"Then eat them, or let the birds have them." Xen glanced up the street. "I suppose all the water mains and storm drains and whatever are all pretty old. Must be why gentrification is going so slow."
Mr. Keric growled a bit. "Pack of la-di-dah Oners moving in. And then what's an honest man to do, surrounded by a pack of nasty mind-readers."
"Laugh at them." Xen shrugged. "I mean, they mostly don't use their abilities for anything but glowing and fencing. Those Oner names are just potential. Three-quarters of them never even try to develop it. Just a few like Rael, here. Now she's dangerous."
The old grump looked Xen up and down, spat on her weeds and stomped off.
"Do you laugh at us?" Rael batted her eyelashes and tried to look hurt.
Xen grinned. "About as often as I laugh at myself. So, do you want a stereotypical suburban lawn, or we could try some low ground cover like wild violets?"
"I was thinking in terms of buying plants, not . . . where did you get that tree?"
"In a forest on an Empty World. The grapes . . . my dad has a vineyard. He's constantly planting grapes, starting them in pots and . . . then he hasn't got any place for them, so he sticks them in bubbles. He was quite happy to have me take a couple. The wild violets—most places consider them weeds. Silly. Much prettier than grass, and low maintenance."
"Oh yeah? No drawbacks?"
"It doesn't take trampling very well. Not good if you . . . are planning on volleyball."
Why that pause? Oh . . . "if you have kids." Yeah, damn it. My constant . . . wobble. And no reason you'd want more children.
Rael crammed those thoughts down and forced herself to think about landscaping. "Wild violets sounds nice."
He followed her inside. "You don't like the tree?"
Drat, was I leaking thoughts? Emotions, more like. "The tree's beautiful . . . I guess I'm having a bad case of . . . oh, wishing I had a normal job, a normal life."
He heaved out a breath. "I do that sometimes. But doing what? I'd purely hate a desk job. Medgician? Soldier or cop? Farmer? I could grow chocolate oranges and breed horses. Mine for gold. Start a dimensional engineering company. Just run off and explore to my heart’s content, although that might feel a bit pointless after a year or two. How about you?"
She leaned on him, head against his warm chest. "Oh. I've got an office, but Urfa sends me off so often it hardly counts as a desk job . . . it's just that sometimes I look back at those forks in the road and wonder what sort of person I'd be if I'd taken one of the other forks. Or maybe if the fork hadn't happened." She leaned away so she could see his face. "What do you think you'd be doing if the Assassination Attempt had never happened? Professional horse shows, or would you have started working for Urfa?"
"No, I was mostly done with my exit prep. I was going to be delivering my government's response to the passing of the war bill to the president and the council, and acting as some combination of diplomatic courier and envoy."
"A diplomat?"
"Mainly because I was the only one they were pretty sure would survive long enough to attempt to get some sort of communication going. As soon as it was safe, they'd have sent a real diplomat."
"Umm. So they were going to sacrifice a well-placed spy?"
"Eh. We'd gone in pig-ignorant and blind and stumbled around managing to not do anything disastrously wrong. Our next infiltration was much better."
She thumped his ribs. "I know. Izzo grumbles about not getting a whiff, when it's a virtual certainty Comet Fall's got another group in. Damn, now I'm sorry I missed what would have been an awesome . . . what? Reintroduction?"
Xen chuckled. "Exactly. I was going to very briefly introduce myself to the president, hand over the letter from my King and Council, then pop over to your Council Hall for the really fun part. We had it all scoped out. Seal the doors, take control of the media feed to keep it going, and explain a few things to the Council. Starting with a history lesson. It would have been awesome. And a hell of a lot better than almost losing you." He pulled her close. "Damn Urfa. I thought you were dead for . . . three years? It seemed like longer."
"But you came and healed me."
"The healing sleep, or whatever you want to call it . . . we dream, and we can't tell the difference between real and dream. I thought it had to be a dream."
"Ah. I sort of wondered why keeping me away from you was working. I figured . . . three years, why would you care anymore?" She looked away.
He thought I was dead? What would he have done if he’d known?
"And when Q told me there was a Oner with spiky red hair . . . Ha! She made me dress up before she told me, because I teleported right over and it was true. There you were, glowing and throwing off happy sparks in all directions."
She straightened indignantly. "Happy sparks! I do not!"
"Do too."
She sputtered with laughter. "All right, enough. I think I'll keep you. Now what are you going to do to my poor overgrown backyard?"
"Hmm, do you have anything in mind?"
She looked out at the small sticker filled space. "Umm, kill everything and put in concrete? A table and chairs?"
"Tsk. How about raised planters on three sides and a paved patio in the middle?"
"You know it'll turn out to be solid weeds."
"Not if I came by now and then to take care of that little problem."
Rael paused. Caught her breath. "How often is now and then?"
"How often do you get time off?"
Hard dry swallow. Don't panic! It's only a little escalation in the relationship. "Generally Sunday night through Wednesday morning. Depends on if the President is travelling or there’s a big meeting or party. So I frequently end up working or exercising or just hanging out at the barracks . . . "
"Anything but pulling weeds?" He sounded amused.
She looked around. "It gets too empty and quiet."
"Yeah. I know that feeling." He stepped out and waved his hand around. The weeds fell over and piled themselves, finely chopped, in a corner. Then the ground sort of ruffed up and smoothed out.
Xen started pulling stone blocks out of thin air . . .
Four hours later, they were eating real steaks grilled over real charcoal in her new stone grill, surrounded by vegetation and flowers.
"At least I got to buy the furniture." She shook her head. "What are you planning to do next?"
He mimed consulting an invisible device in his hand. "Ah! Seduce Rael. Nearly forgot."
"Ooo! I may have to play hard-to-get."
***
/> Two weeks later the Helios Miniverse dawdled slowly past the Paleogene World, diverted a few degrees.
Xen eyed Q's dissatisfied expression. "Not enough?"
"It was pretty much what I expected. And it did bend even more toward the Dinosaur World. But probably not enough for me to successfully force a merge with the Dinosaurs. It will be close." Q bit her lip. “The tumble might be going faster than I’d expected. It’ll be closer for the Dino World.”
"Good. We increased the chance it will hit the Dino world. Lessened the chance that it'll close enough for the Helaos to force a merge with the One World. That'll do for now." Xen thumped her shoulder.
She glowered. “I can’t really tell if the tumble was affected by your insane . . . adventure. It’s so bloody slow, anyway.”
Xen nodded. “I guess I’ll just leave my gates up, can’t hurt . . . probably.”
"I'll start getting the gates up next week. The Helaos deserve to merge with dinosaurs. I'll try to find time to see how the Miniverse tumble is going. Heh. Might even find a few minutes to say hi to my daughter."
"And if they miss both of the inhabited Worlds, there are plenty of other Empty Worlds we can steer them toward . . . And get rid of this menace forever."
Chapter Ten
Business opportunities for Eldon
Some Earth, Tunguska Cluster
21 September 2017
Eldon walked back to the apartment . . . thinking.
Am I being a good guy, or a stupid jerk letting those kids risk their lives? And I'm selling stuff that would be illegal as soon as the authorities found out about them.
He crossed the street, and jumped out of the way of a car as the light changed.
"You won't live to be thirty, crossing streets like that." The old lady rolled down her window and yelled at him. The man in the fancy chauffeur's get up in the front seat looked resigned.
