by Isaac Hooke
Her father was back. Her father. She nodded quickly. "I'll do what I can."
She glanced down at the shard. The creature felt like ice against her skin, and it only added to her uncontrollable shivering. She took two deep breaths, and focused.
But the spark was nowhere to be found inside her.
"I can't," she said. "What about you?" He had no collar that she could see.
Hoodwink shook his head. "Gols don't have the ability. Most of them, anyway."
Gols. Her father had become a gol. She still couldn't believe it.
She heard the distant trudge of boots in the snow. The first wave of guards emerged at a run onto the far side of the square.
"Ari," Hoodwink said. "We can't let them see the shard."
Yes. And the damn thing wouldn't come off once you let it touch your skin.
"Well cover it then!" she said.
"You don't get it, you don't," he said. "Once a shard grabs you, it's like a town crier to us gols. It's practically glowing to my eyes. Doesn't matter how much you cover it. Trust me, we have to melt the thing! And now!"
She gritted her teeth, and rested her fingers on the shard. She closed her eyes and reached into herself, searching, roving for the power that had warmed her all these years.
But it was spent.
She hadn't a glimmer left.
She shook her head. She was beginning to feel sleepy again. It would be so easy to close her eyes. "I'm done, Hoodwink. I'm sorry. I'm old and spent. I just, I want to sleep. Go. Leave me here."
He stared at her, the disbelief plain on his face, then he flashed that easy smile she remembered so well. "I'll do nothing like that, I won't."
The guards were closing.
"It's not like my Ari to give up like that. And I won't let her." Hoodwink flung one of her arms around his neck, and raised her upper body. She started to protest, but then the pain of what he just did reached her, and fresh excruciation pulsed through her torso. She wasn't sure what stung more, the pain, or her father's words.
It's not like my Ari to give up like that.
He was right. She wasn't a quitter.
She'd prove it to him.
She reached again.
Still nothing.
It was hopeless.
She was a quitter. A quitter and a failure.
And she was going to die.
CHAPTER SIX
Ari glanced at the guards in defeat. The gols were almost upon them. She felt Hoodwink tighten his grip.
And then she noticed something.
The pain, pulsing through her torso, was like a current passing through her, signaling agony upward from the chest and into the brain. That current fanned the tiniest of sparks in the recesses of her mind, and if she listened, really listened, she could almost hear it calling to her.
She reached for that spark, fumbled for it, but it slipped from her grasp.
She reached again.
Got it.
She let a trickle of electricity, all she could manage, flow from the spark and into the shard.
That was all it took. The crystalline life form warmed pleasantly, and the heat spread outward from her ribs. The pain immediately lessened, and then faded entirely.
Hoodwink glanced down in shock as the shard melted into her. And then he smiled fondly. "That's my Ari."
"They don't call me... the greatest User... for nothing," she said, panting.
Hoodwink helped her to her feet, and the guards approached, halting in a semicircle around them. Many of them stared uncertainly at the number on Hoodwink's chest.
Ari knew that if Hoodwink spoke, the ruse would be up. No gol talked like he did.
She feigned a sob. "A man killed them." She intentionally fingered the fake collar around her neck. "A lightning-shooting hooligan." She indicated the direction Richard had escaped. "He ran that way."
The gols didn't move. They gave no indication they'd even heard her. Their eyes were on Hoodwink. More than a few of them were slobbering.
"She speaks the truth." Hoodwink's words and manner had changed entirely. He spoke like a man who expected to be obeyed. "The User flees to the south. Pursue the krub. Now!"
The gols didn't even hesitate. They made off at a run in the direction Richard had gone.
"They'll kill him if they catch him," Ari said.
Hoodwink scowled. "Bastard deserves it for what he did to you."
She regarded him warily, not sure she knew who he was anymore. Not sure she knew who she herself was. "How did you do that anyway?"
"Do what? Oh. Make them run, you mean. Well, sometimes the convincing works right well. The numbers on my suit trick them, make them think I'm a gol somebody. And if I believe I'm a gol somebody myself, well, you know what they say—if he looks like a somebody, talks like a somebody, well he must be a somebody."
Ari gazed at the numbers on his chest. "What does it mean?"
"Eight."
She raised an eyebrow. "Eight."
"My gol name." He wrapped his free hand around her waist. "Nothing you need concern yourself with for now. We're going back to your house." He glanced at the snowpack around her. "Where's your coat? Or cloak?"
"Don't ask."
She'd forgotten the cold until he mentioned the cloak, and now she felt it keenly. She snuggled against Hoodwink like a little girl. Though the shard had healed her ribs, it had done nothing for the pain in her knee, which flared up again, and she limped worse than ever.
"Everyone's going to think I'm your mother," she said in that cranky tone of hers. Everything she said sounded cranky these days.
"Good." He grinned. Of all the things about her father, she remembered his grin the most fondly. It comforted her. "Then our disguise is complete. No one'd ever suspect the leader of the New Users is the mother of a gol."
"Yes," she said, the sarcasm oozing. "And a fine leader she is. In her dotage." She looked at him. "How did you become a gol?"
He frowned, saying nothing. Another guard patrol jogged past. That signaled the end of the conversation, apparently.
A short while later Ari was back inside her tiny home, seated by the frosted window, a fresh cup of tea in hand, the door sealed up against the cold, Hoodwink sitting in the chair across from her. She took a deep sip, then rested the cup on her leg. Her knee had stopped acting up, at least.
Hoodwink. She stared at him, at a loss for words. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak first.
"I never thought this day would come," she said at last. "The day you returned from beyond the Gate. From beyond death."
"So you knew, then." Hoodwink nodded absently. "That passing the Gate would kill me. And you let me go anyway."
She stared at him, the indignation rising inside her. "Now just a minute young man—" Young man? What was she thinking? She cleared her throat, and tried again. Not so cranky this time. "Just hold on... Hoodwink. I didn't know that crossing the Gate would kill you. There was a chance you'd fall during the climb, true enough. And that the gols on the other side would greet you with swords. But killed just for crossing? I didn't know. How could I? Besides, if I recall, you did accept the risk."
Yes. He'd accepted the risk to save her. Her. Why was she hiding her true feelings like this? Was it the indignation she felt over his tone? Partially. No, truth was, she'd hardened over the years. She'd had to surround herself with a shell of iron as Leader of the New Users. It was the only way to protect herself.
"Oh the gols on the other side greeted me with swords all right," Hoodwink said. "But maybe not in the way you think. Tell me something, just what do you believe is on the Outside? What notes did you get back from the Users who went before me?"
She scratched her head vigorously. Her scalp could really itch sometimes. Another mark of old age, she supposed. "Only some gibberish about sand, and giant skeletons."
"That's outside the city walls, sure," Hoodwink said. "But I mean the real Outside."
She set aside her tea, and regarded him warily
. "The real Outside? I don't— come on, out with it."
He smiled enigmatically. "The Outside beyond the Outside."
She shook her head. "Now you've really lost me, dad."
He laughed, and looked away. "This feels wrong somehow, doesn't it? You calling me dad. Grandson might be more appropriate."
She smiled coldly. "So even you would patronize me?"
The humor left him. "No Ari. That's not what I meant, not at all." He stood, and walked to the bookshelf hammered into the wall. He pulled out a volume. Ubik, by Philip K. Dick. One of her favorites. He flipped through the tome. "Look, the gols need our help, but their inner workings won't allow them to accept it. This isn't news to you. It's what the old Leader wanted ten years ago. It's what you want. Well, jump up and down for joy, Ari, because I've found a way to do it."
She stared at him a moment. "How?"
"I'll get into that later. For now all you need to know is, well, to succeed I need someone on the Inside who can track the gols, and keep me in the loop on how well the changes I've planned for them take. Someone who can get to the Control Room in the mayor's office. Someone who knows the halls of his house. I want you to be that someone. But first we need to fix up your body."
She frowned. "Someone on the Inside? What are you talking about? Inside the mayor's house?"
He smiled briefly—an impatient smile, she thought—and returned the book to the shelf. He strode to the stand-up mirror by the dusty make-up desk, and with a dramatic flourish he removed the white blanket that covered it.
"There are levels of the mind." He had his back to her, and his reflection spoke from the mirror's depths. "As different from this one as ice to stone. You need to go up a level before you'll know what we're facing." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "Tell me, Ari. What would you give to have your youth back? Your beauty?"
CHAPTER SEVEN
"My youth?" That piqued Ari's interest, which of course he must have known it would. Who wouldn't want their youth back?
She answered slowly. "I would give quite a lot. But, tell me, what's the price? And don't tell me there isn't one. There's always a price. Especially for something so valuable."
"Oh there's a price all right," Hoodwink said. "And I wouldn't dare tell you differently."
Ari tapped her foot impatiently. "So what is it?"
"Your innocence, mostly. You'll learn the truth the other Leader thought he knew, but didn't."
Her eyes focused on the numbers on his chest. "Will I become a gol, like you?"
His face became grave. "When you come back, yes. But you'll be safe from the mind disease."
"And will I lose vitra?"
He nodded. "Yes."
She sighed. Always a price.
"But there are other powers you can tap into," Hoodwink added hastily. "I swear it's true."
Her gaze drifted to the window. "I've sat in this same chair every day for the past two years, stared out at the same snowy street. A recluse, waiting to die alone."
"Come back with me, Ari." He strode to her, and held out his hands. "Come back and be young again. Cross the Forever Gate with me."
She grunted dubiously. "How? I can't climb it, not in my condition."
"The Forever Gate isn't the wall that hugs the city. It's a token for crossing over to the other side of life. For jumping up a level of the mind. It can be crossed in two ways. The first is by dying. Die, and you'll find yourself in the Outside. That way is a bit of a blow to the body though, and I don't suggest it. A lot of people die for real. Definitely don't want that." He turned toward the mirror, and spoke to his reflection. "The second way is by denying reality. You just refuse it. It's where you know, deep inside, that none of this is real. That your heart beats in a far-off place. That your thinking comes and goes in a mind that lives on the Outside." He smiled at his reflection. "It helps to have a symbol. Something to focus on. I like to use a mirror."
He extended a palm toward her. "So? Have you made your choice?"
She took his fingers.
Hoodwink helped her to the mirror. She hadn't looked at her reflection in so long. Was she really so old? So ugly? Already?
"Place your hand on the mirror," Hoodwink said.
She did so, joining her hand to its reflected twin.
"You know what you see in the mirror is an illusion, right?" Hoodwink said. "A copy?"
"Sure," Ari said.
"Okay. So what if I told you that you were the illusion, and the person in the mirror was the real one?"
"What?" Ari glanced at him. "That's absurd."
"Maybe. But it's not so absurd. Not when you know the truth. Look in the mirror. Good. Believe that the world you see there, past your fingers, is the real world. Believe that the person you see there is the real you, and that the person standing here is the copy. That's the key to all this. See the mirror for the illusion it shows you to be."
She cocked an eyebrow, unable to keep from smiling. When she saw that Hoodwink was dead serious, she bit her lip, and concentrated on her reflection. I'm the copy. Every gesture, no matter how subtle, was played back to her in the way that mirrors did. The reflection was obviously the copy, not her.
At last she couldn't take it and erupted in a haggard giggle. "I feel like a fool! This is silly. Of course my reflection is the illusion, and not the other way around."
Hoodwink lifted an eyebrow. "So you're sure that the idea for each action starts with you, and not the person in the mirror?"
She tapped her foot irritably. "I am."
"How do you know the old woman you see there isn't staring back at a mirror on her own side, believing for all the world that you're the one copying her?"
Ari opened her mouth, but didn't know what to say to that. Of course it was impossible, but Hoodwink was right, she couldn't know for sure. There were few certainties in this world.
"That's what I thought," Hoodwink said. "Now look back to the mirror."
She did.
"Let your eyes lose focus. Stare past yourself, into the copy of the room. Gaze at your bookshelf, or out the window, at the street beyond. Let the walls of reality tumble down."
Ari gazed intently into the mirror. She focused on the window beside the bookshelf, and stared, unblinking, at the reflected street beyond. After some moments, she no longer felt like she gazed at a reflection at all, but the real world. It was only when her eyes drifted back to her own image that the illusion fell apart, and so she concentrated on the window and nothing else.
Her thoughts wandered as the moments dragged on, and again her eyes were drawn to her own reflection. She pretended her image was a part of her, and that together they formed the twin halves of some unified whole, a conscious entity more than the sum of its parts.
Gazing at her trembling hand, she realized she couldn't tell if the hand in the mirror originated the motion first, or her own hand. And when she blinked, was it the image that blinked first, a split-second before her? Or was it she?
Was it really possible that none of this was real? That the mirror, herself, the floor she stood on, the very air she breathed, was all illusion? Was she merely the reflection of some distant being, connected to this body by thin strings that existed in dimensions she couldn't see? The puppet of an invisible puppeteer?
She leaned forward, steadily increasing the pressure she applied to the mirror. Her image was definitely blinking its eyes first, now, and she was the one playing catch-up.
I'm an illusion! I've been tricked my entire life!
It felt like the hand in the mirror pushed back. She should have been shocked. Instead, she felt outraged.
Outraged at the lie.
Without warning the surface gave and swallowed her arm up to the elbow. Her reflection stared back in mock disbelief. She tried to pull the hand away, but it was stuck, just as if she'd pressed it into some thick sludge. There was no way to go but forward—into the mirror.
She glanced around frantically. "Hoodwink!"
But he was
gone.
She knew she had to press on, but she couldn't bring herself to. Hadn't Hoodwink said that passing through the Forever Gate was the same as death? If that was true, wasn't she killing herself by doing this?
She tugged and tugged, but couldn't wrest her arm free. Exhaustion began to seep into her limbs.
Come back and be young again.
Her heart raced in her chest. Was she really going to go through with this?
Be young again!
Hoodwink wouldn't lie to her. Would he?
Be young.
She surrendered. She slid her arm further into the unseen sludge. The mirror ate her flesh greedily.
Young...
Her face was almost touching the surface now, and she was eye-to-eye with her reflection.
"Be young," she said.
Without warning an invisible hand grabbed her from the other side and yanked her through.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ari was enveloped in gluey sludge. Sap, mud, mucus, whatever it was, it hampered her every movement. She couldn't open her eyes. Her ears were plugged. She tried to hold her breathe against the sludge, but she realized her lungs were already full of the stuff. She was drowning in it.
The hand still grasped her firmly, and continued to pull, though the grip didn't feel solid, just as if it clutched her through some kind of membrane. Panicking, she tried to break free of its hold, but then the membrane gave. She slid through an ever-expanding orifice and smashed into a hard surface with a clang. She banged her knee pretty bad. The sludge piled down on top of her.
She hacked the mucilage from her lungs, feeling for all the world like she was dying. Dying might have been preferable to the burning pain she felt in her throat and lungs just then. She expected to black out from lack of air, but her vision remained clear, and her mind lucid through it all. Her fingers tightened reflexively, and wrapped around the cold bars beneath her. Some kind of grill, a part of her mind noted.
She wasn't sure how long she lay there, hacking away, but eventually the sludge seemed mostly expunged from her lungs, and she gave two long, painful inhales. After that, she was able to breathe evenly, with only a few coughs here and there. Her lungs still burned though, like she'd run a marathon.
