by Judith Tarr
If what the data stream hinted at was true, the other two were not constructs on the web or personas in a game. They were alive. They had lived. They were real.
“Of course I’m real,” said the one in the middle. “You’re the imaginary one. You don’t even exist yet.”
“I do too exist,” Meru said. “It seems we all exist. And this”—she brushed the scarab with a virtual finger—”is the thing that binds us.”
“I don’t think,” said the most ancient of them, “that an amulet alone completes the spell. It’s larger than that. Stronger.”
“But it lets us see each other,” the one in the middle said. She narrowed her eyes at Meru. “Meredith. My name is Meredith.”
“Meredith,” Meru said. It was a sort of apology.
“And Meritre,” said the oldest of them all, though in her own world she was as young as the rest. “It’s good we give each other the gift of names. Names matter.”
“Maybe they’re a part of it, too,” Meredith said. “It’s like time travel. But—bigger. Somehow.”
“Yes,” Meru said. “Yes.” She hung on the edge of something enormous—some knowledge that would change the world.
The pieces of it clicked together, one, two, three. Three pairs of eyes met across the millennia.
“I think I get what you’re doing,” Meredith said. “You’re web searching, right? We have the web, too. Much smaller. Much, much more simple. We can’t link directly to it. Yet. But soon. I think. We’re close.”
“You are,” Meru allowed. “Yes, I am searching.”
“I don’t know what this web is,” said Meritre, “though it seems to have something to do with what spiders do—threads woven into a pattern, yes? Like certain kinds of magic. Magic of weaving, and of patterns. But also magic of words. Words are power. Speak them just so, and they can break worlds.”
“Or make them,” Meru said.
“Those are best of all,” said Meritre.
Carefully she closed her fingers over Meredith’s, and over Meru’s. “Let us be hunters of words. Where do we begin?”
Now there was a question. “Stay with me,” Meru said. “See what I do. If something looks familiar, tell me.”
“I can do that,” Meritre said. Meredith, between them, nodded.
Her face was tight. Meru’s felt much the same.
That was comforting, in a strange way. She used that fear to sharpen her senses; to deepen and broaden the search.
As little good as it did. Every search string led to the same blank wall.
Access Forbidden.
The first, she bounced off, startled. The second, she tried a sub-string, and for an instant was sure she had breached the wall. Just as she braced herself to slip through the crack, it slammed shut.
The third wall rose up like a storm of fire. It seared her edges; it licked toward her center. She reeled backward.
The Egyptian reached through her. It was clumsy, because she could not have ever done such a thing before, but she found her balance remarkably quickly.
“Keywords,” she said. “Search strings. Here we call them incantations. They fit into patterns. Look; see.”
“I can’t—” Meru stopped. Yes, she could see. The search strings clicked together in particular and perceptible ways—ways that led to a trap.
“Something doesn’t want us nosing around in here,” Meredith said. She sounded a little breathless, as if she was fending off fear.
“My mother died for those answers,” Meru said, very level and very calm.
Neither of those things had anything to do with how she felt inside. She reeled herself in before she did something frustrated and angry and very badly advised.
Meritre was not paying attention. She was singing to the web and the wall. “Ra of the Horizon, Ra-Harakhte, Mother Isis, Great Osiris, hear us. Look on us. Guide us. Grant us the key to the door; the secrets of the plague; the truth of those who live in threes, who dwell in the house of life, from age to age and into eternity.”
She had a beautiful voice. Its clarity pierced through the hiss of the fire. The words it carried took shape in the web, shaping patterns that Meru could not have imagined, search strings bound to concepts that no one in her world would have thought of.
The trap dissipated in a cloud of random data. They all slid through, the three of them bound together into a single persona.
“Whoa,” said Meredith, just as Meru said, “What did you—”
“I gave it my heart,” Meritre said.
Someday Meru would understand that. Maybe. For now it was enough that it had worked.
Though what it had worked on, she was not exactly sure. There was nothing there except another reference, a pointer to a database that had long since been taken out of Earth’s web. Meru would have howled, if it would not have brought the whole web down on her.
“What’s the matter?” Meredith’s voice was sharp. “What is this? Why aren’t you celebrating?”
“Because it’s not an answer!” Meru almost shouted back. “It’s barely even a question. And it’s not here. Not on Earth’s web. It’s out there.”
She flung her hand outward, toward the near-infinite ocean of the interstellar web. “Starpilots go to school for years to learn how to surf that web. I haven’t even set foot off Earth yet. I’m good. I’m well trained—for Earth. But this…”
“We have to try,” Meredith said. “We’re here, aren’t we? That must mean something. We’ve got a key, somehow. Somewhere in us is a password to the locked data.”
“Maybe it’s the scarab,” Meritre said. “Have you read what it says? It’s a simple prayer, but then there is nothing simple about prayer.”
“Why not?” Meredith said. “It couldn’t hurt.”
With no expectation of anything happening, but because she could not think if anything else to do, Meru gave the web the inscription on the scarab’s bottom, exactly as it was carved, in writing that almost no one alive could read.
The firewall fell. All the data in the universe roared and surged around her. Warnings flashed and strobed and screamed.
Forbidden! Felony! Unauthorized entry! Insufficient clearance! Do not enter! Do not enter! Do not enter!
The storm of data reduced Meru to an infinitesimally tiny speck. Before she could quite wink out, the starwing’s insubstantial warmth wrapped around her. At the same time she felt a hand in each of hers: one shorter and wider, and one wiry and narrow.
The Triple was still together. Still holding on.
“You have us,” Meredith said. “You are real.”
“We are real,” said Meritre. “We are whole.”
The starwing trilled and spread its wings. It was as much at home riding the streams of data as it was soaring on the physical winds of Earth.
And why not? The web was energy, and so was the starwing, mostly. Who knew; maybe this was its native environment.
All three humans rode inside the creature like passengers in a starship. The data stream that had brought them there glimmered ahead of them. Meru sent the starwing after it, skimming the streams and darting through eddies and currents.
At the edge of a wave of data, just before the stream melted into it, Meritre caught it. Meredith batted it back toward Meru. Meru triggered Save, and then, Download.
Even as she captured the last of it, the web turned against her. Security bots swarmed over her. The starwing melted from around her. She hardly had time to react to the betrayal before she crashed out of the web.
Chapter 18
“I’m sorry,” Yoshi said. He did not look apologetic. He looked furious.
The Guards had emptied the café and sealed it, turning it into its own Containment unit. Two of them held Yoshi. They were much bigger than he was, but they looked remarkably ruffled. One had a bruise on her cheek.
“I tried to keep them out,” he said. “But my hack got hacked. It didn’t hold.”
“You are good,” Vekaa said. “If you make it as far
as your own starship, you’ll do well.”
“I fully intend to,” Yoshi said.
Meru was dizzy and dazed from her deep search and the things she had found there. The two strangest were still inside her, watching in silence, living these hours with her.
She drew a deep breath. Her uncle and her friend started as if she had let out a shout.
Where were you? Yoshi demanded through their link that had not broken in spite of everything. You just suddenly evaporated. I could see you sitting there. You were breathing, your eyes were open, but you were gone. Totally vanished from the web. I couldn’t find you anywhere.
I went deep, she said. And then out. Off Earth. Then I got cut off.
It was not all of the story, not by half. She could tell he knew it. Later, he said. Tell me.
She could not have answered even if she had wanted to. Vekaa had her by the shoulders, shaking her.
He caught himself. He looked as startled as she felt. Cool, contained Vekaa never cracked. Never let go.
He drew himself up and composed himself with visible effort. “I’m not even going to ask what you were thinking,” he said. “Did it never occur to you that we might have let you go?”
“It might have,” she said. “I didn’t find anything. Have you?”
He closed his eyes, then opened them. “No. Nothing new. Except new mutations of the disease.”
“Nothing offworld?”
“Nothing yet,” he said.
“Maybe,” Meru said slowly, as the thought took shape, “it’s not alien. Maybe it’s one of ours.”
“That can’t be,” he said. “We’ve isolated or eradicated every virus and bacillus that can affect the human body. The only diseases that can touch us now come from the stars—and we’ve armored ourselves against them.”
“I can see that,” Meru said. “It’s in the all the data streams, right off the official feed. But I can see something else, too. Even with no mention of plague or epidemic, people know what the word you are using means. It’s a situation. You’re telling them to stay home. Not travel. Wait for further instructions. Don’t you think that’s making them afraid?”
“They’re braver than you may think,” Vekaa said, “and we are working hard to find the cause. We will find it. Soon.”
“With respect,” Yoshi said, and his tone was indeed respectful, “if we can hack the system, so can others. The news is going to break. What if you haven’t found the answer yet? What then?”
“Then the Deciders will decide what to do,” said Vekaa.
“And we are keeping you from your work.”
Vekaa shook his head slightly, but he did not deny it. “We who work in Containment are at wits’ end. The organisms we study have all been thoroughly tamed. All the wild ones that survived have stayed safely offworld. And yet this is one is wild beyond capture. And it is here.”
Meru had never heard him speak so bluntly before. He had been closer to Jian than anyone but Meru. His world breaking. And so, she could see, was he.
“Uncle,” she said, and she tried to be gentle, “may we go home? We’ll promise not to run again. As long as we’re all on lockdown, can’t we be locked down with our families? I think—I need—”
She was not feigning the catch of tears in her voice. If she was using it to get what she needed, she told herself, it was for a good cause. She would help them if she could. She would save them all—if it was possible.
“That is fair enough,” said Lyra’s voice. Her face materialized in the air, drawn off the web. “She takes up resources that we need to fight this thing. Send her home and order your family to keep her under surveillance pending judgment, and come back to your laboratory. Make sure she really is locked down.”
The Decider’s face winked out. Vekaa bowed his head to the shimmer where it had been.
When he turned to Meru, she could see how torn he was between duty and grief. He covered it quickly with the same cold stillness that had been in Lyra’s face and voice. “Should we trust you?”
That was fair, though it stung. She answered him as coolly as she could. “I can keep searching the web from home, if you don’t cut me off again. That’s all I wanted to do.”
“It wasn’t my decision,” he said. She heard the pain there, quickly and firmly suppressed. “You realize you haven’t been judged yet. There will be a penalty.”
Meru swallowed. She was afraid she knew what it would be. But she could not have done it differently.
One thing she still had to say. “Whatever you do to me, let Yoshi go. I’ll take all the responsibility—and all the penalty. Don’t punish him for what I’ve done.”
“No,” said Yoshi. “No, you don’t. I’m part of this. I’m not leaving till it’s done. And I’m not letting you do all the paying. We’re both responsible. If we go down, we go together.”
Meru did not look at him. She kept her eyes on Vekaa. “He is a good friend,” she said. “Please let him go home, and be safe, and be free.”
“He can be safe,” Vekaa said, “but he can’t go home. The whole continent is on lockdown. All the roads and the airways and the tunnels under the seas are closed. I’ll send him home with you.” He turned to Yoshi. “You will be welcome in the house of Banh-Liu.”
Yoshi bowed politely. “I will be honored,” he said.
He was very kindly refraining from gloating where Meru could see. She could hardly object: he was her friend; she wanted him to be safe.
Completely safe. Not bound up in this thing that she was bound in, for which she would very likely lose her dream of the stars. She did not want him to lose the stars.
Vekaa took her hand. His fingers were warm and his clasp was firm. “Come,” he said, “and promise me. If you find anything, tell me.”
“I will if I can,” she said.
That was slippery phrasing, but he let it go. She was free to go home, and nowhere else. The bubble he sealed her into with Yoshi was set for the family’s entrance code, and would not stop or unlock before it reached the house on the headland.
Yoshi stretched out on the floor of the bubble as it began to move down the road. For the first time she could see how tired he was.
“Go to sleep,” she said. “I’ll wake you before we get home.”
He eyed her warily. “You’re still mad at me.”
“Not really,” she said. “Just annoyed. And afraid for you.”
“I can take care of myself,” he said. Even while he said it, he yawned.
“Sleep,” she said.
He could hardly help it. His eyes drooped; he drew a deep breath. His whole body let go at once, falling into sleep.
She was exhausted; she had been awake for days. But there was no sleep in her. She would rest when this was over.
The sun was setting over the port and the sea. With her new and intermittent threefold vision, she also saw it hanging low over a landscape of wide brown river and stark red cliffs and pitiless blue sky.
The other two were in the same place, though separated by thousands of years. It was not the same place Meru was in. What she could gather from Meredith, who knew what the whole planet was shaped like, pointed to a location well south and east of the starport.
With their curiosity and barely controlled eagerness to urge her on, she opened the data stream she had pulled off the greater web. It was a small thing, a spurt of information. First, a timeline, marked off in equal thirds. Then, a human figure standing at the point of each third.
It was the same figure in all three, though it wore a different costume in each. The note attached to it said, Some in this world live in threes. Three eras, three lives, one self. See ‘Triple,’ ‘Triad,’ ‘Transmigration of Souls.’
None of those keywords led to an active link, though Earth’s web offered a flood of irrelevant data. All she gained from that was an overview of ancient religion, magic, and superstition.
“That makes no sense,” Meru said.
“But it does,” said Meredi
th. “I know it shouldn’t. I’ve never heard of anything like it.” Through the link they shared, Meru felt how she wavered between incredulity and a kind of stunned belief.
Meru shared the incredulity. The rest… “It’s not possible,” she said.
“Except it is,” Meredith said. “Because here we are. What I don’t understand—what I don’t quite get—”
“I…think I do,” Meritre said. “We’re the same person. All our souls are one—one being. We’ve lived each of these lives, and who knows how many others, but we can talk to each other. We can know what we were and what we’ll be.”
“Yes,” Meredith said. “And because we know all that, we can change the flow of time.”
“Time is a river,” Meritre said. “I’m here, down in Waset, and you’re in the middle, and she—she’s almost to the sea.”
“Right,” said Meredith. Her voice shook a little.
Meru was shaking all over. Part of it was anger at herself. How could these ancients, these creatures of times so old they could barely comprehend this world she lived in, be so much quicker to understand what was happening?
“Now that is just rude,” Meredith said. “Maybe you’re so advanced you’ve forgotten how to see the obvious.”
Meru sucked in a breath. Before she could burst out, Meritre said, “That doesn’t help anything. We are here, and we are real, and so the rest must be real, too. There must be something we are destined to do. Or why do we exist at all?”
“Simply because we exist,” Meredith said. Then she added quickly, “No, no, that’s rude, too. It’s all so…it’s crazy. Wild. Unimaginable. But it is.”
Meru hated to agree, but she had no other or better answer. “Even our names are alike,” she said. “Which is maybe a coincidence, and maybe not.”
“Yes,” said Meritre. “It’s a great magic.”
“It makes my head hurt,” Meredith said.
Meru’s head was aching, too. Her world had been full of wonders and strangeness, but it had been safe, because she thought she understood it. Now she understood that it was stranger than she had ever imagined—stranger and more deadly.
