by Pam Uphoff
Ajki frowned suddenly. "Wait. Five worlds that can make gates? Empire, Earth, Comet Fall . . . Oh. Helios. Of course. Who else?”
“The Arbolians . . . and I think the Purps are working at it. I . . . think it’s just or Astronomers picking up the dimensional techniques. I haven’t seen any sign of their government being involved.”
“Damn . . . and the Purps will do it for Earth, no doubt. Probably more dangerous than the Helaos having powered gates. And I really hope you aren't going to invite them to Embassy."
Xen blinked. "Do you know . . . I never considered that. Perhaps I should go explain a few things to the ArcHelaos."
Ajki looked alarmed. "Please don't get yourself killed. Believe it or not, the President isn't the only one who realizes how much you've helped us. How much we need you."
Xen just grinned. "Not to worry. Just behave for a week while we put up the gates to the Dinosaur World. Then I'll come back and help you with anything else you need to do to the Helaos."
Chapter Seventeen
Gates on a Dinosaur World
20 Muharram 1405 yp
Dinosaur World, EP 11566
Rael took a deep breath, and nearly choked. "One! What did they do to the air here?"
Xen laughed. "A little thick and humid, Spikey? Welcome to a typical dinosaur world. At least we're far enough north, and it's winter, so it's not hot along with the humidity."
"I'd say this qualifies as stifling." Rael looked around at . . . greenery. "I see the plants like the thick air, too. Did the dinosaur killer asteroid knock some of the atmosphere off?" She peeled off her jacket and wondered if she'd packed along any shorts.
It's the middle of bloody winter!
"I've heard that theory, but not seen any convincing evidence. I suppose that if I poked around enough worlds I could actually see the end of the world. Maybe someday I'll have the time to do that."
Rael heard the wistful tones and nodded. "Going to quit Disco and go into private exploration?"
"Umm . . . I might have to maintain some sort of tenuous contact . . . "
"In case they need you to scare people into civilized behavior?"
That got a grin. "I'm not at all sure that actually works."
"It works for governments, by-and-large. Individuals? Not so much."
"I guess I'm just too chatty. But the witches are getting right to work, so why don't we stick the Great Stone Inn up on that slight rise there?"
"Good plan . . . now, I have noticed that your corridors have something on them that keeps your sea level to mountaintop corridor from turning into a wind tunnel. So can you keep the humidity and air pressure outside?"
"Good idea. And it's just a . . . physical effect to prevent the movement of air, sort of the converse of a one way pipe. A moderately strong no-way door. For loose liquids or gasses. I'll reinforce all the window effects too."
"Excellent." Rael started the ute and headed for the slight rise. "Where are we this time?"
"Asia. Siberia, I think."
"Why not Spain or the Middle East again?"
"Oh, the time differential is so extreme, and the continents not in the right place . . . There's not hardly an Atlantic Ocean yet . . . so this was not too hard to get to, and far away from your Fort Dinosaur and the marooned Helios."
"I see." She pulled up in front of a fairly flat stretch. "Do we still have troops in Fort Dinosaur?"
"Nope. They pulled out yesterday, and we closed that gate."
"We? Is it hard to close the gates?"
"We, as in Disco. No, it's easy, if you know how. Lon sent Nighthawk."
“Yeah, I heard you were putting the kid to work. You going to do the Big Bad Dad thing over Ra’d?”
“Oh, a Comet Fall Witch wouldn’t put up with that. And if three years apart from each other made no difference, I figure it’s a lost cause.”
She eyed him.
He shook his head. “Ra’d is much too honorable to defect, and Nighthawk has had a powerful lesson in how the Empire treats non-Oners. I’m afraid they’re as star-crossed as we are.”
“Star-crossed.” The perfect term. She sighed.
They were solid on the routine now. The guys on guard, Bunny nudging the witches and Q when they need to move or take a break. Xen and Rael setting up the Inn. Then Xen would search for more distant cones and herd them in to the gate makers, while Rael made sure nothing ate him.
The dogs roamed, and only went hunting on the breaks.
"I really hope they have sense enough to not try to hunt anything very big here."
Xen looked over at them. "I've warned them about the dinosaurs." Then he turned back to dig the four pits and drop the Inn into place.
Ha! If Paer could see how Disco lives when they're exploring new worlds, she'd call them spoiled sissies.
Xen snickered, and she tightened her shields. Again.
And listened in a bit while he herded cones.
:: To close a gate, you crash a fast spinning cone into the junction of the two gate cones. ::
A faint warning feeling . . .
:: Just telling her, Q. I won't interfere with your greatest gate swarm ever. ::
Rael dropped her contact with Xen and looked around . . . no danger.
Lots of gates, the lifeless melted landscape of Helios quite noticeable against the verdant greenery here.
"Greatest gate swarm ever?" Rael paced a bit further away, Ohhe walking over to join her. "Is Q actually capable of crashing worlds together? And what happens if they overlap, instead of just get close enough for the Helios merge machinery?"
Ohhe nodded. "It's scary to think that the Fallen could force a merge. But that would solve most of the problem . . . until the next time the depopulated Helios hits another world square on."
Scar looked over. "Yeah . . . and Q is certainly giving the impression she really, really wants Helios to merge here."
"I read a report from Ajha at the first listening post. If they're translating the sort-of-Greek correctly, the Helaos are of the opinion that their world has slowed to the point that the next merge might stop them, rather than their victim getting ripped out and carried along with the Miniverse." Rael looked around. "This is a good place for Bad Men to die."
***
They traded, mixed up triads, put up double their usual number of gates.
The earthquakes got stronger and more frequent.
So they kept putting up gates.
"Is it my imagination? I swear I can feel the attraction between the planets." Q was staring into nothing.
Xen was looking also, but to him, at this close range, the crumpled-paper membranes were static—moving so slowly they might as well be frozen. Of course they're only separated in non-spatial dimensions, not, not really physically separated . . . kind of. It's just our weird perception that gives us the illusion of . . . Oh, eff it all, leave the explanations to the physicists.
"Well, that's four hundred gates. What do you think? More? Maybe spread them out all around both worlds? The worst that will happen is Helios getting a dinosaur invasion, which, all things considered, would be fitting."
Q snorted and pulled her perception out of the inbetween, shrugged off the loose mental link they'd been holding.
Xen did the same. Stretched and stood up.
“The stars aren’t quite right, are they?”
“No.” Q looked over at him. “But they’re getting closer. I have no idea how close is close enough.”
The other six witches and the their guards were looking at them. They all looked happy and eager.
Scar grinned. "So? What continent do you want to move to?"
Q grinned back. "North America, the West Coast's about opposite here, and we can stay away from the Helios there."
"You like earthquakes, do you?" Xen eyed her.
"Well, don't you think they deserve a few closer to home?"
"All right. We'll move in the morning."
***
"Let's leave the Inn bu
bbled until we see what sort of earthquakes proto-California is prone to." Xen eyed the sharp peaks to the north. "And volcanoes."
Rael consulted her computer . . . "There a subduction zone all along the coast of North America. No specific mention of volcanoes, but most subduction zones have them."
They loaded into the utes and drove back to the staging world. Q collapsed the gate to the Dino world . . . and opened another.
They drove through, into a dark forest of ferny trees and redwoods.
The witches got to work and had twenty gates open by the time Rael call a halt for lunch. Or a second breakfast, given the time of day, here.
Xen looked around at the soggy ground. "Let's drive south. It feels like there's higher ground, which means less trouble with waste water for the Inn. We can put up more gates there."
They moved ten miles to a low broad hill, but took more like double that on the ground, detouring around boggy areas.
Then the witches got back to work.
Xen eyed them. They aren't nearly as obnoxious as they were at the start. Maybe being out, with real jobs that stretched their abilities has been good for them. And they're handling the dimensional work quickly and easily.
Scar was shading his eyes and looking at something in the sky.
"That's not a pterodactyl."
"Good. Last thing we'd need is an aerial attack . . . " Xen followed Scar's gaze, zoomed in his vision. "Oh, that's a plane . . . or one of your antigravity aircars with a bit of wing . . . Unmanned surveyor? I'm not feeling anyone . . . oh shit, I think there are Helaos in there . . . there's a second one . . . "
He broke off check the witches—oblivious in their triads—and Ohhe diving into the ute and grabbing the radio.
Xen threw an illusion over the entire area. Probably too far away even if it would work on their squirrely brains. I need a physical effect, light reflecting bits dancing around . . . or just a heat distortion.
"Q, wake up. We've got a problem."
"I'm not asleep . . . oh crap! Did they detect the gates? Ha! I'll bet they think their own people have found them. What shall we do to them?"
Scar shot a glance her way. "You mean with them?"
"Not really. But I suppose I shouldn't be too nasty."
Xen grinned. "Or we could let them go home just in time for the last merge."
Q threw a corridor hard to the south and chivvied the witches into the utes.
"Go. I'll hold the illusion and follow you." Xen tried for a head count . . . over a hundred soldiers . . .
Q leaped into the bronze circle of the corridor and opened the far side. Xen waited until the utes were gone . . . looked back at the wallowing overloaded aircars.
Soldiers who just want to go home . . . to merge-murder terrified teenagers . . . He sucked the power out of the hot humid air, and threw it at the aircars. Watched the burning wrecks fall, then turned and stepped through the corridor. He popped it behind him.
I just killed a couple hundred men. I hope I have enough of a conscience left for that to bother me . . . sometime.
He refused to think about it, right now. Sat down to make gates.
Five gates, then he was kicked out of his trance by Rael. "We need to get out of here, right now!" Huge dark clouds and constant shaking.
"Huh. I think we triggered a volcano, or maybe started one from scratch."
"Stop analyzing and . . . " Rael gawped, and he turned to see climbing black clouds. A deep boom, almost more felt than heard.
"Yikes! Corridor fast!" He grabbed a bubble and threw it hard. "Q! Witches, into the utes, guys get ready to drive."
Xen finished pinning the corners, as Q jumped in to open the other side. He grabbed witches and yanked them out of their triads. Lots of energy releases . . . he channeled the energy and shoved the witches at the vehicles. The utes zoomed through the corridor as soon as Q had it open. Xen leaped through, and it popped behind him.
Not that it wasn't shaking here as well. "Everyone stay in the utes. Q, it's time to get off this world. Can you find any cones?" They sat on the ground.
Q's cone connected somewhere, his connected right in front of them. The utes drove through, Q and Xen jumped.
Xen thumped back down on the ground of their Staging Point World. Caught a cone and took down the gate. Stayed in the blue.
Helios, from this distant perspective, was small, tied to another world by a skein of silvery threads. He could see the whole Miniverse in a slow tumble. As he watched, the Alpha Centauri pair of suns slid past their twins, the angle of the Miniverse carrying them below . . . flares and eruptions on the stars.
He looked for the Sun . . . passing above the larger universe's Sun . . . and down there, two Earths. One full of life, one ruined and nearly dead . . . nearly touching, cables tight . . . stretching and . . . Helios was past and moving away.
He relaxed a moment. Opened his eyes to the overlap of blue and the real world.
"Damn, damn, damn, damn, DAMN! They pulled away." Q thumped down on the ground. "Damn it."
Rael kneeling worriedly beside her. "It didn't work?"
Xen shook his head. "No."
He closed his eyes and pulled back a bit, looked at the ghostly fading trail Helios was leaving behind as it passed beyond the gravitational influence of the dinosaur universe . . . extrapolated forward . . . Oh Shit!
Xen let the blue go.
"And it looks very much like we've aimed it right at that Primitive World."
Barely two weeks. A couple million people, without a clue that doom is bearing down on them.
Chapter Eighteen
Mass Kidnapping
25 Muharram 1405
Primitive World 65480
Deep night. Bright stars. Down below, all was quiet. The fires burned down, everyone asleep. Safe behind their sturdy wooden walls.
Xen grabbed a bubble, "seeing" it large. Large enough to scoop under the entire village and take it all. He slap-attached it to his shoulder . . . picked up the shocked reaction of two guards who'd been outside the stockade and popped over to bubble first one and then the other. Attach their bubbles to the village bubble, then reach out and feel for the glow of a concentration of intelligent life and use that to jump a few hundred miles to the next village.
There's not enough time! God damn those Helaos!
A sudden bright mind, half a continent away. :: Stop being so pessimistic. We've got time. ::
:: Q! Excellent. Everything all right at Disco? I thought everyone was screaming for Gates? ::
:: They are. I handed it all to Warric. He's utterly horrified. ::
He could feel even more people with her. Orion, Korbin, Falco, Grace, and Kevi. Richie and a pack of his kids. His knees felt weak with relief.
Xen took a deep breath and relaxed. :: Right. Now, how are we going to do this? ::
:: I'm going to drop the guys off near large bunches of people, and . . . are you having trouble persuading them? :: She sounded worried.
:: Not asking. I'm scooping up huge areas, their whole villages, at night when almost everyone is home and bubbling them. ::
:: Oh. Well, that will save time. Since you're in the south, I'll spread everyone out then find the north end of their range and start working on that. We can work every night for a week, take a break for the meeting with the Oners, then get right back to it. ::
Xen huffed out a breath of relief. Twelve of us. We can do this. :: We could send Inso and Lon to the meeting, and keep working. ::
A mental laugh from Q. :: I told Lon that was what you'd say. ::
***
The Exploration Subdirectorate had a larger conference room than the Information Subdirectorate, so the meeting was held there.
Ajha looked around the room and grinned. They'd been swapping personnel back and forth so fast they all had to pause occasionally to remember who they worked for at the moment, and he'd given up trying to keep track of everyone else.
Uncle Ajki . . . Director Ajki, rather, tapped
the table top. "I trust you've all at least skimmed each other's reports. Is there anything new that needs to be brought up?"
Ajha raised a finger.
"Intel Leader Ajha?"
"We've got translations from a meeting yesterday. The Helaos had not anticipated the Dino World encounter to be so strong. The scientists have been reamed about it. And they've recalculated. From what they've said, every merge slows them slightly. Apparently our speculations about spontaneous mergers is a bit simplistic. The Helaos are speculating that they might hit square enough, with all five stars close enough to their equivalents that they will merge spontaneously—even the stars—and they think they might stop there, remaining a part of that Universe."
He sobered a bit. "It sounds like they have never merged spontaneously—even though the first was accidental—apparently some sort of power storage system produced that first disastrous merge. And they are looking quite spooked—apparently their world has been close enough to merge regularly, but their sun has never merged, just passed through, the other sun, with serious flares and other highly energetic results. Ditto, brightening of the other four stars in their Miniverse, that they attribute to passing through another, but never more than one at a time.
"But this time, the change in direction of the Miniverse, plus its tumble, is going to put all of the stars and major planets close to overlapping at about the same time.
"They have no idea of the consequences.
"There was quite a heated discussion about the wisdom of everyone just bailing for their colony world. The old men were furious at the suggestion. And pointed out that the destruction of their gate made that difficult."
