Saul smiled sympathetically. “Just take it slow and easy and tell it from the beginning. Everyone has trouble getting a handle on their first time.”
Daniel tried to collect himself and thought about it for a minute. When he noticed that his hands were shaking, he rubbed them on his jeans to stop them. After a moment, he opened his eyes, and told Saul the whole story, leaving nothing out.
After he was done, it was Saul’s turn to be quiet.
“Well?” said Daniel.
Saul shrugged. “If I hadn’t felt that blank hole where you came through for myself, I’d say that was the biggest load of horseshit I’d ever heard.”
“That’s exactly what happened!” Daniel vaulted off the sofa and began pacing.
“I believe you. There’s just some stuff missing from your story, okay? Like how did you get to this place without a Wayguide? How did you Walk that far without an Arc? Where did you end up? The known worlds are just like Earth, Dan. In fact, some people say they are Earth, just different versions. Time passes, they have sunsets and sunrises, and they don’t have some kind of emotion associated with them. They’re just places.”
Daniel spun around and looked at him incredulously. “Are you trying to tell me that you, a dimension hopping man who gives away magic bracelets, is having a hard time with my story? Seriously?”
Saul appealed mutely to the ceiling. “From your point of view, anything is possible. It’s all out of the norm. But right now, you’re like a caveman telling a mechanic that a car flew away to the moon. The mechanic knows damn well it didn’t, but the caveman is convinced that if something as weird as a car can exist, it can do anything. Trust me when I tell you that you did not see a flying car. But I do believe that you experienced something damn weird, I just don’t know what it really was.”
Saul put on a conciliatory look that Daniel wanted to smack off his face. “Tell you what, we’ll go talk to a guy I know a little bit later, and see if he can straighten this out for us. He’s a big deal in Veil research here, so there’s a good chance he’ll have some ideas about what really happened. But that’ll have to be later, right now I need to get you up to see Mr. Keldon so you can start collecting a paycheck, and I can finish delivering you as ordered.”
The men stepped out of Saul’s office and into Walker Hall proper. They were in a wide corridor beautifully paneled in dark wood, whose fine grain swirled and eddied across its surface in a wash of luminous copper motes. Daniel had never seen anything like it.
Every thirty feet, massive pilasters engraved with ivy and vines, birds and insects, stood like sentries down the length of the hall. The arched ceiling was a smooth white vault, crossed with heavy beams where the pilasters grew up the walls and met each other overhead.
Oil paintings dotted the walls at regular intervals, showing bucolic meadow scenes and placid lakes full of waterfowl and cattails. Despite the overwhelming gravity and richness of the magnificent hallway, the paintings seemed banal and trite, like art school schlock purchased by the pound to decorate an office building.
Daniel trailed behind Saul, gawking. Underfoot were thick, intricately woven runners that muffled their footsteps. Elegant sconces sprouted from the walls without variation, always centered over a painting, as if to highlight a particularly insipid landscape or dewy-eyed woodland creature.
They traveled up a few floors in a beautifully appointed elevator, complete with a sitting couch at the back, and brass panels and controls in the front. Instead of the familiar vertical rows of buttons that Daniel had expected, it had a tall brass lever set into the floor near the doors. It looked like something out of an old 1920s Wall Street skyscraper, but without the attendant. Saul pushed the lever forward, and a light began traveling across a strip of numbers over the elevator doors. The short ride was smooth and silent, which struck Daniel as funny. An antique elevator that ran like something from a modern high rise office building. Go figure.
When the light reached number six at the far right of the strip, Saul pulled the lever back to the center and pressed the button set into its top. The doors slid soundlessly open, revealing a large oval room with a wide, crescent shaped wooden desk in the center. The ceiling was an enormous dome made of glass panels, showcasing the bright blue sky above. Behind the desk sat a neatly groomed young man with a telephone headset on.
“Hi Stanley,” said Saul.
“Mr. Erinbaum, nice to see you again. Mr. Keldon is expecting you and your guest, you can go right in.”
Saul thanked him, and led Daniel down a short hall behind the reception desk and into an office clearly designed to be intimidating.
A massive mahogany desk dominated the space. It was unadorned and looked like one seamless, glass-smooth rectangle. In front of the desk sat two delicate looking chairs, their upholstery matching exactly the pale tan of the carpet.
Seated at the desk was a man that Daniel assumed to be Mr. Keldon. He rose and shook hands with Saul, not unfriendly, but not smiling either. He was dark haired, handsome, and much taller than Daniel. A few lines around his mouth and eyes caused Daniel to raise his original estimation of the man’s age by about ten years. He turned to Daniel and extended one square, manicured hand.
“My name is Francis Keldon, pleased to meet you.”
“Daniel Thorsen, sir.” Daniel’s voice sounded much firmer in his ears than he had expected, considering the state of his stomach.
“Please, sit down. I see that you have decided to join your fortune to ours,” he said, gesturing to the Arc on Daniel’s wrist. “Welcome aboard. I’m in charge of the more interesting members of the Guild, those who share your particular talent. I can say without exaggeration that Walkers are the lifeblood of this organization. Without them, the Guild would be without purpose or potency. It is the importance, and the rarity, of this skill that gives us a certain amount of prestige.”
Mr. Keldon spent a moment looking at the papers on his desk, which Daniel realized were from his Human Resources file at work. His old company logo looked strange across the tops of the pages, so far from home.
“Now, before we talk about your compensation, there are a few questions that I would like answered.”
“Yes, sir. Whatever you want to know.”
“You may not realize this, but you come to us as something of a mystery. Let me explain to you how a Walker is normally found.”
Mr. Keldon leaned back in his chair, one elbow propped on the leather armrest.
“Walking the Veil is like trying to find your way across a vast, dark wilderness. People called Wayguides can provide a beacon in this dark place, called a Sanctum, allowing you to find your way. All of our Walking is done towards one of these Sanctums. There is nothing else, just the dark and a pinpoint of light to reach for. Now, what usually occurs is that a person with the ability to cross the Veil will sense one of these beacons in the distance and manage to step across to it. There are people in these Sanctums whose sole job consists of helping these newfound Walkers through their initial fear and disorientation, and then inducting them into the Guild. Are you following me so far, Mr. Thorsen?”
Daniel nodded, spellbound.
“Excellent. Now, traveling between Sanctums is not an easy task to begin with. Even ones that are relatively close together.” Mr. Keldon leaned forward conspiratorially. “It’s not really distance, you understand, but it’s a convenient metaphor that we use. Some worlds are easy to step between, so we consider them to be close together, while some are not. In any case, a new Walker may barely be able to span the distance between the very closest of Sanctums without an Arc to aid him. It can be exhausting, and if the Walker has moved past the limits of their abilities, it can be dangerous, even fatally so.
“Now for a variety of reasons, we watch the Veil very carefully. And what we found with you, Mr. Thorsen, was quite startling. You crossed from your world and back, but never arrived at any Sanctum. Which means that you seem to have Walked without following the beacon provided by a W
ayguide. There are few Walkers in our history that were strong enough to do such a thing, one to be exact, so naturally we’re very excited to see if it’s something you can repeat. Which reminds me, Mr. Erinbaum, where did our Mr. Thorsen end up? I would assume Buellere, being the closest world to him at the time.”
“Actually, sir,” said Saul, “I don’t know where he went. I could feel the disturbance he made when he returned, but I couldn’t feel the other side of it. There was the sense of a completed passage as far as I could reach, but no end. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Mr. Keldon’s eyes widened, just a little and quickly masked, and he glanced at the two men in front of him. “I find that hard to believe. The trail between even the farthest worlds is plain to see. There’s no such thing as ‘too far.’”
Saul shrugged. “Until this morning I would have agreed with you, but that’s the only way I know how to describe it.”
“Are you sure he Walked at all? Maybe he simply started to cross, and with no Sanctum to guide him, simply fell back.”
“No sir, that trail was definitely crossed. Besides, we would never have picked up a failed crossing to begin with. And we saw two separate crossings, I can only assume one there and one back. Dan here has given me his story, and his description doesn’t match up to any of the known lands.”
Mr. Keldon was visibly pleased by that announcement and this time made no attempt to conceal it. He met Saul’s eyes across the desk and some unspoken communication passed between the two men. Daniel shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Finally, Mr. Keldon spoke up.
“A world so close to his own, that it can be crossed to without an Arc, but undiscovered by the Guild? Not a single Walker from this new world to one of our Sanctums, when every other world brings us a few every year? Mysterious indeed. I agree that there is something we don’t understand about this, so I want you to take Mr. Thorsen to Bruce Wolternel in Veil Research and see if you can’t get some answers. If it appears genuine, and not some sort of false crossing, then I want you to accompany Mr. Thorsen to this place with some Wayguides and claim it for the Guild.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. Mr. Thorsen, now that we know where we stand, let’s talk about what the Guild can offer you. You will have your own office, and your own apartment here in Walker Hall. Your salary will be in United States dollars, deposited to your current bank account, starting at one hundred thousand dollars per year. With bonuses and hazard pay based on your performance, of course.”
Daniel blinked at that. Hazard pay?
“Mr. Erinbaum will give you all the details, and when the time comes, set you up with an aide. As a Walker, your Arc will give you access to all non-executive areas of this facility. How does that sound?”
Daniel was nervous, but he didn’t feel the awkward sense of embarrassment that normally plagued him in these situations. Usually, he would be staring at his hands and agreeing to whatever was said, keeping his opinions smothered until later when he would rant and complain to his friends in safety. But this time it was different. His mom’s well-being was at stake, and if he was going to take of her, he needed more.
“I appreciate the offer, but if I may?”
Mr. Keldon waved him on.
“A hundred thousand is a good salary to be sure, but I make half of that now, and I don’t have to worry about assignments that would justify hazard pay. I also do not possess any particularly rare or sought after skills to make that money. I write programs for a living, same as a lot of people. No disrespect intended, but I think a hundred thousand is a little light. If it helps, I don’t need the apartment, I’ll just live at home and, uh, commute.”
Daniel sat very still, unaware that he was holding his breath. Mr. Keldon’s lips turned up in a tight smile.
“I have to say that you are a refreshing change from the Walkers we usually get, especially from the lower classes. They’re so used to being bought and sold by their betters that they’re thrilled to get the basic offer, which is, as you put it, a little light.”
Daniel exhaled.
“However, allow me to make some observations of my own. Unlike the other Walkers that I hire, you have yet to prove that you can do the job. I grant that you appear to have crossed the Veil, but since I don’t know for sure where you went, or even if you did, in fact, go anywhere, I can’t give you full credit. Also, part of the value of a Guild membership is in the protection we grant in various hostile environments.
“We will provide you with a bodyguard who will also act as your assistant, at our expense, should it be required. That service in itself is worth a considerable sum. The apartment is, I’m sad to say, non-negotiable. Once you become a member, living outside of the Guild can be quite dangerous. When you do leave the Guild compound, a Guild member must accompany you for your own protection. So, my counter-offer to you, Mr. Thorsen, is two hundred thousand. When you prove to me that you can cross the Veil to a Guild Sanctum, I will raise that amount to five hundred thousand, plus the bonuses and hazard pay that we discussed earlier.”
Daniel’s hand went to his forehead as the implications of Guild life began to sink in. Never to go home again without a guard. Never to live on his own. Give up his world except for visits. Daniel had never had much luck in the way of dating, but now what? Don’t mind this guy, he’s just my bodyguard? Want to come visit my fortress apartment in another dimension? What about his friends? What about his mother? How would he maintain his frequent visits?
“Mr. Thorsen, I understand what you’re going through, and I sympathize. I myself was a new Walker once, just like you. But please realize that we did not put you in this uncomfortable position, you did that yourself when you chose to use your gift. Even though the sacrifices are many, the rewards are greater still. You will be a part of an elite group of people who know the true nature of reality. You will never again be part of the crowd of helpless, ignorant sheep who spend their days oblivious to the real world. You will also be a rich man. It’s a good offer, Mr. Thorsen.”
“I suppose it is.” Daniel stood up and extended his hand. “I’ll take the job.”
4
It required a ten-minute trek through endless posh corridors and antechambers, mezzanines and foyers, to escape from Walker Hall. Daniel and Saul exited through a pair of thirty-foot-high doors to find themselves on a stone pathway, bordered on each side by manicured lawns and marble benches.
A vast canopy of leaves sieved the afternoon light, dripping bright dots onto the shady ground. Winding paths of cut stone connected the other campus buildings, few of them on the same titanic scale as Walker Hall, which were in turn surrounded by a ring of lesser edifices like foothills at the base of a mountain range. People of all ages strolled under the trees or sat on benches chatting. Saul pointed to a horizon-eclipsing mass off to the east.
“Veil Research, our next stop.”
Daniel gawked at a pair of robed women with elaborate facial tattoos eating lunch on a nearby bench until Saul grabbed him by the arm and began towing him down the path.
“This is amazing! It’s like a huge Ivy League school for theater refugees.”
“That’s because it serves as both a center of learning and headquarters for the Guild. Some of these people are students, some are researchers, and some are Guild muckety-mucks. Hell, some of them are even working stiffs like you and me.” Saul smirked at Daniel. “This is the dark heart of the beast, as they say.”
When they arrived at the research building, Daniel was taken aback by the guards standing to either side of the doorway. The presence of guards was in itself a little unsettling in this peaceful environment, but it was their dress that was truly alarming.
Covered from head to toe in black ballistic armor, they looked like the prototype for every secret police “enforcement” brigade ever seen in grainy low-light footage on CNN. Their faces were obscured by smooth, glossy black faceplates snapped on to Kevlar tactical helmets, and they carried compact machine pistols
on straps over their shoulders. A full riot kit of baton and gas canisters hung from their belts, and what appeared to be long, thin machetes were strapped to their thighs.
The silent, unmoving men stood at parade rest to either side of the doorway, neither friendly nor threatening. Daniel wasn’t frightened of them exactly, but he did try to keep from looking at them or brushing against them as he approached.
Unlike Walker Hall, this building had doors on a more human scale, and instead of being made of elegantly carved oak, these were faced with plain steel, lacking even handles to relieve the stark blankness. Saul placed his left hand on the flat metal, bringing the Arc on his left wrist close to the surface, and pushed. The door swung inward, and the pair entered the building.
“So,” said Daniel, “if the Arcs are keys to all the secure areas here, what happens if somebody steals one?”
“Unlikely. Removing an Arc from its owner without the proper equipment is pretty difficult, as you’ll notice there are no seams. Of course, you could chop off my arm and try to get in that way, but then you’d have to explain to the goon squad back there why you were carrying around a dismembered limb or an ownerless Arc. They pretty much feel the same way about both.”
“Good to know,” muttered Daniel under his breath while resisting the urge to look over his shoulder to make sure that the guards had stayed outside.
The trip to Bruce Wolternel’s office was thankfully brief.
Bruce was a large, barrel-shaped man with magnificent salt-and-rust muttonchops adorning his balding and blunt-featured head. He ushered them inside with a maximum of fuss and back-patting.
“Welcome, welcome! You must be Daniel! Please, have a seat. Saul, good to see you.”
The men seated themselves around a circular table in the middle of the crowded office. To one side was a long desk nearly hidden under stacks of paper, and on the rear wall was a floor to ceiling whiteboard covered in a diagram of some kind, full of dots and circles, long sweeping lines, and dozens of small patches of handwritten notes.
Walker Page 3
