Every Wind of Change

by Frank Tuttle

  “The probability is high they will simply mass just beyond the boundaries of the anomaly, waiting for the path markers to reappear,” the machine said.

  “Leaving us trapped,” said Donchen softly.

  Skoof, if he heard, had no reply.

  For an hour, they walked, sometimes climbing across twisted beams, sometimes leaping from one leaning platform to the next. After a time, the debris took on a particular gargantuan order, as the heaps of machines seemed to be stacked in square piles, with widening paths set between each stack.

  Mug eyed each new stack of twisted debris warily. “You said that was a baby Mag,” he said, after Skoof paused. “It must have been thirty feet long. Are we likely to find those here too?”

  Skoof raised a foot. “Silence.”

  Mug wilted. “What now?”

  Meralda heard the footfalls next. Heavy treads, ponderous and slow, punctuated by the occasional screech and fall of metal on metal, as though the walker shouldered aside everything in its path.

  “We should hide,” Donchen said.

  “It knows we are here,” Skoof said. “Be still, and silent. I know this construct. It is easily deceived.”

  A mountain of wreckage shifted and fell, spilling out into the clearing ahead. “Stay close,” Skoof said. He marched out into the open.

  A gargantuan walking engine rounded a corner. Debris fell from its broad flat back before being trampled by three massive metal legs. A fourth leg hung limp, wide foot dragging across the deck in a deafening screech.

  Mug’s eyes blinked all at once. “Big as a Great Sea ship,” he muttered.

  The machine shook itself before lumbering to a halt ten yards from Skoof. It raised its battered head as three dim red eyes focused on Skoof.

  Skoof emitted a series of loud chirps. The huge machine shifted on its three working legs and replied with similar blasts so loud Meralda’s ears rang.

  Skoof replied in kind. The machine’s eyes dimmed, and it seemed to sag. After a moment, it resumed its thunderous walk, heading directly for Skoof and the rest.

  “It will pass us by,” Skoof said. “But only if we all remain still.”

  As he spoke, the walking engine did veer to the right. Meralda clenched her jaw and exchanged glances with Donchen, who shrugged and remained by her side.

  The machine’s feet rose and fell. Meralda studied it as it neared, taking in the bent struts, the great patches of rust, the dark fluids that leaked from every joint. Hundreds of glowing blobs oozed across the machine’s intricate, moving mechanisms. As the crippled rear leg passed, she saw thousands of the jelly creatures attached to it, pulsing and glowing greedily as they fed on the metal itself.

  The machine passed. Instead of turning at the next intersection of cleared corridors, it simply lumbered ahead, shoving aside the mangled wrecks until it was gone.

  “What was that?” Mug demanded.

  “A remnant of the Hub war,” Skoof said. “A primitive though durable mechanical device.”

  “What did you say to it?”

  “It seeks its former occupants. I told it they were located some distance ahead.”

  “Are they?”

  “No. They are long deceased.”

  “Won’t Big and Scary be mad when he figures out you lied?”

  “In its present state, it can only recall a few hours of its past,” Skoof said. “Its only permanent memory is that it must search. It will not recall encountering us, or being deceived.”

  “That’s the saddest story I’ve heard lately,” said Mug. “How long has the poor thing been crashing around in here?”

  “A long time. But let us not dwell upon it.” Skoof turned his dome about as though searching the heaps and leaning towers around them. “Our refuge is near. Come.”

  He trotted away.

  The wind howled. Occasionally something in the distance would shift with a forlorn squeal as metal scraped metal. Skoof seemed untroubled by the sounds, and the thunderous voice that filled the sky, so Meralda just kept walking.

  “Some of these things look like wrecked ships,” Mug said, close by Meralda’s ear. “I wonder just who was fighting this war?”

  “I do not trust that creature without reservation,” Donchen whispered, when Skoof vanished around a corner. He pressed a short double-edged knife into Meralda’s hand. “We have no assurance it isn’t leading us from one peril into another.”

  Meralda slipped the knife through her belt, at her right hip. “We’d still be out in the open if he hadn’t shown us this place.”

  “True,” Donchen replied. “Yet still. Let us be wary.”

  The group emerged into a new canyon. Ruined machinery towered above them on three sides, while a ragged ring of flickering lights cast a twilight glow from high above.

  A squat rounded tower, shaped like a massive egg, rose from the heap of debris. Its sides were smooth and unmarked gaping holes or tears, but even so, it took Meralda a moment to realize it was merely half-buried in mangled metal, and not a part of the tangled wreckage surrounding it.

  “We must ascend.” Skoof’s dome flashed, and a series of vertical rungs silently emerged from the side of the egg-shaped hull. Skoof’s silver arms emerged again and gripped the ladder. “I trust your appendages leave you equipped for a short climb. Follow.” He climbed, his jointless limbs coiling and whipping.

  “We’ll manage quite handily, thank you very much.” Meralda’s mother swarmed up the ladder.

  One by one, the rest followed. Donchen insisted on going ahead of Meralda.

  Mug flew beside her as she caught her breath at the bottom of the ladder. “So, do you have any thoughts on getting us home?”

  “Why, of course. I’ve only awoken to learn I am being pursued by furious monsters while being led into hiding by a stranger made of metal. I’ve had oodles of time to build a voidship and hide it in my pocket.”

  “Touchy.” Mug’s eyes turned upward. “Nearly there, Mistress. There’s a platform of some sort.” He threw his cage into a sudden ascent and was gone.

  Meralda began her climb, her legs aching, her arms fatigued and quickly beginning to shake. Mug’s question echoed in her mind, though.

  Just how will I get everyone home? Is that even possible?

  She laid her hands on the last rung. Donchen helped her up, and she joined the others on the tiny, seamless platform.

  Skoof moved to the hull of the tubular structure. “Shield your eyes. This craft responds only to instructions delivered via bursts of light.”

  Meralda closed her eyes just in time. Even through her lids, she saw a bright flash.

  “Next time, friend, a little more warning,” Mug said. “It takes me a moment to shut them all.”

  A grating squeal sounded, and a circular portion of the hull before Skoof began to swing inward. The metal being darted inside.

  Donchen was the next through. As he entered a light inside flared, red and dull.

  The chamber was circular, with a domed ceiling and walls crammed with smooth, bulbous devices that blinked and glowed and whirred. There were no sharp corners, no variation in the slate-gray hue of the walls and machinery. Meralda was reminded of melted wax. “It looks as if everything was poured.”

  “A trademark of Gow construction.” Skoof shrank himself to waist-high and trotted to the center of the chamber as the circular door began to close. “While the craft itself is damaged beyond repair, many low-level functions endure. The air will support you, and yonder door can only be opened via the code I just set. You are safe here. I suggest you sleep, and we shall consider your options when you are rested.”

  “That won’t take long,” Mug said, settling his cage upon the deck. “Trapped like rats, that’s what we are. And me with a column due tomorrow!”

  Weary, Meralda sank to her knees. Though the water from the generous tree had refreshed her briefly, the flight across the Hub left her exhausted.

  Meralda’s mother was the last to sit, and the first to full
y recline. “I take my breakfast promptly at seven,” she said, as Reardon crept into her upturned hat, made three shuffling circles, and fell fast asleep. “Two eggs, no bacon, and a spot of grape jelly.”

  “This one jests,” Skoof said. “Unless I misunderstand her utterance?”

  “She’s crazy.” Mug glared with a dozen eyes. “Best ignored.”

  “Impudent foliage,” muttered Meralda’s mother. She closed her eyes, laid her hands over her bosom, and fell silent.

  Donchen removed his jacket and folded it into a makeshift pillow. “For you,” he said to Meralda.

  She pushed it back at him, taking off her coat and rolling it into a bundle. “Keep it. There is simply no way I can sleep right now.”

  The crows took up position on each side of the hatch.

  Meralda sighed and lay back on her coat. Donchen propped himself on his elbow beside her.

  When her mother and Mrs. Primsbite began to snore, Meralda spoke.

  “Earlier you used the term ‘tripping wheel,’ she said, facing Skoof. “Please explain.”

  The faceless dome tilted toward her. “Tripping wheels are a form of transport. We are now in the hub of one. Spokes radiate out from the hub, traverse the multiverse, and emerge as points on sections of an arc which itself manifests in various disjointed portions of the multiverse.”

  “The multiverse?” asked Meralda.

  “A term meaning the combined sets of all possible realities,” Skoof said. “Each separate from the others, each governed by a unique set of physical and metaphysical laws. Is this concept unknown to your people?”

  “So we haven’t merely traveled across the void.”

  “No. You have reached a minor tripping wheel, one of a potentially infinite set of such devices scattered across the multiverse in antiquity by agents unknown. We are in a hub. The tripping wheel allows denizens of disparate realities to coexist here by creating bubbles of your universe about your person, and any objects with you.”

  “Why is that necessary?” asked Donchen.

  “The speed of light differs from universe to universe, for instance,” Skoof replied. “Other basic physical constants vary as well. A person from one reality might perish if moved to a reality where basic chemical reactions cannot take place properly. The Hub prevents this by blending universes, through means unknown.”

  Without speaking, Meralda closed her eyes and summoned her Sight. When she opened her eyes again, she lifted her hand to her face.

  She saw the familiar glow of lifeforce, the usual sparkles, the ebb and flow of subtle energies on her skin. But when she looked past her hand, toward Skoof, she saw – nothing.

  Enough of her mundane vision remained to show her Skoof’s dim silhouette. However, where energies should have played and swirled, where the tiny flows of faint magic should have hung like a persistent fog, there was nothing.

  Not a hint of her Sight extended beyond her own skin.

  It wouldn’t matter if I’d brought the whole Laboratory with me, she realized. I can’t do magic here. Because outside of ourselves, there isn’t anything to manipulate.

  She shivered. The emptiness seemed to deepen, to expand, pulling at her like a sudden growing vacuum.

  “Are you all right?” asked Donchen.

  “Quite.” Meralda let go of her Sight. “So each spoke is a path to somewhere else?”

  “That is basic tripping wheel function. If this wheel were functioning normally, the yellow path you saw earlier would still represent the way to your home spoke. There would also be a series of blue lines, which would take you to each of the nearest spokes leading to universes similar enough to your own to support your continued existence there, beyond the Hub’s influence.”

  “But this particular wheel is not functioning normally, is it?” asked Donchen, his dark eyes glinting in the dim light.

  “No. There was a conflict here, on this Hub, long ago. The weapons employed must have damaged the wheel, which is, to my knowledge, the first such incident in all recorded history. All of the spokes are sealed. Many are ruined. This anomaly, for instance, is probably the result of a spoke twisted out of hyperspace just enough to block the light and induce minor spatial disturbances.”

  “This conflict – were the Mag responsible?” Meralda asked.

  The metal man chuckled. “Oh no. The Mag are voracious and merciless but stunted technologically. No, they were merely trapped here when the wheel ceased to function, along with myself and some ten thousand other travelers from various worlds.”

  “There are others?” Mug blinked, fighting off sleep. “Anyone who might help?”

  “The Mag have consumed all,” Skoof said. “Save me, and a few others who have managed to hide. None have the resources to do more than remain hidden.”

  Had Meralda retained the energy, she would have risen and paced. Instead, she merely balled her hands into fists and sat up straighter. “One thing doesn’t make sense.”

  “Only one thing?” Mug muttered.

  “You claim I am aboard some ancient travel device, built for travel among different aspects of reality. You claim you have been trapped here for a long time.”

  “I do,” Skoof replied.

  “Then how are you able to speak Kingdom?”

  “When I first heard your companions speaking among themselves, I queried the Hub’s repository,” Skoof said. “I quickly found a match for your language. Your people have been here before. There is sufficient phonetic drift to suggest an interval of many centuries since the sample was collected, but it is your language.”

  “Well I believe we’d remember if we’d happened upon this great big tripping wheel of yours before,” Mug said. “Too, you said the wheel was damaged, so how are you talking to it?”

  “Many of the wheel’s lesser functions are undamaged,” explained Skoof, no hint of annoyance in his voice. “I communicate with what remains by radio. My people have been using tripping wheels for millennia.”

  “To what ends?” asked Donchen.

  Skoof dipped his dome in what looked like a shrug. “We are explorers. Adventurers. Collectors of music and literature. I myself collect traveler’s tales. The multiverse is rich with such things.”

  Silence fell. Meralda watched Donchen struggle to remain awake and realized her own eyelids were drooping.

  A thought pierced her drowsiness like a sudden hard slap. “How many times have you brought people here, trying to save them from the Mag?”

  Skoof sagged. “It would seem rude to supply the precise count. I have done what I could. It was never enough.”

  Donchen slumped to the deck beside her. Meralda saw Mug’s eyes close, and then sleep took her too, even as she wondered just how many unfortunate souls had lain on this very floor, night after night, hoping for a rescue that never came.

  14

  Mister Mug’s Musings, Tuesday, January 4th, 1971

  I write this column knowing that, much like an article in the Crier or the Daily, it will likely never be read. Not for lack of readers, but because I am now trapped aboard an ancient structure a quarter of a million miles from home.

  Mage Meralda’s heroic attempt to communicate with the Arc triggered a machine which snatched us from Tirlin and left us here with no way back. Worse, this Hub, as our guide calls it, is now overrun with an infestation of voracious bug-like beings he calls the Mag.

  Though some ancient conflict here ruined most of the otherworldly wonders, I still hold out hope that Mage Meralda will find a way to bring us all home.

  It will be no easy task. Our guide, a mechanical being who has himself been trapped here for many hundreds of years, claims the mechanisms which control the magical spokes are damaged and inaccessible. We have food and water, supplied by the strangest of trees, but little else, save our wits.

  We know that the spoke linking this place and our faraway home is still functional. Indeed, I am told, it may well be the only functional spoke. The lighted yellow paths the machine casts ben
eath us confirms that – but these same paths also alert the Mag to our presence, and they need only follow them to find and overwhelm us, should we venture out of the dark.

  While my exhausted companions fell into an uneasy slumber, I spoke at length with our guide. These Mag, he explains, are not only a danger to us, but to Tirlin, and beyond.

  The Mag are functionally immortal, he claims. Given ample food, they reproduce at a fantastic rate, consuming all in their path. Skoof insists that the survivors of the Hub’s failure numbered in the thousands. Within a few years after that event, only Skoof remained, because he is made of some otherworldly metal.

  Here, in this lifeless place of metal and emptiness, the Mag may only nourish themselves from the odd feeding trees that dot the landscape. Skoof claims their ranks swelled during the first years of the occupation, and that they ate their own after eating everyone else. Now, the feeding trees keep a stable population alive. Their numbers have remained constant for the thousands of years they have been marooned here.

  It would not do, gentle readers, to have a single one of the ugly insects ever set a single ravenous claw on our fair, green world.

  Even faced with such overwhelming perils, this reporter remains undaunted. I have every confidence that Mage Meralda will contrive some solution to each of the challenges before us. Even so, I shall record our efforts. If we fail to reach Tirlin, my notes may perhaps be found one day, and our story shall at last be told.

  We are seven souls. Mage Meralda Ovis, Royal Thaumaturge to the Kingdom of Tirlin. Mrs. Wedding O. Primsbite, a fellow reporter for the Tirlin Times. Donchen, beloved chef and master of languages, of Tirlin by way of Hang. Skoof, our metallic guide, trapped here since the days of prehistory. Miss Bekin, a woman with no discernable skills and an unpleasant demeanor and person. Reardon the dog, breed unknown. And of course myself, Muggleworth Ovis, adventurous journalist extraordinaire.

  Tomorrow we shall wake and face this grim and sunless realm with as much pluck and resolve as we can muster. It may be true that no one has managed to leave this Hub since the battle that left it in ruin took place.