Facets of the Nether

by William C. Tracy

  The group had taken a quick break to get a midday meal, then met back at the abandoned house, and the tunnels beneath.

  “It is hard to say,” Mandamon said, and Gompt’s head snapped up to watch him. His bright blue eyes bored into Mandamon from behind his glasses. “My plans for the device will work in theory, but to bring the design to fruition will take work. It will not be easy to usher a three-house majus back to this reality.”

  “That sounds ominous,” the Festuour said. “I’ve seen you with a plan before. It’s usually several cycles of effort, and lots of pain and suffering.”

  “This one will likely be no different.” Mandamon raised his voice to get the others’ attention, who were still poking around the detritus left from the previous Society. “If have finished your evaluations, I have an announcement.”

  Touching Digits signed.

  “Not so strange,” Mandamon said. “Between our ranks, we cover all six of the houses, in several combinations.”

  “Will any of our skills matter against the strength of a three-house majus, which you say is a source of great power? I assume such a being might have their own ways of returning to this universe,” said Laryn I’Hon. Hir large eyes missed nothing.

  “Indeed. Yet they contacted Slithen the Dreamer for aid, and I suspect the Dissolution draws near. I believe they might offer their help—but they need this to arrive.” Mandamon grunted as he bent to retrieve a cylinder from a corner of the underground space. He unlatched it to produce the set of schematics he’d tucked safely out of sight. “I’ve had related concepts stored away for many cycles, but the Life Coalition’s emergence, the talk of the Dissolution, the Aridori, and one strange young man led me to combine several ideas.”

  Gompt tugged the rolled sheaf of papers out of his hands and began flipping through them. He grunted. “You’ve made some improvements to the parts I recognize.”

  At a squawk from Krat, Gompt waved the papers over the arms and the tops of the legs, which seemed to satisfy her.

  “Symphony may take exception to this design. Might also have unanticipated effects on local space-time,” the Symphony Beast said. The two young Methiemum maji traded glances, and Touching Digits leaned forward, trying to get a look.

  “There will be enough perturbation of the Symphony, if the Dissolution truly approaches faster than normal,” Mandamon said. “A little more will do nothing.”

  “Perhaps not nothing,” Laryn said. Zie had one sheet from Gompt and was studying it. “But then, not enough to matter, as you say.” Zie looked up. “How long do we have to build it?”

  Mandamon shrugged. “How long until the end of the universe? Sooner than we like. But if we work together, I think we can create a prototype in a month or so. I have waited too long, dealing with the politics of the Council. The faster we have a working prototype, the better.”

  “What exactly will this thing do?” asked the young female Methiemum—Emma. “Search out your mystical three-house majus?”

  “Not precisely. Think of it as opening a door and inviting something through. We must assume the three-house majus waits on the other side,” Mandamon answered. “So now we test our hypothesis. In fact Sam—the young man—gave me the idea to return to this project.”

  Touching Digits asked.

  “He made me question the origin of the Methiemum. One who is biologically of the same species appears from a homeworld none of us have heard of. With so much lost in the Aridori War, I wondered what else has been hidden. What did the previous Dissolution change?”

  “The previous Dissolution?” Gompt asked. “Wouldn’t that have happened thousands of cycles ago, if the tales are true?”

  “Tens of thousands or millions, more likely,” Krat said.

  “We do not know the exact time. It is our principal problem,” Mandamon said. He spread his arms, palms out, to quiet the others. He was getting too old for this. “However, new technology I’ve dabbled in with Methiemum businessmen gives us the ability to date the life of certain objects. It takes a few notes from the House of Potential, and one can trace the ancestry of the elements in an item.”

  Touching Digits signed. His fingers bounced off each other as he signed.

  “We’ve done preliminary tests on the oldest sites of Methiemum architecture and artifacts we could find. None are over fifty thousand cycles old.”

  “Then the Methiemum began their technological development only fifty thousand cycles past?” Laryn asked. “It makes sense, considering how much your species loves to innovate.”

  Mandamon sighed, and knuckled a knot developing in his back. Too much time standing the past several days. The others gathered here—even Gompt and Krat—had not been party to his investigations over the past four cycles.

  “A valuable point, but not the one I am making.” He took in a deep breath, then let it out, and panned his gaze over the assembled two-house maji. “There is no piece of Methiemum remains, as far as we can find, over fifty thousand cycles old. No dwellings, no tools, no split rocks, no painted caves, no bones. Nothing.” Now the others were frowning. Good.

  “What are you saying?” Gompt asked. “Were there no Methiemum at all that long ago? Did you folks just spring full-fleshed from the trees?”

  “Or appeared due to effect of Dissolution,” Krat added. Gompt’s furry muzzle opened, his lips making an “O” shape.

  Mandamon waggled a finger at the System Beast. She truly had the same intuition as Kratitha. At some point he must talk with her about her progenitor’s programming. Could it be duplicated? Should it?

  “You see why I have concerns about events if another is on its way. Is fifty thousand cycles the length of this sequence? How can we know, if it removes all trace of what it does?”

  Touching Digits fingers jumped as he stuttered, his middle fingers meeting more often than they should.

  “Indeed.” Mandamon looked at the assembled two-house maji, all professionals near the top of their field, none prone to over exaggeration or susceptible to night-stories. “Therefore I propose to build a device capable of splitting the veil between this realm and others that may exist.” He waved a hand toward the sheaf of papers.

  “Where the Life Coalition failed, we will succeed. We will invite a three-house majus who has transferred to another reality—one where I hypothesize the Symphony is quieter, or runs at a slower tempo. One where that universe’s Dissolution may arrive only after its inhabitants have lived out their entire species’ existence. This device will hold the veil open long enough to bring them through to share what they’ve learned. Perhaps, as the Sathssn legends say, they will have a source of great power to be used against the coming Dissolution. And if not, they may show us what happened last time, so we may prepare.”

  * * *

  Mandamon looked up, blinking, from the collection of wires he was soldering into place on the main board. His eyes were getting too old to see this detail. Several wires ran to tubes with a vacuum inside, which would help regulate the current into the device, only opening gates when required by the programming. Krat had been invaluable in designing that architecture over the last several ten-days.

  They’d expanded the cavern where Mandamon stored the equipment so it would accommodate all seventeen of them and their workstations. This area was close to the floor of the Nether, and a section near one wall reflected their lights in a faceted spray of crystal. The house they were under was near the intersection of two walls of the Nether, which loomed over the city of Poler. He suspected the floor structure of the Nether was like a giant bowl. The center depth was located around Gloomlight and the surrounding lakes and swamps, the crystal covered by several times the depth of earth in the shallows near the walls.
/>   Each two-house majus was working busily on their own section of the design, in accordance with the aspects of the Symphony they controlled. They’d had several successes, and more failures, but overall, the splitting device was coming along. While each part worked by itself, it was unknown whether his design would reach through the veil between this universe and another. Assuming that was even the correct place. Moortlin’s notes were incomplete on where the three-house maji secluded themselves.

  The only way to find out was to build it.

  “Gompt,” he called, and Krat spun around with a clicking of her little feet, bringing Gompt’s head around to focus on him. His glasses were pushed far down his nose and he squinted at Mandamon for a moment before pushing them back up.

  “What is it?” he asked. “I’ve almost got all these blasted logic gates fitted in order. Smaller than the tits on a tree-louse.”

  “I need three additional gates over here if you have—” Mandamon jerked upright as a deep, sonorous chime sounded, seemingly everywhere at once. “What, by Shiv’s magnificent eyebrows, is that?”

  The sound kept on, destroying any possibility of work until it ended. The two-house maji, picked for their sense of innovation and curiosity, were also harder to rein in than a pack of weasels. They scattered to map the sound. In truth, Mandamon was just as curious. He’d heard nothing like this in all his cycles.

  Touching Digits—female today—signed, her fingers fluttering in the stutter. She pointed at the section of exposed crystal floor, her arms roped with alternating hoops of brown and yellow. Mandamon could barely hear her changes in the Symphony of Potential. She manipulated the vibrational energy around them as the sound passed through the air. He couldn’t hear the other half of it—the part in the House of Communication—but he tucked the technique away for later trial.

  “Any thoughts?” he asked as the sound finally died. It had lasted for several minutes. The others shook their heads. He had found little in either of the Symphonies of Potential or Healing.

  “Sensors detect epicenter on other side of Nether,” Krat grated. “Perhaps in Imperium.” She was standing in the corner, all her legs touching the surface of the crystal, Gompt taking notes while perched on her.

  “And it reached all the way here?” Gompt asked. “Underground, in a cave beneath Poler? That’s a powerful signal.”

  Emma poked her head down through the hatch in the ceiling. “I couldn’t hear it at all up here. I think the sound only emanates near the walls and floor. Maybe not even all of them.”

  “She’s right,” Laryn I’Hon added. “The walls and floor of the Nether passed the signal along with little resistance. I can tell that through the House of Strength.”

  “Hm.” Mandamon pulled at his beard—which usually soothed him. Another disturbance in the Nether. Was this the first sign of the Dissolution, or merely a repetition of events so long in the past no one had records?

  “No damage to the equipment?” There was a round of negatives. “Then we carry on. More reason to complete this project. If the phenomenon repeats, we will attempt more measurements.”

  * * *

  The deep resonant chime repeated in an increasing pattern as the days went by. First it would skip a day, then occur every day, and then twice a day. Every time it rang, Mandamon felt pressure build within him to complete his project. Surely meeting a three-house majus would reward them with a font of information about the universe.

  But despite his feelings, Mandamon didn’t let the others go haring off on side projects. Much. They discovered the sound only happened near the floor of the Nether in this region, but not through the walls. One majus snuck back to the Imperium and reported it was much louder in that region. Everyone could hear the sound, and the entire city was wondering what it was. In Poler, located in the opposite corner of the Nether, no one could hear it except for them. The sleepy city kept on as it always had.

  Mandamon would have investigated further if he dared, but he had a growing feeling it would matter if they finished construction sooner rather than later. Some inner clock in his subconscious was ticking down, to what he didn’t know. There were occasional chords in the Symphony of Potential giving him a sense of massive gears, turning beneath the surface of the universe, as if the Nether itself was reconfiguring to a new state, opening some door.

  His design grew from day to day as they collected components, added notes to the complex System driving the algorithm, and tested aspects of the program. Acquiring the parts was another matter, often requiring trips to remote locations on Methiem, Festuour, and Loba, and one memorable trip to the floating city of Parasmenia, in the Sea of Fire, on Etan. It was the only location in the ten homeworlds that produced a crystal with just the right resonating parameters.

  After a ten-day, they tested the dimensional tearing. Mandamon wanted to call it dimensional shifting, but Gompt was insistent.

  “It tears the wall between dimensions, so we’re gonna call it what it is.” The Festuour waved a hand to the other maji, most of whom were watching their exchange. “If we bring one of these three-house maji through, there will be records and artifacts left over. You want future scientists blindly stumbling into making a tear so big the universe collapses? No. So we’re labeling it like it is, and I hope we’ll remember to use some caution.”

  They called it dimensional tearing, but they still tested it.

  “Bring in more power,” Mandamon called to an older Methiemum majus. “We’re almost there!” He lowered his goggles. Gompt had insisted everyone have a pair.

  With another surge of electric current, The Potential of the System rose to an exultant hum. “That’s it! Gompt—throw the switch.”

  Krat scuttled to a giant switch on the wall and Gompt, his hands ringed in the blue of the House of Grace, hesitated, then lowered the lever. It was just as important to know when to activate it.

  The half-constructed device, like the skeleton of a sphere, vibrated in the middle of the room, and collectively, the maji took a step back.

  Mandamon peered through his goggles into the brightness in the center of the cavern. It was nearly as brilliant as the walls at midday—not that they knew what time it was down here.

  “It’s working!” he cried. “I can hear the chords of potential energy buckling. Just a few more moments and—”

  Something exploded in a shower of sparks and the nearby maji covered their heads. Touching Digits ran forward with a blanket to smother the flames.

  “Well, we’ll need to find another fuse capable of handling that much current—or more,” Gompt grumped. “That one came all the way from a special forger on Methiem. It cost a month’s worth of my savings, and I’m on a fixed income.”

  “Contact them again,” Mandamon told his old friend. “And get it fast. In the next few days if you can.”

  “It’ll cost,” Gompt said.

  “I’ll pay it.”

  * * *

  The chime had come three times a day for the last four days. Mandamon unclenched his fists as the latest faded away. He itched to discover the meaning of the sound—was the Nether crumbling? Was someone drilling into it with the new equipment that explorer had discovered? Was it a cry of pain or a call for unknown action?

  But they were so close, and he suspected time was short. Those deep chords in the Symphony of Potential were rising in key each day. It gave him night-terrors about the Nether shifting, grinding the Imperium to dust as the crystal walls slid to new configurations. The other two-house maji who could hear the music of Potential were also reporting restless nights.

  They spent the days until the new fuse was ready adding more safeguards to the System programming, though all of the maji agreed the prototype was basically finished. It was a task to keep them from each other’s throats.

  Mandamon pushed his glasses up and looked over the results from the last trial. The level of kinetic energy storage was strangely high, like it re
ferenced a part of the Symphony none of them had access to. He’d shown it to the other maji, in case one of them caught the source, but none had. The resonating frequency was higher, too. He was certain this energy came from a previously hidden portion of the Grand Symphony—detectable as their experiments probed farther through the veil between universes. Was it coming from an unknown pocket where a three-house majus had concealed themself?

  All they needed was the fuse.

  The next day the chime rang all day, completely disrupting their plans. It grew so loud at times they couldn’t even communicate, and they constantly had to re-calibrate the finer components of the device. The vibrations coming through the ground were just enough to knock things out of alignment.

  When it stopped, they let out a collective sigh of relief. Touching Digits squatted over the exposed Nether floor and tapped a quick drumbeat on it with her fingertips.

  “Check the alignment, quickly,” Mandamon called as he climbed the ladder to the abandoned house above. He could at least see if the Nether was caving in.

  It was not, but he met Krat scuttling toward him from the front door. “Do you have it?” he asked.

  Gompt held up a bulky cylinder with thick trailing wires. “Got it.”

  * * *

  It took the rest of the night and the next morning to check over everything once more, align the finer mechanisms, and set up protective barriers between the watching maji and the circle inscribed in the middle of the device.

  For once, he’d had a restful few hours of sleep. The emanations deep in the Symphony of Potential had ceased. The Nether had finished the alignment it had started. It helped his nerves not a bit.

  Mandamon followed a set of tubes with his eyes through a maze of connections and into the module holding the main System. The base of the device was half as tall as he was, triangle-shaped to concentrate the tearing energy. Above, a rotating ring extended outward into three upright arms reaching nearly to the cavern’s ceiling. They hummed imperceptibly, tuned to an inharmonic chord. It was ready, and so were they.