Fire World

by Chris D'Lacey

  The com:puter quickly uploaded a series of routines, then paused, awaiting further input. Bernard’s fingers hovered over the neural control pad. “I ordered SETH to run a simulation of the rift that appeared during David’s sleep, based on the data sets from Strømberg’s recording. The results are quite impressive. I’ve slowed the sim down substantially to give you an impression of its physical composition.” He tapped the pad. The com:puter screen quickly drew a vertical “rip,” which appeared to be made up of a limitless number of helical strands, orbiting around a common core.

  Harlan sat forward, his steepled fingers pressed up against his mouth. “Excellent,” he muttered. “Did you do the 3-D?”

  “Mmm.” Bernard’s fingers flowed across the pad. The screen responded by turning the simulation on its end. At first the two scientists seemed to be looking at a solid hexagonal structure. But as Bernard zoomed in, the screen became filled with a series of fuzzy dots, indicating there were spaces between the individual strands.

  Harlan put on a pair of spex. “What’s the resolution of this?”

  “Subatomic. Notice anything?”

  Harlan studied the image and shrugged. “The strands are shimmering, but there’s bound to be a high degree of electro:magnetic force between them.”

  “Oh, it’s far better than that,” said Bernard. “Watch what happens if I apply a single color to a small group of strands.” His hands moved over the pad again. He paused the simulation and pointed to a region of red dots at the top left of the structure. “This is a still, of course. But look at the red in active mode.” He ran the program again. Instead of staying where they were, the red dots began to flash in different areas of the rift.

  Harlan Merriman breathed in sharply.

  “Thought that would excite you,” Bernard said. “The sim always maintains its structure. But when you run a fine trace on the strand trajectories you discover that individual strands are popping in and out at light speed — but they never come back in the same locations. They’re moving, Prof. Swapping places. What you’re looking at there is not one rip —”

  “But an infinite number of possible rips,” Harlan said quietly.

  Bernard nodded. “I’ve revised my previous opinion, by the way. Even if David is ec:centric, I don’t believe that anyone on Co:pern:ica could imagineer something of this complexity.”

  “Then what does that say about the firebirds? How could they possibly be involved in this?”

  Bernard parted his hands. “How are they able to pass through our constructs? How did they evolve on Co:pern:ica in the first place? Where do the feathery little critters go at night? I don’t know. Let’s stick with the phys:ics for now. Do you want to see the really spooky bit?” Harlan switched his gaze sideways. The tech:nician was chewing his lip. “Here’s a full-color sim from the normal view.” Without waiting for permission, Bernard uploaded another series of routines. Immediately, the rift was fizzing with energy, almost sparkling around its perimeter and tips. Every third sec or so, as if a small current had been passed along its length, a changing gradient of color rolled from top to bottom, then bounced back again.

  “It’s beautiful,” Harlan said. “Can we go into it?”

  Bernard nodded again. “It’s fractal, but it doesn’t obey any of the known systems or processes. Watch what happens if I push into the core.” Using the pad, he sent a small cursor into the pattern. The rift responded as if it had been punched. There was a blooming of color in all directions. And yet, wherever the cursor moved, there remained an image of the rift.

  Harlan Merriman opened his mouth and out came one small word. “Wow.”

  “It self-replicates,” Bernard said. “In any number of simultaneous dimensions.”

  “And the spooky bit?”

  Bernard swallowed hard. “Although the spatial possibilities are infinite, the time point, wherever you set the cursor, is fixed. In other words, what turned up in David’s dream was not a little ripple in the envelope of space. More like …”

  “A portal,” Harlan said, pushing back his chair. “So if you or I — or David — had stepped into that rift, we would not have traveled through time, we’d have passed into a different dimension, but in the same time frame as the one we’d left behind.”

  “That’s how I read it,” Bernard said, a little shakily. “But the portal, by its nature, must operate both ways. So given David’s reaction in the film, one can only conclude that whatever created that rift was looking for him — not the other way around. It sounds ridiculous, but based on the evidence we have, it would appear that something was trying to contact your son. Something from another world.”

  14.

  The taxicar that came to take Eliza Merriman and Aunt Gwyneth away was like none that Eliza had ever seen before. It was roughly the same size and elliptical shape as the standard carriages, but its outer skin was grimy and badly dented (in several places), as if it had been involved in a number of collisions. Aunt Gwyneth assured her new charge there was no need for concern, but did add that the journey might be a little “bumpy.”

  Where exactly are we going? Eliza commingled.

  Back to the beginning, the Aunt replied cryptically. Back to the beginning.

  Bumpy the journey certainly was. Chilly. Tedious. Miserably long. The cabin light flickered all the way. The seal nearest to Eliza’s head whistled as though it would split at any moment and suck her into some awful void. The chair she was riding on wobbled persistently. Every now and then the whole taxicar would drop through the sky so fast that the organs of the body felt as if they’d been pinned to the roof.

  Aunt Gwyneth slept through it all.

  Finally, the thing did come to a halt. Even then, the doors refused to open. A well-aimed kick from Aunt Gwyneth’s sturdy heels soon remedied that. A slab of air came in as the Aunt stepped out. Dampness. Coarse soil. Ferocity in the wind. All of these conditions registered with Eliza before she had put a foot outside. But nothing could prepare her for the wilderness she was about to encounter. Aunt Gwyneth snapped her fingers and the taxicar zipped away. It was a dot on the horizon before Eliza could measure the extent of the isolation the two women now found themselves in. All around them was nothing but barren land. Grassed and dark green, going to black. In the sky were thunderclouds and every threat of cold. Hope perished in Eliza’s heart.

  “Where are we?” She shuddered.

  “You know where we are.”

  The Dead Lands. Eliza shook her head in confusion. “Why have you brought me here?”

  “To learn, my dear.”

  Eliza clamped her arms and looked all around her. What could anyone learn in a place like this? She shivered and tried to imagineer a sweater. There was no response.

  “Once, there was a civilization in these lands. Buildings. Rivers. Trees…. Creatures. All dead, because of what we became.”

  Eliza wasn’t listening. “What’s wrong with my fain?” Her failure to produce a sweater had now been compounded by her failure to imagineer a pair of gloves. She cupped her hands and tried to construct a button: the first thing any child on Co:pern:ica was taught. Even this most simple of acts was beyond her.

  The Aunt turned and gripped her powerfully by the wrists. “Your fain is useless here. What would you do if I told you that you could never imagineer again? That you were here to plant a seed? To give something back?”

  The wind blew through Eliza’s hair, holding up its strands like precious red jewels. “Take me home,” she said, shaken by the look in the old woman’s eyes. Some kind of madness had enveloped the Aunt, underpinned by a look of angry desolation.

  “This is your home,” Aunt Gwyneth sneered. “It’s where you came from. It’s where the very soul of this world resides. Here. Still clinging to this dying earth.” She dug in a heel and twisted it hard, churning up a divot of squelching mud. “This is what you will learn, Eliza Merriman. This is what you will take back to your pod and your precious gardenaria. When you appreciate the truth ab
out this land, I will grant you a daughter.”

  “You’re making me uncomfortable,” Eliza said. The Aunt’s grip was actually causing her pain.

  The old woman relented and let her go. “Do you know how old I am?”

  “No. Does it matter?”

  Aunt Gwyneth gave a quiet snort. “I have seen things you would not believe.”

  “Yes, I imagine you have,” said Eliza. “And I’m sorry that my ignorance of the Dead Lands offends you. But I’m willing to accept whatever knowledge you can offer me. Especially if it means I can make Harlan happy. A daughter is something he’s always wanted. What is it that you want me to do?” She folded her arms and waited.

  Aunt Gwyneth circled her slowly. “Tell me about your parents.”

  “My —?” Eliza was suddenly thrown by this. “I … why?”

  “It’s not for you to question. Answer me, girl.”

  “I can’t. I … I don’t remember my parents.”

  “You do,” Aunt Gwyneth said from behind her.

  Eliza turned her face to the sky. The clouds, she thought, were moving toward her, as if they were eager to hear her story. “I don’t. I have no memories of childhood. I’m an abandoned construct. I remember nothing before my twenty-eighth spin. When I met Harlan, I was an empty shell. He took me in, loved me, married me without question. I have no idea who imagineered me, or why so old, or why they orphaned me. Why are you making me say what I’m sure you already know? Why are you making me …”

  “Suffer?” said the Aunt.

  Eliza looked away.

  “You need to reach inside yourself. To do that, you must feel.”

  “Feel?” Eliza’s pretty face screwed into a ball. “You know very well that the Higher put an end to all that …”

  “ ‘Soul-searching’?” The Aunt examined her fingernails, as if they were suddenly the answer to everything. “That was what people called it in the past. The inner search for meaning. But you know this, don’t you, Eliza? I can read it in your auma. You’ve tried it, haven’t you? You question your parentage constantly, tormenting yourself because you cannot resolve it. But you don’t have the courage to examine the doubts. Question the doubts, child. Only then will you be able to deal with the truth.”

  “What are you doing?” Eliza said. The Aunt had spread her fingers and was pointing them, rootlike, at the ground. Wisps were beginning to rise around her feet, emerging from the soil like coils of smoke. Eliza gasped as two of them twined together and formed themselves into the shape of an animal. Long, floppy ears and a rounded body. Roughly the size of Boon, but not a katt. Her eyes darted to another wisp. A tiny buzzing creature was flying around an even wispier flower. And then …

  The next apparition stopped her breathing. She knew what it was. She even had a name for it. The word was in her head as if it had been there all her life, simply stored away for safekeeping. She stepped forward for a closer look, but the ghostly contours shook its wedge of tail feathers and waddled off before dispersing. “Duck.” It was a duck. The very creature she’d fantasized about but never seen on the river. She sank to her knees, feeling the softness of the earth where it supported her. Slowly, she put her hands into the mist, trying to gather the threads of it in. But it was the mist that soon had control of her. It wrapped itself around her arms and tried to pull her down. The force of it made her cry out. But with one snap of Aunt Gwyneth’s fingers the mist retracted into the soil. Eliza looked up to see the Aunt looking down. In what appeared to be an act of genuine kindness, the woman laid a hand on Eliza’s forehead and moved a lock of red hair out of her eyes.

  “You did have a childhood,” she said.

  Eliza by now was shaking uncontrollably. “How? How do you know this?”

  Aunt Gwyneth hunkered down. Her eyes were a stunning violet color. “I know, because you spent it with me.”

  15.

  Teeth gritted, Eliza struggled to her feet. “No,” she said, crossing her hands several times. “Why are you mocking me like this? If I’d met you before, I would have recognized you. And this mist. These forms. Are they some kind of … advanced imagineering? Some trickery to measure my worthiness for motherhood? If I’m flawed beyond redemption, please just tell me.”

  Aunt Gwyneth straightened her skirt as she rose. “In the days before we had fain,” she said, bringing her wrinkled fingertips together, “people would have used the word ‘magick’ to describe what you just saw. Are you familiar with this term?”

  “No,” Eliza said abruptly.

  The Aunt gave a supercilious sniff.” ‘Magick’ was an art form used by charlatans skilled in deception to make the impossible appear to be plausible. It was considered ‘entertaining’ by some. Nowadays, we have no need for such amateurism. We simply materialize whatever we require. But, oh, the price we have paid for it.”

  Eliza’s head swept back and forth. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “You recognized a rabbit, a bumblebee, and a duck. Tell me if these names mean anything to you?”

  Eliza sighed and covered her eyes. The smell of damp earth was on her hands. “Duck,” she muttered. “I’ve found myself trying to picture them.”

  Aunt Gwyneth nodded. “Good. In time, you will recognize more. These creatures were not my constructs, Eliza. They were your memories, given limited reality by your residual association with this place.”

  “Aunt, I’ve never been here before! And this ‘place’ just tried to kill me!”

  “No, girl. It was trying to reclaim you.”

  “Oh!” Eliza threw up her hands. Her eyes were almost as dark as the clouds. She turned and stared intently at the horizon. “Are you saying I spent a childhood here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why don’t I remember it?”

  “Because you were not meant to. It was erased just days before your fifth spin. You were then re-formed by the Higher to become the woman that Harlan Merriman would marry.”

  “Are you implying that Harlan and I were deliberately brought together by the Higher?”

  “That is immaterial.”

  “Not to me.” There was an uneasy pause. When it became clear that the Aunt would not be drawn further on this matter, Eliza said, “Very well. I was re-formed. For what reason? Was I ec:centric, like David?”

  Again, Aunt Gwyneth chose to hold her tongue.

  “Tell me,” Eliza insisted, having the courage to shake the old woman. “Did I do something wrong? Did I threaten the Design?”

  “Yes.” Aunt Gwyneth’s voice was brittle. “Yes, but through no fault of your own. You were given up to the Higher when it became clear that you’d inherited … your father’s anomaly.”

  Eliza reared back. “This is not from one of your reports, is it? You knew him, didn’t you? You knew my father.” Her gaze narrowed. The Aunt’s face was as rigid as stone.

  “He was an out:kast,” she said eventually. “The very worst kind of ec:centric.”

  “Why don’t I know him?” Eliza pressed. “What became of him? Is he still alive?” She thought of David, in the librarium. In her father’s time (and just how old would her father have been?) the counselors and Aunts might not have been so generous as to send a potentially dangerous individual to a place of relative safety.

  But just as Aunt Gwyneth was about to give an answer she flicked her head to one side and said, “I am being summoned.” Her sober expression faded to a glint of amused curiosity. “Well, well. How interesting.”

  Eliza could hear nothing of the Aunt’s communication, and with her fain disabled could detect no thoughts in the ether either. “We’re leaving?” she said, looking for a taxicar. None was coming.

  “I am leaving,” Aunt Gwyneth said, brushing down the sleeves of her jacket. “It seems I’m required — by Thorren Strømberg.”

  “Strømberg?” Eliza stepped forward again. “Is it to do with David? Is there something wrong?”

  Aunt Gwyneth pulled on a pair of white gloves.
There appeared to be elec:trodes running down the finger seams. On the palms was a strange-looking mark, made up of three ragged but unconnected lines. “What you will discover here will shape your future. Go carefully, Eliza. It may be some time before I return.”

  “Wait. You can’t abandon me! Where will I sleep? What will I eat? You haven’t explained about my father. And what about my training? And the daughter you promised?”

  “An Aunt,” the agent of the Higher cut in, “must learn to cope with any adversity. Your training starts here. Alone, in the Dead Lands.” And right before Eliza’s eyes, Aunt Gwyneth spread her arms and the mist rose up once more and surrounded her. Blue flashes lit up her gloves and she was drawn away swiftly, as if she were nothing but a feather on the wind.

  For twenty paces, Eliza gave chase. Failing breath and the loss of a shoe finally brought her stomping to a halt. She hung her head as the solitude closed in, then limped back and retrieved the shoe. It was soaked and reeked of something … unwholesome. With a hostility she barely knew she possessed she set herself to hurl it far away and go barefoot across the grass. (Where to though? Where?) But before the rage had her in its sway, something else had conquered her auma. She paused and looked at the dirt on the shoe. Smoky wisps were rising out of it again. With her free hand, she scraped some mud off the sole and rolled it through the ends of her fingers. Strangely, it did not smear. And the more she rolled, the more permanent and workable the stuff became, until she had a ball of it on her palm. It sat there, gray and shiny and smooth. It was then she recalled a name for it.

  “Clay.”

  16.

  Voices. Mr. Henry and someone new. Rosa pushed the dragon book under her arm, blew a kiss to David, and hurried from the room. She paused inside the doorway of the next room along and hid herself there, to listen.