A World Too Near (2 page)

Nearby, perhaps three miles distant, the wall of the universe formed a barrier between this cosmos and Earth’s. The wall, crafted by vast and faultless technologies, resisted penetration. Yet this lobed engine could reach through, bringing about the collapse of all that she loved: the Earth and everything else beyond imagination to the ends of the folded, curving universe. It would not, Lord Inweer said, happen today or next year, but soon. In response to the siren call of the engine the Rose universe would fall in on itself in an instant. Thus collapsed it would burn so very brightly. A fine source of fuel and virtually an eternal one.

For all her intent gaze the maze kept its secret. No paths pierced the heart of the chamber; at least not one she could see. This excursion was a failure. God, of course, didn’t owe her a revelation.

She felt more than heard a presence behind her. Turning, she
saw her servant. The vile creature had followed her.

“SuMing,” Johanna said, keeping her voice even.

SuMing bowed. As she did so her braid fell forward, a great rope of hair that hung to her waist.

“Did you bring my shawl? One is cold.”

“Your shawl is in your apartments of course.”

“Then you have a long walk back, SuMing.”

With a hint of a smile, SuMing bowed to her mistress. She had no choice but to fetch the shawl. As she turned away she stopped suddenly, then bowed again, deeply this time, as another figure appeared from a side corridor.

It was the Tarig lord. SuMing must have alerted him. Johanna bowed to Lord Inweer. “Bright Lord.”

In the early days his form had disquieted her, but no longer. Her lord’s face was fine, even beautiful. One could become accustomed to anything, living with it long enough, Johanna had learned. The Tarig even seemed normal with their muscular, attenuated bodies and seven-foot height.

Standing before Johanna now, Lord Inweer’s skin gleamed with a copper tinge as though he were cast from metal. SuMing hurried past him, causing his slit skirt to billow. “Stay,” Lord Inweer said. The servant stopped and turned back, waiting on her lord’s pleasure.

However, Inweer took no further notice of SuMing, his eyes fixed on her mistress.

“Johanna,” he said, his voice smooth and deep. “We find you abroad. Not sleeping, hnn?”

She had planned what to say if caught. With all the poise she could muster she turned from him, looking down into the chamber. “It called me. I had to see it.”

In four strides he stood next to her, his gaze sweeping the great hall one hundred feet below.

To Johanna’s dismay she found herself shaking. She breathed deeply to control this, but Inweer had already noticed.

“Afraid of heights, Johanna? Or afraid of us?”

“Both,” she answered, though only one was true.

On her back she felt the pressure of his hand, heavy and warm, without claws. Perhaps he believed her. She had served him well, and received his indulgence in return. Until lately, since the news had come that Titus Quinn had been seen again in the great Tarig city far away. And that he had fled, taking all the Tarig brightships with him. Now Inweer had cause to worry where her loyalties lay. He suspected that she still loved her husband, and she let him believe that. It conveniently explained her agitation these days. But she hoped that Titus had forgotten her. He should concentrate on more urgent matters. Such as this engine. If he knew it existed. Pray God that he did know it existed: She had risked everything to ensure that he did.

Inweer guessed that her thoughts were of her husband. “Titus did not rescue you when he came to the bright city. Did you think it possible?”

“No. Still . . .” She put on a wry smile. “My husband was always unpredictable.”

“We recall.” Once, long ago, Inweer had known Titus in the Ascendancy where the Tarig had kept him. All the ruling lords had known him. One had died of the experience.

Inweer watched her with an unblinking, black gaze. “You must shut your ears against the engine.”

“I can’t.”

“Other things which we required of you were eventually possible. You recall?”

Now he toyed with her. She dared to leave his question unanswered. Instead she murmured, “Why did you ever tell me, my lord?”

In his chambers one ebb-time when he had held her as she wept, he had murmured the thing that he thought might release her from longing. He had told her the purpose of the engine.

“We should not have done it if it deprives you of rest. An error?”

She put her hands on the railing, feeling the engine’s drumming even there. “Perhaps.” You made a mistake, she thought, a most profound mistake.

“Yes, an error,” he conceded. “We wished for you to give up your hope of home. It had sickened you. We favor that you remain well.” He added unnecessarily, “You will never go home.”

“If not, I wish always to be with you, Bright Lord.”

“Yes,” he murmured.

If it appeared that he had forgotten SuMing he now made clear that he had not. “SuMing,” he said, “come to us.”

SuMing appeared by his side, bowing low. “Bright Lord?”

Without looking at her but still gazing outward, he said, “Climb onto the railing.”

Her mouth quivered, then released the words, “Yes, Lord.” Wearing practical tunic pants, she climbed up, sliding her legs over the railing, locking her hands in position. She teetered ever so slightly.

Lord Inweer said, “Johanna, are you cold? You shake.”

“Yes, very cold.”

“SuMing,” he said, “remove your jacket.”

To do so SuMing had to remove one hand from the rail to undo the clasps. After a long fumbling at knots she undid the five buttons, dipping one shoulder to let the jacket fall away, leaving her with a small shift for a top.

“Hand it to your mistress.”

She did so and Johanna took the garment, locking glances with the terrified girl. The silks of the girl’s tunic rustled in the air currents from below.

“Now jump,” Lord Inweer said.

Without hesitation, SuMing let go, pushed off, and plummeted. In an instant Inweer had grabbed her braid, stopping her fall and ripping a terrible shriek from her. Then she hung quietly, her braid clutched in Lord Inweer’s hand.

Inweer’s outstretched arm did not tire. He turned to Johanna. “Shall I open my hand?”

Below, SuMing hung perfectly still, keeping a terrible silence. Johanna wished she were strong enough to rid herself of this enemy. But not this way.

“No, my lord,” she whispered, “I will teach her to better please us.”

He cocked his head. “If so.”

She nodded.

Then Inweer raised his arm, lifting SuMing’s limp body in an effortless maneuver that hauled her onto the railing. With his other hand he pulled her knees clear and deposited her on the floor, where the girl collapsed, twitching. A trickle of blood fell down her neck.

Ignoring SuMing, Inweer resumed his conversation with Johanna. “It all has a price,” he said, gazing at the engine. “Even the gracious lords must pay a price for all we do.”

Johanna watched SuMing shivering on the floor, her scalp pulled halfway from her head. She could not go to her yet.

Inweer went on. “You understand the price?”

“Insofar as I can.”

“You can understand.”

In saying this he required her to leave him blameless in the matter of the engine. The Tarig universe was failing, its power source rapidly depleting. Only one decent substitute existed: Johanna’s universe. So the burning of the Rose was the price for the billion sentient lives gathered here in their far-flung sways and in their common hopes for life and love. The same things that people on Earth desired, which only one place could have.

SuMing inched away from the precipice and pulled herself into a ball, hugging her knees.

“SuMing,” Johanna said, “can you walk?”

“Yes, mistress,” she whispered.

“Then go to bed.” Even traumatized and bleeding, SuMing should get out of Inweer’s sight quickly.

SuMing looked up. Her expression might as easily have been hatred as gratitude.
She crawled backward for a small distance, eyes on Lord Inweer. Then she managed to stand up and stagger away.

Johanna felt a cold river move through her, the currents of things to come. The person sitting on the rail might easily have been herself. It helped to watch how others faced a terrible death. SuMing had been brave.

Inweer held out an arm for her. “Now you will rest?”

She laid her hand on that hard skin, that tapering arm.

It would all be so simple if she despised this Tarig lord. But that was far from the case.

She looked into his dark eyes. “Yes,” she said, answering whatever he had asked her. She must always say yes. Loving him, it was easy to do. In most things she gladly obeyed, serving him in all ways but one.

CHAPTER TWO

T
ITUS QUINN WATCHED WITH ONLY A FEW MISGIVINGS as his niece and nephew played with the world’s most comprehensive standard-gauge model train collection outside of a museum. It was worth upward of a half-million dollars, and used to be off-limits to touching, except by himself. Today he allowed six-year-old Emily to hold the train set controls, and eleven-year-old Mateo to polish a locomotive. They were his only family in this universe, and he meant to cherish them until he returned to the other one.

“All aboard,” Emily declared, presiding over the Ives New York Central model train, just pulling out of the station by the bookcase. She slammed the start button with her fist, causing Quinn to wince. The S-class locomotive strained to life, hauling four illuminated passenger cars plus flatcars, boxcars, tenders, and a caboose.

Next to him at the dining room table, Mateo polished up the Coral Aisle, using the special cloth that Quinn reserved for the locomotives. “When will Mom and Dad be back?”

“Tomorrow, Ace. You get to see them tomorrow.”

Mateo’s face fell. “Maybe they’ll stay longer.”

“Hold on,” he heard Emily say.

The Ives New York Central barreled toward the sofa, zooming too fast into the turn. He saw the trajectory, and knew it would be grabbing air. He jumped up, gesturing uselessly. “Emily . . .”

Too late for interventions, the locomotive jumped the tracks coming out of the turn, flying a couple of feet before folding back on the tender unit and first three passenger cars. It fell to the floor with a sickening clatter.

Reaching Emily’s side, Quinn saw the tears welling, her face starting to come apart with shock. “Hey, don’t worry,” he told her. “They make these trains real strong.”

Emily’s mouth crumpled, but she held on to her dignity.

At Quinn’s feet, the locomotive lay, still humming with power. He shut down the system with a signal of his data rings, the ones he’d forgotten he wore, that could have avoided this accident if he’d been paying attention.

Mateo ran over to survey the damage. “Boy, did you screw up,” he told his sister. “You broke it.”

Quinn snorted. “Hey, a simple crash like this? Hell no. We’ll just pick it up, okay?”

She nodded, sniffing back tears. “We’ll fix it?”

He paused, thinking of a small alien girl who had recently been sure he was a man who could fix things. The day, already rainy, seemed darker for a moment. There were things he’d done on his mission for Minerva Company that haunted him.

“Sure, we’ll fix it. But later.” He stood up, needing some fresh air, even if it was sodden with cold spring fog. “Get your coats, guys.”

“It’s raining,” Mateo said.

“You bet. That’s why the coats.” Quinn led the way, stopping Emily on the porch to redo the mismatched buttoning of her yellow jacket.

Outside, the rain had upgraded into a wet fog, with the sky brightening to a lighter shade of gray.

Not like
the bright
. The bright sky of the Entire. The place that, after only a few weeks’ absence, had begun to pull on him like a force of gravity. When he went back, he would be not a sojourner, but a strike force.
Fire, oh
fire
, the navitar had said on that impossible river of the Entire. And,
Johanna
is at the center of it.
In two utterances predicting that the Tarig would burn this universe, and that Johanna would warn him of it. Before she died.

“Uncle Titus?” Emily gazed at him. He was still holding on to her yellow jacket.

How could they burn a universe—collapse it in an instant? There was a way, the physics team said, and it elegantly bypassed speed-of-light issues and all the other objections. A quantum transition. If the universe, our universe, was not at the lowest-energy state possible, it could make an instantaneous quantum leap, turning matter—all matter, everywhere—into hot plasma. This was just one theory of a dozen or so that attempted to explain what Johanna said the Tarig knew how to do. And were starting to do, at Ahnenhoon.

“Uncle Titus?” Emily repeated, trying to pull away.

He released her. “Stay close so I can see you, okay?”

She ran off down the strand toward her waiting brother.

When he was around Emily and Mateo, the Tarig seemed remote, hardly credible. Even after years in their presence, he still knew little of them. Where did the Tarig come from, really, beyond the legends they fostered? Were there limits to their powers? How did they manipulate matter and energy as they did? They hoarded much, and even those sentients who knew them well were not privy to essential Tarig secrets.

He watched Emily in the hillocky sand, her small legs pounding, hands held out for balance. His daughter had loved the ocean. Did Sydney miss it where she was? She would be grown up now, and beyond sand pails and shell collections. Perhaps beyond him as well, although that did not bear long thought. He lengthened his stride to keep the kids in view. As they raced down the beach, Quinn ran too, into the stinging air, icy with moisture.

Out of a curl of fog a figure appeared, near the dunes. It startled him. The whole beach hereabouts was his. Others were not welcome.

The figure stood on the beach, dressed in a parka and what looked like suit pants and city shoes.

“Who the hell are you?” Quinn said. The stranger remained silent.