Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) (7 page)

“Sam and I are not from the same realm. It’s a long story—that I’m sure he would love to tell you when he’s not being a mute stump.”

“Why not just let them meet and let the chips fall where they may?”

“What?” Mara was still paying more attention to her father’s face than his words.

“Sam and your father.”

“Oh! We were afraid he would get hurt.”

“Sam or his father?”

“Either. Both.”

“You can’t fix everything, Mara.”

Mara smiled. “My dad always says that.”

“I know,” he said.

“No, I mean, my version of you says that, back in my realm,” she said.

The right corner of his lips tightened again.

“You’re not buying any of this. Are you? The whole alternate-reality thing?”

“I believe something is going on. You disappeared for more than a week, and now you are back, although dressed a little strangely. And I have to admit that Sam here resembles what I had imagined your brother would look like if he’d had the chance to grow up. But alternative versions of people from other realities? That’s a lot to swallow at one sitting.”

“I understand. It took me a while to come around when I first met Sam, but we’ve got some compelling evidence that I think will convince you,” she said. She glanced over at her brother and then at Ping. “Don’t we, Sam?”

He took a second to catch on. “Oh, yeah. We’ve got Ping.”

Dr. Lantern glanced at Ping.

“Not that Ping,” Sam said. “The other one, our Ping. We brought one with us.”

“Where is this second Ping?” he asked.

“He’s at the hotel just off the southeast corner of the square, taking care of a friend of ours,” Sam said.

“Taking care? Is something wrong with this friend?” Dr. Lantern asked.

“It’s my friend Abby,” Mara said. “She had been through a lot lately. I want to check on her as soon as we are done here.”

Ping interjected, “I’m not sure it would be such a good idea for you to go into town right now. Word hasn’t gotten out about your return, and just popping up will cause a scene.”

“A scene? What kind of scene?” Mara asked.

“A mob of people wanting to see you. You’ve been gone a week, and now that you are back, the chasms have stopped. Everyone will want to give you a hero’s welcome home, and there won’t be any way to deter them,” Ping said. “You would be swamped before you got near your friend.”

Dr. Lantern nodded. “That’s true. I’m heading out that way on a house call. I’ll take Sam. We can stop by and pick up your friend—and your Ping, if he exists—on the way back. If need be, everyone can stay here. There’s plenty of room. And that will give me a chance to get to know Sam. All agreed?” Without waiting for an answer, he answered for everyone. “Agreed.”

“No, not agreed,” Mara said. “I’m a little concerned it might not be safe for you to deal with Abby without me being there.”

“You’re concerned about the metaphysical demon you mentioned before?” Ping asked.

“What?” Dr. Lantern asked.

Sam waved a hand in the air. “There has been no sign of the Aphotis since Abby arrived. I think Dad and I can get her back here with no trouble.”

Mara glanced at her father when Sam called him
Dad
. That doubtful corner of his mouth turned up, a change so subtle that no one else would notice, but she did.

Dr. Lantern stood up and said, “Let’s go, Sam. My wagon’s out front.”

After they left the kitchen and Mara heard the front door close behind them, Mara turned to Ping and asked, “What am I supposed to do while they’re gone?”

He stood up and cleared the plates from the table. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

“What would your Mara be doing if she were here?”

“Most likely
you’d
be working on something in the steam lab or the fabrication shop. You’re always working on some invention or gizmo,” he said, putting the dishes in the sink and then turning around to lean against the counter.

Mara stood up from her seat at the table and walked toward the hall. “Steam lab? That sounds interesting. Is it this way?”

The hall leading from the kitchen to the front door bisected the manor. To the left was a wide staircase with an ornate banister of polished dark wood. Through its spindles, a red patterned runner climbed the center of the risers. To the right, a textured off-white wall shot up beyond the first flight of stairs. A pair of doors, also polished dark wood, stood halfway between the front of the house and the kitchen entryway. Mara stopped at the two doors and rattled the doorknobs. Locked.

Ping hurried up to her and said, “That’s the fabrication shop. It’s locked.”

Mara shook the knob again and said, “So I can see. You got a key?”

“I thought you wanted to see the steam laboratory. That might be a better idea for now,” he said.

“Steam lab it is. Where is that?” she asked.

Ping held out a hand toward the front of the staircase. Mara eyed the locked doors for a second and said, “Is there something in here that I should not see?”

“Of course not. We’d have to go to the steam lab to get the key anyway.” Ping led her past the front door and the foot of the staircase into a hall extending into the left side of the house. After one hundred feet, they came to another set of double doors. Ping reached for the doorknob but paused. “It might be a good idea for you not to touch anything inside,” he said.

“I thought this was my steam laboratory. Why shouldn’t I do whatever I want in there?” Mara said. She crossed her arms for added emphasis.

“Well, it is your lab,” Ping said. “But since you claim to
not
be Mara …”

“You can’t have it both ways, Ping. Either I’m Mara or I’m not. Either you believe what I told you or you don’t.” She stepped toward the door. She was more interested in getting him to admit that he believed her than getting inside the lab.

He held up a hand. “Very well. I believe you. All the more reason to be careful inside. There are volatile substances, and I don’t want to explain to your counterpart why half her house is missing when she gets back.”

“So you accept Dad and Sam will return later with another version of yourself. You admit that’s a possibility?”

“I’m not ready to go that far. Let me put it this way. I’m convinced you are not quite yourself, and I’m open to
that
possibility. You must admit that is further than you would go if you were in my shoes. We both know that’s true.”

“All right. I promise to be careful. Can we go in now?”

Ping turned the knob and pushed open both doors. Mara’s breath caught in her throat. The room before them was cavernous, soaring through the second story of the house. It was so wide and deep it took up this side of the manor, though it was difficult to be sure. Dozens of pipes and hoses hung suspended above an equipment-laden doughnut-shaped counter in the center of the room.

“Where do you people live around here? This lab is massive,” Mara said, her head craning and swiveling as she stepped inside.

“Living quarters are on the third floor. The steam lab takes up most of the south side of the house while the fabrication shop occupies the north. The kitchen, pantry and utility rooms run behind the back wall of the lab,” Ping said.

A loud hiss and a
clunk
startled her. She jumped backward and bumped into Ping’s hip. He reached out and steadied her. “That’s just the compressor.” He pointed to a bank of tall copper pipes stacked vertically along the back wall fronted by a broad console of dials, levers and knobs. It reminded Mara of a pipe organ. One of the pipes hissed again, and a cloud of steam filled the air near the ceiling.

“What does it do?” Mara asked.

“It provides distilled steam under pressure for your—er, Mara’s—experiments,” he said. He pointed to the top of the copper pipes and indicated the smaller tubes branching from them, mounted along the ceiling and fanning out to the sides of the room where massive transparent cylinders stood in copper-framed alcoves lining the walls. Each was as thick as a tree trunk and reached the ceiling.

Giant test tubes.

While the cylinders and alcoves were identical, the clouds that roiled inside were distinct. Some glowed with color, and others were almost imperceptibly different. Yet others luminesced, and some seemed shadowy, to absorb light.

“How much steam does this girl need to perform an experiment?” Mara asked, her gaze passing over the huge alcoves.

“The large cylinders along the walls contain production steam—finished product ready to be distributed to the rest of the world. Technically this is a manufacturing facility as well a development laboratory. Most testing and experimentation is done here at the counter once a steam sample has been synthesized. If the results are satisfactory, then Mara will fabricate any related hardware that might be needed. Of course that’s done in the fabrication shop.”

“Of course,” Mara said with a tinge of sarcasm. “So she makes steam and sells it? People around here can’t boil a pot of water?”

“You haven’t been paying attention. Recall the digisteam from the miders?” Ping asked.

“How could I forget? Little arach-notes crawling everywhere.”

“
Arach-notes
. I like that. Too bad we didn’t think of that when we first came up with the concept.” Ping chuckled, then cleared his throat. “First off, the progenitor doesn’t sell her steam innovations. They are freely distributed from here through a network of underground pipes. Second, as you have witnessed, the steams she creates here are quite remarkable and useful.”

“Like the copter’s gravisteam.”

“Exactly.”

Mara walked over to the counter, picked up an empty beaker and examined it. She supposed she could see getting into this sort of thing if she hadn’t gotten attached to gadgetry at such a young age. It all seemed related to understanding how things worked. Yet she couldn’t see anything on this counter, as large as it was—and as covered as it was with a mish-mash of paraphernalia from chemistry, biology and engineering—that explained how ordinary water vapor could carry digital information or make a vehicle fly.

She set down the beaker and surveyed the rest of the counter. “I don’t get it. This appears to be a scientific endeavor, but it doesn’t make sense. Why steam?”

Ping was about to reply when Mara pointed to the far side of the counter at a board set up like an easel, a dozen lightbulbs mounted to it. “That looks interesting,” she said. “What is that?”

She walked around the perimeter of the doughnut counter to get to it, but Ping took her arm.

“It’s quicker just to go this way,” he said. He grabbed the edge of the countertop and lifted. A segment folded upward, giving them access to the center of the circular counter. He bowed and waved Mara toward the opening. She passed through and walked straight to the board with the lights.

“This is the first thing I’ve seen since I arrived that looks like real technology,” she said. “Is Mara on the verge of discovering electricity?”

Ping caught up with her and shook his head. “Of course not. We are fully familiar with electricity,” he said. “Remember where we came from—a world of technologically sophisticated people who built their own bodies.”

“If you people are so tech-savvy, why the obsession with steam? And why are people pulling around wagons with horses? And, by the way, where the hell did the horses come from? I don’t think the people in your technologically advanced world are keeping farm animals in receptacles. They crossed over with you?”

“Remarkable,” Ping said, shaking his head.

“What’s remarkable?” Mara asked.

“How you can believe that you came from another realm, that you are now in a different realm created by the mind of your counterpart, but you continue to doubt so much? How can you reasonably believe one thing and not the other?”

Mara shook her head. “It’s not doubt. Not anymore. I used to question everything because I couldn’t believe it. Not now. Now I’m asking questions because I want to understand, to understand why things are the way they are. Like why there is no electricity when you people understand how it works.”

She turned to the board of lightbulbs and touched one with her finger. A tiny arc of lightning jumped from her fingertip. For a second, the inner space of the bulb glowed, but then it exploded, leaving an actual gaping black hole floating in the air where it had been. One bulb next to it had shattered, spraying glass across the board.

Ping grabbed Mara’s wrist, pulling it back. “How did you do that?”

“It was just a little spark of electricity. A tiny bolt, not more than a little static.” Mara stared at the black hole floating over the spot where her finger had been. It looked like someone had punched a hole in space. Other than the broken bulb, the board itself was undamaged, apart from the missing portion taken by the black hole.

“Is that one of those chasms you talked about?”

Ping eyed it, uncertain. “It appears the same, but this one wasn’t spontaneous. You caused it with that little bolt of yours. How did you do that?”

“It’s an ability I have. I tried to get the bulb to light up,” she said.

The black hole faded, and they could see the missing piece of the board reappear.

“Don’t do that again, not even a little. There’s a reason you don’t see electricity in this realm. It’s incompatible with the environment here,” Ping said.

“
Incompatible
?”

“Yes, incompatible. This world consists of thought, dreams, if you will. Thoughts are electrical impulses, and those impulses can be disrupted when exposed to random spikes of electricity. That’s why you don’t see it deployed as a power source or in any technology here.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“I was unaware you would shoot lightning from your fingertips, young lady. Are there other abilities of yours that I should be aware of?”

Sam and his father sat at the front of a plain open wagon being drawn by a single horse, heading north toward the low-slung skyline of the Portland a couple miles away. While Sam had been in this realm for several days and had gotten acclimated to its somewhat rustic charms, he found the experience of riding behind the horse fascinating. The smells, the rhythmic tug forward, the clap of the horse’s hooves on the dusty road all slowed his pounding heart. He couldn’t believe that here he sat next to his father, holding the reins and smiling into the afternoon sun. They hadn’t said a word since turning off the manor grounds five minutes ago.