The Space Between (14 page)

The saveigni took the book and opened it up.
"Well, Miss McLean, you are free to enter, but unless your friend
here also has an American passport, she'll have to wait out
here."

Meledrin had had enough —
being forced to stand in the rain and talk to a
man
.

"Kim and I have information regarding the
alien attacks," she said. "Kim suggested that the United States
might be the nation that could best make use of the
information."

"It's all right, Mel. I'll go in and get
someone."

Meledrin ignored her. "Immediately inform
your lord that we seek an audience."

"My
lord?
" the saveigni said.

"Yes, go and get her now."

Kim put a hand on Meledrin's shoulder and
pulled her back slightly. "Please excuse Meledrin. She's not from
around here. She isn't aware of how things work."

"Not from around here? What planet is she
from, exactly?"

"My world is called Sherindel," Meledrin
said. She realized too late that it might have been a rhetorical
and sarcastic question all in one.

The man was no longer enjoying himself.
"Look, we've had all sorts of crackpots turning up here over the
last few days. None of them got in, and you aren't going to get in
either." He looked at Kim. "I'm starting to have my doubts about
you as well."

Meledrin opened her mouth to speak, but Kim
got in first.

"Look, it's all under control. Meledrin will
stay out here while I go in and tell your boss about the magical
gate in Nottinghamshire." Kim turned to look at the elf. "It may
take a while, though. I'll have to start at the bottom and work my
way up to someone who knows something. All right?"

"There's a magical gateway in
Nottinghamshire?"

When the savegini said the words, Meledrin
suddenly realized how ridiculous they sounded. The look on Kim's
face suggested that she was thinking the same thing.

But the woman continued anyway. "Actually,
your superiors might already know about it. The English army knew a
couple of days ago."

"A gateway?" The soldier looked at his
nearest companion. When he turned back, it was clear that the
conversation had almost reached its conclusion. Before he could say
anything, though, a tall, aging man stepped into view from the
Embassy.

The crowd waiting outside the barrier
launched into a cacophony of sound. They all seemed to shout a
dozen questions at the newcomer, but he ignored them all and moved
quickly to where Meledrin and Kim waited.

Meledrin waved a
Beginning
.

The man was not dressed in a uniform, but
his bearing was much the same as that of the guards.
Straight-backed and proud. "Ladies, my name is Mathew Gainis. If
you'll just come with me, please." Instead of leading them back
inside, he led them through the crowd and to the street. As they
arrived, a large black car with dark windows met them.
"Nottinghamshire, you say? Helicopter will be quicker."

"You know something about this gate, don't
you?" Kim asked as she ducked into the car.

Meledrin glared at the stranger as he put
his hand on her waist to usher her inside as well. She did not
move.

"No. Not this gate." The man saw Meledrin's
expression and removed his hand with a slight bow of apology. "The
English authorities have not been kind enough to let us know though
we have had our suspicions that something was going on."

"There's another? Were you kind enough to
let the English government know about your one?" Kim smiled as if
something was extremely funny.

The man did not reply, merely hurrying
around the far side of the car and climbing into the front
seat.

The car took them to a helicopter and that
machine took them back to Sherwood Forest. It was much quicker than
the train journey had been, but the ensuing conversation between
the American and the local soldiers seemed to last forever.
Eventually Mr. Gainis passed through the tree to Sherindel. When he
returned, he immediately headed for the helicopter.

"You, Meledrin, come from Sherindel?" Mr.
Gainis asked when they were back in the air a couple of minutes
later.

Meledrin wondered how many times she would
be asked, and by a man at that. She had answered the same question
several times already. If it was taking this long for this man to
be satisfied, she could not imagine the type of questions a Warder
or a Lord would ask and how long the process would take. She
sighed. At least it allowed her to concentrate on something other
than the motion of the helicopter and the alarming distance to the
ground.

"You haven't informed the Brits of your
presence here?"

"They would not speak with us, though the
soldiers spoke with me when I arrived. Have you found my
companion?"

"Yes, Palsamon was in the hospital where you
left him. He's on his way to London right now. He'll be taken to a
private hospital." The man checked some papers in a folder on the
seat beside him. It had not been there when they exited the
helicopter previously. "Kim, how did you get involved in this. A
pilot with the Australian army?"

"Not for a long time, years, as I am sure
your records show."

He flipped through some pages. "Usual,
everyday stuff since. A few times to America?"

"My father's family still lives there. They
don't like my mother much, but they're willing to provide me with
free accommodation."

"And your father was in the diplomatic
corps?"

Kim laughed. "Something like that, yes."

As the conversation continued, Meledrin
watched as Kim spoke with the man and wondered what she was
missing. Kim seemed to think carefully about every answer, as if
they were all vitally important, or potentially dangerous.

"So, how did you get involved?"

"I just happened to be there when Meledrin
and Keeble came through the gate. I've been backpacking."

"Keeble? There's someone else? And you
didn't think to mention this before?"

"Well, you weren't giving me much time to
think." Kim shrugged. "I don't know where Keeble is. We lost him on
the train."

"Lost him?" Gainis sighed and raised his
eyebrows all at once.

"Well, possibly he deliberately ran away.
It's hard to know for sure. He and Mel don't like each other too
much, you see."

"So there's another elf walking around
somewhere?"

Meledrin laughed.
How ridiculous.
"No
elves. An elf would not have become separated, either by mistake or
on purpose. Keeble is a dwarf."

"A dwarf? Oh, this gets better and
better."

"You are suggesting that I am lying?"
Meledrin arched an eyebrow. The manners of every human she met left
a lot to be desired.

"Of course not; I went to another
world."

"Dwarves and elves, right?" Kim said. "You
are wondering if you will see hobbits next. Well, get used to
it."

"Yes."

He checked his papers again, though what he
might find there, Meledrin could not imagine.

"Any ideas where we might start looking for
Keeble?"

"No," Kim replied.

"You know nothing that might help us?" He
turned for a moment to look at Meledrin.

Meledrin did not know why she had originally
risked her reputation and standing in Grovely by deciding to help
Keeble. She had regretted the decision almost every moment since.
But she also wondered if the changing circumstances gave her the
right to ignore the responsibility she had taken on. She looked
away for a moment. "He will probably be repairing something."

"Pardon."

"He will be repairing something," Meledrin
said again. "It is what dwarves do. They make things and repair
things."

"Great. That narrows it down."

Meledrin sniffed and looked around at the
interior of the helicopter. Like most of the human vehicles she had
seen, it was cold and lifeless. Meledrin wanted to feel the breeze
again, and rain. She wanted to be away from the men and their
incessant questions. She wanted to be back on Sherindel. She had
wanted to stay when they had taken the American to see, but neither
he nor the English soldiers would allow it. They were battling the
bats on Sherindel, strengthening their position and moving
outwards, but had not managed to find many survivors. Some of their
own men were missing.

Meledrin sighed. Palsamon and Keeble were
both here on Earth. Perhaps her place was here was well, but all
she really wanted was to be away from the saveigni and the endless
questions.

9: Shifting Sands

Tuki fazed out of the
trance, letting it slowly slip away. Sounds and scents, colors and
sensations followed one after the other like sand draining through
his fingers, but the trailing edges of the vision clung to his
consciousness like never before. For a moment, it was hard to
separate the here from the
there
, to separate the now from
the
then
. He drew
in a deep breath, trying to calm his swirling thoughts. He felt a
terrible sense of foreboding. When he opened his eyes, even that
was gone, leaving him naked in the heat of the desert with just the
memories. He blinked rapidly.

The warm wind touched his dark skin. Sand
set it to tingling.

The day had drifted on, farther than he
imagined. The shadow in which he sat had pushed its ragged edge
several meters closer to the shattered, sand-choked well in the
center of the square.

"I have travelled far," Tuki said to the
glass ewer as he took it up in his hand. He knew he should not
judge, but he would never have thought that such a plain item, made
by humans, would be able to take him so far. When he had first
found the ewer, buried beneath the sand in the corner of a
desert-drowned house, he had thought it would hold no life within
its flawed form. But life it had contained, and what a life!

He wondered what long-dead human had
possessed enough skill to produce such a wonderful Eye. And he
wondered what journey he had made. Obviously it was a journey of
many kilometers, for no such hills were in the desert, and he had
never heard of anything like the strange snaking creature he had
seen. But had he also travelled in time? Had he witnessed what was,
or what will be? Or had he watched the meteor's destruction of the
silver trail as it happened? And what of the other creatures — the
three legged ones and those with the hard, colorful shells who rode
the strange bats? There were too many questions to be answered by
one young male, alone in the desert.

Pursing his full, thick lips in
concentration, Tuki turned the ewer over. It was a small item for
him, sitting comfortably on the palm of his broad moai hand, but
for a human it would have been quite large. The glass was green,
cracked, with a single, simple geometric pattern that offered no
real attraction. Finishing his examination, Tuki found no physical
qualities to match the spiritual one he had already witnessed.

He placed the ewer carefully onto his naked
thighs. Closing his eyes, he once more pushed his consciousness
into the glass. This time however, he did not join completely with
it, instead just touching at its edges so that he could ask
questions of it.

The breath of the desert caressed his chest
as he twisted his thoughts through the silicates, touching at the
reflections they offered. The wind brushed gently across his thighs
and stomach. It kissed his face and fingers as he chanted softly.
It ruffled his dark, curly hair.

But the ewer, thousands of years in the
desert, held nothing beyond what it had already given. It provided
hints of the journey he had already taken, but could not tell of
its home.

When Tuki fazed into the real world once
again, letting himself down gently, the shadow of the wall had
stretched its fingers all the way to the well, poking at the
crumbling stones, the first tentacles of night groping across the
landscape.

He carefully set the ewer down in a
protective hollow of sand, rose to his feet, and stretched, arching
his back and standing up to his full two hundred and fifteen
centimeters. When he was done, he looked to each of the compass
points in turn and bowed to the remains of the day, thanking Poti,
the Mother Blower, for the gifts She had given.

To the south, he could see nothing except
the rise and fall of the desert, going on forever as far as anyone
knew. "Thank you for the Desert," Tuki said.

To the east, a hill thrust up above the
dunes, a rocky knob in the waves of sand. "Thank you for life."

Northward, out of sight over the horizon,
was Dry River, snaking its way from the moai homelands into the
world of man. "Thank you for what you have given."

And westward, where the Mother Blower was
sinking down behind a long ridge. "Thank you for Glass: the
present, the past, the future, light in darkness."

Tuki left the ewer where it was and explored
the rest of the village in the gathering gloom. Only three
buildings of the dozen in evidence still had more than one wall
standing. Most had long ago given in to the creep of time and sand.
He searched until the Mother Blower was long gone and the Skeleton
constellation was high above the horizon, but he could not sense
any more glass that might let him unravel some of the mysteries he
felt he had uncovered.

When he finally started to run north, Tuki's
mind was alive with questions that would probably never be
answered.

The heat of day dispersed quickly as Tuki
continued to run. He flowed through the night like the cool wind,
not rousing the creatures of the desert from their nocturnal
activities, his broad feet hardly marking the desert. He counted
each step as the landscape slipped by. Each kilometer much like the
one before, each hour much like the one before, with just the dunes
and occasional islands of stone, and the numbers in his head.
Counting.