Lee plopped down and regarded the nylon canopy they were under, then the beach. “Looks deserted and dead around here.”
“That’s why they call it the Dead Sea.”
“How very funny.”
“We are in the netherworld; there is no one around anywhere. I shifted the moment we were in Earth’s gravity well.”
“Now what?”
“Now we sleep like the dead, that’s what.”
And so they did.
Sometime before dawn, something caused Hagar to wake up. She sat upright and looked around.
About a hundred paces away, a figure was seated cross-legged not far from the surf, with his back to the gently rolling waves. Next to him, a lit torch was mounted on a high pole anchored in the sand.
Quietly, as not to wake Lee, Hagar put up her hair in a ponytail and made her way to where he sat, waiting.
The man rose to his feet as she drew near, the flames throwing shadows across the handsome, square face.
They stood there and looked at each other.
As Hagar had hoped, he received her transmission and journeyed to see them.
“Puddeck?” she asked simply.
“I got him out of the timefold a couple of days after I put him in it, back in 1937,” Aratta replied. “Puddeck treated the whole thing as a practical joke and was amused by it. Later, he took the news of your death hard, though.”
“Where is he now?”
“These days, he spends most of his time in the ripples. He surfaces about once a year. I do not know his current whereabouts.” Aratta regarded the pale, beautiful face he had thought he’d never see again.
“Back then, did you take out my analysts as well?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do to them?”
“Rendered them unconscious. When they woke up, they found themselves safe and sound in their respective home worlds.”
“So all is well,” Hagar said. She walked up to Aratta and slapped his face, hard.
He closed his eyes for a moment then opened them.
“I’ve mourned your death for seventy-four years,” he told her. “All the while…I had no idea.”
“Yes. Warsaw, 1939. Lee told me,” Hagar said crisply.
“Aye. The stasis box you were in was placed in a site that suffered a direct hit in the German air raid. Nothing survived it.”
“So then?”
Aratta averted his eyes. “They must have moved the box shortly after I’d set it there. Later, they claimed ignorance.”
“They being your accomplices?”
He lowered his head in acknowledgment.
“You didn’t want me dead,” she stated.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’d rather kill myself first,” he added.
“You wanted me out of the way,” she said quietly. “You didn’t want me to convene a hearing at the time.”
“Correct.” He met her gaze. “I wanted to give the Earth people a chance, a real chance to alter course.”
“I’d like to discuss more of this sordid affair at a later date,” Hagar said at last. He nodded in response.
She undid her ponytail and shook her hair out.
“Hagar,” he said and approached her until he was close enough she could feel his body heat. “Never again,” he said softly. “You have my word of honor. Never again will I hide things from you.”
“That sounds really good,” she whispered.
“I’ve missed you, Hagar.”
“You big oaf,” she murmured with affection.
He kissed her tenderly on the lips.
“Numskull,” she added.
They kissed again for a longer time.
“Dunderhead,” she told him after she caught her breath. “That’s it.” She pushed him away. “No more compliments for you.”
He gave her a lopsided smile, and they both sat down facing each other.
Aratta broke the silence. “We have a real problem,” he said.
“So I’ve gathered.” Hagar cast a worried look at him. “You failed to form a rift leading out of Earth; Lee tried to get through the portal but it was destroyed moments earlier; and when I just thought of opening a rift in Brazil, the humans around were taken over, possessed, mind-controlled.”
“I think an emergent entity is behind all of this,” he said. His eyes focused on her. “It’s a…human overmind.”
She was rocked by what he said, staring at him. That was something that hadn’t occurred to her or she had even thought was possible. His explanation made a strange kind of sense, though. And yet.…She looked at him with a slight frown. “We’ve never run into anything like that on any of the other planets.”
“This is because we’ve never been around a human society whose population exceeded two billion people,” Aratta responded. Hagar’s eyes widened. “For it to come into existence,” he went on, “it probably needed a critical mass of humans, which must have happened sometime around mid-twentieth century.”
She mulled it over for a while. “It’s been fighting us,” she mused out loud, “trying to stop us from convening a.…” The words died out as realization sunk in.
He gave a slight nod. “After a fashion, it perceives the possible consequences for humanity of such a hearing and seeks to prevent it from taking place. This ‘human overmind’ reacts to any perceived threats to mankind on this planet.”
“Yes.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Yes, of course.” She regarded him with dismay. That was a disaster. The overmind would never let them send word out. Were they doomed to spend the remainder of their long lives on Earth as helpless witnesses to the waning of its natural world?
Aratta said, “I’ve had a lot of time to reflect. I don’t think this overmind is truly sentient, Hagar. For all intents and purposes, it is humanity’s immune system: largely mechanical and wholly reactive.” He gave her a small bow. “You were wise to immediately shift to the netherworld on your return to Earth,” he said. “This entity cannot exert its influence here, in this realm. For one, there are no humans here through which it can express its powers.”
She studied him. “How have you managed to stay alive once you were marked by it, Aratta? Lee told me you have a shop back in the real Earth.”
“Whenever I am there, I block out the more…seditious memories and thoughts. As long as I do that, in a manner of speaking, the overmind’s antibodies ignore me.”
Hagar considered that. She glanced at him, then she narrowed her eyes, noting the suggestion of a smile on his face. Her stare intensified. “You didn’t make the trip here just to make amends or prepare me for a prosperous life in exile on Earth, did you?”
“You are correct.” He smiled openly. “I think we can accomplish together what we can’t individually.” His smiled broadened. “It’s high time we fought back against this human overmind. Ready to take on an upstart god?”
A bit later, they woke Lee up and briefed her.
After breakfast, Aratta transported them to Sri Lanka, where he and Hagar were to attempt tearing open a rift. They wanted to try it where they stood the best chance of success.
They tried to explain things to Lee. The fabric of reality had seams: stretches where it was thinner and therefore easier to pierce and open up a rift to another world. The seams were easy enough to find if you knew what to look for. However, only in three sites the seams intersected and the fabric of the realm they were in was at its thinnest. The island of Sri Lanka held one of those intersections. In addition, its counterpart island on Qataria happened to be the location from which Lee could access a portal. In turn, the portal on Qataria would enable Lee to reach her actual, final destination.
Ahead of time, Aratta had warned them that the seam intersections, the most vulnerable spots on Earth, were likely to be monitored by the emergent en
tity, by the human overmind. He wasn’t wrong.
He teleported the three of them to a rainforest in Sri Lanka, a mile away from where two seams intersected.
Aratta and Hagar masked their thoughts and Lee’s. It was to be radio silence, as Aratta had explained before they left the netherworld. Anything suspicious could set off the overmind and bring it down upon them.
As they approached the seam intersection, they ran into more and more people. Initially, Lee fancied them to be tourists. But they didn’t look the part. She then reckoned they were villagers. Except they were traveling through a national forest preserve. This aside, something didn’t scan right about the people they were encountering.
At first, they appeared glum. But that wasn’t it. For a brief moment, Lee caught the eye of one of them. Somebody was home, but the lights were off. There was a sense of a shadowy presence behind those dim eyes, but whatever it was, it wasn’t human. Lee had seen that look once before. She felt a prickle of fear run down her back. Like the slaves in Brazil, those people were under the control of the human overmind, acting as sentinels.
When they were within a few hundred paces from the seams juncture, the number of people grew markedly, and the occasional glances of the sentinels turned to stares and those turned to glares, until the three of them were forced to a standstill by a living barricade. Thousands of faces glared at them, unblinking. Thoughts reached them from outside, giving them countless reasons to turn back. Myriad voices flooded their minds cajoling them to turn away and threatening them if they ventured any closer to the point the seams intersected. Lee began to buckle under the mental assault and turned back. It was only Hagar who physically prevented her from walking away.
Aratta took a few steps forward. Growls and bared teeth greeted him. He paused, then relented, and the three of them turned away and tried to get closer using a different route. To no avail. They were prevented from reaching the actual intersection regardless of the direction from which they approached it.
Hagar and Aratta eventually decided on a strategic spot about a half-mile away. It would have to do.
Out of view of the sentinels, Aratta clapped once and closed his eyes. Lee gazed at him in wonder as his outfit transformed. His boots were now framed with metal and studded with spikes. Leather straps spiraled up his trousers. His muscular upper body was stripped bare but for an ebony cape about his shoulders that slowly billowed, despite the lack of a breeze. Hagar’s garb also underwent change. She now wore baggy black pants with slits at the sides. A fitted leather vest covered her torso. And a cord bound her hair, pulling it back in a sleek ponytail. Her forearms sported leather sheaths that bristled with spikes.
The time for subterfuge was over. Hagar turned to face Lee. “We will scrape at the seam, that’s all we can do.”
Lee nodded curtly. “I remember what you said. And if you guys manage to form a rift, I’ll make a dash for it.” She took a few quick steps back.
Hagar turned to Aratta. The two of them closed their eyes and formed a link.
They marshaled their powers. Then in concert, they blasted the nearby stretch of seam with all they had. For a moment, a tremor jolted the earth, and the facade over reality in the region went haywire. But then, almost immediately, conventional colors returned, three-dimensional perspective resumed, and the solidly of the ground was restored.
Lee couldn’t tell if their blast was enough to make a tear and form a rift. It was up to her to find out.
The response to the powerful energy discharge was almost instantaneous; from far away a great roar arose, washing over them. Lee shuddered at its vehemence and malice. A tremor came from the ground as thousands of people barreled toward them. She could hear howls and squeals and the sound of vegetation being trampled. It felt like a demonic horde was converging on their position.
Hagar and Aratta broke their link and faced the pandemonium. Their task now was to buy Lee time. Aratta turned his head toward her. “Run!” he bellowed.
Lee had stood transfixed and wide-eyed. At the sound of Aratta’s voice, she spun around and tore downhill, hunting for something approximating a rift, a tear in the seam big enough for her to get through.
Two short metal poles appeared in Aratta’s hands, and for a moment he whirred them about, forming a blur. A dozen paces from him, Hagar unfolded a three-section staff in one practiced motion, the connecting chain-links glittering in the sun. The two stood ready.
Aratta and Hagar didn’t need to fight them all to submission, merely buy Lee enough time to do her thing. The two could have mowed down the rushing swarm with miniguns. And this was an option, but it was a last resort option. Those charging their position were people: fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. All under compulsion of the human overmind. Hagar and Aratta were going to spare as many lives as was possible, for the eventuality that one day those people would regain their autonomy and reasoning faculty and resume a normal life. It was a fine line Aratta and Hagar were walking; a lot more than the lives of a few thousand humans was at stake. The fate of the planet hinged on whether the three of them would manage to convene a hearing.
And then the human wave surged through the trees and stampeded toward them. Aratta and Hagar had chosen their location well. It was a choke point: a section of a dirt road where the rock was blasted on both sides of the hill, forming two sheer cliffs with the pathway running between them. This funneled the incoming people to where the two stood, before they could aspire to reach Lee and prevent her from locating and then going through a rift. Aided by their reasoning faculty, people would have found roundabout ways. But those rushing Aratta and Hagar were under the control of an entity that operated on little more than a set of triggers and responses.
Aratta waved his cloak, and a spray of dust and sand arose and engulfed the throng of people who rushed them, disorienting and temporarily blinding them.
Aratta let loose a deep battle cry; Hagar, a piercing, blood-curdling shriek. The two crashed into the horde, and half a dozen bodies flew backward. Then the battle began in earnest. Hagar slid low into the human mass, striking knees and shinbones lightning fast, and people toppled like bowling pins. Somewhere ahead of her, Aratta leaped high into one of the side walls, pushing off it. His ebony cape billowed, and sudden clouds of dirt rose up in the air. And then he descended upon the human avalanche, wielding the two gleaming poles like sickles through a field of wheat.
Hagar’s piercing shriek grew louder and louder. A large flock of black birds answered her call, plummeting from the sky and joining the chaotic fray down below.
Lee halted for a split second and shot an astounded glance at the ferocious melee boiling in the distance. And she was off again, running. Parts of the terrain were murky with hints of things from beyond. With the battering of the seam by Hagar and Aratta, the barrier between the two worlds was thin enough for Lee to be able to dimly make out some elements in the other realm. Then she noticed an actual, sizable tear.
As she hurtled toward it, the rift traveled, like an oily bubble sliding along the seam. She hadn’t expected the rift to move—and faster than she could. It was worse than that. The rupture was slowly healing itself.
Lee stopped running, her breathing labored. There was intentionality behind the rift’s movements. She was like a magnet, repelling it. The overmind was not capable of shutting the breach between the worlds outright but was doing the next best thing. If it nudged it out of Lee’s way for long enough, the seam would seal on its own. Time was working against her.
But there was predictability in the push-pull dynamic her movements were eliciting, and an idea occurred to her. She was going to find out just how good her parkour and martial arts skills really were. Lee took a deep breath and raced toward a boulder where the portal appeared. As she expected, it started to shift its location as she drew near. She climbed the rock at a full run and almost immediately pushed as hard as she could, propelling
her body up and backward—into the rift that re-materialized behind her.
The overmind’s rending scream of rage and frustration came seemingly from everywhere. And then it was cut off as Lee left Earth and entered the parallel planet, Qataria.
Chapter 17
Sri Lanka Island, South of the Indian Subcontinent, Qataria
The children’s large tree house straddled an ancient, massive banyan tree with multiple trunks. The tree grew near the high bank of a placid lake. And one of the windows offered a clear view of the lake with its blossoming lotus flowers.
Maya and Baldar slept on wooden ledges, which every morning they pushed into a nook, along with their mats and linens. The twins reserved the precious floor space for the things they toiled on.
Obtaining propellers, metal sheets, and balsa wood, Baldar worked hours on end, constructing miniature vessels. He spent much of his time in Grease Alley, watching the mechanics work. Sometimes, he stayed the night with a group of them, listening to their heated discussions and taking mental notes of their sketches.
Every few weeks, Baldar would visit the town library. There he pored over lavish picture books that showed mechanical components and speculative ideas for novel contraptions. Baldar read and wrote better than his twin sister ever would, or would ever care to.
Nighttime was the most magical time for doing things, when the distant hum of dragonflies rose from the tranquil lake. Frequently, the two children would stay well past midnight, the soft glow of their floor did not dim the view of the sky alight with the glittering canopy of the Milky Way.
In recent weeks, Maya had been studying instructional illustrations. She carefully copied, over and over, the anatomical drawings. And more and more of her rolled canvases were added to the alcove above.
Baldar had spent that time working on a lens. A memorable chance encounter with a stranger had turned him on to the idea of building a telescope. The boy had obtained two thick circular slabs of glass and varying abrasive powders. He’d worked countless hours, moving one glass atop the other, gradually grinding and creating a depression in what would one day be the primary lens.
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