“I’ll sit the exam at least. I’m too sodding curious not to. It’s all your fault, you know. You’ve infected me with a taste for this sort of information.”
“This sort—”
“Deviant world levels.” Ari sighed with brief melancholy. “Part of the exam seems to deal with those. But the really important bits are the units on inter-world law and procedures. It’s a good thing I have some leave accrued. Holiday time, you know. I’ll put in for it so I can study.”
“Then there’s a lot of data in that cram book.”
“It’s quite thick, yes.”
“It sounds like my kind of intel.”
He turned his head and scowled at me. “It’s got a security restriction. You don’t have clearance.”
“I figured that. Why else the lock?”
He smiled.
“Look,” I said, “we, and I mean us personally, have had visitors from deviant worlds, first the apparition and then that guy who tried to break into our flat. Every bit of data I can gather about deviant world levels is important. I have need to know, Ari.”
“I can run your request by Spare14. That’s all I can do.”
“Judging from the things he said just now, he’ll turn any requests down until the Agency’s officially linked up with TWIXT. That’ll take months once the bureaucrats get involved.”
“Sorry. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
Ari and his damned procedures! We left the lawn and turned down the narrow side road where we’d left the car.
“Those intruders from other worlds.” I tried again. “They’re Chaos threats.”
“Yes.”
“Stopping Chaos threats is my job. I can’t do it without more information about this deviant—”
“No, I won’t let you read the sodding book.”
I knew better than to try giving him a direct order. I did what I usually do when I feel baffled: I got mad.
“Then I’ll just have to wheedle it out of you.” I kept my voice calm. “You might think of a few things you’d like. Things we haven’t tried yet.”
At first Ari merely looked puzzled. I sensed his Qi level spark upward when he realized what sort of “things” I meant.
“Nola, don’t,” he snapped.
“Don’t what?”
“Make my life miserable by trying to wheedle access to the sodding book.”
“You could just give in now.”
“No! I don’t care if you’re the bureau head. You don’t have the clearance to read it.”
So that’s it, I thought. He’d hated asking my permission to take the TWIXT exam so much that he was reasserting control. All right, O’Grady, I asked myself. Are you going to let him get away with this?
Aloud, I said nothing more until we reached the Saturn. I settled in to the passenger seat, Ari behind the wheel. He held the carrier bag upright between his ankles while he buckled on his seat belt, then picked it up and set it on his lap. I considered tactics. It was just possible that I could read the combination from his mind if I could catch him when he was opening it, but I was willing to bet he’d never open it in front of me. He noticed me staring at the bag.
“I’m going to keep this at the gym,” he said. “I have a secure locker there.”
He’d left me no alternative but treachery. I spent a moment pondering just what his most intense sexual fantasy might be. I had plenty of hints from the various activities we’d already sampled. The more I pondered, the more obvious it seemed.
“I bet you own a pair of handcuffs,” I said. “Maybe a couple of them. You are a cop, after all.”
“Yes, I do.” He glanced my way. “Why?”
“I bet you’ve got a pair that would fit me.”
I smiled at him, merely smiled, that is. I kept my own Qi under control for fairness’ sake, but I felt his Qi level spike.
“Nola, stop it!”
“Stop what? I’m merely thinking out loud. If there are sections in that book that give TWIXT codes, secret stuff like that, I would never read those. You could tape them shut. I only want the background material.”
He growled and stared out the windshield.
“Handcuffs and those black stockings you like so much,” I went on.
“Let’s just go home.”
“Is that a yes?”
“No!” He turned the key in the ignition with a macho flick of his wrist.
As we drove home, I stayed alert, watched the road, scanned the sidewalk, kept my eyes moving, but I saw no false images and nothing else abnormal or dangerous. Well, nothing, that is, if you don’t count the effects of Ari’s driving style, which produced a lot of blaring horns and obscene gestures from the other drivers on the road.
We survived to make it home. Ari settled on the couch with his laptop. I went into the bedroom and took off the sweater, the shirt, my athleisure shoes, and my healthful and utterly non-sexy white cotton socks. That left me wearing a black lace bra and jeans. When I came back to the living room, I noticed that he’d attached the Hebrew keyboard to his laptop and tucked the carrier bag underneath. I stayed standing, just beside the entrance to the hallway with my back against the side wall of the room.
“You don’t need to worry about me taking that bag from you,” I said. “It won’t do me any good without the combination.”
“Yes. That’s why there’s a lock.” He punched a couple of keys, then looked up. “I’m thinking of going to the gym. I can’t do my weights routine here. Run scans, will you? I don’t want to leave you alone if it’s not safe.”
“Okay. I’ll just be in the bedroom. After I run the scans, I’ll go through my underwear drawer.”
He said nothing, but I saw his jaw tighten.
“When you came back from Israel,” I went on, “I bought some new things that you haven’t seen yet, a black lace garter belt and stockings. They’d look good with this bra and the handcuffs.”
Ari winced. I felt the Qi begin to flow between us. He hit a few more keys. The laptop shut down.
“I’m going to the gym,” he said. “I need to get out of here. If you’re not safe, it’s your own sodding fault.”
“Why?” I leaned back against the wall and hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my jeans. This time I let Qi flow out toward him along with the smile. His face turned pink.
“Nola, stop it! I’m not going to give you the combination, and that’s that.”
“Okay. Then take the book out of the bag and just give me that.”
He set the laptop down on the coffee table, put the carrier bag beside it, and stood up. I let the stalemate hold while I scanned the Qi he was inadvertently releasing: a steady overflow with no hint of his irrational rage. He was annoyed, but he had good reason to be. What did come through was raw desire.
“I suppose,” Ari said, “that if I don’t let you read the sodding book, I’ll end up sleeping on the couch.”
“What? Of course not. I’d never do that to you. I’m only bargaining with—well, let’s call it refinements.” I gave him my best heavy-lidded smile. “Like the handcuffs and the black garter belt. With the stockings. Fishnets instead of lace if you prefer.”
“This is utterly unfair of you, and I’m not going along with it.” He took a couple of steps toward the hallway, which meant toward me. “I’m going to get my workout clothes out of the dryer and leave.”
I had one last weapon. It was my least favorite playtime activity, but damned if I was going to let him keep that book away from me.
“Yes, you should go. I’m being a bad girl.” I looked modestly down though I kept him in view through my eyelashes. “I deserve a spanking.”
Ari cracked. He walked over, caught me by the shoulders, and kissed me. I laid my hands flat on his chest.
“Just take the book out of the bag,” I said. “First.”
“But you won’t read the TWIXT code section?”
“I promise. Why would I want to?”
“Right.” He kissed me a
gain. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“I can.” I rubbed up against him. “It’s obvious how much you want to. I’ve been a very bad girl.”
He caught my hands in his, spread them away from my body and pressed me back against the wall. When he kissed me, he was oozing so much Qi that I started to sweat.
“I’ll just go change into something cooler.” I pulled a hand free and ran my fingers through his hair, also sweaty. “Just bring the book with you when you come into the bedroom.”
“You’re going to read it right away?” He kissed the side of my neck. “I think not.”
“No, I’m going to put it somewhere for safe keeping, where you can’t get it back until I’m done with it.”
Ari let me go and returned to the coffee table. He twirled the combination lock, then opened the bag and slid the book out. I took it from him.
“There,” he said. “You hide it. I’ll fetch the handcuffs.” He smiled, tight-lipped and tiger-eyed. “And your hairbrush.”
Some while later, I got dressed and left him asleep in the bedroom. I took the cram book into the living room, fetched a notebook and a pen, and gingerly sat down on a soft sofa cushion to read through the relevant sections. True to my word, I skipped the chapters on TWIXT legal codes. Oh, all right, I did glance at them. They had nothing I needed, and besides, they looked hideously complex.
The pages of background proved to be invaluable. The material covered the formation of deviant worlds and hinted at travel between them. Although the book supplied a lot of details, the basic principle was simplicity itself. Forget all those sci-fi stories about killing Hitler and changing history. Worlds split and deviated not because of human actions—or the actions of any other intelligent species—but by mathematically determined transformations inherent in the system of worlds. The multiverse turned out to be one huge fractal pattern, generating replicas and deviants of itself by its inherent nature.
The impetus or energy for this self-generation was still a mystery, according to the text. The astrophysicists on Spare14’s level tended to believe that “quantum fluctuation” or “foam” lay behind the deviations. Although the process could be expressed by enormously complex mathematical formulae, the book showed none of those. I guess the authors figured that mathematical geniuses wouldn’t want to join TWIXT.
A fractal pattern like the famous Mandelbrot Set only transforms along three axes: Vertical, Horizontal, and Time. In the multiverse, the transformations occur in Time and some unknown number of spatial dimensions. Like Numbersgrrl once told me, they shoot off in all directions. The process can generate splits at varying times in a level’s existence. Thus two “cousin worlds” might be strikingly similar if the one had recently been generated from the other, or conversely, surprisingly different if the split lay in the distant past.
The book used an elaborate analogy to explain these principles. It postulated cars of the same brand and model parked one above the other in a multilevel car park. Although the cars were identical when they left the factory, different owners used them for different journeys. They let individual kinds of junk pile up in the trunks and glove compartments as well. In some cases an owner might even have painted a car in some eccentric way. The result would be a set of cars that had most things in common while displaying significantly distinct features.
Gates between worlds would then be like elevators in the car park. No one could simply jump through the concrete floors that separated the nearly identical cars. A person desiring to move from Car A to Car B had to walk up the spiral ramps or take the direct elevator from floor to floor. The analogy broke down at that point because in the multiverse there are no ramps, and the elevators do not stop at every floor.
With time, cousin worlds move too far apart to “continue to share information,” as the cram book put it. I took that as meaning they could no longer be reached one from the other. Thus a world-walker could find only recently separated and thus somewhat similar worlds. The information stopped there with a couple of cryptic notes. Recruits had to pass the exam and become sworn agents before they learned how to travel from world to world. Luckily, I already had some information on that subject.
I was just putting my notes away in my computer desk when I heard Ari go into the bathroom. In a minute he came into the living room, yawning, stretching, grinning at me. He’d put on his jeans and a red 49ers T-shirt, both of which showed off his assets. He walked over, caught me by the waist, and kissed me. I laced my hands behind his neck and pulled him down for a second kiss.
“I hope I didn’t actually hurt you,” he said.
“You didn’t, no. You were surprisingly moderate with that hairbrush. Merciful, even.”
“Good, though mercy was certainly more than you deserved. Have you taken a look at the book yet?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m done with it. You can have it back.”
He pulled back to study my face. “Already?” He sounded strangely disappointed.
“Yeah. I learned in college how to speed read through that kind of material. Why? What’s wrong?”
“I was hoping you’d want to bargain for a second look at it.”
“Nope. Sorry. No more of that fancy stuff.” I was half-sincere, half-teasing him, because the entire experience with the handcuffs and so on had turned out to be much more pleasurable than I’d anticipated. “You’ll have to wait until I want some more classified information out of you.”
“I’d better do well on that exam, then. Nothing like a little motivation.”
“If you pass, will they give you more data?”
“So Spare14 gave me to understand. Which reminds me. While you were off communing with the saints, I told Spare about our burglar and that bluish sphere. He confirmed that the device had transport capabilities.”
“Does he think that guy will come back?”
“No. He admitted that the transport type of orb is very rare.”
“Which means there are other types.”
“I can’t confirm that.” He was grinning at me. “You don’t have the right clearance.”
“Very cute, Mr. Nathan.”
He laughed, then kissed me. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.” It felt surprisingly good to say. “I really do.”
“Then why won’t you marry me?”
I suppressed a snarl. “Because you’re a stubborn bastard who doesn’t know when to stop badgering me about it.”
“That should be a recommendation, not a drawback. It shows I’m sincere.”
I groaned and slipped out of his grasp. “Let’s get something to eat,” I said. “After all that exercise, I’m hungry.”
CHAPTER 5
AFTER A BRIEF EXCHANGE OF E-MAIL, I received Y’s permission to turn Belial’s consciousness over to TWIXT. By contrast, the TWIXT offer of liaison presented difficulties. In a trance meeting late on Wednesday morning, Y tried to explain.
“For one thing, I’m worried about security,” Y said, “since TWIXT has psychics. The threat you call the Cryptic Creep is bad enough, and now you tell me that this Spare fellow managed to get information that Nathan thought was classified.”
“That’s true, but if we liaise with TWIXT, they’ll be our allies, not another threat.”
Y’s trance image crossed its arms, stuck out its lower lip, and sulked, but only for a few seconds. The image blinked out. Hiding your emotions in the trance state sometimes requires an image reboot. In a second or two he returned to his usual august self, a Japanese-American man of middle age, his thick hair streaked with gray, but still a good-looking guy, really, even with his wire-framed glasses.
“Don’t forget,” I said, “that Saint Maurice vetted Spare14.”
“Yes, that’s true.” Y heaved a dramatic sigh. “At times we must throw the fishing line of truth into the waters of darkness and see what takes the bait. I’ll admit to being relieved at having Belial off our hands.”
“So am I. And I think you’ll f
ind Spare easy to talk to, if you decide to arrange a face-to-face meeting.”
“All in good time, Nola.” His image betrayed him with a scowl, and he changed the subject. “About this Cryptic Creep person, any more visitations?”
“None so far.”
“Good. Where do you get these names, anyway? You must have read comic books when you were a girl. Batman, things like that.”
“I did. I was obsessive about the X-Men. But, look, Spare14 will be here in an hour to pick up Belial. What shall I tell him about the liaison?”
“That his proposal is under advisement. We’ll be having a top-level meeting about it tomorrow.”
With that, Y closed down without even a good-bye. The sulk baffled me until I mentioned it to Ari.
“He’s afraid of losing control of his unit,” Ari said, “or of having to share the control. I saw a lot of that in the army. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t want a military career.”
“You mean he’s jealous of Spare?”
“No, not personally. He merely sees Spare as a threat of sorts to his power base within the Agency. Or so I’d guess. I don’t know the man, of course, but it’s a common pattern.”
“It makes perfect sense,” I said. “But at the same time, Spare’s offering something Y really wants, that policing capacity.”
“True. He must feel torn.”
I worried for reasons of my own about one aspect of this sudden involvement with TWIXT. Before Spare14 turned up, Ari had assured me that as an Interpol officer he had no authority to interfere with my efforts to bring my father home. As a member of TWIXT, he’d be duty-bound to stop me and Michael from breaking the terms of Dad’s parole—assuming, of course, that he’d been paroled—by taking him from his world to ours. I doubted if we could find out where he was and get him out of there before Ari became a sworn officer of the trans-world police.
“By the way,” Ari went on, “speaking of Spare14 and all that, my request for leave’s been approved.”
“How much do you have accrued?”
“Three weeks. That should be more than enough to study for the exam. The legal material’s fairly simple.”
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