HOME (The Portal Series, Book 3)

by Bowker, Richard;

  He was staring up at Via.

  She thought she saw tears glistening in those bloodshot eyes.

  “My lady, this man is named Liber,” Decius said, pulling on the man’s sleeve to get his attention. He turned to her and, finally, bowed. “Liber was a viator—or as close to one as we have found.”

  “He’s a drunkard,” the queen replied. She had seen enough drunkards in Gallia. It seemed likely that her son would turn into one.

  Liber bowed again. “I am sober at the moment, my lady,” he said.

  Yes, he was sober. And she could tell from his gaze that he was not afraid of her. That was good. She had no use for people who told her only what she wanted to hear.

  “The man says he knows about Via,” Feslund said. “He told us that—”

  “Do not tell me what he knows,” Gretyx interrupted. “I feel certain that he will tell me himself.”

  She turned her attention back to Liber. “Well, then?”

  He shrugged. “I attended the schola here in Urbis until I left, of my own choice. But I learned much while I was here. I learned the secrets of the priesthood. I know what the priests do not speak of.”

  “And what is that?”

  “They do not mention that it is all a lie,” he said.

  She didn’t understand. “What is a lie?”

  He gestured around him. “The temple. The religion. The gods. None of it is real. Only Via is real.”

  She still didn’t understand. “The gods are not real?”

  “None of it is real,” he repeated. “They are lies the priests have told us—or allowed us to believe.”

  And now she found herself becoming angry. Was the man mad? Why was he wasting her time? “And what is the truth?” she demanded.

  Now he sighed, as if speaking the truth were a burden for him. “The truth, my lady, is this: there are numberless worlds—whole universes, really. More than you can possibly imagine. Some that are like ours, some that are very different. And Via is nothing more than a device that lets us travel to these other worlds. In fact, it likely came from one of these worlds. The gants that the Gallians used to conquer Urbis came from a world called Gaia. They are not a gift from the gods. Viators went into Via to obtain them from Gaia and bring them back to Terra.”

  The one time Gretyx had met that boy—what was his name?—he had said something like this about the gants. But what this fellow said was absurd. “How can there be numberless worlds?” she asked. “There is only Terra.”

  “No, my lady, there is not. That is the secret the priests have hidden from the ordinary people. And that is the secret you must understand if you are to rule Terra.”

  “But why would the priests lie?”

  “Because most people cannot understand the truth. It makes no sense to them, as it makes no sense to you.”

  “We have sent soldiers inside Via,” Gretyx pointed out. “They have not come back out.”

  “Via is dangerous unless you know what you are doing,” Liber replied. “Visiting other worlds carries with it many risks. Viators know what they are doing, and even so, many of them do not return. I am not surprised that your soldiers did not return either.”

  “The soldiers died because they disrespected the gods,” Feslund said. “Because we disrespected the gods. We know better now. We give Via the honor it deserves.”

  “Then you will fail,” Liber responded. “You cannot succeed in ruling Terra without using Via the way the priests used it. You have your weapons, but that is all you have. Eventually the gants will run out of power, and then you will have nothing. People will say that the gods turned against you. But that won’t be true. You will fail because you are afraid, and because you will not use the knowledge I am offering you.”

  “This is absurd,” Feslund said. “Decius, why have you brought us this fool?”

  “Because he knows abou Via, my lord, and we don’t,” Decius replied.

  “Come with me into Via, my lady,” Liber interrupted softly.

  Everyone turned to look at him. “What?” Feslund demanded.

  “I can talk forever about Via,” Liber said, still addressing her. “But you cannot know the truth about it until you experience it for yourself. So come with me. You will be safe—I promise you.”

  “You are not taking the queen with you into Via,” Feslund said. “I will not allow it.”

  Liber ignored Feslund. “My lady?” he said, gazing at her.

  Gretyx stared back at him. She didn’t care about her son’s opinion, or Decius’s. She realized that she had a question. “What do you mean, ‘numberless worlds’?” she asked.

  “No one knows how many. People on some of these worlds even think that every time you make a decision or take an action, a new world splits off. Every choice of every person in all of history creates another world—one where you turned left, one where you turned right. One where Prince Feslund said yes, one where he said no. So many worlds that it is impossible to count them; it is impossible even to imagine them. These other worlds interpenetrate ours, in ways that I cannot describe and do not understand. They are not far away; they are right here, only not here. You will say that this sounds like drunken nonsense, and I cannot disagree. Other people have other ideas about the number of worlds; they say there has to be a limit to them, that some worlds are more likely to exist than others. But no matter who is correct, Via allows us to visit other worlds and return from them. That is what you must see for yourself.”

  Gretyx pondered this. “Every world is a choice not taken,” she said finally.

  “Yes, my lady. Your choices—everyone’s choices—branching without end, throughout all of time. Again, I do not pretend to understand this idea, and it may very well be wrong.”

  “He is a madman,” Feslund insisted. “A drunken madman.”

  The idea was absurd. Yes, of course it was. But it was also absurd that here she sat, with all of Terra at her command, barely able to move, barely able to breathe.

  Gretyx stood up. The temple was silent. “I will go with you,” she said to Liber.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  She stared up at Via. It seemed as if she had been sitting in the silent temple staring at it forever. Time had stopped; her life had stopped.

  “Take me to a world where my daughter is still alive,” she ordered the viator.

  Six

  Liber

  “My lady,” Liber replied. “I cannot do that.”

  “So then you were lying to me?”

  “No. I do not have the knowledge; I do not have the ability. Hieron did not approve of traveling to worlds very similar to our own, so viators were never taught how. In any case, it is not something I would recommend. If your daughter is alive in another world, it is likely that you yourself are also alive. That will inevitably complicate things.”

  “I do not care about complications,” the queen replied. “I just want to see Siglind once more—living, breathing, laughing.”

  “I am sorry, my lady. I simply cannot do it. I can bring you to another world, though—a fascinating world, far different from ours.”

  Gretyx sat back down and waved her hand in dismissal. “I am not interested,” she said. She closed her eyes.

  “I am not interested either,” Feslund said. “Decius, get rid of this madman.”

  But Decius slowly shook his head. “I will go with him into Via,” he replied. “If you approve, my lord,” he added.

  Feslund looked as if he wanted to object, but then he merely shrugged. “As you wish,” he said.

  Decius turned to Liber. “What do we do?”

  Liber wasn’t happy. It was the Gallians he needed to convince, not Decius. But it appeared that he had no choice. “We cannot go in these robes,” he said. “We must find the right clothes downstairs, and then we will enter Via.”

  He bowed to Feslund and the queen. The queen still had her eyes closed; Feslund ignored him. So he turned away and walked towards the door behind the altar that led to t
he stairs. Decius followed him.

  Liber could feel his heart starting to race. Back into Via! He gazed at it once more as he walked past. He hadn’t been allowed to use it often—and then only with a senior viator—but oh, when he did, the excitement, the power! Stepping out into an alien world—ah, there was nothing like it.

  “So, you believe me?” he asked Decius as they walked down the wooden staircase.

  “It seems absurd, as Feslund says, but I think perhaps I do,” Decius replied. “What kind of world are we visiting?”

  “You will see.”

  He found the clothes where they had always been, in the bowels of the temple, in a long room off the main corridor. They were carefully washed after every trip and arranged on wooden hangers with labels above them. The labels were just numbers; the viators had visited far too many worlds to name them all. And of course, most worlds had multiple languages and therefore multiple names: Earth. Terra. Tierra. Terre. Aarde. Zemlya. So many languages. He had learned only a few in his time at the schola.

  He found the number he was looking for. “These will fit you well enough,” he said, handing Decius a hooded yellow jacket, a brown shirt, thick pants, and boots.

  Decius eyed them quizzically. “It is cold there?” he asked.

  “You have never experienced such cold,” Liber replied. “You will encounter much that you have never experienced.”

  Decius shrugged and donned the clothes. “The jacket is too light to protect us from the cold,” he pointed out.

  “You will be surprised.”

  “I don’t know how to close it up.”

  “Just press the two sides together.”

  Decius pressed them, and the sides connected. No buttons; nothing. He looked baffled, as Liber had the first time he had donned such a jacket.

  Liber put on his outfit. In the old days, devoted temple assistants would have assisted with such mundane tasks and explained clothing items like the jacket. No more.

  Behind the racks of clothes were drawers built into the walls.. He opened one and took out some paper currency. “What are those?” Decius asked.

  “It’s money. Like coins on Terra. We will need it.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “No need to understand.”

  Liber put the money in the pocket of his pants. Then he looked at Decius and nodded. “Good enough,” he said. “Let’s go back upstairs.”

  They returned to the temple’s nave. Feslund had pulled up a chair next to his mother and was lounging in it, looking bored and irritated. “You look ridiculous,” he said when he saw them.

  “Yes, my lord,” Liber replied. “And your outfit would look ridiculous in the world we will be visiting. We are now entering Via. I do not know when we will return.”

  “Do you expect us to wait for you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “When you come back, what will you have accomplished?”

  “Then, my lord, we will possess the key to your triumph on Terra.”

  “But I have already triumphed. Here I am—ruling the priests’ empire.”

  “As you say, my lord. But now you must ensure that the triumph continues.”

  Feslund shrugged and did not bother to reply.

  Liber gave the briefest of bows and walked up the steps to the altar, followed by Decius. He stared at Via. How beautiful it was! Oh, how he had missed it! It beckoned to him, like a lover who wanted him to possess her. Oh, yes!

  “Pull up the hood of your jacket,” he instructed Decius.

  Decius did as he was told.

  If you looked hard enough, you could see a rectangle of darkness among the shifting blues of Via’s surface. That was the right way to enter it. He took a step, and then another, and then he was inside, pulling Decius after him. They stood there together and looked around. They couldn’t see out; the temple had disappeared. All they could make out were the shimmering blue waves of light that enveloped them.

  There is nothing easier. And nothing more difficult.

  That’s what his mentor, Tiberius Rufus, had said. Of course, that was not helpful at all; most of what Rufus had to say to him had not been especially helpful. Nothing was helpful, really, except doing it. Moving your hands over a set of controls that one could barely feel, that barely seemed real; making the motions that somehow corresponded to the world you wanted to visit. Why did these motions matter? What did these controls do? Rufus didn’t know; no one knew. Perhaps they didn’t matter. Affron didn’t seem to think they did. Only your mind mattered, he insisted. But how did he know? He’d had little more experience with Via than Liber when he made such statements.

  In any case Liber had done what Rufus told him to do. He had copied the motions that Rufus had taught him, and together they had stepped out of Via into Tierra, Terre, Aarde…into 14702.

  And that is what he did now, hoping that his hands would remember what his brain could not. Because if they got it wrong, who knows what wretched world he and Decius would step into? And even if it wasn’t wretched, would it contain the prize he sought?

  “What happens now?” Decius asked.

  “Now we are silent,” Liber muttered. And he set his hands to work. When he was done, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Was it right? He had no idea. But he could do no better. “Come,” he said.

  He walked forward, out of Via, out of the shimmering blue light, into bitter cold and howling wind.

  He looked around.

  He smiled.

  Yes, he thought.

  14702.

  Seven

  Decius

  Liber grabbed his arm, or else the wind would have knocked Decius into the deep snow. “Come,” Liber shouted, pointing to a building of some kind about a hundred paces distant.

  Decius staggered forward through the snow, holding on to Liber. If this was what other worlds looked and felt like, he wanted no part of them. Besides the building, he could make out trees and distant mountains. And something…ah, he could scarcely describe it. Something in the distance, in front of the mountains, shimmering and round and impossibly large.

  They made their way to the building. Decius realized that he was not as cold as he expected to be. The pockets of his jacket kept his hands warm. The jacket’s hood even seemed to warm the exposed skin of his face. How did it do that?

  And then he made the mistake of looking up. He saw something gliding in the gray sky far above them. It was far too large to be a hawk or any other bird, and it moved far too fast. He pointed to it. “That,” was all he could manage to say.

  Liber looked up but said nothing.

  Next to the building were rows of black machines resting on the snow. How did they not sink into the snow? What were they for? Liber ignored them and approached the building. It seemed to be made entirely of dark glass. As they reached the building, an opening appeared, as if the building had sensed their presence. They walked inside, and the building closed up behind them.

  “Where are we?” Decius asked. “What is happening?”

  Liber didn’t respond. “Over here,” he said. He led Decius to a room that glowed with a strange blue light. In front of the room was a gray table. “Take off your jacket,” he said. “Put it on the table.”

  Decius did as he was told. The table disappeared into the glowing room and then returned, without his jacket. Liber did the same thing.

  “How do we get the jackets back?” Decius asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Liber replied. “The room will remember us.”

  What did that mean? Decius was trembling. The building was warm, though he saw no fireplaces, no braziers. There was light, although he saw no lamps or torches. The air had a strange smell, something like a flower—roses? But he saw no roses.

  “Come,” Liber said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the city. There are more wonders to see, but we are not here for the wonders.”

  Now he led Decius to a staircase. It looked familia
r enough, except that the stairs moved, appearing from beneath the floor and heading down below the building. Next to it was another staircase where the stairs moved up into the floor.

  “Hold my arm,” Liber said. “It’s been a long time since I did this.” Then Liber stepped onto a stair and Decius stumbled after him, grasping Liber with one hand and a moving railing with the other.

  They headed down, far underground, as if by magic. The staircase finally ended, and they hopped off onto a solid floor. Now they were in a long high-ceilinged hall, with a sunken area in the middle. And here he saw his first people, standing in front of the sunken area. Many of them wore a strange device in front of their eyes. How could they see? Their hair was shades of blue and green and purple. Some had rings in their noses. He had never seen people like them.

  “Do not stare at anyone,” Liber warned. “Act as if you have seen these sites for your entire life.”

  Decius looked at the words written on the walls; some of the letters seemed familiar, but the words didn’t make sense. This wasn’t Latin. But in any case the letters of the words glowed. And every few seconds they would rearrange themselves into different words. “Can you understand this language?” he asked Liber.

  “A little. It’s easier to learn than many, because it’s based on Latin, although much changed.”

  Decius heard another person speaking. From where? He could see no one. And then he felt a vibration that turned into a rumble. He saw a dark metal machine, at least two hundred paces long, gliding into the sunken area of the hall. It came to a stop and along its length doors slid open—again, apparently by themselves. “Come,” Liber said, and he walked through the open door nearest them.

  Inside, people were sitting on long benches facing each other. Liber found two empty spaces. “Sit,” he said.

  They sat.

  “Do not stare,” Liber reminded him.

  Decius couldn’t help staring. All the people wore strange, multi-colored clothes. Most wore devices that covered their eyes. Many also had devices covering their ears. Only a few were like Liber and himself, their heads unadorned, looking silently out the windows.