Mobius

by Garon Whited

  I flexed my hand, slowly, and rotated it a few times. The ball continued to hover around it and my fingers made faintly-glittering, short, prismatic trails through the substance of it. Eventually, it let go of my hand—if that’s the right phrase for something immaterial—and drifted back to the Energy Ellipse. I couldn’t detect any change in my hand. I couldn’t detect any change in my ring, either, so I wondered what the ball was trying to do.

  Weird, but I’ve grown surprisingly comfortable with weird.

  I took my waterfall for the sunset and armored up. Leisel came down the tunnel while I dressed and helped me latch everything.

  “I’ve never seen armor catches like these.”

  “Clever, aren’t they?” I asked. I realized as I spoke the only fasteners I’d seen were buckles on armor or laces on clothing. They haven’t developed latches or buttons, much less zippers and Velcro. Still, if they weren’t wearing armor, they usually weren’t wearing a whole lot. The climate was rather warm in this region. They might not need much in the way of garment closures.

  “Very clever,” she agreed. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Stand guard outside. Bronze will also be standing guard, but on the inside. Once I shut the door, I don’t want anything coming in.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until I open it.”

  “And if you scream for help?”

  “Leisel. Look at me.” I looked her in the eyes. “There are two reasons that door will open. I will open it, or something disastrous will happen to it as something horrible comes out of it. Leave it alone no matter what you hear or see. Bright lights, unearthly screams, smells of death, cries for help—ignore all of it. If it’s happening inside, it’s my problem. Your focus is on what’s outside. If you are moved to action for any reason, the first and only question is, ‘Do I have to open the door?’ If the answer is ‘yes,’ don’t do it, even if it means doing nothing. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Oh, and if something disastrous does happen—the door catches fire and explodes, for example—run.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “No, but it is a suggestion based on prior experience.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind, sir.”

  I gathered all the crystals, sorted through my stuff, carefully laid it all out, checked my spells, and made sure everything was ready. Leisel went outside to stand guard and Bronze took up station on the inside, to the left of the door.

  What do I do with a glowing ball of light? I wondered for a minute and finally decided to temporarily lock it in. It should be fine, protected inside the containment diagram.

  Now, the moment of truth. A horde of thoughts ran through my head. Has the Orb found a magical universe and a suitable cat’s-paw for casting cloaking spells? Have I wasted all this time and effort in setting up another launcher only to lose it? Can I move it all somewhere else and sit on it, checking periodically to see if the Orb’s defenses slip? Or would it be a waste of time? What do I do if the micro-gate in my ring fails to achieve a—

  Lock!

  The micro-portal opened and the scrying spell slipped through. The mirror faded into a view of the far side. I had the scrying spell set for a psychic image rather than a direct conduit—sunlight is bad for vampires—so I could see the Orb without much trouble. It was in a massive pile of rubble, surrounded by broken concrete, twisted steel, and shattered glass. At a guess, a building fell on it. Looking at the concrete and steel, I’d say a big building.

  My first thought was, What did the Orb do? I’m not sure how or who or why, but where there’s widespread misery and destruction, I’m not surprised to find my Orb of Evil.

  I switched gate vantage points and suppressed a momentary panic. It was daytime there. I watched for a while as workers cleared rubble and craned large pieces of wreckage onto trucks. Clearly, this was not the moment of the disaster. There were no fires, no smoke, only the slow, painful process of hauling away a heap of broken images and handfuls of dust.

  I did some searching in the immediate vicinity. The place was a mess. Some major metropolitan area was liberally coated with dust and gravel. Tall buildings surrounded the wreckage of what must have been a fallen skyscraper. Flecks of shattered glass were everywhere, like glitter after the stone golem’s bachelor party. The demolished building was a heap of broken material, wide and tall. A series of metal girders still stood, like twisted, terrible gates into a ruined and dusty Hell.

  How deep was the Orb? I parked my viewpoint near it again and did some scrying around. It was jammed tight inside the crushed remains of a basement or other floor below ground level. The crushed remnants around it looked like those pay lockers where you give them money, stash your stuff, and take the key. I couldn’t be certain, but my limited ability to look around gave me the impression the Orb was buried on a subway level, deep under the actual skyscraper. It could be weeks before anyone dug down to it.

  This could be a problem. How do I get the thing out when there’s no room for an Orb-sized opening? I can brute-force a pinpoint opening anywhere there’s a suitable gap. But something nearly a foot across? A brute-force gate has to physically appear in both locations. I didn’t see any free space large enough anywhere nearby.

  Well, universes tend to skip a bit when I open gates to them. If I close down the Ring of Spying and open it again, maybe several times in succession, I might get a forward skip. If they dig it up for me, all I have to do is find the poor guy who walks away with it. If I’m really lucky, I may even find a point where someone has dug down almost to it before the end of the day.

  I tried it. Some of the reconnects had a time differential of one-to-one or worse—I only disconnected for a moment in between—but a few skipped ahead an hour or a day. True, some of these were visions during the day, which I did not appreciate, but I’m looking through a scrying spell, not risking my naked eyeballs. The daylight is merely unnerving, not dangerous. It’s like watching a sunrise on the television from another time zone, with only a mild phobia about immolation.

  I kept at it for a while. Every so often, the connection would skip ahead, so I made progress. Eventually, I felt they were getting close enough. The workers were digging through rubble below street level, now, and my scrying told me the Orb might be uncovered any day. As for me, well, between a Saber of Sharpness and the inhuman strength of a vampire, I felt I could manage to dig out the Orb. It helped to know exactly where it was, and to know exactly what I was looking for.

  This meant going through my escape gate—the only one large enough for me—and maintaining a connection through the micro-gate in my Ring of Spying. I hadn’t planned on a physical trip, but I had a lot of extra crystals. Plus, Leisel was guarding the door outside while Bronze guarded the door inside… It wasn’t part of the plan, but no plan survives contact with the enemy.

  I put my ring on the table to anchor my micro-gate and brought the tongs. A quick look around saw only a couple of security guards, each sitting in a portable building by a road-access gate. I arrived already inside their perimeter and avoided them. Before long, I was hefting slabs of concrete and sections of cut girder out of the way. It was only ten or twelve feet farther down and I went through the pile like a kid through a sandbox.

  The Orb was not having a ball, to say the least. It was delighted to be dug up, anticipating a new victim to dominate and control. It was not pleased to be hauled out of a dusty hole by a pair of tongs. Of course, there wasn’t a trace of dust on it. It was also shocked to see me.

  You!

  “Me,” I agreed. “How did you get yourself into this mess?”

  You are not the only one who has made enemies across the universes.

  “Really? Who did you piss off?”

  Do you think I would tell you?

  “No, but I had to ask, didn’t I?”

  Of course. But to tell you of my enemies is to tell you of potential allies—and even you are not so foolish.

  “
Fair point. Last I saw you, you were a gallstone in the formless void.”

  The Things of the void come in many forms, and many are susceptible even to the control of human minds.

  “Ah, so that’s how you got to an Earth analog. Flew up to the edge of the multidimensional space and jumped in? Or became projectile vomit, I should say.”

  I had little choice, as you well know!

  “And you’ve been in this low-magic universe ever since?”

  Fool! it sneered. Do you think yourself the only traveler across the multiverse? There are other worlds than these, and weak places where one requires only the will to cross! Had I found even one weak place into a world beyond the realms of Earth, you would never have found me!

  I silently cursed the variable time rates of alternate realities. The Orb may have been rolling around for a thousand years or thousands of years. There was no way to tell how much damage it might have done.

  Then the import of its revelation really came home to me: There are natural (or natural-ish) places where the borders between worlds are weak. How weak? Weak enough to let people slip through. There may be a whole network of… not gates, exactly, but maybe rat-holes in the wainscoting of the universes!

  “So you’ve been stuck in Earth timelines, have you? They’re pretty much low-magic, aren’t they?”

  The only answer was a deeper sense of hatred.

  “Okay, be that way. Come along.”

  What do you intend?

  “Ideally, I’d like to destroy you, as you know.”

  The feeling is mutual.

  “I know. But I have things to do and you apparently had a good long time to do as you pleased without me. I figure it’s fair to take a turn.”

  How so?

  “I think it’s time to cram you in a box.”

  You will not contain me! it snarled. I can conquer your will!

  “Tongs,” I pointed out.

  You cannot contain me! it shrieked.

  “No? Not even in a deep cavern under a mountain, embedded inside inlaid diagrams of incorruptible metal, and spells of such power as to preserve it all against the ending of the world?”

  I am inevitable. I am eternal! I am indestructible! And I promise you, I will always return to claim you as the vessel of my consciousness!

  “As soon as you overcome the power of your nemesis.”

  You are a poor nemesis, it sneered. Your power is my power!

  “Oh, not me. I was thinking of your true nemesis—tongs.”

  It screamed wordless fury at me, but so what? It couldn’t reach me. Behold, the power of tongs!

  “Now, now,” I told it. “You’re being naughty. We both know temper tantrums only feel good while you’re having them.”

  Yeah, it was angry. I was okay with it being angry. It would be distracted while I switched my gate spell to return to the launch setup. As I hoisted it, climbing out of the hole, someone—presumably a security guard, although why anyone would guard a pit full of rubble is beyond me—shouted at me to stop. I suspect the Orb’s angry emanations made people uneasy for miles. It probably made the snoozing guard prick up his ears and look around. I’d have thought my digging would have woken him long before.

  I ignored him. Even if he shot me, it wouldn’t matter. Some things are beneath my notice, and a small-caliber handgun at long range, at night, while I’m armored up? Pfui. I don’t see this as a problem.

  I stepped through my momentary gate and let it snap shut behind me. Immediately, I lowered the angry Orb into the bottom half of the sabot-form. It nestled nicely in the depression, but the Orb was slightly larger than I thought. I never actually measured it, so I guesstimated. I was close, at least. Close enough so the remaining foam inside the outer sphere compressed and allowed it to fit. I applied a layer of glue to the rim.

  I am going to eat your soul! it screamed, helplessly.

  “Shouting didn’t do you any good in the ruins. Now we’re in a cave. Scream all you want.”

  You will live ten thousand years imprisoned in the boiling sea of guilt and fear underneath your own mind!

  “Yeah, well, you’re going to have to figure out a way to break the spells to even see out, so forgive me if I’m not quaking in terror. Then you’re going to have to work out how to break the containment. Then you’re going to have to find your own Gollum to carry you out. Considering where I’m putting you, you won’t find fungus, much less a person. I’ve had a lot of time to think about your prison!”

  There is no prison you can devise which I shall not shatter. Our powers are too similar. Whatever you can build, I can destroy—and I shall!

  “No doubt,” I agreed, amiably enough. “I accept you’ll eventually worm your way out of anything. But, for the next year, the next ten thousand years, the next eon or three, you won’t be in my hair. That’s all I can really hope for and expect.”

  When I am free again, I will break your heart before I break your mind!

  “You know, you remind me of a dog one of my neighbors used to have,” I said, finishing with the glue. “He ran out to the end of his chain and barked a lot, too.”

  I will re-take your physical self to seed a thousand women so I may slay your children!

  “Bark. Barkbarkbark. Arf!”

  The Orb screamed at me again, a wordless blast of rage. I felt it reaching for me, straining to touch my thoughts, but all it could do without contact was scream. I picked up the electric screwdriver.

  “In the doghouse, mutt,” I told it, and put the other half of the plastic form on. I drove in the screws to shut it. I wanted it thinking in terms of magical seals, ancient labyrinths, terrible guardians, prophecies of doom, all that sort of thing. I didn’t want it thinking about ways to avoid being sucked into an event horizon until tidal forces ripped open the container.

  I loaded it into the pipe, screwed everything together, and took a listen. I couldn’t hear it in there, but I’m immorally certain it was hating at me. I was equally certain it was already planning some cleverness about how to summon something, manipulate someone, or even draw energy from the secondary containment. Well, good for it. I left it to its planning while I took care of mine.

  I didn’t cast the final gate spell more than eight or nine times. I did cast it multiple times, mostly because I wasn’t happy with the first ones. It’s not that I missed, exactly, but I wanted it placed perfectly, oriented precisely. When I finally worked out the precise system for aiming it—I should have done this beforehand!—I cast it again, using power at a ruinous rate to overcome the spatial distortion of high gravity and park it as close as possible. It was still a long way off from the event horizon—a collapsed galaxy in a dying universe is no laughing matter—but the gate was motionless relative to the target, and the air cannon would give the Orb a good kick. Gravity would do the rest… eventually.

  I switched the micro-gate to the cannon gate. Instantly, a wild rushing sound and a metallic pinging noise told me the pipe was now in vacuum. My spells and tendrils held the Orb stable while the air in front of it was sucked away.

  With the barrel now in vacuum, I pulled the lever. There was a hissing whump! Air blasted down the barrel of my air cannon. The Orb, unrestrained by any air pressure in front of it, launched like a ping-pong ball from a shotgun. I switched the cannon-gate to spy-ring-and-mirror to watch. The projectile was already tiny and getting perceptibly farther away by the second. I watched it for several minutes, making sure the plastic bullet was on course, flying blindly and ballistically through space, down into the inexorable—even inevitable and possibly eternal—gravity of a cosmic garbage disposal. It had quite a long way to go, even in astronomical terms. I couldn’t park a gate any closer than several light-years away, so the Orb could be falling for a century or more.

  Too late, it occurred to me to put an inertia-damping spell on it. With no inertia, it would immediately accelerate to the highest possible speed. That is, it would instantly reach terminal velocity for a falling object. Sin
ce the medium through which it fell was rather thin, being outer space, the terminal velocity would be quite high. It might even exceed the speed of light, since the limiting factor on acceleration is based on mass…

  Then again, I would have to affect not just the casing, but the Orb, itself. It’s a construct of magic, not a normal object. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing I didn’t try it. I’d hate to toss it through a gate and watch it disintegrate, or go back in time—again!—by going faster than light. I’m not even sure I can cast a spell directly on the Orb.

  Somehow, I don’t feel at all bad about missing the opportunity for experimentation.

  I sat and watched it as it fell toward the infinite blackness of the singularity. I intended observe until it was too far away for even my eyes to make out. I had to call it quits sooner than I liked, though. I hadn’t planned on a physical excursion, and the power-intensive work of establishing a brute-force gate so deep in a gravity well cost me more than I expected. Maintaining it there wasn’t a problem with the space-stabilizing spheres, but I put it as close as I could in the first place.

  Now that I think on it, could I have put an Orb-tossing gate through earlier, covered in space-stabilizing spheres? It could fall into the gravity well and act as a gate locus in a stable spacetime environment! In theory, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. On the other hand, chucking the Orb through it would be problematic. There would be no way to control the orientation of the gate from this end, so launching the Orb through would be in a random direction. And if I didn’t time it properly, the target gate could, conceivably, cross the event horizon while open.

  I think it’s something to research, but not yet suitable for use as an anti-Orb weapon. If it ever comes back, maybe, but for now, the Orb is blindfolded, in a dying universe, and falling into the largest black hole I could find. Eventually—if it didn’t fall directly in—it would find time slowing to a crawl as it approached the speed of light, making it even less likely to escape its blindfold, much less the event horizon.