Wyrmhole: Jack Stein #1 New Edition

by Jay Caselberg

  She frowned. "I guess, but what do you —?"

  "It doesn't matter right now."

  He knew she was ready. Billie didn't really have anything to take. Jack stood and scanned his apartment. A few clothes. A few assorted patches in the bathroom. Nothing much else. Where were the traces of his life? No bric-a-brac. No personal memories. Maybe it was time to change all that. He needed a bag, and some food and stuff. No matter about his equipment back at the office. It could be replaces easily enough, and he felt somehow, now, that it was tainted anyway, tainted by the Locality and everything that existed inside it.

  "Wait here, Billie. I've got to get a few things, and then we're leaving."

  "Nuh-uh. Leaving where?"

  "It doesn't matter. We're just getting out of here."

  She said nothing, just stared at him.

  Jack sighed, then crouched in front of her. He owed her some sort of explanation. Did he have any right to force her to leave with him?

  "Billie, listen. This place is no good. The Locality's no good. As long as we remain here, it can't get any better. We'll go on, the same old things. Sure, I'll get work here and there, make a living, but what about you? What do you want?"

  She frowned, then shrugged. "What are you talking about, Jack?" The question was framed in a peculiarly adult way.

  "I guess I'm talking about the fact that you deserve better than what you've got here, what we've all got here. Are you happy?"

  Again, she shrugged.

  "I want you to be happy, Billie."

  She looked at him blankly and he looked away. Just for an instant, he couldn't meet her eyes.

  "Okay. I'm going to get some things. You think about it while I'm gone." There was no going back now. "And while I'm gone you can decide. You think about whether you're happy here. You said you were okay with me. You either come with me or you can stay, but I'm not going to hang around in this place any more and just let all this crap happen. I can’t do anything here to change it. The whole place belongs to people like Warburg and Van der Stegen. Maybe somewhere else I can make some sort of difference, but I can’t change things here. This place, everything in it, it changes you, not the other way around. It’s time I took some responsibility."

  She watched him carefully, as he prepared to leave, a frown clearly etched on her forehead.

  As he left the apartment, Jack knew there was a risk. He could come back and Billie would be gone. Then he'd have his answer. And what would she do then? Maybe drift back to Old. He just hoped it wouldn't be that way. If he came back and she was still there, then they'd leave together. He didn't know how long he could rely on the handipad outside of the Locality. It had to have some range. Food, provisions, a couple of tools. What else? Maybe something that he could trade, or convert. That still worked. He hadn't been out of the real world that long. And then? He'd have to rely on the instinct that had served him so well over the years. He didn't know where he was going or where he'd end up, but it was somewhere in the real world. Of that much he was sure.

  When he got back to the apartment, she was still sitting on the couch. He felt some relief. At least she was still there. That was something.

  “So?” he said.

  “So, what?”

  “Have you made up your mind?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms. “Where are we going, Jack?” she said.

  “Um…I don’t know, really. I thought we could get outside the Locality, and head in whatever direction felt right.”

  “Nuh-uh,” she said flatly. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know what –“

  Billie fixed him with a stern look. “You really do need looking after, Jack Stein,” she said. “Did you get paid?”

  “Well, yeah…”

  “Are there flyers that go to other cities?”

  “Sure, but…”

  Billie sighed and rolled her eyes. “Well pick one.”

  She was right, of course. What with Van der Stegen’s payment, the stuff from Gleeson, he had enough for a ticket for both of them, enough to spin things out for a couple of months after that. He should be able to find something in another city. It might take a few weeks to get started, but the work would start to come.

  “Yeah, you’re right, Billie.” He met her gaze sheepishly, feeling slightly stupid. “Tell you what. You pick somewhere.”

  She shook her head, sighed again, as she stood and crossed the room to call up the wall screen.

  oOo

  Jack looked down from the flyer’s window. Out across the landscape, a broad escarpment overlooked the valley where the Locality currently crawled. Cliffs, rocks, escarpments — they'd all featured heavily over the last few weeks and here he was looking down on another one. No White-Haired Man this time. No dream to sweep him away, but he'd come full circle all the same. Full circle. He'd had his fill of circles.

  Below lay the Locality, inching its way across the plains and valleys, shimmering with its own obscene opalescence, and strangely reminiscent of the sinuous tentacles extruded from the mine walls on Dairil III what seemed like so long ago. Down there was the real beast — nothing more than a doorway into a hive. And inside lay the remnants of what had been promised to everyone who had lived there, gradually falling apart into inevitable corruption. He glanced across and put his hand on Billie's shoulder. They still had a lot to work out, Billie and he, but now they had the opportunity to do it somewhere else. Maybe somewhere better.

  "You ready for this, kid?"

  "I guess," she said. "What are we going to do when we get there?"

  He looked up at the sky — the real sky — then back at the Locality. As above, so below. That was the alchemical rubric. You had to know the depths to ascend to the heights. Well, they'd both been there, Billie even more than he.

  "I don't know," said Jack. "I don't quite know."

  But he knew it didn't really matter that he didn't know. It never had.

  "You know what, Billie? I think we’ll work it out together."

  There was the barest shake of her head, and just the hint of a sigh. Her lips slightly pursed and giving no other response, Billie turned to look out the window at the landscape crawling slowly past below them.

  The End

  Sources:

  George Withers A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (London 1635) as cited in Harris.

  John N. Harris Spira Solaris Archytas-Mirablis Internet Publication, 1997.

  Michio Kaku "Black Holes, Wormholes and the 10th Dimension" Sunday Times Literary Supplement, 1994

  Frater IAM Parallels within Gnosticism, Graeco-Roman Mythology and Hermeticism 1994 as cited in Harris

  Kip S. Thorne Black Holes and Time Warps Picador, 1994.

  Michio Kaku "A Theory of Everything?" William Shore (Ed.) Mysteries of Life and the Universe Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992

  Michio Kaku Hyperspace. OUP, 1995