The Myth of the Maker

by Bruce R Cordell

  Well.

  She hadn’t seen that coming.

  Raul said, “Say something. You must have… questions?”

  He studied her, a hesitant smile on his lips, as her mind tried to make sense of the man’s admission.

  She said, “Oh, come on. So you’re telling me, what, that you’re an alien?”

  Raul shrugged. “I’ve taken on Earth’s context. I’ve been Raul for twenty years. I’m as human as you, Kate.”

  “Twenty years? Why? And what were you before?” Given everything else that had happened, Kate realized that she couldn’t rule out Raul’s story merely on principle. The “that’s crazy!” ship had sailed several months ago, the night she’d met Jason’s homunculus at GDR.

  Raul said, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “No. Yes. Jesus Christ, Raul.” The fuck of it all was that Raul was probably telling the truth. Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t a fuckhead who’d lied to her since the first day they’d met. He came from a world like Jason’s, even if he wasn’t Jason. How many fucking worlds were there “under” Earth, anyway?

  He said, “I was–”

  The office door beeped, and someone rattled the lock. Kate ducked. Her hand was already on Malcolm’s holster, and she loosed the safety snap. Raul slipped around the desk and scrunched down next to her. He saw her hand on the gun and whispered “Wait!”

  Kate waited by pulling the 9mm free. Ever since she and Carter had been caught flat-footed by Liza Banks’ hired goon, she’d been putting in a few hours a week at a gun range in Bellevue. Her confidence with the piece had increased a lot. Though the way her heart pounded and hands shook, maybe she’d been fooling herself.

  A voice outside the office said, “See? Empty.”

  Kate remembered that she’d left her briefcase sitting open on the desk. Worse, the normally hidden safe was plainly visible. The gig would be up if the office door opened. Shit!

  “I heard a woman talking,” another voice said.

  “A woman? You wish.”

  Kate risked a peek around the desk. Two security guards loomed in the hallway light.

  “Don’t be a dick,” one guard said. “Why are the lights on in there? They weren’t an hour ago. We should check it out. Using the new procedure.”

  Guard Two said, “Fine.”

  It’s not fine! Kate thought as she ducked back out of sight. What was the new procedure? Grenade first, inspect after?

  But instead of chucking explosives, the sound of a single set of footsteps receded. As did the second guard’s voice as he said, “If the freak is still here, she can do another scan.”

  “Her name is Soma,” replied Guard One, apparently still loitering just outside the entrance to the office.

  Raul’s eyes found Kate’s. He gave her a nod, as if that meant anything to her. Then he hopped up and over the desk, unlocked the office door, and eased it open.

  Shocked that he’d revealed their position, she stood up before she could think better of it. She kept her gun concealed behind her back.

  The nearer guard was watching his partner move off down the hallway. Before he realized he wasn’t alone, Raul slipped up behind him and applied a chokehold. The guard made a soft noise and tried to pry Raul’s forearm from around his neck, but failed.

  Kate shook off her astonishment at seeing Raul move so aggressively. Today was apparently the day he’d decided to pull off all his masks. She whispered, “Pull him in here!” She hurried to the entrance and pressed her gun to the man’s temple.

  “Stop struggling,” she hissed to the guard, “or I’ll shoot.” The man’s eyes, already wide, locked on Malcolm. The fight went out of him, then consciousness as the chokehold restricted enough blood to knock him out. Raul pulled the limp form into Klein’s office. The moment the guard’s feet were clear of the door, she bumped it shut again. Raul settled him to the floor.

  “We have to move, mi chula,” Raul said. “I don’t know where the other guard went, but it did not sound promising.”

  She nodded, studying the safe. No time for finesse or worrying about all Raul’s lies. Kate pulled the shaped charge from her briefcase and removed the outer packaging. She slapped the charge onto the safe front where the smooth surface, she was fairly certain, hid the locking mechanism. When everything was set, she and Raul took shelter on the opposite side of the desk.

  BANG!

  Smoke and the acrid smell of burnt explosive filled the air. Shattered knickknacks and shredded, smoking carcasses of books that had been on the shelves flanking the concealed safe now littered the carpet. She crept forward through the haze, careful not to step on anything sharp. The fist-sized, rough hole in the safe’s surface was pretty much what she’d wanted to see. The safe door was slightly warped, but she pulled it open with a jerk.

  Inside were a few scorched file folders and a smaller lock box. She grabbed everything and dumped it into her briefcase.

  Raul waited for her at the door. He cracked it open and gazed into the hallway. She paused until he gave the all-clear.

  Five seconds passed, and he didn’t move. Then another five. The hair on her arms stood up.

  “Raul? What is it?”

  Still no response. She held her breath and approached the door. Raul was as immobile as a statue. Dread caught at her limbs, but she pulled the door wider anyway.

  A woman stood in the hallway, and her eyes met Kate’s. The woman’s clothing was oddly wrong. Far more alarming was the haze of blue light that swirled around her head. It reminded Kate of false color images she’d seen of magnetic field lines migrating across the sun. Not something you expect or want to see flaring around someone’s head.

  The woman said, “Here’s your security leak. Two people. One’s from Ruk, but I’ve got him.” The woman was talking to the guard who’d walked off, who stood nearby. He was obviously more nervous about the blue-light woman than concerned about seeing an intruder standing in Klein’s office.

  Kate aimed her 9mm at the woman and asked, “Who are you?” She hated how her voice shook. And what was a Ruk?

  “My name doesn’t matter,” the woman replied, unfazed by the gun pointed at her. “I stop oppressors and thieves, like you, and make them sorry. Although…” The woman’s hand went to her temple. “You’re not just a thief, are you? Something about you is interfering with my talent. Or maybe I’ve just stayed too long…” The authority in the woman’s voice faded as she said the last.

  The woman gestured with her other hand. Kate’s muscles seized. She tottered and almost toppled. The blue-light woman was doing it, somehow. Kate concentrated on squeezing the trigger. Something prevented her. So she redoubled her efforts.

  The woman yelled, “She’s fighting me! She’s quickened, and I–”

  The gun went off. Mobility suddenly returned. Her first shot had been wild. The guard threw himself to the floor. The woman looked shocked, and her weird aura was gone.

  “Try that again, bitch,” Kate said, “and I put a bullet in your brain.”

  Raul groaned, and pitched forward on his face like a marionette released by its puppeteer. In the time it took Kate to glance his way and back, the woman snatched a small object from her belt sash.

  “Drop it!” screamed Kate.

  The woman complied. The object, shaped something like a snow globe, smashed on the floor. The shards blossomed into a rip in space, a literal opening to somewhere else. Kate saw an unfamiliar city skyline in the cavity. The strange woman stepped through the hole while Kate gaped. Then the opening collapsed to the sound of distant thunder.

  Kate blinked. Except for cracked hallway tiles, nothing remained of the other guard, the woman who could immobilize people with a glance, or the doorway to elsewhere. Had she seen into another world? What had Raul called it; another recursion?

  Their regular coffee shop, much as she loved it, wasn’t a discreet location for discussing their burglary at September Project. Plus it was still closed at five in the mornin
g, which was when they’d made it back to Seattle after driving north up I-5 from Portland. So Kate brought Raul back to her condo. She’d got it cheap after the bottom fell out of the housing market in ’08. The condo was comfortable enough, if small, and offered them reasonable privacy.

  Raul’s daze lifted after she’d set him up with a chicken salad sandwich and some ice tea at her kitchen bar. She helped herself to a second sandwich.

  “So, you want to talk?” Raul said. He looked resigned.

  Kate chewed a bite of sandwich, then swallowed. “Yeah. Starting with that woman, the one with the blue aura. She was from a recursion?”

  “She was.”

  “The same place as you? Ruk, she called it?”

  “No, someplace else. A different limited world. I have no idea which one. Hundreds, maybe thousands of recursions are hosted around Earth. Most of them born from the power of human imagination – from human fiction. She might be some character in a kid’s story come to life, or maybe inspired by a fusion of several stories, seeding someplace wholly new.”

  Kate’s head swam with possibilities. But she didn’t want to let herself get distracted. She said, “But you’re from Ruk?” She wondered if she could believe anything he said. She wanted to, but trust had been breached.

  Raul nodded.

  “I’m pretty sure there are no novels or movies about a place by that name. I mean, if you said you were from Middle Earth, or the Federation…”

  “Ruk, like Ardeyn, was crafted purposefully,” said Raul.

  “Ah,” said Kate, as if that explained everything. It didn’t, of course. “C’mon, stop making me pry it out of you. And why’d you say you were an alien?”

  “That was your word.”

  “So you’re not an alien?”

  Raul waggled the hand not holding his sandwich. “It’s complicated. Ruk has hidden in Earth’s shadow since before humans fully evolved. In Ruk, reality operates under a different set of laws. Amazing feats of science are easy in Ruk. We’ve mastered the secrets of biosculpting and genetic engineering. To say we’re alien isn’t really correct. Rukians are almost indistinguishable from humans, and purposefully so.”

  Kate shook her head. Ancient people on Ruk had made themselves look human on purpose? Or was he suggesting that Rukians had made human ancestors on Earth look like people from Ruk? She decided not to pursue either line of inquiry in case she didn’t like the answer.

  Instead she said, “So, Ruk is a recursion like Ardeyn, a tiny world? But instead of magic spells, you’ve got warp drive and killer robots?”

  “Well. Yes, in very broad strokes, that’s correct,” said Raul.

  “If Ruk has been around so long, why not reveal yourself to people on Earth?”

  “It’s not our way. We’re a cautious people. Plus, only a tiny percentage of Rukians can pass between recursions, just like on Earth. Recursors are what we call people with that ability. All are rare, special people.”

  “Then why are you here? Twenty years, you said you’ve been Raul? I thought you were from Mexico City!”

  Raul smiled. “We’re a fractious people. Some among us are even dangerous. A faction called the Karum is particularly outspoken in its desire to sever Ruk’s ties with Earth, violently if necessary. I came to Earth to keep an eye out for Karum activity. I was installed as a sort of sleeper agent, you might say. One of a few.”

  “Oh great. How many Ruk natives are creeping around Earth?”

  “I don’t know. Less than a dozen, probably. It’s been mostly quiet. We couldn’t have guessed that the threat to Earth would come from an upstart recursion force-seeded three years ago.”

  “Who’s ‘we?’” asked Kate.

  “An organization on Ruk that believes that Ruk is best served by Earth’s continued safety, called the Quiet Cabal. It’s the faction that sent me here, to guard against the Karum. Now it seems like Ardeyn is the bigger threat.”

  “Huh,” she said, and finished her sandwich. She hadn’t really tasted it. Their conversation absorbed her attention. At least she was no longer ravenous. Which somehow made it easier to believe everything Raul said. It pissed her off. It didn’t mean she trusted him.

  She said, “All this time you’ve been an alien agent, here to safeguard Earth. And you never told me. I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend. But I also have a job to do. I’m surprised you didn’t suspect something, especially when I went into hiding.”

  “Why would I?”

  Raul said, “You didn’t think it odd when I went underground and removed myself from society?”

  “I just thought you were an eccentric. It’s quite a leap to say, ‘Wow, Raul sure is weird. I wonder if he’s an alien from a parallel dimension.’”

  “Ah, true.” He looked sheepish.

  Kate slapped the table with her palm. “How was it that you came to be my friend? How could you’ve known that I’d one day get involved with this?”

  “Mi chula… I sensed something about you. You are touched by the Strange. Quickened. Like I am, like Carter Morrison must be, and as the woman at the office who tried to fry my brain most certainly was.”

  Kate rocked back, “What the hell do you mean by that?” “Quickened” had been what that woman said, too. The memory of Kate’s limbs locking up returned. The helpless feeling, now that the direct danger was passed, made her queasy. She wished she hadn’t eaten her sandwich so fast.

  Raul said, “Some people, whether they’re from Earth or a recursion, are connected to the Strange. That connection allows them to travel between recursions, to take on the context of each new recursion they enter, and even call on amazing abilities. People who can do that under their own power are quickened.”

  Kate didn’t know what to make of Raul’s explanation, but she didn’t like the subtext. “You say you’re my friend. But really, you stayed near me because you were watching me like a lab rat. To see if I’d start using Strange powers.” She stated it as a fact, studying Raul to see his reaction.

  “It wasn’t like that!” he said.

  She kept her gaze on him.

  Raul blushed, then he said, “All right, yes, at first it was like that. But think about it, Kate. I could have watched you from a distance and you’d never have been the wiser. I stayed in contact because you became my friend.” He glanced away, embarrassed.

  “Jesus, Raul. I just don’t know…”

  She wanted to trust him. She had thought of him as a confidante for years. His admissions now threatened to invalidate everything between them.

  An uneasy quiet fell as she struggled to come to a decision. It was tempting to just trust him, because that was easiest. But easy didn’t mean smart.

  Finally Raul volunteered, “We should try to figure out the nature of your quickened abilities. You held off that woman remarkably–”

  Kate held up a hand. Raul stopped. “Let’s see what was in the safe. We can worry about whether I’m quickened later,” she said. One thing at a time, she told herself. Her plate was already full.

  She set the briefcase on the kitchen bar and opened it. Inside was her stethoscope and other tools, plus the scorched file folders and lock box she’d taken from the September Project safe.

  She grabbed the files, Raul the lockbox.

  Coming cold to someone else’s records and organizational system is always a pain. She laid out the documents, collating them until she eventually figured it out.

  “Damn it!” she said. “They’ve split their quantum research between locations. Portland was just a fucking HR office.”

  “We already knew they were doing the actual research somewhere else,” said Raul in a distracted voice. He was still fiddling with the lock box.

  “Yeah. Well, getting to these places isn’t going to be as easy as driving to Portland. One’s in Brazil, and the other one… well it’s some place I’ve never heard of. And according to this document,” she waved a piece of paper, “we need to go to the one in Braz
il before you can use the key to get to the other place. Whatever that means.” Kate sighed.

  “Where in Brazil?” asked Raul.

  “City called Curitiba, at the Federal University. Shit, do we have to get a visa to travel to Brazil?”

  “We’ll check. Where’s the other place?”

  She shook her head. “These files call it the Sister Foundry. It’s located somewhere called Megeddon.”

  He flinched, almost dropping the lock box, and stared at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “It’s pronounced ‘meh-GED-on,’” he said, his voice rough.

  “Fine,” she said. “Is Megeddon in Brazil, too?”

  “No. Megeddon, the Fortress of the Betrayer – Jason Cole, in other words – lies in the recursion of Ardeyn.”

  19: Ringmaster

  Jason Cole

  A psychic sledgehammer smashed into Jason’s mind. He bellowed a sort of obscenity-scream. Worse than the pain was how his eyesight grew dim. Most disturbing of all was the explosion of brain cotton behind his eyes, so invasive that when he reached for War’s facility to duplicate himself, he couldn’t find it. Icy fear stabbed Jason’s stomach. He whirled, lashing out blindly with his staff. He struck something that grunted with a deep, earthy tone.

  He backed away blinking. He hoped his retreat was in the direction of the dragon lair’s exit. Jason had entered the crumbling opening high on the side of the dead volcano thinking to slip in unnoticed. No such luck. At least whatever faced him probably wasn’t the dragon itself, because the tunnel was too small to contain Merid’s bulk. Unless she could shrink herself. Maybe the dragon knew a spell that could reduce her bus-sized bulk enough to fit into tunnels only humans could normally navigate. Seemed unlikely, but…

  “Merid?” he ventured, slashing blindly. “This is a misunderstanding. I came to propose an alliance! If you have the Ring of Silence in your hoard, there is an opportunity for both of–”

  A rough voice interrupted, “Merid will not treat with you, Betrayer.”

  Jason’s eyes cleared enough for him to see that his foe was no dragon. But… A hiss of surprise escaped Jason.