by Beth Goobie
Taking another leap, Nellie twisted midair, spinning herself around so she landed facing the table, and saw her double. Seated in one of the three-legged chairs, the girl was wearing the gold-brocaded dress and snapping her pocketknife open and closed. With a yelp Nellie leapt backward, her knees bent and her claws out.
“Keep yelling like that,” her double said casually, “and you’ll bring the whole neighborhood in.”
“There isn’t any neighborhood,” Nellie said scornfully, trying to ignore the kick-ass thud of her heart. Reaching for the yellow T-shirt she pulled it over her head, hiding as long as she could within its freshly laundered scent.
“There’s more going on around here than you think,” her double said drily. “This isn’t the only warehouse that’s been taken over, y’know.”
“I’ve never seen anyone,” Nellie flared. “And I’ve been around here at night.”
“Most of the tramps meet one block over,” said her double, pointing her knife at the south wall. “At a warehouse right on the river. Most of them.”
“How d’you know that?” Pulling on the blue shorts, Nellie backed against the wall and slitted her eyes at her double.
“Been busy,” her double said tersely. “Doing what you should be doing, but you’re too busy hanging around with him.”
Unaccountably, Nellie flushed. “What’s wrong with Deller?” she asked gruffly, kicking at the blankets heaped on the floor.
“Nothing’s wrong with him,” said her double. “You’ve got more important things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like finding out things.”
“Finding out what things?” Nellie stared, dumbfounded.
Her double sighed. “Finding out what I’m finding out.”
Nellie’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah?” she said coolly. “Well, you can keep your secrets. Take them back to your own level. I’ve got enough of my own.”
Her double snapped the pocketknife closed and leaned forward. “Don’t you want to know how I got through the burnt skin where Fen got stolen?” she challenged.
Nellie’s eyes narrowed until she could barely see. This double was just about the weaseliest person she’d met in any level. “Did you see Fen in one of those machines?” she asked, trying to keep the interest out of her voice. “When I went into that level, there was a hall with a whole bunch of doors, and then a room with machines that had kids in them. Fen was in one of them.”
“I’m not telling you what I saw,” her double smirked, leaning back again. “At least not yet. There are other things you need to learn first.”
“Like what?” hissed Nellie, stung.
“Like the fact city administration has been put on high alert because the skins have been breached so many times lately,” said her double.
“Skins again.” Nellie rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, skins,” snapped her double. “Lucky for you they don’t know who’s jumping the skins or how, but they’re out looking, and if you keep blundering around the way you do, you’re going to get caught.”
“No one notices me,” Nellie huffed. “I sneak in and out of other levels like I’m invisible.”
“Oh really?” hissed her double, leaning forward. “Burning down a church is being invisible? Letting a doubled priest do a probe on you isn’t being noticed?”
“That was in this level,” shrugged Nellie. “And anyway, hardly anyone travels the levels. Sometimes I think I’m the only one.”
“What about the men who took Fen?” asked her double. “Or the guy from the Interior Police that stepped out of the store wall? All City Hall has to do is ask the Interior to set some trackers on you.”
Nellie blanched visibly. “You travel the levels too,” she sniffed nervously. “What makes you think it’s me they’re after?”
“Because I know what I’m doing,” her double said, flipping the pocketknife into the air and catching it. “I don’t leave the skins quivering and disrupted like you do. The trail you leave vibrates like a rat scream.”
“Oh come off it,” said Nellie. “I can ride flux and shapeshift too, y’know. What makes you so much better than me?”
“You don’t ride flux,” snorted her double. “You find a tiny ittybitty place flux spit on, and play games with it. My whole skin is always in flux. There’s always something changing, something new coming through. But then I come from one of the quicker skins. Your skin’s the slowest, so things are pretty fixed here.”
“Slowest?” bellowed Nellie. Who exactly did this double think she was? “And what d’you mean, fixed?”
“Fixed in time and space,” said her double coolly. “The next nine skins are fixed and then they break free, at least here in the Out-backs. In the Interior, they’re fixed a lot further up. That’s what they do there—lock you into a fixed pattern, so all your skins are the same. They’re trying to do that in the Outbacks too, but it’s still pretty free here.”
Nellie’s thoughts scrambled, trying to keep up. “Fixed for the next nine levels?” she said. “That makes ten. It was the tenth level where they took Fen. Were they trying to stop him from seeing the levels that aren’t fixed?”
“Maybe,” said her double.
“Well ... “ Nellie paused. If she sounded too interested, her double wouldn’t answer this next question for sure. “What are the unfixed levels like?” she asked in her best bored tone.
“You’ll find out,” said her double in an equally bored tone, “when you’re ready to vibrate that fast.”
Nellie sucked in her breath and tried not to scream. “All this about vibrating faster,” she said accusingly. “I can scan vibrations, y’know. So I can tell you’re not vibrating any faster than me right now. And when I stepped into your level in the store, the vibrations there weren’t that much quicker than they are here.”
“I adjust,” said her double dismissively. “I’m one of the floaters. There’s a few of us. When I feel like it, I can move my whole skin around and adjust the vibes so they’re in sync with wherever I end up.”
About to make another scornful reply, Nellie faltered. “You helped me,” she said slowly, remembering. “At the Jinnet. You broke Ayne’s probe when I couldn’t.”
Her double nodded tersely.
“All my other doubles are always doing the same as me,” Nellie continued thoughtfully. “They dress like me and live in the same place. I guess that means they’re fixed, right?”
Her double nodded again.
“But you carry a knife,” Nellie went on. “You travel the levels and you think different. And there was flux in the store where I first saw you.”
“That’s my home skin,” said her double. “When I float it into a new area, I adjust it to the closest skin so I don’t stick out. I’ve been coming down into the slower skins, investigating.”
“Investigating what?” asked Nellie.
Her double shrugged. “Things that interest me. Like I said, there’s a lot of flux around here. It’s much tighter in the Interior. Those skins are a real bitch to get through.”
“I didn’t travel the levels when I lived in the Interior,” Nellie said hesitantly. “I only started about a year ago. But I know it’s easier to get from one level to the next if there’s flux.”
Again her double nodded. “At least you know that much, but there are a lot of things in the skins that are way past anything you could imagine. They’re dangerous. It’s not all fun and games. You’ve got a lot to learn if we’re going to pull through this.”
“Pull through what?” Nellie couldn’t help the scornful note in her voice. Maybe her double knew some things she didn’t, but that didn’t make her the Goddess’s announcing angel.
Her double leaned forward, her face tense with exasperation. “They’re after you, idiot. Here, in this skin, and the other skins are starting to get interested too. You let that doubled priest probe you, and Ayne. They read your vibes. What d’you think they picked up?” She let out a long suffering hiss. �
�If they get you, they get the rest of your possibilities too. Not all of us are as stupid as you, but we all get stuck paying for your choices.”
“I thought I copy what you do,” Nellie snapped.
“It’s all relative,” her double snapped back. “The possibilities don’t all have to do exactly what you do, but they’re stuck dealing with the consequences. Except for the ones in flux, of course. Possibilities like me can come and go as we wish, and believe me I’m not here because I’m desperate for your company. I’m just tired of seeing the possibilities suffer because of what you’re doing to the skins, and I’m not going to be caught and hauled back to the Interior over your mistakes. I’m here to smarten you up so we can all live easier.”
“Oh.” Stunned, Nellie wanted to open the closest gate and step through to a level where she didn’t have to face the sense she was hearing. So this was why her doubles always froze when they saw her—they were afraid of whatever dumb stupid thing she was about to do next. “Wait a minute,” she said, a new thought entering her mind. “If the fixed doubles have to do what I do, how come I can travel the levels and they can’t? They don’t even know there are levels.”
“Dunno,” said her double, watching her closely. “That’s the big mystery. Something’s happening in this skin that’s different than the next nine. You’re vibrating out of sync with the pattern. For some reason you’re not as fixed as the others.”
Nellie stared at her blankly. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s good,” hissed her double, pointing the knife at her, “if you smarten up and quit ripping through the skins like a truck. And if you’ll start listening, and let me teach you a few things about living properly in flux.”
“Deller knows,” Nellie said suddenly, feeling the need to confess. “And the Skulls. I haven’t taken them to another level yet, but Deller told them so they’d let me join and stay in their headquarters.”
Her double let loose a hiss of swear words, then sat sucking her lower lip until it disappeared into her mouth. “Do they know about me?” she asked finally.
Nellie shook her head. “Last thing I wanted was for him to find out about you. He wants me to take the Skulls into the levels so we can all start looking for Fen.”
Her double’s face twisted into an expression of delicate pain. “That would be just about the absolutest stupidest idea in all the skins put together,” she said darkly. “The only way I’m teaching you anything is if you promise never to show any of it to the Skulls.”
“What about Deller?” Nellie asked quickly.
A thinking expression crossed her double’s face. “Maybe Deller,” she said cautiously. “He’s smarter than the others. Smarter than you, at any rate. C’mere.”
Fighting the urge to bristle, Nellie joined her double so they stood side by side in the deepening dusk, facing the cardboard-covered window. “First things first,” said her double grimly. A faint line of light cast by the split in the cardboard ran down the center of her face. “You’ve got to learn to listen to the skins.”
“Tune in,” Nellie said immediately. She already knew this part, it was easy. She just had to let her mind tilt to the right and the molecular field would come into focus like it was doing now, leaping in its dance of energy and color. Even her double was transformed, radiating luminescent wings of orange and sky blue.
“No,” her double said tersely. “Listen, not see. If you can’t listen to me, how are you going to hear the skins?”
Chastened, Nellie stood staring at the molecular field. Listen? What was there to listen to? Sure there were lots of humming and crackling noises, but that was just the boring old background noise molecules always made. It was the same in every level. Why not find a gate and open ...
“Are you listening?” demanded her double.
Heaving an almighty sigh, Nellie focused on the tiny humming sounds. It was a little like listening to a field of evening crickets, the sound pulsing against her ears in liquid waves, except that sometimes the sound came high and sometimes it came low, and every now and then it seemed to step sideways into a different range altogether.
“What d’you hear?” asked her double.
“Noise,” Nellie said shortly.
Her double sighed. “And?”
Nellie shrugged. “Different molecules make different sounds. It depends on their color. And the gates don’t make any sound at all.”
“Gates?” asked her double.
“Where you go through,” said Nellie, pointing to one that hovered midair, a few steps away. “They’re like dead space—no vibrations, no color, no noise.”
“That’s because they are dead space,” snapped her double. “They used to be alive, but then some idiot pushed her way through and killed that part of the skin’s soul.”
Stunned, Nellie protested, “Lots of travelers use gates. How else are you supposed to get to other levels?”
“Ssssst,” hissed her double. “You might get into another skin, but you’re not part of that skin once you enter its turf. Any skin will be dead set against you if you come into it through a wound.”
“A wound?” Suddenly Nellie’s mind was reeling as she relived the pain she’d felt coming through the gate in the church wall. So it was the molecular field that had let out that scream of agony. But why? It wasn’t human, it couldn’t have thoughts and feelings like people did.
“Yeah, a wound,” said her double. “All those gates as you call them didn’t used to exist. They were torn open by someone forcing her way from one skin to the next. The wound suffered for a while, then closed over and that part of the skin died. Unfortunately the scar still showed, and you know bullies and idiots—they always look for the easiest way through anything.”
“I’m not a bully,” Nellie said defensively. “I didn’t know, that’s all.”
“Bullies and idiots,” said her double distinctly. “Idiots think tuning into the skins is like watching TV. The skins are alive, just like you and me. Now start listening to your body the way you were listening to the skin.”
Nellie scowled. This was getting stupider and stupider. Her double had seen her travel and knew she could shapeshift, so why did she insist on treating her like a know-nothing? Sullenly she turned her attention to the molecular field and focused on her own body. It was easy enough, she used to do this regularly when she first discovered the molecular field—tune in and watch the various energies at play inside her body—but she’d never paid attention to the sounds they emitted. Now as she listened, she heard the same chorus of humming crackling noises that the surrounding molecular field was making.
“It’s the same,” she said diffidently.
“Not quite,” said her double, but she sounded pleased. “Listen deeper.”
Deeper? thought Nellie. How did you listen deeper? Focusing again on her body’s molecular field, she let her mind walk downward into sound as if descending a ladder. As she did sound slowed, and there was a brief sensation of pressure. Then this cleared and the sound changed, opening into something entirely different—a deep kind of calling, many voices swirling through each other in a vast vibrating ocean of sound.
“Like the stars,” Nellie gasped. “It’s like the dream of singing stars I get when flux is coming.”
“It is coming,” said her double. “Put out your hand.”
Nellie stretched out her hand and saw that it was no longer there. Glancing at her body, she saw that it had also vanished. Somehow, without any conscious decision on her part, her entire molecular structure had dissolved and she’d entered a state of pure sound— the voices of her flesh.
“Can you hear yourself?” asked her double.
“Yes,” Nellie whispered.
“Now,” said her double, “listen beyond yourself. Listen to the skin.”
Lifting out of the sound of herself, Nellie opened to the song of the molecular field. On all sides she saw energy leaping and dancing as usual, and yet she seemed to have stepped
into a new level of reality where molecules had dissolved their basic structures and colors interwove in a kinetic tapestry. From everywhere came a huge crying out of voices, their eerie beauty swirling around Nellie like a kaleidoscope that had broken its pattern, the vibrations of the surrounding molecular field calling toward the vibrations of Nellie’s body until she lost all sense of herself and became part of a vast shimmering river of sound.
Gradually the sensation faded and she became aware of herself again, standing beside her double in the dimly-lit room that was the Skulls’ headquarters. Ahead of her sagged the split cardboard that had been taped over the window, to her left leaned a three-legged chair, and behind her she could see the edge of the table. Taking a slow breath, she followed the rush of air through the tunnels of her nose, deep into the cave of her lungs. Everything was as it had been, and yet it was utterly changed. For she now recognized the life that sang in that three-legged chair, and she’d been one with the vibrations that pulsed through the table. For one brief soul-shimmering moment, everything in the room had been part of her, and she a part of it.
Nellie’s double sighed, then said quietly, “That was the beginning of listening. Remember—listening will always take you further than seeing. The eyes tell lies, but the ears are harder to fool. Practice listening to this skin, hearing what it’s got to tell you. And no matter what happens, don’t go barreling in and out of the other skins until I come back and teach you how to sing your way into them.”
“Come back?” Alarmed, Nellie turned toward her double. “But you can’t go, you’ve got to help us find Fen. And what about Ayne and those people from City Hall you said were after me? If I can’t travel—”
“I’ve got things to do,” her double said gruffly. “You’re not the only possibility, y’know. Just do what I told you—practice listening to the skin and hearing what it’s got to tell you.”
Then, as Nellie stared, her double began to disappear. “Wait a minute,” Nellie yelped, lunging toward the ghostly shimmer. “You can’t just—”
But her groping hands slid vainly through her double’s fading outline, and when she tuned into the molecular field she found no gate where her double had vanished. With a disconsolate grunt, Nellie settled into her nest of blankets. How could her double be so heartless, so extremely weasely, and at the same time know how to tune into such exquisite, soul-singing beauty? Just the memory of that eerie ocean of voices made Nellie’s breath pause in wonder. Could she do it again? Well, why not try? Her double had said she was supposed to practice.