Colleen and Dillon were making their own grid pattern as if they had mapped out a way of searching between the two of them and were looking for trace in each small area.
“What’s this?” Meg asked. She was over near one of the larger trees that sat at the edge of the crash field. She could smell the fresh scent of pine even as a light breeze blew through her hair making it more pungent than it normally would have been.
Dillon came over. Colleen followed but more slowly. Meg saw her scan the area. Dillon’s walk across the field seemed long and loud. Meg heard every leaf that broke. The sun moved behind a cloud as she waited. That made the outline of what she thought she might be looking at harder to see.
Dillon stopped behind her. “What is it?”
“I think down there,” Meg pointed just in front of her feet. Dillon walked up behind her. A small hole, even and tidy, like a drill had gone through there, but so precise it felt wrong. It wasn’t deep though.
Dillon crouched down looking closer. Colleen came up behind them, hanging back a little so as not to block what light there was. Meg turned her head to see her look around, carefully.
“What?” Meg asked softly, her
“Hear it?” Colleen asked.
Meg strained to listen. She heard nothing, other than their movements. Then it dawned on her. She’d been hearing birds and the movement of the small animals. Now it was gone.
“Nothing,” Meg whispered.
Colleen nodded. Dillon raised his head, also listening for something but hearing nothing.
Meg glanced around the tree, thinking she saw something. It looked like cloth. She was fairly certain it hadn’t been there the last time she’d walked through that area.
“That’s new,” she pointed.
Once again, Dillon, always thinking about tracks, gestured Meg to step back. He crouched down near the earth looking carefully.
“These tracks are similar to those we followed earlier, at the other site,” he said.
Meg looked down, seeing familiar patterns but not sure what he was looking at.
Dillon got up, and walked carefully next to the tracks. He paused at the clothing. “They appear to stop here.”
“Whoever it was, was short,” Colleen said, observing that the cloth was near Dillon’s shoulder. If it came from a hat, Dillon would have a good six inches on them.
“The one I saw had a hat or something,” Meg said. “I remember that. I couldn’t see hair exactly but strands coming out of a hat.”
“Looks more like it would have been a hood from that cloth,” Colleen said. “I guess what we saw could have been a hood or a cloth hat of some sort.”
Meg considered, trying to remember how tall the other person had been. Dillon reached out a pen and grabbed the cloth. Meg looked over at it. It looked ordinary like a heavy canvas.
“Odd that it ripped,” Dillon said. “It’s heavy.”
“How could they get in here?” Meg wondered.
“It’s not the right material for parachute material,” Colleen said, “But I am put in mind of that when I see cloth from branches.”
“And they’d have to leave again,” Dillon said.
“Helicopter pick up?” Meg suggested although not very forcefully.
“Or they could just disappear the way Peter does,” Dillon said.
“I don’t leave footprints,” Peter said from behind them.
Dillon jumped at Peter’s voice but Colleen made a very strategic turn so that Peter was no longer at her back. She had moved before Meg even registered that Peter was actually there with them. Once again Colleen impressed her.
“Really?” Dillon asked looking around as if he wanted to see.
“They’ll be here as long as I am,” Peter said. “I could leave them here longer if I wanted the earth to retain that impression, but usually there’s no point.”
Dillon nodded smiling. “Nice trick.”
Peter smiled, a slight twinkle in his eye. Meg had no doubt that it was a trick that had been played on more than one unwary hiker
“So no werewolves, no wererabbits, what about werebirds?” Dillon asked, half joking.
Peter gave him an inscrutable look but said nothing. Apparently, Meg thought, there just might be people who could change into birds, rabbits or wolves but he wasn’t able to talk about them.
“Is there anything you get from the cloth?” Meg asked.
Peter looked at it. “It’s cloth. But the molecular structure is slightly different from the jacket you are wearing. To the naked eye the two would look like they were made of similar stuff.”
“I think this is heavier,” Dillon said.
“It’s a little heavier, but it’s the structure that is unusual,” Peter said.
“You know, that branch has cloth but it’s not broken,” Colleen said. “How did that happen?”
“None of the branches are broken,” Meg said, looking around. Dillon did his slow long look, as if examining each branch.
“There’s nothing broken here,” Peter said. “I can see twelve footprints in this area from an unknown person. The rest belong to you. There is the hole that Meg found. I have no idea what did that or what might have sat there although I should know. There are three branches over where you entered that are broken when Meg went through and four more lower down that were broken when Colleen brushed them. Dillon knocked off two leaves but did not break anything. His foot falls displaced three rocks, which none of the women did. One is still stuck in his shoe.”
“Impressive,” Dillon turned smiling.
Peter met his gaze evenly saying nothing.
“The natural energy levels are off here too,” Peter said. “I don’t like it. It’s probably why there are no birds. It came on about half an hour ago, although the last of the birds left perhaps twelve seconds before you became aware of the silence.”
“Twelve seconds?” Colleen asked, as if she were embarrassed it had taken her that long.
“Animals don’t like the unknown. It could be dangerous. Let’s move away from here and watch. I can hide you from anything you need to be hidden from, at least long enough for you to get away.”
They grabbed their gear and moved off to the edge of the crash area. Peter had them shelter near some bushes, which seemed to grow up before their eyes. Meg settled back against a tree. Colleen sat on a rock comfortable enough to sit on. Dillon laid flat on his belly, looking towards the clearing.
Peter leaned against a tree next to Meg, until he seemed to fall back into it and merge with the trunk itself, leaving Meg with only the sense of him in her mind, hovering there, waiting with the rest of them.
Rain
My stomach growled, although with the low instrumental music I had playing in the background, I doubt anyone heard it. It was getting towards dinner time. At first I thought it was my thinking of dinner that brought Zari trotting in but RaeLynn followed her, looking puzzled.
“What’s up?” I asked, wondering what those two had been up to.
“Zari’s had me looking over everything from Langea,” RaeLynn said.
“I was looking at the work of the laboratory tech Blayn G used,” Zari said as she settled herself in her cat tree. “I wanted to see what sorts of things he might have been ordering and any research materials that might have been on the system.”
“And?” I asked. RaeLynn sat in a chair, shaking her head. Today she had on long pearl like earrings that flashed in the light when she did so.
“There’s nothing. At least nothing that makes sense,” Zari purred. “So what would go missing that could start this? Maybe notes? And what was Blayn-G working on?”
“Getting to the other side of the universe?”
“How?” Zari pressed.
I shrugged.
Zari sat up in her tree, looking at me. “He had to move things quickly through our universe. The easiest way to do that is by bending space. To do that, you need a lot of power. There are a number of mathematical equations that we st
arted with, and are probably more powerful than those we use, but they either force us to go through other universes or offer the probability of entering a sort of parallel universe if calculation is even slightly off.”
I nodded, although I didn’t quite understand. I hoped RaeLynn could ask better questions than I could.
“What if the scientist had those notes and didn’t know that he could enter the parallel universe and did so on accident?” RaeLynn asked quietly.
“He’s one of the missing, isn’t he?” I thought back to what Kyle had said. He was one of the many missing pieces in this puzzle. In fact, there were so many missing pieces it was hard to say if this was a puzzle at all.
“He is,” Zari said.
“Do you think he tried to put something together and found his way to one of these parallel universes?”
“I do not know that,” Zari said. “And we must also consider that the scientist who did this originated from a parallel universe. That leaves may options as to how he came by the metal.”
“So the people who look distorted in the photos are from this parallel universe?” I asked.
“If my theory is correct.”
“Why?”
“Because someone came here. Moving from parallel universe to parallel universe is not easy or safe. There are not doors that open and close. Once a way in is created, it has a tendency to open randomly,” Zari explained. “This could explain your mysterious people who appear in places they shouldn’t and where the people who belong here go.”
“We have a plane that might not belong here. Is that what is keeping the door, as you call it, open? And would that explain the strange radiation readings?”
“It could,” Zari said.
“Although in most science fiction I read, isn’t traveling through parallel universes dangerous? Do you suppose others have come through and been killed?” RaeLynn asked.
“Very dangerous,” Zari said. “Although, it would be hard to know who was killed or missing in a parallel universe or even here. We only know people who have shown up unharmed. What about those that haven’t shown up?”
“Or disappeared like that warehouse full of stuff that Kyle was investigating.”
“The thief may never know that he was in the wrong place.” Zari seemed to get a chuckle out of that. “But it is more dangerous the longer it goes on. Think about it. We are here. In another universe, or two or three or six, the scientist might have made that device. Now we have maybe a dozen of the universes having people crossing from one to another. Some will go to universes that are similar and perhaps take advantage. Others will die. Still others will arrive in a universe where they are recognized as outsiders and be killed before they can return home.”
“Could that be why they have the weapons systems?”
“Are you sure they were weapons?” Zari asked. “Or were they weapons systems adapted to something that looked like ordinance but could have used bits of the metal from my world? Aligned properly and with the right power, you could use those to tear open a hole between universes. It would be a way to get in and out quickly.”
“But John said the ordinance was normal,” I said, recalling a comment he made.
“It looked normal. He did not examine it minutely. Peter did and there were traces of alpha33678gamma 943992alpha8336 inside.”
“Why a plane?”
“A plane is a good test case because you can zip in and out quickly. Perhaps they made a window to watch. The plane would be designed to look ordinary so they could move around here and perhaps explore or exploit something we have that they need.”
“So they aren’t all that similar to us?” I asked, trying to wrap my brain around this.
“Why would they be?” Zari asked.
“Well, because you said parallel universe. I figured there’d be people like us in the same place.”
“There are, but there are differences to. After all, if four hundred years ago, one of your ancestors died, you might not exist and then this world becomes very different.”
“But wouldn’t we see universes that split off more recently so that those would be more similar to ours, at least at first?” RaeLynn asked.
I looked over at her.
She raised a shoulder and grinned, wryly, “Science fiction geek.”
“It’s like bank robbers digging underground,” Zari said, pulling images from things I knew she’d read about here, “They need to know where to dig upwards or they miss the bank. Now if they are just digging out, who knows what building they will end up in? They might go past the bank and get somewhere else.”
“So they could have gone farther than they wanted,” RaeLynn clarified.
Zari washed a paw, as she looked at RaeLynn. That was probably an agreement.
“So what do we do?”
“I am not sure what we can do without making an even bigger mess,” Zari told me quietly. “It is the reason my people don’t travel to parallel universes.”
I nodded.
“Will John be in danger?” RaeLynn asked.
“I believe Peter took the metal from him so nothing would be drawn to his home,” Zari said.
“Why didn’t Peter figure this out?” I asked. “He has to know about this, doesn’t he? Or Kuan Yin or Pele or someone.”
“How would Peter know?” Zari asked.
“He always knows things like that,” RaeLynn said. “I mean isn’t he supposed to know what’s part of the earth and isn’t?”
“But this is part of the earth,” Zari pointed out. “Just not our earth.”
“So is it like trying to see one set of ants invading another ant’s home? We couldn’t tell the difference which ants were which nor could we see into the ant hill,” RaeLynn asked.
“I do not believe that Peter would think that a very good analogy, but it does come close,” Zari said. “He exists as he is in both universes at the same time. You are separate and unique individuals if you exist at all, as am I. Peter is a nature spirit so he is not separate. You exist in three dimensions and move through a fourth. Peter is not limited by those any more than you are limited to seeing in one or two dimensions. Asking him to notice this is like asking you to see the line rather than the cube, if that makes sense. But now, if you see a drawing of a cube and I point out the line, you might see it. And yes, this means that Peter has noticed and I’m sure that because he knows Gaia knows.”
“Let’s just hope Pele doesn’t come marching in and expect us to help out,” I said drily thinking of how the goddess had demanded our help last time. She’d been powerful enough missing her little dog, which was part of her existence. Much as I found her amusing, I would hate to see her come in here at full power.
“I doubt there is anything we can do,” Zari said. “Except for me, your world has less understanding of the technology than this other one does. And with my expertise, I can only tell you that traveling between universes is far too dangerous to attempt.”
“I wonder if you thought so in the other universe,” I mused.
“It is completely possible that neither you nor I exist over there,” Zari said. “And no one was there to clean up after Blayn-G.”
I found the idea that I didn’t exist at all in another universe somewhat unsettling. Perhaps that’s just my own personal self-centeredness.
Meg
The sun was settling behind the trees as Meg, Colleen, and Dillon considered whether to stay on the mountain or head farther down towards Whisper.
“Peter isn’t happy we’re up here,” Meg said. Peter had left them after it appeared nothing would be immediately forthcoming in the area. Meg and her companions had had a snack while he investigated. He’d returned and suggested they leave.
“It’s an easy hike back if we go down to Peter’s,” Colleen said.
Dillon glared at her. Meg saw the puzzled look on the other woman’s face. It was the same thing she had been thinking.
Meg stood up to stretch. She looked at the darkening
sky. “I think we should go to Peter’s.”
“Peter doesn’t like the instability of that area. We could go back to the car, have a real meal in town and then hike up again tomorrow.”
Meg glared at him, although it was probably much too dark for him to notice. “What is up with this? And what do you know?”
“What do you mean?” Dillon asked, playing innocent.
“You know what I mean. This whole, don’t go to Peter’s. What’s going on?” He was lying. He knew exactly what she meant, Meg thought. She knew it in the cells of her body, realizing that at least this one time she was glad to know when someone was lying or telling the truth.
Meg gasped. A flaming sword sliced through her brain, leaving nothing but red pain. She thought she would vomit, wanted to vomit, to feel the pain spill out of her. As quickly as that it was gone, leaving behind the sense that something had been torn from her. The sense was so strong, she patted her body to make sure she wasn’t missing an arm.
Could it have been a warning from Peter? She considered it but he felt impossibly distant. The connection felt even less intimate than the time she’d left the mountain to go down to Portland. This was like she wasn’t even on the same continent as he was.
The flaming sword came back down, perhaps to finish her off. Red fire burned up from her stomach and into her head. The world shifted. Meg fell to knees, empty. Had there been an earthquake? She reached out to ask Peter, but there was nothing.
“What’s going on?” Dillon asked, coming over to Meg. Colleen was also on her feet.
“I can’t feel Peter. It’s like someone ripped every connection I have to him out of my mind and my body,” Meg said, leaning back a little. Then she got to her feet. Dillon offered a hand but she didn’t take it.
“I think we ought to head back down,” Colleen said, shouldering her own pack.
“I need to know what happened. The mountain isn’t supposed to be able to exist without Peter. But that’s exactly like what it feels like to me.” Meg could feel tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. Even hearing about Lacey hadn’t brought this kind of physical pain. Then she had a disbelief and denial and anger, each appropriate in its own way, guiding her through the paths of her grief. This was like someone had ripped her body in half.
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