by Robert Reed
He put the photograph away. The tide was rising, pulled up by the unseen moon. Looking above, the everted earth was dissolving into sunshine—first the night face, then the brighter day face—and he was thinking about everything, and nothing. Then he noticed the stranger passing nearby, looking at him with an odd expression. Was she some agent keeping tabs on him? Then why the look of pity?
Touching his face, Cornell discovered he was crying. For how long? He began to wipe his eyes with both sleeves, and he sniffed and gave a little moan, accomplishing nothing, tears still coming but the wiping motions soothing, in a fashion.
4
Jordick Tiller was a peculiar man at first glance, and at second glance, too. He had raven-black hair kept long and dirty, yet everything else about him seemed precise, in its place. Cornell remembered him from the broken van. Yet Jordick didn’t seem to recall him, glancing up at the sound of the door, the eyes showing no hint of recognition. The lounge was empty save for the two of them. Was this the right place? Cornell checked the number on the door. Yes, it was. Jordick dipped his head, a pen in his left hand, a little comppad covered with a precise drawing of the chair opposite him. Just like in the van, he was wearing pressed slacks and a brown too-heavy sweater. Cornell sat, but not close to him, waiting a moment and then asking, “How have you been?”
“We’ve got to wait,” Jordick replied. His head remained down, the hand making more lines. “The woman said so.”
“Then what?”
Jordick frowned at his drawing. “I don’t know.” Dark eyes betrayed nervousness, perhaps even fear. “I guess we take some kind of class, I don’t know…”
“Nice drawing,” Cornell offered.
“Thank you.”
They sat without speaking for several moments, then a woman entered the lounge through a second door. “Gentlemen?” She smiled and said, “Come this way, please,” and the smile dropped away.
They were led into a long hallway lined with closed doors, and once in a while there were sounds. Cornell heard people talking and bits of music, emotional Romantic stuff dominating. The hallway was very white. A white floor and white walls and a long white ceiling. Cornell joked, “I’m having an out-of-body experience.”
Then:
“I must have died.”
His companions turned, almost glaring at him. Then the woman, crisp and officious, and perhaps bloodless, pointed to two doors set together. “Please remember your room numbers. Mr. Tiller? 115. Mr. Novak has 116.” Again she remembered to smile. “You’ll be tutored by interactive computers programmed for your specific needs. The restrooms are here. You’re free to work at your own pace—”
“Learning what?” Jordick blurted. Then he coughed, surprised by his little outburst “I’m just wondering—”
“No doubt,” the woman replied.
Cornell touched his door, hearing a distinct click before it swung open. The room inside would make a deep closet, a large flat screen built into the far wall, a desk and chair and some kind of food dispenser set in front of the screen. A voice said, “Hello, Mr. Novak. Welcome.” It was a woman’s voice, young and charming.
The woman in the hallway said, “Good luck, gentlemen,” and began to leave.
Jordick tugged at his long hair, glancing at Cornell and swallowing. When he opened his door, a stiff masculine voice said, “Come in, Mr. Tiller.”
A different voice; a different attitude.
Interesting.
“Good luck,” Cornell offered.
Jordick gave a weak, lost nod, then vanished. His door clicked shut after him, and nothing else could be heard in the still white air.
“What I saw,” said the man, “was a hole right in front of me. Close. I mean so close that I jumped back to keep from falling, and the hole pulled away from me. A thousand feet, it felt like. Which is crazy. I know. It’s just that distances and sizes got all confused. A step back was a thousand feet, but a big step forward got you nothing. Like you were inside some carnival’s supermadhouse, you know?”
Cornell could see the man’s face on the monitor, and he couldn’t. Computers had scrubbed his features, leaving only his expressions and a generic identity. The man could be anyone. Everyone. That gave his narrative an unexpected force.
Someone offstage asked, “What happened next?”
“‘Go closer,’ I heard. Then, ‘Look inside it’ As if I was looking down a gopher hole. But I got down low—that seemed to help—and started crawling. And all of a sudden the hole turned huge and close, and I was on its lip, looking down.”
“Down at what?” asked the invisible person.
“I don’t know.” He paused to drink water from a big glass. He seemed winded, colorless eyes beginning to squint “Like a whirlpool, sort of. At least at first. All black, except it seemed bright, too. I know, that doesn’t make sense. But that’s how it was. And there weren’t any whirlpool motions, just a lot of back and forth twisting. And someone said, ‘Go deeper.’ So I did. I was laid out on my belly, getting stretched out—like a wire? That’s how it seemed. And that’s how I looked to the people watching me.” The image jumped, time passing. What had been edited out? The man was saying, “I kept getting thinner, and I got my head through the hole. To me, the hole looked miles across. To everyone else, it was fist-sized. But it all made sense by then. You know? The way dreams make sense, no matter how crazy they sound later?”
“What happened next?”
The man paused, breathing fast. Gathering himself. Cornell took a sip of coffee, hot and fresh; then the story continued:
“I felt like I was falling, falling down a thousand-mile hole, going faster all the time, and the hole kept swirling, then stopped and swirled the other way. And all of a sudden I felt odd. I mean, it was more than being pulled out of shape. It was me. I was changing. Things were looking different because my eyes were different. I know because I touched them, I thought something was in them…I brought my hand up from a million miles back…and I felt hard surfaces and no eyelids and it wasn’t even a hand touching my eyes. I mean, I had this bug limb. Full of joints and hard parts. Like a roach’s, only bigger. And I tried screaming—you don’t know how scared I was!—only I didn’t have a real voice anymore. I let out this crazy fucking screech, like metal tearing, and here’s what’s craziest. I understood myself. I mean, it was a bug’s voice, and I knew the screech meant shit or something like that. My feet were back up on the earth, and normal, but the rest of me was turning into this monster, like in that old fly movie…?”
“What else did you see?” And now Cornell recognized the voice, solid and steady. It was F. Smith, his case officer. “You were on the other side, somewhere else,” she continued. “What else did you see?”
“It’s hard, to make it make sense—”
“Try,” said Ms. Smith.
“The sky was green, only it wasn’t. And the clouds were white, only white meant something else on the other side. With my new eyes.” A brief pause, then a gasp. “It was someone else’s sky. On a different planet. I know that. I felt it. And I was this big bug, bigger than any man, and smart.”
“You didn’t stay there.”
The man said nothing.
“Why did you come back so soon?”
His simple mannequin features held a generic fear, Cornell feeling his own pulse quickening.
“We’re not angry. We just want to know why you came back.”
“I was going to be eaten,” said the man. “I mean, I just knew I was exposed there, in trouble.”
“Eaten by what?”
“I’m not sure anymore. I don’t think I ever knew.” He swallowed audibly, then said, “I was this creature all done up in armor, and I was scared of being in the open. Think of it. My eyes were built to point up, to watch that green sky, and the clouds, because something could come and get me.”
“I see.”
And he laughed in a thin, forced way. “I wasn’t high on the food chain. You know?”
&n
bsp; “Perhaps,” said Ms. Smith, “you’d like to go back again?”
Nothing.
“It would be an enormous help—”
“No. No way.” Defiance mixed with fear, one giving the other backbone. “Don’t seriously ask me.”
She said nothing.
“You go. Go and come back,” he told Ms. Smith. Another thin laugh, then he said, “You can tell me all about it.”
The screen went black, and Cornell thought about a bright blackness. How would that look?
“Any questions, sir?”
He sipped his coffee. Music began to play, soothing and soft. Bach, he realized. But performed by synthesizers. He put down his cup and said, “Okay. You found a way into other worlds. Right?”
“We call them quantum intrusions. In essence, they are holes. Very strange passageways, indeed.”
“Quantum intrusions.” He nodded and sat back.
“They involve complex physical principles. Principles only marginally understood.”
“How’d you find them?”
“That’s classified. I’m sorry.” The voice almost sounded apologetic. “The technical aspects require the highest security clearances.”
“Do you know how?”
“No, sir.” It waited for a moment, then said, “I can tell you that it was unexpected, an example of extreme serendipity.”
“Who was the man? The witness?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“But why him? Was he the first one?”
“He was a volunteer, and he seemed qualified.” A pause. “It’s taken some time for us to learn who is most qualified.” Years ago, accompanying his father, Cornell had listened to rambling accounts from UFO witnesses. Something about their adventures mirrored this one. Not the events themselves, but in that kind of astonished inability to explain what was seen and felt.
“Yes, he was an early volunteer,” the voice continued.
Cornell picked up the coffee cup, finishing the last dark drops. “So how many intrusions have you found?”
“That’s classified.”
“A few? A bunch?”
“Sir,” the voice reprimanded.
The cup was spun cellulose, soft and foamy, and he bit off one of the white edges and spit it into the remaining cup. “If there’s one intrusion, there’s probably a lot of them.”
Silence.
“Classified. I know.” He grinned and remembered Porsche’s tale. The universe was an enormous suburb, fences between the worlds and the geometry much more complicated than rectangles and curling streets. “Are the intrusions like gates? Gates in a fence?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Okay. How about this. You pass through an intrusion, and what? You’re transformed—?”
“I can’t pass through. Only living matter makes the journey, and then, it seems, only when the lifeform possesses minimal neurological functions. We don’t know why. But large primates are capable, as are porpoises. And elephants, too.”
Cornell laughed. He was playing with the image of stuffing an elephant down an otherworldly hole, then F. Smith trying to interview the bedazzled elephant on its return.
“Different intrusions allow different species,” the computer volunteered. “We think it has to do with having an appropriate species on the other side, one which can be used as a template.”
Another bite of the cup, another chunk spit back into what remained. “I bet you used Special Forces boys. Didn’t you? Big tough disciplined souls, and they didn’t work out. Am I right?”
Silence with a whiff of disapproval.
He smiled. “And machines can never go through?”
“To my knowledge, no.”
“Maybe we need smarter machines.”
“Perhaps,” it allowed.
“How about clothes? Do they pass through?”
“No.”
“Tools?”
“Never, no.”
“Only the living organism?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what about coming back? I’m assuming people can come back, free and easy.”
“Yes, the process is reversible. The intrusion’s machinery—I use that term loosely—retains records of each organism that passes through it, then remakes them when they return. We carry out thorough physicals, and there’s never been a discrepancy. Fingerprints and scars, weight and age remain the same. Always.”
“So you’re saying the only real thing that makes the trip is a person’s soul. Is that what you mean?”
“I don’t know if ‘soul’ is appropriate.”
“What’s a better word?”
That stumped the machine. “Self” was its best effort, but neither of them seemed happy with it.
“Soul,” Cornell repeated. Another bite, and he leaned back, smiling at the ceiling while saying, “Huh,” several times. “Huh, huh, huh.”
He reached the point of saturation, in several ways. Rising, he announced, “I need to pee.”
“To your right, then left.”
“Thanks.”
The restroom was clean enough for surgery, human wastes feeling like an insult. A tall black man gave him a weak smile, then left, and Cornell took his time, letting his mind wander. Intrusions; transformations; souls. No, he wouldn’t try to make it sensible. Instead he thought about Porsche, how she was a tough person to do this stuff. To do it and be eager to do it. He wondered where she was now, and what she might be doing. Could it be described in human terms?
He flushed and washed his hands, and Jordick entered.
“Oh, hi,” said the black-haired man. “How are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Fine. I’m fine.”
“What are they showing you?”
“An interview.” Except Jordick’s interview was different. An entirely different world with its own character. “This girl became a fish,” said Jordick, “and she was swimming in a warm ocean.”
These lessons were matched to each person, probably. What did their bosses think? That Cornell would rise to a challenge, but Jordick needed to be eased into the insanity?
“She’s gone over many times since. Sometimes for days.”
Cornell nodded absently.
“Was yours the same?”
“Mostly,” he lied. “Pretty much.”
“I’m excited.” If anything, Jordick looked more peculiar when he was excited, his pale skin and eyes almost glowing. “Are you eager to start?”
Cornell nodded again, saying, “Pretty much.”
He left the man standing in the middle of that rampant cleanliness, staring at his reflection in the mirror. Practicing fish expressions, Cornell realized. Getting ready.
“Okay, help me. I pass through an intrusion, and magic is done. I come out with a different body, alien eyes, and I’m preprogrammed to understand the language. The basic rules. Is that it?”
“In essence, yes.”
The process struck him as incredible, impossible…a thorough and instantaneous transformation of flesh and mind. But then again, someone or something had rebuilt the universe in the past. Remodeling the human self was a smaller job, wasn’t it?
“But why turn into a bug? Why not become the bug’s predator?”
Silence. Then the voice said, “On that particular world, at least one large insect is a good match for humans. Presumably the predators are either less intelligent or well beyond human capacities.”
“Are people exploring the bug world now?”
“I can’t answer that.”
Cornell shrugged. “It’s funny. I’ve always assumed that intelligence would be tied with tools and technology. Is that a bad assumption?”
“It is a simple one.”
“Okay.” Another shrug. “I go through, but I’m still Cornell Novak…right? I keep my identity?”
“Yes.”
“With all my memories? And the same winning personality?”
“Yes, and yes.”
�
�Thank you,” he joked.
The computer made a soft sound, then said, “Within certain parameters, your basic profile is maintained. In fact, we have personnel on each world whose only task is testing and retesting themselves and others. Since there is no way to transfer modern medical equipment, the research is limited. Perhaps in some future time—”
“But what if no critter is our equal? What if we cross, only the world is uninhabited?”
“You cannot cross then. No intrusion will form.”
“No?”
“The transformation is tuned to neurological activity.”
Questions were forming, too many of them, and Cornell couldn’t speak. All at once he felt tired. Sleepy. Looking at the chewed-up cup, he remembered how Pete would drive him and Dad across the country. That’s where he learned this nervous habit, from watching Pete chew on his cups. And for a moment, without trying, Cornell heard his father’s smooth soft voice talking about worlds and galaxies without number, life forming and spreading, growing wiser by the moment.
He groaned, then asked, “Where am I going?”
“Its designation is High Desert.”
He thought of the virtual images.
“It’s a fortunate posting,” the computer promised. “For some, it is easy to adapt to the new circumstances.”
“For others?”
“Our testing is much improved, and your scores are quite good. You should have no problem.”
“High Desert…is it earthlike?”
“In some details, yes.”
“Show me.”
“I’d prefer to discuss our support facilities here. We have a dozen psychiatrists ready to help you readjust, should you need help. Plus we have several recreational facilities. The agency owns resorts in three states, including American Samoa. Off shift time is meant to be restful. You are precious to us.”