On the Run (Wine of the Gods Book 28)

by Pam Uphoff

  Fidel stepped through and then walked out the door.

  Chapter Nine

  16 December 2961

  It took nearly an hour to get the meeting back in order.

  "It's a trans-dimensional corridor. Either Mr. Enterprise or I can make them. The first corridor needs to be stretched by hand, so to speak, which is why I flew up there the old-fashioned way. This is our first experiment with them in space, we have no idea how the orbiting and rotation factors will work out in the long run. We may, or may not be able to make parallel corridors with the Earth spinning. We don't know if even this single one will last long. But even if the corridor proves to be a short-term phenomenon, as you have seen yourself it lasts long enough to move a large number of people and freight from Earth to the Moon at virtually no additional cost."

  "How do you make them? Frankly, sir, this is close to terrifying."

  Fidel nodded. "The techniques are proprietary, however I will provide your labs with several to study here on Earth, and as for this one, we'll move the ends wherever you want at either end, and leave it for a few months, so we can all get an idea of how enduring it is, before we put a price on it."

  He glanced at his notes. "Now, as to its utility. As you noticed, there is an acceleration effect in transit. This will vary from 0.1 g to 3 g's depending on the relative positions of the spot on the Earth to the Moon. Fragile cargo and people can move when the Moon is more or less overhead, and more sturdy freight during the higher acceleration parts of the day."

  Ajay had gotten over his nerves in the course of running back and forth through the corridor, herding board members. By the time Fidel had wrapped up his brief presentation the hastily summoned science and engineering staff had arrived and Ajay herded them through. Made a few local corridors for them to study, and talked about time dilation and acceleration through the corridor. More people kept arriving. The far end of the corridor was moved first to the company offices and then to the dock area. This end was likewise moved.

  Lack of comprehension did not prevent the managers from shifting several large and heavy machines through.

  "We seem to be taking advantage of ye." Douglas eyed Fidel curiously.

  "I hate to tell you this, Ben, but you are advertising." Fidel grinned at his expression. "Think about it. Think of the value in a corridor from London to New York or Miami. Denver. Sydney. Calcutta. The sheer volume of traffic, the value of the saved time and transshipment is enormously larger than the traffic to the Moon."

  A calculating look crossed the executive's face. "Fidel, is this company of yours going to be publicly owned? How much are ye hoping to charge for these corridors of yours?"

  "We've discussed this, and no, we're going to keep the ownership private. As to cost, we looked at how much is spent on highways and decided that simply charging a million pounds per corridor would bring in more money than we have any idea what to do with."

  "There are going to be security concerns, aren't there?"

  "Oh, yes. Starting with the dangers of that corridor up there possibly being moved into an airlock, or even what would happen if the Redoubt lost pressure. And keeping mice and bugs out. Or pests from India away from the Great Plains grain and so forth. I suspect I'll be receiving a visit from the security people about opening corridors across national boundaries. Probably very soon."

  Douglas chuckled. "Oh, I think ye can count on that, Fidel."

  Chapter Ten

  17 December, 2961

  "So, how was London?" Peggy shifted to top gear and settled into the outbound traffic. She'd picked her dad up at 'the office' at his request.

  "I think you were right about your boyfriend being a space alien."

  Peggy winced. She'd tried hard to shake her feelings for Fidel. It hadn't worked. "What has he done?"

  "Opened a magic tunnel from his office to the Lunar Redoubt." Her dad's eyes twinkled, probably at the expression on her face. Then he sobered. "He genuinely has, and it's got a lot of people totally flummoxed. I feel very, umm, through the looking glass just now."

  "Magic tunnel?"

  "He calls it trans-dimensional, and as far as the scientists can tell, that's correct. He and Enterprise can apparently make them at will, and will be selling them for about a million pounds a piece."

  "A million . . . If true, I can't think if that's too much or too little."

  "Yes, considering what it costs to build a highway overpass or a bridge it's pretty cheap. But apparently the two of them made four for the scientists to play with in about an hour. With no equipment whatsoever. If these things live up to their promise, they are going to be filthy rich in no time at all."

  "No equipment?"

  "He claims it's a sort of mental ability, like telepathy, that allows him to see and manipulate a 'natural' multi-dimensional phenomenon."

  "Telepathy? I do hope he hasn't been reading my mind for the last few months."

  "Hmm. Yes. In any case, we talked it over, and we'd like you to try and find out where he's from, and how he does this."

  "Probably with his engineered genes. Should I let him know that I know about these magic tunnels of his?"

  "I think so. It will be public knowledge in a few more days. Apparently he considered the corridor to the Moon to be good advertising." He blew out a dissatisfied breath. "One other odd thing we've found out about Mr. Iron and Mr. Enterprise. They both have accents. In fact Ajay barely speaks English."

  "Don't be silly, Dad, I talk to both of them regularly. They both sound like Oxford grads."

  "They sound just like you—to you. The recordings are completely different. They say the same things, but with very odd accents. Iron's is minimal, I suspect he's worked on it. But Ajay doesn't seem to care."

  "Really?"

  "Really, and no one notices at all. I've half a mind to tackle him myself, but I don't know that he'd talk to me."

  Peggy snorted. "With or without an accent. And where, pray tell, is this mysterious beau of mine?"

  "Home. Apparently he brought a corridor from his study to his hotel suite in London, and has been coming and going at will."

  "Umm, and half the government is in a total panic?"

  "Oh, three quarters, easily. We really do need you to talk to the fellow. Umm, with a pickup."

  Peggy sighed. "Yes. Of course."

  "Perhaps if you were to dress for riding? I wouldn't mind having you out in plain sight while you talk to him."

  "I . . . don't think he's dangerous. Or . . . not to me."

  "None-the-less . . . "

  So she stopped at the house long enough to change, and drove off wondering how many people were watching, and how she could get Fidel to not do or say anything embarrassing while she was wearing this appallingly stylish emerald stick pen.

  There was no one in sight as she drove up, but Ajay stuck his head out the barn door and pointed at the house, so she parked there.

  Fidel opened the front door before her knock. "Word got around quickly, I see."

  "Good heavens, yes. My father wants me to find out if you're a space alien, and if you really have a magic corridor from your office to your hotel suite in London."

  "I closed the corridor when I relinquished the room, mainly to keep the Redoubt people from following me home, and your father reads the wrong sort of science fiction. He needs to study the type with parallel worlds."

  Peggy choked. "Do you mean that?"

  "Oh yes." His forehead wrinkled a bit. "Is your father the person I should be speaking to about this? Or someone he knows? I decided there wasn't much use in hiding my background once I committed to this. Why don't you call him and have him come over?" He grinned wryly. "Or is he listening in? The number for the gate is six eight seven four. Hang around if they'll let you, so you can retreat with cover, or I'll tell you my horrible history in private, later."

  "Is it that bad?"

  "It's horrible now, and will barely warrant a footnote in history a century from now." He stepped to the win
dow. "Ah yes. Three car loads. They must have been worried about you."

  She followed him into the kitchen, and watched him start a pot of coffee. "It can't possibly be boring, will we need the caffeine?"

  "I'll feel a bit more hospitable." He stuck his head out the door and whistled. "Show them all in, Ajay."

  Ajay waved and headed for the front. Fidel walked back to the living room and opened the front door.

  "Ah there you are. Mr. Falconstone, and company. Help yourselves to anything, while I tell you the history of the Universe and my sordid part in it."

  "Do we really need the history of the Universe?" Her father asked. The other men were either spreading out to watch out, or closing in to watch inward. Fidel sat in the chair to the left of the fireplace and put his feet up on the coffee table.

  "I suppose we could start with the Great Fire of 1707. That seems to be about the time of the split between your universe and the one where my people started. The scientists call all the different possible Worlds 'membranes', and it of course got shortened to 'branes' almost as soon as the full term was coined. Most major splits are due to astronomical events, so I suspect a rain of small superheated meteors started the fires. In this universe it brought a halt to the escalating war between the French and British colonists through the medium of the Indians. In another there was no fire, the so-called French and Indian War escalated, and the British colonists found Britain so busy elsewhere they had nothing to spare for the colonies. This led, eventually, to the rebellion and separation of the Colonies. Then India wanted its independence . . . the British Empire fell apart as a single political entity, but its parts continued to dominate much of the world. Now, one thing I must tell you—and I'm not a scientist so I can't explain it. Once Worlds split apart, time can proceed at a different pace in each. For you it is year 2961. For the Earth that my ancestors came from it is the year 3522. They've had so many wars, they've destroyed and rebuilt their civilizations a dozen times. They aren't much advanced over you, technologically. They have home computers sitting on their desks, and they haven't found much to pull them out into space. Oh, they have a colony on Mars, but it's tiny, and they mine the asteroid belt in a small way.

  "And they have dimensional travel."

  "And genetic engineering?" her dad asked.

  "They had genetic engineering, managed to scare themselves, and when they discovered the parallel worlds, they had the perfect solution to their problem. Well, first, about the genetic engineering. They cured diseases, then they selected for advantageous genes, then they made artificial genes that were an improvement over nature. And they realized that a lot of things that had been considered coincidence were happening a lot more frequently. Telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. And they tried to figure out what was making this happen and boost it."

  "They called those experimental kids 'gods' but it was sarcasm, not worship. But the gods could do things that made their theoretical dimensional gate actually work, and that's what they were used for. They treated them like slaves, removed the engineered from the definition of human for the purpose of civil rights. They got rid of the mass of slightly engineered people by shoving them through a gate to Worlds with serious challenges. Then the highly engineered gods rebelled and escaped through the gate with them."

  Fidel shrugged. "Without the gods the gates couldn't be made to work, with the computers they had at that time, fourteen centuries ago. And then there were wars, and rebuilding, and more wars. A bit over a thousand years before trans-dimensional travel was rediscovered and implemented. Now, Earth has been exploring for several centuries. Another world, the Empire of the One, has discovered dimensional travel independently and has been exploring for a bit more than a century. My world was discovered by both about fifty years ago, and we subsequently figured out how to use our unique mental abilities to do easily what they do with a great expenditure of energy mechanically. My world being the one the gods escaped to."

  "So, are we the fourth World to be discovered? No, couldn't be, for centuries of expenditures." Peggy recognized Dr. Al-something from a few visits to her dad's office.

  Ajay snorted. "Nah, Earth's got, like a hundred Colony Worlds. With and without Natives, who get royally screwed."

  "Which is what they tried with us." Fidel smirked. "We sent them packing. We're still split into about eight countries, the One World had dealings with one of the other countries, but pulled out when they found out we were about to get hit by a large comet."

  "Were you?"

  "We diverted it, mostly successfully. Some small chunks that fell off hit. Well. Getting down to the details of what I'm doing here . . . I am a cousin to the King of one of those eight nations, and I committed treason. The main results were the deaths of about thirty guards and myself and my younger son being sent to prison under suspended sentences of death. Some other people who were imprisoned there were part of a magical criminal gang. When the rest of the gang hit the prison and freed them, we went along. Joined the gang, which included one of the rare, very strong 'witches' who could open gates to other branes."

  Fidel sighed, his eyes staring into space. "I didn't take part in most of their more violent actions. There very nearly wasn't any need for any criminal actions, but they liked the thrill. On a primitive World one could trade good steel knives for gold, bring the gold here and sell it, buy whatever one wished."

  "Computer games. Chocolate." Ajay explained.

  "But my new friends weren't terribly interested in, sorry, Ajay, honest trading."

  Ajay shrugged. "Some of the guys were real thrill seekers. And those western wizards liked rape, no doubt about that. And some of the girls liked killing."

  "They did?" Fidel looked surprised.

  "Well, that was before the prison break, before we, the Cove Island mages, drifted up on their beach, for that matter. But the way the witches tell it, Jade was an out-and-out Black Widow, and Teri not much better. They had both been beaten by someone they called Heliotrope, shortly before we arrived and the witches . . . took us on as play toys. Then Rior came along and organized them, trained everyone and pulled off the prison raid. And started all the cross dimension raids."

  "I see. Well, in any case, I was planning an exit and quiet retirement here. Then the gate disappeared. One suspects the Good Guys caught up with the gang. We don't know, since neither of us can make gates. We're marooned until the Good Guys track us down and drag us back to prison."

  "These 'corridors' are different than 'gates'?" another man, someone she'd never met.

  "Yes. The corridors are a weak cousin."

  "We've got corridors all over our home World. Going from town to town, hauling freight, people commute from a thousand miles away. They're great." Ajay grinned. "Think of what they'll do for your air quality."

  "Indeed." Her dad eyed the two . . . other worlders. "So you two are criminals, by your own admission?"

  "Apart from what was needed to establish legal identities, not in your jurisdiction. Not in your whole world. I was careful about that, wanting to stay here." Fidel said. "As for our moral characters, yes, we're the Bad Guys, with little respect for the law. However, here and now we're trying. So, when you figure out where you want to study these corridors, let us know and we'll make a bunch of them for you. And then we'll start selling them."

  Her father nodded. "I see. I think I'm going to leave you now, and talk to a rather large number of people."

  No promises. Peggy thought. What the hell do you do with a pair of trans-dimensional criminals? If that is what Fidel is. Her father caught her eye and nodded toward the door. She shook her head and took off the pin and handed it to him. Hopefully unobtrusively.

  When they'd all filed out, Ajay let out a deep breath. "Well, that went well. I figured we'd be locked up. Possibly in the looney bin." He flapped a hand in farewell and closed the door behind himself.

  "That's why you did it this way, isn't it?"

  Fidel smiled at her. "Oh yes. Otherwise there
'd have been a huge credibility problem, and a chance your father or someone would just make sure we disappeared."

  Peggy sat down in the chair across from him. "Since you're in a confessing mood, will you tell me about this treason?"

  He sighed, but nodded. "The Kingdom of the West held my loyalty, heart and soul. And I saw a weak King, and a succession of heirs that were disasters. We handle the inheritance very oddly, even for our World and our history. The two eldest sons of the king inherit the leadership of the military, and the leadership of the administration. The Spear, the eldest son, becomes the General. The second son becomes the King. They support each other, and when necessary, they check the other."

  "Are you the son of the Spear?"

  "Great grandson, and I married the granddaughter of another king. It had become the custom of the king to marry twice. A commoner, frequently the daughter of a general, to produce a Spear Prince with martial prowess, then divorce and marry a daughter of the nobility to produce a Crown Prince with a lot of governmental blood ties and loyalties."

  "That sounds like a recipe for disaster."

  "Anything but a single son is, for most monarchies, but the two half brothers, by splitting the power seem to rub along well enough. But Leano had a bastard son, which we didn't learn of until after he'd married a commoner and had another son. And fell in love with his wife. He promoted the bastard as his Spear Heir and his commoner son as the Crown Heir. We nobles didn't take it well, but Crown Prince Leano was popular, his devotion to his commoner wife seen as a romantic love story. They had another son, five daughters and finally a last son.

  "King Rebo died at the age of a hundred and seven, Leano was crowned, and the Bastard and the Commoner confirmed in their places. Crown Prince Rolo obediently married common for his first son, Staven, divorced, married nobility and produced another son. They named him Rebo, after his grandfather. He was a disaster. Weasely little backstabber, always running off, neglecting his duties. Bisexual, too. Not a hint of morals, seduced his uncle's wife. That uncle, King Leano's third son, hired an assassin and had him killed. Prince Mirk was discovered, and attempted suicide, failed at that. But at least he saved the kingdom from Rebo the younger.