Falzon had to know this. Why then wasn’t he worried?
6
As soon as Dr. Koertig was gone, Falzon locked the door to the room, then pulled the curtains on all the windows. When he was sure he had complete privacy, he knelt before the block of stone that acted as the dais for his throne, and pushed it back. He grunted with the strain as it slid along the floor. A sasquatch might be the only other creature who could do this unassisted, and even then it would take an exceptionally strong one. Which was why Falzon had chosen it to cover his hiding place.
He stopped pushing the platform when its edge cleared a square cut in the stone. He found the groove along the outer edge and levered it up with his talons. In the space beneath lay the strangest object he had ever seen… or touched. It never looked the same twice – not the same shape, not the same size. Look at it once and it was oval; blink and it was a seven-sided polyhedron; blink again and it was a pyramid. But even more disturbing was its feel.
He lifted it from the recess and felt a familiar pleasant tingle run up his arms and neck and into his brain. He loved to hold this thing. At the moment its shape was like an egg, but the surface pressing against his palms was all sharp angles. He blinked and it had a spiked surface but felt soft and furry to the touch.
All of Nocturnia was looking for this, what the Silent Ones called “the Key to the Temple.”
Half a dozen years ago he’d tracked down the dwarf Aagonsson who’d led the only expedition ever to return from the Frozen Wastes. Falzon had wanted to know if it might be worth his while to venture into the ice barrens at the bottom of Nocturnia – did the cyclopean structures he’d found hold any secrets the Uberall movement might exploit?
He’d found the elderly dwarf in poor health, rattling on about the “component” he’d removed from one of the structures. Component of what? Aagonsson didn’t know. All he knew was that it was valuable, but he couldn’t say why. He’d hidden it in the Spinal Mountains of Afric and never gone back. Falzon had tortured the location out of him and then strangled him. He’d then journeyed to the Spinal Mountains and retrieved the “component.”
Shortly after that, the southern end of the Spinal Mountains detonated in a world-shaking explosion. If Falzon hadn’t acted when he had, the “component” would have been lost forever. The Silent Ones began their attacks shortly after he’d retrieved the object. Only then did he realize that Aagonsson’s “component” was the Silent Ones’ “Key to the Temple.”
But that did not mean someone could not find opportunities in the Silent Ones’ depredations. No crisis was so terrible that it could not be exploited by a nimble and – Falzon gleefully admitted it – ruthless mind.
For that was when he realized that the Key to the Temple was also the key to stopping the attacks by the Silent Ones, as well as stopping their destabilizing the world’s occultium and thinning of the Veil.
All he had to do was return the Key.
But Falzon wasn’t ready to do that. The thinning of the Veil, though dangerous, was too useful to stop just yet. All he needed was for Koertig to find a way to enlarge the breach to the needed dimensions, and Falzon would change the histories of not just one world, but two.
Regretfully, and with no little difficulty, he returned the Key to its recess. He’d simply had to hold it just once before leaving for home – a visit he was not looking forward to, but an obligation he could not put off any longer. At least he would be flying in a Y-RC plane, the fastest transport in the world. The Academy of Science was good for something, at least.
He slid the dais back into place, pulled back the curtains, then headed for is quarters to pack for his trip to the far side of Nocturnia.
7
Telly parked the steamer coupé next to the car he’d used to rescue Emma and Ryan the other night. He’d avoided taking that one to the farm for fear of Ergel recognizing it.
Could it be only two nights since he’d dropped off his brother and sister at the Balmore safe house? Seemed like so much longer.
Damn! He pounded a fist on the steering wheel. If only he had a way to get word to them. Or they to him.
But another concern pushed to the front of his thoughts as Simon’s words echoed down the halls of his memory.
Tell the esteemed Doctor Manfred Telford Koertig…
Telford? How could he and Dr. Koertig have the same name? Okay, it was Telly’s first and Koertig’s middle, but still… back home it wasn’t a common surname, but he’d never met or even heard of anyone Telford as a given name. And now here, on a totally different world, the most brilliant scientist alive was named Telford.
Coincidence? Telly didn’t believe much in coincidences. But if this was one, it had to be the mother of all coincidences.
As he hopped out of the car and hurried back toward Dr. Koertig’s laboratory, something whooshed overhead. He looked up and saw a sleek, silent aircraft climbing into the sky at jetlike speed. He’d never seen anything like it on Nocturnia.
He hurried on to the lab and found the pluriban waiting for him in the control room overlooking the rescue chamber. He’d replaced the tentacle with a normal hand.
“Doctor Koertig, I just saw something that looked like a plane zoom by overhead.”
“Falzon’s plane. It rakshasa design – top secret. Won’t share it with anyone else. The Y-RC sent it to ferry him home.” He craned his neck to look around Telly, then raised one of his bushy eyebrows. “Where is he?”
“Oh. Master Simon won’t let him go.” Telly threw in some Nocturnia jargon for good measure. “Says he holds the lease on the little snack and needs him to work the fields.”
Koertig shook his head. “What a greedy, unpleasant loup.”
Telly figured that Simon must also be one frightened loup – sooner or later he’d have to tell Falzon he’d lost his property. But Telly was more interested in Koertig’s relationship with Ryan.
“May I ask why you’re so interested in a kid from Humania?”
“I’m not sure myself. Inexplicables and anomalies hover around him and his sister.”
Yes…inexplicables. Telly knew exactly what he meant. But he wondered if his inexplicables and Koertig’s were the same.
“How so?”
“You would not understand.”
“Try me. People bring me gadgets that don’t work. The reason they don’t work is ‘inexplicable’ to them, but perfectly clear to me once I take a look at it.”
Koertig dropped into a wheeled desk chair. “Very well. Sometimes simply laying it out for someone else can clarify matters.”
Telly found another chair and sat facing him. “I’m listening.”
Koertig patted the pockets of his lab coat. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”
Telly almost said he didn’t smoke, but thought he’d be safer playing dumb.
“What’s a cigarette?”
“Of course…your benighted upbringing in the hinterlands. How would you know?”
Telly put on a puzzled face. “What am I missing?”
“Nothing. It’s a bad habit. I’m almost glad we can’t grow tobacco here on Nocturnia.”
“Tobacco?”
“It’s a Humania plant. You dry the leaves, wrap them in paper to form a little tube, then set it on fire and inhale the smoke.”
Telly put on an insulted tone. “Just ’cause I never went to school, doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
Koertig looked puzzled. “Whatever are you talking about?”
“‘Set it on fire and inhale the smoke’? You must think I’m a real idiot, because that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of!”
Koertig leaned back and laughed – a weird sound from a troll throat. “Yes, I guess it is. But millions of humans do it.” He shook his head. “Where were we?”
“Inexplicables.”
“Oh, yes. The two kids who weren’t scheduled to be saved. I knew from the breach viewer that a young couple on bicycles would be killed in the tornado
that afternoon. Since they appeared healthy and of an age that would allow many years of breeding, I targeted them for rescue.”
This was SOP, Telly knew. The breach generator, when it opened a windowlike hole in the air, could be used simply as a peephole to the other side. Nocturnia and Humania were not synched timewise. Ryan and Emma had told Telly he’d been missing for ten days back home, but by Nocturnia time Telly had spent a good two-and-a-half months here.
So the viewer often showed the past or the future back home. One of Koertig’s minions, usually Trant, would search for people who were going to die and go missing – sailors lost at sea were a favorite. Once they were identified, Koertig would “save” them for a life of slavery and breeding in Nocturnia.
“But instead of two adults in their twenties,” Koertig was saying, “I found two children.”
Telly shrugged. “I hate to accuse Trant, but he must have made a mistake.”
“My thought exactly. I was ready to kick him out of my labs for good, but I decided to play back the recording first.”
“Recording?”
“Yes. We record all breach viewings.”
“There was no mistake?”
Koertig pointed to a switch near the door. “Turn out the lights and see for yourself.”
Telly did as he was told while Koertig hit a couple of buttons on the console behind him. A videotape machine whirled – no DVDs yet in Nocturnia. A screen in the wall lit with an image of a street that he recognized immediately as downtown Skelton Springs. A wave of longing swept over him.
Kansas…home…
Even though he’d never really fit in back there, it still held a lifetime of memories.
He saw a young couple he didn’t recognize approach a pair of bikes chained to a no-parking sign. They were dressed in shorts and each carried a shiny safety helmet. Koertig fiddled with a dial and the action sped up until they were moving herky-jerky at roadrunner speed. They biked out of town, saw the tornado cloud, tried to race back to safety, but were caught and sucked up into the funnel – to their deaths, Telly imagined.
“But that’s not at all what happened,” Koertig said. “We have some strange anomaly here.”
Telly had a thought. “When you made that recording, you were looking into the relative future, correct?”
Koertig nodded. “Correct.”
“Would you be able to aim the breach viewer into the past on Humania – to watch that scene again?”
“What for? The past is past – it doesn’t change.”
“But maybe we can spot the anomaly.”
Koertig stared at him a moment. “It’s a fool’s errand, but I like the way you think.”
“Thank you.”
He frowned. “Why do you say that?”
Telly shrugged. “Growing up I was taught that it’s good manners to thank someone for a compliment.”
“That wasn’t a compliment. I merely stated a fact.”
That sounded like something Ryan would say.
“Then I take it back.”
Koertig made no reply as he busied himself with switches and dials on the console.
“The time slippage between the worlds is inconsistent – one might even say capricious. I have entered both the geographic and temporal loci of where the recording started. Not sure it’s going to work. Let’s see if the peephole can access it.”
The screen flashed and filled with static, then coalesced into the images of the young couple again, approaching their bikes with helmets in hand.
“Exactly as before,” Koertig said.
But the words had no sooner passed his lips than the couple stopped and stared at their bikes in dismay. At first Telly couldn’t see why, then he noticed their tires – all four of them were flat.
Dr. Koertig shot forward until his big troll nose was almost touching the screen. “Someone slashed their tires! But that’s… that’s impossible!”
Obviously not, Telly thought, but kept it to himself. Instead he said, “Can we go back further and maybe see who did the slashing?”
“Good thought.” Koertig fiddled with the controls but nothing new came on the screen. He shook his massive head. “I am afraid this is as far in the past as we can view.”
“How could someone alter the past?”
“It can’t be done, but…”
Telly waited as Koertig stared into space. “But …?”
“You can’t change the past, but you can change the present, and changes to the present will carry into the future. This scene was originally viewed in the relative future. If someone who did not exist in the space-time continuum at the moment we recorded it later entered the relative present of that continuum, they could slash the tires and change the future, i.e., the couple’s meeting with the tornado.”
Telly shook his head. “What?” His brain felt like it was going to break.
And did Koertig actually say “i.e.”?
Koertig kicked the desk chair, toppling it with a crash.
“It could only be someone from Nocturnia! The same someone who sent those two children to the exact spot where I’d planned to pick up the other cyclists!”
Professor Polonius? Telly almost blurted the name. From Nocturnia? It couldn’t be.
And yet…Ryan and Emma had told him that Polonius had given them the coordinates, saying they were from their big brother. A total lie. Even gave them a GPS to help them find the exact spot.
Telly’s mouth had gone dry. He swallowed. “W-why would anyone want to do that?”
“That is precisely the question: Why? Why arrange for me to haul two children into Nocturnia? Why substitute them for the adults? Is there something special about them?”
Telly couldn’t imagine anything special about Emma and Ryan. Just a couple of normal, everyday, corn-fed, Midwest kids.
“What’s more,” Koertig was saying, “they set off the cardonite alarm upon their arrival. Which, by the way, is why you’re here today: To see if you can find out why it was triggered with no cardonite present.”
“I would be honored,” Telly said. “But did it ever occur to you that maybe someone’s messing with your head?”
“My head? My head is not a mess.”
Telly reminded himself to avoid American slang. “I didn’t–”
“It is perhaps the best head I have ever owned.”
Gotta be the ugliest, Telly thought.
“I meant, maybe someone is trying to distract you or confuse you.”
“I am neither. But I am consternated. Especially by a remark made by the boy when I had him while Falzon was going on about that human spy nonsense.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me the man who gave him the coordinates – a Doctor Polonius, I believe – stuttered.”
Yeah, Polonius stuttered, all right. But…
“Does that mean something?”
“Heinrich Bluthkalt stuttered.”
Telly knew a little about Dr. Bluthkalt – what Uberall didn’t? He’d been one of Koertig’s fellow pluribans who became Nocturnia’s version of the ultimate mad scientist, hated and feared the world over, even by his fellow pluribans. He’d sought refuge with Falzon and his Uberalls, but Falzon killed him – crushed his head with one of his massive feet, as the rakshasa loved to remind anyone who would listen.
The death of Dr. Bluthkalt endeared Falzon to much of Nocturnia. His Uberall movement had been miniscule until then, but ridding the world of Heinrich Bluthkalt had attracted recruits and donations from all quarters of Nocturnia. The Uberalls became a powerful, cross-species movement.
“But Bluthkalt is dead.”
Koertig nodded. “I am well aware of that. I was there when Falzon pulped his brain.”
“That must have been…interesting.”
“I thought it a bit excessive, but excess is expected from a monomaniacal rakshasa. What I didn’t understand was why. Falzon and Bluthkalt were equally unbalanced. They should have formed a perfect bond. Falzon welcom
ed him, set him up with a lab, then made his annual trek back to his homeland. When he returned, his first act, without warning or explanation, was a public execution of Bluthkalt.”
Telly was glad that was long before his arrival.
“Um, I’ve never seen a picture of Doctor Bluthkalt. What did he look like?”
If Koertig said a skinny old guy with glasses and thick gray hair…
“That’s an idiotic question. We’re talking about a pluriban.”
“Oh, right, sure. Forgive me. I never saw a pluriban as I was growing up. It takes some getting used to.”
Appearance was meaningless when talking about a race that was cobbled together from other races and could switch heads and limbs whenever the whim struck.
Koertig shook his head. “Oh, yes. Once again your deprived childhood in the rural lands rears its empty head.” He raised a finger. “Heinrich donned many heads and bodies through his life, but the stutter was a constant.”
“Then who–?”
“This Polonius must be someone from this side – from Nocturnia. Someone brilliant enough to devise a way to use the breach generator with no one’s knowledge.”
Telly realized with a start that that must have been what had happened to him. He’d been working in Polonius’s lab when a ring of light lit the floor beneath him. The next thing he knew he was falling through the air. He landed in the rescue chamber just a few feet away from where he now sat. He must have hit his head because he vaguely remembered stumbling down dark corridors into the night.
“Bluthkalt would fit that description perfectly,” Koertig was saying. “He helped design it, in fact. But we know it can’t be him, so who is it?”
“Did he have an assistant who might have picked up some–?”
Koertig waved off the question. “He was a maverick. We partnered for a while on designing the breach generator and on some experiments on captured humans, but on the whole he liked to work alone. Perhaps that was why he went mad.” Koertig tapped his temple. “No back and forth with other minds, no exposure to new ideas. He developed crackpot theories.”
Family Secrets Page 4