Worldshaper

by Edward Willett

  But I’d never been here before. How could I . . . ?

  The thought died unformed as my stomach growled. I put a hand on it. “Let’s explore,” I said. “We’re here until dark, right?”

  “Yes,” Karl said. “We will wait until two or three in the morning, when we are least likely to be observed, then carry on.”

  “Carry on where?”

  “Later.” He held up the tire iron. “Let us see what these buildings hold.”

  The door of the nearest cabin, though locked, proved no obstacle to Karl and the tire iron. He thrust the sharp end between the door and the jamb, and pulled hard. Breaking and entering, I thought as wood splintered, but couldn’t muster any guilt. After all, if I had created . . . Shaped . . . this world, didn’t everything in it belong to me?

  We entered the dim interior. Nothing happened when I clicked the light switch by the door, but there was enough light to see two double beds with a table, bearing a lamp and an old-fashioned clock radio, between them, a small round table with two chairs in one corner, and a shelf with a clothes rod below it just outside a tiny bathroom. I made a beeline for the latter, and emerged a few moments later, feeling much relieved, drying my rain-soaked hair with a towel, to find Karl standing at the small window that faced the main cabin. He’d drawn the dusty pink curtains back, relieving the gloom a little. “If we are going to find food,” he said, “it will be there.”

  “Let’s find out,” I said.

  “In a moment.” He disappeared into the bathroom. His going to relieve himself relieved me, too, as had his comment about food. Whatever else he was, he was human.

  Or was he? The Adversary and the mysterious Ygrair were both aliens, he claimed. Was he one, too? Even aliens would have to pee and eat, wouldn’t they? The form is imposed by the planet . . .

  I kind of wished I hadn’t remembered he’d said that.

  When he emerged again, we crossed through the rain to the main building. Its door gave no more resistance than the cabin’s. We stepped through into a kitchen. In the big room visible through an archway to our right stood half a dozen square tables, covered with plasticized red-and-white checkered tablecloths and surrounded by rickety-looking wooden chairs. A shelf just below the ceiling held exactly (again) the kind of knickknacks I’d expect this kind of resort to use for decoration: rusty kerosene lanterns, old crates with long-vanished trade names stenciled on their sides, a horse collar, and photographs of bearded men in dark suits and hats and women in long white dresses carrying parasols, standing on the lakeshore. Aside from the archway, a long counter separated the kitchen and the dining area, the space between it and the ceiling sealed with a fiberglass accordion-style curtain, in a rather unattractive shade of flyspecked yellow.

  A big upright freezer and matching refrigerator, whose rounded corners marked them as dating back to the 1950s, stood like silent sentinels at the far end of the kitchen, beneath a long, narrow horizontal window just below the ceiling. In the middle of the kitchen, an island provided work space. The wall to our left held two giant sinks, beneath shuttered windows that, when open, would look out toward the cabins. The short counter to our left ran beneath the closed canteen window.

  With the power off, I didn’t expect to find anything edible in either the refrigerator or the freezer, and didn’t—they were both empty and warm. But beneath the canteen counter, locked cabinets yielded (with the judicious application of the tire iron) chips and chocolate, jars of jerky, packs of peanuts, and scads of soft drinks. They were cheap brands I’d never heard of (Pepp’s Ginger Ale, Rocky Cola, Eleven-Up), and of course they were warm, but beggars . . . oh, all right, thieves . . . can’t be choosers.

  We sat in the dim dining room and ate jerky, chips, and chocolate, washed down with sugar-laden pop, and if my teeth felt notably more corroded afterward than before, at least I felt a bit more energetic, and my headache lifted. Afterward, we explored the rest of the building. A room off the far end of the dining area turned out to be a staff locker room, and Karl ducked inside and finally got rid of his tights and doublet, emerging decked out in khakis and a dark-green golf shirt bearing the Candle Lake resort name. He even found a pair of hiking boots that fit, losing the ridiculously high riding boots, which had gone above his knees and been attached by garters to somewhere even higher up. He kept the cowboy hat and duster, and the dagger.

  We walked back through diminishing rain to the cabin. Eating had helped my headache, but if anything, I felt even more exhausted. I’d been running on adrenaline since the coffee shop attack, and it was finally draining away. I lay down on one of the beds and closed my eyes, just for a minute. I heard Karl open the door and go out again.

  I shouldn’t sleep, I thought. I’ll be vulnerable if I fall asleep. Karl could still be something other than what he claimed. If he were really, say, a deranged killer, having carefully arranged to be alone with him at a deserted resort was possibly not the wisest choice I’d ever made.

  He might not be a killer. Just a rapist.

  Not helping, I told my spinning brain.

  And also, stupid. Because weird things had happened and he seemed to know about them. So far, everything he had told me had checked out. The simplest explanation was that he was telling the truth. Occam’s Razor, and all that.

  On the other hand, razors could produce painful nicks.

  I shouldn’t sleep . . .

  But I did.

  * * *

  Karl walked through the rain from cabin to cabin, breaking into each to see if any held anything of value. He found nothing they had not found in the first cabin. When he reached the end of the line, he stared into the forest and wondered if he should just keep walking.

  Shawna had power, more power than he had yet seen in a Shaper. Most, once they had Shaped their worlds, had very little ability left to continue to make changes to it, though they could usually at least Shape individuals as required. But Shawna . . . not only had she performed the amazing feat of resetting the clock three hours, she had twice now, he was certain, unconsciously Shaped the world on a much smaller, but still impressive, scale: first, the track into the woods to the old campsite (though that had not been as helpful as it had first seemed), and then this resort, complete with food conveniently left for them to find. He doubted either had existed until she had decided she needed them. It was no wonder she was exhausted: the wonder was she could function at all. That was certainly the kind of power a Shaper would need to do what Ygrair demanded. And yet . . .

  She still had no memory of Ygrair, no memory of the training she had been given, no memory of her entry into the Labyrinth or her initial Shaping of this world. Karl had been in Ygrair’s world when Shawna was in the school in the First World. He had never met her before she entered the Labyrinth, had known nothing about her until today. Clearly even Ygrair had not sensed her potential power, or she would have told him to seek her out.

  The Adversary had recognized her—had called her by name—which meant they were contemporaries in Ygrair’s school. Had she been one of those students Ygrair had hurled into the Labyrinth at the time of the attack? If so, that might explain her lack of memory . . . perhaps she had not been fully prepared . . .

  Whatever the reason for her amnesia, if Shawna could not remember her past, never remembered it . . . would she ever truly believe him? As they journeyed through the Labyrinth, Shawna capturing the hokhmah of world after world with the goal of eventually delivering all that gathered knowledge to Ygrair, what if she began to doubt him? With her power, she could prove an even greater threat to the Labyrinth, to Ygrair, and to his own hopes, than the Adversary. She might even decide to become the Adversary’s ally!

  No, Karl thought, instantly rejecting the thought. Not that. Not after she saw him kill her best friend.

  Still, even if that were a remote possibility, the other possibility, that she would reject Ygrair’s mission and c
laim power for herself, remained.

  The forest, dark and dripping, beckoned him seductively. If he left her here, sleeping in the cabin, the Adversary would eventually find her and kill her. Regrettable, but at least he would be free to find the place where he could open the next Portal, and flee to the next world. Perhaps its Shaper would be as powerful as Shawna, and unlike her, would remember—and thus feel loyalty—toward Ygrair.

  Perhaps. But he would not be able to prevent the Adversary from passing through the next Portal, any more than he had been able to prevent him from passing through the last Portal into this world. Once the Adversary had finished with Shawna and consolidated his hold on her world, he would follow Karl into the next world . . . and the one after that . . . and the one after that. World after world would fall to him, inevitably, until Karl found another Shaper with enough power left to meet Ygrair’s need . . .

  . . . if such a one even existed. What if Shawna were the only one with that much power? Abandoning her would then mean his failure. The Labyrinth would be taken in full by the Adversary. He would leave the Portals open between the worlds he captured, drawing power from each, becoming unstoppable. Eventually he would reach Ygrair’s world, claim it, and kill her, and then rule unopposed over all the Shaped worlds and all their myriad inhabitants.

  Or so Karl assumed. He had to remind himself that the Adversary was not human, and his true goals and motivations might not be apparent. However, that was a somewhat uncomfortable thought, because Ygrair was not human either. Was he certain he understood her true goals and motivations?

  She has entrusted me with her world, and now with her life, he thought. I cannot start doubting her. Or the promise she has made to me . . .

  He returned his thoughts to the Adversary. If the Adversary succeeded, what would happen to Karl? He did not know, but he supposed it would not much matter. Whether he was hurled back into the First World, to try to piece together a life in a place now alien to him, or enslaved or executed somewhere in the Labyrinth, it would make no difference. If Ygrair died, the hope he had held on to all these decades, the promise that one day he, too, would be able to Shape a world to fulfill his deepest wishes . . . and one wish in particular . . . would die with her.

  I cannot abandon Shawna Keys, he thought, staring into the sodden shadows of the trees. She may well be my only hope of success. All I can do is stay close to her, do my best to instill in her the urgency of her mission . . . and try to keep her alive until she can fulfill it.

  He turned away from the woods, and walked back along the line of cabins to the one in which Shawna slept.

  * * *

  I awoke from a confused dream, which vanished the instant I opened my eyes and stared up at the strange ceiling. It was still light outside.

  Karl sat in the chair in the corner, watching me, which was a little creepy. His black duster hung on the back of the chair, his cowboy hat rested on the table by his elbow. “Bad dream?” he said.

  “Since this morning, everything has been a bad dream.” I sat up. “How long was I asleep?”

  “Three or four hours,” Karl said. “I was about to wake you. We must discuss our next move.”

  I rubbed my head. I hated naps; as a rule, they left me feeling worse than before, and this one was no exception. My head felt full of damp cotton. I wished I had coffee. There was a coffee maker in the corner, on a small table under the clothes rod, but without power, there was no way to make use of it. I wasn’t quite desperate enough to chew a coffee bag. “What we need,” I said, as grumpily as I felt, “is for you to finally explain, in detail, what’s going on.”

  “I have explained much . . .” Karl began.

  “No,” I said. “You haven’t.”

  “Enough, at least, so that you understand that you are not safe, and that your world has changed.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That part I know. I still think there’s some chance I’m hyped up on drugs and hallucinating all this from a hospital bed, but assuming I’m not, I admit recent events have made your insane claims about me being some kind of Almighty-God-like being slightly more believable.”

  “I have told you,” Karl said, a hint of impatience in his voice, “several times, that you are not a god of any sort, and certainly not almighty. If you were, your world could not be changed by the Adversary.”

  “Start there,” I said. “Start with the Adversary. You said he had his own world.”

  “Yes,” Karl said. “And unlike you, he knew full well it was his to Shape. He made himself a kind of God-Emperor within it, exerting control over every aspect of it: nothing was beyond his ken, or purview.”

  “‘Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state,’” I said.

  Karl raised an eyebrow. “I am unfamiliar with that quote, but yes, that is very much the kind of world he Shaped. He saw it as a perfect world, one without disorder, crime, war, or poverty.”

  I had just quoted Mussolini at him, but suddenly I wondered if I had misjudged the Adversary’s motives. “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “But in such a world,” Karl said, “where there is only one way to think, ruthlessly imposed, there can be no freedom, no change, no creativity. All must be done as the Adversary orders it should be done. Worse, he Shaped his people—like the cadre of soldiers accompanying him from world to world—to obey his orders without question. He has stripped them of free will. He is the ultimate tyrant.”

  I grimaced. “Okay, I get it, bad Adversary. And that’s what he intends to do to my world.”

  “Yours, and all others.”

  “If you think I can save other worlds . . . why can’t I save mine?”

  “It is too late. When he touched you . . . he already has this world’s hokhmah. Only the fact you still live keeps him from imposing his complete will on it.”

  “But you want me to take the . . . hokhmah . . . of other worlds. Just like he took mine. How will that work without me killing the Shapers?”

  “The Adversary . . . stripped it from you. Stole it. He has technology, from his home world, that allows him to do this. But the transfer is not complete while you live. When you obtain the hokhmah from another Shaper, however, you will not steal it. It will be given to you willingly. And once given, it will be yours completely.”

  “How will that work, exactly? I don’t have any special technology inside me.”

  “Do not be concerned about that. I will give it to you when the time is right.”

  I still felt exhausted, and my head still felt full of mush. What kind of Adversary-defeating heroine could I possibly be? “Why would another Shaper give up their power to me willingly?”

  “Because unlike you, they will remember Ygrair and what they owe her.”

  “You expect them to be that loyal to her.”

  “I do.”

  “Sounds like wishful thinking to me. This Labyrinth of yours may be doomed. Did you ever think of that?”

  “Of course I think of it!” Karl sounded as close to angry as I’d yet heard him. “I think of it every minute, every day, every week, every month, every year.”

  “Every year?” I stared at him. “Just how long have you been searching?”

  A pause, as though he’d said more than he’d intended. “A long time,” he said at last. “Although time is difficult to measure in the Labyrinth.”

  “And yet, other than the Adversary, I’m the first candidate to replace Ygrair you’ve found?”

  “Yes,” he said at last.

  “How many worlds?”

  Another pause. “I have not counted.”

  “A dozen? Dozens? Hundreds?”

  He only shrugged.

  “What if I say no? What if I refuse to go along with you on this quest of yours?”

  “Then the Adversary will kill you,” Karl sai
d, voice flat. “As I have explained.”

  “But you say I still have power to Shape this world. I could create a hiding place . . .”

  “It would be a prison,” Karl said. “And it would not last long. The Adversary already has some of the authorities on his side, and I would imagine that every hour he is Shaping more of those in power to do his will. No matter what you do, if you stay in this world, he will eventually find you, and kill you or have you killed.”

  “But if I leave this world he’ll turn it into a copy of his own!”

  “Yes,” Karl said. “But that will happen no matter what you do. Stay, and die, or leave, and live . . . either way, your world is lost. It has been lost from the moment the Adversary touched you in the coffee shop.”

  I tried to think. If Karl was telling me the truth—and again, Occam’s Razor slashed a burning wound through my reasoning mind—I had absolutely no choice but to follow his orders, go where he told me to go, do what he wanted me to do. To do otherwise would be to countersign my own death warrant, already issued by the Adversary, and would not change the bleak future of my world one iota.

  I was tired, and grief and possibly a full-blown blubbering breakdown were lurking just outside the crumbling walls of my self-composure. I wanted to go home. I wanted the life I had had the day before. I wanted to be sitting in the Human Bean with Aesha listening to the DNA Eruptions butcher a song. I wanted to be making love to Brent. I wanted to call my mom. I wanted to throw pots, fulfill the contracts I had, make new stock for my shelves. I wanted normality . . .