Worldshaper

by Edward Willett

  I felt a little sick. All this manipulating of people. It had already led to deaths, and even something like this . . . wasn’t it wrong?

  Sunday School lessons floated up in my memory again. God gave people free will. I used to wonder why, considering what abysmal use they made of it, in biblical times as in the present. But now I thought I understood. He wouldn’t have been able to live with Himself if He hadn’t.

  Karl looked from one to the other of us as though we’d lost our minds . . . and Swallows and Amazons was a cultural reference from almost a century ago, although admittedly a somewhat obscure one.

  I tossed my backpack onto the boat, then followed it aboard. The yacht shifted under my feet, a little preview of things to come. And we hadn’t found a source of Dramamine.

  I climbed down into the . . . let’s call it “snug,” instead of “claustrophobic,” shall we? . . . interior. To port, an open door revealed a tiny cabin, almost completely filled by a narrow bunk. To starboard was a closed door, next to a tiny table, lit from above, on which was spread a chart. I glanced at it. It showed the coastline to our south. I pulled the chart we’d taken from the yacht club from my backpack, unrolled, and placed it over the one on the table, pinning its curling edges in place with a couple of anchor-shaped lead paperweights. Then I moved forward, past a sink and a tiny toilet . . . no, on a boat, it was called the head, wasn’t it? (although that hadn’t been in Arthur Ransome’s books, where no one ever went to the bathroom) . . . and through a small central mid-ship space, with padded benches along each wall, to the forward cabin. Like the stern cabin, it was mostly bed, though in this case, a double one.

  Which Karl and I were supposed to share.

  Oops. Just what had I Shaped Julia into believing about us? I remembered something Karl had said about any particular individual’s mind shaping its existing reality around the new, hard, immutable “facts” my Shaping introduced into his or her world. Like an oyster forming a pearl around piece of grit, I thought. This particular pearl appeared to have made Karl and me a couple.

  Well, it wasn’t worth arguing about. I wasn’t some Victorian maiden whose reputation would be ruined if word got around I had slept in the same bed with a man who wasn’t my husband. Anyway, we’d already shared a tent. It wasn’t like we were going to do anything except sleep.

  Don’t get me wrong: Karl was not unhandsome, but there was absolutely zero sexual attraction between us that I could detect. And if he felt anything like that toward me, he hid it so well that even if it existed, it might as well not have.

  For something that doesn’t matter, you’re thinking an awful lot about it, that annoying second- or third-thoughts part of my brain murmured.

  Shut up, I told it, and tossed my backpack on the bed.

  I turned around to find Karl right behind me, and Julia, back by the cockpit steps, looking at the chart I had placed on the table just seconds before. Whew, I thought. “Sorry,” I said out loud to Karl, and stepped to one side.

  “For what?” he said. He tossed his backpack onto the bed next to mine, and if he had any second, or even first, thoughts about the sleeping arrangements, he kept them to himself. He turned and led the way aft, as Julia, her navigational questions apparently answered, climbed back up into the cockpit. Karl found the promised locker under the cockpit steps and pulled out a bright-orange lifejacket for each of us. I noticed they each had a waterproof flashlight attached by a carabiner on the right side, and a multi-tool on the left, which worried me a little: why would we need those?

  As I struggled with the buckles, I heard a whirring, splashing noise from the bow, and the boat shifted beneath us. I glanced up at Julia, though all I could see were her feet and the bottom half of her legs.

  “It is perhaps just as well that we did not steal this vessel,” Karl said, glancing in the direction of the sound. “The boats I have sailed have been considerably less technologically advanced. I believe she just used some kind of automated mechanism to push the bow of the Amazon away from the pier. A water jet, I would surmise. I would not know how to operate such a thing.”

  “Then how do you even know that’s what it is?” I said.

  “I have been in many worlds,” Karl said. “I have seen many technological wonders. That does not mean I have learned how to use them.”

  I filed that away in my why-is-Karl-so-weird mental folder, just as the engine noise changed. We were definitely moving now, the sway of the boat slight but unmistakable. Lifejacket finally snugly secured, I stuck my head up through the cockpit hatch. Julia smiled down at me from the wheel. “On our way,” she said.

  I climbed out. The cockpit had benches on three sides: I sat in the starboard one, and looked astern at the pier, slipping away behind us into the night, devolving into nothing but anonymous lights. Above us, stars blazed, but I remembered the clouds that had been rising in the west. No lingering light remained there, but peering forward, past the swaying mast and over the bobbing bow, I realized I could still make out those clouds in the starlight, as a silvery edge with nothing but darkness beneath it, now covering about a third of the sky.

  Then, beneath the silver lining of that rising cloud, lightning flickered.

  Uh-oh. “Is that a storm?” I did my best to keep my voice in its accustomed range.

  “Forecast was for some light thundershowers,” Julia said. “Shouldn’t trouble us.”

  “Won’t it get . . . choppy?”

  “Might,” she said cheerfully. “That’s when it’s fun.”

  I was beginning to doubt that un-Shaped Julia and I could ever have been friends, Swallows and Amazons notwithstanding. We clearly weren’t cut from the same cloth, sailing-wise. “Remember what Mrs. Walker told the kids when they were allowed to camp on Wild Cat Island?” I said. “No night sailing? Think she had a point?”

  “Absolutely,” Julia said. “But I’m not twelve years old, and my mother gave me permission.”

  I smiled, a little weakly, and then grabbed the edge . . . the coaming . . . of the cockpit as the boat lurched a little more.

  “Almost out of the cove,” Julia said. “Not enough wind to sail. We’ll keep putt-putting along with,” she flashed me another grin, “‘the little donkey’ for the time being. Even without Roger to keep it oiled.”

  I nodded and smiled at the additional Ransome references. But I didn’t let go of the coaming.

  Karl came out of the cabin and settled in on the port bench. Completely relaxed, he leaned back and looked up at the mast. “I could help you make sail when the time comes.”

  “No need,” Julia said. She pointed to a row of buttons on a pedestal to her left, each covered by a hinged, plastic guard. “All I have to do is push a button and the mainsail hoists itself. Another button for the jib. The others control the mainsheet. I can even reef if I have to, without ever leaving the wheel.”

  Karl looked almost . . . offended. “You might as well have a powerboat.”

  “Amazon is a powerboat at the moment,” Julia pointed out. “No wind.” But then she grinned. “I don’t have to use the hydraulics. Sometimes I deal with the sails myself. But at night or in bad weather, I’m glad to have them. I’m out here to have fun, not to prove how tough I am.”

  “Fun,” I said. I swallowed. We’d apparently entered the open ocean. The swell had increased, and my stomach was already rebelling.

  Julia glanced at me, looking slightly confused; then her expression cleared. “Oh, right, you get a little seasick, don’t you? Don’t know why I didn’t remember that. Dramamine in the first aid kit in the locker under the sink. And then you might be happier lying down. Nothing much to see at sea at night anyway, and we won’t raise Dead Seal Island until sometime tomorrow morning.”

  I swallowed again, and decided she was right. “Thanks,” I muttered, and ducked into the cabin. I found the first aid kit where she’d promised it would be, fou
nd the blessed Dramamine, took two, and then made my way to the bed in the bow, turning off the light in the little dining area as I went, and then the one over the bed itself, so that I lay in semidarkness, the only illumination coming from over the sink. My nausea faded quickly, whether from being horizontal or from the drug I couldn’t tell. Exhaustion flooded in to take its place. It had been a long day, and I’d Shaped Julia not that long ago. That Shaping had, unusually, felt pleasurable . . . but it had still taken energy to push through that troubling new sense of resistance.

  I hadn’t taken off my lifejacket—and wasn’t about to—but despite its bulk around my body, my eyes closed and I half-dozed.

  I came alert again as our engine stopped. Things whirred and thudded on the deck above my head. The boat heeled to starboard. I heard water rushing along the hull, close to my head. The swaying of the boat no longer bothered me. In fact, it seemed pleasant, rocking me to . . . to . . .

  I snapped instantly awake from a deep sleep, without a clue as to how much time had passed. A new sound, deep and throbbing, vibrated the hull. Then bright light flashed through the porthole over my head, and a man’s amplified voice boomed, “Sailing vessel Amazon! This is Coast Guard Vessel RB-M 45602. Maintain your course and speed. We’re coming aboard.”

  I jerked upright, to see Karl at the door to the cabin. “We’re in trouble,” he said. “How did you Shape Julia?”

  My brain was fuzzed from interrupted sleep and the Dramamine, and for a second his question made no sense. “What?”

  “How did you Shape Julia?” he said again, more urgently. “Will she let them board?”

  “I . . . I didn’t . . . I never thought about it,” I stammered. “I just wanted her to accept us and sail us out to island. But even if I had . . . how can she stop the freaking Coast Guard? They’ve got guns. If they want to board, they’ll board.” I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. it didn’t work.

  “Hey, you two!” Julia called. All I could see of her from the front cabin was her feet. “We’re going to have visitors. Make yourselves decent.”

  The bright light returned, shining through the portholes, casting sharp-edged circles of light on the starboard side of the cabin. Karl took a quick look through the nearest porthole, then ducked down again. “I believe it is the vessel we saw nosing along the coast. It is hard to see much with the spotlight shining on us, but it appears they are preparing to launch a smaller boat, no doubt to come alongside.” He looked at me. “You must stop them.”

  “How?” I said. “That boat we saw had a freaking machine gun in the bow, remember? And you can bet those men coming over here are armed, too.”

  “Shape them.”

  “To do what? Just not notice we’re here? Will that work?”

  Karl frowned. “No,” he said. “You cannot make us invisible. Not reliably.” He took another look. “Two men getting in the boat. How many crew on a vessel that size?”

  “I don’t know anything about Coast Guard boats,” I said.

  “They cannot be allowed to find us,” Karl said.

  “Why not?” I said, inspiration striking. “Why not let them take us aboard their boat? I could Shape the crew once we’re over there. It’d be like the helicopter and the SUV. We’d be using one of the vehicles sent out to capture us. Perfect disguise.”

  But Karl shook his head. “Too dangerous now,” he said. “The Adversary has had much more time to work. Law enforcement and the military may well have orders to shoot you on sight. At the least, they will have been ordered to incapacitate you. The Adversary knows you can Shape others just as he can. He will have made provisions for that ability to be taken from you in some fashion.”

  “Then what?” I said, beginning to feel desperate. End of the line. All of our effort for nothing . . .

  “Shape something else,” Karl said. “We need to lose them.”

  Lose them. At sea . . .

  The Swallows and Amazons books came back to me, boats in fog, trying to find each other . . .

  Karl was at the porthole. “They’re casting off.”

  Fog.

  I closed my eyes, reached out to the sea all around us, imagined . . . believed . . . it was not a clear night, that there was a thick, thick fog, too thick for the Coast Guard boat to find us . . . especially since their radar didn’t work . . .

  The Shaping didn’t come easy. In fact, it felt like trying to lift an enormous weight. I could feel a strange tearing sensation in my mind, not pain, exactly, but disquieting, disturbing. But I didn’t stop.

  Fog. Miles of it. Covering the ocean. Hiding us. Faulty radar.

  “What the hell?” The shout came from Julia.

  I opened my eyes. All I could see of the world outside was a little bit of the cockpit, where Julia stood at the wheel, but even that was enough to show me that thick fog shrouded the boat. The bright light of the spotlight had become a diffuse glow.

  “Sailing vessel Amazon!” the Coast Guard vessel boomed. “Heave to!”

  I closed my eyes again, reached out to Julia. We have to get out of here. I pushed the idea into her head. It wasn’t pleasurable this time. It felt like trying to push a car uphill, singlehandedly. It hurt. We can’t let the Coast Guard catch us. We have to get out of here.

  Over our heads, a creaking sound. The boat had been heeling to port, now she heeled to starboard. There was a jerk. “Changing course,” Karl said. “Leaving the Coast Guard behind.”

  I scrambled off the bed and headed aft. Julia looked down at me, face pale in the fog. “Close call,” she said. “They almost caught us.” She glanced astern. Light flashed there, diffused by the fog. Confusion flitted across her face again as she turned to face me once more. “Wait. I’m running from the Coast Guard. Why am I running from the Coast Guard? That’s crazy. And useless. They have radar.”

  “Their radar doesn’t work,” I said. I hope. I climbed into the cockpit beside her. “And you didn’t have any choice. Remember?”

  Her expression cleared. “You’re right,” she said. “We’ve got to get you two to Dead Seal Island.” She laughed. “I always enjoyed spy novels, but I never thought I’d be caught in one. I’m glad you trusted me.”

  I wondered what story her mind had crafted to explain all this. I didn’t ask. Instead, I settled myself on the starboard bench once more. Karl climbed up and sat on the port one.

  We sailed on. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. The motion of the boat increased, each swell bigger than the last. My nausea remained under control, though. I actually started to relax a little.

  But only for a moment. The fog suddenly lit with bright white light again, but this time it didn’t come from the Coast Guard, but from the sky, and the crack of thunder followed hard on its heels.

  Thirty seconds later, the waves hit.

  TWENTY

  THE ADVERSARY SAT alone in his private Situation Room in the Emerald Palace. Unlike the President’s Situation Room, there were no giant video screens, no ranks of people at laptops, no crackling radio transmissions, and no advisors. Just him, in a chair, at a desk, with a phone, waiting.

  He had the security apparatus of almost the entire world at his disposal now, searching diligently for Shawna and Yatsar. He had only to wait. Their discovery was inevitable. Any force amenable to such orders had been ordered by its commanders to shoot Shawna on sight. Those whose codes of conduct or terms of engagement prevented such orders (and whose commanders were in some fashion constrained from changing those codes and terms) had strict orders to incapacitate her: render her unconscious, in whatever fashion they could, before she could act against them.

  Karl Yatsar was not included in the shoot-to-kill orders. He was to be captured alive.

  And then, as he sat there, the world . . . shifted. He felt it. A Shaping, and on a scale greater than any Shawna had attempted since that in extremis time-skip in t
he coffee shop: greater even than the snowfall that had hidden her and Yatsar’s tracks in the mountains.

  He waited impatiently for the news he knew would come. Twenty minutes later the phone finally rang. He pressed the speaker button. “Yes?”

  “We have an anomaly, Mr. Gegner,” a woman’s voice said. “In line with what you told us to watch for.”

  “Tell me.”

  “A Coast Guard boat was about to send a boarding party to a small sailing yacht off the coast of Oregon when the weather . . . changed,” the woman said.

  “Changed how?”

  “A thick fog came up out of nowhere,” she said. “So thick, and so sudden, they instantly lost sight of the yacht. Their radar malfunctioned at the same time.”

  “How long ago did this happen?” the Adversary asked, though he was certain he already knew.

  “Twenty minutes,” said the woman, confirming his supposition.

  “Are there other vessels with radar in the vicinity?”

  “Yes, sir. But they are also unable to track the sailing yacht at the moment.”

  The Adversary frowned. “Why?”

  “They are currently fighting to stay afloat in a Force 10 gale,” the woman said. “Wave heights are such that radar is useless.”

  “I take it this storm is also . . . anomalous?”

  “Extremely so, sir. The storm followed the fog within minutes. Meteorology predicted neither. A line of squalls was moving through the area, but that was all. Satellites now show what looks like a typhoon. Meteorology says it can’t possibly be there.”

  “I see,” said the Adversary, his frustration mingled with admiration: frustration because Shawna and Yatsar had to have been aboard that sailing yacht, but had now slipped out of his reach again; admiration because Shaping on that scale, of the ocean itself, was impressive, especially after all the Shaping she had already done in her attempts to evade him, and with him now sharing her hokhmah. It was no wonder Yatsar had decided she might be the one who could fulfill his quixotic quest . . .