Worldshaper

by Edward Willett

  I blinked at her. “What?”

  She turned red-rimmed eyes toward me. “There is no island here. It does not exist on any chart. It’s not real.”

  “It was real enough to wreck your boat,” I said. The words came out more harshly than I’d intended, and I immediately wished I could call them back.

  Julia turned away again, to look back toward the hidden rock that had killed her beloved yacht. “I don’t think you’re real, either. I don’t think I am where I seem to be, I don’t think Amazon is really stuck on a rock, I don’t think there was a storm. I think I’m hallucinating all of this, both of you, the rocks that wrecked Amazon, this island. I think I was in some kind of accident and I’m drugged up and lying in the hospital. And eventually I’ll wake up, and everything will return to normal.”

  I’d thought the same at one point. Sometimes I still wondered. But the cool damp air in my face, the smell of seaweed, the pain in my side . . . no. This was real. For me, and for Julia. “Julia . . .” I began.

  Julia cut me off. “It would be interesting if a figment of my imagination were able to convince me it was real, but you do not have that power.”

  I felt . . . stung. Angry, in fact. I wasn’t real? I was the Shaper. If anything, she wasn’t real. She was literally a figment of my imagination. No, not even that—she was a mere copy of someone in the First World, a doppelgänger the Labyrinth had created to populate the world I had Shaped for myself.

  If I had my Shaping power, I’d show her who was real, and who wasn’t. I’d . . .

  The anger faded, so suddenly it left me shaken, wondering where it had come from. Tales of vengeful Greek gods ran through my mind. Was that what they had felt, fury that mere humans had dared to defy them, or failed to appease them, or fallen afoul of some arbitrary law? Was that what I was going to become: another Hera?

  I swallowed. “I hope you’re right,” I said. “I hope you’re right, and you wake up soon, and find everything has gone back to normal.”

  “I’m not listening to you anymore,” she said. They were the last words I heard from any of the people who inhabited the world I had Shaped: an appropriate farewell, I suppose.

  I strode past her to where Karl awaited me, and then together we moved inland to find the place where Karl could form a Portal, and I could leave my world forever. After all I had done to it, and the people within it, I was beginning to think it would be better off with the Adversary.

  * * *

  Another day had passed in Washington, D.C. without a hint as to the location of Amazon, another day with no break in the strange mist and cloud hampering the search efforts. Strange to the meteorologists, at least; not so strange to the Adversary, still monitoring the situation in the Emerald Palace Situation Room, who knew the clouds and mist had been Shaped by Shawna Keys. He remained impressed once again by her power, but also more certain than ever that she had put so much effort into protecting Amazon during the storm that she had temporarily exhausted her Shaping ability. She had rendered herself defenseless. All he had to do was find her. But so far . . .

  The Adversary sighed and rose from the Situation Room table. He was expected at a private dinner, arranged by the President, with the justices of the Supreme Court. But as he turned toward the door, one of the three other people in the Situation Room, monitoring the many streams of information pouring into it, jumped to his feet. “Mr. Gegner!” the young man called.

  The Adversary glanced at him. “What is it?”

  “A signal, sir. From Amazon’s EPIRB.”

  The acronym meant nothing to the Adversary. “Explain.”

  “An EPIRB is an Emergency Position Indicator Radio Beacon,” the young man said. “They’re automated devices that send out a signal pinpointing . . . well, within two nautical miles . . . a vessel’s location if it gets into dire trouble.”

  “How dire?”

  “Typically, sunk or in the process of sinking. The EPIRB triggers automatically when it’s submerged in salt water.”

  Neither Shawna nor Yatsar had died; of that, the Adversary was certain. But if Amazon had foundered, perhaps damaged past the point of seaworthiness by the storm despite Shawna’s best efforts, they might have abandoned her. Which meant they would now be in a small open boat, and could not have traveled far from the sinking yacht. “Show me the location.” He turned toward the nearest monitor, in the wall to his left. “Here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A moment later the screen lit with a chart of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Oregon. A red dot blinked.

  “Any land nearby?”

  “No, sir,” the young man replied.

  “How far by helicopter from the Bonhomme Richard?”

  A green dot appeared on the map, fifty miles from the red. “That far, sir.”

  “Excellent. Contact the Bonhomme Richard’s captain and provide the coordinates. My cadre will, of course, be in charge of the operation.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young man sat down. As he pulled on a headset and began to speak into its microphone, the Adversary donned the headset from in front of his own chair and touched the button he had programmed to connect him directly to Captain Arneson, his cadre leader.

  “Arneson here,” said a deep voice.

  “We’ve received a signal from the boat,” the Adversary said. “Your ship’s captain has the coordinates. Take two helicopters—only your men, except for the pilots. I expect you’ll find Shawna Keys and Yatsar in a small boat on the open sea. You know your orders.”

  “Kill the woman, take Yatsar alive. Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t worry about the reaction of your pilots to whatever actions you might take,” the Adversary advised. “Once Keys is dead, it won’t matter.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “As soon as you can arrange it, Arneson.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Adversary ended the call, and rather than continuing to the dinner with the Justices, sat down in his chair at the end of the table and poured another cup of coffee. “Once the mission commences, display all available video feeds,” the Adversary said.

  “Yes, sir,” said the young man who had first brought the signal to his attention.

  The Adversary sipped his coffee and waited for the end.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  WE HEARD THE beat of the helicopter rotors just as we began our third attempt to scale the sodden slopes of the improbably tall mountain at the center of The Mysterious Island.

  “The Mysterious Island,” caps and all, was what I’d started calling it to myself since I’d left Julia behind and joined Karl, and we’d made our first attempt to make our way inland toward the precise location where the “thin spot” between the worlds existed. The Mysterious Island had been my favorite of Jules Verne’s books as a kid: for years, I’d had vivid adventure dreams in which I explored just such a place. The idea of an island nobody knew existed, with a secret at its core, had struck a chord. Even though I doubted we would find Captain Nemo and the Nautilus waiting for us when we reached the center of this island—if we ever did—the general description fit the circumstances.

  I’d wondered, though, as our second attempt to find a path up the mountain had ended in a sheer rock wall and we’d had to backtrack yet again (the mist, which had conveniently saved us from aerial discovery, thickened as we ascended, most inconveniently making it impossible to see far enough ahead to spot even obvious barriers like cliffs until we were faced with them), whether there might be a world where Captain Nemo did exist, along with the Nautilus; another where the Wizard presided over Emerald City; one where King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table held court in Camelot. Karl had as much as said there were worlds where elves still sang in Rivendell and hobbits dwelt in the Shire.

  It was both an exciting thought and a disturbing one. Exciting, because what reader wouldn’t love to fi
nd herself in a world she had previously only visited in her imagination, and disturbing, because some of those worlds were definitely places you might want to visit, but would never want to live.

  It was also disturbing because, as I’d thought before, the fact I’d chosen to Shape such a close replica of the original world seemed to say disappointing things about me. In the First World, had I really been such a boring person, with such boring dreams? I mean, a pottery shop? Really? When I could have made myself Queen of the World?

  Back on the beach, we slogged along for another quarter mile or so, until we found a place where the forest thinned and the slope was relatively gentle, at least as far up as we could see. But we’d taken only a few steps uphill before the sound of choppers cut through the mist.

  Karl stopped and stared in the direction of that distant thunder. “The Adversary has found us.”

  “How?” I demanded.

  “Luck. Some technological device we do not know about. It doesn’t matter.” He glanced at me. “The real question is, who is aboard those helicopters? Are they people from your world, or members of the Adversary’s cadre?”

  “What difference does it make?” I said. “I’m burned out, you said. I can’t Shape them either way.”

  “Probably not,” Karl said. “Though in extremis, you should at least make the attempt. But that is not the only reason I would like to know. The Adversary’s cadre will undoubtedly have orders to kill you on sight. Law enforcement or military types . . . maybe not.”

  I shivered. “That would be a very good thing to know,” I admitted. “But wouldn’t it be even better to never find out?”

  A brief smile flicked across his face. “An excellent point.” He turned back to the slope. “They will have a very difficult time tracking or seeing us in this fog. With luck, perhaps we can avoid them until we reach the place inland where I can form the Portal.”

  With luck, perhaps we could, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Our third climb ended, like the first two, in a sheer cliff. I was uneasily aware that we only had a couple of hours of daylight left, no food, no water, and no camping equipment. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if there was a way to the top. I said as much to Karl.

  “There has to be,” he said, without explaining why that was more than just wishful thinking.

  To be sure, wishful thinking had worked out rather well for me recently, but I still had no Shaping power that I could sense. We had no choice but to descend, to continue working our way around the base of the mountain.

  The sound of the helicopters had died away shortly after we’d first heard them: now, as we neared the beach once more, we heard them again. I tried to picture what they might have done. Landed, probably, and disgorged armed men to search for us on foot. They were presumably looking for our tracks, which they would most certainly find, since despite my love of Tolkien I was neither hobbit nor elf. The mist would help conceal us, but for how long?

  Now, it sounded like the helicopters had taken off again. Why? Returning to wherever they’d come from, for reinforcements or fuel? Giving up? (That was definitely wishful thinking.) Or . . .

  “Do military helicopters have sensors that can penetrate fog?” I said. The unpleasant thought had just occurred to me. The helicopters were distant, and their sound waxed and waned, but it never died away completely—which meant they must be searching the island.

  “I am unfamiliar with the technology available on military helicopters in your world,” Karl said.

  “Well, do they have them in the . . . um, First World?”

  “I am equally unfamiliar with the technology available on military helicopters in the First World,” he said.

  The sound of the helicopters no longer waxed and waned: now, it just waxed. They were headed our way.

  “We should get under cover,” I said; but we were traversing a barren stretch of shale, remnants of some long-ago fall from the cliff face. None of the rocks were big enough to hide behind, and the nearest tree, a dim ghost in the mist, was likewise too skinny to be of any use. “Up the slope!” I cried. If the helicopters did have some kind of fog-penetrating radar, surely it only showed outlines. If we were pressed up against the cliff, we might look like nothing more than oddly shaped protuberances. But out here in the open, we’d show up like sore thumbs.

  Karl didn’t argue. We stumbled up the slope through rocks that shifted treacherously beneath our feet, threatening sprained ankles or worse. The pain in my side had eased—which probably meant a bruise rather than a cracked rib—but I still felt like I was being poked with a sharp stick at regular intervals.

  We reached the cliff. It had a kink in it, a deep fold, and down at the bottom the rock was blacker than . . . no. Wait.

  That wasn’t black rock. It was a hole.

  A cave!

  I pointed it out to Karl, and he scrambled down to it and into it, with me close behind, shale skittering in my wake.

  Just in time. As I plunged into the darkness, the roar of the helicopter became earsplitting. Even if it didn’t have fog-penetrating sensors, those aboard would surely have seen us if not for the cave: the helicopter practically exploded out of the fog, terrifyingly close. It wasn’t a Coast Guard chopper but a full-on military model, gray and bristling. It hovered, visible through the mouth of the cave, for a terrifyingly long time before finally swinging away to our left and sweeping on around the mountain.

  I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “I don’t think they saw us.”

  “They may not have seen us,” Karl said grimly, “but I am certain they saw the cave. Ground troops will undoubtedly be sent to investigate. We must keep moving.”

  I sighed. “Well, if you’ll give me a boost, I can probably get back up the . . .”

  “Not out there,” Karl said.

  I turned around, and saw that he wasn’t facing me, but staring into the darkness at the back of the cave. I took a step toward him, and saw what he saw: the cave not only continued, it sloped up, toward the center of the mountain . . . and the center of the island.

  At least it’s not the first step of a Journey to the Center of the Earth, I thought, and suddenly wondered if this island were my doing, if I had Shaped it, my own Mysterious Island, my own endless caverns—but no, this island didn’t exist in my world. Julia had said so.

  Did that mean it had somehow . . . leaked . . . from the new world we were trying to get to? Was it a Vernesian world? Or something similarly steampunky? Karl had kept saying he sensed something odd . . . was that it?

  Karl took the flashlight he’d rescued from his life jacket off of his belt. I reached for mine, but he stopped me with a hand on my wrist. “Let us limit ourselves to one at a time,” he said. “We do not know how long they will last, and we do not know how far we will have to follow this tunnel.”

  I nodded. Makes sense. “Lead on,” I said. But before I followed him into the darkness I took a look back at the entrance, hoping for a convenient boulder we could roll across it, trying to believe with all my heart that such a thing existed.

  Nothing changed.

  I hadn’t known I was a Shaper until three days ago. Now I felt like a part of me was missing.

  The cave appeared to have started life as a natural crack in the massive upthrust stones of the mountain, which flowing water had widened and smoothed over millennia. (On an island that Karl insisted was really no more than ten years old, but never mind that.) It started out high enough to walk through, but soon it narrowed, until eventually we were crawling on our hands and knees. The rock beneath my palms was moist and slimy, and all the time I was uneasily aware of the tons of stone above me and surrounding me. A slight shrug of the Earth would reduce us to smears of paste.

  But the Earth did not shrug, and after a few dozen uncomfortable yards, the tunnel opened out again, allowing us to stand upright. Unfortunately, it also got
a lot steeper, so that in places we were climbing near-vertical walls, moving from handhold to handhold in the dim light of Karl’s flashlight, attached to his belt again so it mostly illuminated his knees and feet, with occasional blinding flashes into my eyes.

  I had gone through a brief climbing-wall phase at my local gym. I’d like to say that experience went a long way toward increasing my confidence as I tried to make my way up the middle of a mountain in the dark, but that would be lying. My heart pounded, my breath rasped, and my fingers and calves and arms and shoulders burned. I tried really hard not to think about the sheer drop beneath me, with little success.

  At least, I thought my heart was pounding—until I heard voices echoing behind us. Then I discovered it had barely been beating at all.

  I started to say something to Karl, but snapped my mouth shut just in time. If we can hear them, they can hear us.

  Clearly Karl’s pessimistic prediction had proved prescient: the helicopter crew had seen something and had called in the Marines. Possibly literally. At this point, that was the best-case scenario. Soldiers from my world were less likely to shoot me on sight, unless they’d been directly Shaped by the Adversary, and he couldn’t have Shaped every individual involved in the search for us.

  If, on the other hand, those now pursuing us up the tunnel were members of the Adversary’s cadre . . . well, best not to be seen anywhere within rifle shot.

  In fact, best not be seen at all.

  The slope abruptly flattened. I scrambled onto level ground and stayed on my hands and knees for a minute, panting. Karl had already moved farther down the tunnel, but now he paused. He unhooked the flashlight from his belt and shone it on something I couldn’t see.

  I got to my feet, joined him, and blinked at what he had found.

  The cave we’d been struggling through had been formed by natural forces. The continuation of it had not: not unless natural forces had somehow formed a perfect stone staircase, lined the tunnel with brick, and installed iron brackets, each containing an unlit torch, every twenty feet or so. “Who would have made this?” I whispered to Karl, still fiercely aware we had company some unknown distance back, though I’d heard nothing since that first burst of voices. That might mean that our pursuers had turned back rather than climb after us, but it could just as easily mean that some commander had told whomever had been talking to STFU, and they were still hurrying upward through the dark.