Universe Between

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “What the hell.” He sat there, the Jeep ticking in the sunlight, and the sounds of insects cheeping and of water running brought his head around. “Do you see that?”

  Behind the Jeep sat a small cabin that looked like it had been built of discarded packing crates and wood salvaged from some of the ghost towns that dotted the Nevada deserts. It had two, small, warped glass windows that flanked a blue painted door that looked entirely out of place in the weathered grey patchwork of wood. Green grass grew right up to its foundations and a small stream ran a silver thread through the verdant grass and then disappeared into the haze that seemed to surround this small wedge of land.

  A wedge of land. He grabbed the two maps and studied them again. Yes, this wedge was about two hundred yards across and could account for the difference his Gifted senses felt and what was on the map. Beyond the heat haze or whatever it was, the ridge rose closer than it should be according to where they had been.

  He glanced at Sylvia who still sat stiffly beside him. “Do you know where we are?”

  She shook her head and stared at him wide-eyed. “I could see through that Jeep.”

  “Yeah.” He thought about it for a moment. “I guess it’s because they weren’t really here because here doesn’t exist according to the normal world.”

  Sylvia’s blank stare made him grin. He caught her hand. “It’s like this. You know how we could sense the feel of people? Well, we can sense this place, too. The other guys in the Jeep couldn’t, so they drove through it and never saw it. It was probably like a blink of the eye or something. They just didn’t see it. But we can, just like whoever built that cabin can.”

  Sylvia’s fingernails dug into his palm. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. How could those men not see this place when we do? How can a place not exist when clearly it does because we’re sitting in it?”

  “The maps, Sylvia. It’s all about the maps. They don’t meet at the edge, so people don’t know the place between them exists.” How much could he tell her? The Gifted could Change the landscape through the creation of new maps. His agency, the American Geological Survey, was responsible for stopping such Changes that might arise from foreign or domestic causes. When a map was created and the rest of the unGifted population accepted the new landscape, it became reality. Historically it was known that surveyors’ work often didn’t match up exactly and that small spaces were left between the edges of their survey lines. With the growth in population and the advent of GPS, most of those anomalies had been found and fixed, but here in the desert it probably just hadn’t come up. Between the maps—he wasn’t aware of anyone even thinking about what such a space would mean. “Think of it as a little wrinkle in reality, okay? I really can’t say anything more.”

  Sylvia just looked at him as if she was trying to see inside his soul. Finally she shook her head and sighed. “You’ve changed, Landon. You’ve got secrets now. You did find a career that uses your skills, didn’t you?”

  What could he say? He inhaled wine-laden air and opened the door. “Let’s get Chloe.”

  The cabin was silent as they walked across the springy grass. At the blue door, Landon didn’t bother to knock because the golden flare of Sylvia’s daughter roared from inside, but nothing else did. No one else was there.

  The open door revealed a stark little room, with a heap of opened and unopened army surplus meal packets, a stack of plastic water bottles and a cot across the back of the room. Chained by a leg iron to a link in the wall lay a sleeping teenage girl with hair as silver as Sylvia’s but the girl was longer legged and more athletic looking. The room stank of wine-soaked sweat and the ammonia-stink of the honey pot shoved under the bed.

  Sylvia was across the room and on her knees beside her daughter before Landon could move. Clearly whoever had confined Chloe hadn’t expected anyone to find her. The police certainly wouldn’t have.

  The girl roused with a start. “Mom? Mom? Is it really you?”

  Sylvia rained kisses on her daughter’s face, buried her in hugs and caresses. They were both in tears and Landon went to examine the chain end in the wall. Clearly the girl had been working at it, but for all the weathered look of the cabin’s wood, her captors had chosen well.

  He retreated to the Jeep and dug out a tire iron then went back into the cabin and almost strained his back prying the chain loose. Finally it clattered on the floor. By then the two women were seated on the bed hugging each other, with Chloe promising she would believe her mother from now on when she suggested the people Chloe wanted to hang with weren’t the right ones.

  “I think we should go now,” he said.

  The two women wiped their eyes.

  “Who’s he?” Chloe asked.

  Sylvia caught Landon’s hand and pulled him in beside them so for a brief moment he could almost feel part of the reunion.

  “This is Landon Snow, honey. He’s a dear friend who goes all the way back to grade school. A very special friend because he helped me find you.”

  The girl’s eyes were nothing like her mother’s. Dark, assessing, dismissive as most people were when taking in a white-haired, pink-skinned man in child’s clothing.

  Still, Chloe held out her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Snow. I don’t know how long I could have stood it. The guys, they said they weren’t going to hurt me, but they wanted to be sure I’d work with them on their crazy plans. They said we could do stuff that no one else could.” She shook her fine head. “Crazy. Totally crazy, but when I told them so, they tied me up and left me.”

  Whatever she had been through, she sounded fine. Sylvia bundled her out of the cabin and out to the Jeep. They climbed in and Landon started the engine and looked around the small wedge of ground. It really was a most marvelous discovery, one that the young people who had held Chloe must have found accidentally and one that most likely would have gone undiscovered for years more given where it was situated.

  The drive back to Las Vegas was unremarkable—long and hot and dry, with no sign of the military Jeep, but they ate food and drank tepid water from their supply and made it back to Sylvia’s small rancher on the city outskirts. Chloe, exhausted, went into the house and that left Sylvia and Landon facing each other in the driveway, in the light spray of water from the automatic sprinkler system that was part of the well-kept homey place.

  “I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve given me my life back.” Sylvia hesitated, clearly wanting to go after her daughter, but recognizing how much she owed him. Her eyes gleamed the way he’d always remembered, the way he’d always loved.

  “It really wasn’t anything. We just took a drive. I had a little bit of the skill we needed. That’s all.” He shrugged and caught her hands. “Listen. Those young men whose names you gave me on the trip back to town? You won’t have to worry about them anymore. I know people who will be interested in them.” The AGS would be very interested in any Gifted. If the young men weren’t interested in cooperating, then the AGS had ways of dealing with it. “But I’m going to suggest that you might want to change cities, or at the very least take a long vacation right away. The people who come for them will take anyone with that little something extra you have.”

  She cocked her head, then suddenly leaned into him and kissed him, again on the lips. Soft. Hesitant. Testing. Then she pulled back and looked him in the eye. “You’re trying to keep us safe, aren’t you? From something you’re involved with.”

  He wouldn’t even allow himself to nod, just drank in her fragrance of sunshine and dreamt of what might have been. He let go of her hands. “Go on. She needs you and you need to get away.”

  Then he turned and climbed in the Jeep and watched her walk away. It hurt just as much as the last time, but this time he got something in return.

  The space between the maps was his secret and he’d make sure those young men kept it that way. He was good at keeping secrets; just like he’d always kept secret the gap in his heart between what was, and what might have been.
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  He started the Jeep and drove away.

  Introduction to “Perfect Notes”

  Something about the theme of this issue inspired several writers to tackle musical themes. One of those writers is Scott William Carter, who makes his third appearance in these pages, after “The Elevator in the Cornfield” in Time Streams, and “The Toy That Ran Away” in Moonscapes. Scott’s ten novels and fifty short stories cross genres and styles, just like Fiction River does. His latest novel, Ghost Detective, also crosses genre lines, as you can tell from the title alone.

  He says he got the idea for “Perfect Notes” at his daughter’s piano recital.

  Perfect Notes

  Scott William Carter

  He was there in the tenth row, toward the back of the library performance hall—wiry and lean, sitting perfectly erect with his fingers steepled under his dimpled chin, dressed in a tight black T-shirt and designer black jeans.

  It was just as Caleb remembered him. He did not have many memories of those early years, but he did vividly recall how his father always insisted to his mother, when she complained about his limited wardrobe, that there was no need to dress in any other color when black suited him just fine. Any opportunity to simplify the choices in his life, he used to say, was a good thing because it allowed him to focus his energy on his music. This was how his father won most arguments, by claiming it was about the music. And because Phillip Mertz had been a great pianist, at least in his own mind, nobody could really argue otherwise.

  Since Caleb had not been expecting him, he could not be sure later how long his father had been sitting there. The whole recital? Just Caleb’s song, a spritely rendition of Mozart’s Sonata in C Major? Or only a few notes?

  He only knew that as he rose from the piano bench and turned to the audience, forcing himself to lift his acne-ridden face as he prepared to bow, he saw him. Dad. The Great Phillip Mertz. The spotlight was in Caleb’s eyes, the air hazy from the oppressive heat, but there was no mistake. The shoulder-length black hair flecked with gray, the pale as snow skin, the hooked nose, and the narrow, intense eyes were all intimately familiar.

  Something else was strange too: Nobody was moving. This wasn’t a natural pause, either, everyone stilling as they waited for him to bow. Even the little toddler in the fourth row, who’d been squirming the whole recital, was frozen completely—as if God had hit the pause button on the great movie of life. Caleb, his face warm and his throat tight, opened his mouth to speak. His collar, damp with sweat, felt like a noose around his neck.

  “Dad?” he said.

  Then, as the gears of time became unstuck, and the audience of hurried parents and bored children raised their hands in polite applause, the image of his father faded and disappeared. The cushioned seat was empty.

  That’s when Caleb knew he had done what his father once told him could be done. He was fifteen years old, he’d already been playing three hours a day for ten years, and he’d finally done it. He’d opened up a rift between universes with his music.

  Now he just needed to do it again.

  ***

  Caleb was three years old when he saw his father disappear for the first time.

  It was also his first memory of hearing his father playing piano, or really, the first memory of music of any kind. The sound reaching through the thin walls stirred him from his afternoon nap, the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. It might have been a piano version of Beethoven’s Fifth, though he was too young then to know and he would wonder about it for the rest of his life.

  Snow coated the tiny paned window. The pale gray light formed a hazy square on the green afghan. The tip of his nose felt numb; his face, unlike the rest of his body, was exposed to the cold air so common at the back of the little house.

  He crawled out of bed and, dressed in his red wool pajamas, crept to his door and opened it—carefully! He did not want it to creak. Even though he was wearing cotton socks, the wood floor was so cold it made the bottoms of his feet hurt. He smelled baking bread and heard his mother, in the kitchen, humming along to his father’s song. She sounded happy. That’s what he remembered. How happy she sounded.

  Sneaky, very sneaky—he tip-toed down the hall, careful not to slip in his socks. He peered around the corner in the kitchen and saw his mother leaning over the counter, a cloud of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. She was slicing a bright red apple, her long tresses of hair almost the same color. Caleb had red hair, too, just not as long. One day maybe it would be as long as hers.

  When he was sure she wasn’t looking, Caleb darted to the shorter hall that led to the studio. The studio door was closed, as usual. Caleb passed the bathroom and the dripping faucet. A floorboard creaked, and he froze, his heart thudding away in his ears, but the piano was so loud that nobody heard him. He reached for the doorknob.

  Unlike all the other times he’d tried, the door was unlocked.

  Easing the door open, Caleb felt a jet of cool air blow past his face. It smelled of winter and old wood. Already the piano sounded so much louder. Still sneaky, still slowly, he opened the door just far enough that he could peer through the gap. He saw the unfinished pine bookshelf packed with sheet music. He saw the high, cracked-opened window, the burgundy curtains billowing in the draft. He saw the wine bottles on the dull gray filing cabinet, green ones, brown ones, so many different pretty bottles. He saw the edge of the old upright piano, stained a dark chocolate brown—and then his father’s hands, long fingers flitting across the white and black keys like mad spiders.

  That’s when he first noticed something odd. The fingers. They were ... not there.

  Not all the time, anyway. Sometimes Caleb saw them, and sometimes they vanished like mist in the sun.

  His chest felt very tight. His heart pounded still harder, and he had to pee. He opened the door a little more. He saw his father’s long black hair and his lean back, the bumps of his spine showing through his tight black T-shirt. His body was doing the same thing as his hands. It was fading in and out.

  The song stopped suddenly—the silence as shocking to Caleb as a shout—and his father spun around. His eyes were hard. There was no more disappearing. His father was fully in the room, and Caleb wished for all the world that his father would smile. If only he would smile, just as his mother smiled when she saw Caleb, and scoop Caleb up and tell him how much he loved him and everything would be right and everything would be good.

  But his father did not smile or pick him up. Instead, he charged to the door and yanked it open, shouting over Caleb’s head:

  “Barbara! Come get your son!”

  ***

  “I saw him again,” Caleb said. “It was just for a moment—a flicker.”

  He stood naked at the dorm window, looking through the parted curtains at Harvard Yard. The oaks and elms were in the full shift toward fall, a full spectrum of red, yellow, and green, but it was still early enough in September that the swept sidewalks and manicured green lawns were still bare of leaves. The window was open just a crack and he smelled barbecuing hamburger—probably someone a floor or two below, on a camping stove most likely. A definite no-no, but he had friends who did the same at Julliard. He liked that there were rule breakers at Harvard, too. It made them seem less stuffy.

  “Come back to bed,” Maria said.

  “I was playing this little dive bar in Brooklyn,” he said, ignoring her. His breath, against the closed part of the window, blew back the scent of the wine he’d drunk earlier. “Not one of my usual places. I was there meeting a friend. And I thought, you know, maybe I’ll play a few songs. It was just the sort of place Dad used to play, at least after I was born. Dark and crappy and full of drunks.”

  “Who was this friend?” Maria asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Caleb said.

  “A girl?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  Irritated, Caleb went on: “I was doing some Billy Joel numbers, you know, real crowd pleasers, and then
I looked up and saw him sitting at the bar. Long black hair, black clothes, the whole deal. He was looking right at me. But then he was gone.”

  When she didn’t say anything, he turned and looked at her. She was curled up in the little bed on the left—the bed on the right belonging to her roommate Steph, who had mercifully gone back to Connecticut for the weekend—and the way the sheets twisted around her body, revealing glimpses of her smooth, golden flesh in the semi-darkness, a bit of slender leg here, the bottom slope of a breast there, was more powerful than if she had been completely naked. Her long curly hair, normally a rich chocolate brown, looked almost black in the dim light.

  He might have gone to Maria right then if he hadn’t seen the look in her eyes: not quite disapproval, but something else. Pity?

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing,” she said. She stretched out a long luxurious arm, reaching for him, the sheet falling away and exposing her beautiful breasts. “Come here, beautiful boy. I want to show you something.”

  “I really saw him,” Caleb insisted.

  “I know you did.”

  “Then why do you look at me like that?”

  “I’m not. I’m—I’m just enjoying the view. I like looking at you naked. You know that. I like touching you even better. Come here, let’s not spoil it. We only have a few more hours before you have to go.”

  But Caleb did not want to let it go. He couldn’t. Maria had been one of the few people he’d told about his father, about what his father could do, and he needed her to believe him. She was not only beautiful, but smart, much smarter than him. She said she wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice someday, and he had no reason to doubt her. He believed her the same way he wanted her to believe him.

  “One of these days I’m going to get to talk to him,” he said, and he felt his throat seizing up on him. “It’s going to happen. I just have to practice harder.”