“Wait,” he said, “I think I know what you mean. I can hear…stuff. There’s a crackle to it…and a hum, something that sounds rather like distant city traffic…and someone’s singing…”
“Wow,” Tess breathed as Terry’s hand made contact with the cube, and the Fire face’s shade marginally deepened into a hue that was almost pink.
“Your turn,” Thea said. “Same thing. Find the face that speaks to you.”
Tess reached out for the cube in the same way that Terry had done.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I think I can taste something, right at the back of my throat, over by the Water face—but it’s faint, so faint…And I didn’t see it light up, the way Terry’s did.”
“Water is usually associated with sight,” said Mrs. Chen, who had slipped back into the room. “Usually. But I think from what you’ve told me, Thea, you were the sight component of this grouping, and you’ve chosen to attach yourself to that unknown symbol instead. So that sense might have migrated.”
“But it was Fire and Air that lit up for me, before,” Thea said. “Not water.”
“As I said,” Mrs. Chen said, “it isn’t an exact science. Tess, if that seems the best fit…”
“No, wait,” Thea said. “If she’s unsure, let’s see if the other two have a stronger reaction to anything. Magpie?”
Magpie reached out with her right hand, biting her lower lip. “I’m not sure I know what—oh!”
“What is it?”
Magpie stood transfixed, her eyes wide, her hand hovering just above the Earth face of the cube. “I can feel…it feels like…tree bark, under my fingers,” she said. “And…silk. And…and…feathers?”
She touched the face, and it too changed color very subtly, shading into a coffee-with-a-lot-of-milk shade of white.
“Between you and Tess, Ben,” Thea said.
“I so don’t want to do this,” Ben said, staring at the cube. He had wrinkled his nose several times already, as though in anticipation of a sneeze that never came, his usual allergic reaction to the faintest whiff of magic. He did so again as he spoke, scrunching up his face into a grimace and shaking his head. “It’s like that infernal feeling when there’s a sneeze just hovering in the back of your nose, tickling, but you never quite sneeze and it drives you bananas.”
“Try it. I think yours is the stronger link,” Thea said.
Ben sighed and reached out for the cube. His hand hovered briefly over the Water face, but then he shook his head and glanced back at Tess over his shoulder.
“You were right, I think. This one does nothing for me.” He shifted his hand over the Air face, and then, suddenly, let go of an explosive sneeze that made Rafe, halfway across the room, jump and jolt a book off the professor’s shelf. “Oh, yes, I think this one’s mine,” Ben said, after he sniffed a few times and rubbed at his watering eyes with his free hand. His fingers touched the Air face, and it, too, changed color into pale, pale blue. “I can smell ozone,” he whispered. “Like you sometimes can in a thunderstorm. And apples. Yes, apples.”
“I think that’s the taste I had,” Tess said, reaching out resolutely toward the Water face, which began to shade into a pale green as her fingers got closer, the color of shallow water over white sand. “Apples…”
She touched the Water face.
And everything went away.
Thea found herself standing alone in a thick, roiling white fog. She looked down at her hands, but she wasn’t holding the cube, not in this place, wherever it was. But the new gadget, the wrist-computer that Humphrey had given her, was still on her arm. She squinted at it through the drifting mist, flicked it on, and typed Cube 1: white fog, starting place. She didn’t have a clue where she was or what had happened, but it was obvious that she was no longer in the professor’s office holding an Elemental cube with her friends.
Speaking of whom…
“Marco!” Thea called out experimentally. Her voice sounded muffled by the fog, unable to carry very far. But almost instantly there were several responses.
“Polo!” Magpie called out from somewhere to her left.
“Likewise,” Tess’s voice came floating from somewhere behind Thea.
“Where are we?” Terry asked.
“What did you do?” said Ben at the same moment.
“Oh, great, you instantly assume it was me,” Thea said, pitching her voice to carry.
“Your idea,” Ben said.
“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Seriously,” Terry said, “where are we? I can’t see my hand in front of my face in this fog.”
“Don’t move, let me find you,” Thea said. “Whatever else happened, I’m still the anchor, so don’t drift off by yourselves. One at a time. Terry, keep talking.”
“I think your voice comes from somewhere over to the right of me, and you also sound like you’re in front of me,” Terry said.
“This fog muffles everything,” Tess said. “Feels like cotton wool. I can’t see anything past my nose.”
Magpie suddenly yelped sharply. Thea froze in place, whipping her head around, trying to place the sound.
“Magpie? Say something! What’s the matter? Are you okay?”
“Sorry,” Magpie’s voice came back from the fog, sounding shaken. “Something brushed past my face. Like wings. I couldn’t make out what it was. Could you hurry up?”
“Don’t move,” Thea said. “Terry, talk to me.”
“No, I think I see him,” Ben’s voice said. “Remember the colors that cube turned? I see a reddish area…it’s just off to the left and the back of me. I think that might be where he is. Terry, look to the right and ahead—can you see anything other than white?”
“Not…really…wait…Yes, I think so…. There’s a greenish—”
“That would be me,” Tess said. “I got green. Ben was blue. Magpie was…brownish.”
“I have no color, I’m white on white,” Thea said. “Stay put. I think I see that pink tinge, Terry. Keep talking. Put out both your hands. I’ll see if I can’t see something sticking out of the fog when I get closer.”
“Thea,” said Magpie, and her voice quavered, “there’s something out there. It’s brushing past me constantly, and I can’t see anything.”
“Hold it together,” Thea said. “I’m closest to Terry. We’ll head your way as soon as we hook up….”
She suddenly gasped as her outstretched hand brushed past something solid in the mist, which was shading into a pale pink around her, but the touch was instantly followed by a familiar voice.
“Thea?”
And fingers closed about hers: Terry’s hand.
They clung together for a moment, and then Thea shifted her grip so that she held Terry’s hand in a firmer grasp and stepped closer into the mist. Terry’s physical form materialized as the mist seemed to shred from around him; he looked reassuringly solid, real, familiar.
“Are you all right?” Terry asked, squeezing her hand.
“I think so. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I was expecting. Not this. Magpie, I’ve got Terry. We’re coming to get you.”
“Hurry up,” Magpie said, and this time Thea could hear tears in her voice.
“Hang on, we’re coming. Keep talking! Your color is the hardest to find!”
Magpie started singing instead, something slow and sad, in a language none of the others knew. It was the song that led them to her in the end; they practically tripped over her. She had not held out her hands, as Terry had done—she had crouched down into a tight little ball, hugging her shoulders with her hands, her head laid across her folded arms.
Without letting go of Terry with her left hand, Thea dropped down on one knee beside Magpie.
“What is it? What did you see?”
“Birds,” Magpie whispered. “I think there’s birds. Can you hear it? I think it’s cooing. Like a pigeon. And that rustle of wings…”
“Hey. Sound’s my province
,” Terry said.
“I felt them brush past me,” Magpie whispered. “Wings. Like they were…looking for something. Lost birds.”
“Magpie.” Thea shook her shoulder gently. “Come on. We need to get the others. Come on. Look, there’s no birds here now.”
“Is everyone all right?” Tess called out, her own voice developing an edge.
“Yes, we’re coming. Just keep talking.”
“Oh, fine,” Ben said, off in his own pocket of mist. “Leave me till last.”
“I need you to bring up the rear,” Thea said. “You think the fastest of all of us.”
“Survival tactic,” Ben said, “except I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be surviving. Hurry up, would you?”
“Tess is over there,” Terry said, nodding in what seemed to be an arbitrary direction in the white mist.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Twins count for something,” Terry said. “Magpie, take my other hand. Thea, go forward…left…left…left…”
Tess stepped out to meet them from her own island of greenish mist as they came close enough for the mist to change color.
“I told you not to move,” Thea said.
“Twins,” Tess said, shrugging.
“Grab Magpie’s other hand. Ben? You said you could see the greenish mist pocket—can you still?”
“No…yes…well, it’s green and all other stuff…I guess you’re all there…should I just…?”
“No!” said Terry and Thea at once.
“Stay put. We’ll come and get you. Tess, stick out a hand, grab him,” Thea said. “Don’t any of you let go, or we’ll just lose each other again.”
“Got him,” Tess said after a moment.
“About time,” Ben said. “Stuck in this completely impenetrable…”
“Actually,” Terry said, “I think the fog is lifting. I can see all of you now; when Thea first approached me, I couldn’t see her before our hands actually touched. But now…”
“I think you’re right,” Tess said, looking around. “I think…I actually grabbed Ben’s hand, and that’s when it started to—”
“Somehow we got split,” Ben said. “Even if we’re all still holding on to the cube, back in the professor’s office, here we got scattered—and just as it took all of us to get through the first barrier of that thing, it took all of us to get through the second. Some defenses, this thing’s got.”
“Terry,” Thea said, “does it feel anything like the Twitterpat holo to you?”
Terry turned a startled look on her. “It’s nothing of the sort. Whatever made you ask that?”
“I don’t know. All of this is weirding me out a little.”
Terry sniffed. “If that’s what this is, it is several orders of magnitude more sophisticated a mechanism than what Twitterpat used,” he said. “That was built to interact with our own world on our terms—it isn’t real, but our world is. This actually feels almost the exact opposite—what the Twitterpat hologram might perceive us as. That’s an interesting idea, actually.”
“Never mind what it is right now. What I’d like to know is where—” Ben began, but Magpie suddenly gasped.
“Look,” she whispered. “Look down. Look!”
It was becoming obvious as the fog thinned that they hadn’t been so much in it as on it—inside a cloud, perhaps—because what revealed itself underneath their feet was a whole lot of nothing, and then what looked like the surface of the Earth, a very long way down.
Tess let out a small shriek, but that was all anyone had time to do because all of a sudden they weren’t standing still anymore but flying, or more precisely plummeting, down toward that distant ground.
“Dooooo somethiiiiiing!” yelled Ben, flailing uselessly around with his free hand as though he were trying to flap a nonexistent wing.
“I’m open to ideas!” Thea flung back, her hand clutching Terry’s in a convulsive grip.
“I hate heights!” Magpie wailed. “I’m closing my eyes now! Someone let me know when we smash into the ground!”
“Oh, I think you’ll know,” Ben said, and then fell quiet as their descent assumed quite a different aspect. All of a sudden they weren’t falling like a stone but gliding in a manner that felt controlled, although none of the five was aware of controlling anything. They actually began to angle and turn as they descended, in the manner of a raptor riding thermals.
After a moment, Thea, who had stopped feeling terrified and was now peering down at what seemed to be their destination with rapt interest, shook her head in puzzlement.
“That’s New York,” she said. “At least, I think it’s New York. It doesn’t quite look right, but I’m not sure why.”
“It isn’t New York,” Ben said quietly. “It was New York. If you’re right and this whole thing is Nikola Tesla’s work, then that’s New York in the 1880s. I read a little about him after last summer. He came to New York from Europe around 1885.”
“Wow,” Tess said, craning her neck this way and that for a better view as they approached the city laid out beneath them, a gridwork of streets and docks and bridges. “Look at those ships!”
“I’m not looking at anything!” Magpie squeaked. “Are we down yet?”
They swept closer to the city, still banking sharply, and flew down a street at the height of the first or second story windows, straight out toward the docks and the harbor area. There seemed to be a lot of noise, and wires, and people, and steam, and smoke.
“Oh! The gloves!” Tess exclaimed, looking down at the people scurrying beneath them in the crowded streets. “And my word, the hats! I mean, I know people used to wear that stuff, but can you imagine getting up in the morning? It had to take an hour to get dressed and properly turned out for the street!”
“Watch out—you’re going to kick someone’s hat off with your feet if you aren’t careful,” Terry said.
“Are we low enough for that?” Magpie said, finally opening her eyes. What she saw just underneath her own feet startled her so much that she gasped and relaxed her hold on the hands that were holding her own; if Tess and Terry hadn’t strengthened their own grips to compensate, Magpie would have slipped out of their grasp and tumbled down into the street below.
“Don’t do that,” Terry said sharply. “I nearly dropped you!”
“What do you think would have happened? I don’t think they can see us or anything.” Tess said.
“Oh, don’t be silly—we aren’t actually here,” Terry said. “We can’t have just hopped off back to the 1880s. All of this is probably a memory projection.”
“You can too go back to whenever you want,” Thea said. “I’m living proof of that. Cheveyo, remember?”
“Look,” Ben said suddenly. “We’re coming up to the docks—and look, right by that ship, just stepping off the gangplank…”
“That’s Tesla, isn’t it?” Terry said. “I’ve seen pictures…”
And then the city beneath them, so thoroughly three-dimensional and real, suddenly and shockingly flattened into what looked like a grainy black-and-white photograph, which then winked out. They were briefly stationary, and a thin film of fog or cloud roiled around their feet. Then it cleared again, but this time something quite different was underneath them.
“Aaaaiieee!” Magpie wailed, closing her eyes again.
They were as high up again as they had been above the New-York-that-was—except this time they appeared to be above a different city, straddling a river that snaked between two banks lined with majestic baroque buildings—and then they were falling toward it again, just as they had done the first time. But now that they knew what to expect, they weren’t quite so startled, and all of them, with the exception of Magpie, who still had her eyes resolutely closed, were examining the new city with great interest.
“Thea?” Terry said. “Clues?”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Thea said. “Europe, obviously. But that means it’s before New York, if these are Tesla’s memories. Wher
e was he before he came to New York? Paris, France? That isn’t Paris down there.”
“How do you know? It’s got a river, doesn’t it?”
“I’ve been to Paris,” Thea said. “There’s no island down below. No cathedral. No Eiffel Tower.”
“Yeah, but when was that built? Would there be an Eiffel Tower in this time?” Tess said.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like Paris, anyway.”
They had dropped down low again, skimming the ground, and they were rapidly coming up behind a dapper gentleman walking in a park. He was wearing a hat and they could not see his face, but Terry nodded.
“Tesla,” he said. “No mistaking that frame. They said he was really tall. Look at that guy.”
“He still can’t see us,” Ben said. “Oh, open your eyes, Magpie, nothing bad is going to happen and looking at you is making me dizzy. What’s he doing now?”
“I haven’t a clue, but he looks like he’s in pain,” said Magpie, who had opened her eyes.
She had barely finished speaking when Tesla looked up, straight at the five of them.
“He can see us,” Thea gasped.
But that was all there was time for. The picture underneath them went two-dimensional again, with Tesla doubled over in what seemed to be agony. He had fallen onto his knees, and his hands were over his ears as though he had been assaulted by a sudden cacophony of noise.
“Oh, God, was that our fault?” Thea said, appalled, as they found themselves standing ankle-deep in white mist one more time.
“He did see us,” Terry said. “We might have triggered something…or…”
“Did he see us back in New York?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t remember if he even looked up or not. Here we go again…” Magpie said.
They swooped one more time, and this time there was no city at all—just an open field with a barnlike object in the midst of it, a strange tower with a bulbous top protruding from the middle of it like an antenna. The field was surrounded by mountains, and the house or barn on the field was surrounded by a wire fence. The five of them skimmed over the fence, so low that they could read a sign tacked onto it: ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Worldweavers: Cybermage Page 5