by Tim Pratt
But the Lector was watching – I counted four cameras in this room alone – and said, “Ah, ah, ah, no more sleepy-time, Zax. That big door beside you is an airlock. I already opened the outer door, and with the push of a button, I can open the inner one. The station really hates to open both those doors at once, but as your talking pinky ring mentioned, I’ve seized control and implemented my own protocols. Fortunately, while this world seems fairly advanced in terms of biological sciences, it’s unimpressive from a computer-science perspective. There’s no artificial intelligence on board. Not even expert systems. All I had to do was trick a sensor so it thinks the outer door is closed when it’s not. Easy enough. If you and your potted plant so much as close your eyes, I’ll vent you into space before you have time to sleep away.”
“You won’t kill me,” Zax said. “You need my blood to make more serum, and if I’m dead, that limits your supply, doesn’t it?”
“Ah, the situation has changed, Zaxony. The people who built this station had staggeringly advanced technology, even by my standards. Their biotech laboratory is particularly fine, and has ample feedstock and replicators. I can take a few samples from your floating corpse, multiply your blood volume in the lab, and create more serum than I’d need in a lifetime. That said, I’m not eager to do an EVA to recover your body. I could just cut off the air to the room you’re in and collect your corpse at my leisure… but I suspect Ragweed there can find a way to feed you oxygen, can’t she?”
Minna was glaring at all the walls in turn.
“Of course she can. Listen, Zaxony. I don’t want to kill you. I am a man of science, not a murderer. Let me take your blood, and then you and your merry band can be on your way. I’ll stay here for a few weeks – there are sufficient supplies, and I need to recreate my traveling case anyway. The new version might be even better than before. The scientists here were doing work on transcranial magnetism and deep-brain stimulation with interesting applications for behavioral modification, too… While I’m studying, you’ll have time to put dozens of worlds between us, and I won’t be pursuing you anymore, so there’s no reason to think we’ll ever even cross paths again. We can be estranged friends who never talk. Doesn’t that sound civilized?”
“Vicki, is he telling the truth about the airlock?” Zax said.
“I am afraid so. There is only a single door between us and the void.”
“I have sedative patches, they act instantly, but–”
“Reach for anything, and die,” the Lector said. “I’ve pursued you across hundreds of worlds, Zaxony Delatree, and I have expended all my patience. You took my supplies, you stranded my friend in a world of glass–”
“Polly was not your friend. You slipped up once and called her your pet, so don’t pretend she meant anything to you.”
“Polly had an admirably straightforward approach to life, Zaxony, and I found her very amusing, which is more than I can say about you. I have been patient. I have been kind. I am done being both. I know cooperating with me is abhorrent to you, but what was it your potted plant said? ‘Adapt or die.’ No more negotiations.”
After a moment, Zax said, “All right.”
“I’ll open the hatch,” the Lector said. “You come out. Minna and her shiny ring with all the opinions stay inside.”
Minna flung herself at Zax, embracing him and babbling, “Please be careful Zax, he is a bad weed and he will steal your sun, do not believe him.” He hugged her back, and didn’t even notice when she unobtrusively slipped me off her finger and into his pocket. Minna is more observant and smarter than we gave her credit for. I regret that… and I miss her. I hope that she is safe and well, and that her considerable resources and ability to adapt allowed her to escape her situation. But when I run calculations based on my available data, the extrapolations are not heartening.
Separation, Anxiety • Blood and Marrow • A Logistical Problem • Another Handshake • Twenty Worlds • The Point of Revenge
Zax hugged Minna back, then gently pulled away. I couldn’t see what was happening, since I was tucked away in his pockets, and I once more attempted to interface with the station. I still couldn’t take control, but I did manage to enter the system as a passive observer, and was able to observe what happened next through the station’s various cameras.
The Lector ordered Minna to move to the back of the room. She wrung her hands, either from genuine worry or to disguise the fact that I was no longer on her finger. Zax gave Minna a little wave when the Lector opened the hatch, then floated through into the corridor. He followed the Lector’s directions, propelling himself along several ash-streaked corridors, until he finally entered a well-appointed laboratory, where the walls were white and unstained, and lined with benches and equipment.
The Lector floated in the center of the room, smiling, and holding a very large needle.
“I can open the airlock in your friend’s room with a voice command, Zaxony, so please do behave.”
“I just want to get this over with, and get on with never seeing you again,” Zax said. I tried to think of something clever to do, but none of my simulations ended in anything but death for Minna. Even if she could generate her own oxygen for a certain amount of time, being in space without a protective suit would kill her in myriad other ways, and I couldn’t guarantee a method to subdue the Lector and save her in time.
“I know you see me as an adversary.” The Lector rolled up Zax’s right sleeve and peered at his arm in search of a good vein. “I acknowledge that I handled things badly. I shouldn’t have tied you down. I feared you wouldn’t consent to exploratory surgery.”
“Of course I wouldn’t have consented. I don’t even consent to this. I’m doing this because you threatened my friend’s life.”
“You see? That’s why I didn’t bother asking nicely in the first place. You won’t have to endure my interest much longer.” He slid in the needle, which was connected to a tube, which was connected to a bag. “Make a fist for me, Zaxony, and squeeze.”
Zax’s blood spiraled up the tube. The Lector hummed and bustled about, adjusting the lab equipment, while Zax floated and slowly exsanguinated. The Lector filled one bag, then swapped it for another. “I’ll give you a cookie and some juice after you’re done.” He chuckled. “Or a protein biscuit and a pouch of electrolyte gel, anyway. The supplies here are ample but not varied.”
Zax ignored him and looked out the window. “All those people,” he murmured. After a moment I found an exterior camera so I could see what he did. The Lector had not lied – the planet beneath us a ruin, much of its visible landmass burning.
“This is a world that could have used a strong, sensible leader, don’t you think?” the Lector said. “Look what happens when the fools are in charge.”
“Someone like you, you mean?”
“The Colloquy never ran better than it did under my stewardship, and making it work perfectly wasn’t even a challenge. Ruling an empire is far better suited to my talents.”
“This whole idea of a multiverse-spanning empire doesn’t make sense, Lector. Even with an endless supply of serum, you can stay awake for at most, what, a week? Even if you could conquer a place in that span of time, you’d fall asleep afterward, and move on, and never be able to return.”
“I considered limiting my scope. I could calibrate the dosage precisely enough to let me travel only once, and then stay wherever I landed as long as I wished. All I’d have to do is find a sufficiently advanced world, acquire weapons there, and then conquer a place with a lower level of technology. I could be a king.”
“Is that your new plan, then?” I could tell from the stresses in Zax’s voice and his physiological responses that he liked that idea. At least in this scenario the Lector would only ruin one world.
“No. I never lacked for ambition. I have faith in myself, Zaxony. I will find out how to control this power, and once I do, I can revisit the worlds I conquer at will.” He picked up a long needle. “While I have you here,
I’m going to extract some of your bone marrow – marrow makes blood cells, and it’s possible the source of your ability is rooted there. My ultimate goal is to alter my own body to produce the substance naturally, like you do, rather than relying on the serum. One step at a time.” The Lector grinned. “Don’t worry. The extraction process can be painful, but local anesthesia will be sufficient for our needs. You won’t fall asleep, or pass out from the pain.”
“Do whatever you need to,” Zax said wearily. “Just finish this.”
The Lector extracted blood and then marrow, clearly enjoying Zax’s discomfort, but he provided adequate medical care. I was waiting for him to try to kill Zax, but he was briskly professional. He inserted vials of blood and marrow into machines of unclear purpose, and I am forced to acknowledge that the Lector must possess a brilliant analytical mind if he can use alien equipment with such ease.
Zax must have gotten bored, or else he couldn’t rein in his natural optimism, because he tried again. “So what happens until you figure out how to control the power? You can’t take over anything. At best, you can murder a bunch of innocent people, and leave wreckage behind. Even if you do come back later, it’s not like the places will stay conquered.”
“I admit, the lack of permanence presents a logistical problem when it comes to maintaining control of any worlds I liberate… but it’s a problem I’ve solved.”
“How so?”
One of the machines beeped, and a light turned green. “Ahhh,” the Lector said. “Success.” He turned toward Zax. “Our time is done. I’m afraid you’ll never know how I solved the problem of maintaining my fledgling empire. If you’re lucky, you’ll stay ahead of my conquests, and you’ll never have to see for yourself. Just don’t spend too long on any particular world, and I won’t catch up to you.”
“We’re done, then?” Zax said. “We can go?”
“You can go,” the Lector said. “After you shake my hand.” He reached out.
Oh, no.
Zax was clearly suspicious, but what could he do? After a moment, he took the Lector’s hand and gave it a perfunctory shake – or tried to. The Lector gripped his wrist, then whipped out a needle with his other hand, jabbing it into Zax’s arm.
Zax jerked free, rubbing at the injection site. “What did you do?”
“Don’t worry, it isn’t poison.” The Lector smiled. “It’s true I wanted you alive, even after I realized I could reproduce your blood in quantity here. Do you know why I wanted you alive? Because the dead don’t suffer, Zaxony, and I want you to suffer. I want you to know what it’s like to be abandoned and alone and without resources, the same way you left me. I just dosed you with a very… special sort of sedative, something I synthesized here in this beautiful lab earlier. You’re going to travel so far ahead of me, my old friend! But I’m afraid you’ll be leaving without Minna. I look forward to studying her. I’m sure her body has many interesting qualities that will benefit my research. Farewell, Zax. I look forward to never seeing you again.”
Zax tried to kick off the wall to attack the Lector, but then he moaned and slumped. I quickly partitioned my mind and shut down my conscious functions, and we traveled.
I awoke in World 1015 – we were in an empty lot full of trash – and said, “Zax, I’m here, Minna put me in your pocket.”
“Vicki? Oh, Vicki.” He slipped his hand into his pocket and me onto his finger. “Minna, she…” Then Zax let out a bone-cracking yawn. “I can’t… my eyes open…”
A special sort of sedative. I quickly shut down my mind as Zax traveled again.
World 1016 was all smokestacks rising from the barren ground, belching steam from some underground habitat. Zax didn’t even manage to sit up that time, just said, “Vicki, something’s wrong,” and then I shut myself down again.
World 1017 was a white marble floor surrounded by columns, beneath a broken dome that revealed a hazy green sky, like a scum of algae. Zax didn’t speak this time, only gasped, and rolled over, before dropping again.
In World 1018 we were on a raft drifting down a river in a flotilla of other rafts inhabited by creatures that looked like possums, but larger and wearing random bits of armor that appeared to be made of scrap metal. They clattered weapons together when they saw us, but Zax fell asleep again before the bravest or most aggressive of them completed its leap from a neighboring raft to our own. By then I’d noted the interval of Zax’s waking and sleeping, and programmed a cycle of my own to match, while partitioning copies of my consciousness in case those intervals changed.
The Lector had drugged Zax, and flung us far off into the multiverse, and we flickered on and on.
1019: A frozen chasm, with people and robots and machines locked in the translucent ice all around us.
1020. A red plain in a place where humanoid giants encrusted with lichen and vines took long, slow steps all around us.
1021: The roof of a skyscraper made of topaz glass, where delicate flying machines with flickering dragonfly wings landed and took off in an intricate dance.
1022: A sports field of some kind, where our arrival startled the three opposing teams, who pursued a whirling, burning orb that darted around us in the air.
1023: An outdoor café, where a woman with the head of a water bird topped by a golden crown dipped her beak into a bowl of some steaming liquid and looked at us placidly.
1024: A shallow pool, one in a vast array of pools stretching as far as I could see, that contained some fluid that buoyed us up. A creature rose to the surface and then dove down again, its head a profusion of eyes, its tail finned and scaled. It surfaced again and began to chirp and burble, but before I could attempt to translate, we vanished again.
1025: A museum full of screaming statues.
1026: A nest the size of a house, full of bones and stink and immense red feathers.
1027: A concrete island in the midst of a divided highway occupied by self-driving vehicles in garishly bright colors.
1028: A rocky cliff covered in eggs.
1029: A mine, full of wide-eyed children with faces smeared with black dust.
1030: A Gothic cathedral, with pews full of skeletons with hydraulic muscles and gleaming jewel eyes, and a fountain that bubbled blood.
1031: A lounge full of battered old couches and the smell of burnt popcorn, with a screen showing images of naked, greasy people wrestling with some sort of warty megafauna. Zax sat up, and licked his lips, and said, “I feel better, I think it’s wearing off.” He managed to stand up before his eyes rolled back and he fell toward a couch.
1032: “Gah.” Zax sat up, wiping slime off his arms. We were in a wooden vat, the sides steep, the bottom full of wriggling eel-like creatures. Machinery rumbled in the distance. “Come on, Vicki, let’s climb out of this thing.” There was a ladder built into the side of the vat, and Zax made it up three rungs before passing out this time.
The intervals were getting longer.
1033: A dustbowl of a place, beside a partially collapsed geodesic dome. The slime all over Zax was sticky and he was soon covered in dust. “I feel like a piece of meat rolled in flour about to be cooked,” he said. “I don’t think I’m all the way recovered yet, Vicki. I still feel pretty woozy.”
“I extrapolate that you will be able to remain awake in just–”
1034: “Two more worlds,” I finished. “One more, I mean, after this.”
We were in a forest, the trees all pure white and uniformly vertical, lined up in perfect orderly rows as far as we could see. A stream flowed through the trees a few meters away, and it too was mathematically precise, running between precisely parallel banks. Zax limped toward the water, intending to wash himself off. He didn’t make it.
World 1035 was the one that stuck. We woke on the outskirts of a ruined city made of great stone buildings, surrounded by purple grass that grew in profusion, and that Zax said made him itchy when it touched the few parts of his body not covered in slime and dust. He climbed up on a pile of broken st
ones where the grass didn’t quite reach and sat, cross-legged, looking at the sun sink through red clouds to the horizon. “Minna would have been interested in this grass. She would have found something useful in it. If nothing else, I bet she could have helped with the itching.” Zax, filthy and disconsolate, scratched at his arms. “She’s with the Lector. Who knows what he’s doing to her? And there’s nothing we can do. Nothing. He put, what, fifteen worlds between us?”
“Twenty. You were quite dazed in some of them.”
“Twenty. And he said he’d spend weeks on that station, tinkering with my blood. Even if I stay awake as long as I can, he’ll be able to stay worlds behind me. It’s unlikely he’d bring Minna with him anyway.”
I had done the same calculations, and come to similar conclusions. “I’m so sorry, Zax.”
“What if he kills her? Or strands her, in that lifeless place, above that lifeless world? Even if she lives, she’ll go insane there.”
What he said was true. I had no comfort or refutation to offer.
Zax curled up on his side on the stone and said no more for a long time. Later, in the dark, when strange things began howling in the dark city, he said, “I’ve lost so much, Vicki. So much, so many times. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. I try to prepare myself. But this time, it wasn’t circumstance, or accident, or a friend deciding they’d found a world where they wanted to stay. It was an attack. I never understood the point of revenge, Vicki. Restorative justice, making amends, those things made sense to me, but not revenge. Now, though… I want more than anything to hurt the Lector. The way he hurt me.”
“It’s understandable, Zax.”
“It is. But it’s also terrible.” He rolled onto his back and looked up at the sky, which was disturbingly barren of stars. Perhaps there was a void infestation in this world, too. “The Lector has made me into the kind of person who wants revenge. Into someone like him. That’s just one of the many ways he’s won, and I’ve lost.”
“Zax, I–”
“We can talk later, Vicki. I’m… very tired right now.”