Doors of Sleep

by Tim Pratt

  “You’re very lucky we aren’t allowed to knock you unconscious,” one of them said, and tossed me over the back of the flying machine, and carried me away.

  They were building a headquarters already, unleashing small machines that assembled the components for structures out of the dirt and rock around us. One of the first things they built was a cell, just a box of bars, and they threw me into it. The Pilgrim wasn’t in there, at least. Maybe he’d come break me out. That seemed like the sort of thing he might do. I walked around and around in my three-meters-by-three-meters of dirt, the sun sending the shadow of steel mesh across me and the ground, and I babbled.

  They’d taken away my bag, and my journal, so I couldn’t even record my thoughts, and I had so many thoughts and they were so fast, thoughts of the Lector and his conquest and most of all his mind, his twisty, tricksy, deep, seeing-all-contingencies mind, his terrible mind, that engine of an empire, intellect without empathy, a diagnostic device that could apprehend almost anything except the terrible flaw at the center of itself, that mind that mind that mind–

  When I started to stumble, they’d shoot me with more stimulants.

  It was night when the Lector came to me.

  A Conversation Between Old Friends • Biting Down • Stabbed • Worms in the Apples • Infinite Time • The Falls

  The Lector wasn’t wearing his armor, and looked much as he had when we first met, clean white coat and all. He unfolded a little camp chair and sat down on it outside my box, gazing at me through the bars. “Hello, Zaxony. You had some sort of local confederate helping you, hmm? One of my warriors was found in a sniper’s nest, beside a rifle, his neck broken… and his vial of serum missing. Whoever your helper was, he’s chased after Minna, it seems. Fear not. We’ll find them all. As you’ve seen, even with superior firepower and prepared ground and the element of surprise, you’re hopeless against me.”

  “So smart,” I babbled. “So smart, you’re so smart, you see all the angles, don’t you, around every corner.”

  “You flatter me, Zaxony. I read your journal. I even took the liberty of writing the ending, since you won’t have the chance.” He withdrew the slim object from his pocket and held it up. “Your writing has improved a bit since we began, but the mind behind it is still so terribly naïve. The things you think of me! Your career as a social worker with delusions of grandeur does not qualify you to understand a psyche as complex as my own. You think I act out of fear or insecurity? You think that contemplating the infinite makes me feel small? I will cup infinity in the palm of my hand. Then you’ll see who’s small. I’m going to kill you, my dear boy. It grieves me, as you are my oldest friend, but you have pushed me too far. I will cut you open, and squeeze every gland I find, and see if there’s something of use in that body of yours to serve the needs of the Moveable Empire.”

  “Always thinking, don’t you get tired, don’t you ever want to stop and rest?”

  He crossed his legs and looked at me thoughtfully, as though considering my question. “There are predators in some seas that must move constantly, or else they’ll die. I suppose I’m a bit like those. I am driven to find new worlds, and improve them. But this relentless forward motion is temporary. Once I can revisit old worlds, and stop sleeping unless I want to sleep, and choose my destinations – then I will choose a homeworld suitable for my purposes, and it will become the center of an expanding web. I know this process might take a long time. Decades. Even centuries. But my traveling case produces all the serum I want, and I’ve found technology that should enable me to live forever. Forever! Do you understand that, Zaxony? Infinite space is nothing to fear if one has infinite life in which to explore and master that space. In a few hundred years, I don’t think I’ll even remember your name. No one else will, either.”

  “Such a mind, such a mind, and you use it for this, why would you use it for this, you could have done so much good.”

  “I have done good,” he said. “I am doing good. I will do good. You are standing in my way. Soon you will be lying on a slab instead. Stand back, Zaxony, clasp your hands behind your back, turn your face up to me and bare your throat, and I will make your death quick. It’s time to go to sleep one last time. Perhaps some of the fools who believe in gods are right after all, and you’ll just step out of this life and through a door that leads into another.” He stepped toward the cage and smiled. “I doubt it, but if there is a heaven, I’ll find it eventually, and conquer that, too. I can’t see why it should have any gods before me.”

  He opened the door and came inside, still holding my diary. He looked down at it, then back up at me. “I was going to keep this, as a cautionary tale, but upon reflection I think I’ll just incinerate it along with your remains, once I’m through examining you. You’re a failure, but if people read your story, they might… get ideas. Think they can learn from your mistakes, perhaps, and succeed where you couldn’t.” He threw it at my feet. “Yes. I think it’s better if no part of you proves to be immortal, not even your terribly prosaic thoughts.”

  I shivered and jittered and trembled, then scooped up the journal and tucked it inside my jacket, where I’d carried it for so long, close to my heart. Having my life story close to me made me feel a little better. But only a little. I didn’t have a lot of dynamic emotional range right then, as jacked up as I was by stimulants.

  The Lector reached into his coat for his weapon and then approached me slowly, carefully, the long and gleaming knife in his right hand.

  “Lector,” I said, and he paused, close enough to touch. “I want you to know how sorry I am. I never wanted it to come to this.”

  His eyes widened in alarm. “What do you…” he began.

  I threw my arms around him, hugged him close, and bit down on my false tooth just as he stabbed me.

  I never wanted to poison myself. Minna was relieved when she realized that. What I needed was an escape hatch. I knew the Lector would want me to suffer, and that he could keep me awake for a long time, if he wanted, and trap me in place. I asked Minna to come up with a sedative, something so strong it would fall just short of killing me, powerful enough to override any stimulant he might force into my system. She complied.

  So I went to sleep, with the Lector in my arms. I’d done the same things scores of times before.

  The difference was, this time, the Lector was wide awake.

  I woke in a field of wildflowers, my side throbbing with pain and my head even worse. I reached down through the rip in my shirt, and the flesh of my side was tender, but there was no deep wound, just a bloody scratch. Thank the spheres I’d had the Lector’s arms pinned and spoiled his strike. The stimulant was out of my system, but the sedative had brought on a nasty hangover.

  The Lector. I turned my head, and there he was, sprawled on his back, staring up at the twin suns in the sky, his eyes shining reflections. “There are holes, Zaxony,” he said. “Holes all through creation, and there are things coming through, there are things wriggling through them–”

  “Lector!” someone shouted – one of his soldiers, I was sure. I grabbed onto the Lector, closed my eyes, and willed myself to sleep the way Minna had taught me. It wasn’t easy with my head pounding, but I managed.

  This time I opened my eyes waist deep in a lagoon, full of reefs and sinuous snakelike fish. The spot reminded me of the island where I’d found Vicki, and I looked for a lighthouse, but there was none. This island was barely an outcropping above endless waves. The Lector rolled over in the water, giggling, and reached out to touch an outcropping of coral that protruded just above the water.

  “Look at all the little holes,” he said. “Trypophobia is what they call the fear of clusters of small holes, but people should fear the big holes, and the things coming through them. There are worms in the apples in the orchard of worlds, Zaxony.” He looked at me, and his eyes were blank and watering and his mouth was slack and drooling.

  His mind. His terrible wonderful mind. I hadn’t been able to kill
him, but I’d broken him. Just like I’d broken Ana. “What did you see?” I asked.

  “The journey takes forever when you’re awake,” he whispered. “I understood infinite worlds but I did not understand infinite time.”

  Something big splashed in the water nearby, so I grabbed him, and transitioned again. I didn’t know if the Lector’s soldiers could fix whatever I’d done to his brain, but I didn’t want to give them the chance.

  “How are you still here?” he said in the next world. We were in some kind of children’s playground, surrounded by small humanoids with hair that writhed like anemone tendrils, and the little ones and their parents ran screaming when we appeared. He touched my cheek. “You can’t live so long. You can’t live for eons. I saw the holes. I almost touched one. I wonder what’s inside it–”

  I grabbed him again, and flickered, and flickered, and flickered. I had to outrun his soldiers.

  Some dozen or more worlds later, I stopped. I lost count. I was in World 1150, maybe, give or take.

  We woke – or rather I woke, the Lector just appeared – on a narrow shelf of rock above a waterfall, the biggest cataract I’d ever seen, the bottom of the falls lost in clouds of prismatic foam. There were spikes of rock visible through the mist down there, hundreds of meters below. The boom of the rushing water so huge it annihilated thought. I covered my ears and shrank back against the stone, terrified by the proximity of the drop.

  The Lector said something, but I couldn’t understand him, and he leaned close and shouted into my ear. “We don’t matter,” the Lector said. “The holes go all through us now. All through everything. I have lived a million years, in between, and I still don’t matter. If I don’t matter, Zaxony, if I don’t matter… then nothing matters.”

  Then he patted me on the shoulder, in a friendly way, took two steps straight backward, and fell. I screamed and lunged for him, but I missed – fortunately, or he would have pulled me down with him. I watched him fall. He struck one of the spikes of rock, and, whatever defenses he had, they weren’t enough to counteract that, and he bounced, red and ragged, to disappear in the mist.

  I drank from the spray of the falls, then I covered my ears, and wept in the endless noise, and finally fell asleep.

  The Feasting Hall • A Musing on the Causes of Madness • Who’s Asking? • The Chariot

  When I woke up, Minna was there, and the Pilgrim, too, though he was wearing a voluminous hood that hid his leonine features. I thought I must be dreaming; maybe I’d appeared in another patch of coma-flowers.

  Minna kissed my face and said, “Zax, oh Zax you are here, how are you here, how did you escape?”

  Not a dream. “The Lector is dead,” I croaked. “I tried to stop him, but I missed. He fell. The emperor fell. The empire fell.”

  “You have not eaten in worlds, have you?” Vicki said from Minna’s finger. “Let’s get some food in you, and then we’ll hear your story.”

  They carried me from the dusty yard where I’d landed into the upside-down hull of a ship, which was it seemed a sort of feasting hall, full of people who looked much like me, except brawnier and wearing more golden armbands.

  Minna had some gold in her bag – it’s valuable in lots of places – and the proprietors were happy to serve us roasted meat and root vegetables and ale in exchange for a few pieces. We sat where I could lean against a wall and stare into space for a while. “Pilgrim,” I said finally. “How are you here?”

  “I stole a dose of serum from a soldier, and in the next world, found Minna. We hid from the soldiers, and then… she made me drink her blood.”

  “Just a sip of sap. Enough to let him travel, not enough to remake all his blood always. I will only do that if he wants it.”

  “I am yet undecided,” he murmured. “We jumped ahead, a bit, and then Minna said we should wait, in case you came through. The gem did not think it likely.”

  “Minna told us you had a sedative of last resort, but my simulations indicated that the Lector would pursue and recapture you even if you fled,” Vicki said. “Do please tell me where those simulations went wrong?”

  I told them what I’d done. What the Lector had said, about infinite time, and worms in the apples in the orchard of worlds. And how he’d died. My recitation was dull and unexciting, and they took it in solemnly.

  Minna touched my hand. “You are not a killer, Zax. You still are not that.”

  I stared at the scarred wooden tabletop. “I broke his mind. That’s like killing him. Maybe worse, given how much he valued his mind.”

  “The things he said,” Vicki mused. “About the holes. The worms. It’s all very similar to what your first companion Ana said, isn’t it, after she transitioned awake? How curious. Did they see something real, or something their minds couldn’t adequately comprehend? If the subjective sense of the passage of time really does seem vast when you make the journey awake, maybe it’s the perception of endless time that damages their minds. Without sufficient stimuli, or with only distressing stimuli, a mind is apt to break…”

  “Someone new,” Minna said. “Coming in.” We all looked at the door to the hall. The Pilgrim reached under his robes, where he doubtless had some sort of weapon. We waited for one of the Lector’s soldiers, or for a reconstituted Polly, or someone equally dreadful to come through.

  Instead a big man in a leather apron walked in and called, “Is there anyone named Zaxony here? Zaxony, ah, Delatree?”

  After a moment I said, “Who’s asking?”

  He cocked his head. “If you’re Zaxony, she says to tell you she’s the long lost love of your life.”

  I blinked. “What? Who?”

  The man jerked his head toward the door. “Go find out for yourself. And ask her where she got that chariot. It’s nicer than any I’ve ever seen.”

  I rose, walking slowly to the door, with Minna and the Pilgrim at my back, and Vicki once more twinkling on my finger. I paused at the threshold, and then pushed through.

  I saw the chariot first – it was a gleaming filigreed half-sphere with plush seats inside, the chassis resting on delicate wheels, and there was someone sitting in the rear, head sprawled against the back of the seat, snoring. A circlet rested on his shaved head, and wires ran from the crown down into the body of the chariot itself.

  Then I saw the woman leaning against the chariot. She was dressed in an immaculate black linen shirt and a skirt that stopped just a little above her knee-high, silver-buckled boots. Her hair was dark, her eye shadow darker, her lips red like wine, her smile warm as a fire on a snowy day.

  “Hello, Zax.” She spoke in a language my virus didn’t have to translate. “I’m sorry it took me so long to reach out. We couldn’t risk approaching you while the mad professor was still in pursuit – there are things we have to tell you that are way too dangerous for him to know.”

  I stumbled forward, my mouth dry. “Ana? Is that… How are you here, how are you alive, how are you sane?”

  “You aren’t the only wanderer through the worlds, Zax.” She stepped toward me, took my hands, then glanced at Minna. “Are you two, ah… together? I don’t mean to overstep… We’ve caught a few glimpses of you in the past few dozen worlds, but I wasn’t sure…”

  “What? No, we’re not, I mean, Ana – Ana. It’s you.”

  “It’s her?” Vicki said, and Minna said, “Shh, let this be beautiful.”

  “It’s me.” Ana kissed me, deeply, her hands clasping mine, and I closed my eyes and breathed her in and tasted her. I wondered if I’d actually died in the battle with the Lector. I wondered if I was in the heaven he’d scoffed at.

  Ana took a step back, looked me up and down, then kicked the wheel of her chariot. The snoring man blinked and looked around. His eyes were violet. “Oh,” he said vaguely. “We’re here.”

  “Zax, meet Sorlyn. He’s my Sleeper.”

  “Your… Ana. What is going on?”

  “More than you know. Let’s go inside and get a drink. You can introduce
me to your friends. Then we need to have a conversation.” She sighed. “About holes in the space between the worlds.” She sighed again. “And about the things coming through those holes, and their intentions.” A third sigh, deeper than the others. “And about what we’re going to do about them.” Then she twinkled a grin. “I bet you’re wide awake now, aren’t you, Zax?”

  She looped her arm through mine, and we walked into the hall together, through yet another door, and into a greater unknown than ever before.

  Acknowledgments

  I started writing stories about Zax a few years ago for my Patreon, where I create a new story each month for my supporters, so first I’d like to thank those patrons for providing a platform for me to experiment with new characters and ideas. (The character changed a lot from those stories to this book, but there are still fragments of those narratives bobbing around in here.)

  Thanks to Eleanor Teasdale at Angry Robot for acquiring this book; she inherited me from another editor, and it means a lot that she decided to continue working with me, especially when I pitched this weird multiverse book instead of the space opera she was probably expecting. Thanks also to Gemma Creffield at Angry Robot for heroic acts of organization and coordination. Simon Spanton edited this book, as he did my previous one, and once again he saved me from myself and made it a stronger novel. Paul Simpson did heroic work copyediting (I swear I really tried to keep all those numbers straight). My agent Ginger Clark continues to be my greatest supporter and advocate. My day-job boss Liza (to whom this is half dedicated) and my co-workers at Locus are always supportive when I need to vanish for a while to work on books.

  On a personal level, my wife Heather Shaw and son River are immensely tolerant when I talk to myself and sit hunched at my desk for hours. River is thirteen now, with an inventive mind, and talking over ideas with him is a blast. I hope he enjoys reading this book.