An Opening in the Air (Applied Topology Book 2)

by Margaret Ball

  But it wasn’t going to happen tonight. We would just have to teleport to the house, raise shields immediately, and reverse the process when we wanted to go home. Or get away. Depending on which happened first.

  We put our wallets and phones in a kitchen drawer, just in case the wrong people identified us. I should have remembered from last May that when anybody says ‘just in case’ it’s a sign that disaster is aimed squarely at you, but I didn’t.

  After that, Ben spread out a deck of cards on the coffee table and we played no-hands fifty-two card pickup until nearly ten o’clock.

  We were going to have to go in by the front yard, because Google Street View didn’t show the back yard where our mysterious informant wanted us to meet him. But it did give us a nice image of the front, right down to the numbers lettered on the curb. That was extremely helpful, because panning out showed that this was one of the Austin suburbs where the developer had used the same three house plans over and over. The numbers, coupled with the fact that the house at this address looked significantly shabbier than the rest of the neighborhood, should protect us against accidentally teleporting to some other house of identical design.

  “Anyway,” Ben pointed out, “anyone who can’t teleport would have to go around the house from the front, and anyone who can would have the same problem we have. So he…”

  “Or she…”

  “Must you get distracted by trivialities? The point is, they won’t be made suspicious by our coming in from the front.”

  It started off just fine. A single, very quick “whoosh” brought us to the street in front of the house – that’s what we got for concentrating on the house numbers – and nobody noticed us in the dark. In fact, there was nobody on the street at all. It looked like one of those suburbs where everybody sat in front of the television after supper. I could even see flickering, bluish light filtering through the window shades of the house on our left and the curtains of the house on the right.

  We raised shields immediately, then had to shrink them because there was a wooden gate with a latch cutting off access to the back yard. As soon as we were past the gate, I visualized my protective shield as a sphere with a nice, roomy three-foot radius. I presumed Ben did the same, because I could feel the boundaries of our shields meeting.

  It turned out that the back yard was fenced all around. That’s often a sign that the householders have a dog. I hoped that in this case the fence was a holdover from previous owners. An aggressive dog wouldn’t be able to penetrate our shields, but it would get very frustrated trying to bite us and would probably attract attention with its barking.

  No dog, or if there was one, it was sleeping indoors and was too deaf to hear intruders.

  There seemed to be no other living being in the back yard, either. There was a swimming pool (full of dead leaves, ick) and a cluster of boxwoods in one corner that looked as if they hadn’t been cut back in recorded history. Ben explored the boxwoods with the pen light on his key ring and saw no one.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone living here,” he whispered, indicating the swimming pool.

  “Maybe it’s a hoax, and that’s why Ingrid and Jimmy aren’t answering their cell phones. Too busy making fools of us.”

  “There’s a light inside. Let’s look,”

  “Let’s you look.” I retreated to where I could duck into the bushes if it seemed advisable. Just in case it was some kind of trap, one of us needed to stay free to rescue the other one. Ben edged up, very quietly, to the back door.

  He pulled it open – maybe all the way open – I never knew, because of what happened next.

  The tiny light inside the house expanded – and bear in mind, this all happened faster than a short teleport – into an orange blaze that filled everything inside and outlined Ben as a black form against the light.

  I barely had time to see that much before there was an explosion that deafened me and threw me back into the midst of the boxwoods.

  When I regained consciousness, there were flashing lights and sirens out front and somebody was messing with my jeans.

  Some protection I was! I wasn’t even sure what had happened. Ben had been going to open a door, and then… and then…

  “She’s breathing,” the person who’d unzipped my jeans called. “Airway not obstructed. Clothes are too tight, but I don’t think that’s the problem. Most likely just tertiary blast trauma.”

  Just? I hurt all over. And beyond that, I felt as though a thousand needles had attacked my arms and neck – mostly on the back.

  A nasty bright light shone in one eye, then the other. “No signs of concussion,” the person kneeling over me called, then she looked at me again. “Can you hear me? Good. What’s your name?”

  “Sally.” My brain was starting to work again. Whatever was going on, leading these people to the Center could be a disaster. And it’s not like Austin was full of people named Thalia Kostis. Good thing we’d left our phones and wallets behind.

  “What day is it?”

  “Uh – October, October 29, that’s it.”

  “Who’s the President?”

  I groaned.

  “Yep,” she said, “I feel the same way. Okay – what year is it?”

  That could be a trick question. What if I’d accidentally traveled back in time?”

  “Um… seventeen,” I mumbled, hoping I could claim confusion if this happened to be, God forbid, 1957 again. I’d had enough of 1957. Except… I was missing somebody… someone who hadn’t been with me in 1957…

  “Ben!” I sat up, which hurt, but that wasn’t important. “Where is he? Is he all right?”

  “Sally, the other guys have searched the entire yard. There is nobody else here.”

  “Then he’s in the house!” I scrambled to my feet and ran towards the conflagration. We’d designed our shields to protect against homemade flamethrowers. Would they stand up to a conflagration? Ben might have survived. I could shield and go in after him where nobody else could.

  A burly man grabbed me just outside the door. I could feel the heat of the fire on my face. “Honey, if there was anybody inside, they’re dead now. No one could have survived that fire.”

  There were streams of water playing on the fire, but I didn’t have time to wait for them to put it out. “Let me go! I have to— have to—"

  Something pricked the inside of my elbow.

  “Looks like there’s no spinal damage and no broken bones,” said the voice of the woman who’d been beside me first. “I don’t know about brain injury. She seemed tentative about her name and the date, and she may have been evading my question about the President.”

  “He’s still in there… we have to…” My tongue felt thick, and it was hard to remember the words.

  “Delusional, at least,” the man holding me said. “She may be right that somebody was inside, but she’s freakin’ batshit crazy if she thinks we’ll let her go in to look before the fire’s out.”

  And my legs were rubbery.

  “Not to mention waiting for arson and insurance inspectors,” the woman said. “Can you carry her to the ambulance?”

  And that was the last thing I heard before darkness swallowed me up.

  Words like broken glass

  Chapter 23

  When I woke up again, I was in an unfamiliar bed. White sheets. Puke green walls. Moving my arms hurt. Legs, same. If I tried to move my head, my neck twinged and threatened to cramp. It seemed like a great time to lie quietly and think. I wasn’t sure how I came to be here.

  I pushed the sheets down. What had happened to my clothes? More importantly, who had taken them off and put this baggy white thing on me? I twitched at the fabric and discovered that the only thing holding it closed was a loose tie around my neck. Goddamn butt-exposing hospital gowns… Hospital. It came back to me in a rush, only in reverse. The needle prick in my arm. Before that, screaming at somebody to let me go, to let me run into a raging fire because Ben had to be there. Go back: somebody
asking questions, trying – what? Probably to check my mental status. Unless I’d been blown back to 1957? Before that - blackout. And before that, an explosion that hit me and my shield and knocked me back into the bushes. That explained the stinging scratches on my arms; boxwoods are not user-friendly.

  Keep thinking back, keep thinking. It wasn’t easy; I really wanted to go back to sleep, could hardly keep my eyes open. When I closed them, I saw Ben silhouetted against a raging fire. I couldn’t believe his shield had stood up to that. And if it had, where was he now?

  Had I just lost my best friend? I didn’t want to believe it. I did not cry; but I may have sniffled.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake!” A person with a professional smile, wearing light blue scrubs, greeted me cheerfully. I hadn’t even been aware he was in the room. “I’m Amari, and I’ll be your nurse for the rest of the night. It’s Sunday, October 29.” He wrote this information on a whiteboard facing my bed. “I just need to check your vitals. Ah… you seem tense. Are you having pain? I could ask the doctor to prescribe some pain meds.”

  I shook my head. Slowly. Carefully. “Not pain.” Actually I did hurt, but pain pills make me stupid. I couldn’t afford stupid. Not just then.

  “It’s Ben. I have to find him. Why wouldn’t they let me go back for him?”

  “Oh. Right. The paramedic filled me in. Darlin’, I’m sorry about your friend. They wouldn’t let you go into the house because we have this prejudice against suicide. It wouldn’t have saved your friend if you’d got yourself killed too, you know. When the ashes cool down I promise, I promise they’ll look very carefully for your friend’s body. The fire department is very professional. You can trust them.” He paused for a moment, then changed the subject. “Now, I need to check your vitals.” He advanced on me with a thermometer.

  “No! You don’t understand. I have to go!” Ben couldn’t be dead. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. His shield should have protected him from the worst. But my shield had failed when I was briefly unconscious after the explosion. Could the same thing have happened to him? It was too hard to figure out, I needed to see. Amari left the room and I pushed myself up to a sitting position. Something tugged at the back of my hand. Oh, great, I was leashed to an IV stand. And damn, this hospital gown was drafty. “Where are my clothes?” I demanded when Amari came back.

  “Darlin’, we can’t discharge you just like that. But you can talk to the doctor in a minute.”

  A young, crew-cut man bustled into the room. “Sally, don’t get hysterical!” he said sharply. “You’re all right, you’re in a hospital.”

  “I figured that out,” I said. “And I want my damn clothes!”

  “I’m Dr. Barnes. Lie down.” He looked at Amari. “Get a female nurse. I’m not going to manhandle her and maybe get sued later.”

  Then there were three people in the room, and the fat brassy blonde took my shoulders and tried to shove me down. I fought her. “I have to get out of here!”

  “Are we feeling a wee bit confused?”

  “I’m not. I don’t know about you.”

  Amari advanced on me with a clipboard. “I see you’re feeling better, Sally. Maybe you could fill in some information for us? We can’t discharge you until we have more data.”

  “What was she doing there?” the doctor demanded sharply. “The paramedics wrote that the house was uninhabited.”

  I couldn’t fake answers to everything on the clipboard, and I didn’t dare try to answer the doctor’s question. I was still feeling slow and stupid, which didn’t help. So I distracted them by slugging the blonde nurse.

  “Hysterical,” said the doctor. He picked up some papers that were hanging at the food of the bed. “Hmm, no signs of concussion, no sedative except intravenous midazolam, standard small dose of 6 mg, by a paramedic on the scene. Damn, Julie’s good. How the hell did she manage to inject a vein when the subject was struggling? Oh well. She’s small for the regular dose, that’s probably why she was out for a couple of hours. It certainly seems to have worn off now. Amari, give her an even smaller dose; she looks to be about 100 pounds, so 4 mg should be about right for her body weight. I’ll write it up. And then set the IV so she gets the equivalent of 1 mg per hour until I evaluate her again.”

  “Don’t!” The nurse had grabbed me again. “I have to go! I want my clothes!”

  “Darlin’,” Amari said, “they had to cut them off you in the ER. You were unconscious and they needed to make sure you didn’t have any more serious injuries.”

  He did something to the tube connected to the IV bag, and within seconds I felt myself sliding back into darkness.

  When I woke the next time, the room was shadowy. Not entirely dark; I don’t think hospitals ever let you actually sleep in the dark. I could hear soft voices outside and a clicking sound which I finally identified as a faulty wheel on a cart rolling down the hall.

  And someone was sitting next to me, holding my hand.

  “Lia. It’s about time you woke up.”

  My eyes popped fully open and I drew a long shuddering breath. Was this a sedative-caused hallucination?

  No. Ben in his underwear was not the stuff of dreams.

  “Why aren’t you dead?”

  “Same reason you aren’t. The blast didn’t get through my shield, it just blew me backwards. I knew we needed to do research on blocking large attacks of kinetic energy,” he added parenthetically.

  It wasn’t a concept I felt like pursuing right now. My brain still felt fuzzy and slow. Probably the way normal people feel all the time. Oh, Lensky would have loved to hear that; he already thought all topologists were insufferable intellectual snobs…

  It was hard to concentrate, too easy to let my mind wander. “Did it knock you out too?”

  “No, it just dumped me in the pool. Your evaluation of the pool – “ick,” as I recall – was absolutely right. Those leaves were decaying. And slimy.” He shuddered.

  “Huh. So it knocked out your shield too? You must have been unconscious for a minute or two.”

  “No. Initially I couldn’t orient myself enough to get out of the pool. Getting my head above water was enough of an accomplishment. Then there were lights and sirens and I instinctively did chameleon. You know how we couldn’t teleport and shield at the same time? Well, I couldn’t do chameleon and shield at the same time either. Not being noticed seemed more important than shielding.” He shuddered again. “Although if I’d known how gross those slimy, rotting leaves were… Well. Anyway. I slipped out of the pool as unobtrusively as I could, and fortunately no one was looking my way to fuss about mysterious splashes. Most of them were concentrating on putting out the fire, and the others were pulling you out of the bushes. I tried to get you, Lia, but there was somebody holding onto you every minute. The best I could do was hide in the ambulance with you, because I didn’t know what hospital they were going to take you to.”

  “You do a mean chameleon,” I said with admiration. “Sorry I was unconscious and missed it.”

  “It was… not without its problems,” Ben said. “Remember, I said I was blown into the pool? My damn clothes were dripping. I was creating a puddle in the ambulance. The paramedic might be too concerned with you to notice, but when we got to the hospital the trail of drips was going to be obvious. So I took off my shirt and jeans and rolled them up. Whoever cleans that ambulance,” he added reflectively, “is going to have one neat little mystery to solve.”

  “Wasn’t your underwear wet too?”

  “Yes, but that was easier to deal with; I took it off and squeezed it out over the jeans.”

  That was a picture I really didn’t want in my head.

  “I managed to squeeze out the shirt too,” he said proudly. “Rolled it up for you to wear. I had a feeling you weren’t going to be too thrilled to make your escape wearing a hospital gown.”

  “You,” I said with deep feeling, “are a prince among men and a parfit gentil knight.”

  “A what
?”

  “It’s in Chaucer. I think. Either that or Malory.”

  “Just as long as it’s not an insult.”

  “You can look it up on your phone when we get out of here.”

  Which brought my sluggish mind back to the main event. “Ah, how are we going to get out of here?”

  “Easy. We teleport.”

  I waved my left hand, the one that had a needle in the back with a tube running up to the IV stand. “We teleport that too?”

  “Pull the needle out.”

  “I think that might set off alarms.”

  “Dammit. There’s got to be some way to turn the thing off.” Ben walked around the bed and squinted at the controls. “I think this does it,” he said, flipping a switch.

  It did indeed. I pulled off the tape holding the needle in place and gently removed the needle. Removing the tape actually hurt worse than taking out the needle.

  Ben handed me a slightly damp, buttoned shirt. It was large enough to slide over my head and long enough to make the lack of panties less than obvious. I stood up; I felt a bit wobbly, but so what? “Turn around for a minute.” I shed the hospital gown and pulled on his shirt. It was damp and chilly, but I could live with that. A worse problem was the fuzzy feeling in my head. I tried to visualize what we usually called up for teleportation… what was it? Two lines crossing, no, that wasn’t right. A glowing plane with one point… I grabbed Ben’s arm. “I can’t do it. Damn sedative. Can you take both of us?”

  “Of course I can,” he said. “Brouwer,” and we were both standing in his living room. Standing very close, given the limited space available. I took one step back and was in the doorway to the bedroom. One more step and I was able to fall across the unmade bed, where I contemplated my dizziness, weakness and the fact that I hadn’t sensed the in-between at all when Ben teleported us. I hoped that had been because I was, for the first time, only a passenger.

  The alternative being that the sedative had permanently destroyed my abilities.