by Neil Gaiman
Josephine was looking at me with her eyes narrowed, like she still wasn’t sure what my game was. “I still think you’re crazy,” she said, “but now it’s for different reasons.”
“Yeah,” I said, and turned to walk into the base. After a moment, I heard her follow me.
“First order of business is to get to the control room,” I told her as we picked our way through the debris in the hallways. “There might still be some auxiliary power cores lying around. I have no idea when this happened, so I don’t know if they’ll still be good.”
“What if they’re not?”
“Then we hope they can be recharged.”
“Recharged? How?”
“That depends on how old they are,” I explained, shoving down my rising impatience. I had nothing to do but explain things as we made our way to the control room, and she really didn’t know any of this. I imagine I was much the same when Jay had first picked me up. “They can be charged a few different ways, if the transducers are still working. Thermal energy, chemical, electromagnetic, etc. The ship mostly runs on kinetic energy, as I understand it.” I glanced back to see if she was following all this, then elaborated. “Meaning, once it gets started, it’ll work up its own momentum and charge itself.”
“I see,” she said, climbing her way over a pile of rubble. “So how do you get it started?”
“Well, some kind of pulse. A shock, or—”
“Like a static shock?”
“It’d have to be more powerful than that, but that’s the right idea.”
“So if the trans . . . ducers aren’t working?”
“We fix them somehow.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how,” I admitted. “So let’s hope they’re working.”
“Okay,” she said, sounding dubious. I could practically hear her second-guessing her decision to come with me, as I obviously didn’t know what I was doing.
She was pretty much right.
It didn’t take long for us to make our way to the control room. I was anxious every step of the way; I kept expecting to run into bad guys, or worse—what was left of the good guys. There was nothing, though, no bodies of any kind or evidence of a single other creature, living or otherwise. On the one hand, I was glad. On the other, I wanted to know what had happened here. I wanted to know how to stop it.
We did find some used-up power cores, and some of them still had juice. Not enough to get the ship up and running but enough to give us a boost for the mechanisms that still worked. Such as activating the solar panels.
“At least we’ll have some power once the sun rises,” I said, flipping a long line of switches that activated the panels all over the roof of the main building.
“So this is both a ship and a town, sort of,” Josephine observed, carefully watching what I was doing.
“Yeah. The whole thing is a ship—it just doesn’t look like one. It doesn’t look enclosed, but it is. At least, it is when the shields are working, so we can phase to worlds that don’t have the right kind of air for us.”
“But this world does, right?”
“Obviously, or we wouldn’t be breathing.”
“How did you know it would?”
“I’ve been here before. The ship can’t phase without the engines, and the engines don’t run without power. I knew it’d be in the same place.”
“So we can phase again if we get power?”
“Maybe. I know power makes the ship run, but I don’t know exactly how we make it phase. I know how HEX and Binary do it with their ships, but . . .” I shook my head. That wasn’t on the table.
“How?” I should have seen that question coming.
“They use us,” I said as bluntly as I could to keep from discussing it further. “They take our ability to Walk and use it for their own ships.”
She pressed her lips together, looking away. Even as new to this as she was, she’d felt what it was like to Walk, and I think she already couldn’t imagine having that taken away. I knew how she felt.
“Come on,” I said, flipping one final switch. “It’s time for a lesson.”
I hadn’t really bothered looking out any windows, the last time I was here. I’d been in too much of a hurry, too desperate to get back to where I belonged. Back then, I’d assumed the ship was still floating above the ground, cruising along at about five thousand feet as usual.
I’d realized it slowly as we made our way through the ship this time, but we were actually docked: completely and utterly still. We were sitting on the ground in a wide-open field, nothing but grassy plains visible as far as the eye could see. There might have been a sparkle of water in the distance, but it could just as easily have been a trick of the light.
“Are we alone on the planet, too?” Josephine asked, once she’d taken in the size of InterWorld itself. We weren’t talking the size of New York or anything, but it certainly would have taken a while to walk all the way around it.
“Depends on your definition,” I said, pointing to a group of butterflies collecting around some flowers. “We’re the only people. This is a prehistoric world.”
“But I thought we were in the future.”
I paused. Oh, boy. This is about to get complicated. “We are. But InterWorld operates on a broad spectrum of locations. Not just back and forth”—I moved my hand from side to side—“but forward and backward. There are thousands of different dimensions programmed into the soliton array engines, but only three basic Earths. The ship moves—or moved—forward and backward in time over a certain period, as well as sideways into different dimensions on those three Earths. Even though the ship can move further into the future, we tend to stay in prehistoric times and move sideways. Less chance of startling the locals that way.”
She was glaring at me. “Did you actually answer my question, or did you just spout a bunch of bull—”
“Sorry, sorry. I got carried away. Basically, we are not in the future. We’re in the past, because that was the last place this InterWorld docked. But this InterWorld came here, to the past of this world, from the future.”
She frowned, considering. “But . . . we went into the future. Sort of. I mean, that’s what it felt like. It was like taking a giant step forward, when your bubble thing—”
“Hue.”
“—was wrapped around us.”
“Yes, but we went forward into InterWorld’s future, which took us to the past,” I explained. “So the ship is from the future, but the planet is in the past. Make sense?”
She hesitated, looking like she had a question that she thought might be considered stupid. After a moment, she asked “Are there dinosaurs here?”
I didn’t laugh. I kind of wanted to, but I understood why she was asking. I mean, wouldn’t you have? I know I would have. “I honestly don’t know,” I told her, and she glanced around as though she might see one. “On some planets, yes, there are. And, yes,” I said, unable to help a grin. “I’ve seen them. But I don’t know if it’s this one. I don’t know which planet we parked on.”
“Okay,” she said, still looking up at the sky, which was brightening to a blinding blue. It was chilly out here in the early morning, but we both had our jackets on, and the sun was warm where it was rising over the horizon. “So what now?”
“Now I teach you to Walk,” I said, gesturing for her to follow me. “You want to be away from everything for your first try. It’s really difficult to Walk into something that’s already there, but it’s not impossible.”
“You mean, I could get stuck in a rock, or something . . . ?”
“Like I said, it’s unlikely, but it is possible. We’ve basically got built-in subliminal algorithms for that kind of thing, like an instinctive navigational system. Reflex, kinda. But when you’re first learning, it’s better not to take any chances.”
“Okay,” she said, watching me closely. She had a familiar look of determination on her face; familiar, because she looked so much like me. “Teach me.”
>
I spent the better part of the afternoon teaching her how to Walk, and discovered that not only was she a fantastic student, she had a particular ability for it. Not that it came easier to her than to any of the rest of us (in fact, it took her the better part of an hour to follow my instructions correctly), but that once she learned it, she slipped through the dimensions like a cat burglar on an easy heist. I even lost her once, which was a frightening moment, considering she was my only recruit. I wound up having to sidestep through four different dimensions and cast my senses about for her every time, which was more than a little tiring.
“And you’ve never Walked before?” I asked once I’d found her, sitting in the middle of the field, blowing tufts of dandelions into the wind.
“Never before today,” she said, looking pleased with herself. “Why?”
“Well, you’re pretty good at it.” I said, readjusting the brace strapped around my wrist. I’d had an itch there I’d been trying to ignore for the past fifteen minutes.
“I thought it was taking me a while to learn.”
“It took you a while to get it, maybe, but once you did . . . You’re almost undetectable, you know that?”
“Yeah?” she asked, looking up at me. She didn’t look guarded anymore or angry or like she was about to run. She looked happy, the way I remembered my sister looking when she was having nice dreams. Content. Peaceful.
“Yeah. It’s like when you step into the water, you don’t make any ripples. You just sort of slip in.”
She smiled and shrugged, though I could tell she was pleased to be good at something in particular. I know I would have been.
“Will that be helpful?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her honestly, offering my noninjured left hand. She took it, allowing me to pull her to her feet. “If you do the Walking, we’ll be able to gather up the others without being detected. Gives us a lot more breathing room. Why don’t you give it a try now? Walk back to the world we parked on.”
Usually, when teaching a new Walker how to get back to base, they’re taught a formula. It’s an address, an equation that tells us exactly how to get home, wherever home happened to be. It tells us that no matter where the base was, we were connected to it, and we could find it anywhere.
This future InterWorld—InterWorld Beta, as I’d come to think of it—might or might not have the same address, when it was powered on. Since it wasn’t currently on, I had no way of knowing; I just knew that the address I knew, the one for what would be InterWorld Alpha, was a dead end. Maybe it wouldn’t be if the ship ever stopped, or if it turned out the address could be used for InterWorld Beta when the ship powered up again. Either way, it was useless; there was no reason to teach it to her now.
Josephine kept hold of my hand, closing her eyes and focusing. I kept mine open; it was easier to Walk when you weren’t watching your surroundings change around you, but I was just along for the ride this time.
The scenery shifted; we were standing in shadows one moment, then again in sunlight.
A flock of birds passed above our heads. . . .
The ground trembled beneath us for a moment, as though a herd of something large was stampeding nearby. . . .
The brief, salty scent of the ocean and the cry of a seagull from over the mountains . . .
And then InterWorld Beta rested in front of us, sad and majestic, like a ship run aground. An abandoned city lost to time.
Josephine kept hold of my hand this time, as the world settled back around us. It was lonely, somehow. It was our salvation and our hope; it was part of what let us witness the extraordinary things we’d seen and experience the amazing things we’d done. It was the wind in our hair and the travel dust on our boots, and it wasn’t right for it to be stuck here, dead and lifeless.
She looked at me, subdued and determined, and let go of my hand. We had an understanding, then, and I think she finally knew why I was willing to risk everything. I think she was willing to, as well.
It was a small comfort, at least.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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WE RAIDED THE STOREROOM, gathering anything and everything that might be helpful. We brought cleaning supplies as well as thick gloves and kneepads into the hallways, and we spent the rest of the morning clearing out the debris and making sure there were easy paths to get to the main places we needed to go.
From the control room to the storeroom, down to the lower decks where we could get out onto our temporary home planet, to the living quarters, the mess hall, and back up to the control room. It took until well into the afternoon, and we were starving despite the few snacks and energy bars we’d taken from our backpacks.
The mess hall hadn’t yielded much in the way of food, not even the protein packs or MREs I was used to. The only thing I found of any use was a few gallons of water stored away in still-sealed containers, which were admittedly very useful. We poured several of them into the septic filtration system, which was completely empty. I didn’t know if any remaining liquid had simply dried up, or if it had been emptied on purpose. For all I knew, this could have been a base-wide evacuation.
“I can Walk somewhere and get food,” Josephine suggested, as we were sorting through a stack of discarded electronics in an attempt to find anything helpful. I hesitated. On the one hand, she had already demonstrated her ability to Walk without causing so much as a ripple and would most likely be able to go get us supplies without incident.
On the other hand, she was all I had.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said, and was rewarded with a disgusted look.
“What are we going to eat, then?”
“I can go get something,” I said, but she shook her head.
“You’ve gotta start trusting me sometime,” she said. “I can’t be the only one taking leaps of faith, here.”
“It’s not about trust,” I protested. “You’re my first and only recruit. You’re my responsibility. I can’t let you run off to do something potentially dangerous, and beyond that, where are you even going to go? We’re on a prehistoric Earth, remember? It’s not like you can just Walk to the corner store and buy us some milk.”
Now it was her turn to hesitate, though it was for an admirably short moment. “There are other ways to get food. I’m sure there are fruit trees, right? And fish?”
“I don’t think there are fish trees,” I said, and she threw a coil of copper wire at me. I’d gotten her to laugh, though. Sort of. “Although, that’s not a bad idea. Fishing, I mean.”
“No, it’s not. I don’t even have to Walk anywhere, I can just go off ship. Okay? Send your bubble thing to find me if I’m taking too long.”
“His name is Hue,” I reminded her, though I refrained from pointing out that I wasn’t sure I could really send Hue anywhere. He wasn’t exactly at my beck and call.
“Whatever. Gimme one of those satchels and I’ll go get us some fruit, okay? It’s better than nothing, which is what we’ve got.”
I handed her one. Somewhat reluctantly, but I knew she was right; I had to start trusting her. We’d only been working together for a few hours, but this was fate-of-the-world stuff. I needed to let her stretch her legs, and it was best she do it now while we were still relatively safe.
Besides, this meant I could do a few things around the ship I was way more comfortable doing on my own.
First and foremost, once she left, I made my way down the cleared hallways to the living quarters. It may have been silly, but I wanted to find my own room—or what had been my room. If this InterWorld was thousands of years in the future, I’m sure I was long dead. It must belong to another Walker by now, but I just . . . wanted to see. I wanted something to be familiar, anything at all.
Nothing was, of course. InterWorld didn’t allow for much customization in the first place, and whoever had used this room before the base w
as evacuated (abandoned? Surrendered?) hadn’t left any personal items. The most I found was an old T-shirt, so yellowed with age that it was impossible to tell whether it had ever had any kind of logo on it at all.
I set my backpack in there nevertheless, and swept out as much of the dust as I could. The shift shutters—made of the thick acrylic they use to make airplane windows—were down and wouldn’t open until the ship was powered up again. The sun had been up for a few hours now, and was currently directly overhead; the solar panels were soaking it up, and with any luck we would have enough power to run basic functions by the time Josephine got back. Then I could open the windows and air out the rooms, get the dust out of the ventilation systems, use the stove and ovens in the kitchen, and (I hoped) have enough hot water for a shower.
And maybe, if I could use the solar energy to charge up a few of the power cores, I could get the Hazard Zone up and running. Then Josephine would have a chance to really stretch her legs.
She came back a few hours later, right as I was starting to worry. While she was gone, I’d managed to get two rooms as cleaned out as I could for us, and moved our stuff into both of them. I was staying in “my” room; hers was right next door. I figured it’d be safe enough and far less awkward than trying to share. I was still pretty sure she didn’t like me much. That was sort of par for the course with most of my para-incarnations, it seemed. (A small part of me wondered exactly what psychological implications it may have that I never seemed to particularly like myself. The rest of me was just concerned with trying to keep everyone alive.)
I’d also managed to start up the ventilation system, and there’d been enough solar power to get the shift shutters open by the time Josephine got back. We’d still pretty much be inhaling centuries of dust for a while, but it wouldn’t be as bad tomorrow.
“These apples are as big as your head,” Josephine said once she’d found me again, tossing one in my direction. I caught it reflexively, though it took both hands. She wasn’t kidding.