by Dana Fredsti
“Does that mean we’ve got to get out of here to get back to the control room?”
“No,” Hypatia replied, “I think the control room we want—the one with your Merlin, our Merlin—must be here, contained in one of these spheres.”
The four of them looked out at the countless globes.
“It could take forever to find it,” Amber said. “We don’t have time.”
“But you can, Amber,” Cam said. “You can find him with the second sight Dee gave you.” She wished she shared his confidence in her, but she also knew he was right.
“Yes!” Nellie said. “Your mind-reading powers, or astral projection, or whatever it is.”
She shook off her doubts. “I’ll try,” Amber said, “though I wish Dee was here to help.” Closing her eyes, she reached out with her mind. Instantly she was hit with sensory overload, and she had to brace herself to keep from falling. It was as if she had plunged into an ocean of Merlins…
“My god,” she gasped, “there’s so many of them. Way, way too many. I don’t think I can do this.”
“Focus, Amber,” Hypatia said. “Train your thoughts on the one you know best.”
“But there’s millions of them!”
“What other choice have you but to succeed?” Hypatia said softly.
Nodding, Amber took a deep breath and tried again, fighting with the sheer numbers that threatened to drown her in psionic overload. Steadying herself, she let her psyche acclimatize to the overwhelming near-infinite number involved, the crushing intensity of it all. Each Merlin had his own unique signature, she saw. So she began by winnowing her way through them all—sorting through all the permutations, honing in on the ones she knew.
* * *
Cam noticed the change first. Already on the lookout for trouble, he feared it might be an aftershock.
“Something’s happening,” he cried out.
The uncanny landscape around them was subtly shifting, altering its physical layout as easily as a gem split a beam of light in all directions just by turning in the sun.
* * *
Amber felt a tangible change as she sifted through whole realms of possibilities, massaging the impossible into the conceivable, the conceivable into the workable. Tangentially, she was aware of a million other Ambers, some like her, others distinctly not, doing the same thing.
She was in a pocket universe with its own laws of physics, and she was learning to surf them. All of the trippiest Alice-in-Wonderland physics concepts came to mind—phrases like “quantum entanglements,” “dark matter,” “strange attractors,” and Heisenberger, Heisenberg…
Was that his name?
She was uncertain, but the thing he had said about Schrödinger’s cat… suddenly it seemed to make sense. His principle was at play here. Somehow, the act of searching for Merlin was bringing him closer to her—she couldn’t explain how she knew, but she could sense it happening. On this side of the looking glass, observation really could change the nature of reality. It already was.
Then she was back.
“I think we can do it now,” she said. “We just need to keep walking.”
Nellie looked confused. “How far, exactly?”
Amber shrugged. Exactly was such a woefully inappropriate word here in Escherspace. Everything was relative, everything was paradoxical.
“We just need to turn around here, it’s only a couple of spheres away.” She set off back the way they had come.
“What?” Nellie said, trailing behind her. “Wait, Amber, we’ve already seen all those spheres—” She looked over her shoulder, to Cam. “Tell her. It doesn’t make sense.”
He shrugged. “It’s magic’s nature to be strange.”
“Oh! Here he is!” Amber said, stopping at a sphere. Inside was her Merlin—their Merlin—standing like a symphony conductor, a holographic orchestra of lines, shapes, and text coloring the air around him.
Nellie caught up. “You’d think I’d have gotten used to being flabbergasted.”
“I’m getting a feel for it,” Amber replied. “It has something to do with quantum mechanics, I think.” Nellie looked blank. “In this little universe, where we’re standing, we’re all connected somehow. It constantly reflects us, or maybe it reacts to our thoughts by re-shaping itself. I don’t know, but the sense I get is that to find each other, we have to focus, and let the universe do the rest.”
“A labyrinth from which you can neither escape, nor become lost in,” Hypatia said, intrigued. She stepped up to peer into the sphere. “What you are looking for, you find.”
“I think you are right,” Cam said, pointing to a figure coming down a side branch. “Harcourt has found us.”
“Quickly! You have to get out of here!”
The professor looked utterly terrified as he ran toward them, holding on to his beloved hat for dear life.
“There’s no need to panic, Harcourt,” Nellie chided. “It’s really no more dangerous here than in a hall of mirrors.”
“No!” He shook his head violently. “They’re coming!”
56
Kha-Hotep, Rockwell, and Shanks stared at the vortex into which the professor had disappeared. Harcourt had panicked at the sight of them and, in despair, thrown himself down the rabbit hole.
It was terrifying to witness. The Egyptian was awestruck, and his two companions looked on uncertainly.
“Well, shitfire,” Rockwell growled at last. “If that twiggy little lily-livered English pansy-picker can do it, so can we.” The other two nodded, bolstered enough to step through together.
As they found themselves walking in an inky black limbo, looking out on all the sphere-studded walkways, doubts arose.
“Cast into the outer darkness with the sons of perdition,” Rockwell said with uncharacteristic apprehension. Shanks didn’t like seeing his leader so shaken. Kha-Hotep nodded, but kept his jaw firm.
“Come,” he said. “We’ll find them and return.”
* * *
Even as Harcourt ran over to join his friends, three unwelcome figures came into sight. He had led their enemies straight to them. Their doppelgangers appeared on each and every infinite pathway, but Kha-Hotep’s posse didn’t seem to notice.
Cam moved in front to face them, and lifted his crossbow. He had only two bolts left, Amber remembered. Then he would have to rely on his sword against their guns.
Kha-Hotep and Shanks approached with their submachine guns raised, Rockwell with a pistol in his hand and another in his holster. Amber backed away instinctively. The bounty hunter’s gleaming eyes and wild long hair terrified her.
Jesus! He looks like Chewbacca with rabies.
“Easy, my brother,” Kha-Hotep said as if calming a panicked horse. “It’s over, Cam. There are three of us, and our weapons are greater.”
“Nothing is over,” Cam said, his crossbow trained on the man he considered his brother.
“Where’s Blake?” Amber demanded.
“Dead,” Rockwell answered with grim finality. “So is your friend, if he doesn’t drop that pepperbox.”
Cam said nothing, but merely swung the repeater over to the big man.
“You can’t kill me with that, you know,” Rockwell said, taking a step closer.
“Nor you, me,” Cam answered.
“I mean it.” Rockwell advanced another step. “I’m the new Sampson. Made a Nazirite vow. No bullet or blade can ever harm me.”
Cam shrugged. “These are bolts.”
* * *
Harcourt’s eyes twitched back and forth between Cam and Rockwell as the tension between the two rose like a head of steam, finally becoming unbearable. Without warning, he grabbed his top hat and snapped it through the air at Rockwell’s face, dashing forward to tackle the man.
Rockwell snatched the hat in midair. Harcourt bounced off the burly man as if he had collided with the side of a barn, and fell to his knees on the walkway, stunned.
“A goddamned hat?” Rockwell exclaimed. “Now I’m i
nsulted.” Throwing aside the offending object, he reached down to grab Harcourt by his scrawny neck and snap it—but Nellie darted forward and shoved Rockwell off the walkway. He fell with a long shout, and all his doubles did as well, each plummeting away at a different angle into the endless void.
“Porter!” Shanks’s cry, multiplied a million-fold, reverberated throughout the space. He wheeled on Nellie, his ugly teeth bared. “You filthy scapegrace bawd. I will put you in hell for that.”
Nellie backed away from the Redcoat, frightened, but Kha-Hotep intervened before Shanks could carry out his threat.
“Hands in the air, all of you,” he commanded. Shanks paused.
Everyone but Cam complied.
Kha-Hotep brought his gun to bear. “Please, Cam. Do not make me do this.”
Relaxing his grip on the crossbow, Cam raised both hands above his head.
“Good, my friend. Now drop the crossbow.”
Cam hesitated, but before Kha-Hotep could enforce the request, Shanks shoved in front of him, his focus on Nellie.
“As for you, murdersome bitch,” Shanks growled at her. “Step off that ledge. Do it yourself, or I’ll just shoot you off where you stand.”
Cam stayed perfectly still and kept his hands in the air, but turned his gaze up and away—at their doubles walking upside-down on another walkway. He pulled the trigger.
The quarrel struck the other Redcoat. Instantaneously, a quarrel came down on their Shanks, sinking deep into his flesh between neck and shoulder. All across Escherspace, a million different Shanks dropped dead.
“That was a nice trick,” Kha-Hotep said, keeping his gun trained on the Celt. “Will you shoot me next?”
Cam thought about it for a moment.
“Why don’t we talk instead?”
“Good. First, drop your crossbow, kick it off the edge, and step away from the sphere. It’s going to be alright. We’re all going back home now.”
Cam obeyed. In every direction, a million other crossbows sailed away, too.
“Kha,” Amber said, keeping her voice calm. “It’s not going to be alright. If we don’t find Merlin’s override and stop the Event, the aftershocks are going keep tearing the planet apart until nothing’s left.”
“No!” The vehemence in Kha-Hotep’s voice made her flinch in surprise. “No,” he repeated, softer this time. “Leila and I made a life together. We raised a family, for eight years. The aftershocks stopped on their own. Don’t you see?” He stared at them with a fanatical intensity. “I am living proof that nothing needs to be done.”
“Listen,” Amber said. “Outside, it’s already happening and if we don’t act now, we’re all doomed. The world is doomed. Kha, I know you don’t want to hear this, but those eight years you’ve spent with Leila…” She hesitated, then forged ahead. “You have to face it, that all that time may have just been a glitch.”
“A glitch?” he spat out the ugly word. “What is that?”
“I don’t know what else to call it,” Amber replied. “It’s just a… a wrinkle in the timeline that will get smoothed out, sooner or later. Like everything that’s happened to us—all of us—ever since the Event hit. It will be gone, painlessly, naturally.” She let that sink in, then continued, “But if we don’t act, everything—everything that had ever existed, will be destroyed—down to the subatomic level.”
“Enough!” Kha-Hotep shouted. Amber stiffened, but he did not pull the trigger. Instead, he collected himself, lowering his voice. “Come back with me, and you’ll see. You’ll understand when we get back. We will all have a long and happy life together.” He paused, then pleaded, “Please… please do not make me kill you.”
Cam stepped closer.
“Kha… you know you can’t kill me with that, don’t you?”
Amber stared, horrified. Oh Cam, you have no idea what a machine gun can do to you.
Kha-Hotep remained calm, keeping the Tommy gun trained on Cam’s chest, even as he took another step closer.
“I think I can, if I cut your head off,” Kha-Hotep replied.
“Cam, don’t,” Amber said softly. “Let’s just—”
Cam snapped forward to tackle Kha-Hotep, but the Egyptian pulled the trigger and fired off a burst. Harcourt screamed as the bullets went flying wide, and then the two crashed together.
A split-second later, Cam and Kha-Hotep’s bodies hit the sphere, disappearing instantaneously.
57
The Primary Chamber
Forty-five seconds before the Event
Cam could neither move nor see. Was this Dubnos—the dark world, the realm of the lost dead, deep beneath the earth? Or some hidden fortress-palace of the Sídhe? Somewhere nearby, a man was talking, his voice echoing strangely.
“Targets acquired in the operating theater,” the familiar voice said. “Advancing to stage two. Stand by to initiate on my mark.”
Cam tried to wiggle his fingers and toes but couldn’t be sure he still had any.
“Approaching optimal…” the voice continued.
Cam snapped awake. He had fallen onto a hard metal floor. The air before his eyes swarmed with the tiny blue lights of mischievous fairies, reveling in his misfortune. Shaking his head, he raised himself to his elbows and looked at his surroundings.
He lay at the precipice of a vast subterranean chamber, its perfectly spherical walls gilded in a tartan of stars. Before him stretched out a narrow bridge that ended mid-span in a round platform. A man in white clothing stood there, his arms outstretched like a druid sorcerer, as a host of lights, glyphs, and sigils danced in the air.
Entranced, Cam stared in wonder at the sight, until he heard a moan from behind him. His Egyptian sword-brother Kha-Hotep lay nearby, rubbing his eyes, his firearm close at hand. The two locked eyes, and with a jolt Cam’s memory came rushing back. He was here to stop Merlin.
Kha-Hotep was here to stop Cam.
He lunged for the weapon just as Kha-Hotep’s hand darted out.
“Steady… steady…” Merlin’s voice again, calm and even, focused on the task at hand. Although he was all the way at the end of the walkway, his voice resonated throughout the chamber.
Cam grabbed Kha-Hotep’s arm, twisting to ground himself as each man strived for control of the gun pinned between them. Kha-Hotep had one hand on the trigger and the other on the barrel—Cam fought to keep it away from his face. They rolled, both teetering on the edge of the drop. Then Cam shifted his weight, kicked his way free, and sent them tumbling backward to relative safety.
He couldn’t keep this fight up for long. Kha-Hotep was bigger and stronger than he was. He struggled to get to his feet and gain the advantage, but the Egyptian rose with him, and the pair locked together as Kha-Hotep tried to shake him loose. But the Celt held on for his life, trying to pry Kha-Hotep’s hand from the trigger, the barrel of the gun wavering dangerously near his face.
“Commence warp,” Merlin said.
The machine gun went off. A blaze of fire burst forth in a deafening roar, and sent a spray of bullets past Cam’s face toward the center of the chamber.
Where Merlin stood.
* * *
Meta stiffened as the hail of bullets struck, and then dropped to the floor of the platform.
“Intruder alert in Primary Chamber!” The loudspeaker’s mechanical voice came booming off the echoing walls. “Security alert omega! We have gunfire in Primary Chamber!”
Meta lay unmoving in a crumpled heap, though his eyes remained open. He had felt nothing as the barrage went shrieking through the holographic displays, narrowly missing him as they impacted the walls beyond.
Was he hit? Miraculously, it seemed not. Overhead, the three drone cameras automatically swooped in for dramatic footage of his would-be assassination.
Intruder alert? he wondered. The only way into the chamber was still sealed tight—how could anyone else be inside with him? Continuing to play dead, he turned his gaze to locate his attackers.
What he saw confuse
d him. The two were fighting each other. One a saboteur, then—and the other fighting to save him? But which was which? In a few moments, it wouldn’t matter. The security team would take both of them out with a scythe beam or a burst of nanoflechette clusters.
“Primary Chamber, do you copy?” Main Control said over the neural link. “Dr. Meta, are you—?”
“I’m alright,” he responded, hoping the intruders couldn’t hear him. “Don’t worry about me. What’s happening to the warp containment?”
“It’s happening! We’ve done it! But, Doctor…” Even through the neural link Meta could hear the man’s fear. “We’re—we’re reading multiple anomalies within the containment area.”
What?
Meta risked a look up at the holographic interface. If the containment field failed, they were all dead. The Calabi–Yau display painted the air with impossible space-time topology. The lines of the eleven-dimensional modeling were tesseracting in a rapid series of mind-bending origami folds.
Playing dead couldn’t save him now. Damning the consequences, he leapt to his feet and checked the quantum micro viewscreen. The display teemed with pairs of waltzing particles. Another pair suddenly appeared.
Then another.
And another.
“Shut it down!” he shouted. “Abort! Abort now!”
Trinity Test Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico
July 16, 1945 – 5:29 a.m.
Twenty seconds before the Event
In the control bunker, Dr. Oppenheimer adjusted his welding goggles one last time and held on to the nearest post to steady himself, tension growing as the final seconds ticked off. He stood like stone, scarcely breathing, listening to the announcer’s voice do the countdown, until at last he spoke the final word.
“Now!”
The pre-dawn darkness of the Jornada del Muerto desert suddenly burned bright as a thousand suns. His face relaxed.
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
58
Cam’s ears rang from the blast, and Kha-Hotep snapped the Tommy gun’s barrel up with a jerk of his hand, clubbing Cam in the face. He reeled back from the blow, and Kha kicked him backward, sending the Celt staggering onto the catwalk.