by Neil Gaiman
I stepped off the ship onto a small mound of sand, flailing my good arm to catch my balance. I hadn’t even bothered to ask the quartermaster for a gravity-repulsor disk; he was still mad at me for losing the shield disk, and I wasn’t about to push my luck. I was walking.
Well, more specifically, I was Walking, and then I was walking. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and followed the threads of a portal into the world I was looking for.
Dust still hung thick in the air near the mountain. I could see it from a distance, a faint miasma that made it almost look like a volcano. I’m sure it didn’t need help to look any more ominous, but the debris in the air certainly served to give it a malevolent air. I started toward it, depression settling more heavily over me with every step. I wished I had someone to talk to. I wished I knew where Acacia’d gone, or what Hue had been trying to communicate. I wished I hadn’t decided to come back here, even though it would be a fitting tribute for Jerzy.
I walked until I reached the base of the mountain—it was little changed, except for the larger rocks scattered over the ground. I stood still for a moment, just staring up and feeling very small. What looked like only a few rocks out of place had killed a friend of mine and injured two entire teams of combat-trained warriors.
Mother Nature was not something you wanted to mess with.
There were caution markers in certain areas, the kinds we had in some places around Base Town, which usually had motion sensors and cameras in them. Some of the officers were probably intending to sweep the area a few more times. I didn’t bother to avoid the cameras as I picked my way through the rocks; they knew I was here already, were probably keeping tabs on me via the tracer, and I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Yes, I’d recognized my need to continually reassure myself, thank you.
I started up the mountain, testing each rock carefully with my foot before putting my weight on it. Some of them shifted even after I’d tested them, sending my heart leaping into my throat and a tremor through my knees every time. Maybe the whole PTSD thing wasn’t just an excuse.
It took a fair while for me to get to the top like that, but I didn’t dare move any faster. My shoulder was still fractured; I couldn’t climb, and I couldn’t catch myself if I fell. Every footstep I made sounded like an F-18 crashing to the ground, and there was a little voice in the back of my mind gibbering about how I wouldn’t survive a second rockslide. Finally, though, I was standing on a small, natural platform about ten yards below the very top peak.
Some of the boulders up on the plateau with me were blackened and scorched, as was the edge sticking furthest out from the mountain. For a second I was confused; was this a volcano? Then I remembered the explosions. Doubtless whoever had been sweeping the area had taken samples to be studied; come to think of it, that was likely why no one was out here now. They may have found all the evidence they needed. I hoped it wouldn’t somehow implicate me.
I turned slowly in place, looking for another path up to the peak of the mountain. Instead of finding anything that looked climbable, there was a splash of color against the reddish-brown rocks, half buried against the side of the mountain.
It took some pulling, wriggling and rolling, and more than a few creative swear words, but eventually I stood on the plateau, holding aloft the flag Jerzy had died trying to get.
It wasn’t much, as far as tributes went, but I found it oddly fitting. Jerzy had always been so dedicated. He’d said more than once that he owed InterWorld his life, and the best way to pay that back was to dedicate that life to the cause. It infuriated me that he’d died on a training mission, of all things. A stupid game of capture the flag. In retrospect, perhaps this wasn’t that great a tribute. Maybe I should just leave it here and come up with something else to put on the Wall for him.
I was looking at the flag in disgust, contemplating throwing it over the cliff and Walking home, when a familiar pop sounded just over my right shoulder. Hue bobbed into my line of vision, still sporting the oddly dual-sectioned color scheme he’d had in my room.
“Hey, Hue. I got the flag,” I said, surprising myself with the amount of self-mockery in my tone. Hue spun around slowly in place, then bobbed from side to side, trying to tell me something.
I wasn’t sure what; my attention was caught by a flash on the ground as the mudluff moved. “Hey, wait, Hue—do that again.” He paused, then repeated the motion more slowly, and I located the source of the glint: a transparent bit of what looked like plastic, invisible on the dirt-covered rocks until Hue had passed over it. It must have been dislodged when I’d pulled the flag free.
It looked kind of like those clear plastic circles that come in cases of blank CDs. Or, for those of you who’ve had extensive schooling in a multidimensional military academy, it looked like an uncharged shield disk.
“Huh.” I turned it over in my hands, testing the charge, then the emergency power switch. Nothing worked; it was either completely out of juice or plain broken. I wouldn’t know until I could get it back to a charger. I wondered what it was doing there; then I remembered Joaquim’s injuries had been mitigated by having a shield disk. I felt a small flare of validation—I wasn’t the only one who’d lost a disk, though it’d certainly done Joaquim more good than it had done me. Maybe I could get some points with Jernan by bringing it back.
My shoulders slumped. Jerzy was dead, and I was trying to think of a way to get the quartermaster to stop being mad at me? I really needed to get my priorities in order.
I turned to Hue. “Ready to go home?”
He bobbed again, that same side-to-side motion. He took on a frustrated grayish red, then returned to the colors he’d had before, the muddy reddish brown on bottom and the swirl of color on top. This time, I really looked.
The colors tugged at a memory—the red, rock-hard dirt where I’d been unable to dig even a shallow grave, and Jay’s death beneath that writhing, liquid sky.
“You were back there?” Hue brightened, turning a pleased pink. “What were you doing back there?”
His surface turned reflective, as it had when he’d shown Acacia behind me in my room. Now I saw only my own image, freckles and goofy hair and all, standing dumbly on the mountain with one arm in a sling and a flag in my hand.
“I don’t understand.” I tried to keep from sounding frustrated, and Hue gave a brief flicker. He pulsed, alternating between the bright, cheerful blue and the reflection, so I was seeing myself every other second. It wasn’t particularly helpful.
Perhaps seeing the look of utter perplexity on my face, Hue began to bob back and forth again, floating next to me, then in front of me, alternately reflective and blue depending on where he was. I took a shot in the dark.
“You were interacting with something?” He brightened so much I almost had to look away, but it made me laugh. I hadn’t expected to be right.
“You were talking to someone?” He brightened again. “Do you want me to go there?” He flickered an affirmation, giving a pleased up-and-down bob.
Excited, I rolled up the flag and stuffed it into a pocket, calling to mind the coordinates for the place where I’d first met Hue. Grinning like a fool, I took a step toward the edge, and Walked off the mountain.
There was a lesson here in jumping to conclusions, I was sure, but I didn’t really want to think about it.
The planet—or place, or whatever—remained unchanged from the last time I’d seen it, up to and including that swirling sky and the footprints that belonged to Jay and me. There was no wind on this world, apparently, and there were no other footprints—and no other human in sight.
Acacia wasn’t here.
I stood for a moment at that point, looking at the larger footsteps that had belonged to Jay. I could still trace where we’d landed, walked a ways, sat and talked, and walked a ways more…and where I’d suddenly run off to rescue a creature that I had no reason to believe was friendly. I’d gotten Jay killed by doing that—but I’d gained Hue, who had once rescued m
e from the clutches of HEX. I still wasn’t sure it was a fair trade-off.
“Is it safe here?” I asked Hue, who’d been the captive of a giant monster-dragon-dinosaur-snake-thing—a gyradon, I’d learned later—the last time he’d been here.
“Safe as anywhere, which is relative,” my own voice answered.
I looked at Hue, who was bobbing and sporting his pleased color. “What?”
The answer was a laugh, one that sounded a lot like mine. “Oh, come on. Figure it out—you’re smart enough.”
The voice seemed to be coming from Hue. I took a few steps, looked around, peered at the little mudluff—nothing. Then, when I took a step sideways, I saw my own face reflected in my balloon-like friend.
No. Not my face.
Jay’s.
“Jay!” I spun around, saw nothing, darted behind Hue. Still nothing. That laughter sounded again.
“You’ve almost got it. Hue, help him out, would you?”
The mudluff circled around me, orienting himself with his “front” to me and his “back” to where the footprints led off—and I could see Jay again, like Hue was some kind of living magnifying glass that didn’t actually magnify but let you see things that weren’t there.
“I’m looking through him,” I said out loud, and Jay grinned and nodded.
“Yes.”
“But you’re…really here.”
“No, I’m sort of half here. Or I’m here, but I’m sort of half me—it’s complicated. Basically, I’m a psychic imprint. I died here, so some of my essence stayed.”
“Like a ghost?”
“If you want to call it that. It’s close enough, anyway. Not sure if it’s more magic or science.” He shook his head. “Enough about me. What brings you here?”
“Didn’t you? I thought Hue came to get me…”
“If he did, it was his idea.” Hue gave a pleased flicker, momentarily blocking out Jay’s face. “He and I were chatting a little while ago. He apologized for what happened and said he’s been doing his best to keep you safe.”
“He did?” I tried to alternate between looking at Jay and looking at Hue, but the only way to manage it was to go cross-eyed, and I didn’t want Jay to laugh at me again.
“Well, not in so many words. But that was the impression I got.”
“Jay…” I was having trouble adjusting to the fact that I was standing there talking to Jay. I mean, there had been that one time when I’d been falling through the Nowhere-at-All, and Jay’s voice had given me advice, but I hadn’t been sure if it was really him or just me. Now, he was standing right there. Sort of.
“How’re things going at school?” It seemed like an odd question, the kind of thing an older brother would ask when he was trying to break the ice.
It was exactly what I needed. A question I could answer honestly, and someone I could talk to.
I told him everything. I told him about the mission to Earth FΔ986 and Joaquim and losing the shield disk and the twin Walkers and the training mission and Jerzy and everything—and then I told him about Acacia. Jay just listened, until I recounted my excursion to the library and the paltry results that had yielded. Jay’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline.
“TimeWatch?” He gave a low whistle.
My heart jumped into my throat. “You know about TimeWatch? What can you tell me?”
Jay hesitated for a moment, considering. “TimeWatch is basically InterWorld, just…not yet.”
“So…they’re what InterWorld will become?”
“Not exactly. Look, Joey, I’m not sure how much of this I should tell you.”
“Call me Joe. And please, don’t do the withholding-information thing. I’m tired of being kept out of the loop for my own good. You died before I even knew what was going on, Jerzy may have just died because someone set us up, and I’m out here on probation while they use PTSD as an excuse. Y’gotta give me something.”
I wasn’t really sure what possessed me to start all that, but I’d realized halfway through how right I was. It hit me, for the first time, that Jerzy—a good Walker and my friend—hadn’t been killed by accident. They were investigating the possibility of foul play, and of course there’d been foul play. The explosions, the scorch marks…It infuriated me. I was tired of being treated like a kid, and I was more than ready to get some damn answers for once.
Jay was looking at me like he was seeing someone different. He blinked and narrowed his eyes and then, to my astonishment, gave a crisp nod. “Yes, sir,” he said, with more than a hint of irony. “It’s not that they’re what InterWorld will become, exactly; it’s more that they’re the section of InterWorld that deals specifically with time. We keep HEX and Binary from ruling all the worlds on the Arc, and TimeWatch keeps them from ruling the timestream. Though they’ve got bigger problems than Binary and HEX.”
“Bigger problems? Such as—?”
Jay hesitated again, just for a second, as though he was reluctant to even speak their names. “The Techmaturges.”
“The…?”
“They’re the things that give both Lord Dogknife and the Professor nightmares. There aren’t many of them, but they’re so powerful that a single glance from one could destroy a world. They’ve refined the arts of both magic and science so as to be nigh indestructible. And incredibly destructive. They don’t want to rule all life, they want to wipe it out and start over.”
“But if they can destroy worlds that easily, why haven’t they won?”
“TimeWatch. I don’t know exactly how they do it, but they’re the ones keeping things in order.”
“And they can time travel.”
“You got it.”
“So…Acacia’s a—”
“Time Agent. Which means you two have a rocky road ahead of you.”
I didn’t really want to know, but I asked anyway. “What?”
“I know you two just met and all, but if you’re anything like me—and I know you are—you’re interested.”
“I’m not,” I tried, but Jay laughed.
“Please. I’m trying to talk to you like an adult. Act like one. You’re interested, and why shouldn’t you be? Sounds like she might be, too, from how she’s fixated on you.” My face was as red as the dirt beneath us, but I kept quiet.
“The Time Agents care about one thing, and one thing only: the future. Making sure it happens. I’d watch it around her, honestly. If she decides you might change future events, she’ll take you out—and no one will question her right to do so. In judgments about time their authority is absolute. No matter what your intentions are, or how she feels about you—”
“I get it, I said.” I drew a rigid index finger across my Adam’s apple. “Scchhhrreekkk.”
“You should be so lucky. She can do far worse than merely kill you. She can erase you. And will, if she deems it necessary for the good of continuity.” Jay was as grim as I could ever recall seeing him. “To save the timestream, if she has to, she’ll see that you’re expunged.”
I stared at him, logic warring with feeling—though really, the two weren’t mutually exclusive. “I…but, how can she—What about everything I’ve done? If I’m erased, what happens to the things I’ve changed?”
“She fills in the gaps, fixes them herself. It wouldn’t be you who did those things, it’d be her or someone else. She can do it,” he assured me, seeing my disbelief. “And like I said, if she thinks it’s best for the future that you were never in the past, she will.”
I couldn’t argue with that, but I sure as hell wanted to. After struggling for a moment and coming up blank, I pushed it aside and moved on.
“So what do I do now?”
“Go back home. Back to Base. Sit and wait.”
I just stared at him. The seconds stretched on, until he chuckled.
“Didn’t think you’d go for that. But you should go back home, at least long enough to see if they’ve found anything.”
“What about Acacia?”
“She’s a Tim
e Agent. If it’s fated for you to see her again, you will.”
“But—”
It was too late; the conversation was over. I don’t know if Hue shifted the focus of his lensing ability, or if Jay did it himself, but his image shimmered like oil on water and then was gone.
I felt, rather abruptly, like sitting down. So I did, half sitting and half collapsing onto the ground. I looked about, marveling once again at how everything seemed exactly the same. Even the scuffs from where I’d dragged Jay’s bleeding body were still there. I winced at the thought and looked away.
Something odd struck me then, and, much as I didn’t want to, I looked back at those marks. Everything was as I’d remembered it, except for one thing.
There was no blood.
I remembered, all too vividly, dragging Jay, encased in his silver suit which covered him completely, save the huge holes that had been left by the gyradon’s daggerlike teeth. Blood had gushed out, violently at first, then in slower, weaker gouts, as his heart had slowed and his veins and arteries emptied. There had been enough, I remembered, to turn a large patch of the dusty ground to dark, viscous mud.
None of that remained.
The sun, I thought, it must’ve—
But there was no sun—just that swirling van Gogh sky.
I jumped to my feet. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Hue was hovering anxiously in front of me, pulsing colors and patterns like a supercharged kaleidoscope.
I felt something—a presence—behind me…a breeze—or a breath?—on the back of my neck. Images flashed through my head of slitted red eyes and gleaming yellow teeth. I had yet, in all my travels and missions, to come across anything as terrifying as the leader of HEX, and he still featured prominently in my dreams and moments like these, when I was sure there was something just behind me….
Fast as I could, I Walked.
I may not have come away from that conversation completely enlightened, but I’d certainly learned enough to give me a start on things. Now, if only fate would hurry itself up and let me see Acacia again, I could learn a bit more.
I’d like to be able to say that what happened then was the call of my name in a familiar voice. I’d like to tell you that I heard it the moment I stepped into the In-Between, turned, and there she was. I’d like to tell you that, because not only would it have meant I got to see Acacia that much sooner, it would have hurt far less.