For the fourth time that day the attack began with a rocket, fired at the top window of the tower. It was a logical target, as it was the only window in the entire tower — and thus by extension the only window in the entire world — in which a light could be seen. When the rocket detonated against the window, it did so with the customary flare of light, an extremely loud noise and a fairly significant shockwave, which broke the glass and sent razor-sharp shards of it hissing red-hot through the air.
Mephistopheles looked up when the rocket exploded. A shard of glass which would have pierced his eye and caused severe damage to the lower parts of his brain returned to its place in the window, as did the rest of the glass. Within a heartbeat all was as if the window had never been broken or damaged in any way. Mephistopheles rose carefully from his chair and went to look out.
As he had expected, there was a small army arrayed at the bottom of his tower. They were keeping well back from the walls, no doubt assuming as they had the previous seventeen times that the old man who lived entirely alone in this tiny world actually had supplies and people to man the various defensive features which the tower was festooned with. Such things Mephistopheles did not have, although since it was his world, getting rid of a hostile army of any size didn’t prove particularly difficult. Not for the first time did he wish that he’d built his world a little bit further away from certain other nearby worlds, but he’d had his reasons at the time and now he had to live with the consequences.
He mentally reviewed how he’d dispatched the previous invasion attempts, stroking his long white beard as he did so. He was running out of ideas, or at least out of ideas which he could accomplish within the limitations he’d imposed upon the world. A shame it was too late to change some of those, but at the time he’d never foreseen that anybody would want what he had so much to put such determination into having it. Not that Mephistopheles had ever seen much particular advantage in his own power. Ursula had been the one who had craved it, so different from him that it was almost impossible to believe they had grown up in the same house, not actual brother and sister but as close as that relationship ever implies even between blood relatives.
Another rocket launched towards the tower. Because he saw it coming this time, Mephistopheles didn’t have to repair any windows. The tower bent itself out of the way, and the rocket detonated harmlessly against the sky a few moments later. The sound of breaking china from a few floors down reminded the old man that some things in the tower weren’t as well-secured to their shelves as might be desired.
“Why do you keep doing this? You know we will tire you eventually. It would be a shame if you had to die, brother.”
It was Ursula’s voice, amplified. The old man squinted down at the army, and soon spotted her — or one of her, at least — sitting on a sedan chair near the centre of her soldiers, dressed in a black silk dress which was barely there. This particular Ursula had long, wavy black hair which shone in the moonlight, and appeared to be an absolute model of physical beauty. She was holding a megaphone in one hand, and looking up at her brother’s sillhouette in the tower window.
“Come now brother, why not just give me what I want?”
Mephistopheles turned away from the window. Below, he heard Ursula give the order for her army to attack the tower again. A chasm opened up in front of them, not bottomless but deep enough to seem that way, and wide enough that they would have considerable difficulty crossing it. He could tip the whole army into it and finish them for good, but he had already killed a lot of Ursula’s soldiers over this, and if she was coming herself then it was clear that she wouldn’t give up. She never gave up on something she wanted. Never.
So how to protect himself and his power and his world from her? The answer came in a moment of clarity which he might have believed to be divinely inspired — if this world which had had made for himself actually had any Gods. It was a small world, and with only one resident it had no need for such things. Mephistopheles served as the equivalent of a God, when he bothered to look out the window. For the rest of the time, it ran itself quite happily.
At least, it ran itself quite happily until a Brimstone army armed with Ertoran weapons started trampling all over the lush grassy hills and turning them into undulating muddy swamps. Clearly, the only way to remove the continual invasions was to remove the reason for the armies to come. It might not be possible, but here, in his own world, it was more possible than anywhere else in all the worlds, so he would try it. If it didn’t work, he would just have to start killing people again. He’d be safe until he made a mistake, and then Ursula would win. What she would do with his power would not be enjoyed by anybody in any world — except for herselves, of course.
Parchment and a quill pen were on the table. He sat on his chair, dipped the quill in the inkpot and began to write. Everything would have to be carefully balanced, or he would not be able to accomplish the transfer properly.
Far from all other worlds is a world of the fourth order, and the world is called Terra, and upon that world is one who is the recepticle of the unique power of Mephistopheles, that he may never be found or used or have the power taken from him.
He wrote for hours, until he became aware that Ursula’s soldiers had crossed the chasm and were bashing in the tower door. A quick glance over the pages showed that everything was as it should be. The power was gone already, he had felt it depart. Ursula was already too late. Now it was time for him to leave, for even without his power he doubted that she would appreciate his presence very much, and would probably take steps to find out how to retrieve it from the world where it was now hidden away. He tossed the parchment onto the fire, picked up his cloak and walking staff, gathered money which would be accepted on several different worlds, and looked around the tower for the last time. It would be a while before he could come back to this world, and he wasn’t about to let Ursula’s army use it as a staging post or a training ground.
A gap opened in front of him. He stepped through it, into another world, and into anonymity.
Moments later, the door burst open. Ursula strode in, glared around the room, sniffed, and scowled.
“He has fled,” she told the soldiers. “Search this place.”
They saluted, fists to hearts, and did as she commanded. Had they done otherwise, they would have regretted it. She looked around the room more slowly. The fire burned brightly, sheets of parchment catching the flames. One was only burning at the edges. She pulled it from the fire, shook it to extinguish the flames, and studied what remained. As she did so, a smile crept over her face. It was not a pleasant smile.
“Why, the cunning old git. Sending his power to another world which cannot be reached.” She laughed. “How little he knows that his is not the only power of that nature. Commander!”
The Commander of her armies was a middle-aged man well versed in military matters, scarred in numerous places, and a traitor to her cause — but while she knew, and he didn’t know that she knew, he was useful despite that. He came to her side and saluted smartly.
“Yes, your Imperial Majesty?”
“Take the army to Ertora. We prepare for an assault on Utopia.”
“Utopia, your Majesty? That is a dangerous world.”
“I know, and a sickeningly pretty one at that. However, Loryar has something I need, and I doubt he will give it to me just from asking nicely. So, we shall have to go and take it.”
The Commander saluted again.
“As your Majesty commands.”
He turned and marched out of the room, but Ursula had already forgotten him. Already she saw in her mind’s eye the invasion of Utopia, the inevitable victory of her forces — Loryar’s world it might be, but he had a mere fraction of Mephistopheles’ talent in manipulating it — then the journey to this new world called Terra, and the hunt for a man named Norman.
It was a dismal day in Utopia. Kelly knew that was supposed to be impossible, because Utopia was supposed to be a perfect world, but the day was dismal nonetheless. She scowled out of her small, leaky house through the rain to the magnificent palace where dwelt Lord Loryar, creator, ruler and ultimate benefactor of the entire world. Because he was its creator, he got away with a lot more than most people could ever get away with in most worlds. The people here knew they existed only as long as they pleased him, and so treated him as a God.
The problem was that he effectively was a God in this world. Kelly didn’t subscribe to the belief that she had to think of him as one. She was born and raised on Ertora, a world now under the dominion of Ursula, the Empress of Brimstone. Ertora was a much dirtier, muckier and altogether slimier kind of world, and Kelly liked it there. She fit in perfectly.
Utopia did smell considerably nicer though.
She returned to the table near the fireplace, where she’d cut up some vegetables for her evening meal. It was going to be stew again. Stew was the only thing she could cook over a fire, and a fire was all she had here. She didn’t think she’d be allowed to bring in an electric cooker from Ertora even if she could get it past Empress Ursula’s troops and find something to power it with, or trust the house not to let the rain in and electrocute her in her sleep, or just burn down around her ears.
Truth be told, Kelly was a pretty awful cook even when she did have technologically sophisticated gadgets. It kept her full and was edible enough that she was willing to eat it; that was about all that could be said about her cooking. Nobody else ever came round for dinner. Of course, on Utopia she didn’t have any friends who might want to. Assassins were seldom popular people — especially amongst other assassins. They all knew about poisons, and were far too paranoid to trust another assassin’s cooking, just in case they were planning to test a new concoction and eliminate some competition at the same time.
Kelly tipped the vegetables into the bubbling stewpot, where an unidentified chunk of cow had gone some time before. She stirred, sniffed, reached for the spice jar and was surprised by a knock on the door. Hardly anybody had ever voluntarily come to her house. Most of the people who came involuntarily didn’t leave again, which left everyone else very nervous about it. Kelly didn’t mind. She was a solitary person by nature, so having such an unpopular profession really didn’t bother her in the slightest. Lord Loryar, at least, paid well for her services.
The knock came again, and she rose to open the door, which was none too sturdy and probably would have opened by itself on the third knock. Once the door was open she was faced with six of Lord Loryar’s personal guard. The man who had just raised his fist to knock again bowed to her.
“My lady Kelly Fastblade,” he said in a formal tone of voice, “his Excellency Lord Loryar requires your presence in his audience chamber immediately.”
Kelly blinked, then bowed in return. “I would be honoured to attend him,” she said, grabbing her cloak and putting it around her shoulders. The guards bowed to her.
“We will accompany you, to ensure you come to no harm.”
“Such a sweet thought.”
Kelly strode out into the rain, enjoying the confused expression which flashed across the guard’s face. He bowed again, and when he rose was all compusure once more. His men were professionals, certainly. They surrounded her in a good formation, wary and watchful. She wondered what would suddenly make Lord Loryar admit to danger existing within this world for those who followed him. Usually he declared that such danger was impossible, for the world itself wouldn’t allow it. Kelly had seen someone get swallowed up by the ground here once, but she suspected it had been encouraged to do so by Loryar. The problem with building such reactions as that into a world, as many world builders had discovered to their cost, is that it’s very difficult to make sure they never make a mistake and cast you into a lake of molten lava, or bury you beneath an avalanche.
Loryar, from everything Kelly had seen, didn’t have enough talent to even think about pulling off something like that, and he was significantly more talented than most. Possessing some of the world building talent herself, Kelly considered herself able to make some kind of relative judgement in such matters.
By the time Kelly and her guards reached the entrance to the palace, the guards were soaked to the skin and shivering in the freezing rain. Kelly was quite warm and dry; although her cloak looked like the kind any Utopian citizen might wear in this kind of weather, it was made from an Ertoran fabric which was light, compactible, breathable and so waterproof that it was also used to make collapsible waterbottles. Her clothes were made of similar materials from various sophisticated worlds she had visited, and her boots were self-heating and had a variety of interesting accessories built into the soles.
The palace of Lord Loryar of Utopia was vast, made almost entirely of white marble, and in many places utterly impossible. Unlike most buildings, it hadn’t been built, but simply existed as part of the world. It would stay up as long as Loryar wanted it to, and since he still, even after two hundred years, considered it to be the pinnacle of architectural achievement on any world, it was unlikely he’d let it fall down any time soon. As with many things regarding his own importance and talents, Loryar was extremely shortsighted.
The guards escorted Kelly to Lord Loryar’s audience chamber, which was, to her surprise, empty. She was left at the door, which was closed behind her, and then there was silence. Except…
She concentrated, blocking out the background murmur of the thousands who lived and worked in the palace. A noise… breathing. Moving toward her. A scuff of shoe on the polished marble floor. There!
Kelly’s hand shot out, grasped something invisible, and pulled. Like pulling off a dust sheet, the invisible cloth came away and revealed Lord Loryar with a large grin on his face.
“Ah, Kelly Fastblade, I cannot fool you I see,” he said. “Still, an impressive piece of cloth, is it not?”
Kelly bowed.
“Most impressive, my Lord. Is it your own invention?”
“Alas, it is not. Some other of my more talented servitors brought it from Ertora, where the Empress Ursula squanders the resources of that world. I hear that her brother has vanished, but that she no longer hunts him.”
“Could she have succeeded in capturing him, my Lord?”
“I think not, for she would surely have moved against me if she had obtained her brother’s power. I think Mephistopheles has eluded her.”
Kelly nodded slowly. That would fit with Ursula’s intentions. With her brother’s power, she would be able to invade Utopia immediately, and history had proven that she was more than willing to attempt it in the past. For now, other worlds served as a barrier, but eventually they would also fall.
“Rumour has it that she hunts someone else now,” Lord Loryar continued. “My spies speak of a world named Terra.”
“Terra, my Lord? I have never heard of such a world.”
“It is a new world, yet very old. The work of a talented world builder indeed.”
“Mephistopheles, my Lord?”
“That is my thought. I believe either he or his power are there. He hopes to make himself safe from Ursula by doing so. He has clearly forgotten about me.”
“You have located this world Terra, my Lord?”
“I have. It is cleverly done; it is far from all other worlds. We cannot reach it ourselves.” A smile spread across the Lord’s face; it was not a pleasant one. “But he does not know how far my own plans have proceeded. While I am yet some way from my ultimate goal, I have been able to change the relative positions of several worlds. I can bring Utopia closer to this world called Terra and make a gap. Then you will pass through, find Mephistopheles or whatever manifestation his power now resides in, and dispose of it permenantly.”
“My Lord, do you not wish the power for yourself?”
“I do not. If my plan succeeds, it would only be a threat to the society I have created here. It must not be allowed to exist.”
Kelly bowed. “As my Lord wishes.”
“I shall send four other assassins with you. They will assist you, but the mission is yours to command.”
“As my Lord thinks best.”
“Go now, and prepare. You will depart at sunrise.”
“My Lord.”
Kelly bowed, turned, and left the audience chamber, her mind whirling. Ursula had lost her brother? Mephistopheles had made a world to hide his power in? Interesting concepts, and interesting thoughts. Once back in her house, she opened a gap and slipped through it into another world, a bustling market, her purse full. She would need supplies to pull this off, and lots of them. Supplies, skill, and a great deal of luck.
Betraying the rulers of two empires was never going to be easy.
“Is your Majesty pleased?”
Ursula didn’t reply, choosing instead to admire her new body in the mirror. One of her other bodies admired it from behind. It was almost identical to her usual body, but had been slightly altered. Higher cheekbones, a lift of the eyebrows, slightly larger earlobes, slightly smaller and firmer breasts. Her new body nodded slowly. The older body walked up to her and fingered her earlobe.
“I can wear those lovely diamond earrings you retrieved from Ertora for me,” she said. Her new body nodded agreement. The majordomo bowed with a smile.
“You do me too much honour, your Majesty.”
“You deserve no less than you receive,” Ursula assured him. “Please, fetch the earrings. I wish to try them. And tell the cloning people that they have pleased me. Ask them what they want, and see that it is done.”
The majordomo bowed once more.
“Your Majesty is kind.”
“My Majesty is not stupid,” Ursula’s new body said. She ran her hands down her stomach, while her old body ran her hands down her new body’s back. “If I don’t keep them happy, they’re not going to keep turning out their best work. And I must say—” she stroked herself again with two pairs of hands “—that their best work keeps on improving.”
“As you say, your Majesty.” The majordomo bowed his way out of the dressing room, but neither of Ursula’s bodies paid much attention. She did like this new body. Perhaps she’d replace both the older ones with copies of it.
No, that would be a waste. Certainly, she would benefit from having all three bodies as beautiful as this one, but perhaps she should let the geneticists try and outdo themselves. As long as they came up with something at least as good as this one…
She kissed her new body’s neck with the older body’s mouth, and both of them shuddered with pleasure. It was definitely worth trying for something better.
Kelly didn’t think she would notice when the relative positions of Utopia and Terra changed, but she hadn’t been in Utopia when Lord Loryar had been doing his experiments with whatever it was that he had which could move worlds around. The actual moment of change was quite obvious to her, her usually-barely-noticed perception of nearby worlds distorted and twisted in a sickening manner. She staggered, and would have fallen but for the guard who caught her arm and held her upright. She waved him away and attempted to look steady on her feet.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m okay. I think the world just moved.”
A few moments later they reached the travelling room. On the ground floor of the palace, it was large and ornate, and by Lord Loryar’s decree, it was the only place in the world where gaps could be made. Kelly flaunted that decree continually, and thought Lord Loryar was aware of it. Since he hadn’t told her to stop (or more to the point, ordered her executed for disobeying him), she had to assume that he didn’t really mind. She was evidently trusted somewhat — an erroneous assumption in this case, but one which suited her very well.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t trusted enough to know how Lord Loryar was able to alter the relative positions of worlds. It had definitely worked though; there was a new world nearby. Not close, but a world builder could reach it. Five men who Kelly recognised as assassins of considerable renown waited at the side of the room with their packs and their weapons. One was clearly from a fairly primitive world, armed only with sword and knife and shortbow. Not that he was ineffective; he’d chalked up over seventy kills during the five years he’d been on the scene. She wished she could remember his name, but realised it wasn’t really important. She wouldn’t be with them for very long once they got to Terra.
Lord Loryar came striding into the room as Kerry checked that her own weapons were loaded and ready. There was no telling what they’d find on the other side of the gap.
“I have moved Utopia closer to this world called Terra,” he said. “You will be the first people to go there, so nobody can tell you what it is like. Go, find Mephistopheles or his power, and elimiate them.”
The assassins and Kerry all bowed. “By your command, my Lord.”
A gap opened in the middle of the room. On the other side it appeared to be night, lit by a ruddy orange glow. Kerry frowned slightly. Fire? Or was this world lit at night by orange light? If light, it would be interesting to see if there was any technology worth acquiring before she returned.
“Once you are through the gap, it will be closed and the relationships between the worlds restored to their prior state,” Lord Loryar announced. “You need not be concerned that Ursula’s minions will be able to follow you.”
“How will we return?” one of the other assassins asked. He was tall, lean and armed with a variety of unpleasant-looking projectile weapons, which hung alongside a wickedly curved knife. Loryar looked at him.
“To any world you can reach. There will be at least one; it is impossible to create a world entirely disconnected from all others in both directions. Kerry Fastblade has some of the world builder’s talent, so any world you can reach will be through her. I suggest you do not irritate her.”
“I shall keep that in mind, my Lord.”
Loryar studied the assassin for a moment, then jerked his head at the guards near the door, who stalked forward.
“Perhaps you will not be going after all,” Lord Loryar said. Fright flashed across the young assassin’s face. In a flash, he had a gun in one hand and his knife in the other. He moved like a striking serpent, almost too fast to follow, and one of the guards was down with blood pouring from his throat. Another fell from a shot, half his chest torn open. Lord Loryar retreated quickly from the fight as more guards attempted to take the assassin down. Two more fell.
Kerry sighed, took out one of her own guns and shot the young assassin in the head. He went down twitching and making occasional involuntary squeaking noises as his muscles convulsed. Kerry bowed to Lord Loryar.
“My Lord,” she said. Loryar smiled.
“You are clearly living up to your reputation,” he said. “Go now, and increase it some more.”
“As my Lord commands,” Kerry said, and strode through the gap. After a confused silence, the others followed her, and the gap sealed shut. The others looked relieved to be on this side of it instead of back in Utopia with Lord Loryar’s displeasure. Kerry turned to address them. “You may be assuming you will assist me in this mission, or perhaps that I will assist you. If you are, you are mistaken. I work alone. I suggest you all disappear immediately.”
They looked at each other, shrugged, and walked away. Kerry let them get underneath the nearest orange streetlight before she shot them. They made far easier targets there than they did in the shadows. This time they didn’t go down twitching; they went down and stayed there. Blood stained the slabs underneath them.
Whistling to herself, Kerry set off in the other direction. It seemed that this was going to be easier than she had thought.
As the sun peeped over the horizon and lit up the eastern sky, Detective Inspector John Wilkins straighted up and stretched out a kink in his back. The four bodies had been carefully recorded, photographed, written about and then taken away for post mortem examination, although it seemed fairly clear that each had died from a shot to the head, and also within a very short space of each other. Wilkins had the horrible feeling that he was going to be seeing more bodies like this very shortly. It had the feel of a professional about it.
“Sir!”
He turned to see a uniformed constable with her pocket book in hand approaching him.
“Yes, Linda?”
“Message from DS Arcangeli sir. That CCTV camera up there recorded the entire incident, in good light, including a full facial shot of the killer.”
“Excellent. I’ll have to make the arrangements to get his face on every news programme in the country as soon as possible.” He sighed. He hated talking to journalists.
“Um, sir… DS Arcangeli says that the suspect is a woman.”
“A woman?” Wilkins looked down again at where the bodies had been. The pavement still showed some signs of blood and the markings used to help record the scene of the crime. “Interesting.”
“Interesting, sir?”
“How many women do you know who could shoot four men in the head, accurately and quickly?”
“None, sir.”
“Exactly. I hope Arcangeli has retained that tape as evidence.”
“He said he was taking it back to the station.”
“Excellent. I shall have to go and watch it. Stay here until forensics are finished, then I’m sure you’ve got other things to be getting on with.”
“Quite a few of them.”
“Nothing’s changed since I was a PC then. Thankyou for your help.”
Wilkins got in his car and drove back to the police station in a thoughtful silence. A female contract killer? It had happened, but not very often. He would have to see the tape.
After seeing the tape, drinking some coffee, seeing it again and drinking some more coffee, he was still none the wiser. What would five people be doing walking along Derwent Road at that time in the night anyway? He shook his head. There was still a long way to go on solving this one.
Kelly had always prided herself on her ability to blend in and get along in any new world she visited. This one was a little different to most she had been to, but bore enough resemblances to some that she was able to obtain herself some of the local currency and find somewhere to eat before the sun rose more than halfway to its zenith. It was clearly a world of some technical sophistication; nothing to compare to some of the achievements of Ertoran technology which she had grown up with, but nonetheless impressive. Their skills in architecture appeared quite remarkable. As did their ability to eat the most ridiculous foods. She’d only found something edible for breakfast at her third port of call, after the first two, both of which were decorated with large plastic signs featuring lots of red but with different logos, forced her back out just by the smell.
The third place was a quiet little place off the well-travelled routes through the town where she’d been pleased to find that the locals spoke a language she could comprehend and reply in without sound too out of place, although it seemed that they were used to having foreign travellers through. That led Kelly to believe that Terra was a large world, for few were large enough to develop multiple languages, and there was definitely no inter-world traffic through here. Only one world was even reachable, and although she hadn’t looked too hard (quite deliberately), it appeared to be Brimstone. Getting out of here was going to be far more interesting than getting in had been.
Breakfast was slices of a cured meat with eggs, toast and some kind of fried fungi. The toast was excellent, the egg cooked to perfection. The meat (which the waitress called ‘bacon’) was pink, crisp and pleasantly salty, and the fungi were surprisingly agreeable. Kelly paid, left a tip and departed, using a conveniently-placed reflective surface to check if she’d done the right thing by tipping. Not all worlds had heard of the practice, but evidently this one had. Now she just had to worry about how much to tip by.
Money was also going to be a problem. She wasn’t going to be able to get by through pickpocketing and robbery if she was going to have to spend as long here as she was starting to think. The further into the morning this world got, the larger it appeared to be. More and more and more people flooded onto the streets; just feeding them all would require an enormous amount of land. The only worlds she had ever seen this crowded were worlds which depended heavily on others for their food. It had to be a localised thing.
She was also going to have to obtain some new clothing, since she hadn’t seen a single person wearing a cloak, and was getting some strange looks from passersby. A clothing shop was easily found, and after examining some of the prices she was able to purchase some trousers, a top and a jacket and coat which fit and appeared quite serviceable. With almost no money left, but dressed casually with a rucksack over her shoulder, she attracted much less attention. Walking past an electrical goods shop a few minutes later, she saw her own picture on the screen and realised that she’d changed clothes just in time.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the ten-thirty Vermin Trains service to World’s End will depart from platform six. Platform six for the ten-thirty Vermin Trains service to World’s End. Thank you.”
Norman hurried towards platform six. He wasn’t going to World’s End, especially not by Vermin Trains, who had something of a reputation of living down to their rather bizarre name. He did, however, want to see the train itself. To the surprise of the entire rail-using community, Vermin Trains had recently invested a substantially large number of millions of pounds in new rolling stock and even newer engines, and he wanted to see one of them.
Today it seemed he was not going to be disappointed. There was a blockage on the bridge from platform seven as people came down the steps onto platform six and stopped to stare at the train. When Norman eventually got his first sight of it, he did as well. It was an involuntary reaction to something so absolutely outrageous it didn’t look like physics should allow it to exist.
Physics, evidently not possessed of any great sense of taste or decency or even a concept of the ridiculous, had not only allowed this train to exist, it was also allowing it to hover several inches from the rails. Norman shook his head in disbelief as he walked the length of the train to examine its front. Whoever had come up with the idea of building maglev trains capable of running over conventional iron rails was clearly completely insane. The only thing that argued otherwise was that the trains actually worked, and worked well. Something of a shame that they had to look like they’d been piped out of a large icing bag using the star-shaped nozzle.
Eventually the train filled, its extremely oddly-shaped gullwing doors closed, and it glided smoothly off into the distance, accelerating rapidly as it did so. Norman watched it go, pulled a pocket computer out of his anorak and made a notation on the screen. Fifteen more of that model to see, and thirty more on order. He sighed. Trainspotting didn’t seem quite such an attractive hobby when everyone was staring at the train you were interested in. Part of the appeal to Norman had always been its niche and its total lack of credibility. He’d embraced all the stereotypes gladly, happy to make his statement about the world and what he thought about it, content to spend his days on train stations around the world, spotting engines. As a result, he was the most famous trainspotter on Terra.
If only he could remember how he’d got into it. It was very odd; he knew he’d had a full life, he knew he’d grown up with his parents, he knew they’d died when their car had been hit by a lorry when he was twenty-four. He knew all these things, but he couldn’t remember anything which had happened more than about six months ago. The knowledge was there - he knew about banks and language, how to cook, who he was, how to deal with his landlord, how to get a job, basic physics and chemistry and biology, mathematics and all the things people learned in school, but somewhere he was convinced that he’d never actually done any of these things.
Sometimes he imagined that he’d just popped into existence one day, fully-formed, his backstory inserted into the collective memory of the entire planet so that he wouldn’t look out of place. That was ridiculous of course, but it would explain a few things.
In fact, it explained almost everything, and some days Norman went for quite some time in perfect acceptance of this theory. It left only two unanswered questions. Firstly, why had he appeared fully-formed in this world in that fashion, and why did his bank account receive regular injections of funds when he had never, as far as he could remember, actually had a job? He wasn’t going to complain about the situation, as it left him as much time as he liked for such relaxing pursuits as trainspotting, reviewing restaurants on the Internet, and taking skiing holidays. One of Norman’s ambitions was to visit every railway station in the world. Another was to go to World’s End, and travel from there all around the edge of the world as much as possible, with the void on his left and the world on his right, doesil around the edge of reality.
He’d only been to World’s End once. It sat on a peninsula of reality in the endless void which existed beyond the edge of the world, sticking out by nearly seventy miles. At the tip of that piece of land, with void on either side and ahead of him, he’d suddenly become aware of something else in the void. Other worlds.
He hadn’t been back since. Nobody else thought there might be other worlds. Nobody else thought there was even the remotest possibility that there might be other worlds. Science fiction writers hadn’t even speculated on the possibility. They thought about visiting the moon sometimes, but nobody was quite sure where it went when it wasn’t visible in the sky, just like nobody was quite sure where the sun went after it set and before it rose again, so sending people there was considered to be a fairly risky business. Norman thought they should send a robot, but he was apparently in the minority with that opinion. Perhaps he should try getting a doctorate, so people would listen to him with a bit more attention.
Perhaps not. That would involve a fair bit of study, and then the rather tedious writing of an extremely long and boring thesis. Since he couldn’t think of anything he was interested in enough to put that much effort into — it seemed that it was necessary to enjoy what you were researching if you were going to write that much about it and retain some semblance of sanity by the end of it — the whole notion of getting himself a doctorate became rather moot.
Especially since he’d seen the police appeal looking for a murderer in Overbrook, and got the notion that he knew where the woman caught in the CCTV footage was, and that there was more to the affair than met the eye. A lot more, and something which intimately concerned him. Perhaps if he found this woman, she could explain why he didn’t have any memories beyond six months ago, and why he thought there were other worlds, and why he just didn’t fit in here. Maybe he even knew where his money was coming from, although that might be pushing things a bit far.
He walked back over the bridge to platform seven, and from there ascended some steps to leave the station, stopping to buy himself some coffee and a biscuit along the way. Overbrook police station stood opposite the railway station. They were looking for the murderess. Norman didn’t think they were going to have an easy time finding her. Where would he look?
Of course; he’d look by the canal, near Arthur’s Lock.
Having eventually managed to figure out the local alphabet (the numbers were the same as Ertora’s, which had confused her greatly because the letters were completely different), Kelly had been able to find somewhere to eat lunch much more easily than breakfast. She knew now that the two restaurants she’d tried for breakfast where the smell had driven her out again were McHappy’s and Burger Queen, so didn’t even consider going in there, although they appeared to be very busy. This world didn’t really make much sense to her, but then neither did several other worlds she visited.
This one, she was increasingly sure, had really been thrown together in a hurry. It looked old — to all intents and purposes it was probably older than Ertora — but it wasn’t actually very old at all, and it had holes in. Any normal world builder would come and live in a new world for a few years, patch up the mistakes and eventually turn it into a functioning system. This one was in desperate need of attention, although Kelly doubted that Mephistopheles would ever come here to fix it, as even he couldn’t travel here without assistance from Lord Loryar, who was unlikely to see Mephistopheles without trying to kill him, or from whoever it was that Mephistopheles had given his power to.
One thing that was certain was that the power had been transferred. Lord Loryar hadn’t been sure, but Kelly was. If Mephistopheles was here, he certainly would have fixed some of the oddities. Had this been Kelly’s world, she would have taken action over some of them as soon as she noticed them. Still, the world appeared to be self-sustaining somehow, so it served its purpose as a place of residence for the respository of Mephistopheles’ power. From everything she could tell, the world had been created about six months of its own time ago, but thought it had been around for several million years. Which was quite a neat trick.
Now it was mid-afternoon, and she sat on a bench by the canal, watching a narrowboat go through a lock. It was quite a pleasant day — blue sky, some scudding white clouds, birds singing. She sipped from the mediocre cup of tea she’d bought from a nearby vendor and nodded to herself. Yes, she’d been in worse worlds. Like Utopia, this one smelled considerably better than Ertora.
Someone sat down next to her on the bench.
“You are far too easy to find,” he said. “I’m surprised the police haven’t caught you yet.”
“Who are you?” Kelly had a hand under her jacket, ready to pull out a gun if he showed the slightest hint of threat. Assassins didn’t live long if they trusted people overmuch.
“My name is Norman Arlebottom.”
“Norman Arlebottom?”
“Yes.”
“Lovely.” Names were something else Mephistopheles appeared to have skimped on. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you. I think you know some things I should learn.”
“Do you.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What kind of things?”
Norman scooped some stones up from the edge of the path, hefted them, then tossed one into the water. It landed with a loud ‘plop’ and sank swiftly beneath the surface.
“There are things I know which nobody else knows,” he said, sounding like he was only half concentrating on the conversation. “I don’t think I existed more than six months ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire world didn’t exist more than six months ago. And I think there are other worlds out there. Sometimes I can feel them there. I wonder if it’s possible to go there?” He dropped the remaining stones back on the ground and held out a hand. “And sometimes I wonder, why can I do things other people can’t?”
The stone rose out of the canal with an inverted ‘plop’ and landed in his hand, dry as if he had never put it there. Kelly’s eyes popped. She studied him more closely. He really, really didn’t look like the type, but Mephistopheles had been in a hurry. And he also had a reputation for a terrible sense of humour.
“My name is Kelly Fastblade. I think we need to find somewhere more private where we can talk.”
Norman rose.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “If I can recognise you, the police certainly can.” Kelly thought she wouldn’t correct him on that; it was entirely possible he’d only found her because at some subconscious level he was aware that she was from another world. “We’ll go to my flat. We should be safe there for a while.”
“One question,” Kelly said as she also stood and they walked off. “How come you aren’t just telling the police where I am? You know why they want to find me?”
“You killed four people.”
“Yes.”
“I was hoping you would have a good explanation for that.”
“It seemed like a good explanation at the time. I can’t promise you’ll agree with it though.”
Norman shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said. “I think you’re the only person in the world who can help me, so I don’t really have much choice in the matter, do I?”
“No, you don’t. But if you even think of betraying me, I will find you and I will kill you.” She wondered as she made the threat how much water it would hold when it came down to it. He’d already shown he could do things in another person’s world, and by what she’d heard about Mephistopheles, the trick with the stone was just the very least of what he could change here. He might already have reached the point where she wouldn’t be able to catch him by surprise, although she doubted that. If it was related to the power world builders had in their own worlds, Norman’s power would be rooted quite strongly in the physical rules of wherever he was, leaving some of the more esoteric things she could imagine entirely out of his reach — at least in most worlds. She looked at him again, to see how he had reacted to her threat.
“You could try,” he said indifferently. “But I think you need me as much as I need you. Possibly more so.”
Kelly winced, and noticed Norman noticing her doing so. He smiled.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But we’ll talk about it in private.”
He nodded. “Very well. It’s not far.”
Norman’s flat wasn’t much, and he knew it. Although he had a regular income from a source he didn’t know about, it wasn’t enough for him to be lavish in his living tastes. Even if it had been, he doubted he would have been. Living in a modest flat with tatty furniture allowed him to spend more money on what he really enjoyed. Train tickets sucked up vast amounts of his disposable income, and he always ate well. Although the fridge looked like it was on its last legs and might melt or explode at any moment, it was stocked full with the highest quality organic produce from local farms, the very best chocolate, the finest wines.
As a stark contrast, the worktop next to the fridge was usually stacked high with dirty plates, empty or almost-empty pizza boxes, and mouldering takeaway food containers. Kelly surveyed this, and the dirty clothes strewn across the furniture in the living room, with one eyebrow raised, then turned her gaze on Norman, who was revealed to be wearing a scruffy sweatshirt now that he’d hung his anorak on a coathook in the hall.
“So it’s not much,” he said. “I’m not used to having visitors.”
Kelly tested the air with her nose and pronounced her judgement. “It still smells better than Ertora,” she said, “so it’ll do.”
“Ertora? I’ve never heard of it.”
“I’m not surprised.” Kelly carefully cleared herself a space on the sofa and sat down. “But it’s where I was born and where I grew up. Not a particularly nice kind of world, but I’ve seen worse. It would be better if they cleaned the streets from time to time, and perhaps if they paid a bit more attention to the sewers.”
Norman had taken a seat on his usual armchair, and leaned forward at Kelly’s words.
“Another world? So there are other worlds out there? I was right?”
“Spot on.”
“Can you tell me about them?”
“I’ve not been to all of them, so I can’t tell you what they’re all like. You must understand, there are thousands. Some, like this one, are virtually inaccessible from other worlds. Others rub shoulders with so many that they are entirely dependent on their neighbours for survival. There are even several worlds which thrive entirely on the transfer of wealth from one place to another. What I can tell you — what I must tell you — is about the nature of worlds, how they relate to each other, who affects the balance…” she looked up from the sock on the floor she’d been staring at, straight into Norman’s eyes, “…and why I was sent to this world to kill you.”
Norman was on his feet faster than Kelly would have thought him capable of, but she barely had time to notice before something threw her backwards with enormous force. She hit the wall with an impact that jolted the breath out of her and dented the plaster, then slumped to the floor, momentarily stunned. One look at Norman’s face told her the action had been instinctive and unintentional.
“You see,” she said, “why I need to tell you who you are and why people want you dead.” She laughed a short, cynical laugh. “Perhaps I should have mentioned earlier that despite being hired to kill you, I have no intention of doing so.”
“I’m sorry,” Norman said. “You gave me something of a shock.” He came over to her and offered her his hand to help her up, which she accepted with a smile.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I would say it’s my pleasure, but since I’m the one who threw you across the room, it’s not really my pleasure at all. I feel quite bad about it, actually.”
“Don’t worry. It was a natural reaction.” She grinned. “I am, after all, one of the best assassins you will find in any world. There were four of similar calibre to me, but they passed away quite suddenly.”
“The four men you killed last night?”
“Yes. I couldn’t take the chance that they would follow Lord Loryar’s orders to kill you, so I had to eliminate them. It was the only way to do it safely.”
“But… did you really have to kill them?”
“It’s a hard universe. Sometimes it’s the only way to make sure somebody isn’t going to come back to haunt you later.”
“I would have thought that haunting would only be a problem with people you’ve killed.”
“Very funny. You know what I meant. Now, shall we sit back down and I can explain from the beginning.”
They returned to the sofa and the armchair. Kelly sat back comfortably and looked at the ceiling.
“Where shall I begin? Ah yes. The multiple worlds. You are, I assume, familiar with the nature of your own world as a platform of land and sea in the middle of an endless void?”
“Yes. It was at World’s End that I first felt that there might be other worlds besides this one.”
“It is likely that you’d be more perceptive of such things at the edge of a world. However, you should be able to feel other worlds anywhere within this world. Multiple worlds do not share the same sense of physical space — they may actually exist in the same location as each other, I do not know — but they are seperated by another kind of distance which only certain people can cross.
“The most common kind of person with the ability to affect the gaps between worlds is the gap maker, although they’re usually just called ‘makers’. They can bridge the distance between the world they are in and any world which that world is close to, allowing people and objects to pass between them.
“The other kind of person with a similar ability is the world builder. Builders can create gaps not only between worlds which are close, but to any world which is not far from the world they are currently in. Worlds, you see, have a relationship to each other. Two worlds may be close, or far, or neither close nor far from each other.”
Norman leaned forwards again.
“Doesn’t that have a better name? Close, far or neither seems a little awkward.”
Kelly shrugged. “It suffices,” she said. “What really starts to do people’s heads in is when they realise that these relationships are not symmetric. Take this world, for example. The only world it is not far from is one called Brimstone, but as far as Brimstone is concerned, this world is entirely unreachable — far away, as far as it is possible for a world to be. A world builder on Brimstone would know Terra exists, but would not be able to reach it in a million years of trying. In fact, this world is far from every other world we know about.”
“Then if worlds which are far away are unreachable, how did you get here?”
“Most rules are bendable. Apparently, this includes the relations between worlds. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know, but Lord Loryar, the ruler of a world called Utopia, has gained the ability to alter the relations between worlds at least temporarily. He was able to bring Utopia close enough to Terra to make a gap here.”
“So this Lord Loryar is a world builder?”
“He is. Utopia is his world.”
Norman frowned. “Does the name ‘world builder’ imply that he is capable of constructing new worlds?”
“It does. Lord Loryar has constructed himself a world called Utopia and established there what he considers to be a perfect society.”
“I see. And is it?”
“Far from it. Most people live in leaky wooden huts and scrabble in the mud for food because most of their effort goes to feeding the Lord and his sycophants.”
“That doesn’t sound very good.”
“It’s not. Lord Loryar wishes to permanently move all worlds far from his own, so that no travel is possible anymore, to preserve his perfect society. Unfortunately, in order to do that it seems that he has to move all worlds apart from each other, so that no travel between worlds will be possible at all, unless someone else manages to discover how he did what he did to send me here, which seems unlikely.”
“Surely once the knowledge has been found once, it can be found again?”
“Perhaps, but it could take centuries, and in that time a good many small worlds would die out. Many depend upon trade.”
“Were all the worlds built by world builders?”
“We think so. Most of them aren’t around anymore; some build themselves into their world so that they become immortal there, but I could only name three who are still alive at the moment. I think eventually they get fed up with eternal life and just… give up.”
“Who are those three? Lord Loryar, I assume?”
“Yes, he’s one of them. Then there’s Empress Ursula, the ruler and builder of Brimstone, which is a nasty kind of world. Lots of raw granite, and all the land sits in the middle of an endless sea of molten lava. It’s warm, but that’s about all you can say about it. Most of the people there live in cave warrens inside mountains, but it’s good territory for training Ursula’s armies. Ursula intends to rule all the worlds, not just her own, and intends to do it by force.”
“So she’s not very keen on Loryar’s isolation plan?”
“Not keen at all. She seeks the reverse; if she can get her hands on Lord Loryar’s methods, she’ll use it to push all worlds close enough for her to make gaps to them. That doesn’t have to be actually close, as she’s got as much of the world builder talent as anybody has ever had, but there are a lot of worlds she can’t reach at the moment from Brimstone or Ertora.”
“Ertora? Didn’t you say that’s where you’re from?”
“I left a few years before Ursula conquered it. Now Ertora’s factories and scientists produce weapons and armour and vehicles for Ursula’s armies, and she’s turning her sights to other worlds. Arae is at risk of attracting her attention next; it’s close to Ertora and produces vast amounts of food which they trade with other worlds. She’ll need food to feed her armies if she’s going to conquer all the worlds.”
Norman sat back. “So there are two world builders on opposite and equally unpleasant positions?”
“Pretty much, yes. The third immortal world builder is named Mephistopheles, and in a way he’s quite central to the whole affair. He had spent the last several hundred years in his own little world, no other people there at all, just studying things, but then Ursula decided to pay her brother a visit-“
“He’s her brother?”
“They aren’t blood relatives, but they were raised together, centuries ago. Ursula went to her brother and demanded that he hand over a power uniquely his which would ensure her victory. Naturally, he refused, and she sent an army to capture him. Invading a world which has its builder still resident is considerable folly, you must understand. She went through thousands of troops trying to take this one single tower where Mephistopheles had spent centuries contemplating and theorising. Because it was his world, his armies found the ground opening up beneath them, showers of rocks from the skies, avalanches, mudslides, wildfires, stampedes of several different kinds of large animal… you name it.
“Eventually, Mephistopheles grew tired of the killing and decided to disappear. But before he did so, he decided that the only way to have a quiet life was to divest himself of some of his power, the part which Ursula wanted, which made him different to other world builders. He made a new world and selected one person within that world to be the recepticle of it, then put that world as far from all other worlds as he could managed. Then he left his world, and nobody’s seen him since.
“I understand that Ursula was not pleased when she found out. Lord Loryar seeks to take advantage of the situation thus created.”
Norman started to get a sinking feeling.
“When was this?” he asked.
“In the time of this world, six months ago.”
There was a long silence, then Norman sighed.
“Okay,” he said, “so just exactly what kind of power is it that I have that makes Lord Loryar want me dead and Empress Ursula wants for herself?”
“You have the power to alter worlds which you did not create yourself. Usually a world builder is more or less powerless outside their world — all they can do is make gaps, or exercise their skills to make another world. Mephistopheles could change things in any world, although he was more restricted than in one of his own worlds. That power has now passed to you.”
“I can see how it would be desirable, especially if Ursula plans to invade Utopia. She wouldn’t stand a chance against Loryar in his own world, surely.”
“Exactly her problem. She thinks your power and her armies would give her enough of an advantage to gain victory.”
“So Lord Loryar wants me dead to stop Ursula obtaining my power?”
“Partially. However, the other aspect of the power you carry is the ability to make gaps to any world. Absolutely any world; how far away it might be is utterly irrelevant. Obviously, someone with your power could keep movement between the worlds going even if Lord Loryar succeeds in his plans.”
“And so he sends five assassins to kill me.” Norman smiled weakly. “I think I’m lucky that you were one of them.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You won’t be safe here forever, you know.”
Norman sighed. “I was starting to suspect something like that was coming. What do we have to do?”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m quite keen on arranging for Loryar and Ursula to eliminate each other.”
“That would be quite a trick. You want me to help?”
“Your powers would be very useful.”
Norman sighed again. He suspected a psychiatrist would proclaim him insane and order him detained for his own well-being if they heard his answer.
“When do we leave?” he asked.
When her Imperial Majesty, Empress Ursula of Brimstone and Ertora, Creator of Worlds and, she hoped, future ruler of all the worlds, visited Ertora, she did so with great pomp and ceremony. Not only did it help to remind the population of who was now in charge on their world, it also helped to ensure that there was even less chance that any of the natives would be able to come near her without washing first. As many before her had observed, Ertora was not a pleasant-smelling world. Ursula had little use for it as a place, although she did find it extremely productive when it came to developing and manufacturing weapons and other military hardware for her increasingly large armies, currently training in Brimstone ready for the forthcoming conquest of Arae, a charming agricultural world which would provide her with the solution to the nagging problem of how to feed all her subjects. Famine had recently killed a few hundred thousand people in Brimstone, and she didn’t want a repeat of it, especially not amongst the skilled workers and knowledgeable scientists of Ertora.
A useful side-effect of conquering Arae would be easy access to several other worlds suitable for invasion and easy defeat. Brimstone was a fairly remote world, classified as being of the third order, and while as a world builder Ursula could make gaps between more worlds than her army’s gap makers could, she still couldn’t reach the numerous worlds which were far from Brimstone and Ertora. Not all worlds offered gaps to suitable invasion sites on the target worlds, either.
She tapped her lip thoughtfully. One of her spies had reported an unsubstantiated rumour that Loryar, Lord of Utopia, had succeeded in sending assassins to the world Mephistopheles had created, with the intent of wiping out Mephistopheles’ power, whatever he had managed to conceal it in within that world. Ursula had hoped this would happen; it meant that it was indeed possible for people to go there. Hopefully the assassins would prompt whoever it was who had Mepistopheles’ power to flee to another world, where she could more easily get her hands on him. Since one of the assassins sent was one of her own agents, she was as confident as she needed to be that the power would not be lost before she had personally given up on ever acquiring it. With the demonstration the Ertorans were putting on for her today, it may well have already come to the stage where it was no longer a necessity, but merely a convenience. She would find that out for sure on the demonstration field today.
The carriage in which she rode came to a halt in front of what had once been the seat of Ertora’s government. Now it was Ursula’s palace, although it smelled nearly as bad as the rest of the world, so she rarely stayed there. Two of her bodies had come to Ertora, including the newer one she had recently acquired and was still extremely fond of. She hoped that by showing the geneticists how pleased she was with their work this time, she would be able to extract an even better performance from them in the near future. Bringing two bodies was simply an extravagance, a way to say to Ertora that she was powerful, she could be in several places at once and thus they had better not think about crossing her. So far, such tactics appeared to be working.
She appreciated that; it was much less messy and substantially less expensive than keeping the world under control by sheer military force.
Her majordomo on Ertora, a weaselly little man with the pale skin characteristic of being raised in the caverns of Brimstone, opened the carriage door and bowed. Ursula rose and stepped out of the carriage, studying the array of people lined up to greet her. There were no cheering crowds, no people anxious to see her, to speak to her, maybe even to touch her, as more popular rulers suffered. She couldn’t understand why Lord Loryar encouraged fanatical devotion amongst his people on Utopia. Fear was just as effective as a tool for keeping the population in line, and she didn’t have to bother with any attempts to appear to care about anything beyond her own ambitions. The people were important only as far as they furthered her ambitions, and she made sure that they understood that.
Lined up to greet their Empress were a number of scientists from the weapons development laboratories, two of the geneticists who had worked on her latest body, a couple of the highest-ranked military governers she had placed in charge of Ertora, and a small team of gap makers. She greeted them all as she was expected to do, wishing to the weapons scientists luck in their demonstration, and making it clear that she expected their designs to live up to her expectations. They fell over themselves assuring her that it would indeed be thus and so, and she wcould not fail to be impressed by their designs and the efficacy of the weapons they had designed for her.
The geneticists were much more bearable. Aware that they had pleased her, they spoke quietly and calmly but proudly about the progress they were making on an even more perfect body for her.
“It is difficult to measure beauty objectively of course, your Majesty, but we are sure you will agree that the minor enhancements we have made will add quite considerably to your Majesty’s image.”
“When can you show me projections of what the body will look like?”
“We have some here, your Majesty,” they said, bowing. One retrieved some slightly crumpled prints from his pocket, unfolded them and handed them to her majordomo, who glanced at them briefly before passing them to Ursula’s newer body. Her older body looked over her shoulder, and both nodded and smiled.
“Good,” she said. “You have also worked on muscle tone?”
“Very well-spotted your Majesty,” the head geneticist said, bowing again. “We have as you requested looked at improving the physical characteristics of your new body beyond just beauty. It will be difficult to tell until the body is fully grown, but we are currently seeing muscle development in accordance with a twenty-five percent increase in raw strength as measured in terms of lifting power.” He indicated one of his colleagues. “Dr. Logan has some interesting ideas for further improvements, and is already working on the genetic structure for our next round of improvements.”
Ursula’s new body turned her gaze on Dr. Logan.
“I believe I may be able to obtain another twenty-five percent in strength increase over and above that which we have currently seen, your Majest,” Logan said, and bowed awkwardly. Ursula’s newer body reached out a hand and straightened the young scientists up by his chin.
“Excellent,” she said. “Send word immediately when each of the bodies is ready for me.”
All the geneticists bowed.
“Of course, your Majesty.”
“You have done well. You are doing well. Those who serve me well are rewarded.” She turned and moved on to the military governers, who saluted her and told her how smoothly things had been going in Ertora since her last visit. Ursula listened for a while, then cut them off with a gesture.
“If I did not believe you were doing a good job,” she told the men, “I would not have appointed you to your positions here. Therefore, you need only inform me of any problems or outstanding achievements. Is that clear?”
“Yes, your Majesty,” they said, bowing again.
“Good.” Ursula moved further down the line to the gap makers, smiling inwardly. She may well have just spared herself a lot of tedious and unnecessary reports, but time would tell if the governers were intelligent enough to be able to determine what she actually wanted to hear and make sure she heard it as soon as possible. The gap makers bowed to her as she approached.
“Your Majesty,” they said in unison.
“Gentlemen, ladies,” Ursula greeted them. “Have my instructions been carried out?”
“They were completed this morning, your Majesty. All gaps to this world have been closed, except for those regulated by your soldiers which lead to Brimstone. As you are of course aware, we can not prevent other gap makers or world builders opening new gaps, but we have at least prevented the easy flow of ordinary people.”
“You have done as well as you can do,” Ursula assured them. “Continue your patrols and close any unauthorised gaps which you find. We cannot stop our enemies from making them, but we can limit their usefulness. I shall instruct the military governers to make troops available to you, to guard gap sites. That will discourage people from opening the same gap repeatedly.” It was a little-known fact outside gap makers and world builders that gaps between worlds had natural endpoints which couldn’t be altered easily — you couldn’t make a gap from the same place in your own world to any point you wished to in another world; it had to go where the worlds themselves allowed it to go. Ursula had designed Brimstone very carefully to minimise where gaps could appear there, but whoever had designed Ertora, deep a past so distant that nobody had known their name even when Ursula had been born almost seven hundred years ago, had left it as open as was possible, presumably to encourage free trade. Ursula didn’t mind trade, but she didn’t like the movement of weapons and people associated with resistance groups. Several had already had to be crushed on Ertora, although there were signs that the population were starting to give up the idea of an insurrection.
Ursula’s majordomo appeared at the elbow of her older body and bowed deeply.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “the weapons demonstration will be ready to commence in five minutes.”
“Very well,” Ursula replied. She turned her new body’s attention back to the gap makers as her old body started walking into the palace, to reach the demonstration field laid out on what had once been its formal gardens. “Resume your gap closing patrols as soon as you have the soldiers at your disposal. I will arrange it immediatley.”
“Your Majesty,” the gap makers said, bowing deeply. Ursula had done them a great honour, and they knew it. She smiled to herself as her new body went back to the generals to instruct them to release some soldiers for the use of the gap makers, and to provide them with more if they needed more guards. Some people on this smelly world were loyal to her, at least; gap makers hadn’t been very highly prized on Ertora before she’d invaded, considered a moderately replaceable non-specialist skill, poorly paid and badly treated by those who hired them and expected gaps opened up as a personal service rather than a commercial arrangement.
Ursula had changed that, although it had a lot to do with having quietly had most of the gap makers put to death. Those who had shown a willingness to work for her forces had survived, and many of them now proved to greatly appreciate their new roles of importance in defending her empire from threats which originated from inside it, or from without. Much as the Ertorans had liked to brag about their peaceful, fair and just society, they really hadn’t been any better off before. The only real difference was that now they made things to support Ursula’s ambitions of ruling all the worlds, instead of for their own hedonistic pleasures and the oppression of those they considered to be inferior. Ursula would never have claimed to be just and fair — she wasn’t, and she was quite deliberate about it — but on the whole, things hadn’t deteriorated all that much on Ertora since she’d taken it over.
In fact, she thought the smell might even be improving slightly. Or perhaps her noses were going numb.
Her new body caught up with the older one halfway through the palace, and a couple of minutes later they emerged onto the balcony at the back on the second floor, from where Ursula could see the demonstration field quite clearly. The field was nothing fancy; just a large rectangle of muddy grass surrounded by a tall razor wire fence. At one end of the field was a pen made of more razor wire, in which ten people huddled against each other in fear. Ursula smiled to see them; she only got demonstrations on live subjects when the weapons were particularly effective.
She looked at her majordomo with her older body, while her newer body studied the assorted equipment laid out at the opposite end of the field to the subjects. In the middle of the field, a number of tall wooden poles had been driven into the ground.
“Who are they?”
“The prisoners are rebels, your Majesty,” the majordomo said. “They were caught plotting to blow up various factories currently in use to produce armour for your victorious armies.”
“How fitting. Have their families been located?”
“Yes, your Majesty. They are here to watch.” The majordomo pointed, and Ursula picked out a group of extremely distressed people sitting in a booth surrounded by guards, on the opposite side of the demonstration field. Ursula smiled.
“Good. Once the word spreads of what we will do to these saboteurs, it should discourage more.”
“Even as you say, your Majesty.”
They turned their full attention back to the field as soldiers marched onto it and took various weapons from the array laid out. At the other end of the field, more soldiers pulled a captive from the pen and tied him to a stake which had been driven into the ground in the middle of the field. One of the soldiers stepped forward and held his gun in the air, a small and apparently unimpressive pistol, slightly larger than normal. Someone spoke on the public address system.
“Our first demonstration today is of a fairly standard high-velocity pistol with recoil reduction and laser sighting. What is revolutionary about this weapon is the ammunition it fires.” Ursula recognised the voice as that of the chief weapons designer on Ertora, a man of little moral integrity with some dubious sources of pleasure. She didn’t mind his perversions, as if he enjoyed causing pain to others, he was more likely to produce the kind of weapons she wanted her armies armed with.
“This ammunition makes all wounds it inflicts absolutely lethal. Recovery or cure is not possible with currently known medical techniques. For our demonstration, the subject will be shot in the foot, usually an easily survivable wound provided treatment is given for loss of blood and shock.”
The soldier released the safety on the pistol and took aim at the captive’s foot. Ursula turned her old body’s head to observe the families. Some had turned away, while others appeared unable to take their eyes off the field. A few had locked gazes with their loved ones still in the pen. The captive tied to the pole had started screaming something, but Ursula couldn’t hear what it was. She didn’t particularly care either. The solider fired.
The captive’s scream echoed from the palace walls. Moments later, he screamed again, and Ursula leaned forward in fascination.
“Observe, if you will, how the entry wound has become the source of an infestation which dissolves the internal organs, causing painful death within one minute of any would being inflicted.”
The captive’s screams grew louder and more frenzied as his leg became limp and bloody and unpleasant fluids spread on the grass from the wound. Shortly afterwards, the captive slumped down, dead, and over the next minute or so his entire body collapsed into a warm pile of mush at the base of the pole. Ursula applauded.
“An excellent weapon,” she said to her majordomo, who nodded agreement.
“Highly demoralising for the enemy,” he commented.
“All the better.”
Some soldiers had come forward to clear up the remains of the first captive. Others took three more from the pen and tied them each to a pole. A soldier stepped forward with another new weapon. This was much larger, and resembled an armour-piercing explosive shell launcher more than anything else Ursula could think of. It appeared to be extremely well-laden with electronic components.
“This weapon is a multiple-target anti-personnel device,” the scientist on the PA system announced. “It can identify multiple enemy targets ahead of it, and on firing will launch a high-speed explosive projectile at each.” The soldier holding it took aim through the weapon’s scope. “The soldier has complete control through the scope and the weapon’s controls as to which bodies it identifies as threats.” The soldier tapped a button on the top of the gun, conveniently located for operation while aiming, then fired. The gun emitted three shots in extremely rapid succession, so rapid that it was difficult to tell that it hadn’t been just one shot, and each of the captives was blown apart by the explosive bullets detonating inside their bodies. A glance at the families showed them weeping, in shock, or apparently unconscious.
“Our final live demonstration is a crowd-killing weapon,” the scientist announced. A soldier stepped forward with a hand grenade. “Although it looks much like an ordinary high explosive grenade, observe the effects of this weapon on the captives in the pen.”
The soldier stepped forward a few paces, released the grenade’s fuse and threw it, a powerful throw which landed right in the middle of the captives. They scattered from it, but the pen prevented them going very far. A moment later, the grenade detonated with a burst of light. When it faded, all the captives were gone. Blood and bone fragments covered the field and the families who had been forced to watch the deaths of their relatives, and the soldiers guarding them. Ursula leaned toward her majordomo.
“Please congratulate the scientists, approve these three weapons for use by my armies, and give those soldiers something in return for getting covered in gore like that. I’m sure these Ertorans smell no better on the inside than they do on the outside.”
“As you wish, your Majesty.”
“Oh, and don’t let all the relatives leave. Take one member of each family and send them to Brimstone. I shall keep them in custody against the good behaviour of the rest of their families.”
“Very good, your Majesty.”
Ursula rose and left the balcony. Behind her, blood and gore soaked into the grass. She smiled to herself and hummed a sprightly tune. She hadn’t reached the point where Mephistopheles’ power was irrelevant, but she would certainly have an easier time conquering her first round of targets with weapons such as those.
DI Wilkins was back at the murder scene. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but something about this whole affair unsettled him greatly, and he had become convinced that there was more to the casual killing of four men in full view of a not-exactly-invisible CCTV camera than he was aware of. He’d watched the tape repeatedly, and in no way did the murderer ever look like she suspected she might be being observed. Yet who in the modern world, didn’t know about CCTV cameras? Most criminals in his experience checked for them very carefully, and the ones who didn’t were highly unlikely to be killers of such skill. You didn’t get that kind of skill without being at least slightly observant.
He studied the place on the pavement where the bloodstains had been, although a solid evening’s rain had washed them all away. Right under a streetlight, excellent view of her targets — yes, a good place to ensure a good shot, but…
A gust of smoke blew past his face. He turned, suddenly afraid. What the hell was he doing here in the dark? It was a murder scene, for crying out loud. What would stop the murderer from coming back and doing for him as well? He was slightly relieved to see that the three men looking at him were all men. One was smoking a large and smelly pipe, the source of the smoke which had drifted past him. Behind them, a bright white light shone onto the pavement, although he couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Who are you?” Wilkins demanded. “I am a police officer.” He started fumbling for his warrant card. Two of the men stepped forward and grabbed his arms, immobilising him as effectively as if he’d been encased in cement. The remaining man — the one with the pipe — chuckled.
“You’ll do,” he said, and gestured. The two men who had hold of Wilkins dragged him along the pavement towards the pool of white light. He had a brief glimpse of a large, brightly-lit room before he was flung forwards. He put his hands out instinctively and managed to avoid landing on his face, but slipped instead on smooth marble and fell on his side. His radio jammed painfully into his ribs, and his baton poked him in the hip, but he tried to ignore it as he scrambled to his feet. There were people all around him. Looking back, he saw…
…no way back to the street. It was like he’d fallen through a hole in the air. His hands started to shake, but he drew his baton and racked it. A large, finely-dressed man chuckled.
“Got a little bit of spirit, this one,” he said. “No matter. Put the weapon down.”
All around the room, Wilkins saw bows being drawn, arrows aimed at his heart. Slowly, he put his baton on the floor.
“And anything else you’re carrying.”
His pepper spray, handcuffs and radio went next to the baton. The man who’d spoken nodded.
“Excellent. Continue to do as you are told and you will not be unduly harmed. I am Lord Loryar of the world Utopia. You are here to answer the questions which will be put to you. If you do not, you will suffer. Do you understand?”
“I’m sorry, you’re who? Of where?”
Strong hands grasped Wilkins’ arms again. His right arm was twisted painfully behind his back as Lord Loryar approached.
“You may not know me or my world, but you will show respect,” Loryar said in a chillingly quiet voice. “You will learn respect.” He looked up at his men. “Take him. Find out what he knows.”
Loryar turned and strode away. Wilkins was dragged in the other direction, through several corridors and down numerous flights of stairs into what could only be described as a dungeon. Wails and screams echoed through the stone passages, and moans came from some of the cells. Wilkins was taken into a larger room and strapped to a table, although he struggled to try and free himself, the men were too strong and the bonds too tight. He felt his fingers start to throb as the bloodflow through his wrists was restricted.
Another man came into his field of view, holding a long, slender metal implement with a gleaming, sharp point.
“Tell us, if you please, what you know about an assassin called Kerry Fastblade, a world builder called Mephistopheles, and the recepticle of his power, a man named Norman.”
“What? An assassin? Where am I? Who are you?”
“You are ignorant of our ways, and ignorant of the nature of the universe.” That metal point touched Wilkins’ chest, ever so lightly. He felt it break his skin. Sweat broke out on his face. “But you were at our entry point into your world.”
“I was investigating a murder.”
“A murder?”
“Four murders. We have CCTV footage. A woman shot four men in the back of the head and walked off, didn’t know about the camera, obviously.”
“A woman shot four men? Tell me, was it this woman?”
Someone held a picture over Wilkins’ face. It was a quickly-drawn sketch, but it showed the likeness of his murder suspect perfectly.
“Yes. Her.”
“Kelly Fastblade. A professional assassin, one of the best in the business. You are lucky, perhaps, that you never tried to apprehend her. You are a police officer, I think?”
“Yes.”
“We do not have your kind on this world, but I have heard of others who do. It is an honourable profession, even if you are an ignorant and disrespectful man. You have my word that we will not kill you, nor allow you to die. How much you suffer, however, depends on your continued cooperation. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes. People will miss me, you know.”
“They can miss you all they like, they cannot reach us here. Now, let us talk of a man named Norman.”
“I don’t know anybody named Norman!”
“That is something we shall find out.”
The metal point touched skin again, and this time it was more than a pinprick. Wilkins screamed.
Norman looked up at Kelly and grinned. This was exactly the thought of thing he never thought he’d ever find himself doing, yet here he was — standing on the ceiling. Perhaps he was actually looking down at Kelly, but relative to his personal spatial perception, he was looking up. He was quite impressed with how easy this whole business of walking on the ceiling was turning out to be. When Kerry had suggested trying it, after he’d got the hang of levitating teaspoons (they really weren’t any more difficult than pulling the stone out of the canal had been), he’d thought she was a little bit bonkers.
As it turned out, she’d know what she was talking about, and she wasn’t bonkers. He suspected that she was insane instead; she was, after all, a professional assassin. Surely you had to be a little loose in the head to do that.
Whether she was or not, she was his best hope to get out of this situation alive. She’d made it very clear that there was no way out. It wasn’t something he could give up, it was just something he had to survive. Eliminating Ursula and Loryar did seem to be the best solution to the entire problem, although it seemed quite out of reach. Dying while attempting to do something good struck him as much better than dying while trying to hide, though.
The doorbell rang. Norman froze. Kelly had a gun in her hand with a movement so fast he wasn’t sure it hadn’t simply appeared there. Except it hadn’t; he might have that kind of ability (he realised he didn’t know, and should try it), but she certainly didn’t. Kelly had told him that she was a fairly poor world builder, and had never bothered making a world for herself because she thought it would be too much effort to do it right. Norman wondered what kind of world he would make if he had the other half of his abilities, the world building powers which Mephistopheles had kept.
All this speculation wasn’t doing anything about the doorbell though. Norman righted himself, a process he was sure was quite dizzying to somebody watching it, but for him it appeared that he just stepped from the ceiling onto the floor, inverting himself in the process. Changing things — such as how the laws of physics affected objects such as his body — appeared to be as simple as thinking about them and wanting them to happen. Kelly had warned that he might find it easier in this world than in some others, as Mephistopheles had made it in a hurry, and there may well be more loopholes in its laws than other worlds would allow.
And, of course, in Brimstone and Utopia, he would likely have the power of their respective world builders to combat, which he couldn’t hope to counter with his own abilities. The best plan there seemed to be to catch them outside their own territory, but Kelly admitted to having no idea how to accomplish that.
The doorbell rang again. Norman went out into the hall and opened the door, aware that Kelly was holding a position hidden just inside the living room door, but ready to jump out and start shooting if she deemed it necessary. He was quite surprised to see that the doorbell had been rung by a man who was probably about thirty-four years old (six months old, he reminded himself, just like everyone else in this world, even if they didn’t know it), wearing a smart grey suit and a tie. Behind him were arrayed five uniformed policemen and a policewoman, looking like they meant business. Norman looked to the man in the suit, wondering if they were here for Kelly.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I am Detective Sergeant Archangeli from Overbrook police station. We have reason to believe that a murder suspect is currently within your flat, and have a search warrant authorising us to enter and look for her.” He produced from his inside pocket a warrant card (which did indeed seem to be his) and a very official-looking piece of paper which proclaimed to allow them access to Norman’s flat. Norman stepped aside.
“You’d better come in and look then,” he said. “But you are in the wrong flat.”
“We shall see, sir. If you would sit down with me while these officers search the flat, I would like to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course.” Norman turned to go into the flat, and took the opportunity to freeze the officers in time. Kelly nearly shot him when he went back into the living room.
“What are you doing, letting them come in like that?” she demanded.
“Relax. They won’t find you. Here.” He’d never done it before, but the idea had come to him and it seemed the most sensible thing to do; and it also seemed that now he wanted to do it and knew he could, that it was the most natural thing in the world. A gap opened up in the middle of the living room, onto lush green fields under a blue sky. He stared at it for a moment; his first glimpse of another world. Kelly stepped through the gap.
“Remember to open it up and let me back through,” she said. “I don’t know which world this is, but it looks a lot like Utopia, and if it is I’m not going to be a popular person here. Especially if they’ve sent anybody through to check on me and found out about what happened to my so-called colleagues.”
“It’s not Utopia,” Norman said, although he wasn’t entirely sure how he knew that. Ah, yes, actually he was. “There’s no world builder there.”
“Perhaps Lord Loryar is out.”
“It’ll do. Just stay there, this shouldn’t take long.”
He closed the gap before Kelly could protest any more, knowing she would be unable to open one in order to return, as he’d deliberately picked a world from which Terra was far. Then he went back into the hall, got into as close a position as he could to where he’d been before, and allowed time to recapture the officers. Having absolutely no way to know what had just happened to them, and that their quarry had just slipped away to a place they couldn’t possibly find her, they proceeded to search the flat with a brisk efficiency. Archangeli sat down with Norman in the living room after a couple of constables had checked that Kelly wasn’t hiding inside the sofa.
“There’s just some paperwork to fill in,” Archangeli said, opening the folder he was carrying and producing a pen. “Your name, please?”
“Norman Arlebottom.”
“Arlebottom?”
“Ey arr ell ee bee oh tee tee oh em.”
Archangeli noted that down.
“Do you have any photographic identification such as a driving licence?”
“In my wallet.”
“Can I see it, please?”
“Of course.” Norman did the pocket-access scramble to get at his wallet, wishing that somebody had been able to design a pair of trousers which had pockets that were as easy to get at when you were sitting down as when you were standing up. He felt the world start to remould itself under his fingers and clamped down on the idea, stopping it in his tracks. It wouldn’t do to start performing impossible feats in front of this police officer, who he really wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible. The thought that the world he had sent Kelly to was indeed Utopia was one that nagged at the back of his mind uncomfortably. He’d have to get her to introduce him to some of the safer worlds they could use as refuges.
Clamping down on that line of thought before Archangeli decided he was an idiot, Norman handed the policeman his driving licence. Archangeli examined it, noted down the number and gave it back.
“Thank you, Mr. Arlebottom.”
“Please, call me Norman. Or ‘sir’ if you must. I really can’t stand my surname.”
“Very well, sir. What is your occupation?”
“I’m unemployed.”
“Since when?”
“I’ve never been employed.”
“Really? Are you on income support?”
“No. I live off an inheritance a mad great-aunt left me. It was quite considerable.”
“It must have been.”
“Unfortunately it’s dwindled significantly. I think I’ve got enough left to get myself a degree and go out looking for a career. Something to think about.”
“Quite.” Archangeli fished out a print of the capture of Kelly’s face from the CCTV footage of her most recent assassinations. “Have you ever seen this woman?”
“No.” Norman hoped the policeman couldn’t tell that he was lying. Evidently Archangeli couldn’t, because he nodded and continued with his questions.
“Do you have any idea why we might have received a tip-off that said someone matching her description had entered this flat?”
Norman shrugged. “Perhaps they were mistaken, Sergeant.”
“Have you had any female guests today?”
“No.”
“Than you neighbour was mistaken when he saw a woman enter the flat with you just after lunchtime?”
“Evidently. I’m a loner, Sergeant. I don’t go and visit people very much, and I invite people back here even less.”
“Your neighbour said that is why he remembered seeing a woman enter the flat with you.”
“My neighbour, well-meaning though he surely is, is mistaken.”
One of the uniformed constables appeared at the living room door and beckoned to Archangeli.
“Excuse me a moment, sir.”
The Sergeant rose and left the room. Norman heard some quite murmuring, then Archangeli came back in with the constable behind him. He was holding an evidence bag, which contained a gun that Norman recognised as Kelly’s.
“Would you care to explain why this weapon was found in your bathroom, sir?”
Norman stared at it, swallowed, and shrugged. He shook his head, helplessly.
“Very well., I’m arresting you for possession of a prohibited firearm, and I am also arresting you on suspicion of aiding and abetting a fugitive from the law. You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say may be given in evidence. It may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. do you understand?”
Norman nodded. The constable behind Archangeli came forward and took out his handcuffs.
“If you would hold out your hands please, sir,” he said.
This cannot be allowed to proceed, Norman thought. Subtlety was clearly out of the question, and he wasn’t going to be able to stay in Terra any longer. He held out his hands and tried to appear cooperative as the constable approached. Then, just as he was about to take hold of Norman’s hand in order to apply the handcuffs, Norman flicked his fingers and rewrote a small part of the world. Archangeli and the constable staggered backwards, stumbled onto the sofa, and collapsed into a sitting position.
“What the—” the constable exclaimed, realising that he was now wearing his own handcuffs. “Assistance!”
There was movement from the other officers in the flat. The doors into the living room slammed shut and expanded slightly, wedging themselves into their frames. Archangeli surged to his feet, but was knocked back again by Norman, who held out a hand. The gun divested itself of its bag and flew into his hand. He aimed it at the Sergeant’s head.
“I’m sorry it had to come to this, but evidently we slipped up,” Norman said. “I assume you have a pair of handcuffs under your jacket. Please be so kind as to handcuff yourself to your colleague here.”
Archangeli reached under his jacket with shaking hands and did as instructed, sitting down on the sofa.
“There. I’m going to leave now. You’re not going to be able to follow me, so there’s no point trying.” He imagined himself a backpack filled with useful supplies and hefted it onto his back with a grunt at the weight. He tried imagining it lighter, but realised he couldn’t do it without altering what was in it. Some things clearly didn’t have as many loopholes as others. He was actually surprised that things had gone so well. Kelly must be right that this world had been made in a hurry.
“Once I’m gone, feel free to release yourselves. The doors should open again not long afterwards.” He paused to arrange that. “Oh, you can have the flat, if you want. I’m not coming back.”
“Who are you?” Archangeli asked, sounding absolutely stunned.
“Norman Arlebottom. I already told you that,” Norman replied. He reopened the gap to the world where he’d sent Kelly. She was visible on the other side, looking surprised when she saw the situation back on Terra, and produced a gun almost immediately. Archangeli’s eyes got even wider when he saw her as well.
“You’re consorting with a murderer.”
“We’re trying to save the universe. Apparently I’m its best hope. Makes you wonder who’s responsible for it all really, doesn’t it? Against that, I think I can overlook the deaths of four people who were sent here to kill me. Wouldn’t you do the same?”
Archangeli spluttered.
“Well, it’s been delightful, but I must go now. Goodbye!”
The constable looked like he wanted to jump up and try and stop Norman, but with his hands cuffed and Archangeli hanging off one wrist, he obviously knew he couldn’t manage it — which is what Norman had in mind when he’d arranged things that way, of course.
With a jaunty wave, Norman went through the gap and closed it behind him. Archangeli stared at the space in the middle of the room where it had been.
“What do you think?” he asked after a while.
“I think he overpowered us and escaped out of the window, sir.”
“And the doors?”
“I don’t know about those, sir.”
Archangeli nodded.
“Very wise,” he said, and fished out a handcuff key. Just as he was releasing the constable, their colleagues burst into the room, having finally managed to open the doors. Archangeli sighed. He was going to have to do a lot of explaining about this one when DI Wilkins found out.
In the car, driving back to the police station an hour or so later, he heard the radio message that DI Wilkins was missing, having last been heard from at the murder scene. The CCTV footage, when he saw it, showed him being carried off by several burly and dangerous-looking men. There was definitely a lot more going on here than he had thought.
He found himself wishing Norman the best of luck in his attempt to save the universe. It seemed not entirely improbable that the events were connected. Wherever Norman had gone — however he’d got there — struck Archangeli as being quite intimately related to the place DI Wilkins had been taken. He wasn’t sure exactly why he thought that, but the fact that the DI’s abductors had been wearing similar clothes to Norman’s murderer gave him a significant clue.
“Best of luck to you, Mr. Arelbottom,” he said to himself, quietly lest anybody hear. “Best of luck.”
After the gap closed behind him, Norman took a moment to look around. He appeared to have arrived on the side of a pleasantly rolling hill, facing down the slope. At the bottom of the slope was a small stream which sparkled in the sun, and beyond that another hill, this one topped with attractive woodland. The entire place had the look of a park, or a carefully-crafted landscape painting.
Kelly had her hand out.
“Can I have my gun back?”
“Of course,” Norman said, suddenly realising he was still holding it. He’d threatened two police officers with it…
“You did what you had to do,” Kelly said, when she saw his knees start to shake. “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t hurt them, did you?”
“No.”
“Well then. Don’t worry about it. We have to do what’s necessary if we’re going to do any good. You understand that, I hope?”
“Yes, but still… what if they hadn’t done what I said?”
“In that world? You could have done all kinds of things to stop them, I’m sure. Lots of loopholes, remember? You didn’t even need to use the gun, really. Thanks for bringing it along though. It’s one of my favourites.”
“How many do you have?”
“Lots. I’m only carrying four at the moment though.”
“Four guns?”
Kelly shrugged. “In my business, if you’re not armed you’re probably going to be dead soon. All kinds of people take objection to assassins doing their job correctly.”
“I can imagine.”
“I also carry a few knives, of course. Just in case.”
“Of course.”
“But, while you were playing with the police, you’ll be pleased to know that I figured out which world this is.”
“Oh, good. Where are we?”
“I’m not sure it has a name. It’s an abandoned world, built by a world builder about two hundred years ago. He died about ten years back, and nobody’s lived here since. I used to come here sometimes when I was a kid, as it’s close to Ertora so it was easy to make a gap whenever I wanted.”
“That must be a trying ability for a kid to have.”
“I rather enjoyed it.”
“I meant for the parents.”
Kelly laughed. “Yes, I suppose it was. Neither were even gap makers. You must understand, of course, that even gap makers are rare — perhaps one out of every five or six thousand people, and most of them aren’t very good at it. World builders are literally one in a billion. And people with your talent, well.”
“Well what?”
“Nobody’s ever had it before, except Mephistopheles, and he passed it on to you deliberately.”
“Yes, you said. I’d like to talk to him about that.”
“Why?”
“Because he probably knows a good deal more about how this works than I do, and I’d like to know what I’ve got if I’m going to face off with Ursula and Loryar at some point.”
“That does make sense.”
“I’d also like to ask him if he wants it back, because frankly I can live without it.”
“Nobody involved in this kind of thing wants to do it.”
“Except you.”
“Well, except me. But I would much rather that it wasn’t necessary.”
“I’m sure. Any ideas where we find this Mephistopheles?”
“Not a clue. But I suspect a good place to start would be his world. He might have sneaked back there if Ursula’s stopped paying attention to it.”
“Can you make a gap there?”
Kelly concentrated for a moment.
“Not from here,” she said. “But we’re in reach of Arae, which isn’t far from Mephistopheles’ world, so we can go through there. You could make a gap of course, but I don’t think I can show you which world to send us to. You’ll just have to pick up the feel of it when we go there, so you can find it again.”
“Okay. So let’s get moving then.”
“Indeed.”
Kerry turned, and a gap opened in front of her, showing a rustling field of barley under moonlight. She beckoned Norman through, and closed it behind them.
“This is Arae,” she said. “Agricultural world. Quite peaceful, trades extensively with those nearby.”
“Peaceful?” Norman echoed. He pointed. “What about that”
In the distance, something very large was burning, sending a plume of thick smoke high into the starry sky. As they watched, they saw two bright flashes, followed several seconds later by two loud explosions as the sound reached them. Kelly grabbed Norman’s arm and hauled him through another gap, back into daylight. The gap closed.
“What was that for?” Norman demanded.
“That was Arae being invaded by Brimstone forces. Ursula’s troops. It was exactly like that when Ertora fell. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to stick around long enough for them to discover you were there.”
“You’re probably right about that. So Ursula’s trying to conquer Arae. For food, I suppose.”
“Exactly; there’s little other reason to conquer it, except as a staging ground for further invasions. It’s close to quite a few other worlds, and without your power Ursula’s limited to the same kind of gaps that I can make.”
“So holding Arae gives her quite an advantage. Will it fall?”
“Absolutely. They simply don’t have the means to fight off any kind of invasion. Since Ursula took Ertora they’ve been quietly building up defences, but it looked like they were far from sufficient. Ertoran technology is far superior, in any case.”
“Hardly seems fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I’m beginning to. Is this Mephistopheles’ world?”
“It is. What do you think?”
Norman looked at the enormous crevasse which split the world as far as he could see, and the huge tower on the other side.
“Ostentatious,” he said. “How are we going to get across that?”
“That’s your department, not mine. See what you can do. It’s not likely to be as easy to do it here as it is in Terra; this world was built much more carefully. Don’t try anything too extravagent, just enough to get us across.”
“Okay.” Norman frowned, and came up with an idea. “Here goes.”
Kelly was right — it was considerably more difficult to alter things in this world. Norman immediately perceived that he didn’t stand a chance of closing the crevasse, and so reasoned that what they needed instead was a way to get across it. Such as a bridge; but the bridge he made was frail and hazy, and faded away almost immediately.
“This is difficult,” he said when Kelly gave him a curious look. “I’ll try something else.”
“Something simpler than a bridge?”
“Something the world will let me make. That crevasse was put there to stop someone getting across it, so it’s not going to let me stop that. I think I have to make something that will get us across, but won’t let just anybody follow us.”
“And what would that be?”
“How about this?”
Norman gestured behind Kelly, and she turned to find a hot air balloon, tugging at its tie ropes, trying to float away. At the same time, a wind picked up, blowing across the crevasse in exactly the right direction.
“Is it safe?”
“Seems solid enough,” Norman said as he climbed into it. Kelly followed with a dubious expression on her face. “Cast off!”
The ropes fell away, and the balloon rose gracefully into the air, carrying them out over the crevasse. It took less than a minute to cross it, and Norman pulled the rope which started letting hot air out of the top of the balloon. A few moments later, they touched down with a bump. The basket fell over, pitching Norman and Kelly onto the soft green grass, and the balloon floated away again, rising rapidly.
“I had to arrange it so that we couldn’t keep the balloon,” Norman explained. “It’s very odd, it’s like negotiating with the world over what it will accept. Terra was made for me to live in, so was quite happy to do more or less whatever I wanted. This world is clearly somebody else’s, and it’s only got a little bit of leeway in it.”
“Mephistopheles has a reputation as a meticulous world builder.”
“Are there any others of his out there?”
“None that we’re likely to need to go to. Let’s just hope that Ursula and Loryar have been sloppier with their worlds than Mephistopheles was with his.”
“That would be convenient.”
They started making their way toward the large, heavy door at the bottom of the tower.
“Of course,” Kelly continued, “if they’ve made their worlds too strict, their own power will be reduced as well.”
“Comforting.”
“Although they’ll still be stronger than you are.”
“That’s not so comforting.”
“I didn’t think it would be. But it is the truth.”
They reached the door. Kelly tapped it experimentally.
“Do you think you can make it open?”
The door swung open. Kelly smiled and started into the tower. Norman took her arm and held her back.
“What?” she asked.
“I didn’t open the door,” he said. “Somebody else is here.”
“Mephistopheles?”
“Possibly. Let’s be careful.”
Kelly pulled out a gun and held it carefully before her as she sidled through the doorway. As she crossed the threshold, light flared inside the tower as hundreds of candles burst into flame, revealing a large and ornate spiral staircase leading upwards.
“Please, come up,” an echoing voice said. “And put the weapon away. I mean you no harm”
“Who are you?” Kelly called.
“Some call me Mephistopheles.”
“How do we know that’s true?”
The candles all extinguished, plunging them into darkness except for the weak sunlight shining through the doorway.
“There is only one person who may act like a world builder in this world apart from me, and you may ask him who is doing this,” the voice said. The candles burst into flame again. Kelly looked round at Norman, who shook his head.
“Not me,” he said. Kelly nodded.
“Okay. We go up. Be ready for anything.”
“That’s impossible.” Kelly shot him a glare. “Okay, I’ll try not to be complacent.”
“That will have to do, I suppose.” She sighed, and proceeded up the stairs. In a surprisingly short time, they reached a large room laid out with comfortable furniture and tasteful decor, lit once more by hundreds of candles. Upon one of the armchairs sat an old man with a long white beard, who smiled to see them.
“Welcome,” he said. “Please take seats, make yourselves comfortable. I apologise for not rising to greet you; my joints are not what they once were. By your manner of arrival, you are clearly the one who ended up as the recepticle of the power my sister craves so. Let me look at you.”
Norman and Kelly exchanged looks, then sat in different armchairs. Mephistopheles leaned forwards to look at Norman more closely.
“Aaah yes, you seem to have turned out all right,” he said. “It was a risk, coming back here, but once I realised you had left Terra, I had to see you for myself.” He turned to Kelly. “Tell me, how did you reach Terra?”
“I am a world builder. I made a gap.”
“No world builder can make a gap to Terra. Even I cannot reach that world.”
“When I made the gap, Utopia was not far from Terra. Lord Loryar possesses a means of adjusting the relative positions of worlds. I do not know how it works.”
Mephistopheles frowned.
“I had heard that he was seeking such a thing, but was not aware that he had found a means.”
“It does not have the full capabilities he desires. It seems he can only affect one world at a time.”
“Good. We have then a little more time in which to act.” He turned to Norman. “What have you been told about the power I transferred to you?”
“Kelly says that it gives me the ability to modify worlds made by other people, to a certain extent depending on which world. It also gives me the ability to make a gap to any other world from the world I am in, no matter what their relative positions are.”
“That is basically it, yes. A shame that people know so much about that power. If they did not, perhaps all this would not have been necessary. However, despite the interest in you and what you can do by Ursula and Loryar, it does give those of us who wish to stop both of them a considerable advantage, for those powers are not matched by any other being in any world at this time.”
“Doesn’t help much if I’m trying to change a world and the world’s builder is countering me directly.”
“True, it doesn’t, but you may find that in a lot of worlds you can do quite amazing things. This world resisted your attempt to build the bridge not because of any intrinsic property that I constructed into it, but rather because I am here, and while I am here my own world building power works to maintain the world as I intend it to be. Had you attempted to cross the crevasse when I was not in this world, you would likely have found that the bridge would have stayed and would have been safe.”
“I see.”
“I hope that you do. I know that it must be difficult for you to get used to the situation after having lived on a world where they know nothing of other worlds and gaps and builders, but I did it in order to keep my power safely out of my sister’s reach. Now, I see there is hope for defeating both her and Lord Loryar. I would gladly see both stripped of their power, for if one is gone then the other will surely triumph. You must do your best to eliminate both of them within as short a space of time as possible, lest the remaining one gain an unassailable advantage.
“You do need to know an aspect to your power which is not widely known, although if people think about it they should realise that if I was able to transfer part of my power to you, I may well also have the ability to strip power for others. I do not have that power anymore — but you do.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. You can, given enough time, remove the power to build worlds or make gaps, or any fraction of that power, from another person and absorb it into yourself. The procedure does not have to be voluntary, but it does require physical contact. You can also transfer your own powers into someone else. Please do not consider giving my own powers back to me; I no longer wish to have them, and a younger man will be more likely to succeed in what I should have done years ago. I had the opportunities to prevent both my sister Ursula and Lord Loryar from coming into the power and ambition that they now have, but I did not take them at the time, telling myself that it couldn’t be that bad, they surely wouldn’t be that bad.”
“You were wrong,” Kelly said.
“That is now obvious. The future, however, is never as clearly defined as the past.”
“Do you have any ideas how I might be able to get into contact with Loryar or Ursula long enough to remove their powers?” Norman asked. Mephistopheles shrugged.
“Nothing particularly helpful. If you can sneak up behind them, whack them over the head with a lump of wood and drag them somewhere secluded you could do it, but both tend to surround themselves with bodyguards. There is also the problem of Ursula’s multiple bodies.”
Norman looked at Kelly. “You didn’t mention this.”
“I didn’t have time. I was going to, but then the police turned up at your flat, and then we ended up in the middle of an invasion—”
“An invasion?” Mephistopheles interrupted.
“Ursula has invaded Arae,” Kelly said. “I don’t imagine it will take her much longer to consolidate her hold on the world.”
“No, Arae wouldn’t be able to resist her very strongly. And from there she can strike too many other worlds. Something has to be done. I think Lord Loryar may be able to help.”
“What? How?”
“He can change the relative positions of worlds. Go to Utopia, find out how he does it, steal whatever you need to steal and go to Arae and cut it off from the other worlds so that Ursula’s forces and whichever of her bodies she sent along with the army are stuck there until you decide otherwise. In fact, Lord Loryar might even do it himself if he knew what Ursula was planning.”
Kelly got to her feet. “In that case, I’d better go and tell him. He should still trust me, as he doesn’t know what I did when I got to Terra.”
“Go carefully, child.”
“I shall. Norman, good luck, I’ll come back to this world as soon as I can. Mephistopheles, an honour to meet you.” She bowed to both men, opened a gap and went through it. After she sealed the gap behind her, the two men sat in silence for a while.
“And what do I do next?” Norman asked eventually. Mephistopheles stroked his beard as he thought.
“I do not know, exactly,” he said, “but until Lord Loryar is able to alter the position of Arae, if he can, I suggest that you might find some productive exercise for your talents on that world, where you could usefully delay Ursula’s ability to consolidate her hold there.”
“You mean go there and make a nuisance of myself?”
“Concisely, yes. I would not, however, recommend that you get caught.”
“That wasn’t in the plan. Are you going to come? I don’t know Arae at all.”
Mephistopheles shook his head.
“No. I would only slow you down and increase your risk. Remember if you ever have to run from her forces, don’t bother. Just open a gap and get out of there, then go through another one or two, as they might be able to follow you through one. Sometimes it’s possible for an alert observer to realise which world you went to, although there’s a lot of luck involved. It’s best not to take too many chances.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Norman also rose. “I hope to see you again,” he said.
“And I you. If this is ever over and we both survive, perhaps we can spend some time getting to know each other. I didn’t really have time to specify your personality, so really I have no idea what the recipient of my power is like. I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t end up with an irresponsible, power-hungry person who would take themselves immediately to put the power to use for my sister or Lord Loryar.”
“Yes, I suppose you are.” Norman grinned. “I’m not the best hero you could have had, but I suppose I’ll have to do.”
“You will indeed have to do. Good luck.”
“Thanks. Norman picked up his bag and opened a gap back to Arae. “Goodbye.” He shouldered the bag, went through the gap and closed it. Once firmly on the other side, he looked around. Whatever had been burning before was still burning. Explosions still sounded across the peaceful hills. There, he thought, would be an excellent place to start making mischief. Chuckling to himself, he started hiking towards the glow.
Utopia was just as it had been when Kelly left, except that it wasn’t raining at the moment. Lord Loryar, having deemed that the crops had received sufficient rain for the week, had ensured clear blue skies, and plenty of sunshine to try out the cereals and make sure that the other plants grew well. All around, life was in full swing. On Utopia, that usually meant waking at dawn, working in the fields all day and going to bed again at dusk, except for the insects, which flew around in picturesque swarms, pollinated flowers and refrained from biting people. That was one improvement over Ertora which she was happy to see. Why a world designer would include biting insects of any kind was a mystery to her, although some worlds appeared to need them to sustain their ecosystems. Kelly had always thought that she would make sure her ecosystem didn’t need them if she got around to building a world. That day still seemed like it would be a long way off, if it ever came at all.
The palace guards recognised her, and a runner was sent for Lord Loryar while she was left to cool her heels in an antechamber. Nearly half an hour later, the doors slammed open and a full platoon of guards marched in, weapons trained solidly on Kelly. Lord Loryar came in behind them and stared at her.
“You return,” he said. “I would have thought you more intelligent than that.”
“My lord?”
“Do not give me such false respect here. After you killed my other assassins and betrayed me!”
“My lord, I—”
“Silence! I will not hear you speak unless it is your confession. These guards will take you to the dungeon, where you can reflect upon your situation before the questions find out what you have to hide. And don’t try opening any gaps down there; I’ve made sure that it’s quite impossible to do so.”
Guards came forward and quickly searched and disarmed Kelly before locking manacles on her wrists, holding her hands behind her back. Irons were also placed on her ankles, reducing her to a shuffling walk which they made her maintain all the way down the stairs and into the dungeons. By the time they reached her cell, her legs and arms ached, and the bonds weren’t removed before she was pushed in and the door locked behind her. The guards marched away, leaving her in the dark.
A few minutes later, she heard a voice.
“Someone new?”
She would ordinarily have ignored the voice — this was not her first time in a dungeon — but it spoke with an unusual accent. An accent exactly the same as Norman’s.
“What did you do?” the voice continued.
“Killed some people,” Kelly said. The voice — a man’s voice — was silent for a few moments.
“Who?”
“Assassins. They were sent to kill someone I wished to protect.”
“Ah.”
“Who are you?”
“John Wilkins. Detective Inspector John Wilkins. I was investigating a quadruple murder when I was grabbed and brought here. I still don’t really know where here is. Another world, they say.”
“Yes, it’s another world. You’re from Terra.”
“I am.”
“I think I’m the murderer you were looking for.”
“The woman? I had a picture, but they took it. And it’s too dark to see it. And you’re in another cell. Oh, what did I do to deserve this?”
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I was. And you killed some people our captor wanted to keep alive. Have you met his questioners yet? Such pleasant people, with their sharp points and hot irons…” Wilkins broke off and started weeping.
“Unless you count the irons they’ve put me in. I think I’m losing blood flow to my hands. The questioners come later, I think.”
“No good fortune for you then. You’ll tell them everything, you won’t be able to resist.”
“We’ll see about that. I’ve got a friend who’s going to get me out of here, and he’d probably give you a lift out as well.”
The only reply was cynical laughter. Kelly hoped that it wasn’t correct, because she couldn’t see any way out of this situation without Norman’s help. She would just have to hope that Loryar slipped up and gave her the chance to make a gap, because he was entirely correct that she wouldn’t be able to make one out of the dungeon. Whatever else he might be, he did pay attention to the essentials in his world. No matter how inconvenient those details might be for his visitors.
Norman came close to the fighting after about half an hour of walking and careful thinking. Arae appeared to offer him more leeway than Mephistopheles’ world, and he’d come up with a few ideas for what to do, but he wanted to see what kind of army Ursula had before he started doing anything noticeable.
He crawled to the top of a hill in order to be less conspicuous as he studied the forces arrayed below him, launching rockets at a medium-sized town which was already largely reduced to burning ruins. There were perhaps five thousand soldiers, backed up by a hundred or so tanks of assorted sizes, numerous armoured personell carriers and a wide selection of artillery. In the centre of the host was a large vehicle decorated with a coat of arms in gold, which simply had to be Ursula’s. He grinned wickedly. If she wanted to stay out of trouble, decorating her vehicle with gold wasn’t really the way to go about it.
It took only a little persuasion. With a violent shaking and rumbling, the ground split apart right in the middle of the army, sending tanks and artillery and soldiers tumbling to destruction in the firey depths. Lava welled up, catching some of those who had, after a startled moment, turned and fled up the hill. Norman also turned and fled in order to avoid being trampled, but took a circular path around the sulphurous molten rock. Ursula’s personal transport was just at the edge of the lava lake, driving as fast as it could up the hill toward safety. Norman grinned again, and the hill did the closest thing a hill could ever be said to do to a shrug, sending the vehicle tumbling back down and into the molten rock, where it sank below the surface and exploded.
“And if she didn’t make a gap for herself to get out of there, I’m even stupider than I look,” Norman said to himself. Some rain clouds rolled in and extinguished the fires in the burning town, then rolled out again, but the world didn’t appear to want to let Norman rebuild it. He shrugged.
“Oh well, I did try.” Whistling, he was about to open a gap to Mephistopheles’ world, when he noticed Utopia. Perhaps Kelly could use some help. He opened a gap there instead, stepped through it, and headed for the palace. He didn’t know if she was there or not, but it did seem like a logical place to start.
Ursula’s two newest bodies tended the nasty burn her oldest body had received just before opening a gap out of Arae when everything had gone disasterously wrong. She was pleased that she hadn’t sent either of the newer bodies, as the burn across her cheek would mar her looks permanently. Perhaps it was time to retire the older body, but she did find it useful sometimes to appear to people in a body which didn’t cause men to stammer over their words. There were, it seemed, some disadvantages to being what might be termed ‘too beautiful’.
Her majordomo for Brimstone bowed his way into Ursula’s dressing chamber, which was carved directly out of the solid rock of Brimstone’s largest mountain.
“Have you discovered what happened yet?” Ursula demanded. The majordomo bowed deeply, which Ursula took to be a bad sign.
“Your Majesty—”
“If you don’t have any news, don’t bother. Go and get me some!”
“Your Majesty, I have news, or at least, an absence of news which leads to only one possible conclusion.”
Ursula scowled. “Go on,” she said, in a tone which made it very clear that he wasn’t going to survive displeasing her for much longer than it took for him to regret it.
“Your Majesty, the world builder who built Arae is dead. We have heard nothing from Lord Loryar of Utopia; he appears to be waiting and working on his own plans. No action has been taken which is within the capabilities of any group we are aware of.”
“So?”
“So the inevitable conclusion, as I am sure your Majesty can see, is that the holder of Mephistopheles’ power has taken a hand and moved against you directly.”
“Is he working for Loryar?”
“He may be, your Majesty, but I find that unlikely. Lord Loryar wishes to destroy that power in order that his own plans may succeed, and if I may venture an opinion, he is a terrible liar. I doubt he could deceive a person of that much power into believing he was truly intending to work with them on a friendly basis.”
“What if this Norman is intending to also deceive Loryar?”
“That is a possibility, your Majesty. We will know if he moves against Lord Loryar also.”
“Any weakening in my position could be a strengthening in Loryar’s. If this Norman intends to take on both of us, he would want to keep us balanced until the end, lest one of us win. If I could take Utopia, I’d have prime invasion routes for all the key worlds in my grasp. He must know that.”
“Not if he was raised in ignorance of the nature of the Universe, your Majesty. Our intelligence has managed to obtain a report from someone Lord Loryar sent to Terra. Apparently that world knows nothing of any other worlds, or of gaps or world builders. They are technologically sophisticated on a level approaching that or Ertora, but have nothing particularly special to offer. No sign was found of this Norman.”
“So he has definitely left Terra?”
“With events in Arae today, I would say so, your Majesty.”
Ursula frowned, although her old body winced from stretching the burn on her face.
“Very well,” she said. “This is what we will do…”
Norman didn’t think much of Lord Loryar’s dungeons. He’d managed, with some careful concentration and significant effort, to find his way into them without being detected — after he’d explored most of the palace and discovered that Kelly had returned and been thrown into the dungeon. It wouldn’t have taken him so long, except that the people in the palace spoke what sounded like three or four different languages, and he only understood one of the less common ones.
So, the dungeons. Low-ceilinged, stone-walled, stone-floored and lit by flickering candlelight, they fulfilled just about every stereotype in the book, although Norman was glad to note that there were no rats. The cell doors were thick, heavy wood with small barred openings in them, reinforced with iron straps, huge hinges and even larger bolts secured with padlocks as large as Norman’s hand. He peered into each cell as he came to it, but many were empty, and those which weren’t didn’t hold anybody he recognised until he came to the far end of a corridor, where he found Kelly being taken out of her cell by four extremely hefty-looking guards. She was struggling, but he could see it wasn’t doing her much good, especially since her hands were bound behind her with heavy manacles, and her ankles also chained.
That, he suspected, he could do something about. Norman had been very careful not to attract the attention of Lord Loryar by changing things here, restricting himself to changing only things about his own person, thus allowing him to reach this point without being detected. Eventually he knew he would have to change something externally, but hopefully Loryar wouldn’t notice this little change… even if he did, it was something which had to be done.
With a clank and a clatter, Kelly’s chains came open and fell to the floor. The guards froze in surprise for a moment, a moment which Kelly took advantage of. She struck with blinding speed, striking one guard in the throat and crushing his windpipe. He staggered backwards, choking, while the other three advanced on Kelly. Norman imagined himself a knife and threw it at one of the guards. It missed, but hit the wall and skidded to a halt near Kelly’s foot. She stooped to pick it up.
One guard took the opportunity to run in, but she moved too quickly for him, and slumped to the floor with blood pouring from between his fingers as he tried to hold the large wound in his stomach open. The other two drew their swords, but in the confined space they weren’t as useful as they would have been in a larger room, and Kelly was able to evade them with little difficulty. One guard went down with a slit throat, and the last with the knife through his heart.
When all four were still, Kelly looked down the corridor.
“Norman?”
Norman allowed her to see him, and she grinned. “I thought it might be you. That knife was good thinking.”
“I seem to recall you mentioning that you carried knives. I thought you might know how to use it.”
“I’ve been known to practice from time to time.” She bent to retrieve the knife from the guard’s body, and cursed when she found it missing.
“This world resists changes,” Norman said. “It’s best not to fight it too much. I don’t want to attract Lord Loryar’s attention.”
“I can’t make a gap down here. Loryar arranged it so that it’s impossible. Can you do it?”
Norman thought for a moment, getting the feel of the area. He shook his head.
“No, and I don’t think I can change that without making him notice us, and then he’s likely to give us something far more concerning to deal with.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if I could persuade the roof to collapse, so I’m sure he could. It is his world, after all. Any power I have will be a mere reflection of his.”
“You’re really getting the hang of this.”
“It’s almost instinctive. I just know what the feelings I get mean. Someone will probably notice these four soon. Shall we go?”
“Not yet. In the cell next to mine there’s a policeman from Terra. I think we should take him with us. They’ve been torturing him for information about you.”
Norman went immediately to the next cell and looked in. The man lying on the floor was dressed in what had once been a fine suit, but was now tattered and bloodstained. Scabs marred his face, along with bruises and welts. He shivered constantly in his sleep.
“He’s in very bad shape,” Norman said.
“I know. He hasn’t said anything since they tortured him last. That was a few hours ago; I think they’d just got their tools ready for me when you turned up.”
“I’m glad I came when I did, then. Do any of those guards have the key to this cell?”
“Can’t you open it?”
“I’m trying to be inconspicuous, remember?”
Kelly found a ring of keys on one of the guards, and the fourth key they tried unlocked the cell door. Norman went in and crouched beside its occupant.
“What’s his name?” he asked Kelly.
“Detective Inspector John Wilkins.”
Norman touched Wilkins’ shoulder.
“Inspector,” he said. “Wake up.”
Wilkins stirred.
“What?”
“We’re here to get you out of here. Take you home.”
“Home?”
“My name is Norman Arlebottom.”
“Norman? They ask about you. Ask and ask and ask but I don’t know anything.”
“They won’t ask any more questions. We’re getting out of here.” Norman put his hand on Wilkins’ shoulder. “Hold still a moment.”
Kelly watched from the cell door as the dried blood flaked off Wilkins’ face, leaving unmarked skin behind even as the bruises and welts faded. Wilkins stretched and came to his feet with a look of wonder on his face. He stared at Norman.
“How…”
“There’s no time for that. Let’s explain after the risk of being caught has passed, shall we?”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Kelly said. Wilkins stared at her too.
“Your voice! You’re Kelly?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were taller.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really.”
“Then can we get out of here?”
“I think I know where they keep the weapons they take off their prisoners,” Norman said as they headed for the entrance. “Want to see if your guns are there, Kelly?”
“If it’s not too risky.”
“Shouldn’t be. We’re all foreigners here, so I can make us all invisible without too much risk.”
So, invisible, they walked through the dungeons to a room near the entrance, where Norman provided Kelly with another knife. There were two guards in the room, but they fell with the same swiftness as the previous four. Two walls of the room were full of shelves, and Kelly searched quickly through the contents, retrieving three of her guns and two of her knives.
“Bastards stole the rest of them I suppose,” she said. Wilkins had also been looking through the shelves, and waved his equipment at them.
“It’s not much, but some of it might be useful,” he said, tucking it into what was left of his pockets. He kept his pepper spray in hand and ready to use. Norman glanced over the shelves and found himself a loaded crossbow and a couple of knives, which he tucked into his belt.
“Let’s be moving on then. Kelly, the moment you can, I want a gap open to anywhere you can find that’s got air we can breathe. Once we’re through, close it, and I’ll open another gap to a far world so we can’t be followed.”
Kelly nodded. “Okay.”
“Right.”
They went out into the corridor again, Kelly in the lead with Norman bringing up the rear. By some great stroke of fortune, they were able to reach the stairs up to ground level without incident, and a few moments later Kelly grunted.
“Here goes,” she said, and opened a gap. As she did so, Norman felt the world twist around them.
“Go!” He shouted. “Loryar’s changing something! Go!”
Fighting to keep the world as it was for just a moment longer, Norman pushed Wilkins through the gap and urged Kelly to follow. The floor started to crumble beneath their feet as they took the last few strides, and Norman threw himself into the other world even as the floor collapsed beneath his final footfall, sending a cloud of marble dust through the gap. Kelly closed it as Norman hit the mud with a loud squelch. He fought his way upright in mud up to the knees, and spat some out of his mouth.
“Lovely world,” he said. “Where to next?”
“Terra, I think. It’s definitely far from here, they won’t have a clue where we’ve gone, and we need to get John here back home.”
“Okay.” Norman knew Terra — the world he grew up in always stood out in his mental perception of the worlds — so a gap opened easily, onto the path by the canal where Kelly and Norman had first met. They ushered Wilkins through it so that Norman could close the gap, then he led the way towards his flat.
“We’ll go to my flat first,” he explained. “Assuming it’s still safe. Your colleagues were taking quite an interest in me before I left.”
“Were they?” Wilkins still appeared rather spaced out and stunned, which didn’t really surprise Norman very much.
“They were. They seemed to think I was harbouring a murderer.”
Wilkins looked at Kelly. “You are.”
“Good point. Unfortunately, as with many things it doesn’t work out that easily. I had to take steps to stop them arresting me, and we left in rather a hurry.”
“You didn’t hurt anybody, did you?”
“No, of course not. I pointed a gun at a Sergeant — Archangeli, I think his name was—”
“DS Archangeli?”
“You know him?”
“I’m his boss.”
“Ah. Well, I didn’t hurt him, just got him to handcuff himself to a constable so I could have a bit of space to escape.”
“He doesn’t take too kindly to being told what to do.”
“I noticed, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. If I see him again, I’ll apologise — from a safe distance.”
Wilkins grunted; a sound which might be taken for either amusement or unconcern. He kept looking around him as if not quite believing where he was. Norman walked closer to Kelly and pitched his voice so that Wilkins wouldn’t be able to hear it.
“Do you think he’s okay?”
“No, but you wouldn’t be either. Lord Loryar has something of a reputation for what he does to people he thinks have information that he wants, and it’s not a pleasant one. At the moment, our friend is probably feeling quite disoriented. We pulled him out of that situation in a manner entirely unfamiliar to him. You’ve healed his injuries, so he may be wondering if it ever actually happened.” She paused. “I don’t suppose you could erase his memory of it?”
Norman frowned. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure I’d want to. It wouldn’t be right — and what would I replace it with, anyway. He may go insane because of what’s happened to him, but I think that could be averted. He’s not likely to stay sane if his memory starts falling apart. His body is one thing, but his mind is his, and I’m not even going to try messing with it.” He frowned again. “Actually, I’m not even sure I’d be allowed to.”
They walked on a bit further, then came to Norman’s flat. The door stood open.
“Someone’s there,” Norman said.
“Perhaps the police just left the door open when they departed?”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Wilkins said. “We don’t set up people’s homes to be burgled.”
“Right. I’m going in first, then,” Kelly said, drawing a gun. “Norman, stick close behind me. John, stay out of the way.”
Wilkins looked nervously at the gun, swallowed, and nodded. Kelly walked on silent feet towards the door with Norman close behind her, then darted inside. The hall was empty and silent. The living room door was also open. Kelly went inside, gun ready, and found herself face-to-face with a policeman, who let out a cry of surprise and retreated, a hand going to his belt.
“Stay right there,” Kelly told him in a deadly told of voice. The policeman froze. There was another man rising from an armchair. Norman recognised him.
“Sergeant Archangeli,” he said. “How nice to see you again.”
“Mr. Arlebottom. I was hoping we might see you again. Do we have to have the gun?”
“That depends on what you’re here for. I don’t have time to be arrested.”
“We’re not here for that. Although I might change my mind if that gun waves in my face any longer.” He gave Kelly a significant look. Kelly took another gun from inside her coat so that she could point one at each of the officers in the room. “On the other hand, I might not be able to do much about that,” Archangeli admitted.
“Put the guns away,” Norman told Kelly. “You can draw faster than they can anyway, and they’re not carrying anything lethal.”
Kelly shrugged and put the guns back inside her coat.
“Just don’t make any sudden moves,” she warned the two officers.
“I don’t think there’s any danger of that,” Archangeli said, and sat back down, gensturing to the constable to sit as well.
“We’ve got a friend with us,” Norman said. “I believe you know him.” He raised his voice. “John, come inside please.”
Archangeli’s eyes widened in surprise when Wilkins appeared in the doorway.
“Sir!”
“Sergeant. Good to see you again.”
“And you as well, sir. Where have you been?”
“That is something you should ask these two. I don’t really have any idea. They’re the ones who know how to save the Universe. I think that’s what they were talking about, anyway. They promised to explain. If you’re lucky, they might let you listen. If we’re even luckier, we might understand some of it.”
“Are you okay, sir?”
“Me? No, not at all. Sit down, for goodness’ sake.” He looked around. “We don’t seem to have enough chairs.”
Norman smiled. Two more armchairs appeared in the room, making Archangeli and the constable jump.
“Capital,” Wilkins said, and sat on one of them. “He’s a useful fellow to have around. Does take a little getting used to though.” He looked at the constable. “Paul Schulten, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why don’t you sit down as well. Listen to what these people have to say, and then help them out.”
“Sir…”
“Just listen to them then. I just wouldn’t recommend trying to arrest them for anything.” Wilkins looked to Norman. “I think we’re ready.”
“Well then,” Norman said. “I shall explain.”
“He’s done what?”
“Your Majesty, he has invaded Arae.”
“Can we launch a counterinvasion?”
“No, your Majesty. After our last expedition to Arae, our forces are too diminished to match those of Lord Loryar.”
Ursula snarled. “Curse that interfering Mephistopheles and his tame little pet! How are we doing recruiting more soldiers?”
“Conscription proceeds as your ordered, your Majesty, but it takes time to train the recruits. The commanders say we will have a workable army in four weeks. Possibly three, if the troops turn out to be more talented than usual, but they did not sound optimistic.”
Ursula hissed between her teeth. “Unacceptable,” she said. “Can the process be sped up at all? Can we substitute more soldiers for training?”
“I shall enquire, your Majesty.”
“Tell the commanders they may conscript without limitation, except for those essential to the support of the army. We cannot let Loryar hold Arae.”
The majordomo bowed. “As your Majesty commands.”
Ursula stalked up and down the room after the majordomo left. The other body currently awake, her newest and more beautiful by far than even the previous attmept by the Ertoran genetic engineers, reclined on a chaise lounge and ate grapes, watching her slightly older form pace.
“You’re still beautiful, dear,” the newer body said.
“Beauty doesn’t get you anywhere if you’re losing,” her older body retorted. Both of them sighed. Now she was even having arguments with herself! This could not be permitted to continue. Her newer body rang the bell for a messenger. Her majordomo appeared instead and bowed low.
“Your Majesty?” he asked.
“Have you spoken to the commanders yet?” Ursula asked.
“No, your Majesty. I had just completed making the arrangements to do so when you rang.”
“Well, there’s been a change of plans. Loryar cannot be allowed to have Arae. We can proceed without it if necessary, and it is too important to allow into enemy hands. Order the army commanders to deploy nuclear weapons and wipe out Loryar’s forces in Arae. Collatoral damage is no longer a consideration.”
“Yes, your Majesty.” The majordomo sounded surprised, although he hid it fairly well. Ursula ignored that.
“You may go.”
“At once, your Majesty.” He left the room.
“Nuclear weapons, dear?” Ursula’s newer body asked from the chaise lounge.
“Nuclear weapons, dear,” her older body confirmed. “Pass me a grape.” She didn’t need to talk to get her bodies to communicate with each other; she shared a single awareness between them, so it was as futile as talking to herself in a mirror would have been, but sometimes she found it amusing. The newer body plucked a grape from the bunch and tossed it to the older one, which caught it and ate it.
“Delicious,” the newer body said, and ate several more. Outside, she heard rumbling noises, and her old body went to the window. Out of the base of the mountain next to that which formed her palace, a convoy of trucks laden with nuclear-armed missiles was emerging. It seemed the commanders were going to obey with haste. She smiled grimly. She may have been stalled, but Loryar’s forces would not escape Arae alive.
“My Lord Loryar,” an army messenger bowed low before Loryar.
“Yes?”
“Word from Arae, my Lord. Ursula deploys nuclear weapons against our forces.”
“Excellent. Begin the evacuation as planned.”
“At once, my Lord.” The messenger saluted, turned, and ran back to the gap through which he’d come. It winked shut behind him; all army messengers were gap makers, and thus extremely valuable. Loryar turned to look at the array of energy channels and conduits and collectors which extended from a large construction near his palace to a large gap leading into Arae, and through the gap into that agricultural world which was soon to be a radioactive wasteland. He smiled. Ursula would never know she was fuelling her own downfall. He would lose half his army, but after this, his army wouldn’t be necessary anymore.
Gaps started opening on the next hill to the south, and troops poured through them. Loryar looked away, just in time, for through several of the gaps a blindingly bright white light flared, and a blast of searingly hot air followed shortly afterwards. Men burned where they ran, and soon the hillside was littered with corpses. Loryar made a protective barrier for himself with a single thought, and closed all the unnecessary gaps with another. As many troops as were going to survive had now escaped; there was no point allowing Ursula’s atomic detonations to reach Utopia.
Their energy, on the other hand, was going to be immensely useful. The conduits leading from Arae flared brightly each time a warhead detonated near any of the collectors. Loryar counted twenty-seven detonations before the apparatus at the end of the conduits began to glow and crackle with energy. Smiling, he walked towards it, then into the centre of the device, where there was a space for him to stand. He had a smaller machine for moving single worlds, but with this he would be able to move all the worlds at once. The era of travel between worlds was almost over…
Several more pulses of energy finished charging the device, and Loryar bent his will to activating it, guiding the worlds into their new positions. Energy surged and flared around him as worlds moved to his commands. Gaps shuddered closed, never to be reopened. At long last, his goal had been achieved.
Everything was now set in accordance with his vision. Only one person still had the power to stop him, and he shouldn’t be a problem for much longer. With no reason to do otherwise, Loryar began to smile. It truly was a wonderful day.
“He has done it? Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes, your Majesty. We can find no worlds which are not far from Brimstone. We beg of you to inform us if the same situation prevails upon Ertora.” Ursula’s third and oldest body was on Ertora, and even across the space between worlds she retained awareness with it. She concentrated for a moment.
“The situation does prevail there also,” she said. “What if it is just my two worlds he has affected?”
“That may be the case, your Majesty, but we have no way to tell.” The majordomo seemed stuck in a perpetual bow, as if afraid Ursula would be displeased. He was, of course, quite right to be afraid. Fortunately for him, Ursula’s anger settled firmly on Lord Loryar of Utopia.
“I want his head,” Ursula said. “Dripping with his blood, with his last scream of pain still on his lips.”
“Your Majesty—”
“The Ertoran scientists are being put to work on this immediately. Worlds can be moved; we must discover how to do it ourselves. Organise any scientists on Brimstone with any knowledge of world science to immediately work on the problem. All other concerns are of no importance compared to this. Do you understand?”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
“Then get to it!”
“I obey, your Majesty.”
Norman felt it as a queasiness, a nausea that threatened to send him crashing to the floor as his legs gave way. It did send him crashing to the floor as his legs gave way. He banged his head on a table going down, and saw stars for a moment. On the other side of the room, someone else hit the floor, knocking over a vase as they fell, and exclamations of surprise were heard.
Archangeli was there to offer Norman a helping hand.
“What happened?” he asked. He looked a little wild around the eyes, whether because of this latest incident or because of what he’d been told, Norman wasn’t sure. Norman pulled himself with assistance into a sitting position. He still felt dizzy and weak. On the other side of the room, he saw Kelly coming unsteadily to her feet, but didn’t feel up to even attempting that yet.
“What was that?” Kelly asked.
“I don’t know. I…” Norman realised something. “The worlds have moved.”
“What?”
“The worlds have moved. They’re all far from here now.”
Kelly’s eyes unfocused as she felt for nearby worlds.
“By all the… he’s gone and done it.”
“Who? Lord Loryar?”
“Were you aware of anybody else who wanted to do this? Or was even close to the point of achieving it? No, it has to be him.”
“Excuse me,” Schulten said, still looking quite out of sorts himself after what he’d been told. He’d believed it, which Norman hadn’t expected it, but didn’t quite look like he accepted it yet. “Are you talking about the Lord Loryar who wants to seperate all the worlds from each other forever?”
“Yes,” Norman said. “And I think he may have managed it.”
“Except for one small problem,” Kelly interrupted. She pointed at Norman. “You’re still alive.”
“This is very true. What do we do about it?”
“I don’t know, but I think we should go and see Mephistopheles if we can. He knows more about this than anybody who’s not likely to try and kill us on sight.”
“Good plan.”
“We assume, then, that you can still reach other worlds?” Wilkins asked. Norman nodded.
“All he’s done is changed the relationships between worlds so that they’re all far from each other. That’s no obstacle to me.” As if to prove it, he opened a gap to Mephistopheles’ world. Schulten and Archangeli let out exclamations when they realised what it was. Wilkins studied it carefully, having seen a gap before, albeit briefly. Norman watched the comprehension dawning on Archangeli’s face, then at the similar expression on Schulten’s.
“Now you know it’s real,” Kelly said to them, and strode through the gap. The others followed, with varying degrees of hesitation, and they found themselves quite close to Mephistopheles’ tower. It was near sunset, and there was a light burning in the highest window. A few moments after Norman closed the gap, Mephistopheles put his head out of the window and waved at them.
“Why don’t you come up,” he called. “I’ve put the kettle on, there’s tea if you want it.”
“We’re not here on a social call,” Kelly called back.
“I know, but we can at least behave like civilised people,” Mephistopheles replied. He retreated from the window, which became a door. A flight of steps grew from the side of the tower, down to where they stood, then started moving upwards like an escalator.
“Your work?” Kelly asked Norman, who shook his head.
“Much fancier than I would have thought of,” he replied. They stepped onto the moving staircase, and it whisked them to the open door in a pleasantly short amount of time. Mephistopheles waved them all to sit — there were more seats than there had been last time, so they all had several to choose from. Mephistopheles served four kinds of tea from four seperate teapots, pouring into elegant china cups. Norman had a strong, smokey black tea. Kelly chose a milder tea which she had with milk and two sugars. Schulten had the same tea with four sugars, which made Norman’s eyes widen slightly, but it seemed to be a policeman thing, for Archangeli and Wilkins both put three sugars in their teas.
Mephistopheles shook his head as if to say there was no accounting for the tastes of the young, and sat himself down in his own comfortable armchair.
“Well then,” he said. “I don’t need to ask why you’re here. Having felt what happened, I can hardly be surprised that you all turn up seeking help. Unfortunately,” he added, holding up a hand to forestall any premature discussion, “help is something I cannot offer you. I know very little about the situation we are now in, and count myself lucky only that I am in my own world where I am, in theory, safe and comfortable and unassailable for as long as I choose to live.”
“Lord Loryar acted too soon,” Kelly said. “While Norman remains alive, or somebody else with that power remains alive, his vision cannot come true.”
“And so he must have a plan to eliminate that power before much longer,” Mephistopheles agreed. “Obviously we cannot allow this to happen.”
“Of course.”
“As I see it, you have the following options. In the first option, you find a quiet little world and hide in it and hope nobody comes for you, because I doubt Ursula will spend much time idle before she starts working on a method to travel between worlds again.”
“Loryar’s plan doesn’t really work very well, does it? Even if he does eliminate me and my power, someone would still eventually manage to bridge the worlds again.”
“Yes, that is very likely. However, what Loryar perhaps doesn’t realise is that what he has done has upset the structure of the universe. That’s why you were both sick when it happened; I should imagine every world builder and gap maker alive was, except possibly Loryar himself. It depends how he did it. Your first option really isn’t an option at all, because eventually the universe, without any intervention, is going to break apart. Loryar has set the seeds for that destruction with his actions, and without somebody to hold it together, it will fracture and break and everything will eventually cease to exist.”
“Lovely. So we’ve got to do something then?”
“Oh yes.” Mephistopheles sipped his fragrant green tea before continuing. “So your second option is to save the universe. Actually, that’s also your third option; I have two different ways to go about it. The first way is to go to Utopia, fight Loryar on his own ground, and attempt to reverse what he’s done — assuming you survive the encounter. Which, I must say, is unlikely.”
“Not very attractive. What’s the other option?”
“The other option is an interesting one. I don’t know if you’re aware yet, but there are cracks starting to appear in the Universe. There are places you can go through them; places unlike any world any world builder has ever imagined. Worlds older than any I have ever seen or heard tell of. Worlds which perhaps contain our entire Universe within them. I do not know exactly, just flashes I have glimpsed.”
Norman held up a hand. “Hold on a moment. How come we haven’t sensed any of this?”
“Were you looking?”
“No.”
“Well then. It’s not that obvious yet. I started to suspect it was happening after the nausea wore off and I thought my way through what had happened. I am, it has to be said, a lot more knowledgeable about the nature of the Universe than you are.”
“Of course.”
“So, your third option, is to slip through the cracks in the Universe, and go and find out how to repair it from there, from outside the Universe we know. It will be strange and it will be difficult, but it may be possible. Then again, it may not. I do not know.”
“It sounds like there’s a better chance than fighting Loryar,” Kelly observed.
“But you would need to do that as well,” Mephistopheles said. “And before you protest that you cannot, I do not really propose that you fight Loryar.”
“Who will, then?” Norman asked. “I assume you mean to keep him distracted?”
“That is exactly what I mean. And who better to do that, than the Empress Ursula of Brimstone and Ertora. All three of her.”
“You would have me assist Ursula?”
“Well, ultimately you’d have to betray her of course, but yes, I think that’s one of your few viable options at this point. Go and see her, give her your power, and she’ll use it as she sees fit. That use is likely to displease Lord Loryar highly. She may even be able to reverse the damage herself, as it’s certainly not in her best interests for the situation to remain.”
“But to give her this power…”
“If the Universe falls apart, what good would it do you to keep it?”
“Well…”
“And who’s Universe would you prefer? Ursula’s, where there’s tyranny, oppression and murder, certainly — or Loryar’s, which will unravel and annihiliate everything, with no possibility of recovery?”
There was silence after this sombre assessment.
“Ursula’s world is clearly the one offering hope to change,” Norman says. “Therefore, if we have to choose…” he looked around at the others, who looked back at him. Kelly looked horrified, but nodded when she met his gaze.
“It does make sense,” she said. “Although I know how bad it would be.”
The three police officers looked grim. They understood the choice, although they couldn’t possibly have Kelly’s knowledge of what it would be like in every world if Ursula won. Of course, Ursula’s winning wasn’t guarenteed yet.
“Very well,” Norman said. “We’ll do it that way. How do we get through one of these cracks?”
“I’ll show Kelly how to find them,” Mephistopheles said. “There are a couple even in my small world already. You should go to Ertora and see if Ursula is there.She will be easier to deal with if you’re not in her own world; don’t go to Brimstone if you can avoid it.”
Norman nodded. “I’ll need some help to find Ertora.”
“It’s not difficult,” Kelly said. “Just look for the smelly world.”
“You keep mentioning that. Is it really that bad?”
“You’ll see. And you’ll think I was understating it, too.”
Norman’s expression showed that he didn’t think Kelly’s prediction would hold out.
“Here goes,” he said, found a world that seemed plausible, and opened a gap to it.
“That’s not Ertora,” Kelly said after she looked through it.
“No,” Norman agreed, “but I have to start somewhere.”
He stepped through the gap, and closed it behind him. Kelly looked around at everyone who was left.
“So,” she said. “Who wants to explore part of the Universe that nobody has ever seen before?”
Going through a crack in the Universe wasn’t like going through a gap between worlds. It was more like falling than stepping, and Archangeli found himself quite disoriented. So disoriented, in fact, that it took him more than just a few moments to realise that there didn’t seem to be anybody else with him. He looked around several times to make sure, but the others persisted in their absence.
There was also, he noticed, no evidence behind, above, below, in front or to the sides of him of any means by which he could have arrived… here. Wherever here was. It was a strange kind of place — a simple room, with rather unusual proportions, about twenty feet along each side but about fifty feet tall. Six bright lights shone from the ceiling to illuminate the perfectly smooth and featureless mid-grey walls. The only variation in colour came from the areas where the lights cast patterns upon the walls and floor and ceiling, although Archangeli couldn’t look at the ceiling for long because the lights really were very bright. Like the lights used to illuminate sports halls and gymnasiums. Or possibly more like the ones used to illuminate football pitches. He looked around several times to make sure, but the others persisted in their absence.
There was also, he noticed, no evidence behind, above, below, in front or to the sides of him of any means by which he could have arrived… here. Wherever here was. It was a strange kind of place — a simple room, with rather unusual proportions, about twenty feet along each side but about fifty feet tall. Six bright lights shone from the ceiling to illuminate the perfectly smooth and featureless mid-grey walls. The only variation in colour came from the areas where the lights cast patterns upon the walls and floor and ceiling, although Archangeli couldn’t look at the ceiling for long because the lights really were very bright. Like the lights used to illuminate sports halls and gymnasiums. Or possibly more like the ones used to illuminate football pitches.
The floor was slightly soft, although exactly the same colour and finish as the walls. The walls, when Archangeli went to touch them, proved to also be slightly soft, which explained why they looked to be made of exactly the same material. Thinking about such things helped Archangeli to take his mind off the fact that there was absolutely no means visible of getting out of the room. No door, no windows, no blemishes or holes in the walls or floor of any kind. There may have been a route through the ceiling, but he couldn’t see it around the lights even if it had been possible to reach it. Archangeli had been a high jump champion while he was in police training, but that had been fifteen years ago, and fifty feet would have been impossible even then.
“So how do I get out of here?” he asked the empty room. There was no reply — unless you could count the walls disappearing as a reply. It was a sort of swirling sensation, and suddenly the room was gone. Archangeli found himself standing on a chessboard. He was on a white square near the centre, and black and white chess pieces towered all around him. He tried to leave his square to look around, and found that he couldn’t. Whenever he tried to take a step to go out of the square, his leg simply didn’t respond to the command to lift up.
Across the board, he heard a rumbling sound, and saw a huge white bishop sliding along a rank of white squares. It stopped, perfectly aligned to take him, had he been a chess piece. He looked around for black pieces. None were defending him.
“Am I black, or white?” he wondered. Suddenly, he felt the compulsion to move, and ran along a horizontal line to a black square, positioned to take the white bishop.
“That explains that,” he said. The bishop slide smoothly one square, to move out of his line of attack. In doing so, it exposed itself to attack from the black queen, which thudded into it with a horrendous crash. Pieces of the bishop flew in all directions. Archangeli ducked, but one of the flying shards caught him in the back of his hand. He cried out in pain and pulled it out. Blood dripped onto the board.
Again he had to move. He flung himself at a pawn, which skidded wildly out of the way and fell off the edge of the board. Moments later was a rush of movement, a white figure bearing down on him, and a solid impact in the side as the white queen sent him flying over the edge of the board and into the endless void in which it floated. He watched the board fall away above him as he fell.
The world blinked around him, and he was lying on soft green grass, sweet and fragrant in the cool night air. Stars twinkled above him. He lay calmly on the grass for a moment, pleased that nobody seemed to be trying to attack him here, then rolled onto his side to sit up.
Next to him, a young woman wearing glasses and typing on a laptop computer gave a startled cry, scrambled to her feet, and stared at Archangeli in absolute shock.
“You! No! You’re not real!”
“I’m sorry?”
“I must be dreaming. I was writing, I fell asleep, and I started dreaming about the characters in my book. Perfectly normal. Now, I know it’s a dream, so I should wake up now.” She looked around expectantly. Nothing changed.
“Perhaps this is a dream,” Archangeli said, “but if it is, I’m in it as well.”
“Or are you just a figment of my imagination?”
Archangeli remembered what he’d been told about world builders. “Perhaps I’m just something your imagination created.”
“Like I’m some kind of world builder or something? No. I invented them. It’s just a story.”
“I’m Luke Archangeli—”
“I know who you are. Would you like to read your biography? I did a lot of background work on you, and now look what’s happened.”
Archangeli took a moment to arrange his thoughts. “I’m sorry. You say I’m a character in one of your books?”
“My only book. My first one, anyway. It was going well, but then it sort of ran away with me. You were supposed to arrest Norman, but then he fought back and suddenly he’s saving the Universe.” The author sighed and shook her head. “Why do my characters never do as I tell them?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s probably got something to do with why children don’t always do what their parents tell them to do. If we gain free will…”
“That’s absurd.”
“Who are you talking to now? I’m here, you’re not dreaming. You wrote my entire Universe, and I lived in it and believed it was real.”
“Bit of a blow, I suppose?”
“I was only just starting to deal with what I was told about the Universe I thought I lived in. This hits a numb mind, believe me.”
“So characters are crawling out of books now? Is there going to be an invasion of you lot? Are Norman and Kelly and Ursula all going to appear next?”
“I don’t know. I lost the others somewhere. We were going through one of those cracks in Mephistopheles’ world.”
The author gasped. “Mephistopheles! Of course. He’s the one who sorts all this sort of thing out. He’ll know what’s going on.” She turned to her computer and started to type.
Mephistopheles sent Kelly and the three police officers through the crack they had found near the base of his tower.
She paused. “How is he going to find out that everything on this side has gone completely wrong?”
“Can’t I go back and tell him?”
“Perhaps.”
A crack opened up behind Archangeli
She stopped. “No, that’s too convenient. Why don’t we just make Mephistopheles fall through another one? It could open up right next to his chair.”
“Will it bring him here?”
“It will if I say it will.”
“As long as he avoids that chessboard. That was dangerous.” Archangeli’s hand was still dripping blood, and his ribs throbbed painfully where the white queen had hit him.
“I don’t know where that came from, I honestly don’t,” the author said. “Suddenly it was there there. Look.” She pointed at the laptop’s screen, and there Archangeli saw an account of his experience on the chessboard.
“This is very odd,” he said. “You know, I assume, that the Universe I thought I knew about even though I’d only just been told about it and it’s still really only just sinking in, that Universe of the many worlds and gaps and world builders and gap makers and Norman, with Ursula and Loryar and their armies and plans and forces and various underlings and unpleasant torturers and bizarre abilities of their own, is falling apart?”
The girl frowned as she made her way through what was probably one of the longest sentences which Archangeli had ever spoken in his entire life.
“Of course I know,” she said. “It was my idea. It just came to me in a dream…” she trailed off. “Oh no.”
“What?”
She looked around and checked her laptop. Words had appeared in her word processor’s window.
Theresa had thought she was in control of her life and her novel, but now the realisation came to her that perhaps she wasn’t. If she could write a novel where the characters came alive and came to talk to her, what made her think that somebody else wasn’t writing a novel which had her in it, writing a novel where the characters came alive and came to talk to her. And if that person wasn’t also in a novel which someone else was writing…
“Your name is Theresa, I assume?”
“Theresa Jones.”
Archangeli held out a hand. “Luke Archangeli—”
“I know.”
“—pleased to meet you.”
They shook hands.
“So I guess this makes you my Goddess,” Archangeli said.
“Does that mean you do anything I say?”
“No, but I think it might mean I do anything you write on that laptop of yours.”
“Perhaps.” Archangeli noticed that the laptop’s screen was dark. “But I turned it off. The battery wouldn’t last forever anyway. Now what do you say we see if we can figure out if this is the real world, or if there’s another one with a writer writing my story in it.”
“That sounds quite fine,” Archangeli said. He grinned. Theresa smiled back. Archangeli noticed that it really was a very beautiful smile. He grinned more widely. “And since you know me so well, you can have no objections to me getting to know you better.”
“Of course not. We’ll go and eat. Chinese, I think.”
“That’s my favourite—”
“I know. That, I admit, was quite deliberate. Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this, but I wrote you as my ideal man.”
“Oh really?”
“Oh yes.”
Archangeli thought that explained the rapidly-increasing feeling he was getting when he looked at Theresa. Strangely, it didn’t bother him in the slightest.
“Well then. Perhaps we’ll get a chance to find out if you did it properly.”
Arm in arm, they strolled off. On a faroff hilltop, other eyes watched them and chuckled. This was quite fine indeed. The dark figure settled his sword more firmly in its scabbard and strode off, keeping pace with the distant couple. When it came, it would be marvellous. He chuckled into the dark. People who heard that chuckle generally didn’t stick around long enough to hear it again; it was the kind of chuckle which might send shivers down your spine — or if you weren’t one of the bravest people ever written about, it might turn your knees to water.
Most people just ran away from it instead. The owner of the laugh broke into a jog, to gain some ground on his prey before they were lost in the urban sprawl which surrounded the park. It wouldn’t do to lose them. It wouldn’t do at all.
Norman knew Ertora as soon as he came to it. It did, as Kelly had said it would, stink. Walking through the streets from where his gap had opened toward the palace which seemed a likely place to find Ursula, if one of her bodies was here, Norman saw for the first time the full extent of what Ursula would visit on all the worlds if she could. Poverty, squalor and disease were rampant. People argued and fought in the streets, and the fights were broken up by burly police with big clubs who used them indiscriminately. Those who protested too much were dragged away. Those who protested even more were beaten, or in some cases shot.
Big, shiny cars cruised through the streets, floating at waist height and quite happy to knock down anybody who didn’t get out of the way fast enough. The whole place stank of corruption, backstabbing, people jostling to get closer to the seat of power, and a large dose of fear. As well as the actual stink, which complemented the metaphorical one extremely well. Norman expressed his opinion of the smell by making a couple of wads of cotton wool, which he stuck in his nostrils. After a few moments, he added a bit of perfume to the cotton wool, as some of the stink was still getting through. It put him in mind of rotting eggs, mixed with copious amounts of human sewage, fresh blood and swamp gas.
Thankfully, now he could only smell a pleasant scent of roses from his nostril plugs. Unfortunately, the smell was so thick he thought he could taste it — and imagining being able to taste it was just as bad as if he actually could. The palace loomed large before him. He strode up its steps and up to the guards at the door, who levelled weapons at him and instructed him to halt. He didn’t speak whatever language they were using, but the intention was clear enough. With a thought and a slight shrug, he sent the guards flying, one to the left and one to the right. They cried out as they were catapulted into the air, and landed hard, several blocks away.
A woman’s voice spoke from the shadows behind the pillars which fronted the palace.
“They’re probably dead, you know. Did you mean to kill them?”
“Not really, but I can’t say I mind very much,” Norman replied. The woman swayed out of the shadows. She was heartstoppingly beautiful, dressed in very little red satin, with blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. “Who are you?”
“My name is Ursula. I believe you may have heard of me.” She smiled, and giggled, for all the world as if she was an empty-headed beauty. Norman knew otherwise, and backed up several steps to keep a distance between them. She giggled again. “And you would be the famous Norman.”
“That I would be.”
“And why have you come here? You wish to take this world back from me, when I cannot reinforce it and I cannot use my own powers to fight you? You know you could not defeat me if we stood in Brimstone.”
“I know that. I came to talk to you. I have… a proposition.”
“Really?” Ursula’s eyes widened. “How naughty.”
“Don’t act like you’re stupid. I know you aren’t.”
“You’re right, I’m not. It pays to keep in practice though. Shall we?” She gestured inside the building. Norman inclined his head and went in. No guards bothered him this time; Ursula walked next to him. They proceeded up a grand staircase to a large audience chamber. There was a throne, but Ursula stood instead at the foot of the steps leading up to it, and looked Malcom in the eyes.
“Now,” she said. “Tell me what you propose.”
“Lord Loryar of Utopia has defeated you. While the current situation persists, your ambitions cannot proceed.”
“This is true, but the situation will be temporary only. We will find a way to reverse what has been done.”
“Perhaps, but how long will it take you? The worlds are unravelling even now. I came through five worlds on my way here. All are suffering to some extent or another. Even Mephistopheles cannot hold his own world together. Ertora is beginning to fray around the edges. Can you hold Brimstone together for much longer? What Loryar has done must be reversed. He is the only person with the ability to do that.”
“He may not have the ability. He intended only for this to happen, not that it be reversed.”
“Did he intend for the worlds to unravel?”
“It was known that it would be a risk. I knew. He must have known. Mephistopheles knew as well. Did you know how many times my brother tried to persuade Loryar to give up his ambitions?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.” Ursula flicked her fingers dismissively. “I lost count. It was quite a few, though. He had to give up, though. Loryar eventually retreated to Utopia and stayed there, so none of us could go and talk to him anyway. He swore to kill us on sight. He was most unreasonable. I invited him several times to visit me in my citadel in Brimstone, or at the palace here after I took this world, but he always refused in the rudest way imaginable. Eventually I stopped bothering. It was proving difficult to find messengers who would go, as he developed a habit of sending them back in pieces.”
“Delightful.”
“Always a charming one, Loryar. I wish I’d had his parents assassinated before they’d conceived him, but I’m sure you’re aware that hindsight is far more powerful than one’s normal perception of things.”
“You’re just full of cheerful talk, aren’t you?”
“I like to keep in practice. I have to sound barbaric or people don’t do what I tell them to. Now, get to the point?”
“I have a power you want. A power you now need. You have something I want.”
“And what is that, darling?” Ursula fluttered her eyelashes in an extremely girlish manner. Norman blushed, which made Ursula giggle.
“You have the military capability to credibly take on Loryar in his own world.”
“Perhaps. You demolished a fair bit of my army.”
“I’m sure you’ve managed to replace most of it by now.”
“I might have done. Your point is?”
“My point is that with my ability to counter Loryar’s world building power in his own world, you could mount a plausible invasion which might just manage to kill him. With my ability to move between worlds even with the current situation, you could actually get your forces there. You need me.”
“And what if I do? What do you want in return?”
“Put the worlds back how they were. Stop them falling apart.”
“And?”
“And nothing. That’s it. It’s not a hard choice, is it? Your rule in worlds that stay intact, or Loryar’s way, the way we have now, where everybody ends up dead or falling into chaos or somewhere we can’t conceive? Who knows how it would end? Wouldn’t you choose the way you know at least offers some hope of the Universe you want?”
Ursula chuckled. “You’re an intelligent man, I see. What do you propose? You want to assist me? Be my underling?”
“No. I’m going to give you the power you’ve craved for so long.”
“And wouldn’t that be nice. How do you know I won’t betray you and kill you the moment you do so?”
“Because there will be no reason to do so. I will no longer be a threat to you.”
Ursula sucked air between her lips. Colour rose in her cheeks; Norman could tell he’d managed to excite her.
“You make a very tempting offer, darling.”
“I knew you’d find it so. How about it?”
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“You’re going to say yes, and I’m going to give this power to you, and then I’ll be rid of it.”
“And what I do to you afterwards?”
“Doesn’t really matter. But you might as well let me leave.”
“Very well. Return to my brother’s miserable little world, and stay there, and you will not be bothered as long as you live.”
“Done.” Norman held up his hand. “Are you ready? Take my hand.”
Ursula’s fingertips touched his. There was a thud, an impact in the air. The building shook, and Ursula and Norman were thrown apart. They landed on opposite sides of the room. Ursula picked herself up, groggily. Norman did the same, slowly. It was too late for any regrets now.
“Well,” Ursula said. “That I did not expect.” A gap opened in the middle of the room; a gap to Mephistopheles’ world. “Go then. Our deal is kept.”
“You do not have much time,” Norman said. “Act before it is too late.”
He went through the gap, and she closed it behind him. Then she began to laugh. Loryar was in for a big surprise.
Paul Schulten felt like a bubble rising through water. A lot of water. He’d read that oceans had thermal layers which were seperated by barriers of something or other — creatures that liked living there, perhaps, or debris pushed to those areas by the marvellous forces of convection — and it seemed to him that each time he stopped, it was at one of these thermal layer transitions.
It was clear that each time he stopped, he was in a different world, and he was starting to suspect that each might might well be in a different Universe. He’d stepped into the crack in Mephistopheles’ world with everyone else, but had emerged from the other side on his own. He’d only just started to enjoy the pleasant beach on which he’d arrived when that world had dissolved around him, and he’d found himself on a busy city street, then on a high-speed train going somewhere from somewhere else, then on an enormous cargo ship, then in a gloomy forest, a spacious loft apartment, a small grove of trees outside a large town, a coffee shop, another beach, the foothills of some very impressive mountains, and now he appeared to be in a prison. He really hoped that this wasn’t the point where the bubble that was him reached the water’s surface and popped.
Some worlds where he’d appeared, he’d seen other people there. Many had been surprised or shocked, but he hadn’t really been there long enough to hear more than a few notes of surprise — and the first few worlds had been at least as surprising to him as his appearance was to the inhabitants. This time, he’d appeared in a small room — a cell, there was no denying that — and there was only one other person in it, seated at a desk, with a pen in his hand and a sheet of paper in front of him. He jumped when Paul shifted his weight, making various bits of his belt (he still wore his duty belt, although he wasn’t sure what good it was going to do him anymore) click or squeak.
After gaping at Paul for a moment, the man — the prisoner — smiled broadly.
“I was wondering when you would get here,” he said. “Or rather, I was hoping you would get here. I wasn’t entirely sure if you actually would, you see. These things are never as certain as one might wish them to be.”
“And what did you wish to accomplish?” Paul asked him. He settled into the tone of voice he used when questioning prisoners, or potential prisoners. The man scowled.
“I would hope that is obvious by my evident delight and admiration in seeing you. You’re a resourceful fellow, you know.”
“Am I.” Paul said it flatly, making it clear he wasn’t particularly interested in what this man thought of him. He was more interested in why he was here, where here was and how he could get out. Somewhere outside the cell, metallic banging noises made themselves heard, along with shouts.
“We tarry too long,” the prisoner said. “The guards come. What will they think, when they see you here with me? It is clear, I think, that they must not.” He turned back to his sheet of paper and began to write, furiously. Paul leaned over his shoulder.
As Paul leaned over the mysterious man’s shoulder, he felt the world dissolving around him again as he moved up through another layer, to another Universe.
Paul looked around.
“Doesn’t appear to be working,” he said.
“Still here? Don’t worry. It takes a while to take effect. Besides, I’ve not finished yet.”
The prisoner continued to write.
This time, he realised there was something different. This time, he travelled not alone, but with a companion — the man from the prison cell in which he had appeared, the man who appeared to be writing his own future along with Paul’s. They found themselves on a glittering marble beach.
A wave crashed over Paul’s feet, soaking the bottom of his trousers. He danced out of the water, cursing, and feeling water start to seep into his boots through his socks. They were indeed on a glittering marble beach. The prisoner stood on the sand, still with a pen in his hand, laughing out loud.
“I did it! I actually did it!” he crowed. “Oh, thankyou. You have no idea how much I wanted to escape from that place.”
“And where precisely was that place? It looked like a prison to me.”
“That’s because it is a prison,” the man replied, quite reasonably. “A prison in which I was confined.”
“What was your crime?”
“Crime?” The man looked quite shocked. “You think I committed a crime?”
“People in prison usually have.”
“In a fair and just society such as that which you come from, yes. Not in the one which we have just left. I should thank you for helping me to escape — your activities in your own Universe have made it possible for me to bridge this gap myself.”
“What gap? Talk some sense. Start, if you please, from the beginning.”
“From the beginning? Does this have a beginning?”
“Most things do.”
“Most, aye. But not all. I do not know the precise nature of the world from which you come, although I have caught hints of it. I know you enforce the law in a fair and just society, in, no doubt, a fair and just way. You seem a nice kind of guy.”
“I’m not so nice when I’m angry.”
“Calm down, then. I’m attempting to explain. You must forgive me, this is very difficult. In your world — or rather, in your Universe, as I gather it is made up of several hundred worlds at least — somebody did something which upset the very nature of reality. Cracks started to appear. You stepped through one of them. It’s possible you fell through it, but I don’t think you stayed long enough for that sort of thing to have started happening yet.”
“I stepped through. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
“Oh yes, quite. I’m sure it did. You are attempting to save your own Universe, are you not?”
“So I’m told. To be honest, I find the whole thing rather confusing.”
“No doubt. It’s not the easiest of things to grasp. How about if I told you that I believe — and have fairly significant proof by means of your being here at all — that all Universes are created inside the fictional work of inhabitants of another Universe — a containing Universe, as it were.”
“Once, I would have assumed you were mad.”
“And now?” The man looked at Paul with his head cocked to one side, squinting owlishly. Paul shrugged and sighed.
“I’m not sure. It sounds as plausible as anything else I’ve seen — and could explain how I got here. I assume you are the architect of my journey here?”
“In a manner of speaking. I am, you see, an author. An oppressed author, for in my own world, which is barbaric and cruel, I wrote books of freedom and hope. For that I was imprisoned. Because of my work, I was able to persuade certain guards with some hankering for the kind of life you have taken for granted since you were born to allow me writing materials in my confinement, that I could continue my work. As I did so, I realised, gradually, that what I was writing was not the pure fiction of my own mind, but rather mere glimpses of the things which were happening in an entirely different Universe. Have you ever written a story, sir?”
“Once or twice. I haven’t tried it for years, no talent for it.”
“Ah, and you see, what is the talent for writing stories?”
“I don’t know. A fertile imagination, perhaps? I’m a police officer, and so I tend to stay rooted in reality.”
“But some imagination is required when you are attempting to determine what, when, where, why and by whom in the course of your investigations.”
“Some, yes. If I was better at that, I would be in CID.”
“Perhaps, but what is imagination? Is it merely the ability to ‘make things up’, or is it something more profound? An insight into other worlds? What if all fictional worlds are already there, and the people with think make them up are actually just getting glimpses into them, to gain an insight into what other people with other concerns are doing — and then they write them down.”
“That sounds mad.”
“I believe it is true.”
“I—” Paul hesitated. A lot of what he’d seen already was quite mad enough without adding this to the problem, but it had a disturbing ring of potential truth to it. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Perhaps you will figure it out at some later time,” the man said. “In the mean time, perhaps it is best if you at least behave as if you accepted it, for I do and I believe in your presence here I now have proof of it, for you are from a Universe which is being written about in another Universe which is written about in a Universe about which I myself have written. There are more layers than that, you saw them as you came here, but you get the idea.”
“I do. Why me?”
“Whoever is writing about your Universe has played a dangerous game. They have changed it so that the boundaries are no longer solid. We can reach down and communicate directly with those we formerly thought of as our characters. And they can reach up and communicate with us. Passage between the Universes is sometimes possible. All the barriers are breaking down. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but they are. We are, after all, here.”
“And where is here?”
“One of my own worlds. Peaceful, calm, and wise. It is entirely possible that there are people here who will know what is happening and how we can stop it.”
“Stop it? How we can stop it?”
“Participation is not compulsory, but your assistance would be appreciated.”
Paul grunted. The man strode off down the beach.
“As you may have gathered,” he said when Paul caught up with him, “it is also becoming possible for one to influence one’s own world, not just the one which one usually writes about. I’m hoping that it’s not going to swing even further and allow people to influence the world above them in the web. That could cause some serious problems.”
“Is there a world where this all stops? Where all the other worlds came from?”
“Is there? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve seen no evidence that the number of worlds diminishes as you go up the web, no evidence at all. I think perhaps I would have done.”
“Unless we are so far down it that the number of worlds is inconceivably vast even when reduced at each level.”
“That is a possibility, I admit. You see, you’re not as stupid as you think you are.”
“Thanks. I think. Where are we going?”
“There is a village not far from here. We shall go there and talk to the Shaman, and see what he has to tell us.”
“And if he doesn’t know anything?”
“We’ll have to go somewhere else. Do you know what will happen if the barriers between the Universes collapse?”
“No, but if it’s anything like what we were facing back in my Universe, it won’t be pleasant.”
“It will, I suspect, be a great deal worse than that.”
“Delightful. Shall we move along, then?” Paul picked up his pace, and the man had no choice but to follow. Paul realised he didn’t know this man’s name. “What is your name?” he asked.
“Steve,” the man said. “Well, Stephen, but I prefer to be called Steve. Steve Jobs.”
Paul blinked at him.
“Who?”
“Steve Jobs.”
“Are you sure?”
“Certain. What?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s nothing, honestly. Just a coincidence. Forget it.”
Steve looked at Paul warily for a few moments, then decided it didn’t matter that much.
“Okay,” he said. “And your name?”
“Paul Schulten.”
“Ah.”
They walked on.
“Can we actually do anything about this?” Paul asked after a while.
“I don’t know. I’ve got my pen and paper. Beyond that… who knows? Maybe the Shaman will know.”
“Maybe he won’t.”
“Haven’t we been over this?”
“Yes, but it does pass the time. I’m not particularly keen on the consequences of not being able to do anything, you know.”
“Neither am I. A shame I wasn’t able to bring all your friends here as well.”
“You know where they are?”
“Vaguely. They got pulled in seperate directions. I think I’m not the only person trying to get people to help them.”
“And are the other people working for the same thing you are?”
Steve shrugged. “Who knows?” he asked. “Who knows.”
“Well I would hope that you would.”
“Hope doesn’t always work out the way you want it to, Constable. You should be aware of that.”
“I am, believe me. How much further to this village?”
“About a mile. We turn off the beach here.”
“Do they have towels there?”
“Yes.”
Paul’s feet squelched in his boots.
“Good.”
He may have been written as Theresa Jones’ perfect man, but Detective Sergeant Luke Archangeli was beginning to realise that Theresa Jones was just about his perfect woman. He had realised that this would probably also be by design, as any perfect man for a woman would most likely also be seriously interested in said woman, but it made him happy, nonetheless. Somehow, he couldn’t find any way inside himself to object to his rapidly-developing situation. They’d had an extremely pleasant Chinese meal in a delightful restaurant, which had accepted Archangeli’s cash without question. He didn’t think his card would work here, but for now he had cash and was willing to spend it on a beautiful woman.
Beautiful indeed she was, when her smile flashed in the restaurant light, or she laughed around a mouthful of food, trying and failing to remain ladylike. He liked such little foibles.
They went back to her house, as he had nowhere else to go, and both were keen to see more of each other. She had a nice house, cosy and warm, with a large television in the living room. They watched films on it until early morning, Theresa spending a lot of that time fiddling with his handcuffs, for it turned out he wasn’t a policeman by accident either. As with everything else, that also didn’t bother him. He thought people he knew might be bothered by it, but he wasn’t — and was he ever going to see them again? He wasn’t sure. That did bother him, and Theresa noticed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“I was just wondering,” Archangeli said, “what’s going to happen to the Universe if I spend the rest of my life in domestic bliss here with you instead of going to save it.”
Theresa beamed. “You’d spend the rest of your life with me?”
“Of course I would, darling. But I do worry about the people I was working with.”
“They’ll be fine,” Theresa assured him.
“Do you know that for sure?”
“I wrote them well enough,” she said. “I couldn’t surround you with idiots. They’ll figure out a way to sort the Universe out.”
“It’s affecting this one as well. It must be.”
“Is it?”
“How else am I here?”
Theresa was silent.
“Do you know something, honey?”
Theresa sighed. “I think… I think it’s my fault,” she said. She sniffed. “I— I don’t know what I did, but something’s different…” a sob escaped her. “I just wanted to meet you, really. I never thought anything would ever happen. And nothing bad! I didn’t mean—” she broke off and cried. Archangeli drew her into a comforting hug.
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to do any harm,” he said. “But if harm has been done, we need to work to correct it. Do you see?”
“Always a sense of duty. I wrote that into you as well, you know.”
“I know.”
“I like a man with a sense of duty.” Theresa sniffed, squirmed out of Archangeli’s arms and found herself a handkerchief, upon which she blew her nose and wiped her eyes. Her eyeshadow smudged appallingly. She looked at the television, although Archangeli thought that she wasn’t really seeing it. “We need to find out what it was that I really did,” she said. “And fix it. But oh… what if you have to go back? What if you can’t stay here? Surely it’s not that bad.”
Archangeli didn’t like the idea of having to leave Theresa either. He tried not to let it show, for he knew it might be necessary. His mouth twisted. Duty. Her design, but it wasn’t going to help her very much right now.
“We need to find out. You must tell me everything you did to accomplish this. Why did you even think you could do it?”
“Well…” Theresa bit her lip.
“Well?”
“I promised I wouldn’t say!”
“Theresa…” Archangeli let a disapproving tone slip into his voice. Theresa grinned.
“I do like it when you talk to me like that,” she said. She picked up his handcuffs. “Perhaps we could—”
“No.” Archangeli snatched the cuffs from her and tucked them back in their holder beneath his jacket. “What did you do? Who told you about it?” He sighed. “What kind of life would we have if we didn’t act and ended up with the Universe falling apart around us? From what I’ve been told, it’s perfectly possible. I assume at least part of what you wrote into my Universe is true here as well?”
Theresa nodded miserably.
“Well then, what do you have to lose? Tell me.”
“It was a few weeks ago. I’d just started work on the story with you in. I was writing in a coffee shop, I like to write in places like that, and these three big men came in. They sat at my table without so much as a word of permission. I wanted to leave, but I was scared of them — they were very, very big men. They asked me if I was an author, and I said yes, I was, and they asked what kind of author. I told them I was writing a romance.”
“A romance? Didn’t feel like I was in a romance.”
“It wasn’t a romance afterwards, but it was supposed to be. There was going to be this girl, you see…”
“A duplicate of yourself?”
“Of course. I’ve not had a very successful love life. I tend to project that into my stories, except I give them happy endings. Usually very soppy ones.”
“Nothing wrong with that. Now what did these men do next?”
“They seemed to know about my total inability to keep a lasting relationship. They asked me if I ever put anything of myself into my novels, and I said yes, the heroine in this novel was going to be essentially me, and would meet and fall for my ideal man and at least have some happiness that I couldn’t. And they said, well, I suppose I was silly to believe them, but they were so convincing. They said they knew how I could make my perfect man real, so he’d come into this world and I could be with him for the rest of our lives.”
“And you believed them?”
“Yes. I don’t know why, I just did. They told me all kinds of things I had to do in order to make it work. Some were difficult things, but I did them anyway. I had to write in particular places, I had to write about particular things. It didn’t stay a romance very longer. I invented Norman and Mephistopheles and Kelly, but Ursula and Loryar came from their descriptions. The whole Universe you lived in, the multiple worlds, all came from them. They wanted the nature of it very precisely defined, and gave me detailed notes. I began to feel like I was really creating something that would last, something substantial and concrete.
“Then eventually I had Loryar do what he did to the worlds, and your Universe started falling apart. They said that was my chance, you could escape through the cracks, so I sent everyone through the cracks. They weren’t pleased I’d sent everyone, but seemed happy enough with the rest of it. I was trying to work out how you’d manage to save the Universe when you came through there in the park today. I’d almost forgotten why I’d written such a strange story in the first place.”
“So these men definitely wanted something from you?” Archangeli asked. Theresa nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know what, but they wanted the situation exactly as it was said to be.”
“Didn’t you get any clues at all?”
“No.”
“Well, I can come up with a few theories. And one springs particularly to mind.”
“What’s that, darling?”
“That they know we’re inside someone else’s novel, and they’re trying to break down the barriers and get themselves out of it. Or at least get themselves written into a better life.”
“And if they managed it?”
“I think the whole Universe dissolving into chaos might be more than just a metaphor they asked you to put into the story.”
“Well surely they wouldn’t expect anyone to figure it out and try to stop them.”
“Figure it out, maybe, but I have no idea how to stop them. They must have underestimated your character-building skills. Were they interested in the characters at all, apart from the ones they specified?”
“No. You are still as you would have been in the romance I was going to write. John Wilkins and Paul Schulten were going to be in that as well.” She smiled. “I was a young policewoman.”
“You know relationships within the job are a risky proposition,” Archangeli said.
“I know, but it added a bit of spice,” Theresa said, her eyes flashing in the dimly lit room. She sighed. “What are we to do?”
“Do you know where to find these men?”
“If I had any questions, they told me to go back to the coffee shop where I first met them at ten am, and to order a triple decaff espresso with vanilla.” She shuddered. “I hate decaff. If I did that, they’d turn up pretty fast. They did, as well.”
“Right then. Tomorrow, we’ll go to the coffee shop seperately. I’ll hang around and look inconspicuous, and you’ll order that disgusting-sounding coffee, and we’ll see if they turn up. If they do, I’ll have some questions for them.”
Theresa nodded. “Okay. What will we do until then?” She smiled suggestively. Archangeli was tempted — there was physical evidence of it which Theresa definitely noticed.
“I’d love to,” he said, and it was utterly true, “but we’ll need to be awake in the morning.”
“Just once?”
He couldn’t resist that tone of voice. He smiled. “Very well, then.”
They went upstairs.
The next morning, Archangeli took directions from Theresa to get to the coffee shop, and spent a quarter of an hour sipping some not-too-bad cappucino and watching the other patrons. None appeared to match the descriptions of the three burly men who’d approached Theresa and apparently started to bring about the end of the Universe. Or Universes. Archangeli realised he was going to have to come up with a consistent vocabulary for describing these things, and he was ideally going to have to come up with it fairly soon, before he baffled himself into total confusion.
Some part of him wondered if there was an author set above him who was at least as confused as he was, and thus wasn’t able to articulate any of his or her characters’ internal thoughts and external conversations well enough to avoid that. It was possible, but Archangeli decided that he didn’t want to think about it. For now, he’d behave as if he wasn’t at the mercy of some author’s pen. He sipped his cappucino. It really was very good.
Theresa wandered into the coffee shop. Her eyes flitted about the room, but she betrayed no reaction when she saw Archangeli and his cappucino.
Good girl, Archangeli thought with an inward smile, although he schooled his face to stillness lest somebody notice. Theresa went to the counter.
“Triple decaff espresso with vanilla,” she ordered. Several people around her winced, including the server.
“Are you sure, ma’am?”
“Yes, very sure, thank you,” Theresa replied with some bite. Her voice carried the tone of censure for the man’s impertinence in suggesting that he might know better than her what she wanted to drink. Suitably cowed, the server made her a triple decaff espresso and added a generous slug of vanilla syrup.
“That will be four pounds, please.”
Theresa paid the extortionate price without blinking, which appeared to confuse the server even more, but Theresa had dressed to look prosperous today, and pulled the act off extremely well. Archangeli knew from her house that it wasn’t entirely an act, but she wasn’t necessarily rich enough to happily pay four pounds for a triple espresso. Especially one which she didn’t intend to drink — but of course, that was part of the act as well.
She went to a free table and nursed her coffee. Archangeli finished his cappucino and had to go order another one. He was just paying for it — a much more reasonable price than for Theresa’s triple decaff espresso with vanilla — when three large men entered the coffee shop. One went to the counter and ordered an assortment of very large and extremely caffeinated coffee-based beverages for them, while the other two joined Theresa at her table.
“Has it been done?” One asked her in a low voice. Archangeli could barely hear what he said, which was a shame, but he daren’t move any closer in case they realised he was trying to listen in. He watched over his cappucino as Theresa nodded.
“It’s done,” she said.
“Good. Is there a problem?”
“Did you know it was going to set off the end of the Universe? Or rather, the end of all the Universes?”
“It is not necessary for you to know our purpose.”
“It is if I want to survive more than a few more weeks. Is the Universe going to fall apart? Are we all to be plunged into chaos?”
“There will be… some disruption. We do not expect the situation to degenerate completely.”
“So you can control it, then?”
“Yes.”
Archangeli frowned. The man sounded like he was lying, and he had milk froth on his upper lip from sipping his cappucino.
After a moment, Archangeli realised he had milk froth on his lip as well. He wiped it off with a serviette.
“Now perhaps you could tell us why that man over there is listening to everything we say without a look of blank incomprehension on his face,” one of the other men said, jerking a thumb at Archangeli. Theresa looked up in shock. A meaty hand reached out and grabbed her by the arm and started dragging her out of the shop. Archangeli was on his feet in moments, and caught up with them just as they got onto the street.
“Let her go!” he shouted in his best commanding voice. The man laughed at him.
“What are you going to do about it?” the one who appeared to be their spokesman demanded. “I suppose you’re her dream man from her story.”
“So what if I am? I’m here as much as you are.”
“But there are three of us. And, quite frankly, you’re not very large.”
“Quick and light beats slow and dull.”
“Only sometimes. Do you want to die, little man?”
Archangeli had palmed his pepper spray on the way out of the coffee shop. He hoped these men weren’t the kind who’d learned to ignore its effects, or who were just naturally immune.
“Not really,” he said, and gave the spokesman a hefty dose. He wasn’t immune to it; he went down with a cry just like any number of drunks Archangeli had used it on earlier in his career. More so, in fact — drunks were surprisingly intelligent at times, and had learned to anticipate it. Quickly, he turned on the second man and took him down as well. The third had let go of Theresa, who took off at a dead run the moment she was able to. In the confusion caused by her departure, Archangeli was easily able to finish up the can of pepper spray in the third man’s face. He threw the empty can on the ground and took off after Theresa.
It didn’t take him long to catch up with her; she kept looking behind, and when she saw only Archangeli following, she slowed. As he reached her, he grabbed her arm and pulled her up to his speed, which she could barely manage with her shorter legs and evident lack of practice.
“Come on,” he said. “They’ll recover from the spray soon, we need to get far enough away that they won’t be able to follow us.”
“You know, I never knew that pepper spray would be so useful,” Theresa said. “Perhaps I should suggest it to the police here.”
“You made it up?”
“Yes. I got some chilli in my eyes one day, and… what?”
“Good invention. You should definitely tell the police here about it. If anything else about them is anything like the police I know, they’ll appreciate it.”
“They’re mostly the same. I had to make some things up, but I talked to some people I know in the force who helped with some of the information. Some of it was arranged to suit me of course.”
“Of course. Come on!”
They had slowed to talk. Archangeli put on speed, and Theresa managed to match it, running on pure adrenaline now, but she soon began to flag as the immediate danger passed and her muscles began to demand recompense for the effort she’d just put into them. They slowed to a brisk walk and took several corners at random. Theresa led them through a small footpath between some houses, and they came out by the river. She turned left and headed upstream with growing confidence.
“Where are we going?” Archangeli asked.
“We’re going to take a boat trip.”
“What?”
“A boat trip. A friend of mine lives here with a houseboat. He moves around a lot, but I figure he’s probably still here, so we can probably persuade him to go upriver a few miles to the next little town with a railway station, then we can get on a train somewhere and they’ll have serious trouble tracking us after that.”
“Good thinking.” Archangeli was impressed. “I think just avoiding them is going to be a simple problem compared to sorting the actual situation out.”
Theresa grimaced. “I’d managed to stop thinking about that for a while. How are we going to fix the end of the Universe?”
“Well, since you wrote it, I figure you can write it back again.”
“How?”
“Fix what’s happening. Get Norman and Kelly and Mephistopheles to restore the balance in their world, and make sure it spreads in the same way that the instability did. That should sort it out, I would have thought.”
“Perhaps. We’ll have to see how it goes. At times, you know, I felt like I was writing what someone else had already dictated, not what I was deciding to write. I gues that’s where you as a character of mine have room for free will.”
“And where you have room for free will in the story being written about you?”
“Yes, if there is another layer.”
“I think there has to be. I just can’t see how it can work if there isn’t.”
“I don’t know how we’d find out.”
“Write about where the others went. I wasn’t the only one who went through a crack.”
“Yes you were.”
“What?”
“I only wrote you going through. What actually happened?”
“We all went through — John, Paul, Kelly and I did. I assumed we’d ended up in different places. You say you didn’t write them there?”
“I left them in Mephistopheles’ tower. By that point I was only interested in you. I guess your theory is proven.”
“That someone else wrote that?”
“Must have done. And they didn’t get me to do it. There’s another character in this world who’s writing about yours, and we may well both be controlled by the same author in the next world up the chain.”
“Delightful. I wonder if they wanted us to figure it out.”
“Probably.” She looked up at the sky. “Some hints, please!”
Archangeli laughed. Theresa giggled. An empty coke can bounced down the path towards them and hit Archangeli in the ankle. He was about to kick it away when he realised there was no reason at all for the can to have been moving in the first place. The path was deserted in both directions, and there was nowhere someone could be hiding that he could see. He stooped and picked it up. At first sight, it looked just like an ordinary Coke can, but there was writing on it where the ingredients were usually listed. It said:
It is believed that there are an infinite number of worlds. Those who caused you to do what you did, Theresa, are not within my control. Somebody else writes your world, and made the other author of Archangeli’s world. I have not yet determined who it is, but they do not have control over you.
Please do not rely on these communications, I fear causing more damage by disrupting continuity. You are not seeing the effects where you are, but this world is beginning to fray around the edges. Strange things are happening. We must work quickly; I will guide you where I can. Go now, and get on that boat.
Wide-eyed, Archangeli and Theresa looked at each other. They looked at the can again, then looked at each other again. Archangeli dropped the can on the path. It bounced off again, by itself, and landed with a splash in the river, into which it sank immediately.
“Well, that was odd.”
Archangeli nodded. “Very odd. But I think we’d better go and get that boat.”
“Sort of like a message from God,” Theresa mused as they carried on walking. “I wonder what he or she looks like.”
“I’m sure if you want it hard enough we’ll see a picture soon enough. I’ve already met my author.”
“And did you like what you saw?”
“I think I proved that last night.”
Theresa smiled at the memory. “Why yes,” she said. “I do believe you did.” She looked up at the sky again. “Thank you!”
Laughing, they held hands and carried on toward the houseboat now visible, moored by the bank. The Universes might be ending, but things were pretty good outside of that.
The village, when they reached it, turned out to be some neatly-built wooden houses with wooden tiles to keep the rain out, and oiled parchment for windows, which let out only the soft flickering glow of firelight within. Steve walked confidently to a small house with a pair of antlers mounted above the door.
“Where did they get the antlers?” Paul asked.
“What?”
“This isn’t exactly deer country. So where did the antlers come from?”
“There are other animals that like this climate quite well who have antlers here. It’s not your world, and I got quite inventive with the fauna.”
“I see. Is this where the Shaman lives?”
“It is. He knows a great many things.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. I wrote him, remember? Went into quite a bit of detail, in fact. He’s the only person I know who might be able to help.”
“Do we knock?”
Steve smiled. “He already knows we’re here.”
As soon as he said it, the door opened. The Shaman, for that was who the elderly man who answered the door had to be, had completely white eyes. They weren’t fogged over, but were just completely white and bare as if no such thing as an iris or pupil — or even a cornea — had ever contemplated appearing there. Paul found that quite unnerving, but he hid it with the aplomb developed from years of training courses he didn’t want to be on, but hiding from the tutor just how bored he was.
“Ah, you are here at last. Come inside. The tea will be almost stewed, but I’m sure you’d like a cup anyway.”
“I—”
“Come inside, come inside. You’re letting the heat in.”
It was warm outside — too warm to sleep, Paul had thought — and cold air was pouring out of the house as if it was air conditioned. Paul and Steve stepped inside, and the Shaman closed the door. A fire crackled on a hearth in one corner, but the flames were an icy blue, and appeared to suck heat out of the room. The Shaman caught Paul staring at it and laughed at him.
“Not prepared for that, eh boy?”
“No, not really,” Paul admitted. The Shaman pointed unerringly at Steve; lacking though his eyes were in any of the usual things which allowed people to see, he had no trouble at all with his vision.
“Blame him. He invented this world. I’ve been meaning to have a word with him about some of it.”
Steve took the cup of tea which the Shaman poured for him.
“I must confess to being surprised that you know who I am,” he said.
“You made me wise. I know a lot of things. Including what’s happening, and why you’re here. Perhaps you made me too wise, I may hnder more than I help.”
“You can hardly put us in a worse situation.”
“This is true.” He offered tea to Paul, who took it gratefully. It smelt different to the usual tea Paul drank in Terra, a very clean, pure aroma with a citrus finish. He took a sip and nodded agreeably. The Shaman cackled at him and took a cup for himself. “Like the tea, boy?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The Shaman cackled once more. “Polite one, isn’t he? Where did you find him?”
“In the world where all the problems seem to have started,” Steve said. “I pulled him through about seven to get him into mine.”
“Impressive. Things are in difficulty if you were able to do that much in one step. Or at all, for that matter. Do you know where his companions are?”
“No.”
“I have only located one so far. The man named Luke Archangeli is with the author of the world which has caused us all this trouble.”
“He is? Excellent. Does he know what to do?”
“I do not know; I know only where he is, not what he wishes to do.”
“I see. And do you know what we must do?”
“Why, fix the cracks of course.” The Shaman cackled again. “As to how, I have no more than speculation.”
“Do you know if there’s anyone who does know how to fix the situation?”
“Why, as a matter of fact I do. I don’t think you’ll want to go and see her though.”
“Who is she?”
“She is the one who initiated the whole affair. She ordered it done, although none of the dirty work was hers.”
“Where do we find her?”
“You do not. She finds you. It can be no other way, for she lives outside the written Universes which we inhabit and can now move between. She is not a woman, but a primal force of chaos. She usually balances order, but the balance is disrupted, and chaos currently has the upper hand.”
“Shouldn’t we then go to see the force of order?”
“That cannot be done,” the Shaman said. “For the force of order will take no visitors. You could try, but you would likely end up dead. Little saving of few Universes will you do if you are dead.”
This was of course such a startlingly obvious pronouncement that neither Steve nor Paul could come up with a suitable response. Their silence made the Shaman chuckle. Paul was starting to suspect that there were few things which didn’t make him chuckle. Steve had clearly been having an off day when he did the characterisation for this guy. The Shaman shuffled around the house to a small cabinet, which he opened. What was inside, Paul couldn’t see, but the Shaman removed something from it with great care, and set the object upon the table. It was apparently spherical, although wrapped in black silk.
The Shaman removed the silk, and Paul saw that it was nothing more complicated than a crystal ball on an intricately carved and gilded wooden stand. It gleamed in the firelight, but the Shaman used the black silk cloth with which it had been covered to polish it before setting the cloth carefully on the table next to it. He held a hand over the crystal ball.
“Now,” he said in hushed tones. “Watch…”
Light flared inside the crystal ball. Paul leaned closer to see what was visible in it, for shapes started to form. Suddenly, silently, brilliantly, light flared upwards from the crystal. The Shaman took his hand away, and an image formed in the air above the crystal ball, a vivid, solid-looking three-dimensional image. Paul was so shocked by the demonstration of visual splendour that it took him a moment to realise he was looking straight into the projected face of an enormous, angry-looking dog. The dog was barking, but there was no sound with the vision.
“What the—”
“Shush! Watch, concentrate, learn. We can discuss it afterwards.”
Paul watched, but the dog just kept barking. Eventually it stopped, scratched its head, and sat down, at which point it began to lick itself between the back legs. The Shaman put his hand over the crystal ball again, and the image wavered and collapsed.
“Perhaps not so much useful information as I had hoped,” he said, sounding slightly sheepish. Then he spoiled the effect by cackling pointlessly. “Perhaps the Universes do not wish you to interfere.”
“Oh, sod the Universes,” Steve said. “I’m going to try anyway.”
“As will I,” Paul joined in. “What help can you give us, old man? Real help, not three-dimensional visions of dogs licking their balls.”
The Shaman looked insulted for a moment, but he cackled again, covered the crystal ball with the black silk cloth, and put it carefully back in its cupboard. He looked back at the two men who’d come to see him, cackled once more, and went to a dresser, where he opened a drawer and took out a pen. It was a gorgeous pen, with what looked like a platinum barrel, finely engraved with words in a script Paul didn’t recognise. The Shaman held it reverently, and came to stand in front of Paul.
“For you,” he said, “I give you this pen. It is a tool of great power, and you must use it with care.”
“What does it do? Does it write worlds?”
“No. It draws on them.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Most people don’t. Most people don’t know about the writing of worlds, but of those who do know about the writing of worlds, very few know about the drawing of worlds which may accompany it, for in stories are worlds not sometimes partly described in pictures? There may be a map, or several maps. There may be illustrations of key events. All these things serve to heighten the definition of the story, although all the information may be in the mind of the author.”
“I see.”
“No, you do not. The key to this pen is that when an illustrator works on a book which somebody else has written, they add to the world their own interpretation of the visual appearance. They may do this in consultation with the author, and indeed they should, but their own influence is certainly there. With this pen, you can bring the same principle to worlds which you are in.”
That took a moment to sink in. Paul stared at the pen for a few moments.
“So… I can use it to modify worlds?”
“To a certain extent, yes.”
Paul swallowed. “How?”
The Shaman took the lid off the pen. Immediately, the feel of the house changed. The pen had a sense of presence, of power about it. The Shaman held it before him and drew a circle in the air. There was nothing visible, but the pure certainty that a circle was there, no matter how invisible it might appear to be to the naked eye. The Shaman added a little curved line out of the top of the circle, and held out his hand. An orange dropped into it, complete with part of the stalk on which it had hung from its tree. Paul and Steve gaped at it.
“Amazing,” Steve said.
“Also useful. This will aid you.” The Shaman put the lid back on the pen and gave both the pen and the orange to Paul. The Constable put the pen in the pen holder sewn into his uniform jumper’s sleeve, and inspected the orange minutely. It appeared flawless. He dug a fingernail into the skin and started to peel it. Juice and skin oils spurted, spreading the citrus smell. Since it seemed to be a real orange, he split the peeled segments in half and handed some to Steve. They ate contendedly while the Shaman bustled around, apparently looking for something else.
Eventually, the white-haired eccentric produced another silk-wrapped object from a box which he had pulled from under the sofa. It was round, just large enough to fit comfortably in the palm of the hand, and gleamed in the firelight when the Shaman pulled the silk from it.
Finishing his half of the orange, Paul leaned forward and saw that it was a compass. The Shaman turned it slightly, and it caught the firelight on its face. Paul blinked; the face was entirely blank and completely black. So totally black, in fact, that it looked like an endless void beneath the golden needle which was swinging aimlessly around. The Shaman held the compass out to Steve.
“This,” he said, “is for you.”
Steve took it carefully. As the Shaman’s hands left its surface, the compass needle snapped into one position and quivered slightly.
“What’s it doing?” Steve asked.
“It points the way,” the Shaman said. “According to the greatest need you have.”
“And how do we know what the greatest need is?”
“That is something you find out when you get there. I have, I admit, frequently attempted to find something with it, only to discover it leading me to the latrine, or to my fishing poles. The art of using it well is in knowing what it is pointing at. In such a crisis as this, it may aid you.”
“Thank you.”
“I am here to help. Now, you will be needing to know where to go next, and how to get there, I suspect.”
“I would like to see if we can get to the Universe which Sergeant Archangeli is in,” Paul said. “I think we should try and get as many people together as we can.”
“That may be wise,” the Shaman said. “But it may not be. He may be more effective on his own. You may need to be somewhere else to aid him.”
“But we cannot know that if we do not have a chance to find out what he is doing,” Paul pointed out. The Shaman smiled slowly.
“Quite true. This, I declare, is something which I can help you with. Come with me.”
The Shaman shuffled out of the back door and down the garden to a wide, circular lawn. He stood in the middle of the circle and struck the ground with a large stick he had picked up at its edge. After frowning, muttering to himself and shifting his grip slightly, he struck the ground again. This time, it rang like a deep-toned bell. The Shaman nodded and grunted in satisfaction, then struck the ground a third time. The ringing sound repeated, but this time it sustained, and the world grew hazy around them. Gradually, the haziness coaelesced into a crack much like that which Paul had stepped through from Mephistopheles’ world.
“Where will this take us?” he asked.
“The world which your friend is in,” the Shaman said. “I cannot guarentee if you will arrive anywhere close to them, but I think you are at least on the same landmass.”
“Reassuring. Still, it brings us a great deal closer than we were before. Are you coming with us?”
The Shaman shook his head. “I dare not,” he said. “This is not work for people such as me. I will be here if you wish to return and seek more advice; I shall attempt to divine more information against that possibility.”
“How do we come back?” Steve asked. The Shaman tutted.
“Having brought yourself here, you cannot determine how to come here yourself?”
“That was coming into a world I wrote, from the world I was born into—”
“It makes little difference. You carry this world with you wherever you go, as it is your creation. You may reach here from anywhere. Leaving to a chosen destination is the hard part, but coming here will always be possible for you, as long as you have pen and paper with which to write the transition.”
“That is most reassuring.”
“Go then. The crack will not remain intact for long.”
“Thank you for your help,” Paul said. “I hope we shall meet again soon.”
“I don’t.”
“Why?”
“If you come back here soon, it will no doubt mean that you are in desperate need of help. That, I do not wish to see, for it will mean the Universes are in dire peril indeed.”
“Fair enough. Farewell then, and may we meet in safer times.”
“So may it be.”
Paul stepped through the crack. The disorientation was just like last time. The world changed around him. He was on a sandy beach; in a scorching desert; on a sailing ship on the ocean at night; he floated in space, nothing between him and the vacuum but his suit and helmet; he leaped onto the pavement to avoid being hit by a large, red, double-decker bus.
Sound slammed into his ears, the bustle and noise of a big town or city. Everything looked startlingly familiar, but beneath that familiarity he immediately sensed a strangeness that told him strongly this is not my world. Steve appeared a moment later in the middle of the street, not in a noticeable way, but in a way which Paul strongly suspected the residents of this world, or Universe, wouldn’t even notice. A large white van bore down on Steve, hooting its horn. He leaped out of its path, breathless.
“That was quite a ride,” he remarked after gulping for air a few times.
“Better than my first one,” Paul replied. He looked around again. An inescapable conclusion was dawning on him. “I think this world is the world where mine was written,” he said.
“Really? What if it’s a world which was written inside yours?”
“I don’t think so. This is… bigger, somehow. I don’t think anybody from Terra would imagine a world this big. I don’t think anybody there could. I couldn’t have, until I left there, and nobody else has ever left that I know of. I still don’t really know if what I’m seeing is real or not.”
“You seem to be taking it rather well.”
“Well, it does appear to be happening, so there’s no point worrying about it. I can do that when it’s all over and we’ve got time to relax without worrying if the Universe is going to unravel around us.” A loud screech from above made them look up, to see with startled eyes a huge bird-like creature flapping ponderously overhead. It hovered briefly over the street, then screeched, let a huge burst of fire out of its jaws, and disappeared with a slight ‘pop’.
People started screaming, or stood in stunned silence. A few just shrugged and went on, with the air of people who’d seen something like it before; or perhaps people who weren’t sure they’d seen what they had thought they were seeing at the time when they were seeing it. Paul whistled.
“That was quite something,” he said. Steve nodded.
“That it was. Judging by the reaction, I’d say those things aren’t native to this Universe.”
“Definitely.”
“Well, if I wasn’t already convinced something strange is going on… I am now. Where do we go, do you think?”
“You’re the one with the compass, see if it’s pointing anywhere.”
“Oh yes.”
Steve got the compass from his pocket and held it flat. The needle pointed down the street to the left, and this time it wasn’t quivering; it stayed solidly in place. Experimentally, Steve rotated the compass, but the needle remained firmly where it was, pointing down the street no matter how much the compass was moved.
“Well, there’s something there,” he said. “Either that or it’s the route to the nearest public convenience.”
“You need to go?”
“A little. You?”
“If we see one, I won’t say now. One of the first things you learn in the police; always go to the toilet when you can, because you might not get another chance for the next seven hours.”
“Good advice.”
“Exactly. I suggest we follow it.”
“Well, sing out if you see one. Oh, I think we turn right here.” They’d reached a crossroads, and the compass needle had swung to point down the street to the right. They turned and went in the indicated direction.
“That’s convenient,” Paul said. “It appears to know the street layout, instead of expecting us to walk through buildings to get to where we need to go.”
“I wonder who thought of that. It came from my world, but I definitely don’t remember writing about it…”
“Did you have to? You weren’t writing that conversation we had with the Shaman, and unless I miss my guess, you didn’t write about that pen he gave me either. When you’re in one of your own worlds, it probably runs itself quite happily. For that matter, it might run itself quite happily when you’re not paying attention to it as well.”
“Perhaps. That might explain why I suddenly realised how things have to happen in the story in the middle of the night; perhaps they already have happened like that, and I’m just being prompted to set them down.” He shrugged. “Perhaps I’m just mad.”
“Perhaps we’re both mad, but unless I’m hallucinating as well, that’s Luke Archangeli.” Paul pointed, and ahead of them they saw Archangeli in the company of a rather pretty lady of about the same age. They walked together in a very familiar way, although their postures betrayed some significant levels of nervousness. Paul decided to stand and wait for them, rather than approaching them, lest they react badly to a surprise.
It didn’t take long for Archangeli to recognise him. He pointed, said something to the woman, and they came to a brisk walk to meet Paul and Steve.
“Paul!”
“Sarge. Good to see you.”
“Oh, don’t bother with that, call me Luke, please. Who’s this?”
“This is Steve. He pulled me into his Universe when we went through that crack, and eventually we ended up here. The plan is to give you some help, if you’ve got any ideas on how we go about saving all the Universes.”
“Well, we’ve not got ideas so much as knowing what caused it,” Archangeli said. “This is Theresa. She wrote our Universe, and in doing so, caused this entire mess to happen. She didn’t do it knowingly, but I think she must have the power to get things set to rights again. We can’t have any more dinosaurs appearing here. A really huge one appeared in the park an hour or so ago and ate someone before it vanished.”
“Dinosaurs?”
“Big lizard things, apparently they lived on this world millions of years ago. Very dangerous, very stupid, and people like to write about them. With the boundaries between worlds breaking down…” he shook his head and sighed.
“Is anything else happening?”
“We got accosted by some toughs, but they were the natives who got Theresa to do all this in the first place.”
“Do we know why they did it?”
“Not yet. We’re working on that.”
“Could they be working for someone who wants the same thing as Ursula, but on a larger scale?”
Archangeli shook his head. “We’ve considered that,” he said, “but this kind of bleeding together of Universes is just too chaotic. I think it’s somebody who’s trying to get somewhere they wouldn’t normally be allowed to go. Somewhere there are barriers to stop people moving around, and they had to bring down all the barriers in order to do it. We don’t know why Theresa was the one with the power to accomplish that though.”
Steve studied her for a moment. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find, if we went up several layers, we’d find that whoever wanted this set off wrote a world and arranged for another world to be written inside it, and another inside that, and so on until this world, where you’d get Theresa, with the power to do what they wanted to do and break apart all the barriers. Theresa could just be the end result of a carefully-planned world plan and plot.”
“That doesn’t maker her any less powerful. We think what we need to do is mend the worlds where we come from, and the stability caused by that will spread back out through the other Universes, as the instability is doing even now.”
“What about us being here? Doesn’t that cause instability just by itself?”
Theresa shook her head emphatically. “Not that I can see,” she said. “I got some glimmerings of what was happening when I was writing Luke’s world — how could I have done otherwise, given what I was doing? Much as I regret it now. I don’t think actually moving around where you can is inherently dangerous. Breaking down all the barriers is, though — there have to be thousands of worlds full of dinosaurs, let alone what else might come roaring down the street. What about the worlds where there are nuclear wars?”
“I don’t want to think about that,” Archangeli said, in a tone which suggested that Theresa had suggested that possibility before. She patted him on the arm reassuringly, and they exchanged warm smiles. Warm smiles with considerable depth to them. Paul suppressed a grin; if they weren’t absolutely smitten with each other, then he’d be willing to be that he hadn’t actually got any legs, and had in fact been walking around on mere illusions for his entire life.
“So what’s the key to stabilising our own Universe?” Paul asked.
“I think the key is Norman,” Theresa said. “Or rather, his power. He’s given it to Ursula now, and she might be of some use restoring the balance there. Loryar would have had an insurmountable advantage without the marriage of Norman’s power and Ursula’s military forces.”
“So what happens now?”
“Ursula invades Utopia. It’s going to be very messy, I’m afraid — they’ll fight with the world and with conventional weapons. Ursula has already shown she’s not hesitant to use nuclear warheads. Lots of people will die. The trouble is, in that world, Loryar still has the edge because it’s his world. He built it. Ursula is unlikely to defeat him.”
“Can she force him into another world? Any other world he didn’t create would make her massively more powerful than him.”
“Possibly. I think Kelly’s got to come into it somewhere, but it hasn’t all fit together yet. We were going to get me a notepad though, so I could start writing some of this. Time is slipping away quickly.”
“Anything we can do to help?”
“Actually, I think you two would be useful if you went back there. What do you say to that? I could use you quite effectively, especially since you know what needs to be done.”
Paul and Steve looked at each other, then nodded. “Okay.”
“Excellent. Let’s get to it then.”
The gap opened without warning — as all gaps were wont to do — and was immediately filled with a volley of missiles, fired from Brimstone into Utopia. They spread out and detonated, and within seconds of the gap’s opening there was nothing left standing within a mile of it. Mud steamed and smoked, and a few trees burned, as Ursula’s army poured through the gap. More missiles roared through it, flying well above their heads and boosting strongly upwards as they came clear into Loryar’s world. A minute or two later, the first one detonated forty miles away, a bright flash and a hideous roaring. Mushroom clouds rose in the distance as the missiles reached their targets.
All this happened within the first two minutes, when the world was caught by surprise. It wasn’t long before Loryar began to fight back. The ground heaved and rolled, toppling tanks and soldiers. Cracks opened and slammed shut. Clouds gathered in the sky and lightning began to stab down into the middle of the army, sending soldiers and vehicles flying through the air, burning.
Ursula — Ursula’s oldest, most expendable body — strode through the gap and bent her newly-acquired powers against the lightning. There was a twisting in the world, a wrenching of the very fabric from which it was made, and the clouds shattered. In moments, it was as if they had never been. The heaving of the ground subsided somewhat, but from over the horizon a wave of missiles appeared, the first wave of Loryar’s response to the invasion of his world. Ursula’s army had anti-missile systems with them, Ertoran laser weapons which thinned out the attack considerably. Other missiles exploded in mid-air as Ursula turned her attention to them. Some got through, pushed by Loryar’s will. Most of those which did hit anti-missile batteries.
Ursula didn’t particularly mind that. It was irritating, but she had more coming through the gap along with more soldiers, more tanks, more rocket launchers, more artillery. Off to one side of the army, several large guns were already pounding the nearby settlement. It was an attack on a scale which Ursula had never before launched. She was sure that her brother, a world builder of some considerable talent, could have thrown it back with ease from his own world, but Mephistopheles had never had to deal with an assailant wielding the power which had once been his, the power to alter worlds built by others, and to open gaps between worlds not usually accessible.
And from what she’d seen so far, Ursula didn’t think Loryar was anything like as talented as her brother. The tricks he tried against her army were simple things, easy to counter. She laughed; this was far too easy. More missiles roared through the gap. The soldiers surged forward. All was well.
Elsewhere in Utopia, all was most certainly not well. Loryar’s palace had not yet suffered any damage, as the world builder had kept his own residence the most heavily defended of all parts of the world. Any missiles which came close to it suffered fatal malfunctions and detonated early. The town which had surrounded the palace was battered and mostly burning. Bodies lay in the streets, some of them in pieces. Kelly Fastblade skulked through the streets, wondering how she’d got here. She remembered going through the crack in reality with Paul and Archangeli and Wilkins, but then there’d been… nothing. And now she was here. Nothing had happened to her, but she knew, somehow, that time had passed while she was in that nowhere place. The overall feeling was of having been put up on a shelf in case she was needed later.
Evidently, since she was here, she was now needed. It wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on. Ursula was invading Utopia, and it appeared that the power which Norman had transferred to her was giving her an edge she needed to push her way in. Any competent world builder should have been able to deal with the incoming volleys of missiles, but Loryar was having considerable difficulty, which indicated to Kelly that he was spending more of his effort fighting against Ursula’s attempts to change this world than he was able to spend on stopping the missiles and the artillery and the soldiers themselves. The sounds of gunfire were moving closer all the time; Kelly thought the soldiers would reach the city within the hour. She hurried through the streets towards the palace, gun in hand. Although it was a hard choice to work for the woman who’d invaded and oppressed her home world, Kelly knew that Loryar had to be stopped. His way would lead to the end of all the worlds, whereas at least under Ursula’s tyranny they would have a chance to break free. Less chance with her having Mephistopheles’ power, but still a chance.
And any kind of living was better than the unravelling of the Universe and an eternity of nothing.
The guards at the palace entrance were clearly spooked, clearly frightened, and, shortly after Kelly reached them, clearly dead. She slipped inside, dispatched the guards on the inside of the door with two quick shots, and headed for the stairs. Loryar, she thought, would be up high, the better to see what Ursula was throwing at him and counter it. The palace had several towers, but one was taller than the others, and it was this one which Kelly started to climb, running up the spiral stairs inside it. About a quarter of the way up, she had to press herself against the wall to squeeze past a crack in the Universe, which floated gently down the spiral, writhing and twisting as it did do. A corner of Kelly’s coat touched it and disappeared as cleanly as if she’d cut it off with her virsword. Thinking of the weapon, she heard footsteps from further up the stairs, and drew it.
The virsword resembled nothing more than a bare hilt and crossguard when stored, but when activated it projected a force field shaped into a blade sharper than any blade which had ever been made of steel — sharper than any blade made of steel could be, for its sharp edge had a thickness which had to be measured in terms of the size of a photon. Kelly continued up the stairs, moving as quietly as she could, and soon came across a guard coming down. He had a gun, but he was surprised to find Kelly, whereas Kelly had been expecting to find him. Her virsword slashed, and his head bounced down the stairs. A river of blood ran down the stairs from the guard’s corpse as Kelly continued upwards. Two more guards met their end at her blade before she reached the top of the tower; one stabbed through the heart, the other cut in half at the belly. The mess and smell made Kelly screw up her nose. She was good with a sword, but she didn’t much like what it did to people.
As usual, she pushed that out of her mind; staying alive and doing what she had to do were more important than moral considerations at the moment.
The stairs opened out quite abruptly into a large room which encompassed the entirety of the top of the tower. Kelly peered carefully over the edge of the hole through which the stairs emerged, and saw that the room was tastefully furnished with armchairs and coffee tables. A few books were scattered around. At a window on the far side of the room, Lord Loryar stood looking out. Beyond him, Kelly could just make out another round of missiles encountering major malfunctions.
Smiling nastily to herself — and it was fortunate that Lord Loryar couldn’t see this particular smile, for it was one of Kelly Fastblade’s finest assassin’s smiles, Kelly carefully drew her favourite gun and took careful aim. There was a spot at the back of Lord Loryar’s head where his hair tapered out and came to a sort of point. Kelly had always thought it looked silly, but for now it provided a convenient point to aim at.
It was highly unlikely even a world builder of Loryar’s talent could survive a bullet through the base of the brain. That was, after all, where the really, really important bits were. By fortunate coincidence, the angle from which Kelly was shooting should also cause serious damage to the higher brain functions as well. Although she would have preferred a slower, more painful end for the man who’d brought the Universe to the brink of destruction, sometimes you just had to take what you can get.
She smiled slightly more broadly, and pulled the trigger.
The gun fired with a loud thunk, launching its electromagnetically-propelled bullet at a speed for which there was a number, but it was one which Kelly didn’t know the name of, as it was too long and complicated to remember. That speed gave the bullet tremendous amounts of energy, allowing it to be quite small and still cause horrendous amounts of damage. It hit the stone wall of the tower room and shattered a large amount of it. Dust and shards of stone rained down, and a small hole let daylight in from outside. The bullet no doubt carried on flying for thirty or more miles, but it was pushed straight out of Kelly’s mind when a hand grabbed her from behind, under her chin, and hauled her upwards by her head.
“Don’t try and do that again,” Lord Loryar hissed in her ear. “You think you could sneak in here without my knowing about it?”
Kelly struggled, but her feet were a considerable distance from the floor, and she could barely breath with her neck having to support her entire body weight.
“Worth… worth a try,” she managed to gasp out. A hand slammed into her back, and she found herself hitting the wall. Stars flashed in her vision, and she slumped to the floor. For a moment, she lay there, stunned, but eventually she gathered her thoughts enough to start scrabbling around for a foothold. She had to get to her feet, had to be ready for the next—
An armchair slid across the floor and slammed into her, knocking the breath out of her. She gasped and choked, saw another one coming but couldn’t even begin to make the moves to avoid it. It caught her in the head. Ears ringing, she sprawled on her back, trying feebly to get up and fight.
Lord Loryar’s face loomed in her vision, looking down at her with a contemptuous expression.
“Pathetic,” he said. “Trying to attack a world builder in his own world. You of all people should know better than that.”
Kelly coughed up blood and spat it at him. It vanished before coming anywhere near his pristine white clothes.
“Seems I’m not the only one,” she managed to say, still gasping for breath.
“Ursula is a minor irritation. She will be dealt with.”
“Will she? Why haven’t you thrown her out already? Mephistopheles would have done.”
“She brings many troops. To dispose of so many is not the work of moments.”
“Neither is it the work of hours. Why can’t you bury them all in a landslide, or split the ground beneath their feet, or drop a giant boulder upon their heads? You could make it rain fire, or acid, or poison gas if you wanted to. How come their missiles are causing so much damage to your settlements?” Seeing she’d caught on something good here, Kelly continued. “What if Ursula is more powerful than you are, even in your own world? What if she can face you on her own terms here?”
Realisation dawned on Lord Loryar’s face.
“She has the holder of Mephistopheles’ power with her!”
Kelly laughed.
“No, she does not. She has Mephistopheles’ power for herself.”
“She… she has his power?” Kelly had never heard Lord Loryar fearful before. She did now. She decided she rather liked it when he sounded fearful. Carefully, she got to her feet, although she had to steady herself with a hand against the wall to avoid ending up back on the floor again.
“She has his power,” Kelly confirmed.
“How? She found Norman and defeated him?”
“He gave it to her,” Kelly said, delivering the line slowly so that every word could have its fullest impact. They were speaking in Loryar’s native language, which Kelly had learned as a child on Ertora. It had a variation on the verb ‘to give’ which indicated beyond all doubt that the item being given is being given or was given by the giver’s own free will. Kelly used that form now, and the realisation of her choice of words didn’t take long to sink in. Lord Loryar knew she spoke his language fluently, and that she wouldn’t use that verb by accident.
“He gave it to her?”
Lord Loryar also used the free will form of ‘gave’. Kelly nodded.
“You must be aware that what you have done has damaged the structure of all the worlds,” she said. “Cracks are appearing, leading to places we’ve never even imagined existing before.” She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did know it. She continued, speaking the words that came to her as they came, speaking with a firey intensity. “You have put up barriers between all the worlds, but those barriers will rupture, and when they do, the boundaries between the worlds will fall forever. All will merge into one; not just the worlds we know, but hundreds upon thousands upon hundreds of thousands upon millions of Universes and all their worlds and more, all merging together in chaos and confusion.
“Can you imagine why we might accept Ursula’s tyranny over that? At least under her, we still have a recognisable place in which to live, and dream of freedom. And maybe, one day, even achieve it.”
Lord Loryar was silent for a few moments. Outside the window, several more missiles suffered fatal malfunctions and exploded. He flinched, and the bright flash of a distant thermonuclear detonation lit up the room for a moment.
“She comes closer,” he said. “This cannot be allowed.” He grabbed Kelly’s arm and dragged her towards the staircase. This being his world, he was as strong as he needed to be, and she couldn’t escape his grip. Instead, she went limp, conserving her energy and forcing him to expend more to move her, trying to think of another plan. She’d killed a world builder or two before, but never in their own worlds, where they had almost total control over the environment and over themselves. She couldn’t even make a gap and escape, because of what Lord Loryar had done to the Universe.
Unless…
They reached the bottom of the spiral staircase and went down some more stairs into a large chamber containing a complex piece of apparatus apparently constructed entirely out of glass. Except it wasn’t quite glass… Kelly blinked, shook her head, and stared at it again. It looked to her eyes a lot like diamond. A lot of diamond. Loryar could of course put as much of it in his world as he wanted, but it was still considered to be valuable, as most worlds with sane geography couldn’t support much of it without becoming conceptually unstable, especially once the world builder left or died.
There was a chair in the heart of the apparatus, a chair also made of diamond. Kelly was thrown into it and diamond loops fastened with diamond locks bound her wrists, ankles and neck firmly in place.
“Fancy kit,” Kelly said as Loryar moved around, touching parts of it. Flares of light shimmered through the device. Those which touched the chair in which Kelly sat made her feel hot, or cold, or, briefly, like her soul was being sucked out.
“It is a prototype,” Lord Loryar said. He sounded excited, although he also sounded as if it was attempting to hold himself in check. His voice was carefully controlled, but that thin thread of emotion escaped through it. “You are to be its first… subject.”
He touched more parts of the device. It began to glow more steadily, a rippling light which went through the diamond and made Kelly’s skin tingle. She didn’t like it, and she knew it wasn’t going to do her any good. Time for the backup plan.
Closing her eyes, she started writing. She could write only in her head, but that should be enough, she thought. She was a world builder, she always had been, but she had never actually gotten around to building herself a world. It was going to be a retirement activity when she was no longer an assassin, something to do when the trade of killing people became dull or difficult; assuming she survived that long, of course.
Now, it was a way to save her life. She didn’t know if it was possible, with what Loryar had done, but she started detailing a world close enough to Utopia for a gap to be made, close enough for her to escape through. A world of green hills and lush grass and pleasant woodland, a world where wild fruit and vegetables provided plenty to eat, babbling streams held clean water… she fleshed it out in her mind, feeling for the first time the full aspect of her power as a world builder coming to life. It was not like making gaps, an activity she did with barely any thought. It was creation, pure and simple.
And it was working. She could feel the world forming, close enough to reach. Lord Loryar’s modification of the world relationships didn’t apply to her new world yet, if it ever would without him taking affirmative action to make that so. She could feel it coming together, a small world only and of little real use, except as a place to escape, a place to hide, a place to rest and heal…
She screamed as the diamond device activated fully. Her world began to slip away from her as a terrible wrenching tore her soul. Realisation smote her; Lord Loryar was trying to take her power and add it to his own, to increase his control over his own world, and to give him the ability to make himself another world, and to defeat Ursula’s forces in this one. Or possibly in the other one. She had to hurry. It was like trying to grab a bar of soap in the bath while blindfolded, but Kelly caught her concept, caught her world, and opened a gap right underneath her chair.
It fell through. She landed on the soft grass, still bound to her chair, but the wrenching had stopped, and the gap closed behind her. Loryar would follow quickly, if he wasn’t thinking straight. If he did, she would kill him using this world. If he did not, it seemed a fair bet that Ursula would kill him, probably with her fingernails. Either suited Kelly quite well at that moment.
But she was still bound in the diamond chair. She could feel her world around her, open to her suggestions, to her manipulation. The chair didn’t seem to fit in that, and she understood why, both instinctively and by what she had been taught. It was not of her world, it had been made quite deliberately in another world by another world builder, so she could not affect it, at least not until it had been in her world for a good deal of time. She wasn’t sure how long that time would have to be, but as nothing seemed to be changing at the moment, she couldn’t afford to see if it was an hour or so. Besides, lying on her side bound to the chair was extremely uncomfortable.
Thankfully, the rest of her world was mallable, and she had an educated Ertoran upbringing at her disposal. A computer-controlled industrial laser formed from her thoughts. Carefully, she equipped it with sensors, scanners, a decision-making system and a power source. It hummed to life, processed for several minutes, then moved into position and cut precisely through her ankle restraints, then her neck restraint, then her wrist restraints. After it shut down, Kelly rolled away from the chair and sprawled motionless on the grass, wanting now just to rest. Later she would find food and perhaps the medicinal plants which grew in the woods, but for now she lay, and relaxed, and counted herself lucky to be alive.
Theresa threw down her pen and pushed her chair back from the table. A tear ran down her face, and she rubbed it away, smudging her eyeshadow.
“I can’t do it!” she said. “How can you ask me to do that?”
“We’re not asking,” Paul explained quietly. “This is just how it has to be. Can you see any other way of doing it?”
His words didn’t help to reassure; instead, Theresa let out a couple of wracking sobs and fled to the ladies’ toilet. Paul sat back and looked around the small coffee shop they had found for Theresa to start writing the salvation of all the Universes. He knew he stood out in his police uniform, for the police service he had joined had been modelled after the one here in Theresa’s world, and so he assumed the customers all thought that he was on duty.
Today, perhaps, it didn’t matter so much, because they had all see some strange things. The fire-breathing dinosaur which had appeared in the sky for a few moments earlier had been quite enough for Paul, but since then he’d seen a couple of people vanish spontaneously from the street, a couple more people spontaneously appear, and what appeared to be a display formation of flying pigs, leaving smoke trails around a nearby church tower. Theresa had assured them that such things were absolutely not normal for her world.
They’d also seen a goodly number of cracks, and there were more of them almost every minute. Things were becoming critical, much faster than they had thought they would, and they still had no idea who the villain of the piece really was. The only hope was to stabilise the Universes — all of them — from where the instability had started. If Theresa couldn’t write the actions in the world she had created which would cause that stabilisation to happen… Paul had managed to accept that people he knew were going to have to die. Under the circumstances, it seemed impossible for it to be otherwise, but he was also aware of the amount of power Theresa had in her own created world. Was it possible that she could find another way?
Vaguely, he wondered what the author writing this world was thinking about, and what he or she was intending to do about the whole situation, for it surely was affecting them as well. There was a frantic pace to the whole situation, as if there was some deadline or date which had to be reached at a particular stage of events. He shook his head. Speculating about such things wasn’t likely to get him anywhere.
Theresa returned from the toilets. Archangeli rose from his chair as soon as he saw her and gave her a long hug, followed by an even longer kiss. Paul looked away, blushing slightly, to see Steve looking right back at him, also blushing slightly.
The sound of chairs moving made Paul look back, and he found Theresa sitting down at her pad of paper again. She picked up the pen.
“I have an idea,” she said. “Let us see if I can make it work.”
Outside, there was a horrible roaring sound, and heavy footsteps made the ground shudder. Paul just caught a glimpse of an enormous leathery foot coming down onto the pavement (and cracking it) before the foot’s owner disappeared. People ran screaming down the road. Theresa looked at where the beast had been.
“Another dinosaur. They must be more popular than I had thought.” She set pen to paper, and started to write. “Let’s hope this works.”
“What are you going to do?” Steve asked. Theresa smiled at him.
“You wanted to help,” she said. “That’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
It dawned in Paul before Steve. “You’re sending us back into my Universe?”
“Absolutely. You’ve got that wonderful pen of yours — and don’t worry, I’ll make sure it works — and Steve has the compass. And,” she added with a smile that made her look absolutely endearing (and it was obvious that the effect of that smile was not lost on Archangeli), “I’ve also figured out a way to make sure you can move around.”
“Have you?”
“I have.”
“How?”
“Read and find out.”
She turned back to the paper and began to write furiously. Paul leaned over to see what she was writing.
Ursula strode into the ruins of Lord Loryar’s palace with a smile on her face. She had become significantly more powerful than she had thought would be possible even with Mephistopheles’ power freely given. Defeating a world builder in his own world should have been impossible, even with that kind of power. She wondered why it was so, but couldn’t come up with any ideas which seemed plausible. Perhaps she’d go and ask her less-than-beloved brother about it when this was all over.
A less optimistic person might have added ‘if it was ever over’ to that thought, but Ursula didn’t. She knew it would all be over, and she knew it would all be over very soon. The reason it would all be over very soon was standing in the middle of what had been the palace’s grand entrance lobby. Most of the upper part of the building had been sliced off during the fighting, and now lay in a smoking pile of rubble a few hundred metres from the rear wall, right in the middle of the formal gardens. Ursula strode across the dirty, dusty floor tiles, crunching broken glass underneath her delicate-seeming heeled shoes.
“Well,” she said when she was close enough to Lord Loryar to speak to him without raising her voice and be understood. “Here we are.”
“Here we are,” Lord Loryar conceded. He didn’t look particularly happy about it, but Ursula hadn’t expected that. He surely knew that he was destined to die, and that his death was going to be very painful and extremely messy. What he didn’t know is exactly how long Ursula planned on leaving between her final victory and Lord Loryar’s execution, and where that execution would take place.
She felt something change in the world around her, and found herself encased in solid marble up to the neck. Loryar smirked at her.
“Oerhaps you’re not so good after all,” he said. Ursula smirked back at him. The marble shattered, sending deadly sharp splinters flying outwards in all directions, so quickly that Loryar barely avoided being skewered by several of them. Those which would have taken his life clattered to the floor, all their energy bled out of them by Loryar’s power. Ursula’s smirk turned into a nasty smile.
“So,” she siad. “Let’s see what it really takes to defeat you.” She struck the next blow, as quickly as thought, as all such attacks should be if they were to have a hope of success. The floor heaved, but even as it did so, marble shards rose from the floor and moved, streaking towards Loryar so fast they began to glow white-hot at their tips and leading edges. Loryar solidified the air around himself, making a solid barrier against which the marble shards shattered. Fire roared from the ground beneath Ursula’s feet, affecting her not in the slightest, followed rapidly by an upwelling of molten lava, which forced its way through cracks beneath the tiles and spread ominiously towards Ursula’s feet.
She turned her attention to it, and it changed direction, spreading towards Loryar instead. His will pushed it back, but Ursula’s held it in place. The lava became motionless, unchanging. They looked into each other’s eyes, each straining with all their effort to deny the change the other was attempting to make, and to make their own change in its place. The success of one would result in the death of the other.
Unnoticed by either, a crack tore open in the fabric of reality, and a policeman stumbled out of it, bumping into Loryar. It was all the distraction Ursula needed. The lava leaped from the floor as a leopard might leap onto its prey, and struck Loryar’s face, blinding him. He cried out and staggered back, and a large rock struck the rear of his head, felling him as effectively as if his head had been cut off. The policeman caught him and dragged him towards the crack, aided by another man who leaped from the crack as well to take Loryar’s other side. Ursula strode towards them, more marble fragments arraying themselves around her as she walked.
“Hold,” she commanded. “Leave him.”
“Sorry,” the policeman said. “Author’s privilege.”
“What?”
“We get to do something completely implausible, because the author of this world has decreed that it will happen.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It didn’t make much sense to me either. ‘What about continuity?’ I asked, but apparently it doesn’t matter. It’s the state of the story at the end of the book that’s what matters. And we are, I’m told, approaching the end of the book.”
“What book? Talk some sense, or you will be made to regret it. Who sent you here?”
“I suppose you’re going to try and kill me, aren’t you?”
“You certainly deserve to die for your insolence. Do you know who I am?”
“Ursula, I would suspect. You’re the bitch who rules Brimstone, aren’t you? Yes, I’ve heard a lot of things about you. I can’t say I liked any of them, but I must admit, you’re extremely sexy.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely. Which is why it’s a pity we’re going to have to do this to you.”
“Do what?”
“This.”
Something thunked into the back of Ursula’s head. She saw stars, and collapsed. Steve hefted hia bludgeon — a nice large baseball bat which Paul had drawn for him before they’d gone through the crack Theresa had created for them — and grinned with significant satisfaction.
“That’s that done. She really isn’t very nice, is she?”
“Doesn’t seem to be. Neither’s this one by all accounts.” Paul nudged Loryar’s unconscious form with the toe of his boot. “Might as well get on with the rest of it.” He took his pen out again. “Now we see how good my memory is.”
He began to draw, and discovered that his memory was absolutely up to the task. A machine took form before them, a machine made largely of diamond and graphite, two forms of carbon with quite different properties, but both capable of affecting the interaction between the worlds. To be entirely honest about Paul’s drawing abilities and his memory, the device wasn’t particularly complex to construct. When it was done, they dragged the unconscious forms of Ursula and Loryar onto the spaces prepared for them within the device, and strapped them down securely.
“Right,” Steve said, checking their bonds after the last had been fastened. “It appears that our job is done.”
“This job, anyway. Where next?”
“I think we have to go and get Norman next.”
“We’d best do that then.” Paul pulled a small device out of his pocket, tapped it a few times, and pointed it at an empty bit of air. A gap sprang open. “I do like this.”
“Very handy. Is that the right world?”
“Looks like it to me. Come along.” They went through the gap to Mephistopheles’ world and closed it behind them. Left in Loryar’s world, Ursula regained consciousness at exactly the same time as her enemy did. The device made sure of that.
Both saw the situation they were in. Both found themselves tied down. Both started using their power to remove the bindings.
The diamond began to glow, and too late, far too late for it to do any good, Ursula and Loryar realised what was happening to them.
“But it’s not fair!” Ursula cried out before the end, but it didn’t do any good. The plot had already been decided, and the end was determined. Almost as if they had never been forced apart, the worlds moved back into balance, and stability returned to that Universe.
Theresa put her pen down.
“I’m done,” she said. Archangeli enfolded her in a hug.
“You did well,” he said.
“Did I?” Theresa sounded uncertain, which was not particularly surprising, because she was.
“Yes. You did.”
“But I didn’t explain anything very well. What if it turns into a plot hole?”
“A plot hole? Could that be a problem?”
“I don’t know. I tried to avoid them before. I’ve been trying to avoid them now, but time is against us.” Outside, a large tank rolled slowly past, firing its main gun at a giant lizard which was attempting to kick down a skyscraper and doing a pretty good job at it. “It’s like an instinctive feeling that the whole thing will fall apart if there are too many holes in it. I get visions of characters falling into bottomless voids and ceasing to exist completely.”
“Under your control they would surely avoid them.”
Theresa laughed.
“What?”
“What you just said,” Theresa said.
“What about it?”
“Wasn’t how you’re supposed to talk.” She looked up at the ceiling — or rather, at something indeterminately above the ceiling. “Stick to the character, will you?”
“Who were you talking to?”
“Whoever’s writing this world. Do you ever get the impression that whoever it is has gotten rather desperate lately?”
“Well, things have got quite hectic.”
“You could say that. It’s almost like there’s a deadline looming.”
Archangeli checked his watch, which informed him that it was the twenty-seventh of November.
“Well, Christmas isn’t for nearly a month yet, so it can’t be that.”
“I wonder what it is.”
Archangeli shrugged. “Perhaps we’ll find out. If we don’t…” he shrugged again. “Does it matter?”
“I expect not. If there is a deadline, it’d better be for something important. I don’t like having my life messed around with like this.”
“And who are you to complain about that?” He poked her in the arm. “After what you’ve just been doing.”
“Well… isn’t a girl allowed a little hypocrisy from time to time?”
She never got an answer to that question, for they were sent staggering by what Archangeli could only have described as the world shifting sideways by a considerable distance. At the same time, it appeared to ripple. The entire event was over in a moment, leaving people muttering to themselves as they straightened their chairs and tables and, in a few cases, mopped up spilled drinks from the front of their coats.
“What was that?” Theresa asked. They peered curiously out of the window. It seemed that the giant lizard and the tank had both vanished. In fact…
“The damage is gone. All those things coming through from other worlds… it’s like they were never here.”
“Does that mean it’s working?”
“It might. How would we find out?”
“Wait and see if it starts up again, I guess. This could just be the eye of the storm.”
“Delightful image. Shall we take this chance to return to your house?”
Theresa smiled and batted her eyelids at Archangeli in a manner which drove him absolutely wild. She knew it did, so used it to its best possible effect.
“And what would you want to do there?” she asked him in a throaty whisper.
“I’m sure we’ll think of something,” Archangeli said, and took her arm. They strolled out of the coffee shop with broad smiles on their faces. Life, for the time being at least, looked to be on the up again.
Ursula came to consciousness very slowly, much as a person might swim to the surface of a deep pool of treacle, assuming they were wearing some kind of aqualung which would function correctly when immersed in dark, sticky, viscous sugar product. She opened her eyes, and saw above her the ceiling of her bedchamber in her fortress in Brimstone. Ah yes, now she remembered. She’d collapsed while preparing the next wave of soldiers to go to Utopia, when…
…when she’d died in Utopia. Her memories bobbed and weaved; she couldn’t remember how it had happened. She’d gone after Loryar, but after that… what had happened?
In Ertora, her second body woke up in much the same way as the first had. She was also in her bedchamber. Both Ursulas sat up and divested themselves of the heart and brain activity monitoring probes which had been stuck to their skin. They swung their legs over the sides of their beds, stood, and strode to their respective wardrobes, where they divested themselves of the medical gowns in which they had been dressed, and donned instead sheer silk robes designed to hint at far more than they revealed, but to hint very strongly at what might be lurking beneath the fabric.
Brimstone held more of her adjutants and followers, although the medical staff in Ertora were probably better. Those, then, were the people the body she had in Ertora went to see, while in Brimstone she went in search of her immediate underlings. Finding them wasn’t difficult; a large selection of them looked up sharply when she opened her bedroom door. After a startled moment, as one they all rose and bowed or curtsied deeply to her. Her majordomo for Brimstone was the first to rise, and the first to speak.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” he said. “We are most gratified to see you well again.”
“How long have I been unconscious?”
“Three days, your Majesty. Three days and six hours, I believe.”
Ursula waved the clarification aside. In Brimstone, she rang the bell in her bedchamber for an attendant. One answered almost immediately, bowing deeply when he realised it wasn’t a doctor who had summoned him.
“Bring the doctors who have been attending me,” Ursula said. The attendant bowed again.
“At once, your Majesty,” he said, and fled. Ursula nodded in satisfaction. Three days wasn’t long enough to put her out of the minds of her subjects. That, at least, had been done right. As had the campaign for Utopia, unless Loryar had somehow survived what had killed her — that she remembered, he had been caught in it as well. What had happened?
In Brimstone, she spotted the commander-in-chief of her armies, General Firoti. She fixed her gaze on him.
“General Firoti,” she said. “How fares the campaign for Utopia?”
The General bowed deeply, but there was a smile on his otherwise dour features. He wasn’t a very entertaining person, but was capable enough when it came to fighting. More than that, in fact — he’d distinguished himself in planning for the Utopia campaign, and had executed it as well as could be expected when he wasn’t the one with the powers necessary to counter Loryar’s world builder advantage.
“Your Majesty,” he said. “Utopia stands pacified and ready to serve you.”
“Pacified?”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
The General remained impassive, with that slight smile. Ursula wondered briefly how many people had been killed before the rest had submitted, then put it out of her mind. It didn’t matter. On Ertora, a doctor looking exactly like a doctor ought to — white coat, stethoscope, glasses and a few high-technology devices of Ertoran make — appeared at the door to Ursula’s bedchamber, saw her standing waiting for him, and bowed deeply, muttering something about how gratified he was to see her up and about and apparently unhurt.
“What happened to me?” Ursula demanded of him.
“Well, your Majesty, we do not know the cause of your illness. I can describe the symptoms and the treatment we applied, but we were not able to determine the cause.” The doctor bowed again, as if afraid Ursula would order him executed for incompetance. She had in fact had no such notions, although she had done it before when people had displeased her. Since she couldn’t remember herself the circumstances leading up to her death, she wasn’t particularly surprised that the doctors hadn’t been able to find out anything much about it.
“If I require that information, I shall ask,” Ursula said. The doctor bowed again. “Did you give me any drugs which might interfere with my body or mind now that I am conscious?”
“As you are conscious, your Majesty, it shows that the last of the drugs in your system has worn off. We were not expecting it to run its course as quickly as it evidently has, but it would be the longest-lasting and would have kept you unconscious. Your Majesty was initially in a coma, but we were able to bring you out of it after the first day. There were still some extremely strange things on your Majesty’s scans, so we elected to conduct a more complete course of treatment before we allowed you to wake.” He cringed again, for keeping Ursula unconscious could be construed as an assassination attempt.
Fortunately for the doctor. Ursula had some idea of what he was talking about, and could comprehend the reasoning behind his decision. She nodded.
“You are to be congratulated,” she said. “Combatting an unknown ailment cannot be easy. I shall see that you are rewarded, and you are henceforth appointed my personal physician. What is your name?”
“Doctor Timothy Jones, your Majesty.”
“Very well, Doctor Jones. Now, leave me. I shall dress and consult with the clonemasters about a replacement body.”
“A replacement body, your Majesty?”
“One of me died, Doctor. I should replace her as soon as possible, for reasons of safety.”
“Aaah. That explains some things, your Majesty. Would you like me to summon the clonemasters?”
“Instruct my attendant to do it as you leave. If things have become clearer to you now that you know one of my bodies died, I suspect you may wish to depart and think further about it.”
“Exactly so, your Majesty,” Jones said, bowing and backing out of the room. “I shall find your attendant directly.”
He must have done as he had promised as well, for it was inside half an hour before the clonemasters appeared. Ursula passed the intervening time on Ertora taking a shower and selecting something inappropriate to wear. On Brimstone, she studied records of the battles fought after she died. General Firoti had done an excellent job with the remainder of the campaign. She made a note to ensure he was rewarded for his efforts. He had even begun to prepare her armies for another push into Arae, although the world was blackened and burned by the nuclear attack they had launched on it before the seperation of the worlds. With the relationship between the worlds back to normal, Arae was once more of great strategic importance, even if it wouldn’t be providing any food for centuries.
“Begin the advance into Arae as soon as you are ready, General,” Ursula instructed. In Ertora, the clonemasters had arrived, and she wanted to turn her full attention to them. “I am sure that you will acquit yourself quite satisfactorily.”
Archangeli was roused in the early morning light by a scream from downstairs. He scrambled his way to his feet, momentarily disoriented before he remembered that he was in Theresa’s bedroom. Memories of the previous night started to intrude, but he pushed them aside when the scream was followed up by a wail. It was Theresa’s voice; he needed nothing more than that to spur him downstairs, after snatching up his baton from where it lay on top of a chest of drawers.
At the bottom of the stairs, he didn’t find Theresa being menaced by a burglar, or assaulted by a masked terrorist, or otherwise intimidated by any number of other unsavoury people who had flashed through his mind. He didn’t even find Theresa confronted by some new and unusual monster from another Universe which hadn’t seperated properly from this one. Instead, he found her with her notepad from the day before, looking at page upon page of neat handwriting.
“What is it?” Archangeli asked.
“This… I didn’t write it.”
“What?” Archangeli took a closer look. The text was written in Theresa’s handwriting, but it wasn’t what Archangeli remembered seeing at the end of the story the previous evening. With widening eyes, he read about Ursula waking up and mustering her armies for another assault on Arae, her plans for domination of her Universe apparently unchecked.
“Not that I’m surprised by what she’s doing,” Theresa said, sounding slightly calmer now that someone else had seen the same text she had, “as I may have written that sort of thing myself anyway, it’s really the only plausible cause for Ursula to take, but… I didn’t write this.” She gave the pad to Archangeli, who skimmed through the rest of it.
“Doesn’t look good,” he said. “Can we do anything?”
“I don’t know if we should. I don’t know if I should interfere. I can’t change what’s happened there, I could tear the boundaries between the Universes apart again. But Ursula’s going to take over everywhere… you know, I originally intended to have Norman defeat her after he took care of Lord Loryar, in a big showdown in Loryar’s palace.”
“Did you?”
“I did. Things changed a bit once what I was writing started to affect what was happening here as well…”
“You’ve had a thought.”
“I’ve had several, and I don’t like them very much. Someone’s writing us having this conversation, aren’t they?”
“According to what Steve tells us, absolutely. I believe we suspected it even before he turned up.”
“Right, well, what if they also wrote the addition to my story? Why shouldn’t they be able to? I could do it to a character in your Universe — to you, in fact, if you were still there — if I wanted to. The difference is, of course, that stories in your Universe aren’t real.”
Theresa said it in an offhand manner, but it pricked Archangeli’s ears nonetheless.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, you know how the good stories, the well-realised ones, the ones with backing, are usually just views into other Universes partially controlled by the author? That, I think, has been well established by what we’ve seen and been told.”
“If we can trust what we’ve been told.”
“when it matches the evidence, I’m inclined to believe it for now. That seems to be a fundamental property of every Universe. Infinitely nested, we are, stories within stories within stories. But, what happens in a world where the stories aren’t real? What if it acts like… a blocked valve. Some kind of pressure builds up, and then it fractures…”
“And the boundaries fall apart. That’s what those men wanted you to do!”
“They did specify it quite precisely. They didn’t mention that in so many words, but I think… yes, what they said meant that was likely to be the result of it. They knew what they were doing.”
“I wish we knew who they worked for. Do you think we can find them and ask them?”
“You used all your pepper spray last time we ran into them, remember?”
“If you bring Paul and Steve back here, we could get them to help. Paul has that remarkable pen of his, remember?”
“Why, so he does.” Theresa smiled and took the pad back, then pulled the lid from her pen and started to write. “Bringing them back shouldn’t be difficult.” She wrote a couple of lines, then looked up at Archangeli with a smile. “Why don’t you get some breakfast, darling? You’ll need to fix enough for four. I don’t think this will take long, and they won’t have eaten.”
“Right away, my dear.” Archangeli bowed, got a tongue stuck out at him in return for his effort at civility, and strolled happily into the kitchen, whistling a cheerful tune. It died on his lips when he recognised the man standing by the back door.
“We meet again,” the burly man he’d last seen crying out from having pepper spray in his eyes outside a coffee shop said. “I can’t say it’s a pleasure.” His fist flashed out. Archangeli managed to avoid it, wishing he hadn’t put his baton down when Theresa had turned out not to be in immediate physical danger. Not that it would have done much good against this much sheer bodily bulk; Archangeli hit several pressure points which had usually had excellent results on the streets, and even in training where everyone was careful not to unduly hurt each other, but this man was like a brick wall as far as feeling pain went.
It wasn’t long before Archangeli was sprawled face-down on the kitchen floor, his arms held painfully behind his back. He heard tape being pulled from a roll, and then a considerable quantity was used to bind his wrists and ankles. The man patted him on the cheek as the sounds of a short struggle came from the living room.
“Just lie there,” the man said. “And you’ll be fine.” He wrapped tape around Archangeli’s mouth several times and went into the living room, where the sounds of another brief struggle were heard, then more tape being used. The front door opened and slammed, and the house was empty. Archangeli could only lie on the floor, working against the tape, rubbing his wrists raw trying to get free and hoping something would happen.
He didn’t really expect it to be anything pleasant though.
Theresa didn’t know where they took her. She didn’t care where it was, although she was very interested in what they were going to do to her when she got there. She didn’t think it would be very pleasant. She did know that it was a long way from her house, for they had thrown her in the back of a van and driven off. They drove for over an hour, with Theresa’s hands and feet throbbing painfully from lack of blood. Eventually, she heard gravel beneath the tyres, and the back of the van opened. Two burly men — two different burly men — lifted her out and carried her into what appeared to be a large stately home. The cellar appeared to have been refitted from its original use, as it was shiny and sanitised and brightly lit with flourescent tubes behind diffusers. Everything seemed almost painfully clean, and everything was either white or stainless steel.
The chair they put her in after cutting her bonds was stainless steel and very cold through her clothes. It stood in the middle of a small pool of light in the middle of the otherwise dark room. The men lurked menacingly at the edges of it, making Theresa decide that rising from the chair and trying to escape would probably be a bad idea — or at least, an idea doomed to failure.
A few moments later, the door opened, and a tall, slim figure entered the room. She had slender legs, perfect hips, an absolutely tiny waist, small but perfect breasts, and the most elegant arms which Theresa had ever seen. As she came into the light, Theresa saw that the woman was in fact entirely perfect — except for her eyes. Her eyes were dark pits of flaring lights, crashing worlds, confusion and chaos. Looking into those eyes, Theresa knew who she was facing.
“Well, we meet at last,” the personification of Chaos said. Her voice was entirely devoid of humanity, deep and toneless with a disturbing sense of multiplicity to it, as if hundreds of voices spoke in unison. “I would like to let you know just how disappointed we all are in you. Things were going so well, and you had to put them back the way they were. I cannot let that stand, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” Theresa said. “I didn’t realise it was your plan.”
“And had you known, would you have followed it more faithfully?”
“No.”
“I did not think you would have. Tell me, my dear, before we kill you, do you have anything you’d like to say?”
Theresa’s eyes locked onto Chaos’ bottomless pools of confusion for an endless moment, then Chaos nodded. One of the burly men stepped forwards, drew a knife, and drew it sharply across Theresa’s throat. She struggled for a brief, useless moment, then slumped lifeless in the chair. Her blood spread across the spotless white floor, lurid scarlet under the bright lights.
Ursula stood on the blackened soil of Arae, admiring the enormous pylons and collection arrays which spread out before her. These were the devices which had gathered the energy from the detonations of her nuclear attack on Loryar’s invading force and fed it back to Utopia, where Loryar had used it to push all the worlds apart, and started the degeneration of the entire Universe. And then someone had put things right, by killing both Loryar and Ursula herself — or one of her bodies. That didn’t quite add up yet. Ursula was confident that eventually it would. The answers would be there to be found, and she would have plenty of time in which to find them. Her replacement body was already growing, and would be ready in less than two weeks. The clonemasters had promised an even better design than she’d had the last time.
“Your Majesty, do you understand how this device works?” General Firoti asked.
“Yes, General. I do. Would you care for an explanation?”
“No, your Majesty. I fear I would not understand it; I am just a soldier.”
“But you make a fine soldier, General. We must all be what we are, and trying to do those things we were not made to do will not lead us anywhere productive. It is surprising how few people know that.”
“I see, your Majesty. And, if I may ask, were you made to rule?”
“Of course, General. I was made to rule all the worlds.”
The General saluted her sharply.
“Indeed you were, your Majesty. May I do everything in my power to help your destiny come to pass.”
“You, General, have quite a future. Tell me, which world should be brought to my leadership next?”
“Please consider, if you will, the world of Girmesh,” Firoti began. They turned away from Loryar’s energy collectors and studied instead maps and plans and inventories, in the middle of a landscape blackened by nuclear fire, bringing death and destruction to other worlds. At least the worlds would still be there to be conquered.
In his tower in his world, Mephistopheles perceived some of this, and sighed. The Universe would be an unhappy place with Ursula ruling all the worlds, but at least it would be alive. They didn’t talk about it, but he knew Norman understood that choice as well. Ursula was too powerful to stop, too powerful to resist, but at least those who she enslaved would live — most of them would, anyway. And perhaps, one day, she could be overthrown.
A thought came to him. He turned from the window.
“Norman?”
“Yes?”
“How do you fancy having your power back?”