I KEPT TO the side of the Davniadses’ drive, and to the edge of the road after that. There was nowhere else to go—not by the road.
Father said that there had been talk of extending the road until it reached the Wayland Highway on the other side of the hills, but the Engineers had never started the work. My choices were clear—blunder through the still snowy hills or risk the road in the darkness before dawn, accompanied by wind and chill, before the marines started their usual canvass of the area and all the residents.
Like the Davniadses’ drive, the crown of the road was clear.
Click … click … crunch
…
My steps sounded louder in my ears than they probably did in fact, but the sound spurred me to set my feet more carefully on the downgrade.
Once I reached the sweeping ninety-degree turn above our driveway, I stopped and listened. Silence, but that didn’t mean anything. Not where the ConFed Marines were concerned. I edged off the road and into the snow-covered grassy depression that was almost a ditch—on the opposite side of the road. Stepping through the snow, I kept my
head low. Before long, I reached the point across the road from the low stone pillars that marked our drive.
Whhhsttt
…
whssssss
…
Only the whisper of the wind broke the stillness—that and the sound of my breath.
Was there still a guard by the pillars? A marine detachment watching the smoldering ruins of the house built by my great-great-grandfather?
I glanced toward the pillars, but could see nothing but two smudges of gray against the shadows of the evergreen hedge and the overhanging trees. As I strained to make out whether there was a guard posted, the dream impression of the red-blue, gold-black intersection returned, somehow right behind my eyes, even closer than in my dreams.
Crack.
The sound had come from behind me. I could feel eyes on my back, and I grasped in some way for the dark intersection, knowing that only that could save me, if anything could.
Without understanding how, I was on the other side of the black curtain, seeing through a veil the snow-drifted depression where the three marines looked down on a set of footprints that came from nowhere and went nowhere.
From that no-time place, I could hear nothing, but one of the ConFeds made the ward gesture from the Verlyt rites. Another had a shredder aimed at where I would have been, where I had been instants before.
Suspended there, I dared not move, not that I could. So I watched as the three marines stomped through and around where I had been. Finally, one followed my tracks backward until they reached the hard stones of the road and disappeared.
My unplanned disappearance in plain sight might lift suspicion from Allyson and her family, since I hoped that the marines would not walk hundreds of rods back uphill and through the Davniadses’ courtyard to compare footsteps in the snow. At least, I hoped I had left no tracks in the snow between the two places.
As I hung out of time, waiting, a marine reappeared with an officer, a tall and burly man. The marine pointed to my footprints, gesturing, then shaking his head. The burly man seemed to be exasperated, doing some pointing himself, jabbing a finger toward the marine, who kept backing up.
Even though I could feel nothing where I was suspended, I could tell that I was getting tired. The veil, or curtain, seemed to flicker in front of my eyes. What could I do?
My thoughts jumped back to the ConFed Marines guarding the house, and as they did, the scene through the black curtain wavered, then refocused, and I was standing in the orchard, still behind the curtain of time or place. But this time I knew that as soon as I willed it, I could be in the orchard.
With the marine tents, and the row of coffins laid out, some drifted over with snow, I did not want to reappear there. Not at all.
The Academy? No …
Finally, I concentrated on a place where I used to hike with Mother—the Long Wall Trail above the town, on the far side of Bremarlyn. I knew I could not go very far, but I
had
to go somewhere.
I thought, hard, and tried to visualize the trail and the way station, especially the way station, the one-windowed old log cabin.
Crrshhh
…
thud …
Sprawled on the trail, perhaps fifty rods from the way station, I looked around quickly. By now, the dim light of predawn lent everything a ghostly aura.
Chiichiii
…
chchiichii
… An enormous grossjay stared down from the overhead branch at the interloper stretched out on the trail.
On this side of Bremarlyn, the snow did not seem to have been quite so heavy, and the temperature was markedly warmer. Not enough that I could do without cloak and gloves, but enough that I was comfortable in what I wore.
Sitting up slowly, I continued to look around. I did not stand. My knees felt like water, and I had a splitting headache.
Even the idea of trying to call up that contradictory mental intersection made me wince. Right now, that was for emergency travel.
Chichiii
…
chchiiichi
…
No other recent footprints marked the mix of loose dirt and drifted snow, and the grossjay’s scolding seemed more of a greeting.
The Long Wall Trail was more of a summer path, anyway.
Finally, I gathered my feet under me and lurched upright in the dawn. And, after a time, I managed to stagger to the way station.
The latch was rusty, but functional. I scrambled until I found an old wooden bar and slid it into place. Then I looked around in the dimness.
Some little light filtered in from the cracks in the wooden shutters that covered the unglassed window. My feet left tracks in the thin layer of dust that blanketed everything.
Inside were two benches and a table, all of rough wood polished only by time and summer usage. But the bench was as welcome as any soft chair anywhere. Off came the pack, and out came the food. I was so
hungry I was drooling. A growl from my guts reminded me not to gulp it down whole. Beginning with a dried chyst, I chewed each bit thoroughly.
With the first mouthful, my shakes began to abate. After I finished the chyst and a chunk of tough but welcome jerky, interspersed with several sips from the small water bottle Allyson had packed, the headache began to lift.
Clearly, my out-of-time or out-of-place travel took energy, lots of it, and I had started out with an empty stomach.
Sitting there in the way station, I tried to call up the black curtain and the contradictory intersection. While I could bring them into mental focus, the effort set off another headache. The warning was sufficient, and I relaxed and started in on a dried pearapple.
After that, I studied the way station. Four log walls, one with a shuttered window, and one with a heavy door. The roof was not raised, but angled. The log wall which had the door was lower than the back wall, and three timbers, each a handspan wide, ran from front to back. The angle also provided the overhang for the unrailed front porch I had ignored during my staggering entrance.
Just the summer before, Mother and I had sat there, watching the rain come down.
“Not many people come here any more, Sammis,” she had said. “We’re not the physical people I … we once were.”
She had always looked younger than she was, just as I did. On the way up the trail, someone had noted that it was nice to see a brother and sister on such friendly terms. I was too embarrassed to make the correction, and she had just smiled an amused smile.
Yet I knew she was older than my father. That’s what the marriage book had shown.
In the early winter dawn, I dropped back from that memory, cut as if by a knife at the thought that I might never see either my mother or father again.
I carefully rewrapped the food, leaving out one last piece of jerky, and replaced the remainder in my pack. As I chewed, I tried to sort out everything that had happened in the last few days.
First, someone or something had attacked the ConFederation forces on Mithrada and apparently destroyed the planet-forming stations and most of the spacecraft—if the rumors were correct. At least some of the orbital power stations were damaged or destroyed. Nothing was being broadcast from Inequital and from the west. A detachment of ConFed Marines had burned my family’s ancestral home. Strange storms and weather had struck Bremarlyn and perhaps much of Westra. Yet there
were no strange aircraft, no battles nearby, and no other military forces.
Last of all, somehow, I was learning to travel, or slide out of places and into places, and that travel took as much effort as playing a whole centreslot game, maybe more.
What was I going to do? I had some theoretical knowledge, a little skill with woodworking tools. Small for my age, if stronger than many a head taller, and looking even younger than my size—I couldn’t pass as a casual laborer. Not with my gentry talk and uncalloused hands. Or as an orphan of sorts. The gentry didn’t abandon children—ever. There were too few.
I didn’t have an answer, but I couldn’t stay in the woods for too long. And I had no idea how I would be able to find my parents—or what had happened to them without having the same thing happen to me.
For the moment, the problems had to subside with the waves of exhaustion that swept over me. I staggered to my feet and pushed one of the two benches around the table and got both of them side by side. With the pack as a pillow and my cloak as a blanket, I went to sleep. Without a single dream, for the first time in days.
ON THE CONSOLE screen in the laboratory a map appeared, one illustrating the outline of a continent in relief. In addition to the greens and browns depicting different elevations were traceries of red dashed lines. All the dashed lines either began or terminated at the same point near the center of the continent.
The researcher in blue sitting before the screen tapped in a series of commands, and the map vanished, replaced by a chart resembling a star map. She touched the controls, and a three-dimensional version of the star chart appeared. In the center was a red dot, and a handful of red dashed lines curved outward from the red dot. Most ended with a circled black star.
With a frown, the researcher touched the keyboard again. The star map vanished, replaced in turn by a chart listing names, with four columns of entries after each name.
A black star preceded the majority of the names, and those the researcher ignored as she studied in turn the entries following each unstarred name.
Occasionally, she sighed, and the noise echoed in the dimness.
Once the console flickered, as did the power panel lights on the monitoring equipment arrayed around a bare raised platform to her
right. The platform stood in roughly the middle of the laboratory, surrounded at equidistant points by four consoles with screens.
Only the console occupied by the lone researcher was functioning.
The researcher glanced at the screen before her, then at the series of inked designs she had added on one side of the hard copy of the report beside the keyboard.
Again, the lights flickered, then failed, plunging the room into darkness and wiping the screen blank.
Sighing once more, the researcher waited, as if to see whether the power would return.
Wheep.
With the return of the lights, the screen relit, but displayed only a featureless blue.
The woman touched several keys, and the screen went black. She took a deep breath, then lifted the thin report that lay on the flat space to the right of the screen and slid it into the drawer in the console under the screen, shaking her head as she did so. Her sandy blond hair flared slightly with the movement, then bounced as she rose fluidly from the chair, and walked toward the bare platform in the middle of the laboratory.
Click.
Her fingers turned off the monitoring equipment on the right hand side of the platform.
When all the power light panels were dark, she stepped upon the platform and looked around, taking another deep breath, as if attempting a plunge into icy cold water.
With a sad smile, she vanished.
The room remained unpowered, but waiting.
Outside, the emergency etheline generator coughed, and the single set of lights illuminating the console where she had been seated flickered.
The researcher reappeared on the platform, smiling but shaking her head.
Droplets of water cascaded from her onto the platform. Her blue tunic and trousers were soaked, and the thin fabric clung to her like a second skin, outlining a slightly curved and youthful figure.
The lights flickered one last time and went out, leaving the windowless laboratory in near-total darkness, as the emergency generator coughed on the last drops of etheline.
The researcher walked surefootedly toward the doorway, leaving behind a trail of damp footprints that had already begun to fade as she slipped from the laboratory.