Q hunched forward and clutched her head, shaking.
Rael winced in sympathy and pulled the handles of her dimensional bag out of her pocket. Fished out a cold bottle of Boost—electrolytes and sugar, designed to replenish a person’s energy after mental labor.
“Q?” The witch twitched at the cold bottle pressed into her hands. “Drink.”
Q slugged half of it, stopped to breathe. "Rael? Oh, of course the Oners sent you. Dammit, Rael, I can't track them. They took Xen. He’s hurt and they took him. I can’t trace them. It was a powered gate, and . . .”
“From here?”
“Yes. They opened the gate in the plaza right there.” Q fought to steady her breathing.
Rael could feel her, trying to calm her panic, looked at her parents both sitting cross-legged on the ground.
Q took another deep breath as she sat up and forced herself to relax. Rael listened in mentally as Q reached for the electric blue of the inbetween.
:: The powered gate was coming from that direction, but collapsed before I could trace it all the way to its source. It was coming from a greater distance than I could see. ::
Her father’s magnification pulled back, further back, and the little universe sheets shrinking down to bright dots. Clustering, clouds of fireflies, and strings between, like branches holding up clusters of bright leaves, all leading back to the trunk of basic, unicellular life.
:: That’s very different from how I see the Multiverse. :: Q tried to look, to see which direction the gate had come from. Failed.
:: Show me how you see it. :: Wolf was calm . . . but that deep power that had always been there was roiling very close under the surface.
Q withdrew a bit, and looked out at the crystal of the Multiverse. The flaws and cracks that separated the major events . . . where they were, and where the gate had been. Across one crack and further. Her Dad reached through her vision to tag a universe, a second, then withdrew.
:: Did you see the gate go this far? ::
:: Yes it stretched much further . . . and then it was gone. ::
Her mother’s worry leaked, was firmly repressed. :: Extrapolate. Gates wiggle around, but with a general area to search, to watch for their next gate opening, we should be able to find them. ::
Q followed her line further, across another crack . . .
Rael fell out of contact. Damn. How far did "They" reach? And who are "They?"
She stood up and listened to the voices around her, people telling each other what they’d seen. Looked back at the Disco people and caught Lon's eye.
“There was a circular rug, ten meter diameter, metallic copper colored, and as we saw, definitely an electrical conductor. A little fat guy on a fancy throne, six tall skinny guys on guard.” Lon’s firm clear voice. “It popped out of nowhere, no visible gate. The guards, three on each side, stepped off the rug to the side, like a ceremonial guard. Xen walked up to the rug and spoke, introduced himself.
“The man replied in English, very accented. ‘You may approach.’ He said.”
Rael looked around. “So of course Xen stepped on the rug.”
Lon nodded. “‘Are you the leader of the people who destroyed a world?’ he said. Xen asked if he meant the destruction of Helios, or the prior destruction by Helios. And the guy just nodded. ‘You destroyed a world.’ He thumped his staff, grounded the haft and aimed the top at Xen. The rug fibers stretched up a bit, and zap! Xen collapsed. The guards stepped back on the rug and the whole thing disappeared.”
Q nodded. “Xen was alive when they left. I would have felt him die.”
Rael looked at the empty circle of pavement. And he’d better still be alive, or I’m going to kill every single one of them!
Marooned is scheduled for fall 2019.
Other Titles by Pam Uphoff
Wine of the Gods Series:
Outcasts and Gods
Exiles and Gods (Three Novellas)
The Black Goats
Explorers
Spy Wars
One Alone
Comet Fall
A Taste of Wine (Seven Tales)
Dark Lady
Growing Up Magic (Four Novellas)
Young Warriors
God of Assassins
Heirs of Crown and Spear
The Fiend
Empire of the One
Warriors of the One
Dancer
Earth Gate
Mages at Large
Triplets
Sea Wolves
Bad Karma
Dark Side of the Moon
Olympian
Embassy
Rael
On the Run
God of the Sun
Cannibal World
No Confidence
Pure Poison
Flying
Last Merge
Nowhere Man
Black Point Clan
External Relations
Meet the Family
Children of a Foreign God
Lucky Dave
A Prophetable Dimension
Mall Santa
Saturday Night
The Directorate Series:
Directorate School
A Tale of Three Interns
Trouble in Paradise
First Posting
Surveillance
Fort Dinosaur
Shadow Zone
Project Dystopia
Fractured Loyalties
Cooking Hot
The Boy
One Love
A Warrior’s Art
Scrambled
The Lawyers of Mars
Fancy Free
Time Loop
In the Rift
Writing as Zoey Ivers
YA Cyberpunk Adventures:
The Barton Street Gym
Chicago
Atlantis+
Fantasy:
Demi God