The Secret Sea (24 page)

“Snapping right we do,” the other said, and they high-fived.

“Not a word to the others,” Jan warned as he refolded the schematic and tucked it back in the desk drawer.

“They're already getting antsy,” the other protested. “They know something's up.”

“We have to wait. We need money to outfit the boat, and we won't have that until we pawn off the
frau
s to Salazar.” Here he hooked a thumb right in Moira's direction. She panicked for an instant before realizing he was just gesturing toward the holding cell down the hall. “Once we have the dosh, we bring everyone in. Explain it all. I'm not getting them all het up before we're ready. Not like the Washington Park gig.”

The other groaned. “Right, right. All right, Jan.”

“Good is good?”

“Good is good.”

“Snap it, then. Let's go.”

Moira watched them leave. The door clicked shut. She forced herself to count to ten before she dared to move the box aside.

Then she counted to ten again before she stepped out of the corner. She was keenly aware that they could return at any moment. A part of her suspected they would go from this clandestine meeting to the holding cell, where they would find a
frau
missing and a Dutchman possibly dead, certainly mauled. And then what?

And then game over, Moira, without a restart button and with no saved games, so maybe quit actin' the maggot, lassie, and get to legging it!

The voice in her head switched from her own to her mother's. Moira tended to listen to her mother.

She pawed through the desk drawer for the folded sheet of
whatever
and tucked it into her waistband, letting her shirt cover it, and snagged the flask of electroleum as well. Then she cracked open the door, turning the knob with slow, measured rotation. Each minute click of the cogs inside seemed to echo like cannon fire.

With the door open a smidge, she leaned in close, held her breath, and listened.

Nothing. A steady drip of condensation from the pipes, but nothing else.

She opened the door enough to slip out, closed it quietly behind her, and dashed toward the glowing green
X
down the hall.

 

FORTY-THREE

Khalid's story took a while to tell. He kept jumping ahead of himself, and then—realizing he'd missed something—he would have to backtrack to explain. When inventing a tale from whole cloth, he could keep all the details and the continuity straight; telling the absolute truth from beginning to end was new territory for him. His brain wasn't accustomed to it.

As he finished, Dr. Bookman leaned against the wall at one end of the alley, staring up at the sky, occasionally nodding and mumbling to himself, tapping a finger along one side of his jaw.

“Twins, you say?” he asked at last. “Identical?”

“Yeah.”

“Powerful magic, then. Very strong.”

Magic? Khalid shook his head. “I don't believe in magic. I mean, I've seen a lot of weird stuff in the last day or so, but
magic
—”

Dr. Bookman grinned. “Forgive me for using such an outdated term. I'm old enough that I remember the great debates of the eighties. The more acceptable term, of course, is
wild science
.”

Wild science. “
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
,” Moira had said. Well, Moira hadn't really said it. Some old sci-fi guy had said it.

“What's wild science?” Khalid asked, thinking he might know.

“Why, wild science is everything you've described to me! Wild science is what I've devoted my life to studying.” He bowed with a flourish. “Victorio Bookman, MSF.
Magister scientiae ferae
. From the Latin for ‘doctor of wild science.'”

“So what I described to you is
real
here? It's some kind of superadvanced science that seems like magic?”

“In past centuries we thought it
was
magic, but that term is hardly fashionable these days. Do you truly have no wild science where you come from? No telepathy, no astral projection, nothing of the sort?”

Khalid shrugged. “Not really. Some people think we do, but no one has ever proved it. I never saw anything remotely like it until Zak started having visions. And then we came here and…”

“I see,” Dr. Bookman said, nodding. “There have long been theories that other universes could exist beyond this one.”

“That's what Moira said. Alternate universes.”

“Yes. Your friend is very smart. It's too bad most people in this world can't or won't appreciate it,” he said darkly. “It's different where you come from?”

“Girls are okay over there.” Khalid thought about it. “I mean, there's stuff that goes on, but not like here.”

“Given the choice between living in a world with wild science and living in a world with equality between the sexes,” Dr. Bookman said gravely, “I would choose the latter. I'm sorry you've come here, Khalid.”

It was weird—this world had been frightening at first, but once Khalid had been able to calm down, it had become something almost magical. The strange, soft lighting everywhere. The canal and its gondolas. The Wonder Glass that was like the world's best iPad times a million. He could have settled in and gotten to enjoy it … and that was
before
learning that “magic” was real here.

But now, knowing what he knew …

Yeah, he would give up magic to keep Moira safe, too.

“It's a shame for many reasons,” Dr. Bookman went on, “beyond even the simple premises of human dignity. Some preliminary evidence suggests that women may have a greater facility in manipulating and understanding some of the concepts behind wild science. Such studies are, of course, suppressed.”

Khalid sensed a great sadness in Dr. Bookman, and normally he would have had no problem listening to more of the man's talk. But the blood on the plank was still there, and Zak and Moira were still missing.

“Dr. Bookman? Sir? About my friends…?”

Dr. Bookman snapped out of his melancholy reverie. “Yes. Of course. My apologies. Where were we?”

“Alternate universes…”

“Right. Well, as I said, they've long been theorized. There's even a theoretical construct for them. We call it the Secret Sea. The idea is that the multiverse is composed of a sort of quantum foam, with our two universes bobbing in it, almost like corks on the water.”

“Or islands in the ocean?”

“Yes, something like that. And it's possible that the laws of physics work differently in each universe. In ours and in yours, we both have what here is called true science. Gravity, electricity, atomic power, and so on. But yours lacks wild science—magic—whereas here, the M-field allows for a different physics. We have supersymmetrical particles like the M-electron and the M-proton, which can bond into M-hydrogen, which is then combined with extracts of interuniversal quantum foam to form the basic building block of electroleum, for example.”

Khalid thought about it. M-this and M-that flew over his head, but he got the gist: Science was different enough here that it could seem like magic. “But how could Zak be having visions in
our
world? And how could Godfrey get over there in the first place? How did his ship end up there?”

Dr. Bookman pondered this, but only for a moment. “My universe and yours are only microns apart in one of the compactified extra dimensions of string theory … which allowed you to tunnel through in the first place and could account for some leakage of wild science on your side. While most universes are distinct and discrete, it's theoretically possible that similar universes such as ours mutually exert a subtle repulsive force on each other, a force that serves to make them more
dis
similar.”

“You lost me at
microns
.”

“Very well. Imagine the two islands in the ocean, our two worlds. Imagine that they are shaped like two capital
C
s, facing away from each other.” He cupped his hands to show what he meant. “Now imagine that they are close enough that the backs of the
C
s have only a small waterway between them. Narrow enough that it can be crossed.”

He thought back to Moira's description of an apartment. Maybe most of the walls were reinforced concrete, but a few were just cheap wallboard. That made more sense to him, but since they were talking about a boat, maybe the island metaphor was better.

“You're saying Godfrey's boat went through that waterway?”

“I'm saying that the metaphor may not account for this but that the distance between your world and mine may be narrow in certain places. Especially places of great import or great tragedy. Didn't you say a great many people died at the place where he crossed over?”

Khalid thought of the 9/11 memorial, of the Freedom Tower, of the terrorist attacks that had happened before his birth. “Well, yeah. But that was in 2001, and Godfrey crossed over a long time before that.”

Dr. Bookman chuckled. “You think time is linear? That events follow one another like a mother duck leading her ducklings along a path? Not so. Time is simultaneous. Everything that has happened or will happen is happening at the same moment. It's just that we lack the ability to perceive it thus. Time is folded onto itself.”

“Okay, sure, fine.” Science mumbo jumbo. “But in your world, is it actually possible to bring someone back to life? That's what Tommy said. He said that here we could use that electroleum stuff to somehow bring him back.”

Dr. Bookman thought for a moment. “That is the part of your tale that gives me pause. It's been attempted, of course, in the past. Before the wild-science regulations strictly curtailed such things. No one has ever claimed to succeed. But the circumstances you describe … a spirit from another universe, connected to the world of the living by an identical twin … There are certain theoretical, nearly massless M-particles that could interact weakly with the corporeal world while still retaining a spiritual form. If exposed to the energies of the Secret Sea and then, say, supercharged with some kind of monumental energy release—”

Khalid shook his head. “Look, I have to be honest with you: Science was never my big subject in school. Whether it's true or wild or whatever. I just want to find my friends and get Zak healthy. Everything else is … I don't know. You and Moira can talk about that stuff.”

With a self-reproaching frown, Dr. Bookman nodded. “You're right, of course. I'm so sorry. This happens to me: I get so excited by the possibility of something that I forget to mind the
probability
of something. Helping your friends is our first order of business.” He gestured. “Come along.”

“Where are we going?” Khalid wanted to get moving, but he didn't want to go just for the sake of going.

“Back to my office,” Dr. Bookman said with a gleam in his eye. “We are going to indulge in some wild science, my boy.”

 

FORTY-FOUR

The
X
was part of an
EXIT
sign after all. At the end of the hallway, Moira discovered a fire door. Fortunately, the wiring up by the ceiling was disabled, and when she pressed the bar to open the door, no alarm sounded.

So far, so good, but what would she do once she was outside? Six months earlier, she could have passed as a boy—maybe—but not now. Taking herself in, she gnashed her teeth and rued the day her mother had looked her up and down and said, “Time for someone's first bra, I believe.”

Once she was outside, whatever she did and whichever way she went, she would instantly be identified as a girl. A
frau
. An uncompanioned female, subject to who knew what in this awful world. Escaping the cage and the building did not mean instant freedom.

Think, Moira. Think. You can't just stand around and wait for something to happen. You have to get moving.

Her heart thrummed and her breath quickened, and for a moment the holding cell with the other women seemed almost cozy and homey and safe. She cursed at herself for entertaining the thought for even a fleeting instant. She wasn't like the women she'd shared a cell with. Born free, raised free, she wouldn't let a little thing like an alternate universe with a blinkered attitude toward women get in her way.

Such immoral attire
, Salazar had said. She could see his point, from his perspective. Her T-shirt and shorts probably seemed indecent in this universe. They would attract all manner of unwanted attention as soon as she stepped out onto the street. Not good.

Her legs burned to run as far from the Dutchmen's hideout as possible, but her mind braked them. She had to think, not react.

Gnawing at her bottom lip, she made her decision and retraced her steps down the hall. She wanted to run but feared the noise it would make.

Back in the office, she scrounged quickly in her former hiding space, recovering the coveralls she'd kicked aside.

Returning to the exit door, she slipped into the coveralls. They were baggy and hung on her in large, sexless folds, the chest area in particular dragged down by the weight of fabric, covering precisely nothing. She sighed and, not giving into panic, used one of her last buttons to pin back some of the material so that it covered her properly.

There. She looked lumpy, but in all the wrong places. Not feminine at all.

She heaved open the fire door and stepped outside, emerging into a sunken concrete stairwell that led up into an alleyway. The sun was out, and it blinded her for a moment. She cowered down in the stairwell, too aware that if her makeshift camouflage didn't work, anyone who saw her alone—the word
uncompanioned
filled her memory like sludge—would report her to the police. Or maybe try to take her for his own.