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AMBER
Boadice’s diary,
Session 75
Played on the 2nd January, 1998
Written by Jopie Schekkerman, based on a campaign by Astrid Tops.
"
h,
Boa, finally! I need to speak with you urgently.”
From far away, the words were whispered with a drive and a passion and that
was balm to my wounded heart. Perhaps taking Gran’s trumpcall had not
been a mistake.
“I know you don’t want to see me,” Gran went on, “but
this you will want to know.”
By now I the trump connection had become strong enough to allow me to see his
face. Gran’s chocolate-brown hair was shorter than I remembered and he
was paler than usual. The trumpcall had been weak, probably hailing from the
Courts of Chaos or the Black Zone. As I was in Amber, maintaining the contact
took strength from the both of us.
“Can you come through?” I asked, wanting to speak to my lover but
fearing what would happen if I took Llewella away. Gran looked dejected and
asked where I was. I told him ‘Amber’, and promised to help him
get home later, but Gran’s face clouded even more. He said:
“I don’t know if you will still want to…”
I held out my hand.
So there we were, in the doorway of my apartment in Castle Amber, silent because
I did not know what to say and Gran did not know how to begin. After a while,
I asked him in.
“Listen,” Gran said after I closed the door,
“I don’t know how you will react to this… I know you don’t
want to see me anymore so maybe you won’t mind, but I feel…”
“I don’t know either,” I said and I dropped my luggage where
I stood. The seagull with Llewella’s spirit in it had flown to the top
of a cabinet.
“Can you understand how I feel when you, who always insisted on fidelity,
you who said that to love was to be faithful, can you understand what I feel
when you betray me yourself?”
“That is different,” Gran said. He took a step closer and looked
me in the eye.
“I love you, of that at least I am sure, and that makes all the difference.”
I looked away and mumbled my discontent, unable to give word to my feelings.
“I mean, it’s different, don’t you understand?”
“I understand that your jealousy stems from your insecurity,” I
said, hugging myself.
“But you know that I am afraid you still love Trisha, and if you know
that-“
“But I don’t love Trisha!” Gran exclaimed. “But…”
He sighed. “Listen…”
“It does me good to hear you say that,” I said. “Really, it
does, but--.”
Gran took my hands.
“Boadice, I love you, I love you very, very much, but…”
He took me in his arms and I started to sob. I was so tired, and I had missed
him so much. I knew I should have kept my distance but at the moment I needed
a hug more than anything.
“Listen,” Gran said. “You must be strong. My father has un-done
my divorce.”
The black spots, who had been gathering in the corners of my eyes, came rushing
in and I lost consciousness.
But forgetfulness can not last for ever, and I woke up amid glasses of water,
tended by a very nervous Gran. When I had drunk a sip and Gran had calmed down,
I was ready to protest and to argue.
“But the marriage has been annulled! Un-done from the very beginning,
as if it never existed!”
“Not quite,” Gran said. “An act of annulment had been made,
yes, but with the mutual consent of my father and the House Chartin, the annulment
has been, eh, annulled.”
“But they can’t do that!” I cried out.
“I thought they couldn’t either, but my father… You know
how he is. He really likes you, that’s not it, but the problem is; you
have no connections to any of the Major Houses!
“I have a cousin who is the head of-“
“Your father’s position is impossible! He is a convicted criminal!”
I hit the floor with my fist and screamed.
“It is not fair!”
“And then there is the problem of your fertility,” Gran felt obliged
to add. “You see, Trisha, as a compensation, has agreed to immediately
get pregnant.
Violently, I pushed Gran away.
“Don’t you dare,” I said, pointing at him. “You won’t!
Don’t you dare touch her! If you do, you will never see me again, I swear!”
“But she’s my wife!” Gran cried out. “And our house
needs more members, you do understand that, don’t you? We’re tiny,
we’re on the brink of extinction!”
“But, but…!”
“I don’t love her, I love you, only you. This is business.”
“But, but…” I took a deep breath. “But maybe I am pregnant
too.”
We were silent for a long time.
“If you are pregnant, I will love our children at least as much as-“
“No!” I interrupted. “Gran, if you-“
“But they can not be heirs to Escallwyn, you know that. They will be bastards,
because I can’t get married again, officially.”
I thought it was particularly insensitive of Gran to rub it in like that, and
I pushed him away again.
“Gran, if you put as much as a finger on Trisha, leave alone making her
pregnant, you will really never see me again. I can live with many things, but
not with this.”
“My love,” Gran said and he took my hands again. “Do you
know how long you have been gone?”
“A couple of days, to my reckoning,” I said, suddenly fearful.
“It has been six months in the Courts.”
I felt myself grow pale as the realisation dawned.
“She is already pregnant, isn’t she…”
“She is…” Gran did not look me in the face. “And you
must, you must… I know how you think about her, but please, it’s
my child too.”
Gran had accurately read my thoughts. Trisha must die, but the foetus…
He was right, if I killed her now, I would also kill Gran’s child. My
hands were tied. Trisha had beaten me.
But how, why? It was not fair! Trisha had won, all of it. She had taken my
man, my position, and now she had even condemned our baby to bastardhood. And
all because of a fluke in the timestreams.
It was not fair, I had done nothing wrong. The very thought of her and Gran
together made me physically sick and I hugged my belly. My poor baby. Better
you will not be born, now…
But no! I am a bastard myself, and I am proud and strong! And so will you be,
my child.
“And you did not posses the backbone to speak up, to hold out?”
I asked Gran, furious. “You would not stand your ground for us?”
“But you yourself said you didn’t want to see me again! And you
would not answer my trumpcalls. Do you have any idea how many times I have tried
to trump you?”
“And you didn’t set one foot outside of Chaos to notice that time
was going much slower in the rest of the universe? Don’t tell me you only
tried to trump me from the Courts!”
“I travelled through shadow, and I could not reach you from there either.
You would not take my calls, what could I do?”
I buried my face in my hands and groaned.
“I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t know what to
do. I really don’t-“
“Me neither,” Gran said unhappily. “I don’t love Trisha.
I love you. But she is my wife and she carries my child.”
“It is just politics,” Gran went on, pleading. “The house
Chartin can do Escallwyn a lot of good. They are very… practical in certain
matters. We got a good deal on the whole business, and my father thought it
was enough. And I am his son and I have to obey him, he is the head of our House.”
“One day,” I said, holding on to my anger, “you will be head
of the House. Does your father still obey Grendel, your grandfather?”
“My father is head of the House, and the head has the right to demand
this sort of thing from me. Your father can marry you off too if he wants to!”
“He would not dare!” I fumed, teeth clenched. “I would like
to see him try! I would have opposed him.” The effort of shouting made
my head spin. I would have to eat very soon. “Oh gods, dear Unicorn…”
“Your family does not arrange marriages,” Gran insisted. “Mine
does.”
“But I have already saved your family from extinction!” I exclaimed.
“Does that count for nothing?”
“Oh yes,” Gran said, “And we are very grateful, and if the
circumstances were different, we could have been together, but there are just
too few of us and the times are too difficult. I am not saying I am happy with
what my father decided, but I do understand. An alliance with Chartin is what
we need, at this moment.”
I did not know what to do, what to say. It was too much.
“I have to think this over,” I said. “I… I don’t
know how to deal with this. Will you do me one favour?”
Gran nodded.
“Don’t touch Trisha, from now on at least. I hate her.”
I sent Gran away through my trump of Ygg and took several deep breaths. Damn
Trisha! She only won because the different time streams, damn her to hell. I
looked up and I my eye was caught by the intelligent black stare Llewella’s
seagull was giving me. I had completely forgotten the bird, my aunt. Slowly,
I reached up and scratched it under the feathers on its head.
“I hope you won’t remember this, when you’re yourself again,”
I mused out loud. The gull said nothing, understandably.
. . . _ . . .
I ordered myself some dinner, or rather a hot lunch as it was nearing noon in Amber. The seagull hopped from chair back to chair back and ruffled its feathers with an impatient air. Rather snippily told it that if she did not want to spend the rest of her life on webbed feet, I needed to eat because I needed the strength. The gull shrieked and took to the air, and flew up and down my chambers while I waited for my lunch.
When my maid, Mrs. Turpin, brought the first covered plate, I asked her who
took care of Llewella now the Princess Fiona was away. She answered:
“I will have to go out and see, my dear,” and I had to raise my
eyebrows at her to make her correct herself and call me milady. I could not
help but smile at her, though. She tries to mother over me, and right then I
was glad at least somebody was fond of me. She went out and I ate the first
course. At one point a small earthquake made my soup ripple. I took it as an
omen of bad luck. Later, I heard that this was when Adrian used the strongest
of magics to drive the Enemy out of Sherwyn.
. . . _ . . .
With my second course of pasta and vegetables I had ordered sushi for the gull. While my aunt wolfed the fish down, Mrs. Turpin reported that the Princess Llewella had been brought to the infirmary. This was traditionally Prince Gerard’s terrain, so I would have to see him for details. For desert I had chocolate mousse: rich, sweet comfort food. Strengthened, I put my aunt on my wrist and set out to see my uncle, and remembered with my foot on the threshold to change out of my Sherwynian orange and purple and into something more suitable.
Uncle Gerard was not in the infirmary. According to the doctor on duty he was not to be fount in the castle at all. Who would have authority over Llewella’s body when Gerard was gone? That would be King Random. And had the King abandoned us also? Fortunately, this was not the case. King Random could be found in his study, as always, seeing to matters of state.
With the announcement that I had news about the Princess Llewella, I swept
past Random’s obnoxious secretary, knocked on the door and entered.
“Boa!” Random said when he saw me, not unkindly. He was indeed sitting
behind his desk, piles of paper in front of him.
“Hi there uncle majesty,” I greeted him. “Ill be brief.”
“Please do,” Random answered and smiled, looking at the gull on
my wrist. I pointed at the bird.
“Llewella’s spirit is in here.”
That struck him speechless for at least a few seconds.
“That sounds like quite a story, niece.” (Oh no, don’t ask
for the whole story!) “Damn, just when there’s no-one here.”
Random leaned forward over the desk to peer at the gull. With a mumbled:
“I never was very good at this,” he took a deep breath and looked
the seagull straight in the eyes, right before staggering back as if someone
had hit him. I was suddenly very glad I had not tried this myself.
“I think you are right,” Random said to me, straightening his jacket
and rubbing his watering eyes.
“You needn’t be so wary, sis, I only wanted to help!”
I went to the drinks cabinet and poured him a glass of water. He threw it back
in one gulp, coughed, mumbled “Water?”, and got out from behind
his desk.
“Come here, you,” he said to my seagull and put it on his shoulder.
He then turned, as to leave the room, so I called out and asked:
“Am I dismissed?”
Random turned around.
“Do you want to be? Or do you want to stay and watch?’
“May I ask… What now? I assume you will put her back in her body?”
“I don’t know,” Random answered.
“What’s the alternative?”
“I will have to see what happened, and if I can find any experts who are
good at this sort of thing. If we’re not careful we will put the wrong
mind in her body.”
We took a moment to consider the possibility, and then chuckled at the thought
of Llewella’s body animated by the spirit of a seagull.
“Well?” Random asked.
“Good luck with it,” I said, seeing my liberty dawn bright on the
horizon.
“Okay,” said Random, turning and waving his hand. “Dismissed,
dismissed!”
He went out, carrying my seagull, and Llewella was no longer my problem.
I could tend to my own affairs. Then why did I not feel happy about it? Perhaps
a ‘thank you’ or a ‘well done’ would have been nice,
just to give me the feeling that I had actually accomplished something. I sighed.
Family…!
. . . _ . . .
Back in my room I changed into my travel clothes. Well, the world pays no wages to the well-meaning, I thought, I would have to be content with the warm glow of those who selflessly do good for the benefit of their fellow men.
Darn.
Damn Trisha.
Damn her to hell!
Aunt Llewella doesn’t know how much her rescue has cost me! If I had known that saving her would have given Trisha the chance to steal Gran away from me I would have left Llewella to fossilise in that damn mirror of hers. Damn… While I put on my boots I fought back the tears. Gods, I felt awful. Trisha had indeed won it all: my place by Gran’s side, the future we would have had together… And now she had taken the birthright that should rightly belong to my child! I stood up and put my hand over my still flat belly. The injustice of it all made me livid with anger. I am not second rate! And any child of mine is worth at least as much as anyone else’s! And if any of the Family dare to commend, I shall…
I thought for a moment. The only elders who had no children out of wedlock were Deirdre, Fiona, Llewella, Julian and Gerard, and all of them except Deirdre only because they have no children at all. And maybe Flora married Melusine’s father, but there is no record of it in Amber so it doesn’t count. Well, they could just stuff it! Damn them all. And damn Trisha too. Damn her to hell.
I could not kill her. I wanted to but I couldn’t. Not while she was with
child. Gran for one would never forgive me, and I could not bring myself to
kill a baby, not even hers, not with me longing for one of my own so desperately.
And later, after she has given birth? Could I deprive a child of its mother?
Damn her.
There was nothing I could do. Celebrate and be happy, Trisha, for you have won.
Just know that is were the Fates who gave you your victory, and you did not
win through any cleverness of your own.
Also, I decided I was going to find myself a new lover. Soon!
. . . _ . . .
I slung a travel bag over my shoulder and emptied the pockets of the Sherwynian dress. String, pencils and dry watercolours for making trumps and sketches were transported from one pocket to another when I found the small vial of fertility potion I had almost forgotten. Don’t think about that now, Boadice. I tossed it in a drawer. Sketchpad, money, strange coins from the mirrorworld, trump that I used to transport Gran to Ygg... DON'T think about him, Boa! But don't forget that he did not answer you or make any promise when you asked him to refrain from marital felicity with Trisha. Confront him with that later. Bury yourself in your work. If six months had indeed gone by in the Courts, you will have had the longest afternoon off in the history of employment. Ornach might just be a tad annoyed. Well, bugger him! You have spent most of that 'afternoon' with his daughter, so he will have no right to complain. A look at the thickly overcast sky of Amber told me that going to Overshadow via Tir-na Nog’th would be out of the question, so I searched my deck for the trumps of Ygg and Ornach.
When I asked him to transport me from Ygg to the courts, though, Ornach checked
through the mind link of trump to see how honest I was when I said I had come
back as soon as I could. But I had been honest and in fact he did not mind my
tardiness, and asked me how his daughter was. I stepped through the trump into
his office and started to explain.
"The last time I saw your daughter,” I said, taking a chair, “she
had read your letter but she wanted to finish something before she could come
home. Even if time in the rest of shadow has been as swift as it is, or has
been, in Chaos, it has been only a day or so for her since I gave her your letter,
because she was in Overshadow."
"O no," Ornach interrupted me, banging his desk, "She is just
being difficult! The problems I've had with that girl, you can't imagine. Malketh
can be so stubborn, she could teach you a lesson, Boadice!”
"I’m impressed," I said dryly. "But I will take the trump
of the black shadows you gave me and go look for her again, if you will allow
me."
"Won't be any use. She knows we’re waiting for her. Do you really
think that, if you tell her again, she'll come home?"
No, I did not think that. I wanted to speak with that Malachie character she
was searching for, but I did not tell Ornach that. Instead I said:
"She was busy with something, and if I help her finish it she can come
home to you."
Ornach grumbled and sorted through the papers on his desk.
"Listen, things are stirring up down here, so... Just see what you can
do. By the way, have you seen Samal lately?"
I had not and I told him so, and suggested he would ask Murlas.
Ornach answered that Murlas had been here quite a while ago but that he did
not remember discussing Samal. If I saw his son, I should tell him to come home.
This I could easily promise.
If things were really 'stirring up' down here in Chaos, Ornach would need as
many of his children around him as he could find. But with Samal missing and
Malketh away, and Bihaye a djinny, all he had was Taureth. That one had always
seemed honourable and capable to me, but in times of trouble just one won't
be enough.
Ornach then asked if I had heard of any other black-and-white trumps. I had
not, but would keep searching. And, while we were talking anyway, what were
his chances, and indeed his ambitions, of becoming King of Chaos?
"Become King?" Ornach mused, surprised with the turn the conversation
had taken. "I... hmmmm... I don't know if I have time for that."
"Goody," I said, meaning 'bugger'. I wanted the promotion.
"We'll talk about it later."
No time to run for kingship, indeed! If not that, what WAS on his mind?
"It might be useful," Ornach went on, his eyes fixed on the ceiling
in contemplation.
"But... I don't know. I will have to think it over."
I took my leave to go see about his daughter.
Darn him to heck, the old geezer. What DID he want? Most likely he was keeping up with the ‘things that were going on’. But to understand what the army that was attacking Galoria from Sherwyn, the Victorian city in overshadow, the mirror-world Sherwyn, Llewella’s captivity and Brand’s will had in common, I badly needed some background information. To get those, I would have to speak with Malachie, who knew what Brand’s research had been about, and probably knew how it fitted into the big picture. That is why I put on a black commando outfit and trumped from Ornachways straight into the lion’s den, to whit: the Ways of Helgram.
. . . _ . . .
Helgram’s ways were dark and foreboding, even under yellow sky. Dark
pillars and dense black shrubs made up the flora or perhaps the fauna of the
place, and the soil under my feet was dry and crunchy and looked like shards
of black glass. I looked around for the cluster of black shadows that should
be here.
Suddenly, I heard a whoosh of air behind me, like a great sniffing.
“AMBERBLOOD!” dawdled a loud, garbled voice. “AMBERBLOOD!”
I turned and stared in horror as a huge horsy head rose up from the underbrush,
large mouth with long teeth drooling spittle, rising up on a snaky neck glistening
with red and yellow scales.
“AMBERBLOOD!” The dragon bawled again. It had been sleepy but now
it was awake, and shook the soil from its back. I turned and ran.
The dragon ran to pursue me, and the ground shook from the weight of its bounds.
Soon, I glimpsed another red-and-yellow dragon to my right, and to my horror
I saw it blow a tongue of fire from its mouth.
I zigged and zagged between the pillars to keep ahead, and it was sheer luck
that I found the dark cloud of black shadows hanging between the equally dark
vegetation. If I was lucky, I might just make it.
Dear reader, I don’t think I have ever run that fast, especially when
I heard the dragon behind me take a big breath. The black shadows were near.
I heard a ‘whoosh!’ and felt a stinging pain in my backside, took
a flying leap into the cloud of boiling black, and with a small plopping sound,
I had left the dragons behind.
The inside of the black shadows was dark as the grave. It was also deathly quiet and I felt nothing except a growing sense of danger. There was not even the pressure of ground beneath my feet to give me a sense of direction. My instructions were to get to the centre of the black shadows and transport myself from there to Overshadow, but if all of it was like this, how would I tell the centre from the edge? ‘Centre’ and ‘edge’ are just relative concepts, I decided, so where I was would have to do. I closed my eyes, concentrated and when I opened them, I found myself in Overshadow.
The change of scenery came almost as a chock. Normal green trees and grass and shrubs had replaced dark pillars in warped perspective and the light was diffuse and white instead of dim and sulphur yellow. I had changed too; from black haired Boadice into grey and brown Mouse, my Overshadow identity. I exhaled and sat down on a clump of grass, but sprung up again when I felt the stinging in my backside. The first dragon’s fire had scorched the seat of my pants and burned my bum, no more than first or second degree burns but painful none the less. I gingerly rubbed my behind and felt very sorry for myself. Darn Ornach again. He could have warned me there would be guardian dragons. They had not seemed very intelligent, and I had the strong impression that ‘amberblood’ was the only word they knew, but how had the house of Helgram got their hands on a breed of dragons that were clearly trained to hunt Amberites? That would have to wait for another time, right now my foremost concern was with Malachie. I would look for him by searching for Orchis and Number 6. The last time I saw them they were in the Victorian part of Overshadow: enemy territory.
After a brief walk the grey stone of the buildings appeared between the trees. To be able to sneak in, I reduced the way my psyche manifested itself and felt myself grow smaller as a result. Good. I could not fight the cyberwolves by myself so I would have to avoid them. Then, I searched for the trail Orchis and I had left behind the last time we had entered the town. I found it, and carefully I put my foot on the first filthy paving stone.
. . . _ . . .
The town was in ruins! Windows were broken, walls had fallen and streetlamps were bent or had fallen to the ground. The streets seemed narrower than I remembered. Moreover: there was no sign of the cyberwolves. The pressure that had pushed me from Overshadow into the dark Sherwyn had disappeared altogether. Stars shone above me and the place was cold and deserted.
Quiet as a mouse, I snuck through the empty streets, following the glowing mystic trail that Orchis and I had left behind. Whatever had happened to the city had partially erased the blue and purple lines of our trail, and I was only able to follow it because the trail was relatively fresh. Where Number 6 had joined us, a bright white line met ours, and the place where we had fought the cyber wolves was a toxic dump of colours and mental odours. There, my blue line disappeared, and those of Orchis and Number 6 went on into the city. I followed them and came to what seemed to be the heart of the cyberwolves’ city: a small cobbled square between recently ruined houses. Not even the wind made a sound there.
The purple and the white line led me to the middle of the square. Reluctantly.
I followed them and found that the purple line disappeared into a ragged hole
in the ground. There, the white line veered off again and I mentally cursed
Number 6. Had he left Orchis there, to enter the hole alone? Perhaps he had
pushed her in. From the edge of the hole hung macaroni-blue fringes of power,
I gathered they were left over from some sort of security lock. Inside I could
make out a swirling of light against dark; a tunnel perhaps. Whatever it was,
I would have to go in. I liked Malketh; if Ornach thought she was trouble she
had to be all right. If she had dared to enter this hole or prison, I would
too.
To be safe, I took my desire to be able to find the way back and my will to
stay alive and fashioned it into a rope. When I had the rope in my hands, I
tied it to the stump of a streetlamp. With the other end around my waist, I
slowly lowered myself into the hole.
Horror! Mistake! When my head got beneath groundlevel, everything I had seen disappeared and was replaced by a swirling blowing mad space of blue, no rope to hold onto, no place to stand on, no tunnel walls around me but a black blue shining nothing that I fell through, and through, and through…
Panic, screaming with only blue wind in my ears, hot searing fear and then a big round metal egg thing came up and hit me. Or I hit it. Hands clung, sweaty with fear, sliding and kicking legs, and I had something to hold on to. A brief moment of quiet, lying on matt grey metal.
Then a tube with a round glass eye in the end rose from the egg and looked
at me. I made a grab for it, mad with fear, but it disappeared into the egg
again. I tried to hold on to the egg with hand palms sticky with sweat, and
found some of my senses returned to me. This blue storm in a world of nothing
felt like Nexus gone haywire. Then a buzzing sound made me turn my head and
the delightfully normal head of a man rose from a square hole in the egg.
“What are you doing on my ship?” the man said in a vexed, exquisitely
normal voice.
“Help!” I said. Gratefully I took the blissfully normal hand he
held out to me and let myself be drawn inside.
The inside of the egg was warm and cosy and light and I tried to keep from
sobbing in front of this stranger. The man who had saved me had dark hair and
wore a silver coverall. He was looking at me as if he did not know what to do
next, although he seemed to be in a hurry.
“I’ve never seen anything like this!” he exclaimed. “What
in the Unicorn’s name just happened!?”
Hurray, he swore by the Unicorn! That meant he was one of the good guys. I swallowed.
A sort of horn blared and the man darted through a narrow doorway, into a small
room. I followed him. The room held two chairs that were facing a huge window,
and on the surface of a long desk that was shoved against the wall hundreds
of little coloured lights blinked at me.
“Shit shit Unicorn shit, what happened to my pattern regulators?”
the man exclaimed, pushing buttons and yanking at a stick that stuck out of
the desk. This made the vessel buck. The way he took the Unicorn’s name
in vain was very comforting and his harassed, nutty behaviour put me more at
ease than a million concerned words would have done.
Then he seemed to remember my existence and said:
“What were you doing outside? How did you get on top of my ship?”
I held on to the second chair and tried to get my breath back, and his face
softened.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. My name is Estefan.”
I looked at myself and saw hands and black trousers, a fraying plait of black
hair.
“Boadice,” I said. “I am Boadice of Amber.”
“Which Amber?” Estefan asked, pushing a few buttons above his head,
which made the ‘ship’ stabilise.
“The kingdom of Amber,” I said. “THE Amber.”
“There are many of those,” Estefan said patiently. He could be right.
“Gee,” I stammered, still suffering the after-effects of the adrenaline
rush I got falling through space. “Ehm, I don’t know. I do know
of an Amber with a black unicorn. There are more Ambers?”
Estefan confirmed this and said that he had been in the Amber of the black Unicorn,
and that he had the co-ordinates of the place and could take me there, if only
this storm would end. I had to put him right and tell him I came from the Amber
with the white unicorn.
“White Unicorn?” Estefan asked. “Do you know a fellow by the
name of Alexander of Amber?”
I said I did and showed him the trump to make absolutely sure we were talking
about the same person.
“Yes, that’s him,” Estefan said, looking at the trump. “Except
for the moustache and the hair, it looks exactly like him. You might be from
the same reality.”
He went on to describe some of Alexander’s less annoying characteristics
and called him a great student of Nexus energy. I confirmed that he had indeed
met my cousin Alexander.
“I know him,” Estefan said. “I was near that reality and then
suddenly this storm broke and the tunnels exploded. I have no idea where I am
now. By the way, please sit down.”
“We’ll work it out together,” I said, but then the vessel
bucked again and I lost my footing.
I managed to fall into Estefan’s lap, and was rewarded with a spotty red blush and a stammered apology. I did intend to find myself another lover, didn’t I? This one would do for now. But Estefan didn’t know what to do with his hands or where to look and with as charming an apology as I could manage I climbed out of his lap and back onto my feet, and got into the second chair. Estefan busied himself with his buttons and stared at the lights on the desk before him, and I straightened my hair. He was clearly not used to women, that much I could see. The word ‘nerd’ came to mind, but if he just walked upright and got a decent haircut he might be handsome. Should I seduce him? That would not be difficult at all. I could even make him believe it had been his idea and that he had taken advantage of a disoriented and frightened woman, cooped up with a man in a tight space. It would bolster his ego to make him think he had seduced me, and it would give me some hold over him. So why not? But he was really painfully shy. Perhaps some other time.
. . . _ . . .
It turned out that I had plenty of time to reflect on Estefan’s relative desirability as a partner. The ‘storm’ lasted more than a week to my reckoning and in the meantime I kept myself occupied with what I could find. When Estefan did not have to fly the egg-ship, we played cardgames with my trumps. Estefan showed me how to play games on the ship’s computer (a sort of demon captured in the ship’s machinery that required very explicit and precisely worded commands) and when I had enough of those I worked on the trump of Adrian’s sitting-room. I learned as much as I could about Estefan’s world and what his people had done with Power to make egg-ships like this one. According to Estefan, everybody in his world had access to Pattern-like powers by using items that had the power of Pattern trapped within them. Those items were more or less available to all. Some time ago in their world, a phenomenon they called ‘wormholes’ had appeared in their universe. Along with it came the new power they called wormhole energy. Estefan’s description of wormhole energy sounded suspiciously like Nexus to me. Estefan was a Power scientist and had started to study the new power, and he got really angry when he told me about a Doctor Antarra Bowmore who had muscled in on his lovely pet project by being more capable and writing more and better articles about it. Truly devious tactics, I had to agree with a smile.
“I had wanted to do the fieldwork,” Estefan fumed hotly, “It was MY project, I did all the groundwork and devised the preliminary theories, and then that hussy, that woman convinced the university counsel that she would be more… more capable and that my methods were unscientific, unscientific, you hear, MY methods are NOT unscientific, and-!
Estefan thumped the computer console and clenched his jaws. He almost looked
handsome when he was angry.
“So I stole a ship and went for it myself.”
I could not help but smile. He came from such a strange reality, and yet these
university politics were so very, very familiar.
Estefan had been the first to experiment on the wormhole energy; Nexus, and
formed the first theories on alternate universes. But the scientific community
did not believe him and had turned his research and his funding over to someone
with better scientific credentials; Doctor Bowmore.
I comforted him with a little flattery. If he had not stolen this ship, I would
have had nothing to land on and no-one to save me. It had been his work that
had ‘tamed’ the wormhole energy enough to let it be used to propel
the ship, and his ‘conversion algorithms’, whatever that were, that
made it possible to use his jars filled with Pattern in other realities than
his own. Frankly, I was impressed.
I tried to get him to teach me how to use these algorithms and put pattern in jars: ‘batteries’ and matrix thingies like he did, but the gulf between our backgrounds was too big to get to an grasp on even the most basic principles. The closest I got was a sort of intuitive understanding of how things worked based on my experience with magic. Yet, in my now ample free time I did learn to use most of the things he had brought with him. The first thing I used was a healing stick that cured the bruises on my behind. Estefan blushed again when I pointed out that I had burned my backside and that it needed seeing to. He explained to me how to work the ‘regenerator’ before retiring to the cockpit in a hurry. Dear Estefan was indeed a nerd, he did not even get the joke when I asked him where the word cockpit came from. But all in all, we got along well, even better when I did not tease or provoke him. When the bruises Deirdre had inflicted on me turned me into a yellow and purple fright, for a few days we even got along fine. But with my beauty, his shyness returned and he spent more and more time in the cockpit.
. . . _ . . .
