Be My Enemy (26 page)

“Bona speed for Oxford,” Captain Anastasia said, equalizing the thrust levers. “Miss Sixsmyth, attend to Mr. Singh.”

Everett stood with his fist clenched. His breath was tight in his chest. His head was very light. Everything, everyone was a distance from him. He felt loosely connected to reality. He had called down the sun. He had destroyed the Nahn. A line from the Bhagavad Gita, the great Hindu holy manuscript, came to his lips. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer, the creator of the atom bomb, had spoken those words when the first test bomb exploded. Everett had called on forces smaller and more powerful than fissioning atoms—the quantum nature of reality itself—and he'd used them to open a gateway into the heart of the sun in another universe. A second image from the Gita: Krishna, in his universal form, shining with the light of a thousand suns.

Sen ran to him. Everett turned his face from her, lifted his fist.

“Sen. Leave him.” It was Sharkey who spoke.

“Dad,” Everett whispered.

“Impressive, Mr. Singh, but unfortunately this changes everything,” the Brigadier said. “I'll take the Infundibulum. Now, boy.”

“Is it ever over?” Everett shouted. “Can't you ever stop wanting something from me? Just stop needing?”

“Lieutenant Kastinidis, secure the Infundibulum.” The lieutenant raised her right arm. Weaponry unfolded from her fist, but her face was featureless. She looked like a woman obeying orders, only orders.
Everness
's crewmembers were on their feet.

“We had a deal!” Captain Anastasia thundered.

“You are traders, we are soldiers,” the Brigadier said. “There are no deals in war. The Infundibulum.”

Everett snatched Dr. Quantum from its stand to his chest.

“Come and take it.”

“Lieutenant, as he says.”

“Everett, don't be stupid,” Lieutenant Kastinidis said. “I have a weapon.”

“So do I,” Everett answered. His fingers danced across Dr. Quantum's screen. “Oxford.”

“You don't have the power,” the Brigadier said. “Take it from him. Break as many fingers as you need to.”

“Want to bet on that?” Everett said. “Do you really want to bet on that?”

“Everett Singh, no,” Sen said. “Everett Singh, if you do it, he wins. Him, the other you. The Anti-Everett. You becomes him. Your enemy.”

Everett hesitated in a moment of self-doubt. The Brigadier lunged. With a firm grasp and a fast twist, the Brigadier wrenched Everett's arm. Everett cried out in pain and Dr. Quantum fell from his fingers into the Brigadier's grasp. “You're not trained in these things, sonny.” He looked at Dr. Quantum. “Well look at that. You really did have Oxford lined up. You little shit.” Fast and hard, he slammed a fist into Everett's stomach. Everett gasped and went straight down. Sen gave a small, piercing cry and fell on her knees beside him. Everett retched, fought heaving pain and shock. Hit. He had been
hit.
“Well, let's get rid of that.” The Brigadier swiped his fingers across the face of Dr. Quantum, erasing the code.

“If you's hurt him, I tear your heart out!” Sen screamed.

“Oh, for God's sake,” the Brigadier muttered.

Elena Kastinidis's aim had not dropped.

“Lieutenant?” the Brigadier asked, his voice full of amazement.

“So were you planning on taking other ranks with you, or is it officers and bosses only?”

“Lieutenant…”

“Your escape plan. A way past the quarantine, right out of the Plenitude altogether. A brave new world, all yours. Planning on sharing it with anyone?”

“Lieutenant Kastinidis, where did you get this from?”

Sharkey tipped the brim of his hat.

“From me, sir.”

Everett could move now, but every muscle, every bone ached. He had been hurt in football matches—goalkeeping was pretty physical, with its dives and rolls and collisions with fast-moving strikers—but this was the first time Everett had ever been hurt by personal violence. It was more than hurt. There was violation in it.

“‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,’” Sharkey said.

“This is mutiny, Lieutenant Kastinidis.”

“It's not mutiny where she is only following orders.” The Agister spoke now. “Brigadier, return the device to its rightful owner.”

“You have no authority to issue orders. We are still subject to Defense Protocol 4,” the Brigadier said.

“Is anyone here aware that we are under a defense protocol?”

Elena Kastinidis held her unwavering aim on the Brigadier.

“You quisling!” the Brigadier snapped at the Agister. “You were there too. You agreed with me, every single word.”

“I said what I said, and it can't be unsaid. Yes, Lieutenant Kastinidis, I made a deal with the crew to obtain the device in return for safe passage off this world. But at least I have the courage to change my mind.”

“Courage? Treachery,” the Brigadier said.

“It's the only courage, Brigadier: to step back from what's wrong.”

“You do not accuse me of cowardice. Ever!” The Brigadier's rage was as sudden and hot as the heart of the sun.

“This is my world and my home and I would rather fight than run. If we had a chance of being able to win,” the Agister said. “We have that chance now. We have a weapon. The boy showed us. Everything is different. A few small modifications to our existing Heisenberg Gate technology, and we can carry the war to the Nahn. We can destroy the major nodes. Return the device to the boy. We don't need this deal, we have a better one.”

For a long moment of absolute silence and stillness, the
Brigadier stood. Tension crackled like electricity on the bridge. He locked eyes with Lieutenant Kastinidis. Hers did not waver from his.

“Yes, I believe you would, lieutenant.”

He briskly gave Dr. Quantum to Everett. Sen bared her teeth at him and hissed. He slipped his sidearm out of its holster carefully by the barrel and surrendered it to Lieutenant Kastinidis. She dropped her aim. Her weaponry retracted.

“Captain, do you have secure accommodation on your ship?” the Agister asked.

“My latty would be the nearest thing, ma’am,” Captain Anastasia said. “No locks on airships, of course. It's not so.”

“With your permission, Captain,” the Agister said. Captain Anastasia nodded. “Lieutenant, please escort the Brigadier to the cabin.”

The lieutenant stepped behind the Brigadier but gave him a respectful distance. The Brigadier gave a small bow to the Agister but did not say a word as he walked from the bridge, head high, back straight, holding on to his last threads of dignity.

“Captain Sixsmyth, we'll not be taking that deal,” the Agister said from the foot of the stair. She turned to address Everett. “I wish you every success with your search for your father, but believe me when I say: the Panoply of worlds is a very big place.”

Captain Anastasia straightened her belt and cuffs. Mchynlyth's voice crackled on the palari-pipe. “Would someone tell me what the hot hell happened there?”

“We won,” the captain said, “Rather, we didn't lose.” She clicked off the microphone. “Posts everyone. Mr. Singh, if you wish, you may retire to your latty.”

“No ma’am.” Everett's stomach ached where the Brigadier had hit him, hit him hard, adult to adult. He still burned with shame. Another human had used violence on him. He had never known that before.
But I beat you
, Everett thought.
I beat you the smart way.

“Very good, Mr. Singh. The con is yours, Miss Sixsmyth. Bona speed, out of this terrible place. Mr. Singh, any chance of a bite to eat?”

T
hey were dancing on the Moon, Charlotte Villiers and Charles, her alter. The room was another featureless Thryn white space, but in the low gravity they soared and swooped around it like angels. He wore a formal white tie and tails; she wore opera gloves, jewels, and a long ball gown of black and white chiffon that flew up like butterfly wings as she glided and floated across the whiteness. It was proper old-time ballroom dancing, choreographed for the Moon, to some old-time crooner tune. It was one of the most beautiful—and at the same time one of the most wrong—things Everett M had ever seen.

Charlotte Villiers spotted Everett M and Madam Moon as Charles twirled in a series of gliding steps across the white floor. She spun effortlessly from his hold and flew across the intervening space to drift down as light as thistledown in front of Everett. There was a single bead of perspiration on her upper lip. Her hair and make-up were immaculate. The layers and veils of her dress settled slowly around her.

“Mr. Singh.”

“I did it.”

Did he see the smallest smile flicker over Charlotte Villiers's red lips?

“Excellent. You've shown yourself trustworthy. The Order will have need of your special talents again. In the meantime, relaxation and renewal are in order. You've earned it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must change.” She flicked a look at her alter, who straightened the bottom of his tailcoat and gave a small, tight bow.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to take you back. If you recall, I am supposed to be Social Services.”

“I'm not going back home?”

“Everett, no. The cover must be maintained. As long as you are there, the family is safe from your alter. You're acclimating well. We're very pleased. Young males are such resilient little things.”

Charlotte Villiers swept away in a flurry of chiffons and net.

“What about my family?” Everett M shouted. “What about Mum, my sister, here in this world?” A dark circle opened in the whiteness. Charlotte Villiers disappeared into it. “Do they even know I'm alive?” The hole irised shut.

Charles Villiers looked Everett up and down in his stained and scarred Thryn skin suit. “Mr. Singh,” he called from across the white space. “The battle armor?”

“My aspect was destroyed,” Madam Moon said. “The Nahn was unable to overcome me. At the same time I was unable to overcome the Nahn. Self-destruction was the safest course.”

Madam Moon had been waiting with folded hands when the Heisenberg Gate picked him off the back of
Everness
and brought him back to the far side of the E4 Moon. There was never any emotion in those hands, on that grey face, in those grey eyes, but Everett felt looked at, looked at from the skin in, deep looking with senses other than sight. Could she see the Nahn node nestling up against his spine? Did she already know of the deal he had struck with the Nahn? All Thryn were one Thryn. Did some weird quantum-entanglement thing bind them all together, across space and across universes? Did she know and not care? White Thryn, black Nahn, was there any difference between them? And Madam Moon was grey…Once again Everett M wondered whether the sixty years humans had spent studying the Thryn had uncovered any knowledge other than what the Thryn wanted humans to know.

“Welcome back to Earth 4,” Madam Moon had said as she fell in beside Everett. “Please, come with me. The Plenipotentiary is dancing.”

Charles Villiers carefully removed his white dancing gloves as he walked toward Everett and Madam Moon.

“Is there any danger?”

“Thryn and Nahn are incompatible,” Madam Moon said mildly.

“Good job, Everett.” Charles Villiers smacked Everett M lightly on the arm with his gloves as he passed him. “My alter will meet you at the gate.”

Tippy-tap. Scrit-scatch.

No answer.

Louder then.
Rap rappety-rap-rap
.

“What is it?”

There was a way Everett sounded when he was doing stuff and didn't want to be disturbed. Not omi-playing-with-yourself stuff. She knew what that sounded like. This was omi-busy stuff.

“Can I come in?”

“If you like.”

Sen slid open the door to Everett's latty. She let out a gasp.

“It's full of stars!”

Soft blue stars hung in the air, turning slowly, drifting like thistle down on a summer evening. The blue lit Everett's face and hands. He conducted the stars as if they were an orchestra, every movement sending whole constellations wheeling. Everett tapped the little box on his fold-down table and the stars were sucked into it.

“Aw, put them back. They was beautiful.”

A stroke on the lid of the device—the Panopticon, Sen remembered, why always these big mouth-jamming words?—and the soft stars once again filled the tiny cabin. Sen pulled the little wooden misericord down from behind the door and perched her skinny butt on it.

“Wow. That's like the best Christmas decorations in the universe.” She watched Everett turn the stars this way and that, dancing his hands through the light.
You moves well for a ground-pounder
, she thought.
You don't think about. You're all there, moving the stars around.
Omis looked their best when they were doing something. Omis were
their best when they were doing something. All the trouble in all the worlds comes from omis with nothing to do.
All the worlds
, Sen thought. “So, what are they?

“They're all the worlds the jumpgun fired people to.”

“Worlds.” Sen still couldn't get her head around this way of looking at the universe. The universe was what you saw when you flew above the clouds on a night run: stars and moons and things. The universe was
out there.
To Everett Singh, the universe was nothing but Earths, like pearls on a string. Not out there, but over there. Right next to you, close as the breath in your lungs, but you'd never know. “It worked then.”

“It worked, sort of.”

“Oh, Everett Singh…”

“I've got all the locations. There they are.” Everett flicked deep blue air. Stars wheeled between Sen and him. “One of those is my dad. I just don't know which one.”

“But you said the Panpy…thing…that box…You said you could plug it into the jumpgun and it would read all the quantum echoes.” She'd remembered those words. She wasn't thick—she wanted him to know that, more than anything—but that quantum stuff did her head even more than the jillions and zillions of other Earths. It must be hard to be him, head always filled with that stuff, fizzing away.

“Yes, but it doesn't tell me when. It doesn't give a sequence.” Again he spun the stars. He grabbed hold of one and pulled it out to expand it into a knot of code. “This is the time we made the jump from my world to Earth 1, but I only know that because I recognize the code. It doesn't record when we make a jump, only where we go to.” A slap of his hand sent the glowing worlds spinning.

“But he's there.”

“Yes, he's there.”

“Well then, all you have to do is go to every one of them pale blue dots and eventually you'll find him. There. Problem sorted.
Ain't that bona. And on the way, if you could take us to a world where I can get some slap and togs…”

“I'm scared, Sen.”

She got up from her little wooden ledge, stepped through stars, and came down beside Everett on the edge of his hammock. The shape of the fabric forced them together, side by side. He was big and warm and hard, and she could feel his fear.
You been scared forever, omi
, she thought.

“I mean, I was so sure that he's alive and that he's safe and that he's got people looking after him, but I don't know that, do I?” Everett said. “The Agister said to me that the Panoply of Worlds is a very big place. I never really thought about what that means. We've seen what this world's like—there will be worlds out there worse than this.”

Sen took his hand. It was freezing. Oxford snow had piled up at the bottom of his porthole. Working too long alone and not moving. That was bad for you. It was cold here, but not as cold as the last time Everett Singh had spent hours looking at code and trying to make it work.
Everness
was moored once again among the winter snow on Museum Gardens, powering up from the Oxford wind turbines. Annie and Sharkey were at dinner, guests of the Agisters of all the colleges. That's why Sharkey had double armed himself. Them Agisters, you couldn't trust them. Sen had seen how quickly they could turn. She didn't know what would happen to the Brigadier, but she suspected it wouldn't be good. They were hard people here. They had to be. That was all right. He had hurt Everett. Mchynlyth was out with the troopers, drinking. Sen hoped he didn't get into another fight. She knew what he could be like when he had been on the buvare.
Everness
belonged to her and Everett, and he had been hiding away for hours in his latty, playing with stars and universes. A polone gets bored, you know?

“But better too, Everett Singh. That's the thing, ain't it? With so many worlds, odds are you'll end up in one that's kind of bona, rather than fantabulosa or really, really meese.”

“You just reinvented the Principle of Mediocrity,” Everett said.

“Hey! You saying I's mediocre?” Sen felt him squeeze her hand.

“It's an important principle in science. My dad taught it to me. It says that there's nothing special about our Earth, our solar system, us. We don't have a special place in the universe, or any universe. We're not at the center of things.”

“I don't know ’bout you, Everett Singh, but I's pretty special,” Sen declared. “And so's you.” Then she felt him catch his breath beside her. “You are all right.”

“I saw his eyes, Sen. He wanted me to stop it. I couldn't do it. He wasn't my dad…but he was.”

“I weren't there, but I seen a thing. There was an omi down in Hackney, a stevedore, ran the Dalston Number Four Dock. He couldn't fly, see, coz he had something wrong with his Aunt Nells. His balance was all meshigener—you can't fly if you can't balance. You'd never be off your dish. But he had a daughter—loved her to the death—an’ she could fly, and did, on the
English Rose.
She was ’prentice engineer, and he loved her, but she died. There was this accident with the charging arm. Horrible it was. Everyone saw her. She just, like, danced, and then there was nothing, just burned stuff. Horrible, horrible, Everett Singh. But that omi, after that, the light went out in his yews. He had nothing left to live for. One day he went up the dock where she died, and everyone was shouting up, what for you doin’ up there? Come down you meshigener fool, and he fell. An’ he died. Oh, it was so sad, Everett Singh, because everyone knew he'd died long ago. He died when she died. You see it in the eyes. I saw his eyes too, Everett Singh. I did. I sees these things. You told me he lost his wife and everything to that black stuff. That'd kill an omi, inside. He died when she died. He was just waiting to fall over. You done nothing wrong.”

She hugged Everett. He resisted. He could be so stiff and not
so.
What did they teach them in those Earth 10 families?

“I should have been able to do it,” he said.

“No, you shouldn't have. How old is you? Fourteen? No. Nah. Never. Sharkey did right.” The hammock swung gently as
Everness
was swayed by a rising wind. A nor’easter, Sen's weather wisdom told her. Comes the snow again. She shivered. “Everett Singh…”

“Why do you always call me that?” Everett asked. “Everett Singh. Never just Everett.”

“Dunno. Some people, they just need two names to anchor them down. But serious, serious now: Everett Singh: back there, the sun gun…”

“The what?”

“The thing you zapped London with.”

“Sun gun?”

“So? It's a better name than hedgehopper. Anyway…” She poked him hard in the ribs, then remembered he still hurt there, muscle deep. “Sorry sorry sorry. Everett Singh. When you had the sun gun lined up on Oxford—here, would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Oh, you're so
naff
…Would you have fired it? Melted all this to…glass?”

“He was right. I didn't have the power.” But in the blue light Sen could see Everett staring dead ahead of him, at the latty door, and his feet were kicking in that way people do when they lie.

“But if you had—”

“Yes. I would have. I would have because I hated him. I hated the Nahn. I hated this world. I hated the Infundibulum. I hated everything because I hadn't asked for any of it. And for once I could show people what that hate looked like. Like something so bright you couldn't even look at it because it would burn the eyes out of your head. So I couldn't help Tejendra, but this fourteen year old could press a button and empty the sun onto all these people here. But you said something. You said that if I did it I would be just like him. The other Everett. But you were wrong, Sen. Don't you see? I am him already. I am him, and he is me. Everything I am, he is. That's
why I couldn't beat him at Abney Park. And that's why he couldn't beat me. Because everything he is, I am too. The hate in him, I have that too. And I saw that button, and I saw the hate, and I saw what it had done to him, and I said,
I won't be like that. I won't do what he would do
.”

Sen leaned against him, wrapped her arms around him.