Eternity's Wheel (16 page)

The classification number of my Earth was something I hadn't learned until I'd been on InterWorld for a while; they didn't want to encourage us to be homesick or tempted to go visit. I'd looked up the number on my own, out of curiosity, and I'd always remembered it: Earth FΣ3
¹⁴
. Earth F epsilon three to the fourteenth.

One of those worlds was mine.

“Joe,” Acacia warned, a second before I stood up. Timesick or not, she apparently hadn't had any trouble reading me. “I know,” she said, even as I started to speak.

“That means
my
world will be—” I cut myself off, since she was already nodding.

“I will,” Avery said.

“Avery,” Acacia said urgently. “You have to tell him.”

I looked over at Acacia's brother, picking up on their off-pattern conversation. “Tell me what?”

“That you can't leave,” he said.

Screw that. I started for the door.

Avery stepped in front of me, hands held out in front of him. “You must stay here, Harker. There is nothing—”

“Nothing I can do? Screw that,” I said, stopping long enough to glare at him. “I can get my family to safety, at the very least.”

“And bring them where? Here? To live on InterWorld with
you, the only Walker here to have their loved ones? What of the other Walkers? Some of them may have worlds in the Wave's path, too. Will you give them the same warning?”

“It's only right,” I began, but he cut me off.

“And you will all run off into the Multiverse to bring your loved ones into a war they cannot possibly fight. So they will languish on this ship and wait for you—the ones
they
love—to come back from your missions, which some of you inevitably won't.”

I glared at him and he matched it, neither of us giving an inch. “Tell me I'm wrong,” he demanded.

“You're not. You're not wrong, but what am I supposed to do? Just let my world be destroyed?”

“Worlds die and begin anew every day, Harker, every hour. Yours is nothing special.”

I started to push past him, but Acacia (who had probably said this a few seconds ago, according to her) called out, “Listen to him, Joe! TimeWatch can help!”

I stopped, looking at Avery. “How can TimeWatch help?”

“I don't know. I don't know what she's referring to, as it is not our right to interfere with the course of time.”

“This has nothing to do with time! It's outside of it, outside of everything, you said so yourself—damn it, you don't have any protocol for this!”

“You're right,” he said. “We don't. Which is likely the argument my sister intends to use.”

“I don't know,” Acacia said, answering my question from a moment ago. “But I can try. And I have to go back anyway. Please, Joe, let me try before you go running off!”

“I will take her back to TimeWatch, get her the care she needs, and discuss this with the council,” Avery said. “It will be done as fast as we can possibly make it.”

“You're a Time Agent,” I shouted, finally losing my temper. All I could think of was the necklace I always wore, the one my mother had made for me the night I'd left home, and how I'd told her I was leaving to protect them. “Time means nothing to you!”

For the first time, I saw him get truly angry. His hand snapped out to clutch my shirt, and I found myself shoved a few steps back.

“Time means
everything
to me,” he said, still pressing me backward. “Don't you dare think that because I feel it differently I feel it
less
.”

“Is that how you fell in love with Josephine after only five minutes?”

It may have been a cheap shot, but I was pissed off and worried, and I'd been wondering what the hell was up with the two of them ever since he'd called her “Josie.”

For a second I thought I was going to get punched, but he let go of me. “Sit down, Acacia,” he said, though she hadn't moved yet. Then, to me—“Time flows differently across the worlds, Harker. What was five minutes to you could have
been five days to us, or five years. Besides,” he finished, a smirk tilting at the corner of his mouth, “where do you think she learned to use a grav-board like that?
You
certainly didn't teach her.”

Acacia was getting to her feet anyway, trying to detach all the various wires and monitors she was hooked up to. Jianae was hovering around uncertainly, alternating between helping her unhook herself and telling her she should really stay put.

“Avery, stop,” Acacia protested. “Let's just go. Please.”

I turned my back on him, going to Acacia. I was seething, furious at Avery and upset by the knowledge that my world was going to die. “Please come back soon, Cay,” I told her, and then I reached out to take her face in my hands. “I know this isn't happening for you yet,” I said. “But I hope you don't mind when it does.” I leaned down and kissed her forehead.

Avery put a hand on Acacia's shoulder, looking disapprovingly at me. “No, I won't tell him,” he said, and then they both began to glow green. Acacia smiled at me before they vanished, leaving me to wonder what it was she wanted said.

“S
IR?”

It took me a moment to realize Jianae was addressing me. I was so unused to being addressed like that, like I was in charge, like I was someone who knew what I was doing. Like I was a leader.

Like I was the Old Man.

“It's Joe,” I snapped. “And don't look at me like I'm supposed to know what to do.”

Her expression changed, becoming sympathetic. “You don't have to know what do,” she said, “but you're the only one willing to try so far. Sir.”

I stared at her, at this girl I barely even knew, who was telling me I was her leader. It was true, and I knew it; I was the one who'd gathered us all together in the tiniest of hopes that we could somehow stop FrostNight. Not that I knew
how
were supposed to do that . . .

. . . but I had to figure it out. Because I was the only leader they had. Frustrated, I slammed my hand against the wallcom, clicking the link to the engine room. “Jai, are there any extraction teams out currently?”

“I believe Joeb took a team of three out approximately two hours previously.”

“Lock us down once they get back. No teams go out again until I say.”

“Yes, sir.”

“J/O.”

“I'm here.” His voice came immediately from the speaker. “Is everything—”

“Are the information systems online?”

“I'd kept them shut down to save on power, but I can turn them on again. . . .”

“Do it, and meet me in the library.”

“I'm kind of busy driving right now,” he said, though his usual snark was missing. He'd been particularly subdued since Avery had brought him back. I was pretty sure I knew why, but that was a problem for another time.

“Our proximity sensors are obviously working, just set the autopilot.”

“We actually hit something? I knew the readings said we did, but—”

“Something hit us,” I said. “Get to the library and I'll explain everything.”

Jai's voice came through the com as I was about to click it off. “Am I to extrapolate from your actions that you have a plan?”

“More or less,” I said. “Though it'll probably get a bunch of us killed.”

“Better some of us than all of us,” he said solemnly, for once speaking plainly.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Something like that.”

I'd never been much into reading as a kid—some comics and manga, action stories and the like—but the library at InterWorld had been a refuge of sorts. I'd spent much of what little personal time I'd had sitting in the overstuffed chairs by the fire panel (decorative only, something Jaroux the librarian had insisted on for ambiance) and reading up on the histories of a thousand different worlds. It had been interesting to read about Earths where the Roman Empire had never fallen, where World War II had never happened—or, on some Earths, never ended. There were Earths where Jesus had been female and the great Egyptian emperors had conquered half the world before an asteroid wiped out the other half. It was fascinating, and that's not even counting the histories of the worlds that were nothing like Earth at all.

This was not, of course, the same library—or it was, but far in the future—which turned out to be a blessing, since
this InterWorld had had several thousand more years to build up its database.

I sat down near the shattered remains of the fire screen; the chairs were long gone. The words “The place of the cure of the soul” hung faded and smudged on the wall near the ceiling, a nod to the Library at Alexandria, which on some Earths had never burned.

“I need you to access the cataloging system,” I told J/O, who was standing over by the info kiosks.

“Okay,” he said, reaching out a hand. He inspected the port connection, then flipped one of his fingers back (it always freaked me out when he did that) to reveal a modified mini-USB drive. “What file are you looking for?”

“That is the file,” I said. “I don't mean the title index, I mean the files with all the cataloged planets and dimensions.”

He hesitated and then reached over to plug himself in. Anyone could use the info kiosk without hooking into it, but J/O's particular body matrix made it easier and faster for him to navigate the system. He could hook his USB finger into the port and traverse it with a thought, not even bothering with voice commands. When we'd been studying together, I'd always found it very unfair that what I had to memorize, he could download straight to his memory banks. That seemed so far away now. We hadn't gotten along at first, but I'd gotten to know him better during our
two years training together. He was a lot like me, just . . . younger. He had a lot to prove, and I know he was probably still beating himself up over getting taken over by Binary and trying to kill me.

“I'm taking a chance that you're not still corrupted, you know,” I said. He blanched.

“I'm sorry, Joey,” he started, but I shook my head.

“It wasn't your fault. You're you again, that's all that matters.” I saw a weight visibly lift from him as I spoke. I let that sink in for a moment, then added, “But you should really get some kind of antivirus or something.”

“Ha-ha.” He made a face, but I could see a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

“Seriously, even
my
world has that. Norton or something, y'know?”

“
Fff
. Right. Norton.”

We sat in silence for a moment. Though I'd enjoyed teasing him, my thoughts drifted back to Acacia and Avery, and Josephine. Had Avery meant it when he'd said he taught her to use a grav-board? Had they really spent enough time together, in the five minutes it was to me in the Nowhere-at-All, to fall in love? How long had it been for them? I knew that time flowed differently on some worlds. . . . Had he taken her to a place where time moved slower? If he truly had loved her, how had he been able to let her die—no, to strike the killing blow himself? He'd said severing the tie with Lady
Indigo would kill Josephine, yet he'd been willing to do it anyway. Was the alternative horrible enough that killing her had been the only option?

I hadn't liked Avery's attitude from the beginning, but if he'd really spent all that time with Josephine, if he'd brought her back to save us knowing she'd be in danger and then lost her, I supposed I could understand his being less than friendly.

Was that what it would be like for Acacia and me, if we ever got together? Don't get me wrong, I knew I was thinking ahead here. I still barely knew the girl, but there was enough of a
something
between us that I couldn't help putting myself in Josephine's shoes. Had she loved Avery, too? Had she known during those moments they'd spent together that loving a Time Agent was impossible?

J/O interrupted my train of thought. “I think I found it, Joey.”

I stood, going to stand behind J/O. A menu with a few different options was visible on the screen, hard to read through the dust and small cracks. It seemed to be what I'd been looking for, but . . . “Can you tell it to dictate?”

“The voice algorithms are corrupted,” he said. “The system's been sitting so long that only half of it works.”

“Doesn't matter. I want a list of all Earth-classified planets from F delta ninety-eight to the sixth through F epsilon ninety-eight to the seventh.”

He paused, clearly recognizing the first classification. I wasn't surprised. It was the Binary world he'd been corrupted on, where we'd first retrieved Joaquim, the Walker who'd turned out to not be a Walker at all. . . .

Frankly speaking, it was the world where everything had first gone to hell in the proverbial handbasket.

“Okay,” J/O said. “It's indexing.” He paused again, obviously scanning the results. “It's . . . that's a lot of planets, Joey.”

“I know.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Just project the list for me.”

He looked around to find a flat surface, finally settling on the wall to my left. His cybernetic eye grew brighter, the little circuits visible in the iris flaring to life. A blank square appeared on the wall, like when a projector first turns on before the movie starts, then words started to appear and scroll like the end credits, almost faster than I could read.

Earth F
Δ
98
⁶

Earth F
Δ
98
⁶
₊₁

Earth F
Δ
98
⁶
₊₂

Earth F
Δ
98
⁶
₊₃

Earth F
Δ
98
⁶
₊₄

Earth F
Δ
98
⁶
₊₅

“Go ahead and collapse subcategories,” I said quickly.

“One moment.” The classifications vanished, then started again.

Earth F
Δ
98
⁶

Earth F
Δ
98
⁵

Earth F
Δ
98
⁴

Earth F
Δ
98
³

Earth F
Δ
98
²

Earth F
Δ
98
¹

Earth F
Δ
99

It went on for a while. There were a lot of different Earths (an infinite number, actually, since they were being destroyed and created every second, even
without
FrostNight roaming the Multiverse like a gleeful lawn mower), and it's not like I was looking for one in specific. The problem with the Multiverse was that planets and dimensions existed all over the place; classifying and numbering them in a linear way was almost impossible. The basic idea was that the letters (mostly) ran up and down, while the numbers (mostly) ran side to side. Just knowing where FrostNight's path of destruction started and where it ended wasn't enough, since it could take any number of different roads to get there. My world was close enough to the end that I knew FrostNight would eventually wipe out that entire classification; I was just trying to figure out how it was getting there so I could have a chance at stopping it.

I was in the middle of figuring out how to find the most likely projected path when the numbers suddenly dimmed. I glanced over to J/O, trying to make sure he wasn't losing
power or something, but he looked as confused as I did.

“Joey, there's a—”

More words flashed up on the wall.

OFFICER CLEARANCE GRANTED
.

“J/O, how did you—”

“I'm not doing it,” he said. “It's a programmed variable; it's reacting to the search parameters from this location and some other factors.”

“What other factors?” I asked, but the words flashed and faded, and an image appeared on the wall.

It was faint and fuzzy, grainy, like old silent movies from the nineteen twenties. It took me a moment to even place what the image was supposed to be, but humans are trained to recognize faces first—and one face you'll always recognize is your own, even if it is a few decades older and sporting an artificial eye.

It was the Old Man. Captain Joseph Harker, leader of InterWorld.

He was sitting behind his desk, looking seriously at whatever was recording this message. He started to speak, his mouth obviously moving, though the graininess of the video made it difficult to read his lips.

“J/O, the sound!”

“What am I, a home theater system? You want some popcorn, too?”

“J/O—”

“I'm trying, Joey. This file is
really
old.”

I glued my eyes to the image, trying to catch whatever I could of what he was saying. I almost jumped out of my skin as, a moment later, J/O started to talk in the Old Man's voice.

“—to give you a few moments to sort out this file, since I don't know exactly how old it will be by the time you see it. Once you have everything in order, give the voice command ‘proceed,' or select ‘continue' on whatever kiosk you're at. I'll wait.”

The way he said “I'll wait” simultaneously made me smile and hurry the hell up; it was the same impatient tone he always used, the one that meant
I'll wait, but you'd better make this
fast
, before I lose my patience
.

“Proceed?”

“Voice recognition's broken, Joey, I told you that,” J/O said in his own voice. I glanced over to the kiosk, where the word “continue” was visible among the cracks in the screen. I tapped a finger to it, then two fingers. Then, when still nothing happened, I hit it with the side of my fist. The screen flashed.

“Very well,” said J/O in the Old Man's voice, as the projection started speaking once again. “Joseph Harker of Earth F epsilon three to the fourteenth, I trust it is you receiving this message.”

“Yes,” I said automatically, even though I knew he couldn't hear me. It was just a recording. A recording that the
Old Man had programmed specifically for
me
, one that had been floating around in InterWorld's database for thousands of years.