The Dead Gentleman (31 page)

She grabbed a piece of notebook paper and a black magic marker from her desk drawer and scribbled “Be Back Soon” across the front. She would head out to a coffee shop for a
mocha-something and wait out the storm there. She looked at the note for a minute and then added “Love, Jez” at the bottom.

She pulled on her rain slicker and had just started out the bedroom door when something moved in the mural. At first she thought it was a trick of the eye—that had happened before; several times, in fact, over the last few months—but when she looked a second time she was sure that the scene had changed. The sky was lighter; the unicorn seemed farther to the right than he’d previously been …

Jezebel was surprisingly calm when the mural began to shimmer and an ancient man with a cow’s tail stepped through. She knew at once that this was the High Father, even though when she’d seen him last he’d been just a little boy. That was, of course, a hundred years ago.

“
Broken portal
, my butt, Tommy Learner,” she muttered.

“Good afternoon, Jezebel,” said the High Father. “It is good to see you are still alive.”

“Uh, yeah. Good to see you are still alive, too, only … older,” she said. “It worked, you know. Jumping through the Cycloidotrope with Tommy into the future. You were right.”

The High Father smiled and nodded, but he looked troubled. The last time she’d seen him they were preparing for a zombie attack, but he hadn’t seemed nearly as grim then. Jezebel told herself that it was just his age, but the High Father seemed weighted down. Troubled, even.

“Yes, the peculiarities of time travel are mysterious even to the very wise. There are great forces at work there that even I do not claim to fully comprehend; thus we have strict rules. We break them at our own peril, and yet sometimes, break them we must.”

At the mention of time travel, Jez felt her cheeks redden. She’d broken the greatest rule of all when she’d gone back and saved Tommy. Even now if she tried to remember those events, the ice pick returned to stab at her brain.

She decided to change the subject. “You know, every time I saw the Gentleman he looked different, like a different kind of dead. And now, you look different, too. Only, you’re alive, of course.” Jez smiled and plopped down on the edge of her bed. She knew she was beginning to babble.

“Two sides of the same coin, you might say.” The High Father nodded. “Though my cycle of rebirth moves along at a far slower pace than the ever-changing nature of the Dead Gentleman. It has always been so, and it seems that it
will
always be so.”

Something in the High Father’s words set off an alarm in Jez’s head. What had he just said—
that it will always be so
?

“Wait a minute,” she said. “The Gentleman was destroyed. I saw it happen.”

“Yes, you are correct. He found himself trapped in a place he did not belong, and without the protection of Merlin’s stolen soul. One Gentleman was totally and utterly destroyed. But another Gentleman emerged from the battle triumphant. You also saw that. A Gentleman who won.”

“What are you talking about?”

The High Father wobbled over and sat down next to her on the bed. He patted her knee with a wrinkled, liver-spotted hand.

“I don’t blame you for what you did to save Tommy,” he said slowly. “But the universe is not as forgiving as I am. You went back in time and changed the events of your own life. You caused a schism in the timeline and, in effect, created two different,
competing realities. In one of these realities you managed to save Tommy Learner and save your world in turn. But in the other, Tommy died and the Gentleman won.”

“No,” said Jez. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest, her thoughts spinning in her head. “That didn’t happen! I went back and made sure that it didn’t happen!”

“You cannot unmake that which has already occurred,” said the High Father. “It doesn’t work that way. You changed nothing. You merely splintered this Earth off into another path and another reality. An alternate universe. In one universe your Earth dies and the Gentleman is triumphant, even as he is defeated and destroyed in another. We’ve just witnessed the birth of the
multi
verse.”

Jezebel didn’t know what to say. For months now she’d been thinking of herself as a hero.

The High Father smiled at her. “It’s possible that this new universe, this new Earth—the one in which the Gentleman rules supreme—will stay safely locked away, undiscovered, forever.”

“But it’s also possible that the Dead Gentleman will find us, that he’ll find a way to come through and see there is a whole new Earth to invade, a whole new Earth to kill. And it’s all my fault!”

The High Father looked into her eyes, and in an instant the pain in her head was gone. Staring into those deep, soulful eyes, her heartbeat returned to normal and she felt at peace.

“Without you,” he said, “there would be only
one
reality—one where the Gentleman ruled over a dead Earth. By creating another world you
saved
an entire world. You did the only thing you could do. The consequences could not be helped.”

Jezebel understood, but she still felt that she should’ve done
something differently. If she’d acted quicker or been smarter, then all of this could have been avoided.

“You are a hero,” he said. “Enjoy it. And what a hero you are! In all of existence, Jezebel Lemon, you may be unique.”

“Huh?”

“That pain you feel when you try to remember the events surrounding the schism—that is because you can feel the pull of the two realities. You alone have knowledge of both of them. You are one of a kind.”

“But you know about all of this,” Jez said. “If I’m unique, if I’m the only one who knows it, then how can you be saying all this?”

He shrugged. “I’m the High Father. I know things. But trust me, Jezebel, you are special.”

He stood up and stretched. “Ah, I’m getting old, my dear. Another twenty or thirty years and I may have to be born again. It’s the gout, you see. It gets unbearable.” He winked at her, but Jez still felt that he was putting on a show by lightening the mood. What he’d told her was very serious.

He leaned forward and tapped her on the forehead. “Protect what’s in there. They’re your greatest tool, your wits. But you now also carry around knowledge of the most dangerous sort, and that must not fall into the wrong hands. Tommy’s a brave boy, but he’s brash and often vengeful and he could lead you into trouble. Keep him in line, won’t you? You do balance each other well.”

“Tommy left without me,” Jez said, feeling a little pang at the mention of Tommy’s name. “He’s gone. I doubt I’ll see him ever again.”

“That so?” said the High Father, returning to the painted wall. “Remember what I said before, I know things! Take this mural, for instance. You might assume that this is just a regular old painting.
Or you might assume that it was a totally random portal that led to the one place you needed to get to—the Gentleman’s ship. Or you might instead assume that this is a special portal, given to you by a very special, a very
old
friend, and it will lead you to wherever your heart wants to go. If that were the case, I would hope that you would consider it a precious gift, and use it wisely.” The High Father winked at her.

“Be seeing you, Jezebel Lemon,” he said.

With that he stepped through the mural and she watched as it shimmered and glowed, dissolving and swirling into a sunlit glade—a real sunlit glade. The High Father walked along the grass toward a cool green forest beneath a pink twilight sky. Then the colors blurred and she was once again staring at the still life of a unicorn.

The High Father was gone, and Jezebel was left with an uneasy, empty feeling in her gut. The wind had picked up outside and the rain was a steady drumbeat against the window. She imagined Tommy sailing an alien ocean somewhere, probably heedless of some obvious danger in front of his very eyes. She smiled at the thought of Bernie wrestling with a lug nut on a radiator upstairs, cursing under his breath as he did battle with the metal monstrosity, but happy, nevertheless, in his element. She saw her father struggling with the same painting he’d been working on for years. He’d probably want to order in tonight. Maybe pizza. He’d ask her questions about Mom, pretending not to really care, and Jez would play dumb and pretend not to know the answers.

She looked down at the note she still clutched in her hands—“Be Back Soon. Love, Jez”—and set it carefully on her pillow.

The problem, as I saw it, was that I was a captain without a crew, and therefore, a captain without a navigator. Bernard had taken on that role back in the old days, and though it was true that Scott had managed to find his way around just fine for many years without the bespectacled Bernard, Scott had always been more of a jack-of-all-trades type of captain. Me, on the other hand, I’m a specialist captain. I specialize in engineering, I specialize in adventuring, I even specialize in
captaining
. I do not specialize in maps.

I found myself, at the conclusion of my great adventure with Jezebel Lemon in which we saved the Earth, the universe and everything, sitting alone surrounded by hundreds of unfolded maps and navigational charts that might as well have been written in ancient Atlantean. According to my best guess, I’d entered the Lemuria Outcropping at the exact coordinates needed
to transport me to the Borderlands of Faerie, and by my figuring I should’ve been sailing along the midnight-black waves of the Duskwaters right now. But the problem was that the steaming, swampy green muck outside the viewport looked nothing like the Duskwaters. This looked more like a giant ocean of pond scum, and I hadn’t found anything labeled “pond scum” among the
Nautilus
’s charts.

I braced myself as something collided with the ship, again. Whenever I took a moment to slow down and study the charts to find a way out of this giant sewer world, this thing—whatever it was—would catch up and begin banging away at the hull. In the filthy muck water I couldn’t even get a good look at it, so firing a warning shot wasn’t an option.

The ship rattled again and the maps went flying. It was getting annoying. A couple more hits like that and the
Nautilus
would start to take some real damage.

Of course, Jezebel hadn’t wanted to come, and, truth be told, I was glad of it. Exploring was a dangerous profession and I could ill afford to look after the two of us. Historically, I’d had enough trouble keeping my own self alive. Besides, she had her father. She had a life in that towering, gleaming New York of hers. She even had Bernie.

The old man would look after her. I was relieved beyond words to discover that my old partner, Bernie’s father, hadn’t betrayed me after all. My only regret now was that Bernard Senior had died without the two of us making amends. Bernard Billingsworth had been an Explorer, regardless of rank or position. On that Scott had been wrong—Bernard had had the stuff after all.

Jezebel had the stuff, too, but she had other things to worry about. Explorers couldn’t worry about family. The Veil protected
the Explorers from outside prying eyes, but her father would certainly catch on if Jez disappeared again, and even if she tried to show him the truth he wouldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t be able to—he’d been under the Veil for too long; his own mind wouldn’t allow him to see the real world now.

I, on the other hand, was lucky that no one was waiting for me—no one out there to worry about me. Very, very lucky.

The ship rocked as whatever it was took another strike, and the
Nautilus
threatened to bank into a menacing-looking blob of floating gunk just off the starboard side. I barely managed to grip the wheel and steer the ship into a narrow near miss.

And there was another thing about Jezebel Lemon—secrets. How had she gotten into the
Nautilus?
I’d pressed her on this point several times, and she’d always carefully avoided the question. Her first claim that she’d followed me all the way from the Percy and managed to stow away didn’t hold water. I know when I’m being followed—years on the street had given me a sixth sense about that sort of thing. But nevertheless, she’d appeared on the ship’s bridge and talked me out of my admittedly desperate plan to ram the
Charnel House
. But she wouldn’t tell me how she’d gotten there. Not the truth, anyway.

Too many questions. Too many secrets. True, I knew how to keep a secret of my own—like the future I saw in the Cycloidotrope, the vision of the dead Earth the High Father showed me. But I defied the vision and everything turned out all right in the end. Jezebel and I
both
lived, and the world was safe from the Gentleman forever, so why bring it up? The vision could go jump off a cliff for all I cared. The High Father, too.

Then why did I still feel so uneasy? As if something was wrong but I couldn’t remember what it was. Like I’d tied a string round
my finger and forgotten why. Like I’d told this story before with a different ending.