Doorways to Infinity (36 page)

“Go into hiding?” Rachel said. “Like in a cave?”

“Not exactly. I was thinking that we might have to move to Eddan’s world. All of us. Gramma and Granddaddy Pete and Grannie Darla, and the Wilkins and the Callahans…and…probably Nova.” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “Maybe Bryce and Melanie. And John Paul, too, I bet.”

“John Paul practically lives there now, anyway, and so does your gramma. I doubt they’d mind if they had to move there.”

Jamie slumped in his chair and sighed. “Granddaddy Pete wants to build a house there, not to move there forever, but as a second home.”

Carl knitted his brow. “He didn’t tell me that.”

“I talk to him more than you do. But he and Grannie Darla like it there a lot. He calls it his home away from home.”

“See?” Carl said. “It won’t be so bad if we have to move there. I know you’re taking a big risk by agreeing to help Eric and Terry, and if something happens to us because of that, I’m willing to accept the consequences. It’s important that you stop Phillip Cage before more people get killed, and moving to another world would be a small price for us to pay. Besides, I like it there, too. I’d hate to give up my friends and everything I’m familiar with, and I’d have to find a way to make a living in Rivershire, but maybe I could be the sheriff or something.”

“Where would everybody live?” Jamie said. “My house is too small.”

“Well, if you sign that other mining deal, try to set some money aside to build another house, a big one, with plenty of bedrooms.”

Jamie pulled at is earlobe and stared at his plate again. “I guess we could do that. Maybe we could build two or three, since construction costs are so low over there.” Then he looked up at his parents. “That’s not the only thing that’s bothering me. Do you think I should’ve offered to help those FBI agents with their murder case? I feel bad that I didn’t.”

“No,” Carl answered firmly. “If there’s no real magic involved, you wouldn’t be much help. They just need to double down on their detective work and stop wasting time looking for a magic consultant.”

“They’ve gotten over that magic consultant idea. Fred’s potion took care of that.”

“She sure is a handy person to know,” Rachel said. “If there’s a magical problem you can’t handle, she probably can.”

“Yeah.” Jamie smiled. “We’re a team.”

“Your team is bigger than just two people, Jamie.”

“I know.” His smile widened. “We’re the Crew.”

Chapter 15

Jamie’s last week of the winter break was uneventful, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was the calm before the storm. Whenever he tried to talk with Fred or his parents about it, they said he was just being paranoid. He couldn’t help it, though, taking an extra look over his shoulder now and then, or peeking out of the windows at the street in front of his house.

In the evenings, Jamie returned to Rivershire to visit with Dr. Tindall at the stone house. His friends usually joined him, except for Thursday, the last night of Dr. Tindall’s stay on Eddan’s world. She had invited him to have dinner with her, Mrs. Tully, and Aiven.

Jamie joined them at the big table, which was covered with a white linen cloth and set with fine plates and glasses and silverware. Mrs. Tully insisted that Jamie sit at the head of the table, as master of the house (a title he disliked), while Dr. Tindall took the other end and Mrs. Tully and Aiven sat on either side.

Jamie smiled as he admired the meal that Mrs. Tully had prepared: roast beef, asparagus, potatoes in gravy, sliced carrots cooked in butter and brown sugar, and freshly baked bread. “Looks great, Mrs. Tully. Smells great, too.”

Dr. Tindall puffed out her cheeks and crossed her eyes. “She’s been cooking like that the whole time I’ve been here. I bet I’ve gained fifteen pounds.”

Mrs. Tully
tsked
as she spread her cloth napkin in her lap. “’Tis good for you to eat a proper meal. You should see the rubbish she brought with her the first week. And she called it food!”

Dr. Tindall shrugged innocently. “It was only frozen dinners and other quick things. I’m used to cooking for just myself, and I’ve gotten lazy about it over the years. I don’t have time to prepare something like this.”

“Ma is the best cook in the whole county,” Aiven said. “She always cooks like this for me.”

“Well, then you are one lucky fellow.”

“That’s not the only reason I’m lucky. I get my own room with my own bed now with clean sheets. I used to have to sleep on the floor when I lived with my uncle. And I get to go to the Rivershire School now, and I have lots of friends there, like Blane and Declan, and—”

“Don’t prattle, Aiven,” Mrs. Tully said and gave him a stern look.

Aiven clamped his mouth shut and Dr. Tindall said, “You have a lot to be grateful for, Aiven. You really like that school, don’t you?”

“Yes ma’am.” He turned to Jamie. “We started back this week. I’m glad, because I was bored.”

Dr. Tindall laughed and said, “I think he was about to drive his mother crazy while he was on break.”

“There’s nobody to play with here.” Aiven frowned. “Ma made me come to work with her every day, and she won’t let me watch the television.”

“You do not need to waste your time with that,” Mrs. Tully said. “We have books. You got plenty from the library.”

“I haven’t been by there lately,” Jamie said. “Are many people using it?”

“There are always people in there whenever I go,” Aiven said.

“Just kids from the school, or other folks?”

“People from town, sometimes.”

“Great.” Jamie nodded.

“I took Aiven off of Mrs. Tully’s hands the other day,” Dr. Tindall said. “He went with me and my grad students in the pickup truck, out into the countryside, helping us with our research. He’s a smart boy. Always curious and full of questions. He seemed very interested in what we are doing.”

“I am going to be a scientist one day.” Aiven bobbed his head.

Jamie served himself some carrots and paused with the spoon in his hand. “I thought you wanted to be a sorcerer.”

“I shall be both. A sorcerer scientist, like you.”

“I’m not a scientist. I just like science.”

“You could be a scientist, Jamie,” Dr. Tindall said. “You have the right mindset, and you’re smart.”

“Well, thanks, but I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, exactly. I really want to study how magic works, from a scientific point of view. It’s never been done. I think it would be interesting, though I don’t think I can get a job doing it.”

“I think it would be
fascinating
,” Dr. Tindall said. “Like I told you before, you’d have scientists falling all over themselves, offering to help.”

“Then you would be a sorcerer scientist.” Aiven grinned. “Like I am going to be.”

Mrs. Tully tilted her head toward her adopted son and sighed. “You have to go to school, first, and then attend university. How do you plan to do that? There is not one within a hundred and fifty miles of here. Master Jamie cannot be making doorways for you every time you need to go to class. ’Twould be costly, too.”

Jamie fingered his chin while he regarded Aiven, the skinny, brown-haired boy with the bright, eager face. “I wish there was something we could do about that. I’d like to make it so that any kid who graduates from the Rivershire School could go to college if they wanted to, but I don’t know how.” He shook his head and studied his plate for a moment. “It would be too expensive and complicated to build one here, and too difficult to get teachers to staff it. It’s hard enough getting teachers for the school we have.”

Dr. Tindall put one hand to her face while she listened, a finger tapping against her cheek. “You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and I may know a way you can do it. You’d have to give the oath to a lot more people, but it would work.”

“I don’t want to give the oath to
anybody
else right now. You heard about the FBI, I suppose.”

“Your grandmother told me, but you wouldn’t have to do anything for a good long while. Aiven isn’t even twelve years old yet, and he’s one of the older kids at your school, I believe, so it’ll be a while before he’s ready to graduate.”

“I want to go to college,” Aiven said earnestly. “I really want to.”

“Good.” Dr. Tindall gave him a brief smile. “But I don’t think you’ll have to build one, Jamie. What if,” —she waved one finger loosely— “what if you work out a deal with existing universities on Earth? They can have limited access to this world for research, and in return, they have to guarantee a certain number of scholarships to Rivershire graduates.”

Jamie blinked at her with his mouth open. “What?”

“It’s a business arrangement. Scholarships in exchange for research access. And if there’s a language problem, the university could pay a fee for access to this world, instead of offering a direct scholarship.”

“Language problem?” Jamie said blankly.

“You know, if a German or French or even a Japanese university wanted to participate, they could give money for a general scholarship fund. I doubt if any of the kids here speak those languages.”

“We could go to college on Earth, Jamie!” Aiven’s face lit up like a star. “I could go to Western Carolina like you. I could run for the track team, because you’re going to build a track at the Rivershire School and I can practice.”

“What? WCU?” Jamie turned to Dr. Tindall. “You’ve been talking to the kids at school?”

“No, just Aiven and Mrs. Tully. I tossed out the idea the other night during dinner to see what they think about it.”

“Oh, good. I don’t want to get the other kids hopes up, because that’s a…that’s a pretty crazy idea.” Jamie turned to Mrs. Tully. “What do you think about it?”

She pressed her lips together and glanced at Aiven before answering. “I don’t know. I want him to go to university, but….” Her mouth tightened even more and she seemed to struggle to loosen it so that she could speak. “He would be so far away.”

“I would come home on holidays,” Aiven said, “just like Jamie does. Please. Ma? I want to go.”

Jamie said to Dr. Tindall, “If the kids from Rivershire go to college on Earth, they might not want to come back. You know, like that old song,
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”

“You could make their scholarship conditional,” Dr. Tindall said. “They have to put in three or four years of service here, as soon as they graduate. You’ll need more teachers if you build more schools. They’d be ideal for that role.”

“I would come back here,” Aiven said. “This is my home.”

Jamie eyed Aiven for a moment and said, “That’s easy to say now, but wait until you’ve spent a few years on Earth. You might feel differently then.”

“I’ve been to Earth plenty of times, and it is amazing, it is. But it is not my home.” He leaned forward in his seat and tapped the tabletop with one fingertip. “This is my home. Well, not this house, but Rivershire. This is where my friends are. And my family.” He turned and smiled at Mrs. Tully, so purely and honestly, that Jamie wanted to believe him.

Jamie looked at Aiven for a while longer and then shrugged. “Well, you won’t graduate for a while, anyway. We don’t have to make any decisions about that right now. And I don’t see how I can safely let that many people know about my magic.” He lifted a fork full of potatoes and paused with them halfway to his mouth. “Dr. Tindall, do you really think that any university would want to do something like that? Trade scholarships for access?”

“They
all
would. Every university in the world. There’s no doubt about it.”

“There’s no way I could tell that any people about my magic.”

“I know, but if you could, it would be a tremendous boon for science.” She gestured with her knife as she spoke. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last three weeks. This world is a gold mine of research possibilities. Do you ever wonder why humans never evolved here, but other Earth species did?”

“Some of the animals that are here came over with the original settlers.”

“Some, but only a small fraction, I bet. And what about dinosaurs? Surely they existed, if this is a quantum Earth. Did they become extinct sixty million years ago, like they did on Earth? What about geological epochs, or the shape of the continents? Are they the same? And what about the people of Rivershire? If they are originally from Ireland and Scotland, in what ways have they changed? Do they share any of the same genetic disorders? What about obesity rates here? Or alcoholism, or—”

Jamie waved a hand in surrender. “Okay, I get the idea. I never thought about that stuff, but now that you mention them, I can see how they’re important, but…
geez
. The idea of telling that many people about my magic is kinda scary.”

“But it would be cool, wouldn’t it?” Aiven said. “All those scientists coming here? It would be awesome!”

“Aiven….” Jamie shook his head again. “You’re starting to sound like Rollie and Bryce.”

Mrs. Tully shook her head, too. “Mrs. Wallace tells me that the other children at school are picking up that slang. It does not sound proper.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Aiven said and creased his brow in defensive furrows. “Rollie and Bryce are good boys. You said so, Ma.”

“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and sighed.

“But you see?” Dr. Tindall fixed Jamie with a penetrating stare. “The schoolchildren’s lexicon is changing, and those changes may spread to the rest of the population. We need to get somebody over here quickly to document the language and culture of these people before it’s too late. A linguist and an anthropologist, at the very least.”

“Oh, man.” Jamie turned his head and puffed out his cheeks, and it was then that he noticed an antique sewing machine pushed against the far wall, between the two bookshelves. “Uh, what…when did that get here?”

“Today,” Dr. Tindall said. “I gave it to Mrs. Tully as a thank you gift for taking such good care of me these last three weeks.”

Mrs. Tully frowned deeply. “I told her it was not necessary. ’Tis my job to look after the house, and she was no bother at all.”

“Still, I wanted to. You’ve been wonderful to me since I’ve been here. I got the idea for it when I visited Leora’s family. They have a sewing machine like that, the one that Fred’s mother gave them, and Mrs. Hale is happy as she can be with it. She said it saves her so much time and she can make such good clothes now. And I know Mrs. Tully sews all of her clothes and Aiven’s, too, since the clothes in the shops are too expensive.”