Empress of the Sun (34 page)

‘I will bring you back, my love,’ Charlotte Villiers said. She knew her mistake now, and how to make it right. Her father’s calculations had been out by whole orders of magnitude. The worlds were brought into contact not by force ripping apart the fabric of reality, but by the subtle matching of energies, like musical instruments coming into tune with each other. The first gate had punched a hole clear into the Pleroma itself. But the Pleroma, the very stuff of reality, could be manipulated. Everything was mathematics ultimately. The Infundibulum was a tool for tuning the multiverse itself. Everett Singh and his father had not realised the implications of their machine: jumping from any point in any universe to any other was only possible because the Infundibulum could access the Pleroma. A tool that could chisel Langdon Hayne free from the Pleroma was a tool for the control of reality itself.

The candles gusted and blew out in the wind from beyond as the gateway blinked out and closed. The lights
flickered and came back on, the laboratory hummed to the sound of comptators rebooting.

Twenty-five minutes past eleven.

Charlotte Villiers drew the heavy velvet covering back over the gateway.

Work first. The Plenitude had come close to disaster. In the disaster was her opportunity. The Order was unified and strong. There had never been a better time to make a bid for power. Ibrim Hoj Kerrim knew too much. She would neutralise him, in time. And Everett Singh was now a hunted enemy across all the known Worlds. There was much to do, opportunities to be taken quickly. She would return to Earth 3 this night. After Baines’s tea. Next time she would have him prepare the Blond Bear Cafe’s hot-chocolate recipe. The Earth 7 cuisine was quite exceptional.

‘I will bring you back,’ Charlotte Villiers said to the rectangle of rich fabric. ‘I promise.’

Light: all around him, enfolding him, shining through him so hard and so long he could feel it bleaching the organs inside his body. Embedded in light. Being
light
.

The primal light, the light that shines between universes. How long had he been here? Meaningless question. There was no time here. No space. He was everywhere, he was nowhere; he was everything, he was nothing.

And then the light splintered, like a window in a bomb blast, and darkness burst through. He fell into darkness. And the darkness was good. It was great and soft and endless.

This is what death is like
, he thought.

Is he alive?

So, not dead then.

Vital signs are all good, First Minister. Of course, there’s no guarantee there’s anything in there
.

I can hear you! I’m trying to talk to you! I’m trying to speak, listen to me, listen to me, can you hear me?

How long was he in there?

Technically, in the Planck state neither time nor space exist. It’s not really a meaningful question
.

For me, please, Professor. I’m not a scientist
.

Nine days after solstice. We weren’t even sure what it was. Certainly not a human. All we had was a weak resonance. We locked on to it and abstracted the pattern. It took us until now to entangle it with our universe
.

The pattern … And he comes from?

Another universe
.

Another universe. How can I tell you the chill those words strike into me? Wait. I saw his lips move
.

‘I can hear you.’

Nurse, bathe his eyes
.

‘Who are you?’

Soft sweet wetness dabbing at his eyes, wiping away crusted scales and scabs.

I am First Minister Esva Dariensis of the United Isles. You are in a hospital
.

He opened his eyes. Cried out. Light: true light, real light. He blinked the painful light away. A fluorescent tube on a ceiling, and faces, looking down at him, a man in a high-collared suit, a well-dressed woman, a woman in a white cowl. Beyond the light: another light, a great window. He struggled up on his elbows, drawn by the light of the world
outside world. Towers, endless skyscrapers, pinnacles and glittering glass; the contrails of aircraft, ribbons of high cloud, arcs of light moving across the high blue sky.

‘Where am I?’

You’re on Earth
.

‘Earth? Earth? Then what is
that
?’

He lifted an arm to point. Beyond the city skyline, beyond the aircraft and the clouds and even those higher, mysterious moving lights, was another blue world hanging in the sky, so huge he could not blot it out with his open hand. A world of sea and green forests, brown deserts, white snow, coiling clouds.

Easy easy
.

You’ve had a shock
.

You’re safe now
.

Easy easy
.

Your name
…

Can you remember your name?

‘My name,’ he said, still staring at the other world in the sky, ‘is Tejendra Singh.’

alonio: alone

amriya: a personal vow, promise or restriction that cannot be broken (from Romani)

barney: a fight

belay: stop, cease. A naval term

bijou: small/little (means ‘jewel’ in French)

bona: good

bonaroo: wonderful, excellent

buvare: drink (from old-fashioned Italian
bevere
or Lingua Franca
bevire
)

buggerello: expression of distaste or impatience, entirely of Mchynlyth’s devising

cha: tea. Airships run on it

clobber: clothes

cove: friend/person/character

dolly: sweet, pretty. Interchangeable with ‘dilly’

divano: an Airish ship’s council

dona: woman (from Italian
donna
or Lingua Franca
dona
), a term of respect

dorcas: term of endearment, ‘one who cares’. The Dorcas Society was a ladies’ church association of the nineteenth century, which made clothes for the poor

douce: clean (French)

ground-pounder: a non-Airish person

kris: Airish duel of honour between two airships

lally-tappers: feet

latty: room or cabin on an airship

manjarry: food (from Italian
mangiare
or Lingua Franca
mangiaria
)

meese: plain, ugly, despicable (from Yiddish
meeiskeit
: loathsome, despicable, abominable)

naff: awful, dull, tasteless

nanti: not, no, none, never (Italian:
niente
)

omi: man/guy

palare: talk

polone: woman/girl

riah: hair (backslang)

sabi: to know (from Lingua Franca
sabir
)/understand

scarper: to run off (from Italian
scappare
, to escape or run away)

shush-bag: holdall/backpack

so: to be part of the in-crowd/Airish (e.g. ‘Is he so?’)

Tharbyloo!: Airish warning to people below: from ‘There below!’

troll: to walk about looking for business or some kind of opportunity

varda: to see/look at (from Italian dialect
vardare
=
guardare
– look at)

willets: breasts

zhoosh: style, make a show of

Ian McDonald is a science fiction writer living just outside Belfast in Northern Ireland. He’s the author of over twenty novels and story collections – both adult and YA – and has also written for screen and stage. He’s been nominated for every major science fiction award – and even won a few of them.
Empress of the Sun
is the third part of the Everness series.