The Spacetime Pool (2 page)

Dominick angled
through a tangle of bushes into a denser knot of trees. As they pushed through
the bushes, he used his knife to cut away branches. The thicker foliage
screened them from view, but it wasn’t until they reached the center of the
glade that he slowed down. He motioned her toward a boulder that jutted up to
about waist height. Sitting on another, he planted his boots on the ground,
braced his palms on his knees, and heaved in large breaths. Janelle stayed on
her feet, too nervous to sit as she struggled to catch her wind.

“We can rest here,”
he said as his breathing settled.

She rubbed her arms,
feeling cold despite the heat. It was much warmer than in the Smoky Mountains,
and she didn’t want to dwell on the implications of that fact. “I don’t
understand how you know me.”

“Only through the
prophecy.” He watched her as if she were the apparition rather than this entire
place. “I didn’t really expect to find you.”

“How do you know I’m
the right person?”

“You look like the
vision in the Jade Pool. It’s near a mountain lodge where my father took his
seeress.” Sarcasm edged his voice. “Apparently she made better predictions when
she was alone with him in secluded retreats.”

From his tone, she
suspected he had been painfully aware in his childhood of his father’s
involvement with his “seeress.” Choosing tact, she said only, “What did she
predict?”

“Just days before my
mother gave birth for the first time, she showed my father a vision of you. She
said Maximillian and I would be his oldest sons, that whichever of us married
you would kill the other, and that if either of us tried to kill you, that
brother would die.”

“That’s horrible.”

Dryly he said, “My
parents weren’t delighted with it.” He studied her face. “The scribes copied
your image from the pool. But you are much younger than the woman in those
portraits.”

“I doubt they were
pictures of me.”

“It’s more than
appearance,” he said. “The gate was supposed to bring me to you. It took me
three tries to get it right, but it did work. And the seeress knew your name.
Janelle Aulair.”

“You could have
looked me up on the Internet.”

“What is the
Internet?”

Like he didn’t know.
Maybe next he would try to sell her swampland in Florida. “It’s not important.
Just tell me how to get back home.”

He dropped his hand
to his belt and set his palm over a disk. It differed from the abalone circles;
this one had a metallic sheen. He stared at the ground, his gaze unfocused.

“Dominick?” she
asked.

He looked up at her. “The
gate doesn’t open.”

She pushed back her
growing fear. “That’s convenient.”

“It’s true.” He ran
his fingers over the disk. “Do you feel anything?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m trying to create
the gate where you’re standing.”

She didn’t know what
to think. “How did you learn to use it?”

“One of the monks
told me.”

Right. Monks, too. “How
did he find out?”

“I don’t know.”

“A description has to
be somewhere. Books, files, storage.”

He seemed oddly
bewildered. “You mean a library?”

“Yes!” If they had
web service there, she could email someone for help.

“I have one at my
home,” he said.

The last place she
wanted to go was his house. “A public library would be better.”

“I don’t know what
that is.”

She couldn’t believe
him. That he sounded sane made none of this more plausible. “And you have no idea
how this gate works?” she challenged.

His gaze flashed. “Of
course I do. It’s a branch. From here to your mountains.”

“A tree, you mean?”

“No. A branch cut to
another page. Your universe is one sheet, mine is another.”

She gaped at him. “Do
you mean a
Riemann sheet?
A branch cut from one Riemann sheet to
another?”

“That’s right.” He
hesitated. “You know these words?”

She laughed
unsteadily. “It’s nonsense. Not the sheets, I mean, but they’re just
mathematical constructs! They don’t actually exist. You can’t physically go
through
a branch cut any more than you could step into a square root sign.”

He was watching her
with an expression that mirrored how she had felt when he told her about his
prophecy. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Complex variable
analysis.” She felt as if she were in a play where she only knew part of the
script. “A branch cut is like a slit in a sheet of paper. It opens onto another
sheet. I suppose you could say the sheets are alternate universes. But they
aren’t real.”

“They seem quite
real,” he said. “When you went through the gate, it threw off my calibration. I
had set it to come out at my camp.” More to himself than to her, he added, “I
hadn’t actually expected to
leave
the camp.”

“Tell you what,”
Janelle said. “How about you and your brother find wives here? I’ll just drop
out of the picture.” She thought of what he had said about his father. “Unless
you’re already married. Because if you’re pulling this bit looking for some fun
on the side, forget it.”

“Neither Maximillian
nor I is wed. I have had concubines, though not in some years.”

“Concubines!”

He grinned. “You don’t
like that?”

Just like a guy, to
be pleased because he thought she was jealous. “Oh, cut the sexist crap.”

He had the audacity
to look intrigued. “What does ‘sexist’ mean? Is it to do with love-making?”

“No. It means I
should go back to Tennessee.”

His voice softened. “This
world would be much poorer, to lose such beauty as yours.”

“Don’t.” For some
reason, it angered her that he actually sounded sincere with that line. Or
maybe the anger masked her fear. Right now, he could do whatever he wanted with
her.

“Max wouldn’t give
you a choice.” He was no longer smiling. “If not for the prophecy that we would
die if we killed you, he would probably execute you on sight.”

An unwelcome memory
jumped into her mind: she had learned about the deaths of her family from the
media. Someone with too much ambition or too little compassion had leaked the
story, sensationalizing it as an “execution.” Janelle had been visiting a
girlfriend in Virginia during a school break, and the news had gone public even
as government officials scrambled to find her.

Dominick spoke
quietly. “Your face looks like a dark cloud passed over it.”

She shook her head,
unable to answer.

“I do regret all
this.” He stood up and lifted his hand, inviting her to leave the glade. “Are
you rested enough to go on? Let me at least bring you to my home, as my honored
guest.”

Janelle didn’t want
to be his guest. But she was beginning to absorb that this might be real, and
she doubted staying in the glade would help her escape.

The Sun was setting
when they emerged from the screen of bushes. The world had darkened and
blurred, as if they saw it through old glass on the seashore, brown and rounded
by tumbling waves.

Dominick set off
along a faint path scattered with leaves. They had only gone a few yards,
though, when he turned to her and paused, listening. Then he spoke in an urgent
whisper. “
Run.
”

She took one look at
his face—and broke into a sprint.

* * * *

III

The Transform
Palace

Janelle raced through
the woods, and Dominick’s boots thudded behind her. Then she tripped on a
jutting rock, and he plowed into her. Holding onto her, he lurched past a
tangle of wild berry bushes and fell behind a large boulder and the bushes. He
twisted in mid-air and landed on his back, cushioning their fall so she came
down on top of him. Her breath went out in a rush. It happened so fast, she had
no time even to tense up.

For one second, he
held her in a vise-like embrace. Then he sat up fast, rolling her off his body
and onto her stomach. She pushed up on her hands, but when he laid his palm on
her back, she stopped with her head raised. He crouched next to her, his knife
drawn, his head tilted as if he were listening to the distant waves. Her surge
of adrenalin sharpened her hearing, and she caught the shushing of hooves on
sand. Dominick raised his dagger in a single sure motion, the blade glinting in
the last rays of the Sun.

Hooves stamped
nearby. Janelle stayed silent, though surely they could hear the thud of her
heart. Voices spoke in a patois of heavily accented English sprinkled with
unfamiliar words. Straining to understand, she recognized they were talking
about the “two on the beach,” that they would finish off the man and take the
girl. When she heard what they wanted to do with her, bile rose in her throat.

The voices moved
away, until she heard only waves on the beach. Dominick spoke under his breath,
no words she recognized, what sounded like an oath. She breathed out, aware of
her rigid posture.

“I think we can go,”
he said in a low voice.

A reaction was
setting in as Janelle comprehended she might truly be stranded in this violent
place with no anchor except this stranger. “I can’t,” she whispered.

“It will work out.”
Despite his rough voice, he had a kind tone. “Come with me, Janelle. I will do
well by you.”

Get a grip,
she told herself, and climbed to her feet. “I’m all
right.”

Standing with her, he
inclined his head. He lifted his hand as if to touch her face, but when she
tensed, he lowered his arm.

They set off again,
and the ocean’s mumble receded as they went deeper among the trees. The woods
thickened into a heavy forest, and tufts of wild grass stuck up in the soil.
Dusk came like a great beast, one barely noticed until it spread its wings,
darkening every copse and glade. Luminescent bottle flies hummed among the
trees.

Dominick drew her to
a stop. Holding his fingers to his mouth, he gave a whistle that rose and fell
in an eerie tune. A bird answered his call.

“Hai,” a low voice
said.

Janelle started. A
man had appeared under a nearby tree. He wore leather armor and a dagger
similar to Dominick’s, but without the silver or abalone. He also had an “extra”
that made her mouth go dry, a monstrous broadsword strapped across his back
with its hilt sticking above his shoulders.

Dominick spoke in the
same dialect used by the men who wanted to kill him. It sounded like “Hava moon
strake camp,” but she thought he meant, “Have the men strike camp.” Although
she didn’t understand the other man’s response, she saw the deference in his
bow. The man glanced at her with curiosity, then withdrew into the trees and
vanished as silently as he had come.

She and Dominick
continued on, and although she saw no one else, she didn’t think they were
alone anymore. They soon entered a clearing of trampled grass. Several tents
stood on the far side, and men moved in the trees beyond, soldiers it looked
like, in leather armor. Most were tending animals. Their mounts resembled
horses, but with tufts for tails. Each had two horns, one on either side of its
head, with the tips pointing inward. Some of the men wore helmets with similar
horns. The scene had a dreamlike quality, all in the dusk, with mist curling
around the animals. But the cooling air on her arms and legs and the pungent
smell of wet grass were all too real.