Scrambled, page 17
part #14 of Directorate Series
He opened his mind, dropped all his shields.
Glows all around. Small animals, for the most part. Gamer over there to the south, the wives and children, Abbas and Hakim further west, the bright glows of various children. Other adults, none as bright as his family, but all warm and human, even the miners, with no magic at all.
To the northwest, a glowing heap of Oners.
Further, at the bare edge of his perception, a vague sense of more people. Earthers.
My people. Every single one of them. It should be all of us, building and living together. Spreading out and building, not clinging to our little groups and fighting with the others.
I won't take this on as my responsibility.
I can't beat sense into thousands of heads.
I can't spank them and make them behave.
He turned and looked physically and mentally at the nearest Oner. Close and getting closer. That Princess, on a horse.
He fought down all the suggestions from the new hormones, and watched her approach. Fought down a wave of lust. An urge to pull her off that horse and . . .
I will not be a rapist. I am not one of those Oners.
She slowed the horse, stopped. Wide-eyed and looking spooked.
Oh yes. I guess I was a bit . . . awesome? Or was it terrifying?
He pulled in his senses, closed his shields. "Princess . . . Deep is it?"
"Dee Ee Eye Pee. Dipper, because I'm good at dipping in and out of people's notice."
"Yeah. You've even gotten close to me without my noticing. Twice. That I noticed."
She slid off the horse. Tall, slim, holstered pistol, rifle slung over her back. A hint of a strong aura showing . . . gorgeous, irresistible. Nick gritted his teeth. Resisted.
"Was that real? Ra'd ibn Nicholas ibn . . . "
"Emre. My grandfather. Ex Elif. My grandmother."
"Grand . . . mother!"
"Yeah, sorry to break the news, but ten of the Prophets were women."
She looked boggled, shrugged it away to eye him. "Were you there when Isakson killed your grandfather?"
"That wasn't my grandfather. Not really. All the important parts were long gone. That was just a shell the hive mind used to maintain itself."
"There must have been something left."
"I'd rather there weren't." Nick met her big brown eyes, and looked away. "What man would castrate his own grandson to steal his magical strength for his own use? I prefer to not hate the man I remember from my childhood." He swiped angrily at the dampness on his cheeks.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to bring that up."
He waved it off. "It's these damned hormones. Most people have the better part of a decade to learn to deal with them. That healing potion . . . Ebsa said it was what I needed. I didn't realize it could regenerate . . . organs."
"It . . . wait, you mean you . . . are these stupid geldings actually . . . "
"Turning into stallions? I don't know." He walked back to the horse, keeping the big animal between them. He bent over to look. "Nothing. I had a seriously large dose, and a couple since then. Maybe he didn't get enough."
He straightened, put his hands on the saddle. Still warm from her body heat. I want her.
"When . . . "
"Eleven days ago . . . or twelve? And three days ago, yay, balls. But I've got this flood of hormones. My temper's edgy , my dreams horrible and the urges . . . I haven't had enough time to learn to control any of it. I'm not really safe to be around. Especially for women."
Their eyes met over the horse's back. He could see her swallow.
"The rape genes . . . "
"I have five of the six. A bad combination. I need to just . . . walk away into those mountains for a couple of years and learn to control myself."
"But we need you."
"Debatable, on your side. But my family does. So I'll just have to . . . deal with it. And test my magic, having done puberty and sex so recently. And in these circumstances I haven't had time to find out what I can do, to stretch my magic and learn and train for more."
She put her hands on his.
A wave of lust. A jumble of stupid pick-up lines from stupid movies ran through his mind. So you like to live dangerously. Don't worry, I won't let anything hurt you. Hey Cutie, wanna fuck?
Just grab her wrists and . . .
He jerked his hands away. "Don't. Just . . . just leave me alone."
The horse’s head jerked up.
Nick spun, motion registered, no time for the gun . . . a slice took the beast's head off. Another raptor. Two more turned to run and he sliced them both.
The horse was trying to depart. Dipper had grabbed a rein and mostly got out of the animal's way, got her feet down and jerked his head around . . . He stopped, head up and snorting. But the scary creatures were motionless on the ground and he gradually relaxed.
"The Black Horses are very well trained, bomb proof, they call them. But these attack lizards are just totally outside their experience." Dipper was standing with most of her weight on one foot.
"I can load the horse up with meat, but then you'll have to walk."
"I don't think anything's broken. I'll walk. But I'm already getting tired of meat. I'd kill for fresh bread."
"Send your cooks over to our place. They can exchange recipes with the wives." Nick walked over to the dinosaurs.
"Wives?"
"The wives of the Warriors who died at Rangpur. Five of them. And there are other women over there who've been cooking as well." He looked from the dinosaurs to the horse. "Maybe a travois?"
She nodded. "They're all trained to pull things. I'll get poles." She hopped a bit on her good foot and managed to mount without assistance.
Dammit. He watched her ride eastward, toward the stream, then turned back to the dinosaurs. Gutted them, then used quick slices to remove the unneeded heavy parts, head, lower legs, end third of the tail, the big leg bones. It was a damned big pile of meat.
Dipper returned, dragging poles. He skinned the biggest dinosaur . . .
It took a hard tranquilizer spell to persuade the horse to be loaded, over-loaded, with two dead raptors.
Then the Princess led the horse away—not limping—and Nick made a smaller travois of his own and started dragging the third dinosaur home.
***
"We heard shooting. What was that smoke?"
"The Earthers retaliated. An apartment building caught fire. Eight dead." Nick turned the travois over to the men who'd walked out to meet him. "What a mess. We're going to need to be careful, and not draw attention to ourselves. I don't think the Oners would attack us . . . and the Earther civilians I've met were perfectly nice people.
“But the Earth's army attacked the One World, and the war seems to have come through with us. I think the problem's at the top, not the bottom. I should go talk to the friendly Earthers, see if they know what the problem is."
Enuf laughed. "They think it's all our fault. They've all been told that Granite Peak was their colony that we attacked, instead of the other way around."
Nick snorted. "I wonder how much our version has been shaded?"
That got him a bunch of glares.
Marco and Kirk laughed.
"That's the spirit." Marco sobered. "That's what we were taught in school. The Evil Empire of the One! The Noble Earthers bring enlightenment to the Multiverse! Well, all of us 'Natives' knew that part was bullshit."
Kirk nodded. "Yeah. And by now it hardly matters. Huh. I wonder what's happening back there, on Earth and on One. Do you suppose they're still fighting?"
Chapter Forty-one
Talking to the Multiverse
Spring 1409 px
21 Jumada 1411 yp
21 Jumada 1400 nyp
12 April 3528 ce
12 April 3513 ne
Ebsa sat to one side of the podium and listened to Q reporting on the dimensional aspects of the problem.
"The destruction of the working gate is probably what broke the whirlpool. All the trapped membranes were released, zipping off in various directions. I've found no indications that any of the five I've found are in any way bound to the others. I do not expect the displaced areas to shift again, or return home. What you've got is where we'll go from here."
Ebsa looked down at his minicomp. The picture of Paer with a newborn on each arm. My babies. Ten days old. I should be home helping Paer, not risking my ass, and then getting pulled into boring meetings.
"So. We've located that Earth and that One World, and you all heard reports on the . . . earthquake disaster relief. The worst damaged areas were small enough that the locals have now taken over. We have returned the Earthers and Oners left behind on each other's worlds to their own homes. So we will not belabor that point further.
And we actually managed to do it without hardly anyone getting shot.
"Now we've located the nearest three spin-off worlds. I'll let the teams who explored them take the floor."
Ebsa switched the comp to his presentation and synced it to the room's screens. Stood up to take the lectern. More of a judge's bench, but the name doesn't matter.
He took a quick glance behind him at the screen, just to check and make sure he wasn't showing his baby pictures . . .
"The Water World—I'm sure you've all seen pictures of the rocky tide pool places—was about four meters deep, on average, where the swap occurred. Single story buildings were mostly underwater, but both the Nuked Earth and the Nuked One had taller buildings in some of their areas, and with some improvised rafts, managed to rescue the people trapped on their roofs and bring them back to the larger buildings."
Another quick glance over his shoulder. Yes the screens were showing the waves lapping up against—and over and through—the houses, stores, and low office buildings. He switched to the higher office buildings and apartments, the people scrambling out windows and down the hatches of the amphibious crawler.
The placement of the gates had been . . . interesting. On the roofs of stores that slanted gradually down into the water. The balloon type tires of the crawlers had, thank the One, spread the weight of the crawler enough that Q had only moved the gate twice when the roof showed signs of weakening. Then Nighthawk had opened corridors to the stuffed office buildings, and the rest of the people had evacuated more easily.
"They managed well enough for the three days until we arrived, but they were getting desperately short of drinking water. We've returned the Earthers to Nuked Earth, the Oners to Nuked One, and everyone else is here and trying to figure out where they want to go."
"The second spin off was a Dinosaur World. We found a few survivors from Earth holed up in an office tower. We searched the rest of the ruins, with no luck."
A stir through the room. Ebsa didn't need to turn and look to know the screen was showing the scattered human remains in one building, the scavengers cleaning up the last bits.
"We collected DNA samples for identification, in the four areas we found . . . something to sample.
"The third world was barren, we got everyone back here for food while we sorted them out . . . I believe all the Nuked Earthers and Nuked Oners are home now?" He glanced at Wolfson, who nodded. "And again, the people who were born on Earth from parents or grandparents who came from a different world are still here, figuring out where they want to go."
Charts now.
"These displaced people are from Purple, Thousand Year War, and High Cliffs. We're up to 382 . . . I'll call them refugees for now. Given their upbringing on Earth, usually in cities, I'm loath to suggest handing them an Empty World to call their own . . . but perhaps with training that would be the best solution to the problem."
"And we've got four more worlds to go. So there will be more refugees as we locate the worlds. I hope."
Director Wolfson stepped up as Ebsa retreated. "Questions?"
One fellow with a very dyspeptic expression demanded to know how it had happened in the first place. "It was a nuclear explosion, it ought to have just collapsed the gate."
Q stepped up again. "Best guess—and forty-seven years later that's all it is—is that the nuke exploded as it transited the gate, that little blink of time . . . possibly pure bad luck, more likely something about the gate transit triggered it. Keep in mind that nuclear explosions involve quite a bit of energy that is NOT standard EM radiation, and one may easily postulate that the bubbles, cones, and cylinders are linked to or affected by the quantum structure of the multiverse. As a nuclear explosion does have some quantum effects, especially with the massive amount of EM created by the explosion, and adding in the enormous magnetic field used in creating mechanical gates, I would be shocked if there wasn't some serious disturbance of the gate area, if the bomb went off nearby while the gate was up. And as I say, if it was in transit the effect might directly interact with the inbetween and cause a serious . . . disruption. Please do not test this."
She hunched her shoulders. "We do not know if we are approaching something like the creation of the Helios mini-verse, or if perhaps when the various worlds hit the bottom of the whirlpool they might have merged in a fashion similar to the cannibal merges. And yes, I am curious, but I am not going to test the idea. And no one else had better do it either." Her voice chilled.
Wolfson stepped up and eyed the Oner delegation, and then the Earthers. "Consider that an absolute prohibition. Disco will take action to prevent it." His voice was flat and dead serious. His aura deep and dark. Ebsa was not the only one pressed back in his seat and checking for the nearest exit.
Out in the crowd a hand waved. "Neither of those other worlds has a working gate, right?"
Xen shrugged. "Nuked One is reluctant to test theirs, but in theory, now that they are out of the whirlpool, it should work normally. Nuked Earth lost their gate. I have no idea if that was their only one. There's has been no gate activity from there, other than our temporary gates to return their citizens."
Temporary, because the idiots sent armed troops through the first one.
Wolfson's actually quite good at diplomacy—and enforcing respect for Disco's rules. I think that odd twisted version of the One World will behave. And Nuked Earth has calmed down. Might have something to do with the permanent gates to five really primo Empty Worlds.
Another question. "But how are you finding them? Are you just looking randomly?"
Ebsa was close enough to hear Q sigh as she stepped back up beside her brother. "No. The whirlpool pattern, when integrated with the missing chunks of the patterns that were left on the donor worlds, looks to be an octal Fibonacci sequence superimposed on an eight pointed star pattern. Of course, there are random factors, but I have good first estimates as to the direction and velocity of departure, so I was able to quickly locate the Water World and the Dinosaur World. Not soon enough, but . . . And the Barren World has been evacuated. I'll track down the Algae World, the two Mining Worlds, and the Grasslands World in that order."
The questioner nodded and sank down without a word.
Probably afraid to ask for a translation . . .
I ought to find an excuse to go back to Nuked One and find Nick and his family. Except I think Nick jumped onto an odd patch and disappeared. And didn't return. I wonder which world he's on, and whether he'll even want to return. Maybe his family would want to join him . . . Assuming he's somewhere livable. I wonder what they are doing?
Chapter Forty-two
Building Homes in the Country
24 Jumada 1400 nyp
"So we decided to make the pavilion equally inconvenient for everyone."
Nick laughed. "Good idea. So you've moved into the mining headquarters and are installing bathtubs and showers?"
"Yep." Kirk grinned. "No point in staying in those pokey apartments. A couple of Desi's friends are trying to talk their husbands into grabbing a building over there too."
"And my family's moving out several kilometers. But if we use this for a school, most of the children will be coming from the apartments or the Red Zone, so it's best that it not be too inconvenient for them."
Marco grinned. "And we'll all fill in the spaces in between, once we figure out the best way to build houses here. There's some tall skinny trees, but nothing I'd use for a log cabin."
Nick bit his lip. "Have you checked out the sink hole groves? Some of the pines are large enough and straight enough."
"But there's not enough in any given swale for even a single cabin." Marco waved at a loose stack of large bricks stacked around the campfire. "I'm experimenting with adobe. If all else fails, I'll have to head for those mountains and see what's growing there."
Kirk nodded. "We may need to figure out how to trade for some horses. I've got a couple of the guys working on how to make wagon wheels.
"Speaking of my family . . . "
"They moved. They all agreed that any roof was better than no roof." Kirk grinned. "Those are some strong willed ladies."
"You have no idea. So, why don't we let your ladies get to work on most of this meat, and I'll take some to this new home of mine." Nick took a long slow scan to the north and west. No human glows.
"Problem?"
"Not yet, but those Earth soldiers are less than twenty kilometers away. . . what might they do next?"
Kirk eyed him. "What about the Oner soldiers?"
"Half of us are their citizens. And I lent a hand today. Hopefully they will . . . consider us allies." Nick shrugged angrily. "Of course their damned Minister started the fight all over. Who knows what madness he'll come up with when they let him out of the docbox?"
***
Umaya and Gamer had the house floored in squares of limestone, and a substantial garden dug up.
"I think I sprained my magic trying to keep up with Momma. She'd slice down to the limestone, go sideways, and flip a huge chunk up into the air. It exploded all over, which made it really easy to get the weeds out of it. I think we did millions . . . or at least a couple hundred scoops like that."
