Jigsaw World (23 page)

“
The trip tonight will be a little
different from the previous one.” The Sorcerer said. “This time the
team will be stepping through a mirror portal, which will send them
on a path through the nearest cluster of worlds. You will be able
to see where the Seed is located by walking into the most fecund of
the worldlines.”

The group took a moment to wrap their heads
around that concept. Basically, if one is looking for water in a
jungle, one looks at the places where the jungle is thickest. By
that logic, if one is seeking a worldline where it is being induced
into breeding more worldlines, then you look for the area where the
worldlines are most densely packed, if you can figure it
out.

“
Come with me, and I will show you
the mirror.” The Sorcerer continued. “At 6:45 this evening, we will
all meet up back at the mirror, and Tom and Karla will go into it.”
With that, he got up and started toward the East Wing of the house,
which none of the group had been in before. They got up and
followed him.

When they got inside the Wing, the Sorcerer
received a key from the Herald, and unlocked a very old looking
hardwood door. It creaked open, and inside the room was a table
somewhat resembling the round table of King Arthur, with a half
dozen seats around it that looked to be a cross between wooden
bench chairs and an easy chair. At least the seats and arms of the
chairs were padded.

In front of the table, lit on either side by
very old looking lantern formed lights, and by candelabras on
either side as well, if someone should decide to light them, a huge
mirror stood. It was at least eight feet tall and six feet wide.
The surface of the mirror appeared to be totally black at the
moment, but one felt that the mirror had a tremendous depth. The
ensemble exuded both dusty age and a slightly terrifying
supernatural atmosphere.

“
This is the Mirror of the
Worlds.” The Sorcerer said. “When it is activated, it will show the
nearest shadow earth, and then one can walk through the mirror into
that world. The team will be charged with an energy so that they
will continue to be able to traverse other near earths beyond the
first one, and will return through the mirror when they have
succeeded.”

“
Are you saying that without this
‘charging’ we will not be able to see other worldlines and come
back?” Tom asked. “Is this going to be safe?”

“
Oh yes. You have less than a ten
percent chance of getting lost in the worlds.” The Herald replied.
“We are not worried. We have Markus and Vera in case we lose
you!”

“
Thanks a lot!” Tom snarled.
“Maybe we should take you with us.”

“
Oh, no, I have a date tonight.”
The Herald rushed to say. “Don’t worry. You will be
fine.”

“
You have seen the Mirror.” The
Sorcerer said. “Relax until 6:30, and we will meet back here right
after.”

“
How do we recognize the Seed when
we get close?” Karla said. “It would be a shame if we get to it,
and can’t figure out which Thingee it is.”

“
It is more or less shaped like an
almond, it is maybe ten inches long and six or seven inches wide.
It will almost be like touching a live wire to touch it. The world
around it will be changing rapidly, as seen through the vision that
will be put upon you to see the worlds.” The Sorcerer said. “Don’t
forget that you will be seeing the worldlines from inside and from
outside the worldlines during this trip.”

The group went out to the courtyard to drink
more coffee and discuss the ramifications of this undertaking that
all of them had somehow been committed to. It was now just around
noon, so they had a long time to wait until the evening’s travels.
In times like these, nothing passes the warm hours of the afternoon
like fishing with a cane pole for wide mouth bass. The Herald had
assured the group that the bass did indeed inhabit the pond. Twenty
minutes after the first fishhook saw wetness; Vera found that bass
did indeed live there.

The four of them spent a wonderful six hours
pulling fish out of the water, swiping beer out of the conveniently
nearby fridge, and exhaling enough tobacco smoke to make patches on
any nearby ex-smokers redundant. Vera forced Markus to fire up the
portable grill that they found in the courtyard, and they did the
old tin foil grilling of the unlucky catch.

It finally was time to start the adventure.
Full stomachs and a minor desire to take a nap is not the best way
to face an imminent adventure, but it is far from the worst way to
ready oneself. These tasks tend to include long and dusty walks;
and a full belly and a canteen full of water takes some of the
hardship out of it.

A few moments passed, and Tom stood hand in
hand with Karla in front of the Mirror of Worlds. They gazed deeply
into its icy blackness, half seeing movements deep inside the
glass, if it truly was glass. The Sorcerer had given them a few
last minute instructions, encouraging them to ‘follow their
feelings’ on the path to take. The Herald joined him, and they
mumbled the same sort of arcane words that they had done the day
before, and Tom felt something electric pass through his body. He
looked at Karla, and she had obviously felt something
similar.

The Sorcerer looked at them and nodded. Still
hand in hand, they stepped as one through the mirror. Tom felt an
intense and frigid cold as he stepped across the threshold of the
glass, as though he was feeling the freezing temperatures of outer
space for a fraction of a second. His vision was as dark as the
mirror face as he crossed the boundary, just for the second of his
crossing.

A flash of flaring light, and then he was
standing under tall trees beside a river, holding the hand of Karla
and feeling out of place. She looked shaken, but she snapped into a
focused concentration with the sound and glimpsed movement in the
nearby brush. They both knew that there was something watching them
from deep within the vegetation, but they also sensed that which
they sought was not within this world.

The thought is the deed, in this strange
version of a quantum mechanical world. The world about them blurs,
not once, but twice, and then they are crouched beside an odd
plastine thing which might have been a roadway, or it might have
been a wave guide for some unfathomable electromagnetic frequency.
It stretched far into the distance, and certainly could have been
some futuristic version of an interstate highway.

Above it, something glided along its length
some dozen feet or more from the thing. The thing which glided was
segmented like a streamlined train, and there was no indication of
what the motive power of the craft was. Tom knew that which they
sought was not in this world either, but there was some influence
of this world by the device. He looked at Karla, and she nodded
agreement. The world around them blurred again.

Once more the world returned, and there was a
battle above them, craft that might be the descendants of the jets
of the modern world was striking back against a fleet of craft that
looked remarkably like the triangular craft that they had seen in
Grand Prairie. The jets were doing pretty good, but they were not
tough enough to take on interstellar craft and win. They were
losing the fight, but every once in a while, one of the alien craft
would crash and burn.

Tom still felt like this world did not contain
the Seed, but it was very close. It was probably
why
the aliens were
fighting so tenaciously for this bit of the planet. Tom felt it
here, but it was still a world away. Or at least half a world.
Imagine if you would, that this world is the face of another, more
primal form of the world. Somewhere directly below the battle and
therefor right next to Tom and Karla, the Seed existed, but a
dimension, or a light-year, or a nanometer away, and out of the
aliens reach. But not out of Tom and Karla’s reach. The world
around them blurred a final time.

In front of them, on a raised dais sat a box
of cedar wood. Tom and Karla stepped up to the box, and Karla
opened it. Within the box was the Seed, an almond shaped somewhat
segmented looking object which projected a great and primal power.
Karla reached out and touched the Seed, and Tom saw her eyes flare
for just a second like the sun. Just a second, and then she was
her, looking exhilarated and tired and perhaps a bit shocked all at
once.

“
Looks like we have found the
Seed.” Tom remarked. “Ready to go home?”

Karla nodded, and closing the box, picked up
the box with the Seed inside, and made ready. They each
concentrated on the return, and the world once again blurred around
them. Tom once again experienced the Stygian darkness and the
frigid cold that he experienced as he crossed the mirror’s
boundary, and suddenly, he stood in front of the mirror beside
Karla. Karla held in her arms the box, which contained the Seed of
Creation.

“
What happened? Why are you back
already?” Markus asked. “Did something go wrong?”

Markus was confused, because from his
standpoint, the two of them had barely just then stepped through
the mirror, and then they had stepped back through. He could barely
credit the idea that they had been gone for maybe an hour their
time. He could not deny that they had obtained the artifact, so
they must have been gone long enough to do so, but it just seemed
impossible.

Markus and Vera had to acknowledge the success
of the mission when they saw the Seed, and so the rest of the night
was spent in tales and stories, in drinking and in smoking, in
rememberings and in telling of dreams. For the first time, the four
of them allowed themselves to begin to believe that they might be
successful in their mission. After all, they had collected four of
the most powerful tools that had ever existed anywhere, and
powerful men (and maybe other things) were coming out of the
woodwork to help them succeed.******

Karla and Tom were busy feeding each other
small squares of watermelon. Markus and Vera were sitting across
from them at the table with that uncomfortable look that people get
on their faces when they are subjected to such displays of intimacy
with no easy exit available. Tom and Karla knew this, and so they
were not going to make it easy for their associates.

A bee buzzed into the vicinity, attracted by
the sweet wetness of the melon. Carefully sighting, Tom used one of
the disposable spoons to flip it in catapult fashion toward Vera,
who promptly shrieked and ducked the hurtling insect. She displayed
a form of humorous displeasure with her three laughing companions,
but quickly got over it.

They all knew that they were getting to the
beginning of the repair of this worldline. The anticipation of the
impending task, coupled with the very strong effects of the four
artifacts, even while being held in a vault that the Sorcerer
assured the group was blunting the artifact’s effect considerably,
was making the group very excited, very antsy. There comes a time
in any lengthy task when one just wishes that it would be over.
That was the place they were at.

It was around ten in the morning now, and they
were considering whether to get out of the sunny morning, into the
dark and comforting walls of the house. In the final stages of
decision, it happened. First came the wind.

A sudden increase in the wind speed is not an
unusual event. When it seems to be tied to something else, it
starts to become a little strange. On the wind, the four of them
could hear the mournful sounds of some sort of bagpipe being
played, a sound that seemed to have no source. It simply
was.

In front of them, along the West Wing, a cloud
formed. It was an odd cloud, seeming to be constrained inside some
sort of invisible tube about ten feet or so across. It was from the
midst of the cloud that the sound of bagpipes seemed to be coming,
and now they could hear the steady clop-clop-clop sound that one
ordinarily attributes to the sound of a horse walking. In a moment
they discovered that it was indeed a horse.

The cloud swirled at the open end of the tube
nearest the group, and then from the clouds emerged a horse, upon
which two riders could be seen. One was the long lost Veritasia,
who sat behind the stranger. He was a man of dark features,
somewhat gypsy-like in appearance, and he played a strange bagpipe
instrument as the horse plodded along.

Veritasia slid off the back of the horse, and
leaped into the midst of the group, dispensing hugs
indiscriminately to all. She did look slightly confused as she
hugged Karla, whom she had never met. Tom could tell from the way
she rode in with the stranger, and the amount of touching that was
displayed, that Veritasia had moved on from their relationship, so
he went ahead and introduced Karla to Veritasia, letting her know
both who she was and that they were a couple in one fell
swoop.

She introduced her companion as Arpad, and
told the group that she had met him in a cave, having been
introduced to him by a very odd man only known as the Seer. To hear
her tell it, the Seer was one of the most irreverent, funny old men
that she had ever known. And this cave of his was an awe inspiring
mystery.

She had been sent to the Seer by the Sage, and
literally had no idea of exactly how she arrived there. Her first
memory of the process involved looking about her and seeing that
this was a place like no other that she had ever seen. The first
door she had opened (of which there were thousands) had shown her a
landscape in daylight (It was dark outside the cave) in which huge
creatures grazed, creatures that looked identical to the dinosaurs
worshipped by children and paleontologists alike. She had closed it
quickly.