Summerhill (8 page)

“Okay, fine,” he said. “I still want to hear about New Zealand, though, so that if I ever do find my home, I’ll know what to compare it to.”

Katherine laughed, but she nodded, smiled, and leaned forward. She told Summerhill all about the world of New Zealand. She regaled him with descriptions of verdant, rolling countrysides, of wide-open spaces dotted with the occasional town or city, of long coasts and snow-capped mountains. From the conversations he’d had with guests aboard the
Nusquam
, Summerhill had gotten the impression that the worlds that people came from were more uniform, but this place that Katherine told him about sounded so special in its variety, in its extremes, in its wonderful non-uniformity.

And, according to Katherine, it was only a small island nation that was part of a much larger planet that was more diverse still. And that planet was just a tiny one, one of many that circled just one of hundreds of billions of stars that made up just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies.

“Wherever I come from,” Summerhill said when Katherine was done, “I’ll be happy if it’s even just a fraction as wonderful as your New Zealand is.”

“You’re a strange being, Mr. Summerhill. But you’re a fine change of pace from some of the guests I see on the
Nusquam
. Wouldn’t you know it, lots of folks let being hand-picked for dimensional travel go to their heads.”

Summerhill turned and looked out the viewing port again. The nevereef’s features hadn’t changed, the beautiful expanse of coral still just as wondrous and just as eerie against a backdrop of nothing. “Speaking of dimensional travel,” he said, “you said you think this reef is something the lifeboat struck while it was trying to cross some kind of dimensional boundary.”

Katherine peered out through the glass as well. “This kind of science really isn’t my strong suit, Mr. Summerhill. Before we crashed, though, the lifeboat sure looked like it was about to make a reality jump, yes.”

Summerhill scratched the end of his muzzle. “You said something earlier about quantum signatures and the lifeboat figuring out where to go.”

“Yes, that,” Katherine said. “The lifeboats are equipped with a very tiny reality jump drive—like a much smaller version of the one on the
Nusquam
. It’s only got enough power for a single jump seeing as it’s only meant to be used in emergencies.

“Since it can only make that one jump, the on-board computer does a scan of everyone on board, and based on that, it calculates the optimal reality for the lifeboat to jump to. The idea is that even if not everybody makes it back home, at least they get someplace safe.”

Summerhill hummed in thought. “And how well does that usually work in practice?”

“I couldn’t say,” Katherine replied. “The ship’s never had to launch the lifeboats in the time I’ve been aboard.” She stretched her arms up above her head. “Anyhow, it doesn’t matter what caused the crash, at this point. This thing’s not making another reality jump, which means we’re good and stuck here.”

The whole matter of dimensional barriers and whatnot was still alien to Summerhill. He’d made it from the World of the Pale Gray Sky to the
Nusquam
just fine without any sort of reality jump drive; why couldn’t he and Katherine get out of the lifeboat and keep walking until they ended up someplace else, same as he had before?

Maybe that had just been a fluke. Maybe the World of the Pale Gray Sky had an incredibly thin barrier. But Katherine was right: it didn’t matter. A dog and a hostess weren’t going to repair a complex piece of reality-defying technology. Not with what they had at their disposal now.

“Come on,” Summerhill said, standing back up. “Let’s pack some food up and get going.”

Katherine stared at him in confusion. “Get going? Going where?”

“Outside, to explore the nevereef,” Summerhill replied as he opened the food supply cabinet back up. Wagering that they probably shouldn’t try to head to far afield on their initial trip out, he scooped up only a few of the meal packs and loaded them into one of the bags hanging from the inside of the cabinet door.

“Explore?” Katherine balked. “Are you kidding me? We should wait here, where it’s safe.”

“For how long?” Summerhill asked. “Until we run out of food and starve?”

A look of dread crossed Katherine’s face, as if that thought had just crossed her mind for the first time. “I... Well, no, of course not,” she said as she wrung her hands together. “But we
are
in a lifeboat. Maybe someone will find us.”

Summerhill slung the bag of prepackaged food over his shoulder. “Someone like the Consortium?”

“Oh, bollocks,” Katherine muttered under her breath. “All right, fine. We’ll do it your way. I still don’t know what you expect to find out there, though.”

“I don’t know what to expect, either. But the point is that what we have here won’t help us; meanwhile, there could be any number of things out there, just waiting to be found.”

Katherine chuckled as she got to her feet and slipped her pendant back underneath her blouse. She then checked her gun, and kept it in hand afterward. “All right, then, Mr. Summerhill,” she said, motioning with her free hand towards the hatch of the lifeboat. “Lead the way.”

Seven

Boundary

Up close, the polyp structures and stationary tendrils that adorned the nevereef looked even more beautiful. It was just a shame that there was so little time to get a good look at them.

For the first few seconds after stepping outside the lifeboat, the coral surface supported Summerhill and Katherine just fine. Then, without warning, a series of cracks with the appearance of a giant spiderweb spread out beneath their feet.

Summerhill barely had time to register what was happening before the coral gave way. He tried to dive for the hatch of the lifeboat, but he’d already lost his footing as the surface of the reef crumbled. Katherine cried out, but her scream was cut off as she fell into the nevereef as well.

What Summerhill and Katherine fell into, however, was nothing at all like a coral reef. Below them was pure emptiness, like the space outside the
Nusquam
, but whereas Summerhill had been able to saunter through that pleasant sort of nothingness, here he and Katherine were being drawn into intimidating, unwelcoming emptiness. There wasn’t even any sign of the fragments of coral that had fallen in underneath them.

They weren’t pulled down by gravity, but rather
pushed
down by some other force. Summerhill didn’t know what else it was, but he knew what it wasn’t. It felt like being wrung through a sponge, extruded through thick, viscous emptiness by unseen hands.

The hostess’ face was white with shock, her mouth wide with a scream that only barely reached Summerhill’s ears despite how close she was, still the same scream she’d begun to let out when the coral had collapsed underneath her. Her legs and arms wheeled about through the emptiness at a fraction of the speed that flailing in panic ought to, the whipping of her hair and the blinking of her eyelids slowed to an equal degree. It was the look in her eyes, though, still stricken with frozen terror, that showed Summerhill that Katherine was stuck in that moment, trapped in the agonizingly slow passage of time.

The fur on the back of Summerhill’s neck bristled and stood on end. Though he could not see beneath himself, he felt as if the empty skyscrapers of the World of the Pale Gray Sky were down below, were waiting for him, to catch him in their cold, lifeless grasp, like fingers of glass and metal reaching up from the coarse hand of a dead urban landscape.

With a surge of desperation, Summerhill fought against the force working on him. Moving his body as it plummeted through the emptiness was still slow going, like trying to swim through gelatin, but it was possible. The food pack slung across his back weighed him down at first, but he fought against that, as well. He dragged himself closer to Katherine and grabbed her by the hand. Her skin was cool to the touch, and felt more like the plastic of a mannequin than actual flesh, but the dog could still feel the faint twitch of life within. Gritting his teeth, Summerhill pulled her by the arm as he pitched downward and
dove
.

Now that his head was facing downward, Summerhill saw for sure that there were no buildings down below. There was nothing below, not as far as he could see, but as he kicked his legs, he was getting there faster. He kicked and kicked and kicked, dragging Katherine down along with him. Time sped up more and more by the moment, and the rushing of his pulse in his ears got stronger and harder and louder and more
real
until everything snapped back completely into place.

Eight

Details

As soon as reality coalesced around them once more, Summerhill and Katherine fell several feet. The landing was jarring, but it didn’t hurt much. The ground felt soft, spongy, negating most of the brunt of the impact. After the initial shock faded, however, and Summerhill had a chance to paw around at the surface they’d fallen onto, the ground felt hard and unyielding as solid rock.

Pitch blackness still engulfed their surroundings. The air was stale and—well, not stale, but just kind of nondescript. Neither warm nor particularly cold, not dry and yet not damp. Summerhill perked his ears and listened carefully, but he could hear no sounds other than Katherine’s groaning and the drumming rush of his own pulse hammering through his skull.

Katherine groped about blindly, her hand smacking against Summerhill’s arm a few times before she got purchase on his shoulder and pulled herself up into a sitting position. Summerhill helped to prop her up, and noticed that the total darkness had abated the tiniest bit, enough that he could now barely make out Katherine’s shadowy silhouette. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

“I fell real hard on my shoulder,” she replied, working out the stiffness with the opposite hand. “Doesn’t feel like I’m banged up too badly, though.” She took a deep breath and looked around. Now Summerhill could see her hair move as she turned her head. “Where are we?” she asked.

“Inside the nevereef, I would imagine,” Summerhill replied. Once again, he patted his hands against the ground. It was solid, but it certainly didn’t feel like coral. At the same time, it didn’t feel quite like stone or rock, either. The surface of it was rough, but not as uneven as Summerhill would have expected from a natural cavern; however, it also wasn’t as smooth or regular as something that had been carved out artificially.