The Other Normals (9 page)

“On the table,” Mortin reminds me.

“No, wait, stop!” I stand my ground. “How am I meeting two people named Ryu in one day? That’s not normal.”

“You’re still concerned about normal?” Mortin asks.

“You got a problem with my name?” Ryu presses.

“Look: I get punched in the head by a kid at camp named Ryu, and now there’s a Ryu here with blue hair? That’s not a coincidence. Dreams are used to store memories. Is
that
what’s happening right now? I don’t want this to be a dream because it’s a lot better than my real life, but I need one of you to start explaining. If my parents find out I’ve been kidnapped to the ‘World of the Other Normals,’ they’re going to find their lawyers—”

“Didn’t your parents leave their lawyers in the woods?” Ada asks.

“How do you know that? I assume they picked them up—”

“Perry,” Mortin says. “All we want to do is check out your ankle. How does it feel?”

I touch it—after all the itching and subsequent excitement, I forgot about it, but now it throbs. “Hurts.”

“Good. Where there’s pain, there’s life.”

Mortin pulls another lever on the wall. A system of pulleys squeaks to life, and the room’s ceiling slides back like a mechanical football dome. It reveals a gargantuan pool of water above, held in by clear glass. I shield my eyes. The water stretches up far enough to erase any chance of gauging its depth. Light pours in from the top. It’s bright and blue and clear, with no fish or plants of any kind. As soon as I see it, I hear a quiet, pleasant hum. The thakerak likes the water.

“We’re underwater?” I ask in awe.

“We’re at the bottom of the Great Beniss Basin,” Mortin says. I stare up at scaleless blue as Ada offers me her arm and leads me to the table. She moves lightly. I feel bumbling and stupid, my elbow in hers, as I hobble on my bad ankle. It’s the first time a girl has ever touched my arm. Her hand is warm and smooth.

I lie down. Mortin stands at my head. Ada stands at my feet. Ryu watches everything with his arms crossed, making me feel small and inadequate, even though he isn’t taller than me, like the Ryu at camp wasn’t. It’s his attitude that makes him tall. What a trick!

Ada pulls a rope down from the ceiling and puts it around my ankle.

“Ow! Not too tight!”

Ryu laughs. Ada raises her eyebrows at me.

“Fine. Make it tight.”

She pulls the rope taut. It grips my ankle like a claw. I wince but hold the pain in. The rope leads to the glass above me, where it attaches to a hook. Above the hook, on the other side of the glass, a thin metal rod sticks into the Great Beniss Basin. I shake my foot. The rope moves; the hook and rod move with it. It’s like I’m attached to a car antenna. It’s fun. I kick my foot aside and accidentally clip Mortin.

“Ow!”

“Stop him!” Ryu says. “Keep him still!”

“Don’t move,” Ada whispers, grabbing me.

Mortin holds his side. “Are you okay?” I ask. “I didn’t kick you that hard.”

“It’s fine. I just—I’ve got a bruise there,” Mortin says, shaking it off.

Ada holds me still. “Gamary will go nuts if you interfere with the Basin. Just relax your foot while we take the reading.”

“But
what
are you reading? How does it work?”

“Mortin? Permission to do a formal introduction?”

He nods and waves her on, still holding his side.

“Yes.”
Ada pumps her fist. It’s wonderful to see. Ryu sighs like we’re wasting his time. Ada flits back around the room, carefully avoiding the thakerak, and returns with a notebook full of the strange writing that I saw on the bag of hepatodes.
It’s a leather-bound notebook with a thick cover, alien but familiar—a school notebook. I’d know a school notebook no matter what language it was in. When she opens it, I see doodles in pencil on the side.

“This is my first introduction,” she says. “It’s a big honor. I’ve been preparing.”

“Like a test?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re doing great.”

She clears her throat. “Peregrine Eckert—”

“Perry. Perry’s fine.”

“I like Peregrine.”

“But I really—”

Ada blinks. Her eyes are blue like her hair. When she blinks, I think maybe she doesn’t find me so shrimpy and untouchable.

“Peregrine’s fine,” I agree.

“Thank you. Peregrine Eckert, I’d like to welcome you to the World of the Other Normals!”

THERE’S A MOMENT WHEN IT FEELS LIKE people should clap, but no one claps, so I clap.

“Hold still!” Mortin orders.

“I have a question: what do
you
guys call it? When you’re talking to each other. You must call it something else. Some real name.”

Ada looks to Mortin. “Show him,” he says. He slides a panel aside in the wall. Behind it is an array of buttons, dials, and wheels. He focuses on these while eyeing the rod in the water, which jitters as my ankle moves with my breathing and circulation.

“It’s called—” Ada starts, and then her mouth moves but her voice cuts off, just like Dale Blaswell’s did back in the nurse’s office.

“What?”

Ryu laughs. Ada explains, “The true name can’t be understood by your mind. When you hear it, it doesn’t register.”

“That’s ridiculous. I have to call this place something. ‘World of the Other Normals’ is too long. What about ‘Anormalia?’ No, that sounds like a disease.”

“Hurry it up,” Ryu says.

“Freaking Americans.” Mortin adjusts dials and levers. “They have such problems with names. I bring somebody over from Nepal, they understand that certain things can’t be expressed in words. But Americans need names.”

“Continuing!” Ada says. “Peregrine, our universe split from yours six hundred million years ago.”

“So it’s Earth? This is like Earth?”

“It’s a planet like Earth, in a solar system like Earth’s, but a lot of things change in six hundred million years. When the split happened, shelled animals were just starting to appear. On Earth, you got dinosaurs and birds and humans. Here, we got other normals, like Mortin and me and Ryu.”

Ryu smiles. “Baby, you could teach me a class any day.”

Ada glares at him, but then he adjusts his lip ring with his tongue and cocks one eyebrow. She blushes. No way. That’s unfair. I can’t cock one eyebrow like that. I thought people could only do that in cartoons. I always move both eyebrows and it just looks like I’m surprised.
Focus, Perry!

“What about Gamary, the okapicentaur? Is he an ‘other normal’?”

“Yes, we come in several varieties. There are highborn other normals, like all of us in this room, and ingresses—hybrid creatures—like Gamary. All part of our evolutionary tree. Mortin, how’s the reading coming?”

“Good.” Mortin looks at the thakerak as my ankle twitches in midair. The white threads click and buzz in reaction to the
small disturbances I produce in the water. It’s like an organic MRI.

“Then—and I want you to relax, Peregrine—in the year twelve hundred fifty-eight ADD—”

“A
D
,” Ryu corrects. “ADD is a different thing.”

“Oh.” Ada takes a note. “Do you know a lot about Earth, Ryu?”

“I got a dream, to go to Earth and make movies.”

“Like a director?” I ask.

“A
writer
-director, like Quentin Tarantino or David Lynch. Or a rock star. That’s my backup plan.”

“Have you ever been to Earth, though?”

“No.”

“Oh.” I can’t help but feel superior. “Too bad.”

“You wanna get punched?”

“
Anyway
, boys, in twelve hundred fifty-eight A
D,
our two universes came back together.”

“How?”

“That year, on Earth, the Bayt al-Hikmah was destroyed. It was a library in Baghdad, the greatest of its time.”

“I should know this.... I play an RPG based on
Arabian Nights
.”

“Yes, that’s very impressive. When the Mongols destroyed the Bayt al-Hikmah, they threw so many books into the Tigris River that it ran black with ink for six months. It was the greatest single loss of information ever in the history of Earth, and it happened to correspond with a great loss of information in
our world, too. At that moment, the thakeraks here connected with fungi on Earth. So much knowledge was lost that it was possible for our universes to be, for an instant, together again. Ignorance as bliss. We started making trips.”

“That’s impossible,” I say. “We would know. You couldn’t just have mystical beings going to Earth without people finding out—”

“I’m not a mystical being, I’m a consultant,” Mortin says, making adjustments at the wall.

“We were shocked at first, but we’re disciplined people,” Ada says. “The Appointees, when they learned about the connection, strictly regulated trips.”

“Who are the Appointees?”

“Our leaders,” Ryu grunts.

“A bit like your president,” Ada says, “except the Appointees are appointed for life, and they appoint new Appointees before they pass away. They keep us safe; they keep us organized—”

Mortin huffs.

“What’s that?” Ryu asks. “You have something seditious to say?”

“And they’re vitally important for everyone’s
safety
,” Ada continues in an everybody-stay-calm tone. “The Appointees controlled exploration of your universe as we found out about the correspondences between your world and ours. But now, the princess, daughter of the Lead Appointee, has been kidnapped by a terrible monster named Ophisa. Our world has been thrown out of balance. War and sickness are spreading through
the land. The Appointees are detaining anyone suspected of working with Ophisa. These are dark times.”

“Sounds like you need a hero,” I say, thinking,
You’re lucky this is my territory.
“What’s Ophisa like? Serpent? Humanoid?”

“He’s a horrific mutant beast that combines the insectoid and reptilian, with a hundred ten eyes and poison fangs, as tall as a tree,” Ada says.

“All right!” Mortin steps back from the wall. “Perry, you’re fine. You can get up now.”

“What?”

“Reading’s done. Ada has proven sufficiently distracting—”

“But it was just getting good—”

“Your ankle’s okay. It’s not going to cause any problems for your correspondent—”

“Who is that? What did you do?”

“Explanation time is over, Perry. I’m taking a quick smoke break, and then we’re sending you back to camp.” Mortin grabs some pebbles from behind a barrel.

“Hey!” Ryu says. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Calm down, pipsqueak.” Mortin lights up. “Get your boss in here if you need someone to yell at me. I’m not gonna be lectured by a kid with a cheap lip ring who’s got a crush on my intern.”

“Excuse me?”

Mortin blows a smoke ring at Ryu. The pebbles don’t make him calm the way cigarettes make Sam calm; they make him giddy and, I think, they convince him that whatever he’s doing is cute. “Pretty soon people are gonna be tripping all over
themselves to give me my job back for saving the princess! Ophisa’s gonna be a thing of the past, all thanks to me and Perry here, and some attenuate errand boy is going to tell me how to live my life? I don’t think so. Get out!”

I expect a reaction from Ryu—verbal if not physical—but he takes the suggestion. He blows a kiss at Ada, sneers at Mortin, ignores me, and leaves the room. Just like that.

ADA BANGS HER FIST ON MORTIN’S CHEST. “What is wrong with you? You can’t smoke here! He’s going to get Gamary!”

“So? The old joker’s just trying to look tough. I’m not going to let him push me around.”

The door slams back open. Ryu and Gamary enter.

“Look at that!” Mortin says. “Just talking about you two. Sorry, I know no smoking. Putting it out now. Got a little carried away.” He dumps the pebbles on the ground and smiles, but Gamary just points at him, a deep distance in his expression. “That’s him, Officer.”

Three monsters enter the room.

They’re all hybrid other normals—
ingresses
, I remember from Ada’s introduction. The front two are men from the waist down, or at least from where their legs come out of their getmas, and
fish creatures
above, with scaly chests, spindly arms, fins sticking out of their backs, purple bulbous eyes, and jagged teeth. They wear belts with handcuffs hanging off. Their stench hits me—like rotting fish and beached seaweed—as they stand at attention with spears. The best I
can say for them is that at least they’re
up front
about being monsters.

The third one is more subtle. He’s a human from the waist up—if he held your gaze, you’d think he was just a dour man with a thick, dark mustache—but his lower half is composed of thick, slimy octopus tentacles. He makes puckered sucking noises against the wood as he approaches. He’s the leader; the other two stand still as he moves. He’s shirtless, wearing a long burlap skirt (
kilt
, I correct myself), underneath which his tentacles bloom. He has a lantern-jawed face, brown hair, and controlling eyes. He rotates his palm on the hilt of a conspicuously large sword in a jeweled scabbard as he looks at Mortin, Ada, and me.