“We’re still hammering out the details of the formal liaison,” Y told me. “Fortunately, I’ve been given some input into the process. It will allow me to protect my people here in DC.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “This business of the Peacock Angel really is much more an Agency problem than a TWIXT problem. They have to focus on narrow issues, like any police force does. We can take the wider view. They’re lucky they’ve got someone like you they can rely on.”
Y smiled as if to say, “Yes, I know.” He actually said, “They’re lucky they’ve got my entire team to rely on. I’ll be having a conference shortly with the two Spares, Thirteen and Fourteen. They’re on their way to DC. Once we have a plan of action, I’ll contact you and give you a full report of the meeting.”
“Great, and thank you! Huh, I wonder how clones travel together on our world level? The airline will want names for the tickets. As twins, I guess, Austin and Osman.”
“Something like that, I assume.” His trance-avatar radiated disinterest. “In the meantime, continue with your research.”
We ended the session there.
That evening I stood in our bay window and watched the fog come streaming over the houses across the street. Ari walked up behind me and slipped his arms around my waist. I leaned into his warmth, his solid muscle and strength, and braced myself for the inevitable question.
“Why won’t you even consider marrying me?” he said, right on schedule.
“Because one, I don’t want to marry anyone, and two, you’re a foreign national and a double agent, whereas I’m a citizen agent with loyalty to a single government.”
That got him. He stayed silent for several minutes. I slithered free of his arms and turned around to watch him think things through.
“Oh,” he said eventually. “I hadn’t quite thought of it that way.”
“Well, please do! And we agreed that we’re not going to have children, married or not.”
“True. I was just momentarily overcome, seeing you with Beth in your lap. It’s genetic, I suppose. The sodding, pushy DNA and all that. Sorry. But it would be much too dangerous for the children to have parents in our line of work. They’d make such splendid hostages.”
“Exactly. Ari, look, there’s part of you that really wants kids and a normal life, isn’t there?”
He shrugged, but his eyes narrowed slightly. He stepped back as if he expected me to slap him.
“Maybe,” I continued, “I’m not the woman you want. If you left TWIXT and stayed with just plain old Interpol, some nice Israeli girl would love to give you a couple of babies.”
“I can’t deny I’ve thought about that. Unfortunately, it’s impossible.”
“Wouldn’t TWIXT let you go?”
“It has nothing to do with TWIXT and everything to do with you. For God’s sake, Nola!” He set his hands on his hips. “Haven’t you ever believed me when I’ve told you I love you?”
My turn to think things through. “You know,” I said eventually, “it’s because of what’s happened to me in the past. I guess I’ve been waiting for you to say it’s over and leave me.”
Ari took my left hand in his. “What’s this?” He pointed to the engagement ring.
“Oh, okay, but—”
“There isn’t any but about it. You’re not getting rid of me, whether we marry or not.” He pulled me closer. “Do you want to get rid of me?”
“No! I love you. I just—”
He kissed me before I could finish the sentence. I relaxed into his embrace and kissed him again.
“I love you so much,” I said. “But is that enough for you, knowing that I love you?”
“Of course,” he said, and then he smiled his tiger’s smile. “For now.”
Agency Talents and Acronyms
AH Audio Hallucination
ASTA Automatic survival threat awareness
CDEP Chaos diagnostic emergency procedure
CW Chaos wards
CDS Collective Data Stream
CEV Conscious evasion procedure
DEI Deliberately extruded images (visible only to psychics)
DW Dice walk
E Ensorcellment
FW Fast Walking
HC Heat conservation
IOI Image Objectification of Insight
LDRS Long distance remote sensing
MI Manifested indicators (of Chaos forces)
NPI Negative Psychic Input (aka bad omen)
PI Possibility Images
SAF Scanning the aura field
SM Search Mode
SM:P Search Mode: Personnel
SM:G Search Mode: General
SM:D Search Mode: Danger
SAWM Semi-automatic warning mechanism
SH Shield persona
SPP Subliminal psychological profile
WW World-Walking
Deviant Worlds
[The following passages are excerpted from a report Nola filed with the Agency on the contents of an entry-level exam book for TWIXT recruits. The story of how she obtained this material takes place in APOCALYPSE TO GO.]
The background material [in the cram book] covered the formation of deviant worlds and hinted at travel between them. Although the book supplied a lot of details, the basic principle was simplicity itself. Forget all those sci-fi stories about killing Hitler and changing history. Worlds split and deviated not because of human actions—or the actions of any other intelligent species—but by mathematically determined transformations inherent in the system of worlds. The multiverse turned out to be one huge fractal pattern, generating replicas and deviants of itself by its inherent nature.
The impetus or energy for this self-generation was still a mystery, according to the text. The astrophysicists on Spare14’s level tended to believe that “quantum fluctuation” or “foam” lay behind the deviations. Although the process could be expressed by enormously complex mathematical formulae, the book showed none of those. I guess the authors figured that mathematical geniuses wouldn’t want to join TWIXT. However, I can say that the transformations had a certain orientation in common with the evolutionary mathematics of Darcy Wentworth-Thompson, the Scots biologist on Terra Four.
A fractal pattern like the famous Mandelbrot Set only transforms along three axes: Vertical, Horizontal, and Time. In the multiverse, the transformations occur in Time and some unknown number of spatial dimensions. Like NumbersGrrl once told me, they shoot off in all directions. The process can generate splits at varying times in a level’s existence. Thus two “cousin worlds” might be strikingly similar if the one had recently been generated from the other or, conversely, surprisingly different if the split lay in the distant past.
The book used an elaborate analogy to explain these principles. It postulated cars of the same brand and model parked one above the other in a multilevel car park. Although the cars were identical when they left the factory, different owners used them for different journeys. They let individual kinds of junk pile up in the trunks and glove compartments as well. In some cases an owner might even have painted a car in some eccentric way. The result would be a set of cars that had most things in common while displaying significantly distinct features. Gates between worlds would then be like elevators in the car park. No one could simply jump through the concrete floors that separated the nearly-identical cars. A person desiring to move from Car A to Car B had to walk up the spiral ramps or take the direct elevator from floor to floor. The analogy broke down at that point because in the multiverse there are no ramps, and the elevators do not stop at every floor.
With time, cousin worlds move too far apart to “continue to share information,” as the cram book puts it. I took that as meaning they could no longer be reached one from the other. Therefore, a world-walker could find only recently separated and thus somewhat similar worlds. The information stopped there with a couple of cryptic notes. Recruits had to pass the exam and become sworn agents before they learned how to travel from world to worl
d.
As I made clear in previous reports, we at the Agency already have additional information on this travel process. See my notes filed under tags “gates, orbs, overlap.”
The number One is an arbitrary label and not any sort of starting point. Agent S14 had indicated that his world was chosen as One out of “normal human vanity.” According to Agent JH, TWIXT scientists have found a tentative correlation between the numbers and certain factors. Worlds with an odd number contain populations who are widely aware of the existence of the multiverse. Those with even numbers do not, though some individuals may possess or postulate this knowledge. Knowledge that the multiverse exists seems in many cases to bring with it a knowledge that genetic psychic talents exist. Odd-numbered worlds are metaphorically labeled “left-handed,” and the even, “right-handed.”
Notes on worlds and color tags known to me follow.
Terra One—Spare14’s home world, highly technologically advanced. The TWIXT headquarters are in London. Floriation point: 1919. Violet.
Terra Two—The most deviant level of all, at least as far as the solar system is concerned. An alternate wet Venus with a large single moon is the home to the psychic sapient cephalopods. A sapient race descended from leopards, the Maculates, dominate Earth. Agent S14 has hinted that the Mars of this level also contains some mystery. The floriation point must have occurred in the far distant past, but for some unknown reason, this level is part of the local cluster. Perhaps the mysterious quantum foam carried it back. Blue-violet.
Terra Three—Although the other planets in the solar system are much the same as in our world, Earth, which I called Interchange before I understood the numbering system, suffered enormous damage from a mysterious disaster in the early 1920s. Floriation point: 1919. Blue.
Terra Four—our world. TWIXT uses it as the chronological measuring stick for floriation points. Blue-green.
Terra Five—Flann O’Grady’s home world, in many ways similiar to ours except for the fascist governments that dominate much of the planet, including North America. A much-reduced British Empire still exists on Earth. Floriation point: 1919. Green.
Terra Six—is linked to Four because it split off in the same floriation that produced Terra Three, i.e., floriation point is 1919, but the link between it and Interchange has been stressed to the breaking point by the defining disaster on Interchange. Some members of the World-Walkers Guild suspect human meddling may also be a factor. Yellow Green.
Terra Incognita (at the time of filing this report)—Somewhere is a deviant level where the Order-based Peacock Angel cult is the dominant religion in North America. I have spoken to a person known as Bissop Keith. I suspect he’s the chief prelate in that level’s San Francisco, but I cannot state this definitively at this time.
Other levels beyond these obviously exist. The O’Grady set contains sixteen orbs. How many of those lead to a deviant level that we can reach, I do not know at this time.
1 TWIXT has graciously allowed a release of information on this process for those interested. See the Appendices.
Katharine Kerr, Love on the Run
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