An eyebrow went up. “Pardon?”
“The MacGuffin. Somalderis, that’s what it’s called.”
“Ah.” The eyebrow went down. “I had begun to fear it might be the Philosopher’s Stone.” He added, “Sorcerer’s Stone, for you Yanks.”
I threw a wad of bubbles at him—and missed.
He laughed. “So what is it?”
“I’m not quite sure,” I admitted. “Agriarctos said it was some kind of membrane that could take you to another world.”
I expected the next question to be, “Who’s Agriarctos?”
Instead, it was, “Did he say membrane, or M-brane?”
I shrugged. “I don’t honestly remember. What difference does it make?”
Spud was looking off at the corner, lost in thought. He mumbled, “All the difference in the worlds …”
* * *
Spud had me go over and over the last day’s events, and continued to interrupt me with peculiar questions about the most insignificant details. Finally, he sat back and said, “It is time.”
I entirely agreed. My skin was so pruny I looked like a ghost. I kicked him out of the bathroom while I rinsed off and got “decent”. An hour later, Spud and I sat over a pot of tea on my patio and made our plans. He pulled out his Ergal and I craned my neck to look at the map on his mega’ed screen.
“The Black Sea was called the Euxeinos by the ancient Greeks. West of its waters you could find the Greek cities of Chersonesos and Pantikapaeon. East of its waters lay ‘the edge of the Earth’ as the Hellenes called it, the kingdom of Kolhis in what is now the Republic of Georgia.
“Mythological databases describe ancient stories that say that’s where the Somalderis was hung on an oak tree as a sacrifice to Ares.”
“Aries the Ram?”
“Ares, the god of War. Mars.”
I looked at Spud. “What do the Zygfed History records say?”
Spud shook his head. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing. Not one thing in the Zygint data bases or directories about a Somalderis, or anything where it relates to Mars either.”
“Okay. God of War. Certainly fits with Benedict’s tactics.”
“In Greek mythology, King Athamas’ son Phrixos escaped across the Euxeinos Sea to Kolhis on the back of a winged ram—”
“Aha!” I chided. “I said ‘the ram’.”
Spud ignored me. “He sacrificed the ram skin to”—he said pointedly—“Ares the War god and hung the fleece where it was guarded by a dragon until Jason—”
“Fleece?!” I shouted, practically knocking Spud out of his chair. “Fleece?!” My expression was pained. “The Golden Fleece?!”
“Well, yes, but—,” Spud stumbled.
I sat back in my chair and threw up my hands. “Oh, great! I’ve been on a wild goose chase for the Golden Fleece!”
“No,” Spud said, wiping my spit off his face. “I don’t know that it’s really golden. The word in the proto-Indo-European language might have meant light or sun—”
“Okay,” I sighed, “I give up.” Proto-Indo-European language. Really. “So now we have to go back to … 5000 BC and try to find it before Jason and the Argonauts—or Agriarctos and the Ursans.”
“More like 500 BC.” Spud ventured. “And I’m not sure Kolhis is where we’ll find the fleece any more. However, I do believe it is a good place to start.”
Spud micro-ed his Ergal screen and went to put the phone back in his pocket. I shot my hand out and grabbed his arm.
“Wait. What about the temporal vector shield?” Would we need another Trojan horse to get into Earth’s past? Technology was Eikhus’s specialty, and I’m sure Spud wasn’t eager to dive back into Kharybdian waters quite so soon and ask for Eikhus’s help once again.
“I’m scanning—no, we’re clear,” Spud looked relieved. “The shield doesn’t extend that far back in time. It’s only covering the period of Yeshua’s recorded life, which was much later. So, looks like it’s just you, me, and the Ram, Rush.” He got a sly grin and added brightly, “The game is ahoof!”
I don’t think Spud was permanently injured.
* * *
The Black Sea—578 BCE
Pantikapaeon was a beautiful city for its day. Gleaming marble temples, rolling hills overlooking deep blue waters and clear azure skies. Kind of like Baja California before they built all the tourist hotels.
We M-fanned on the edge of town in 578 BCE, as the intrepid brothers Akbar and Danel, or, as we were now called, Aristotelis and Dimitris. Though I normally liked to wear jeans or other pants—excuse me, Spud, trousers—I was actually getting used to these togas. Commandos going commando, I giggled.
“Don’t giggle,” Spud scolded, as we ambled towards the beach. “Or I shall start calling you Dimitra.”
“Perilypos,” I apologized in ancient Greek, or rather my Ergal helped me say. Uploads can only go so far, and I hadn’t had much of a chance to practice dead languages living in modern L.A..
We neared a row of boats bobbing in the water a few feet off shore. Bronze-skinned fishermen were gathering twine nets filled with flopping fish and pulling them onto the sand. I flashed back to the Gliesers for a frightening second and felt myself shivering.
Spud had engaged one of the fishermen in a spirited conversation in fluent ancient Greek. He’s always got to show me up. Darn those British public schools and their Classics classes.
Thanks to Spud’s linguistic and diplomatic skills, as well as a large sac of Ergaled drachmas, we soon found ourselves in a borrowed wooden fishing boat riding the choppy waves with the sun on our backs. Before long, my arms were aching from pulling the oars, and trying to keep up with Spud’s semi-pro rowing stride. Darn those British public schools and their rowing clubs.
As soon as we were a speck on the horizon, I mutinied. “We’re levving this thing the rest of the way,” I insisted. “Why can’t we just Ergal to this Kolhis anyway?”
Spud didn’t answer immediately. He kept scanning the water and raising a hand to the wind. “Because I want to see,” he finally said, “where our dinghy naturally takes us. If my calculations are correct, the currents and weather conditions should mimic those described in Apollonius’s poem.” He looked at me, and sighed. “The Argonautica—the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Now row.”
I made a face and grudgingly picked up my oars, adding with little enthusiasm, “Aye, aye, Captain Bligh.”
* * *
Many, many hours later, we made landfall on a rocky beach battered by small waves. I found a shady spot under an oak tree on a clump of moss to sit and rest my weary arms. I didn’t know what Spud was going do next. There seemed to be a veritable forest of oak trees around us, none of which sported a hanging ram’s pelt Somalderis.
Spud wandered carefully from tree to tree, his Ergal out and measuring something. I closed my eyes and waited. Spud would tell me soon enough what was on his rather arcane mind.
“Aliens!”
I jumped, opening my eyes and reaching for my Ergal. Spud was nowhere to be seen.
“Aliens!” The voice belonged to a tall, brawny man, who stood at my feet aiming a large bronze spear at my chest.
My Ergal CANDI’d me that it was translating Georgian. A fleeting Sarion joke about Southern accents crossed my mind, but my groan was blocked by the gravity of my predicament.
“Not alien. Human,” I said in Georgian, thanks to my Ergal. “Greek.”
“Greek. Persian. All of you are invaders of our kingdom! You must die!”
Ah, I like a guy who gets to the point right away.
“Um,” I raised my hands, “I mean you no harm. I am, uh, a simple fisherman who was shipwrecked and wants to return home. With your mercy.”
I must not have been very convincing. The Georgian slid the tip of his spear over my chest along the surface of my toga. “Tell your soldiers that if they set foot here we will skin alive every last man and hang them from the trees.”
Common practi
ce around here, huh? You haven’t seen a fleece hanging—
Crack! Like a tall tree felled by loggers, the Georgian fell stiffly to one side, barely missing my legs. Behind him stood Spud and his trusty stun gun. Spud walked over to the guard and Ergaled an E-shield around him so that we could speak freely.
“Where were you?” I asked in modern English, an edge to my voice. I scanned the trees, wary of additional Georgians ready to attack us.
“We’re alone,” Spud reassured me. “Well, sort of. If you ignore the portal.”
“The portal,” I said with a note of sarcasm. “Go on.”
“There’s a gateway between two trees thirty meters into the woods.”
“A wormhole?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I was able to Ergal into something for a second or two, but I was ejected. Perhaps one needs the fleece.”
My curiosity was aroused. I nodded at the stunned guard. “Let’s leave Brutus here to rest and go check it out.”
We walked over to the site. I saw nothing more than a clearing filled with waist-high robust weeds. Spud suggested I check my Ergal—it was documenting some space-time distortion that it couldn’t identify.
“Think we should try it?” I ventured with some eagerness.
Spud was enthusiastic. “Yes, maybe with two of us and two Ergals we can push in farther than I was able to do alone.”
I smiled gamely, hoping for the best. Holding hands, Spud and I tried simultaneously X-fanning through the portal. 1-2-3—
I felt my body being torn apart and didn’t even have the energy to scream. Spud’s hand floated by my eyes and disappeared, still grasping mine. I saw the skin of my leg unfold and dissolve into a sparkle of light, then watched my eyes leave my head and disperse into a shower of glitter. My brain slowly absorbed that, without lungs, nose, or mouth, I was unable to breathe, before it dissipated and I felt nothing but…
Hard ground. Gasping. Grabbing for each breath with the desperation of a drowning man. Next to me. Gulping breaths. Spud.
We lay together, still holding hands, for quite a few minutes, before I could eke out a, “What the hell was that?”
“I suspect it was Gary’s—and Benedict’s—‘Level Three’,” Spud responded quietly, still panting. “But I expect it is more like ‘Brane 5’.”
“English, please …”
“Think of it as another dimension. With another dimension.”
I sat up slowly, still shaking, and furrowed my brow. “Well, we normally exist in four dimensions, right? Height, length, width, plus time. So you mean Brane 5 is a place with five dimensions?”
Spud nodded. “The Miletic Theory you were supposed to have learned in your exocosmology uploads, postulates at least eleven dimensions in which strings and membranes form the basic components of each universe. I think our portal here takes you into one of them, but, for reasons I have not yet been able to figure out, only the Somalderis can keep you there.”
I lay back on the cool ground, breathing deeply. “Wow.” I rolled on my side, frowning. “You think Benedict and his gang want to be able to access those dimensions?”
Spud nodded again. “That’s my hypothesis. And I presume that the Omega Archon wants to make sure that doesn’t happen … again.”
Chapter 12
Ion Eyes
Earth Core—present day
We levved the dinghy back to Pantikapaeon soon after nightfall, so that the kind and greedy fisherman would have his boat by morning. We also timed the removal of the Georgian sentry’s stun and E-shield to occur at the same time as our X-fan. We didn’t want any, uh, hard feelings. In fact, Spud Ergaled an almost-empty bottle of Chersonesan wine next to the guard before we left so that the Georgian might have a straw to grasp after he woke up and wondered why he’d spent the last few hours lying literally senseless in the forest.
Our next stop was Earth Core, in the modern era. It was time to talk to Gary again about what we’d discovered.
“Gary isn’t heerrre,” Fydra responded at reception, her tone professional.
I leaned over and handed her a bright, studded necklace I had seen on one of the hotter models at the wrap party; I’d Ergaled a copy on my way down in the elevator from Heck. “Happy Birrrthday!”
“It’s rrrravishing!” Fydra broke into a warm grin and leapt over her desk to give me a wet nose rub. I hugged her back as Spud began tugging on my arm.
“Come on!” he urged.
“Where are we going?” I asked him as I followed him inside the station.
“Gary’s office. We have work to do.”
“But Fydra just told us he isn’t here.”
“Exactly,” Spud said, as we arrived at the suite. “Shh.”
Spud pulled out his Ergal and manipulated some of the dials. After a few moments, Gary’s door opened, and we gingerly stepped in. As it closed behind us, I asked, “How did you do that?”
“Better you do not know,” he said. “Let us hurry.” He started to scan the stylish room, lined with bookcases and what I guessed was expensive art.xx
“What are we looking for?”
“Gary may know more than he is telling,” Spud explained. “Anything MacGuffin-related.”
I chuckled, and started to pore through Gary’s books. Amusingly, a large number of them could be found in the self-improvement section of your local bookstore. Well, at least they weren’t filled with tissues. Spud went and rapidly downloaded Gary’s holo-files into his Ergal and then joined me in searching the rest of the room.
“Hello!”
I turned towards the door, terrified that Gary had walked in. It was still closed—Spud had only spoken an exclamation. I walked over and punched him in the arm before asking what he had found.
He punched me back, then answered, “Look at this textbook.”
The book looked at least twenty years old and was titled, Cosmological Physics: A Unified Theory of the Universe, by Whit N. Miletus, PhD. I raised an eyebrow, “Glad we don’t have to learn all that any more.”
“Miletan Theory.” He flipped through a few pages. “Look at these notes in the margins.”
I glanced at the formulae lining the text, then joked in my best ancient Greek, “It’s Chinese to me.”xxi
Spud, concentrating as he skimmed page after page, didn’t laugh. He closed the book, micro’ed it and slipped it in his pocket. “Let’s go.”
I looked at him as if he were crazy. “Are you crazy? You’re taking Gary’s book?”
“It isn’t Gary’s,” he returned soberly. “It’s Benedict’s.”
* * *
We M-fanned back into my Malibu bungalow. Spud put my whole house under an E-shield, explaining that he needed a few quiet hours to study the text and Benedict’s scribbles.
“How do you know Benedict did that?” I asked. Sure, Spud was a whiz at studying handwriting and being able to identify writers—and forgers. But this was amazing. Where would he even learn what Benedict’s writing looked like?
Spud, annoyed, opened the book to its coverleaf and showed me the nameplate. Chagrined, I read, “This book belongs to: Theodore Benedict.”
“Any other questions?” he mumbled, his head still buried in the formulae.
“No … no … I’ll, uh, just hang …”
Spud’s hand slipped into his jacket and he took out a new, full pack of cigarettes. On second thought, I realized I hadn’t seen the family in a few weeks; maybe this would be a really good time to deliver Kris’s package to Andi.
* * *
Maryland—present day
I M-fanned at the farm in Maryland and ran up the path to avoid being drenched by a pouring spring shower. Taking cover under the awning on our front porch, I wiped the mud off of my shoes before I rang the bell. Some of the gang was bound to be home. I didn’t expect to see George, as ‘Osborne, Conrad, and Jeffries’ was a killer law firm to intern for, and he’d likely be working at his office all weekend. Connie was probabl
y at Georgetown studying for her upcoming finals, and Blair should have already gone back to the UK for planting season. But, Andi and the boys still had a couple of months left in the school year, so I’d have enough company for a few hours, at least until Spud’s smoke cleared. Literally, as well as figuratively.
Bobby opened the door eagerly as I approached. Seeing me, he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Want to make it to fifteen?” I favored him with a faux frown as I walked past him into the foyer.
Billy waved his free hand from the home theater in our family room, his eyes glued to his game. I ducked to avoid a holographic Romulan warship as it almost sliced through my head. Two years younger than Bobby, the blond “starfighter” was already beating his brunet brother in battle games. In a few years, when he turns sixteen, I’d love to nominate him for Mingferplatoi. The boys were back at their controllers even before I headed for the kitchen. At least I knew what to get them for their birthdays.
Andi was making a peanut butter sandwich, strands of her long auburn hair falling into the paste as she tried to keep it from tearing the doughy bread.
“Whole wheat isn’t as fragile,” I suggested.
“Shiloh!” she squealed, and stretched out her peanut butter-covered hands for a hug. Thirteen is old enough to know better. Really. I hugged her anyway.
“I’ve got a present for you,” Andi’s face brightened as I pulled out Kris’s package from a plastic bag. “From Christine.” I handed Andi a towel to clean off the remnants of peanut butter that didn’t make it onto my own T-shirt.
Andi carefully unwrapped the shiny paper and folded it into a small square which she laid on the kitchen counter. She raised the lid of white box underneath and squealed with excitement. “A Mid Kids jacket!”
The olive windbreaker looked wonderful next to her auburn locks, and I complimented her on her style. I pulled out a second box from the plastic bag, this one unwrapped. “I got you a little something, too.”
Andi’s eyes lit up when she saw the sketch pad and colored pencils. She gave me another big hug. After taking off her new jacket so it could stay peanut-butter-free.
We made a pitcher of lemonade for us all and sat around sharing some family and Hollywood news and gossip. I learned about George’s plans to intern in Congressman Acton’s office in July. And Connie’s student teaching in an urban DC school. Blair and Uncle Ari were planning to double the potato crop this year, and the little guys were balancing school, baseball practice, and acting in the occasional local commercial pretty well. Bobby had admitted that he wanted to join Kris in LA this summer, and maybe get a shot at a guest part on ‘Mid Kids’ next season, but George and Connie had both responded with a vehement ‘no’. For once, I was on their side. Kris wouldn’t be a real good role model for her younger brother. And me? No way could I babysit. I already had a second job.