CHAPTER TWO
In which I get clothes, and the Quest begins.
The Traveller and I walked inland from the beach for about fifteen minutes before we reached a house. I was glad that the path was mostly sandy, since my flipflops (and shoes, and clothes, and everything) were back on my beach back in my world.
The house was small, made from wood, and had a pleasant white fence around a yard of familiar flowers. I might have been in New England fifty years ago. The Traveller paused at the gate for a moment, looking at me thoughtfully.
“Perhaps you’d better stay here,” he said.
“I’d rather not,” I said. My teeth were beginning to chatter. Though it was the hot season here as well, a wind had picked up and a faint inner chill was beginning to grip me.
“Very well,” he said gravely. “But please, let me do the talking.”
“Be my guest,” I replied tartly.
The Traveller led the way through the gate and up to the door. He rapped on it sharply, and immediately a female voice called out, startled but not afraid:
“Who’s there?”
“The Traveller.”
I could hear scampering feet, and within a few seconds the door was whisked open. “Well, I never!” said the woman. “The Traveller, here? Come in, come in! It’s an honor to have you! Here, I’ll start a pot of—”
She stopped abruptly when she saw me. Her hands drifted toward her mouth. “Is that—is she a—”
The Traveller sighed. “It’s a complicated tale, but essentially, yes. And as you can see, she came rather unprepared in the way of clothing.”
The woman was staring at me like I would an animal in a zoo. Or, to be honest, like I was staring at her. She was older than me, probably in her mid-forties or even early fifties. Gray hair, thin and braided down her back, but healthy and shiny. Her face was lined with sun wrinkles, and she looked like she probably spent every day out in her seaside garden or in the ocean. I took a quick glance around the cottage: tidy, neat, as if she lived alone. There were no signs to me that a man, or even another person, lived there with her. Strings of shells hung like wind chimes from the ceiling alongside strings of herbs and garlic. It was reassuring to see the garlic, but also uncanny. So much about this world was so much like mine that I had trouble still believing it wasn’t mine. Especially the fact that we were all speaking English. The woman had an accent, but nothing I recognized from my own world’s varieties of English. Sort of like a Texan drawl combined with a Pacific Northwest briskness.
“Clothes? Oh, yes, I can probably find something to fit her. Oh my, oh my! The Traveller, stopping here!”
The woman disappeared into the other room of the cottage for a few minutes. I heard the sound of drawers being opened and shut rapidly, and then she emerged with a folded skirt and a tunic sort of thing. She handed them to me shyly. I remembered just in time not to say thank you.
Unfolding the clothes, I saw a drab brown skirt with a drawstring waist and a tunic of a similar color that looked a little large for me. A few scraps of fabric also fell out and landed on the floor. I bent to pick them up, noticing that the woman had turned bright red. They were just scraps of fabric, long swatches that I assumed I would use as bra and underpants, but I had no idea how.
I looked at the Traveller, wondering if he wanted me to change right here.
“Uhh,” I began.
He glared at me. I glared right back, pointedly tugging one of my swimsuit straps.
“Oh,” he said. “Yes, um, should she use your other room?”
“Oh, go right ahead!’ burbled the woman.
I shot a frustrated look at the Traveller as I passed into the other room.
Why didn’t he want me to speak? Was my accent going to be such a problem, I wondered as I shucked off my now-dry swimsuit, or was he afraid I’d say something wrong? I was happy to follow his directions for now, but I hated being in the dark.
I stared at the scraps of fabric that were meant as underpants. They were actually quite clever, I realized: kind of an Ace-style bandage for the breasts which wrapped around as tight or as loosely as you liked a few times before clasping to itself with built-in metal hooks. I could see holes in the fabric where the other woman had clearly used it herself. The underpants were two crossed lengths of fabric that didn’t fit me half so well, and I was tempted just to leave off until I could buy some that fit me properly. I was a bit taller and skinnier than the older woman, but she must have had skinny hips underneath her own skirts because the underpants fabric just seemed too tight on me. I left it off. The skirt was easy enough to understand, as was the tunic.
I emerged a few minutes later feeling rather breezy round my thighs, clutching my swimsuit and the underpants, and a little pink in the cheeks.
I wanted a bag to put them in. I wanted a glass of water. I wanted to get on with this and get back to my own world and my own life and the nice young men who’d been flirting with me just a few hours ago. Except, I realized, going back would also mean dealing with Snotty and Alice, and Alice’s fear about Jim—
“Here, dear,” the woman was saying as I thought all of this. She was holding out a knapsack, exactly like the ones I would have used for a day of tromping around in the woods. “Put your old clothes in there—I say, didn’t the bottoms fit?”
I shook my head. She giggled. “Well, people come in all shapes and sizes. You can get some that fit in town.”
“Town?” I asked.
The Traveller glared at me. I glared back. I would have some choice words with him once we were out of here.
The woman’s hands went up to her mouth again. “Oh, what an adorable accent she has!”
The Traveller sighed. “Thank you very much, madam, for the loan of the clothing. We will try to return them, but may not be able to—“
“Oh, that’s quite all right,” tittered the woman. “It’s an honor to be of help to you! Here, let me put together some supplies. Town is quite a walk away.”
She went over to some cupboards and began pulling out foods I recognized: dried meats, hard cheese, and bread. She added nuts and dried fruit. Well, I thought, the food at least looks good. I imagine it’s all the same animals, and considering that the level of technology here seems a bit lower than in my world, it might be all fresh organic. I began perking up a bit.
My stomach growled.
The woman twittered again. “You could stay and have some soup if you like,” she presed as she took the knapsack from me and began packing it. “I’d love to hear all about your world.”
“Thank you very much, madam,” said the Traveller severely, “but that sadly is not a wise idea.”
“Ah, well,” sighed the woman. “It was worth a try! It’s quite a pity, really, that information about other worlds is so highly censored. I mean, we all know they exist and that people Exchange and there are Equivalents and all that, but we never hear what the differences are! Not that I’m complaining, mind you,” she added hastily, “just that it’s a pity.”
“Surely you know, madam, that knowledge of other worlds disturbs the Equation—”
“Oh, yes, yes, I know,” said the woman with a smile, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. I sensed that I had happened upon the first piece of crucial information I would need in my upcoming quest: information about other worlds is rationed.
That would explain, I thought, feeling upset and angry, why our walk to this house had happened in complete silence. I had been too preoccupied with watching where my feet went and trying to stay warm to ask the Traveller questions, but he had not volunteered information. I glared at him again, but he we busily dusting his top hat off and looking anywhere but at me.
“Oh!” said the woman. “You’ll need boots. You can take a pair of mine for now, though I don’t know if they’ll fit...” She ducked into a closet and returned with a pair of dusty, worn boots and some mercifully ordinary wool socks.
With a smile of thanks, I sat down on a low wooden stool and pulled on the socks, which were probably the nicest I’ve ever worn, and then pulled on the boots. They were a bit big, but I figured my feet would probably swell into them with all the walking I imagined myself doing.
I grinned up at her and nodded, wiggling my toes.
“Well, then, I’ve given you the best I’ve got, young woman,” said the older woman. “Good luck with... with whatever brought you here,” she said. “And don’t worry about the clothes!”
The Traveller bowed and thanked her, and I braved a “Thank you” that earned me another glare and another titter from the delighted woman. We left the house, the woman closing the door tightly behind us.
When were were safely outside her garden and back in the seaside air, the Traveller turned to me. He was grave again, but his eyes burned with a fire that made me shrink back, remembering that this man, as annoying as he was, clearly possessed some kind of power if he could slip between worlds as he had. Part of me wondered how it all worked, whether it was magic or physics, or if there was even a difference.
“You will please remember not to speak to the people of this world unless I give you leave!”
“Why not?” I asked angrily. “I’m going to need to survive somehow, and I want to be able to say please and thank you and ask for directions, and I don’t imagine you’ll want to accompany me the entire time we look for Jim—”
At his expression I broke off.
“You’re going to stay with me the entire time we look for Jim? Oh, lord.” I said rather a string of bad words in my head.
I didn’t want this. If I was in a new world (or at least new to me), then I wanted to be able to play in it, be like a quest character in an RPG. I wanted to explore the towns and villages, collect rare goods, talk with people who would lead me closer to my goal of rescuing Jim, even though I only half wanted to rescue Jim and mostly wanted to play around in a new world.
But at the look on his face, all thoughts of videogames faded.
“This is quite serious,” he said. “The more you speak with people, the more knowledge about your world filters through the Equation, even if it is just your accent and your presence. Right now teams of my assistants are scrambling to balance what we are forced to do simply to help you survive here. The old woman, had you not spoken, would have been encouraged to forget our encounter and assume she’d simply misremembered how much food she still had or where her clothing was.”
I gaped at him. “You can do that?”
“In a way, yes. It is not easy, but it is doable. Memory is, after all, only mathematics.”
I frowned and squinted at this. “I thought memories were made by electric signals in the brain.”
“Yes, I suppose you would think of it that way,” he mused. “Your world is so heavy on electrical power, you would conceptualize the brain that way.”
I waited for him to explain further, but he was silent, looking out toward the coast, frowning in thought.
“Well?” I said.
“Yes?” he replied, startled.
Well, what happens next? I thought. Are you done telling me to be quiet? Are you going to tell me about the Balance and the mathematics of memory, or is that, too, meant to be kept secret? A hundred questions floated through my mind, which suddenly felt very vulnerable and fragile—would he be able to manipulate my memories as well if he so desired?
I asked the most urgent one. “Can we eat something?”
“Go ahead,” he said, grandly gesturing to the knapsack.
I slung it from around my shoulders to where I could access the flap, and rummaged in it for some dried meat. It was in a paper wrapper, dark with black specks that looked like pepper on it, and smelled divine. I took a bite, my teeth aching as they pulled it apart. It was delicious, hard and chewy, and the best beef jerky I’d ever had.
“Want some?” I mumbled around a mouthful.
Delicately, the Traveller reached forward two slim fingers and pulled a piece out of the packet. Seeing him eat made me feel a little warmer to him; it made him human.
“So,” I said, once I’d had a few pieces and felt in a better mood. “I guess this is your show and I’m just tagging along because I know Jim, right?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, licking his fingers. “You seem to be important to the Equation somehow, or it would not have allowed you to travel here.”
“And do you really have to stick with me the entire time?”
“As far as I can tell, yes, I must. Come,” he said suddenly, breaking into a brisk walk heading away from the sun, which was westering over the beach. “We must find a place to stay the night, and I must communicate with my colleagues.”
I brushed the crumbs from my chest and followed him inland.
I found as we walked that I kept having to bite back questions: tell me about the Equation, I wanted to ask. Do you use magic, I wanted to ask. Who was holding Jim prisoner, I wanted to ask.
That last, I decided to ask. “Who’s the enemy?” I said.
He stopped, knees buried deep in the long grass through which we’d been walking. I was grateful for the boots, which came halfway up my calves and protected me from prickles.
“The enemey?”
“The person who’s got Jim. Who is it?”
“We don’t know.”
“We?”
“The Cohort.”
Yet another capitalized term. I was trying to keep track of them: the Equation, the Balance, Equivalents, Transfers... and now a Cohort.
“Who are the Cohort?” I asked wearily.
“Myself and my colleagues.”
That, I thought, was likely all the answer I’d get.
“And I guess you’re responsible for the Balance?” I said, feeling irritated again.
“In a way,” he said vaguely. “As I told you when we met, normally I only facilitate Exchanges between Equivalents.”
“And your colleagues go around wiping people’s memories.”
“Not all the time,” he replied, rather stiffly.
I realized then that he was somewhat embarrassed, and said so.
“We... we normally have no problems with these sorts of Exchanges,” he said, looking away from me and beginning to walk again. “Normally they are facilitated with no problems, and if you had happened to notice the Transfer my colleagues would simply have encouraged you to disbelieve what you thought you saw or draw your attention elsewhere.”
I felt a little regretful about having been so angry with him, but I was still annoyed and upset.
“Look,” I said, “I understand that you can’t tell me everything I want to know because of some universe-wide balance. Multi-verse wide, whatever. But if I’m going to even help out with this, I would like to know what we’re up against, if we even are up against something. Is there an enemy, or is this all a kind of natural accident?”
“It is... hard to tell,” said the Traveller slowly. “And please, you must realize that I do not mean to make things difficult for you. I have to keep the entirety of the Equation in mind, and right now I do not know its present state. I must talk with my colleagues and see a status update before I can be sure of how unbalanced things have become. For now, I must endeavor to maintain the status quo.”
“So, once we get to town and you’ve brought yourself up to speed, I might learn things?” That sounded hopeful.
“Possibly. Possibly not. Please, do not, hm, get your hopes up.”
I sighed and trudged along. The boots were beginning to fit properly.
We reached the town as an evening breeze picked up. I had no sense of time, and could only guess we’d walked about an hour, almost completely in silence.
The town started abruptly: fields of wildflowers suddenly ended, and a wide, paved road of slick grey material that looked a lot like concrete began. About a hundred feet down the road the first buildings lay: long, low buildings with large yards: industries, I guessed, like lumber and stonecutting.
The air smelled of roasting meat mixed with human waste. I assumed the outskirts of the town were where the sewers wound up. I swallowed convulsively and tried to breathe shallowly. There were definite downsides to a pre-industrial society.
Once we reached the concrete road, the Traveller picked up his pace, walking purposefully from block to block. The buildings around us changed from low industrial buildings to 3- and 4-story dwellings. I started seeing people, who shot the Traveller a startled and slightly excited look but paid me no notice. If a group of people saw us, they would lean in and whisper together. I heard mutters and excited murmurs; no one seemed alarmed, but everyone knew who the Traveller was. I imagined they thought I was just another local woman. I was wearing the same kinds of clothes, though not as nice.
We reached a town square, paved in familiar cobblestones, with a fountain in the center. The Traveller made straight to a building labeled, in letters I could easily read, “HOTEL.” It could have been an old hotel in some small European country: a striped awning, glass windows, a door with a jingling bell.
We entered the hotel, and the Traveller indicated that I should take a seat on a sofa—the cover looked to be stitched together from animal furs and was wonderfully soft—while he went and spoke with the receptionist.
I obeyed. I was exhausted. I wasn’t hungry as I’d been munching on the snacks the woman at the cottage had given me, but my feet hurt and my head ached. I was thirsty, too, and looked longingly out at the fountain, wondering if it was safe to drink.
“Water, miss?”
I looked up, startled. A boy about ten years old was offering me a small cup of water. He wore a suit that was a colorful, miniature version of the Traveller’s suit. I thought it might be a uniform or some kind of livery.
“Th—” I stopped myself just in time and turned my words into a cough. I nodded and smiled gratefully, taking the glass.
The boy shot me a puzzled look but let me take the glass and walked away.
I downed it in one gulp, and found that it barely quenched my thirst. I wanted to call over to him for more, but the Traveller had seen the interaction and was beginning to glower. He was leaning against the receptionist’s counter, obviously waiting for the man to return with something.
I looked down wistfully into the glass, and then occupied myself with trying to get the water boy’s attention without making a sound. I wondered if I’d just have to pretend to be mute for the next... however long this took. How long would it take? Hours? Days? Weeks? A slow horror crept through me as I thought about months, years, stuck in this world unable to interact with people. I found that I was biting my lip and looking up fiercely at the ceiling, blinking to clear my vision.
“Come,” said the Traveller, appearing almost out of nowhere beside me. He spoke in a low voice and was holding a set of keys.
“Where are we going?” I asked, keeping my voice low as well.
“The conference room. We will await my colleagues there. Do you require anything?” he asked belatedly as we set off down a small, dark hallway with a stone floor.
“Water,” I said immediately. “Information,” I added. “No, no,” I said, cutting him off. “What I want to know is what I’m supposed to do. You don’t have to tell me about the Equation, the Balance—”
I broke off as another boy in the same uniform as the water boy appeared from around a corner, trundling a cleaning cart. He stopped in his tracks and gaped at the Traveller.
The Traveller smiled somberly at the boy and tipped his hat as we passed. I smiled a tight, annoyed smile, but was completely ignored.
“—or anything about multiple worlds,” I continued once we were out of hearing range. “I want to know what my role is in this possible rescue, and how long it might take, and what kinds of things I should expect. You also,” I said pointedly, “never answered my question about who our enemy is.”
We had reached our destination, a cheerfully lighted room with a long wooden table and twelve metal-and-fabric chairs. There was a pitcher of water and some glasses on the table, and I made like a tired, thirsty traveller to the water.
The Traveller poured himself a glass and sipped, settling into the chair at the head of the table. “Your role in this,” he said musingly. “I can’t answer that as I do not yet know. As to who the enemy is,” he continued, shrugging, “I also do not yet know.”
“But you have a suspicion?”
“Yes.” He sounded surprised. “How could you tell?”
“A hunch,” I said, shrugging back. “I just got the feeling.” I couldn’t bear to tell him that things were shaping up exactly like they would in a piece of young adult fiction.
“Please,” he said stiffly, “have a seat and explain.”
I sank into a chair halfway down the table and organized my thoughts, thinking back to all of our conversations so far. “I don’t know,” I said at last. “I guess you didn’t seem too surprised that someone had made the Exchange go wrong.”
He frowned and fell silent. I poured myself more water and pulled some nuts out of the knapsack to munch.
A thought occurred to me. “How does your Cohort know to meet you here?” I asked. “You don’t have cell phones or anything, so how did you communicate with them over distance?”
“Cell phones?” he asked.
“Er, mobile telephone devices? Electronic things for talking with other people when they’re not around?” I said.
“Oh, yes, those,” he said, as if he’d encountered them but hadn’t known what they were called. I began to wonder how many worlds he’d seen, how many worlds knew that people could shift universes.
“The receptionist is sending messengers for me,” the Traveller said, interrupting my thoughts. “Some of my Cohort may not arrive for a while yet.”
“A while?” I asked, dismayed. “How long is a while?”
“A few hours, perhaps a day. At least two should be in this town and ought to be here soon.”
I slumped back into the chair and munched nuts.
As there was no timepiece that I could recognize in the room, I have no idea how long we waited. It felt like a long time, but might not have been because the sun was still up when the first of the Traveller’s colleagues arrived. A woman, more a girl than a grownup, poked her head around the corner, saw the Traveller, saw me, ignored me, and came happily over to the Traveller who had risen to greet her.
“Greetings, Hamble,” he said warmly, holding out his hand. She ignored it and gave him a hug.
“Big T, howyadoin? Mus be bad if you’ra settlin in here.” She looked over at me and reassessed me. “Whozat?”
“A mistake,” said the Traveller.
I choked back a laugh. Big T? Did he not have a name?
“Odear,” said the girl, Hamble. “Well, you’ll tell us when more arrive. What world?”
“Four-oh-seven-blue,” said the Traveller in a low voice. I barely caught the designation, but I filed it away. Four oh seven blue. Earth. My home. Four oh seven blue.
Hamble’s attitude shifted to one of wariness as she noticed that he spoke so quietly. “A mistake, indeed,” she muttered, her expression belying an age greater than her small size and childish demeanor indicated.
“Can I talk now?” I said, a little testily.
“No,” they both said.
I fumed and ate nuts.
Hamble and the Traveller took themselves off to a corner of the room by the empty fireplace and began talking in low voices. I couldn’t catch much of anything, but it seemed Hamble was delivering a report of some kind, for she did all the talking and the Traveller’s face became graver and graver.
Maybe twenty minutes later, a man arrived. A good-looking young man a little older than me, I guessed, dressed in what I took to be casual garb from what I’d seen on the streets. I found I was smiling flirtatiously at him, and he smiled warmly back at me before making a beeline for the Traveller and Hamble. It was his turn to report.
I got up from my chair and wandered to a window, looking out on the town at sunset. It was really quite beautiful. The houses were mostly made of wood or stone, very little paint anywhere, and lots of metal decorations. There were streetlamps, little torches covered in glass, that an old woman went around lighting with a long pole. The women mostly wore skirts, I noticed, but many wore divided skirts, and little girls wore short skirts with their knees showing over practical boots. The people came in a variety of skin colors, but a pale brown seemed most common. I would have thought they were half-black, half-white, and found I was speculating about how this continent had been settled. Was it anything like America? Or had perhaps the Europeans and Indians and Africans all interbred? That thought made me look over at Hamble and the young man with a new assessment. Yes, I thought, the young man did have an American Indian countenance, I thought vaguely. The hair texture, perhaps. And Hamble definitely didn’t look European. But, I thought, I hadn’t stood out in town as much as the Traveller. I looked back out at the glimmering town, at the people walking on errands, greeting each other, closing up shops. Some looked like me, some didn’t. I found the diversity comforting.
Two more people arrived together, two more women, both significantly older than me, in their fifties perhaps. They both looked severely at me, and I stared back at them blankly. They joined the little huddle around the unlit fireplace.
The waterboy from the lobby came in, then, with more water and some lanterns, which he lit and placed on hooks on the walls. “Want the fireplace, Mr Traveller?” he asked politely.
“No, thank you, the lanterns will be fine,” answered the Traveller. “Please assure we have privacy for several hours.”
“Yessir,” said the boy, and continued to stand there.
Hamble made a noise of disgust at the Traveller, dug in her skirts for a pocket, and handed the boy a thick, shiny copper coin.
“Thankye, miss,” said the boy with a toothy grin, and scampered off, closing the door quietly behind him.
“Well,” said the Traveler, a slight harumph in his voice. “Let us gather around the table and assess the situation.”
