“You did. You told us that you’d got Jay killed, saving you. All about the MDLF and the tyrannosaur snake. That you were stupid and got him into trouble.”
I looked down. “Yeah.”
He flipped open a notebook, checked it. “‘Jay said to say sorry to the Old Man, to tell him he was sorry he had made him short one operative. He said his replacement gets his highest recommendation.’”
“Did I tell you that?”
“Yes.” He looked back at his notebook. Then he said in a puzzled tone, “What’s FrostNight?”
“FrostNight? I don’t know. It was something that Jay said I should tell you. You can’t lose a single operative. FrostNight is coming.”
“He didn’t say anything else about it?”
I shook my head.
The Old Man scared me. I mean, yes, he was me, but he was a me who had seen so much. I wondered how he had lost his eye. Then I wondered if I really wanted to know.
“Can you send me home?” I asked.
He nodded without speaking. Then he said, “We can. Yes. It’d be an effort. And it’d mean we’d failed. We’d need to wipe your memories, to remove all information about this place; and we’d need to destroy all your world-Walking abilities. But, yes, we could do it. They might wonder where you’d got to, but time doesn’t flow at a constant rate across the worlds; you’ve probably not been gone more than five minutes, so far. . . .” He must have seen the hope on my face. “But would you desert us like that?”
“Mister, no offense, but I don’t even know you. What makes you think I want to join your organization?”
“Well, you come with the highest recommendation. Jay said so. Like he said, we can’t afford to lose a single operative.”
“I—I’m the replacement he was talking about?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But I got him killed.”
“All the more reason to make it up here. Losing Jay was a tragedy. Losing both of you would be a disaster.”
“I see. . . .” I thought about home—my real home, not these countless different shadows of it. “So you could send me back?”
“Yes. If you flunk out of here, we may have to.”
If I closed my eyes, I could still see Jay, looking up at me from the red earth before he died. I sighed. “I’m in,” I said. “Not for you. For Jay.”
He held out his hand. I reached out my hand to shake it, but instead he enveloped my hand in his huge, hard hand and stared into my eyes. “Repeat after me,” he said, “I, Joseph Harker . . .”
“Uh—‘I, Joseph Harker . . .’”
“Understanding that there must be balance in all things, hereby declare that I shall do all in my power to defend and protect the Altiverse from those who would harm it or bend it to their will. That I will do everything I can to support and stand for InterWorld and the values it embodies.”
I repeated it, as best I could. He helped me when I stumbled.
“Good,” he said. “I hope that Jay’s faith in you is justified. You’ll need to pick up your gear from the quartermaster on duty. The stores are in that square building across the parade ground. It’s eleven hundred hours now—enough time to get settled in your barracks and unpacked by eleven forty-five. Lunch is at twelve hundred hours. Twelve forty you start basic training.”
He got up and prepared to go out. I had one question left to ask him.
“Sir? Do you blame me for Jay’s death?”
His LED eye glittered a cold blue. “Hmm? Yes, of course I do. And so do five hundred other people on this base. You have a hell of a lot to make up here, boy.” And he walked out.
It was like being a new kid in a school you hated. Only worse. It was like being a new kid in a school you hated that was run by the army on vaguely sadistic principles, where everyone was from a different country and they had just one thing in common.
They all hated you.