InterWorld (InterWorld 1)

Jai grinned suddenly, showing perfect white teeth. “He said we were a team.”

There was a pause.

“And he said we have potential,” said Jakon proudly.

“He said I could keep Hue,” I told them.

“Then we’re seven in the team,” said Jo thoughtfully, spreading her wings against the morning sunlight. “Not six. And he said ‘well done,’ didn’t he? The Old Man said ‘well done.’ To us.”

“You hear that?” I asked Hue. “You’re part of the team, too.” Hue undulated slowly, satisfied oranges and crimsons chasing themselves across his soap-bubble surface. I had no idea whether he understood any of this or not. But I’m pretty sure that he did.

“I still think we rock,” said J/O. “And, anyway, we have potential. Who needs medals? I’d rather have potential than medals any day.”

“I wonder if there’s any breakfast left,” said Josef. “I’m starving.”

We were all starving, except maybe Hue. So we went to breakfast.

We had almost finished eating when the alarm bells went off. We ran to the bulletin screen at the back of the mess hall and watched images shift and form on it.

“There’s a team in trouble,” Josef said. “A Binary attack on the Rimworld coalition. It’s Jerzy and J’r’ohoho.”

The Old Man’s voice blared over a loudspeaker: “Joey Harker, assemble your team for immediate action.”

I looked at my team. They were ready. So was I.

The balance must be maintained.

I concentrated—and the In-Between bloomed before us.

We Walked.

AFTERWORD

Michael and Neil first started talking about InterWorld in about 1995, when Michael was making adventure cartoon serials at DreamWorks and Neil was in London working on the Neverwhere TV series. We thought it would make a fun television adventure. Then, as the nineties went on, we started trying to explain our idea to people, telling them about an organization entirely comprised of dozens of Jo/e/y Harkers, trying to preserve the balance between magic and science across an infinite number of possible realities, and we would watch their eyes glaze over. There were ideas you could get across to the kind of people who make television, we decided, and there were ideas you couldn’t. Then, as the nineties came to an end, one of us had an idea: Why didn’t we write it as a novel? If we just told the story, simply and easily, then even a television executive would be able to understand it. So one snowy day Michael came up to Neil’s part of the world, carrying a computer, and while the winter weather howled we wrote this book.

Soon we learned that television executives don’t read books either, and we sighed and went about our lives.

InterWorld sat in the darkness for some years, but when, recently, we showed it to people, the people we showed it to thought other people might like to read it. So we brought it out of the darkness and polished it up. We hope you enjoyed it.

—Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves

2007

Joey’s thrilling adventures continue in

THE SILVER DREAM

CHAPTER ONE

CALL ME JOE.

Please.

It’s not that I have anything against “Joey”—it’s a perfectly good name, and it’s worked fine for the first sixteen years of my life. But that’s the point. I’m sixteen now, almost seventeen, and the name “Joey” just doesn’t feel like me anymore. Which maybe isn’t surprising, given that I’ve met more versions of myself than Star Wars has clones. When you stop to think about it, I’ve probably got the biggest identity crisis of all time going, so if I want to drop one lousy letter from my name, I think I’m entitled.

I was trying to explain this to Jai, which wasn’t easy, considering that we and the rest of the team were pinned down by Binary scouts shooting what looked like elongated blobs of mercury at us, and Jai’s not the easiest person to talk to unless you happen to have a dictionary chip installed between your ears. Which I don’t.

He listened, returning fire with more mercury blobs (which are called “plasma pods” in case you’re wondering), and then asked, “Are you unambiguously certain?” Behind him, Jakon leaped on top of a power condenser, crouching all sleek and furry, snarling as she looked for more prey. The wolf girl version of me looked like she might be enjoying this a little. She always did, but I suppose there was nothing wrong with loving your job. . . .