My stomach tried to claw its way up my throat and escape, the entire In-Between rotated ninety degrees in several directions at once—and then “down” wasn’t down anymore. I floated among the lazily drifting geometric forms, past what looked like a partly open wardrobe that gave a glimpse of an inner door leading to a wondrous, sun-warmed land, and continued following the map in my head toward what looked like a vortex of some sort.
Jay was right behind me. This wasn’t a true weightless state, evidently—big surprise, considering our surroundings—because I had read somewhere that trying to swim in zero g got you nowhere fast; all the movements just canceled out. You needed to pull yourself along with hand- and footholds, or—better yet—have some kind of propulsion.
We had neither, and yet we sailed along just fine, seemingly propelled by nothing more than innate righteousness. But I started to get nervous when I realized that our route lay into that lazily swirling whirlpool or maelstrom or tornado or whatever it was called—you run out of words pretty quickly in the In-Between.
Jay was right behind me, and when I stopped—it required nothing more than mentally putting on the brakes—he collided gently with me from behind. “What’s wrong, Joey?”
“That’s what’s wrong.” I pointed at the rotating funnel, realizing as I did so that I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was made of. Not surprising; I didn’t know what nine tenths of the stuff in the In-Between was made of. Dark matter, possibly—that would explain a lot. Wouldn’t it?
But I didn’t care if it was made out of tapioca pudding. I had no desire to dive headlong into that funnel. There had to be easier ways to get to Oz.
Jay looked “down” into the funnel. It seemed to stretch out forever inside, and the swirling convolutions flickered occasionally with what might be lightning. “Is it the way out?”
“I—yeah. It is.” There was no sense trying to hedge. It might as well have had a big, bright neon sign blinking EXIT.
Jay said, in that voice that was still so maddeningly familiar, “Some things are the same no matter which world you’re in, kid. One of ’em is this: The quickest way out of something is usually straight through it.” And with that he floated past me and dived into the vortex.
He either fell or was sucked in; either way it was fast. His body seemed to diminish in size much faster than it should—there was a weird forced perspective aspect to it that I didn’t like at all. What if it were some kind of singularity? All that might be left of Jay—and me, if I followed him—would be a line of subatomic particles stretched out like an infinitely long string of beads.
But it seemed my only other choice was to stay here in wackyland, and that didn’t seem like a real viable alternative. Jay had saved my life—I had to at least try to return the favor.
I took a deep gulp of whatever passed for air in the In-Between and dove in.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I FELL OUT OF a shimmering patch of sky about six feet above the ground. Jay had had the good sense to roll out of the way when he landed, so I hit the dirt hard enough to knock the wind out of me.
Jay hauled me over onto my back, made sure that my windpipe wasn’t obstructed, then sat cross-legged beside me and waited. After a couple of minutes my lungs remembered their job and got back to it, albeit grumpily.
Jay waited until I was breathing normally again, then handed me a small flask. I don’t know where he kept it—that formfitting mirror suit he wore looked like it didn’t leave room for a book of matches. I looked at the flask rather uncertainly, then handed it back. “Thanks, but I don’t drink.”
He didn’t accept the flask. “Now might be a good time to start. There’s a lot you need to know, and some of it won’t be easy to hear.” When I still didn’t take it, he said, “I mean it, Joey. You haven’t had time for shock to set in yet; but it’s coming like a freight train, and you’re tied to the tracks.” An idea seemed to occur to him then; he leaned forward and stared at me from behind that blank silver oval of a mask. “Wait a minute—you think there’s alcohol in this?” When I nodded, he burst out laughing.
“By the Arc, that’s funny. Joey, trust me—this stuff is to alcohol what penicillin is to snake oil. Why in the name of all that’s sane would we drink a teratogenic poison when there are so many other ways to construct ethyl molecules that don’t have devastating side effects?” He opened the flask, saluted me with it and took a swig. What fascinated me was that he didn’t take off that featureless mask—the golden liquid flowed through it. It seemed to swirl around just beneath a transparent membrane on the lower half—the gold drink mixing with the silver whatever in Rorschach patterns—and then faded away. Then he handed me the flask once more and this time I took a drink.
When I retire, don’t bother giving me a pension—just let me have a little tavern on a world somewhere in the middle span of the Arc and give me license to sell this stuff. It eased down my throat and cuddled up in my stomach as gently as if it had lived there all its life, and from there a sensation of relaxation, strength and confidence radiated outward that made every part of me, up to and including finger- and toenails, feel like the last son of Krypton. I wanted to leap a tall building in a single bound, juggle Volkswagens and come up with a unified field theory—and then move on to something challenging. What I did was hand the flask back to Jay. “Wow.”
“Goes down smooth,” Jay agreed. “There’s a world out near the inner edge of the HEX Hegemony, and on that world is a lake, and in that lake is an island, and on that island is a tree. Once every seven years that tree fruits, and it’s considered one of InterWorld’s most honored jobs for a team to be picked to Walk there and come back with baskets full of them apples. They’re the secret ingredient of this little pick-me-up.” He stood up. “Be right back. Gotta see a man about a horse.” He moved off about a hundred feet or so and stood with his back to me.
I wondered why he hadn’t gone behind a rock—then, as I looked around for the first time since I fell out of the In-Between, I realized there was no rock big enough. We were in the middle of a dusty plain that stretched to the horizon in every direction. A ring of distant mountains surrounded the plain, turning it into the punch bowl of the gods. I wondered how hot it got here, and glanced up at the sky, looking for the sun.
There was no sun.
There was no sky, really. Instead, colors swirled and flowed like oil on water, a psychedelic light show stretching from horizon to horizon. There was no single source of light, but everything was nonetheless lit by some subtle, unlocatable radiance.
I glanced over at where Jay stood. Now he seemed to be talking to something he held in one hand. A recorder, most likely. Faint snatches of words came to me every now and then, but none of them were understandable. I felt vaguely uneasy—was he recording what I’d done as evidence for some kind of kangaroo court? Was he really my friend? Sure, he’d saved my life, but was it just so his side could have me rather than Lady Indigo’s? I seemed to be a pretty valuable property—though for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why. All through school I’d been the last one picked for teams; even bullies like Ted Russell picked on me only as a last resort, after they’d beaten up everyone else.
I shrugged away the momentary paranoia. I trusted Jay. I wasn’t really sure why. There was just something about him.
After a few more minutes he came back. “Okay, pull up a rock, ’cause this’ll take a while,” he said, following his own advice. “Let’s start big and work our way down.”
“Why not start at the beginning?” I suggested.
“Two reasons. Imprimus: There is no real beginning to this little tale and probably no end either. Secondus: It’s my story and I’ll start wherever I darn well please.”
There didn’t seem to be much argument I could offer against that, so I leaned back against a rocky outcropping and waited. “Couldn’t you take that mask off?”