The Silver Dream (InterWorld 2)

They were all me, but none

of them seemed to have my luck. None of them seemed to have my penchant for getting into trouble. None of them had seen two of us die.

Hue hovered uncertainly around me for a while, still with that odd multicolored two-tone pattern. I watched him orbit slowly around my head like a planet that’s just been kicked out of the solar system, thinking about how Jerzy already had a place on the Wall, and I didn’t know what to contribute. Maybe I could do what I’d done for Jay, and get dirt from the base of the mountain. Yeah, that was a great tribute. Dirt that’d had a hand in killing him. Very meaningful.

I sighed, flopping back onto my bed. My shoulder ached at the movement, which only irritated me. No classes, no training, nothing strenuous, and the knowledge that most of my fellow Walkers hated me again. Why was I even here? Well, it wasn’t like I could go anywhere.

Or could I? The Old Man had said I was suspended from classes, not that I couldn’t leave the base. And I had a tracker in me, didn’t I? Excursions off Base weren’t against the rules, as long as you were careful, signed out, and weren’t gone for too long. There wasn’t anything saying I couldn’t just…go for a Walk.

That train of thought led to another, and I sat up again after a moment. I knew what to put on Jerzy’s Wall.

We’d stepped a few worlds sideways after the accident, from what I was told, to make sure InterWorld stayed hidden. Knowing which Earth to go back to wasn’t that difficult; there was a running log of our past locations available to anyone curious enough to look for it, and I had the name in just a few short moments.

I got some odd glances as I went through the locker room, got suited up in basic light armor—just in case—and headed for the hatch. No one stopped me, though; Base was on low-key lockdown, which meant leaving was discouraged but not forbidden. I’d signed out, put an estimated time of return, and basically done everything like this was just a normal trip. It was just a normal trip. I just…wasn’t a normal recruit anymore.

I stepped off the ship onto a small mound of sand, flailing my good arm to catch my balance. I hadn’t even bothered to ask the quartermaster for a gravity-repulsor disk; he was still mad at me for losing the shield disk, and I wasn’t about to push my luck. I was walking.

Well, more specifically, I was Walking, and then I was walking. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and followed the threads of a portal into the world I was looking for.

Dust still hung thick in the air near the mountain. I could see it from a distance, a faint miasma that made it almost look like a volcano. I’m sure it didn’t need help to look any more ominous, but the debris in the air certainly served to give it a malevolent air. I started toward it, depression settling more heavily over me with every step. I wished I had someone to talk to. I wished I knew where Acacia’d gone, or what Hue had been trying to communicate. I wished I hadn’t decided to come back here, even though it would be a fitting tribute for Jerzy.

I walked until I reached the base of the mountain—it was little changed, except for the larger rocks scattered over the ground. I stood still for a moment, just staring up and feeling very small. What looked like only a few rocks out of place had killed a friend of mine and injured two entire teams of combat-trained warriors.

Mother Nature was not something you wanted to mess with.

There were caution markers in certain areas, the kinds we had in some places around Base Town, which usually had motion sensors and cameras in them. Some of the officers were probably intending to sweep the area a few more times. I didn’t bother to avoid the cameras as I picked my way through the rocks; they knew I was here already, were probably keeping tabs on me via the tracer, and I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Yes, I’d recognized my need to continually reassure myself, thank you.

I started up the mountain, testing each rock carefully with my foot before putting my weight on it. Some of them shifted even after I’d tested them, sending my heart leaping into my throat and a tremor through my knees every time. Maybe the whole PTSD thing wasn’t just an excuse.

It took a fair while for me to get to the top like that, but I didn’t dare move any faster. My shoulder was still fractured; I couldn’t climb, and I couldn’t catch myself if I fell. Every footstep I made sounded like an F-18 crashing to the ground, and there was a little voice in the back of my mind gibbering about how I wouldn’t survive a second rockslide. Finally, though, I was standing on a small, natural platform about ten yards below the very top peak.

Some of the boulders up on the plateau with me were blackened and scorched, as was the edge sticking furthest out from the mountain. For a second I was confused; was this a volcano? Then I remembered the explosions. Doubtless whoever had been sweeping the area had taken samples to be studied; come to think of it, that was likely why no one was out here now. They may have found all the evidence they needed. I hoped it wouldn’t somehow implicate me.

I turned slowly in place, looking for another path up to the peak of the mountain. Instead of finding anything that looked climbable, there was a splash of color against the reddish-brown rocks, half buried against the side of the mountain.

It took some pulling, wriggling and rolling, and more than a few creative swear words, but eventually I stood on the plateau, holding aloft the flag Jerzy had died trying to get.

It wasn’t much, as far as tributes went, but I found it oddly fitting. Jerzy had always been so dedicated. He’d said more than once that he owed InterWorld his life, and the best way to pay that back was to dedicate that life to the cause. It infuriated me that he’d died on a training mission, of all things. A stupid game of capture the flag. In retrospect, perhaps this wasn’t that great a tribute. Maybe I should just leave it here and come up with something else to put on the Wall for him.

I was looking at the flag in disgust, contemplating throwing it over the cliff and Walking home, when a familiar pop sounded just over my right shoulder. Hue bobbed into my line of vision, still sporting the oddly dual-sectioned color scheme he’d had in my room.

“Hey, Hue. I got the flag,” I said, surprising myself with the amount of self-mockery in my tone. Hue spun around slowly in place, then bobbed from side to side, trying to tell me something.

I wasn’t sure what; my attention was caught by a flash on the ground as the mudluff moved. “Hey, wait, Hue—do that again.” He paused, then repeated the motion more slowly, and I located the source of the glint: a transparent bit of what looked like plastic, invisible on the dirt-covered rocks until Hue had passed over it. It must have been dislodged when I’d pulled the flag free.

It looked kind of like those clear plastic circles that come in cases of blank CDs. Or, for those of you who’ve had extensive schooling in a multidimensional military academy, it looked like an uncharged shield disk.

“Huh.” I turned it over in my hands, testing the charge, then the emergency power switch. Nothing worked; it was either completely out of juice or plain broken. I wouldn’t know until I could get it back to a charger. I wondered what it was doing there; then I remembered Joaquim’s injuries had been mitigated by having a shield disk. I felt a small flare of validation—I wasn’t the only one who’d lost a disk, though it’d certainly done Joaquim more good than it had done me. Maybe I could get some points with Jernan by bringing it back.

My shoulders slumped. Jerzy was dead, and I was trying to think of a way to get the quartermaster to stop being mad at me? I really needed to get my priorities in order.

I turned to Hue. “Ready to go home?”

He bobbed again, that same side-to-side motion. He took on a frustrated grayish red, then returned to the colors he’d had before, the muddy reddish brown on bottom and the swirl of color on top. This time, I really looked.

The colors tugged at a memory—the red, rock-hard dirt where I’d been unable to dig even a shallow grave, and Jay’s death beneath that writhing, liquid sky.