The Space Between Worlds Page 2

  Jean is the one who told me about Nyame, just like he tells every new traverser. It’s the name of a goddess where he comes from, one who sits in the dark holding the planets in her palm. He says the first time he traveled to another world, he could feel her hand guiding him. I’ve never had much use for religion, but I respect him too much to disagree.

  “This is 197, yes?” he asks, nodding to the screen showing the info I’ve just pulled. “The sky scientists were braying over it.”

  “They’re called astronomers, Jean. And yeah, they put a rush on it. They want pictures of some asteroid that’s too far away and they didn’t want to wait a week for.” I try to rotate my arm and wince at the ache.

  “They paid a premium to rush a few pictures?” Jean makes a dismissive clucking sound. “Too much money, not enough purpose.”

  Jean’s dislike of astronomers is an occupational hazard, and the dislike is mutual. Those working strictly in the field of space exploration haven’t been fond of interuniversal travel, the new frontier that came along and snatched up a chunk of their funding. In return, those who work at Eldridge treat space exploration the way a young male lion looks at an older, sickly male lion—no outright violence, but maybe showing too much excitement in anticipation of the death.

  Jean nudges the mug I’m ignoring toward me again. Sighing, I take a sip and barely keep from spitting.

  “I was really hoping for coffee,” I say, forcing myself to down the dark mixture of vitamin D, zinc, and too many other not-quite-dissolved nutrients.

  “Coffee is not what you need,” he says in the accent my limited world experience first thought of as French. “Nyame kissed you hard this time.”

  “With teeth.”

  “So I see. Dell marked you for observation.”

  Of course she did. “I’ve only been scheduling pulls close together so I can take a few days off. I told her that.”

  “A vacation? I should think staying in place would have more appeal for you.”

  “Not a vacation. It’s…it’s a family thing.”

  At the mention of family he smiles, which just goes to show what he knows. In the worlds where he survived—where he wasn’t a child soldier, where he didn’t die trying to stow away into Europe—he did so because of the strength of his father and the bravery of his mother. From the worlds I’ve studied, his deaths are usually despite their best efforts.

  Most of my deaths can be linked directly to my mother.

  “Enjoy this time off. Don’t do too much studying.”

  “I’ll try.”

  But not very hard.

  I’ve been staying up too late studying world stats and the company’s internal textbooks since he first mentioned the possibility of a promotion to analyst. My mother used to say I was born reaching, which is true. She also used to say it would get me killed, which it hasn’t. Not yet, anyway. Not here.

  * * *

  BEFORE I HEAD home, I swing by Starla Saeed’s place. I’m nearly too late, and I approach her apartment among a stream of people in uniforms moving out boxes of her stuff.

  She’s standing in the yard, flanked on either side by immigration enforcement. Her eyes are glassy, but clear. She might have been crying earlier, but she’s done with it now. She looks strong, defiant, head held high like she hasn’t lost everything in the world. I hope I look like that when they come for me.

  “Star…”

  When she turns to me she looks neither surprised nor particularly pleased, but when she looks down at the basket of apples in my hand, she gives a little smirk.

  “We’re not all Ashtowners, Caramenta,” she says. “Some of us have tree fruit in our homelands.”

  I look down. Most traversers come from the encampments outside of walled cities; I just assumed the other towns were like my wasteland. Starla comes from outside of Ira City in the Middle East, one of the biggest and oldest walled structures nestled in the space between what used to be Iraq and Iran. Maybe the settlements outside of Ira are full of fruit and white bread and everything else Ashtown doesn’t have.

  A man carrying a box walks too fast, and the sound of glass clinking against glass rings out between us. She watches him like he’s dragging her baby by the foot. She looks like she might yell—she’s known around the office for her quick temper—but her eyes flick to the enforcement agent standing closest to her and she swallows it down. She’s furious, but helpless.

  “I just thought you’d like something. I know it’s a long flight.” I hold out the basket. “You can still resent me, even if you take them.”

  She smiles again, her mouth wide and full. “I intend to.”

  She takes the basket, but it’s more out of pity than wanting the fruit.

  “I’ll miss you,” I say.

  “So look for me,” she says. “I’m only missing on a few hundred worlds, and this is just one more. I recommend Earth 83 me. She’s my favorite.”

  A woman in a jumpsuit tells the agents they’re done, and the men push Star along. She looks at me over her shoulder.

  “Don’t waste your time feeling guilty,” she says. “It’ll be you soon enough.”

  Over my dead body…but that’s not what she needs to hear. She needs my absence more than anything. A witness to the shame makes it worse, even if it’s a friend. So I nod goodbye, and turn away.

  * * *

  THERE ARE INFINITE worlds. Worlds upon worlds into absurdity, which means there are probably worlds where I am a plant or a dolphin or where I never drew breath at all. But we can’t see those. Eldridge’s machine can read and mimic only frequencies similar to ours, each atom on the planet contributing to the symphony. They say that’s why objects like minerals and oil can be brought in easily, but people have to be gone from the world first—their structure is so influenced by their world’s unique frequency there’s no possibility of a dop. Before we lost 382, there were rumblings of war. I’m not sure how many nuclear bombs it would take to change the song of a place until we can’t hear it anymore, but we lost 382 over the course of an hour: a drastic shift making the signal weak, then another, then nothing.

  It should scare us more than it does, but they were already an alien territory anyway. That’s why the number was the highest. Each number indicates a degree of difference, a slight frequency shift from our own. Earths One through Ten are so similar they are hardly worth visiting. When I pull from there, no more than twice a year, it’s just to make sure the intel is still exactly like ours. Three of the worlds in which I still live are in the first ten Earths.

  There is something gratifying about going places where I’m dead and touching things I was never even meant to see. In my apartment I keep a collection of things from those places in sealed bags on the wall. I’ve never catalogued them, but I can identify each item on sight: dirt from the lot where my childhood home would have been in a world where the slums never made it that far; smooth rocks from a river that’s been dead on my world for centuries; a jade earring given to me by a girl on another Earth who wanted me to remember her, but who only let me love her at all because she didn’t know where I came from. There are hundreds, and when I get back from Earth 175, there will be one more.

  The worlds we can reach are similar to ours in atmosphere, flora, and fauna, so most of their viruses already exist here. But just in case, I seal my souvenirs in the bags Eldridge used to use for specimen collection, before they got bored playing biologists and shifted hard to mining and data collection.

  I’m staring at my clothes, trying to figure out which to bring. It’s hard, living in Wiley while visiting Ashtown. Not a lot of people go between. Sure, Wileyites will visit Ashtown like tourists, and Ashtown kids sometimes get scholarships to Wiley schools, but no one ever tries to fit in both places. Wiley City is like the sun, and Ashtown a black hole; it’s impossible to hover in between without being torn apart. I’v
e spent my time in the city accumulating the kind of clothes that will make me look like I’ve never been to Ashtown at all. If I were smart, I’d keep a set of Ashtown clothes for these trips instead of standing out like a mirror in the desert every time I go. But deep down, I don’t want to fit in. I don’t want to look like I belong there, because one day I want to pretend I never did.

  I’m fingering a blouse I can’t bring—true black synthetic silk, nothing a former Ruralite holy girl would wear—when my sister calls.

  Instead of a greeting, she answers with a grunt of frustration.

  “Preparations going that well, huh?” I say, sitting on the bed. Esther is still just a teenager, but the amount of responsibility she’s inherited makes her seem older.

  “It’s fine,” she says, voice primly forced. Ruralites aren’t allowed to be angry, not at other people, because it would violate their code of endless compassion and understanding.

  “Michael still being useless?”

  No one tests Esther’s faith, or her temper, like her twin brother.

  “Cara, you know all people have value and use in the eyes of God. Michael would be a valuable contribution to the dedication…if he’d shown up at any of the preparations.”

  Ah, there it is, Esther’s rage—the venom no less potent for all its masking.

  “And now we have Cousin Joriah saying he might drop in and—”

  I roll off the bed. “Joriah?”

  “Yes, you remember. Tall, red hair? He moved out here for a little while when we were young, but then left for the deep wastes as a missionary.”

  Of course I don’t remember. I can’t.

  “He’s based in some small town on the other side of the dead lands now, but Dad thinks he might make the pilgrimage.”

  She goes on, but I’m not really listening. I reach under my bed, pulling out my box of journals. Esther said when we were young, so I pick a journal from not long after Esther’s father married my mother. Caramenta, age 13 is written on its cover. Esther would have been five.

  “Hey, I gotta go, but I’ll see you soon.”

  I hit the button on my cuff to disconnect from Esther, then begin searching through the journal. Eventually I find an entry mentioning Joriah moving in, and skim a bit longer until he moves away again, gleaning all I can about him. Apparently he was very funny, though not great at personal hygiene. I find a few more references in later journals, but then it really is time to go. My mother won’t yell if I’m late—not like she used to—but she’ll cloak herself in this sad, martyred quiet I can’t stand. I put the journals back. In them, Cousin Joriah is just called Jori. I whisper both versions of the name so that when I say them out loud later, it won’t sound like it’s the first time.

  I’ve gotten rid of a lot of things from my past, but I’ll always keep the journals. I read them like data from another world, doing research on people who love me. I don’t write now. I make lists in my current journal, but that only started as a way for me to practice writing in Eldridge’s code, so I’m not sure it counts. In the box under my bed there is one journal for every year, two some years, but I’ve had the same one for six years now and haven’t managed to fill it up. Maybe it’s because there’s so little I’m sure of these days.

  I’ve been in Wiley City for six years as a resident. In four more, I’ll be pronounced citizen. For now, I’m nowhere. I live in Wiley but I’m legally still Ashtown’s, and neither has a claim on me that counts. It’s a space between worlds, no different from the star-lined darkness I stand in when I traverse. The darkness is worth it, because I know what waits on the other side.

  * * *

  REASONS I HAVE DIED:

  The emperor of the wasteland wanted to make an example of my mother, and started with me.

  One of my mother’s boyfriends wanted to cover up what he did to me.

  I was born addicted and my lungs didn’t develop.

  I was born addicted and my brain didn’t develop.

  I was left alone, and a stranger came along.

  The runners came for a neighbor, and I was in the way.

  The runners came for my mother, and I was in the way.

  The runners came for my mother’s boyfriend, and I was in the way.

  The runners came for no one, serving nothing at all but chaos and fear, and I was what they found.

  Sometimes, I was just forgotten in the shed where she kept me while she worked or spun out, and in the length of her high and the heat of the sun I fell asleep alone and hungry and forever.

  REASONS I HAVE LIVED:

  I don’t know, but there are eight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I’ve been driving in the desert for an hour when the truck pulls up too close behind me. I’ve prepared to be stopped, but deep down I’m still surprised. Getting shaken down by border patrol is only for outsiders, and the man walking up to my car with a greedy silver smile is proof I’ve made it. His teeth tell me he’s one of Nik Nik’s lieutenants, the kind of guy I would have been happy to land when I was from here. Like all runners, he smells like dirt and sun. He’s tattooed solid up to his jawline, where the ink stops abruptly. The display of vanity strikes me. These days I look for status by reading clothes, haircuts, and high-dollar wrist cuffs, but this too-pretty runner reminds me that I grew up wanting to lick silver teeth.

  “Lovely weather for a day trip,” he says, like it isn’t the same ninety degrees with a hot-wind kicker it always is out here.

  “Not taking a day trip.”

  I don’t know when my posture changed, when my voice dropped, but when I look at him square I want him to recognize me as one of his own almost as much as I don’t. I wish I knew him, knew the name his mother called him so I could throw it in his face. Nik Nik’s runners all go by mister—Mr. Bones, Mr. Shine—but I’d bet he’s an Angelo.

  “Toll for lookie-loos from the Wiles is three hundred.”

  “You mean two-fifty.”

  “Times are tough.”

  “I was just here.”

  “Three hundred.”

  I reach into my dashboard and take out three hundred, just like last time, though I’m going to try haggling every visit until it works.

  He takes the cash with a nobleman’s slight bow. “Enjoy your stay in Big Ash.”

  When he starts to walk away, I clear my throat.

  “My receipt.”

  “Mr. Cheeks,” he says. “Tell the next one you’re paid up.”

  * * *

  MY MOTHER LIVES in a farmhouse in the Rurals where a real farm never was. The Rurals are a part of Ashtown that thinks itself a subdivision, even though the only thing separating it from the concrete stacked pods that make up the rest of the city is a wooden fence and the agreement of people on both sides of that fence. The people in the Rurals are all about charity and piety and religion. The people in downtown Ash are all about anything else.

  There aren’t many cars out here—even runners usually keep their vehicles on the other side of the fence—and sometimes when I drive out kids run beside me for as long as they can, reaching out to touch the paint. Not today though. Today they’re all indoors, sequestered in thankful prayer as they prepare for the dedication ceremony.

  My mother’s house is in deep, where the gray-white sand begins to turn a natural tan at the edges. The front of the house has been whitewashed for the day, the plaster cast of Mary wiped clean. It’s Jesus’s mother, Mary, not the foot-washing ex-prostitute Mary, which has always struck me as something of a missed opportunity given my mother’s background. Mary’s head is inclined toward a flute-playing Krishna, who smiles benevolently in the empty way everyone in the Rurals smiles at strangers. And at me. My stepfather generally preaches more from Islam than Hindu, but there isn’t really a statue for that.

  My mother lets me in, her mouth a line as ev
en and unbending as her principles. Her black hair, 4C hair that I know is twice as wild as my own, is pulled back in a bun so tight it looks straight. Her patterned dress is clean, but washed thin. It bears no scars from mending, so it must be one of her best. I could buy her new dresses. I could keep her in the kind of flash she used to demand from her men before she walked away from the life with a preacher from the dirt. But she won’t take anything from me these days, not even a hug.

  Her eyes are down. Her eyes are always down, this mostly silent woman who’ll wear no skirt higher than her knee and no lip stain darker than a blush. My mother was a woman who had hair feathered whatever color suited her mood and knew how to look men in the eye until they gave her what she wanted.

  “You’re early,” she says. “That’s nice.”

  “I took today off,” I say, but she’s already turning to lead me inside.

  I’ve seen her a hundred ways—with a shaved head, with hair to her back, with rows of piercings for eyebrows, blind in one eye, pockmarked with no teeth, and even as a still-beautiful matron of the House, who could charge as much as the young because she never used and always took care of herself—but this version is my least favorite. She spends her time passing out pamphlets downtown, shaming the workers at the House who took care of me when she didn’t, who saved my life enough times to get this version of me to adulthood.

  My family’s walls are covered with more of the same holiness that’s found outside. At least when we were poor she was original, painting murals on the concrete with the same paste she used to dye her hair. Now her walls are grids, family pictures—the old-school static holograms that flicker on and off with age—broken up with religious icons.