team. I wasn’t surprised he hadn’t taken me, and I couldn’t blame him.
My team’s experienced operative was Jai, enigmatic and, as he once described himself, sesquipedalian. “Means he uses lots of long words,” said J/O, who has access to several dictionaries in his head.
There was me. There was Josef, big as a bull. There was winged Jo, who hadn’t spoken to me since that day on therocks, but who didn’t actively ignore me either. And there was Jakon, the wolf girl. There were worse groups I could have been picked for.
Then the bell went off, and off we trooped to Practical Thaumaturgy, with lab.
The alarm went off half an hour before dawn, waking me from an uneasy dream in which my family and I had, for some dream reason, packed up and moved into the In-Between. I alternated between trying to climb the hall stairs, which had turned into an M. C. Escher etching, and listening to a lecture from Mom about how bad grades could get me eaten by demons. Mom had gone Picasso, with both eyes on one side of her nose, Jenny had turned into a wolf girl and the squid was a real squid, who lived in a cave under the sea. I was actually glad to get out of bed.
We lined up for porridge, except for the carnivorous versions of me, who had ground auroch meat, cooked or, in Jakon’s case, raw. Then we picked up our stores and assembled on the parade ground in groups of five.
Several groups were given the okay to leave, and they stepped into the In-Between and were gone.
Then the Old Man’s assistant ran out of his office and called him over. They were standing pretty near us. I heard “They can’t? Now? Well, it can’t be helped. When Upstairs calls, after all. Tell them I’ll be there.”
He turned to Jai. “You can carry an extra individual, can’t you?”
Jai nodded. He was holding the sealed orders which would take us on our training mission.
The Old Man went back to his group and told them the news. Then he pointed to various places in the parade ground.
My spirits rose; I hoped that Jerzy would be assigned to our group.
Instead J/O sauntered over. “Hey, new team,” he said. “Well, I’m ready to go. We who are about to die, and all that.”
“Do not say that, even in jest,” said Jai. He tapped me on the shoulder: I would be the team’s Walker. “Commence our intradimensional excursion.”
“What?” Jo asked.
Jai smiled. “Take us out of here,” he said.
I took a deep breath, opened a door into madness with my mind, and, in single file, we marched into it.
The In-Between was cold, and it tasted like vanilla and woodsmoke as I Walked.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’d been back in the In-Between several times since that first horrifying jaunt; basic training stuff, honing my ability to find various entry and exit points, learning what surfaces not to step on (the big mauve disks that sailed along like car-sized Frisbees seem to be easy transportation, but put a foot on one and it’ll suck you down like hungry quicksand) and how to recognize mudluffs and other dangers. I still didn’t like the place. It was too bizarre, too unstable. In one of the many survival classes we took, the instructor described navigating the In-Between as “intuitively imposing directional order in an inchoate fractal hyperfold.” I said it struck me more like trying to find your way out from inside a giant Lava lamp. She said it came to the same thing.
But, believe it or not, there were ways to get through it and come out where you wanted to be. None of them were easy—especially not for someone like me who had difficulty getting to the store on a two-dimensional grid like Earth’s surface. No one was really sure how many dimensions were embodied in the In-Between, but InterWorld’s best brains had determined that there were at least twelve, and possiblyanother five or six rolled up in various subatomic nooks and crannies. It was full of hyperboloids, Möbius strips, Klein bottles…what they called non-Euclidean
My team’s experienced operative was Jai, enigmatic and, as he once described himself, sesquipedalian. “Means he uses lots of long words,” said J/O, who has access to several dictionaries in his head.
There was me. There was Josef, big as a bull. There was winged Jo, who hadn’t spoken to me since that day on therocks, but who didn’t actively ignore me either. And there was Jakon, the wolf girl. There were worse groups I could have been picked for.
Then the bell went off, and off we trooped to Practical Thaumaturgy, with lab.
The alarm went off half an hour before dawn, waking me from an uneasy dream in which my family and I had, for some dream reason, packed up and moved into the In-Between. I alternated between trying to climb the hall stairs, which had turned into an M. C. Escher etching, and listening to a lecture from Mom about how bad grades could get me eaten by demons. Mom had gone Picasso, with both eyes on one side of her nose, Jenny had turned into a wolf girl and the squid was a real squid, who lived in a cave under the sea. I was actually glad to get out of bed.
We lined up for porridge, except for the carnivorous versions of me, who had ground auroch meat, cooked or, in Jakon’s case, raw. Then we picked up our stores and assembled on the parade ground in groups of five.
Several groups were given the okay to leave, and they stepped into the In-Between and were gone.
Then the Old Man’s assistant ran out of his office and called him over. They were standing pretty near us. I heard “They can’t? Now? Well, it can’t be helped. When Upstairs calls, after all. Tell them I’ll be there.”
He turned to Jai. “You can carry an extra individual, can’t you?”
Jai nodded. He was holding the sealed orders which would take us on our training mission.
The Old Man went back to his group and told them the news. Then he pointed to various places in the parade ground.
My spirits rose; I hoped that Jerzy would be assigned to our group.
Instead J/O sauntered over. “Hey, new team,” he said. “Well, I’m ready to go. We who are about to die, and all that.”
“Do not say that, even in jest,” said Jai. He tapped me on the shoulder: I would be the team’s Walker. “Commence our intradimensional excursion.”
“What?” Jo asked.
Jai smiled. “Take us out of here,” he said.
I took a deep breath, opened a door into madness with my mind, and, in single file, we marched into it.
The In-Between was cold, and it tasted like vanilla and woodsmoke as I Walked.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’d been back in the In-Between several times since that first horrifying jaunt; basic training stuff, honing my ability to find various entry and exit points, learning what surfaces not to step on (the big mauve disks that sailed along like car-sized Frisbees seem to be easy transportation, but put a foot on one and it’ll suck you down like hungry quicksand) and how to recognize mudluffs and other dangers. I still didn’t like the place. It was too bizarre, too unstable. In one of the many survival classes we took, the instructor described navigating the In-Between as “intuitively imposing directional order in an inchoate fractal hyperfold.” I said it struck me more like trying to find your way out from inside a giant Lava lamp. She said it came to the same thing.
But, believe it or not, there were ways to get through it and come out where you wanted to be. None of them were easy—especially not for someone like me who had difficulty getting to the store on a two-dimensional grid like Earth’s surface. No one was really sure how many dimensions were embodied in the In-Between, but InterWorld’s best brains had determined that there were at least twelve, and possiblyanother five or six rolled up in various subatomic nooks and crannies. It was full of hyperboloids, Möbius strips, Klein bottles…what they called non-Euclidean
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