Chaos Mode

CHAPTER 11—EARTH

WHAT are we going to do?” Colene demanded plaintively. She was such a mixture of joy and helplessness that Nona knew that someone else would have to take the initiative.

She glanced at Darius, who shrugged. They were visible, in the chill early morning, because it was not possible for her to maintain the illusion of nothing while she slept. She knew that Darius was none too comfortable on Earth, being deprived of his magic here. Seqiro never led the way; he always reflected the mind of those he was with. That left Nona. She had her mind and her magic, but now she had to try to be the thing she had never been: a leader. For a while.

“Colene, you solved my problem in the Julia Mode,” she said. “I said I would try to solve yours. Now I shall make the effort. But you will have to help me.”

“You were thinking of me and Darius,” Colene said dispiritedly. “Now I just want to save Burgess.”

“Yes. I must borrow from what you know, because this is your Mode. But perhaps I can bring a fresh perspective. In my Mode, we would look for a specialist in healing, I have tried to heal Burgess, but that aspect of my magic does not seem to be operative here.”

“It’s operative on the Virtual Mode,” Darius said. “But it didn’t help Burgess.”

“I think it would have, had he had an abrasion or injury,” she said. “But there seems to be something missing that my magic can not supply. I do not know what it can be. But perhaps a person who specializes in healing would be able to fathom it. Do you have such specialists here?”

“Sure. Doctors. But any of them would freak out, if he saw Burgess. Even a veterinarian. We need someone who knows Cambrian life forms—say!” The girl’s face brightened. “Amos!”

“Who?”

“My old science teacher. I told you about him. The one I had a crush on. He should know, if anyone does, and he’d be fascinated with this. He’d help if he could, I know.”

“Then we must find Amos, and bring him here,” Nona said firmly. “Is it a far walk to his residence?”

“We can’t walk, for all sorts of reasons. It’s too far, and there isn’t that much time. Any man who sees you on the street—never mind. We’ll have to call a taxi.”

“A taxi?”

“It’s a car you rent, sort of, with a driver. Only problem is, we need money. I don’t have enough.”

“Describe your money, or show me a sample, and I will make more of it,” Nona said.

Colene laughed. “I don’t think so. That would be counterfeiting. I’ll have to borrow some from my folks. I hate to do it, but maybe I can pay it back. Let’s check the house.”

“I can not maintain the illusion of nonexistence for the other three, if I go with you to another place.”

“Um, yes. Okay, let’s make a tent for them, and leave it in sight. The neighbors will figure it’s some project my folks are doing.”

Nona’s full magic did seem to be working, here, so she did not have to grow material tediously. She simply scooped dirt from the ground and transformed it to tent cloth, and made pegs and poles similarly. They pitched the tent to enclose horse, man, and floater. Nona also made extra blankets, because it was winter in this region of this Mode, and too cold for comfort. She had used her magic to keep them warm in the night, a mild variant of the fire spell, but that would not remain in her absence. Then they went into the house.

“Sure is neat in here,” Colene murmured, looking around. “It was always pretty messy when I lived here. Mom was alcoholic, and the details of housework sort of got away from her. Dad was away, mostly.”

“He had a distant employment?”

“That too. But when he wasn’t working, he was off with his girlfriend.”

“But if he was married—”

“Marriage in name only, mainly,” the girl said sourly. “I think I was about the only thing they had in common, and they didn’t pay much attention to me. That sort of thing leads to juvenile misfits. Ask any psychologist.”

Unfortunately that reminded Nona of her own family. The despots had destroyed it, in revenge for her effort to bring the anima. That had perhaps been the last straw, leaving her no reason to remain on Oria.

“Hey, I’m sorry, Nona,” Colene said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“It is not your concern.”

“Yes it is. Because I’m your friend, and I was there, so maybe I have some responsibility for—”

“No, it was bound to happen, whoever was there. The despots did that sort of thing to anyone who opposed them. I knew that at the outset.”

They came to what Colene thought of as the living room. There on the table was a small pile of papers.

Colene went to it, startled. “This is money! And a note.” She picked up the note. “It says ‘COLENE: anything you want. We want to make it right. Only come back to us.’ ”

She sat down suddenly in the couch. Nona saw that she was crying. Colene had been alienated from her parents, yet she did still care for them.

“I think your parents need you as much as you need them,” Nona said.

“I don’t need them!” But Colene’s pain belied her words.

“They tried to keep you here by force, but lost you. Now they hope you will return voluntarily. That is not a bad thing to hope.”

“I can’t stay here. I have to go with Darius. If only I could marry him.”

Something connected in Nona’s mind. “On Oria, women become marriageable at eighteen. But they can do it younger, if there is reason and their parents approve. Is it that way in Earth Mode?”

“Yeah, I think so. We used to joke about it at school. Some kid looked it up in an almanac, and saw that in New Hampshire a girl could marry as young as thirteen, or a boy of fourteen, if the parents gave permission. A lot of other states have it at fourteen for the girl. Some don’t have any age limits at all, even, if it’s okay with the parents. We’d tease someone about getting a shotgun and—” She broke off, startled. “Fourteen! You know, I could get married, if—but no, my folks would never approve.”

Nona touched the note in Colene’s hand. She could not read it herself, because it was in the alien Earth script. “They offer you anything.”

Colene stared at her. “Even that?”

“Perhaps what they really want is for you to be happy, and to feel good about them. If you were to marry with their approval, and they were part of it, then perhaps they could let you go and be satisfied, their job as parents done. This is the way it is in my Mode.”

“But all they ever had was the shell of a marriage. We all faked it, so the neighbors wouldn’t know.”

“Perhaps their desire for the reality was greater, then. They knew that they had nothing, but through you they could have something.”

Colene considered it more seriously. “Our family was nothing, until I left. Then when I came back, with Provos, I found my mom and dad had almost made it real. She had stopped drinking and he had stopped with his mistress. I thought it was weird, that they became the family I wanted only when I was gone. Like maybe they did it only to spite me. But then they tried to keep me here. I thought that was the ultimate betrayal, and I hated them for that. But now I wonder.”

“They do love you, Colene. They just are not very good at it.”

“And you think that if I played along, doing something really family, like growing up and getting married, they’d let me go?”

“I think you should ask them.”

“You know, by the standards of my culture, a married woman is Old Enough. So Darius couldn’t say—” Then she crumpled again. “But I can’t marry him. Because his culture says he has to draw joy from his wife, to multiply, and I’m just not any vessel of joy.”

“His culture does differ, yes. But you would not be married by the conventions of his culture. Only by yours. So here you would be his wife; there you would be his mistress. In either case, you would be his love. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Oh, yes!” Colene grabbed Nona and kissed her. “You have solved my problem, just the way I solved yours.”

Embarrassed, Nona changed the subject. “But first we must save Burgess.”

“For sure! And now we have the money.” Colene got up and took the paper oblongs from the table.

They went upstairs to Colene’s bedroom, where clothing of her Mode’s type was hung in a closet. “You’ll have to change, too,” Colene said. “That red tunic’s no good, here. But I don’t think any of my stuff’ll fit you.”

“I can enlarge it,” Nona reminded her.

“Say, yeah! I keep forgetting that you’re magical.” She picked out a red dress. “You should like this. It’s not the color, it’s the style. Make this fit you, and some matching shoes, and you’ll be a knockout Earthgirl.”

Nona made the necessary adjustments and donned the dress and shoes, while Colene put on a blue dress. This startled Nona, because blue was the masculine color on her world, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t on her world now. Then they arranged their hair in an appropriate way, took up purses—Nona simply duplicated Colene’s, in red—and went back outside and to the tent.

Darius stared at them. “You are two lovely but strange maidens,” he remarked. “Colene I have seen in this manner before, but Nona seems to be a different woman.”

“We must go to seek help for Burgess,” Nona said.

“Seqiro, if anybody pokes around here, you make them go away,” Colene said. “Don’t make them scared, just make them lose interest. You can do that, right? We’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Nona nudged Colene. “Shouldn’t you tell Darius? I suspect Seqiro did not relay the news.”

Colene was startled. “Right.” She turned to Darius. “Oh, just so you know, manface: we’re getting married.”

Darius’ jaw dropped, to Colene’s evident satisfaction. “Tell him, Seqiro,” she said, and turned to Burgess. “Burg, we’re going to get help for you. So hang on, okay? We aren’t going to let you die.”

Then Colene and Nona walked back into the house, where Colene used a magic device she called a phone to telepath a message to a central stable where they had many vehicles. A faint voice agreed to send a cab. They went out the front of the house, and to the street. In a while the vehicle arrived: one of those horrifying self-propelled machines they had seen zooming past at breakneck velocity on adjacent Modes.

“Don’t worry,” Colene reassured her. “I know what I’m doing, in my home Mode. This is no more chancy than riding in the hand of a giant, in your Mode.”

Nona hoped so.

They got into the vehicle, which turned out to be like an enclosed wagon, with comfortable couches inside. “Put on your seat belt,” Colene said, and showed her how to strap herself down. Yet there seemed to be no danger of flying out, as the vehicle was entirely closed in.

There was a man in the front of the vehicle, who seemed to be directing its motion. He did things with his hands and feet, and the vehicle lurched into motion. Nona, seeing Colene unconcerned, forced herself to relax.

The cab zoomed down the street at a horrifying velocity, then abruptly slowed. Only the seat belt prevented Nona from falling off the couch. Now she knew what it was for.

The ride continued, constantly speeding up and screeching to a stop. Now there were other vehicles around them, moving in similar patterns. They were like horses in a chute, racing against each other, shoving each other aside, and squealing in challenge and protest all the while. The vehicles had funny honking voices, as well as their squeals in their wheels as they turned corners.

They stopped one more time, and Colene gave the man some of her paper money. Then they got out. They were now in another part of the town. “This is the high school,” Colene explained. Her meaning was not as clear as before, because now she was using her own telepathy instead of that of the horse. Nona suspected that Seqiro’s mind could reach this far, but that Colene had told him not to bother; she wanted to make it on her own. And of course she knew the local language and customs, so Nona was the only person who needed the translation.

“Now we need a little illusion,” Colene said. “I don’t want anyone to recognize me, until I find Amos, and they had better not get a good look at you. Can you sort of fuzz my face, and make yourself look, well, less developed?”

Nona used illusion to accomplish these things, and they went on into the nearest building. This was crowded with young folk, both male and female, carrying books. They wore every type of garb except tunics. They all seemed to be in a horrible hurry. Then they squeezed into chambers to the side of the main hall, and a loud clangor sounded, making Nona jump.

“School bell,” Colene explained. “Ignore it; we’re not going to class. I think Amos has a free period now, if his schedule hasn’t changed. He’s the only one we need here.”

They went to another chamber, where a man sat behind a desk piled with papers. They approached the desk.

He looked up. “What class are you looking for, girls?”

“No class,” Colene replied. “I need your help, Amos.”

He removed his glasses and gazed directly at her. “Your voice is familiar, but not your face. Are you a new student?”

“Oh. Nona, drop the illusion.”

Nona did so. Then the man broke into a smile. “Colene! Where have you been?”

“You wouldn’t believe it, Amos. This is Nona.”

He gazed at Nona, and pursed his lips appreciatively. “I am sure you are not a student here, Nona.”

“Amos, I said you wouldn’t believe me,” Colene said. “But you’re going to have to. So we’re going to have to give you a crash course in believing, because we may not have much time.”

Amos looked at his watch, which resembled the one Colene wore. “About twenty minutes, before my next class. Will that be enough?”

“Maybe. First, I’ve been to some really weird places. I—I think it will be better if you don’t tell. Can I swear you to secrecy?”

“Colene, if you have been involved in something illegal—”

“No, nothing like that! But if folk knew—well, do you believe in magic?”

“No.”

“Nona, here, is magic. If I prove it, will you agree to keep our confidence.”

Amos smiled indulgently. “Yes.”

Colene turned to Nona. “Do some magic.”

Nona made herself light and floated. Amos, skeptical, got out from behind his desk and came around to her. He passed a hand over her head, then got down and passed it beneath her feet. Then he made a hoop of his arms and passed that hoop down around her body. There was of course nothing; she was floating magically.

“Impressive,” he said, unconvinced. “What else can you do?”

Nona settled back to the floor and formed an illusion of nothingness. Startled, Amos passed his hand through the space at chest height—and collided with her torso. He brought his other hand around, feeling her arms and shoulders and finally her head. “Amazing,” he murmured.

Nona dispelled the illusion. Amos, finding himself almost embracing her, stepped back. She picked a glass paperweight from his desk and transformed it into a red rose. She proffered him the flower.

He took it and smelled it. “Can you change it back—in my hand?”

Nona touched the flower, and it became the paperweight again.

“I even felt the mass change,” he said, amazed. “Anything else?”

Nona levitated the paperweight. Amos felt it tug in his hand, and let it go. It sailed up and circled the room before returning to its original spot on the desk.

“You are good,” he said. “Extremely good. But a professional stage magician could duplicate these feats. What can you do that such a person could not do?”

“Do you have an animal?” Nona asked.

“You are not speaking my language, are you,” he said.

“Right,” Colene answered. “She’s not. She’s from another universe.”

“Then how do I understand her?”

“I am telepathically translating for you.”

He pursed his lips again. “What does Nona intend to do with an animal?”

“She will make it be a familiar. Then she can control it. But this takes a little while.”

“And you are magic too, Colene? You can read minds?”

“I’m learning. I’m not really good at it, yet, but I’m better than I was. I can translate for Nona because I know her well, and I know you. It’s really a matter of putting her thoughts into your mind, and vice versa.”

“Tell me what I am thinking of at this moment.”

“A yellow polka-dot bikini—on Nona.” Nona was not sure of the significance, but gathered that he had thought of an item of apparel.

He looked startled, again, but he recovered. “And what now?”

“A black spider climbing a curtain. It’s got a green eternity symbol on its back.”

“You are reading my mind!” he exclaimed.

“You made the pictures very clear,” Colene agreed, pleased. “You set them up for me.”

“What am I thinking of now?”

Colene shook her head. “I can’t get it. It’s just sort of a swirling blackness with pink streaks through it.”

“You did get it,” he said. “Very well, Colene, you have impressed me. I will keep your confidence. What is it you want of me?”

“We have a sick creature from a Cambrian world. You have to find out what’s wrong, and try to help him.”

“Do you mean Cambrian as in the Burgess Shale?”

“Right. Only stranger. Can you come to my house after school?”

He looked hard at her. “You really are serious, Colene? This is not an elaborate prank?”

“Deadly serious, Amos. We’re afraid Burgess will die, and he’s our friend. You’re the only one I can think of who might be able to figure out what’s making him sick.”

“I will come with you now,” Amos said. “Just let me check out.”

“Oh, thank you, Amos!” Colene said. “It means so much to me.”

They went with Amos to another room, where he told a woman at a desk, something about canceling a class because of an emergency. Then they followed him to the school faculty parking lot and got into his personal vehicle. Under his guidance, it moved, following the road, with considerably greater docility than the other one.

“Amos, I can’t tell you how I appreciate this,” Colene said. “What can I do for you in return?”

He laughed. “Colene, you know better than that! I never accept anything from a student except her homework.”

“And you know me better, too, Amos,” she said evenly. “I never made the wrong kind of offer. But if you can save Burgess, I’ll owe you the equivalent of a life. We won’t be here on Earth long; what can I give back that’s worth a life?”

“There is a life I would like to recover,” he said. “But not even magic can do that. So forget it, Colene; you have intrigued me, and I would like to help you if I can. No other deal is required.”

Colene did not pursue the matter, but Nona knew she was not dismissing it. She was reading his mind to fathom the nature of his concern. The odd concept Sin Eater appeared. Nona also found that she liked this teacher; he was intelligent and principled.

Nona nudged Colene. “You must warn him about Darius, and Seqiro.”

“For sure!” Colene agreed. “As if I could forget them.” She turned to the man. “Some other things you need to know. All part of the confidence.”

Amos raised an eyebrow. “Stranger than what you have shown me so far?”

“Equivalently strange. One is Darius. He’s my man. Don’t laugh; I mean to marry him. Now.”

“Not in this state,” Amos said.

“I’m fourteen. There are states where—”

“Yes, Texas is one. With parental permission.”

“I’ll get it. Anyway, Darius is a regular man, but he comes from a magic world, and he doesn’t speak our language any more than Nona does. So if he tells you he can conjure himself and others to other places, or multiply joy, believe it. He can, where he lives. He’s not crazy.”

“Any more than Nona is,” Amos agreed.

“You would probably think me so, if I told you more about my Julia Mode,” Nona said, laughing.

“Julia? As in Julia sets?”

“Colene calls it the Mandelbrot set. It is the pattern of my reality.”

“Right,” Colene said. “And Seqiro—he’s a telepathic horse.”

He looked at Colene. “You are asking me to take a lot on faith.”

“It’s an overload, all at once,” Colene agreed. “Just take it as it comes, Amos, and worry about faith later. Burgess is the one who counts, right now, and he’s so strange he’ll freak you out at first, but he’s my friend.”

Amos shook his head. “You always were a remarkable girl, Colene. I’m still sorry I ever agreed to keep your first confidence, months ago. I fear I will regret this one more.”

“Well, after we go, I guess you can say what you want. But I think folk will think you’re crazy.”

“I wonder about that myself, at the moment.”

They arrived at her house. The tent was visible in back, looking makeshift, as if children had assembled it. It was a giveaway that something was going on, but maybe the neighbors wouldn’t pry. As long as Seqiro touched their minds and discouraged them.

They walked to the tent. Seqiro’s mind reached out, and immediately understood that Amos was to be accepted. Hello, Amos. I am Seqiro.

“You are a horse?” Amos inquired wryly.

The horse stepped out of the tent. I am.

Darius followed. “I am Darius.”

Amos nodded. “Hello, Seqiro and Darius. I am Amos Forell, Colene’s science teacher. I hope I can help.”

You are in doubt about our validity. I will reassure you.

“I find myself strangely reassured,” Amos admitted.

Colene opened the flap for Amos. “Now, remember—”

But Nona had seen something. “Colene! A vehicle is stopping by the house!”

Colene looked. “Damn! That’s Dad’s car! He’s home. I can’t tend to him right now while—”

The girl was beginning to panic; the turmoil of her mind was coming through. “Yes you can,” Nona said quickly. “Darius and Seqiro can introduce Amos to Burgess, while you and I go to see your father.” She took Colene by the elbow and drew her away.

“Amos, let me explain about Burgess,” Darius said behind them. “He derives from a Mode Colene calls the Cambrian, but I think that was a long time ago. He does not speak or think in the same manner we do.”

Their voices faded out as the two women walked toward the vehicle. But Seqiro’s ambience remained; he was merely letting Nona and Colene have a separate dialogue with Colene’s father. Nona knew she would have no trouble understanding what the man said.

The man had climbed out of his vehicle, which was now beside Amos’ vehicle. He was staring at them.

“Oh, God, I can’t do it,” Colene muttered. “This is going to totally freak him out, and I don’t want that.”

“I will try,” Nona said. “If you introduce me.”

They came to stand before the man. “Hi, Dad,” Colene said tightly. She spoke in her own language, and Nona did understand, as she had expected to.

“Hi, Colene,” he said, just as tightly. Nona realized that Seqiro was reaching to the man’s mind, helping him to accept the situation.

“This is my friend Nona.”

“What happened to your friend Provos?”

Colene turned away. “I just can’t make small talk,” she said, her mind clouding up with mixed emotions. There was love there, and fear, and anger, and hope. This man had always treated her well, but he had betrayed her by trying to trap her here.

“Hello,” Nona said. “I will try to explain.”

The man nodded. Seqiro was providing him greater understanding, now, or at least a willingness to listen to what Nona would say. “Let’s go inside.”

They trekked into the house and took seats in the living room. “I do not know how much you know,” Nona said. “I think you would find the whole truth to be too strange to believe. Perhaps it is enough to say that Colene has had a most strange adventure, and now requires your help.”

“We just want her back,” he said. “She can have anything she wants.”

“First she needs your belief and trust. She is your daughter, and she loves you, but has become estranged. Did you know she is suicidal?”

He stared at her. “No. But I suppose I can’t blame her. Her mother and I—we had concerns of our own, and it wasn’t until Colene left us that we realized how badly we had let her down. We—we thought she had retreated into some kind of fantasy world, insanity, and we were horrified.”

“It was not fantasy,” Nona assured him. “She found a way to travel to places almost unbelievably strange.” She did not want to mention magic, fearing that he would never accept the notion. She had seen how difficult it had been for Amos to accept it, and indeed Amos still thought it was some kind of clever act or ruse. But the concept of travel into other realities was necessary, if he were ever to accept Colene’s relation with Darius.

“We saw her vanish into the air,” he agreed. “Then we knew that she wasn’t just imagining what we had taken to be nonsense about some kind of Virtual Mode and strange places beyond it. We realized that she was into something strange beyond our belief. But it was too late. We had betrayed her, and we feared she would never return. We could only hope she would. We thought we were doing what was right, but then we knew we weren’t. We swore to God that if she ever did return after that, it would be different, and we would never betray her again. Now—”

“Now she has returned, but only for a visit,” Nona said. “As she did before. She—she feels that you did not treat her fairly, before, but if you are willing to help her this time, there will be no further problem between you.”

He nodded. “I know I speak for her mother as well as myself. We would do anything to make it right with Colene. We’ve never been much of a family, but she’s the most important thing in it, and we—” He stalled out, and tried again. “We—we love her, and—” He mopped his face. “Oh, damn it, Colene, we’re so ashamed and sorry!”

He is sincere.

Colene got up and flung her arms around her father. “Oh, Dad!”

Then they were both crying. Nona got up and walked away, knowing that she was no longer needed here.

Outside, in the tent, Amos was kneeling beside Burgess, his hands on contact points.

“Amos is achieving some rapport,” Darius explained to Nona. “But Burgess can’t tell him what is wrong, because he does not know.”

Amos looked up, seeing her. “His world is like this one? Like Earth?”

“Yes,” she said. “Except that my magic was far more limited there.”

“And it was on the Virtual Mode that he became ill?”

“Yes, though not immediately.”

“I think I need to know more about the Virtual Mode. Will you take me there?”

“I could, but it would be dangerous for you, because you are not an anchor person. Also, Seqiro would have to come too, because you and I could not understand each other without the telepathy.”

I can reach across Modes, Seqiro thought.

So he could; he had been doing so as they traveled the Virtual Mode, because their party had often stretched across three or four Modes. “In that case, I can show you. But it will not seem much different, across just a few Modes.”

Amos got back to his feet. “Take me, then. I don’t know what I’ll find, but since I’m at a loss here, it’s worth the try.”

“You must take my hand,” she said. “And do not let go, because you could be stranded in a foreign Mode. You can cross only when in contact with one of the anchor people.”

He took her hand. “Have no fear. I have no designs on you. I only want to learn what I can of this situation.”

True.

She walked him to the anchor at the end of the tent. As they stepped through it, the tent disappeared. They stood in a similar yard, near a similar house. But its color was different, and there were no vehicles beside it.

“That is some effect!” he remarked, impressed. “This is another world?”

“Another Mode, yes. An alternate reality. There are boundaries every ten of your feet, and each crossing is similar. Each Mode is different, but usually similar to the ones closest to it.”

“And I can’t cross by myself?”

“No. Please do not seek to experiment. If I lost you, you would never get back.”

“How could you lose me?”

Nona showed him the stone trick, having him pick up the stone and hold it in his free hand while they stepped across Modes. The stone disappeared, and was there on the ground when they returned. “If we walked across, without touching, I would enter the next Mode,” she said, “while you would continue in this one. If you then fell in a hole and were not visible from where I stood, I could not see you, and certainly I could not reach you. If you were sleeping just beyond the boundary, I could see you but not reach you, because I am in the Virtual Mode, which contains only ten-feet depth of any normal Mode. It is wider to the sides, but still, it is a chance not worth taking.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “What about food? If you eat on one Mode—?”

“We must wait to digest it, or we will lose it. Water, too. Even the air we breathe, I understand.”

“The air!” he exclaimed.

“Yes. It, too, is substance. But our bodies incorporate it very rapidly, so we do not suffocate. Otherwise it would be almost impossible to traverse the Virtual Mode.”

“That may be the key!” he said, “The air. Burgess breathes it too.”

“Yes. More than we do, because he floats. He—” She paused, realizing the significance. “He is absorbing the air of the Virtual Mode! And it is not the same as that of an anchor Mode. His substance is being replaced by Virtual substance, faster than ours.”

“My thoughts exactly. We don’t think of air as nourishment, but it is, and most important. Our lungs—and surely his gills—are extremely responsive to things in the air. A number of drugs are administered by inhalation. Suppose there is some trace substance in the air of the Virtual Mode that is poisoning Burgess?”

“But the Virtual Mode is merely a path across ordinary Modes,” she protested. “There would be nothing there that the others do not have.”

“Then the reverse case. Some substance that isn’t there. Or is there, but isn’t retained, because it takes the body longer to absorb it, and it is lost as you cross the next boundary. Burgess could be suffering from a trace deficiency. There are any number of trace elements our systems need, but we normally get them in our food and water. If he normally picks up some of those from the air, the deficiency might not show up right away, but in time it would manifest. Then he would gradually fail—exactly as he did.”

Nona was amazed at the simplicity of it. “But why has he not gotten better, in the Earth Mode?”

“He may be getting better. But it took time to develop the deficiency, and it will take time to eliminate it. Especially since he is not processing air at his normal rate, now, because of fatigue. Assuming that our air has it in a similar ratio to the air of his world of origin, which may be an unsafe assumption. We shall have to find a way to replace it faster. If only we knew what it is!”

Nona was thrilled that a likely answer had come, but also had doubts. “If there is something, and we make him better—will he not lose it again when he re-enters the Virtual Mode? We do not want to make him ill again.”

“Yes, that is a likely problem. I shall try to find something to replace what he is losing. Then he could take a supply along with him, and not suffer. If only I knew what it might be! Burgess is the most fascinating creature I have encountered, and I have no hope of comprehending more than a tiny fraction of his wonders. A genuine triramous creature, of a completely alien phylum! My ignorance is colossal, and that is the root of the problem.”

Nona discovered that she liked this man. But she did not wish to complicate his life, so she kissed him once, quickly, and led him back through the anchor to the Earth Mode.

“We may have the answer, or part of it,” she told Darius happily.

“I heard,” he said. “It makes sense to me.”

“I must go home now,” Amos said. “But I will try to research the matter of potential airborne nutrients. Meanwhile, Burgess should slowly improve, just being here in one place. Take care of him, and give him comfort. I’ll return tomorrow, hoping for progress.” He turned to Nona. “Thank you for showing me the Virtual Mode. It is part of an experience I shall treasure for the rest of my life, even if I don’t dare mention it.” He paused, smiling. “There are ways in which you remind me of Colene, Nona.”

Nona felt herself flushing with pleasure, though she wasn’t quite sure why.

Amos returned to his vehicle—she realized now that it was called a “car”—and drove away. As they watched the car depart, a sudden strong thought came. Marriage!

Nona exchanged a smile with Darius. Colene had evidently broached the key subject.

In a little while Colene and her father appeared at the back door of the house. She looked radiant. “I have permission,” she said simply. “My folks will take care of it.” Then, almost as an afterthought: “Dad, this is Darius.”

The two men performed the Earth ritual of shaking hands.

“Look, there’ll have to be a license, and a blood test, and we’ll have to make arrangements in Wichita Falls, in Texas,” the man said. “It will take a couple of days if we’re lucky. No problem. Anything to make my little girl happy.” He eyed Darius. “Colene tells me that you two have been together constantly, but you never—”

“Daddy!”

Darius nodded. “She was too young. But if this makes her old enough, by the standard of her culture—”

“It will.” He shook his head. “We never thought—but it will, and I suppose that’s best. Colene always was a good judge of people, and if she loves you—”

“I do,” Colene said.

“We can make space in the house, so you won’t have to camp out—”

“No, they like it out here,” Colene said quickly. It was apparent that she had not told her father about Seqiro or Burgess. “Well, maybe Nona could come in.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “We have a rollaway couch-bed we can make up. Come on in, Nona.”

Nona took advantage of the moment to relay her news, silently. Amos may have found out what is wrong with Burgess. A trace substance in the air, because we cross the Modes too quickly for him to absorb it. He is seeking a replacement.

Colene’s radiance intensified. She was far from depressed now! That’s the greatest news! I knew Amos could do it.

They started in. Then Colene paused. “Something else, Darius.” She shut her mouth, and thought the rest for them only. Amos is doing us a great favor. He doesn’t want any return favor, but I want to give him one. We need to find out about the Sin Eater. I think I’ll be busy, but Darius, if you can—

I will try. Where is my source of information?

Amos.

They went on in, leaving Darius to ponder. “Colene, I need to warn you, this is going to come as a shock to your mother,” her father said.

“Is she drinking?”

Nona understood from the thought that the question was whether her mother was consuming alcoholic beverages. There were some on Oria who did that to excess, and it was not a good thing.

“No. She’s in a program, and she’s been straight. She prays daily for your return. She’s the one who set up the note on the table.”

“That helped,” Colene said. “I had business to do in town. I think Mom will accept me getting married, if you do.”

“If she knows you truly want it,” He hesitated, then broached another subject. “The people you were with, last time—”

“Slick and Esta.”

“After the way all of you disappeared, there was publicity. The—the vanishing was dismissed as someone’s invention; they assumed that all of you had managed to sneak out of town. The police grilled us, but couldn’t prove anything. It turned out that the man was a gangster, and the girl had been severely abused; her stepfather’s awaiting trial now. It seemed that the gangster was the child’s uncle; he kidnapped her to save her from further molestation. He had a record a mile long, everything except molestation. They concluded that it was the single good thing he did in his life, an act of atonement. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“I knew it,” Colene agreed. “I set it up. They’re happy now. He’s out of the crime business, and she’s got nothing but happiness ahead of her.”

He hesitated again. “In the course of the investigation, some other things came out. The police—we—I don’t like to say this—”

But Seqiro was making his thought plain to them. “They found out about the rape,” Colene said.

“It was just a rumor,” he said quickly. “We said it couldn’t be true. You would never—”

“It happened,” Colene said evenly. “That’s why I had to get away.”

“There was no proof. They couldn’t even identify the perpetrators. No one would talk. Just this ugly rumor, how four high school boys tricked this thirteen-year-old girl into coming to an apartment, and plied her with liquor, getting her so drunk she didn’t even resist. You read about that sort of thing all the time, but never believe it could happen to your own daughter. You—you never said anything.”

“There didn’t seem to be any point. What would you have done if I had told?”

“I’ll do it now,” he said, turning grim. “Give me their names.”

“Dad, why should you care about any of that? You’ve had a mistress for years!”

He swallowed. “It is true. It is not easy to be the spouse of an alcoholic, and I needed something to compensate. But I never raped anyone. Like your gangster friend, I am clean in this respect. I abused you only by my absence, and my ignorance, and I want to correct that now. Give me their names.”

The names of two passed through Colene’s mind, so strongly that Nona heard them. But she set her little jaw. “It wouldn’t do any good. I won’t be here to prosecute, and anyway they always treat the girl as if she’s the criminal. It would just drag me and you and Mom down into the gutter, and those freaks would get off anyway. The judge always believes the liars. I just want to forget about it. I’ve found a good man now, and good friends, and if that’s partly because of the spin that gang rape sent me into, then maybe it was a favor in the long term. Understand, I’d like nothing better than to see those freaks get theirs, but this isn’t the way.”

“You want marriage instead of revenge,” he said.

“I want marriage,” she agreed. “And Mom—if she’s straight, now, I don’t want to hurt her. So if we maybe could just forget this—”

“If that is the way you want it, it is forgotten,” he said grimly. He glanced at Nona. “Your friend won’t speak of it?”

“I will not speak of it,” Nona said, though she, too, was sorry that the rapists would not be punished. She herself had almost been raped at one of the alternate worlds in Julia, and she hadn’t liked the notion a bit. But she was aware that Colene, though still deeply angry about the rape, was being practical; she wanted to marry Darius, and knew that something like this could interfere with that by diverting the attention of her parents at this critical time. Colene knew what she wanted, and was choosing her course to achieve it, realistically. Colene was a tough girl.

No, not tough. I just don’t want to lose sight of what I truly want, and maybe lose it.

Colene’s father chose another subject. “Now the marriage. I will arrange it. You and your man will have to come in for the blood tests tomorrow; I can get the doctor to cooperate. But Darius will have to show identification to get the license.”

“Uh-oh,” Colene said. “He’s from another world.”

“Seqiro may be able to handle that,” Nona said. “By changing a mind.”

“Say, yeah!” Colene refocused on her father. “We’ll have Darius ride to the license office on a horse. There’ll be no trouble; they’ll accept his ID.”

“On a horse!” The man smiled. “And will the horse attend the wedding, too?”

Colene had to smile. “I think not. Wichita Falls is too far for him to trot, and I need him here. Darius and I will just drive down to the civil ceremony with you, and come back here right after.”

“Civil ceremony? Your mother will—” He broke off. “There she is now. Perhaps I should handle this. There may be some emotion.”

“You do that, Dad.” Colene smiled. “Nona and I will just stay here and nod our heads.”

Nona braced for the emotional scene to follow. She was not disappointed.