Ten Thousand Skies Above You (3 page)

“YOU TRICKED US,” I SAY TO CONLEY AS THE THREE OF US
stand together in this stone room, in an Italian castle a world away. Paul looks from Wyatt Conley to me in confusion. “Saying you'd let us ‘think it over'—”

“I did, didn't I? You had weeks.” Conley straightens the red robes he wears as if he's proud of them. “Then Paul Markov came to my dimension, even though you were warned it would be dangerous. He's paying the price. It's as simple as that.”

My dimension
, he said. That means this is the Triadverse Conley I'm dealing with. Not that it makes much difference; the two Conleys work together, forming a conspiracy of one.

“Cardinal Conley—I don't understand.” This world's Paul looks hopelessly bewildered, and no wonder. “What law have I broken?”

Conley smiles, all grace and benevolence. “This is between
me and your lady fair, Father Paul. You can speak with her later. At the moment, she and I need to have a private conversation.”

Paul steps between us. It's more obvious than ever how much taller he is than Conley, how much stronger. “You can't blame her for my weakness. I alone am responsible.”

Is he amazing in every universe? I place one hand on Paul's back, a small touch meant to say
thank you.

However, Conley remains in faux-kindly mode. “She won't be punished. More than that, I hear her parents have been condemned for their studies by some of the local priests. Tonight I shall tell Her Holiness to officially declare them under her protection. You see? All will be well. Now go.”

When Paul hesitates anyway, I murmur, “It's all right. I'll talk to you soon. Con . . . the cardinal and I don't have much to say to each other.”

At last Paul turns to go, with one last look at me filled with such longing that my heart turns over. No sooner has he walked out, however, than Conley starts to laugh. “Oh, Marguerite. You and I have
so much
to say.”

“What did you do to him?” I demand. “I tracked Paul here from your universe. I gave him a reminder, and the Firebird seems like it worked—”

“Inconvenient, isn't it? The way most people forget themselves between dimensions. You don't appreciate your gift.”

That's how it is for virtually everyone who travels through the multiverse. Without constant reminders, they quickly become silent, passive witnesses as those dimensions' selves
take over again. For Mom and Dad's purposes, this doesn't matter; the travelers remember everything they experienced through their “other selves” in each world. As long as you have your Firebird to remind you, you can still get back home and analyze what you learned.

But as I discovered on my first voyage, there are serious flaws in this procedure. For instance, you can lose a Firebird. It can be broken or stolen. And if you haven't got your Firebird to remind you of yourself, then you'll remain in that alternate dimension, within that other self—unconscious, paralyzed, and trapped—forever.

That's why it would help to have a “perfect traveler,” someone who always remembered who she was, who remained in control no matter what.

So Triad turned me into one.

I still don't exactly understand what it was that was done to me. The device Triad loaned us seemed like any other piece of scientific equipment, and all I felt when the conversion happened was a moment of dizziness. Paul and my parents have explained it to me a dozen times, but it's the kind of explanation you need a graduate degree in physics to fully understand.

All I know is that I can go to any dimension and remain in total control. Where to go, who to see, what to do: It's entirely up to me. I also know that you can create only one traveler like me in any given universe. (Apparently, creating more than one exception to the laws of physics can seriously destabilize reality.)

But I still don't understand why Wyatt Conley makes such a big deal out of it. “Other people can travel through dimensions! Okay, so, it's more of a hassle. It doesn't matter. You'll use Nightthief on anyone—you proved that much. And you can travel as well as I can, so you can run your own creepy errands! So why do you keep after me?”

“Important work is coming.” Conley's smile fades. “Tricky work, some of it in universes I can't reach. Triad needs you on our side, and soon. Be fair—I tried gentler persuasion, didn't I? If you work with me, you'll be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. But it looks as though more extreme measures are necessary to get you on board.”

“Like kidnapping Paul into this dimension, just like you did my dad?”

To my surprise, Conley shakes his head. The flickering orange light of the torches casts eerie shadows on his face. “Not exactly. This time, I've given you a challenge.”

“You mean, because the reminder didn't work.” How was Conley able to prevent my Paul from waking up? The Firebird seems to be functioning normally, except for this strange, unique reading I don't understand.

Conley walks to the arched window and looks out, though in a world without electricity the view isn't much to speak of. Moonlight paints the city dimly, a sprawl of buildings beneath the high hill of the castle. He says, “I told you already, but I suspect you were too upset to listen.”

“Told me what?”

He turns back to me, once again cocky as he leans against
the stone wall, arms folded across his chest. “Haven't your parents discovered the danger yet? The possibility of splintering?”

My parents have never said word one about “splintering,” unless they were talking about literal splinters to be removed with tweezers. I open my mouth to tell Conley to stop playing games—

—before realizing my parents
did
talk about this. They didn't have a name for it yet, but they'd glimpsed the danger. But we'd had no idea how close that danger really was.

Did that conversation happen only five nights ago? It feels like long, hard years have passed since then.

“We ought to have recognized the potential before,” my mother said, talking about what I now know is called splintering. “Consciousness is energy. Energy consists of packets of quanta. It stands to reason that those packets could become . . . disassociated.”

“Fragmented,” Paul said, his mood black. “The danger—”

“Is remote,” my father cut in. The three of them were seated around the rainbow table, piles of paper and a glowing laptop evidence that they were hard at work, even after dinner on a weekend.

Normally, Theo would have been working alongside them, but it was my turn to do the dishes, and he'd volunteered to help. Still, he couldn't resist weighing in. “Are you sure of that, Henry?”

“Incredibly sure. The odds against it are staggering. You'd
almost have to do it on purpose, not that anyone's likely to try such a damn fool thing.” Dad began typing on the laptop with such gusto that I knew he was trying to find something similarly unlikely to compare it to.

“Great,” Theo muttered as he dried the salad spoons. “Like the Firebirds needed to get any more dangerous.”

I tried to reason with him. “You're like one of those people who's more scared of flying than driving, even though you're way more likely to die in a car.”

“Yeah, but if I'm in my 1981 Pontiac, at least I'm going out in style,” he said, and I laughed.

Paul, from his place at the far side of the great room with my parents, shot me a look—not jealous, but hopeful. He wants things back to normal with Theo. That has always meant laughter.

The two of them have always been such good friends. They seem to have so little in common besides their interest in physics: Paul in his plain secondhand clothes, clueless about pop culture, while Theo wears fedoras and Mumford & Sons T-shirts. Yet they're both young for doctoral students: Theo is twenty-two, and Paul just turned twenty. They both believed in Mom and Dad's Firebird project when few others did. And they became a part of our weird little family. During that time—while everyone was involved with rewriting the laws of the natural universe as we knew them—emotions got confused.

(“We ought to have expected it,” my mother said the first time I talked to my parents about all this. “Isolating
individuals for long periods of time, away from any other likely romantic partners, particularly at this highly active stage of sexual development—strong emotional bonds were all but inevitable.”

“We don't care about each other only because we spent so much time together!” I protested.

“Of course not, sweetheart.” Dad patted my hand. “Still, you have to admit it
helped
.”)

Both Paul and Theo fell in love with me. I fell in love with Paul.

It's not that I don't care about Theo; I do, deeply. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been attracted to him sometimes. For a brief time—when Paul had been framed for my father's murder, and I was sick with grief and betrayal—I wondered whether Theo wasn't the one for me after all.

But Paul and I came back to each other. And Theo was left on the outside looking in. Even though all three of us know nobody did anything wrong in this scenario, both Paul and I haven't been able to help feeling awkward when Theo sees us together.

That night, however, I could almost believe nothing had changed. Our house in the Berkeley Hills looked exactly the same, with houseplants in every corner and on every shelf; the hallway black with chalkboard paint and thickly covered with equations; the rainbow table exactly where it should be; and stacks of books nearly as high as the furniture around us. Paul's plain backpack and Theo's battered messenger bag were nestled by the door along with my denim jacket and
Mom's bike helmet. The guys still practically live with us, like most of my parents' grad assistants over the years.

Yet Paul and Theo have always been different from all the rest. Closer to us, more important. I knew that even before they finished assembling the first Firebird.

“Thought Josie was going to get here tonight,” Theo said. “Wasn't she coming in from San Diego?”

“No, she said the surfing was too great today to pass up.” I squirted a little more dishwashing liquid into the sink. My rubber gloves were bright pink; Theo doesn't bother with them, so suds covered his wet hands. The bubbles smelled like lemons. “She'll fly in tomorrow.”

Theo shook his head. “If the waves are that good, I'm surprised she's coming at all. Not like Josie to pass up a chance to surf.”

“After what happened to Dad, or what we thought happened to Dad . . .” I didn't have to finish the sentence; the look Theo gave me told me he got it. My family has always been tight-knit, but now that the world's turned against us—and we know what it would mean to lose each other—it's like we can't be close enough. With a smile I said, “So that's her spring break. What about yours? Doing anything fun?”

“I learned my lesson,” he said. Last year Theo dragged Paul to Vegas. Paul got thrown out of Caesar's Palace for counting cards, because he didn't understand that casinos consider “mastering probability theory” the same thing as “cheating.” He got to keep his winnings, but apparently he
had to spend all that cash buying back Theo's muscle car, which he'd wagered on a losing round of baccarat. They came home better friends than ever, but Paul said he didn't see the point of spring break.

Theo would always see the point of a party. But no matter how casual he acted about hanging around here, he wanted to stay close too.

Still, there are other ways to travel. . . .

I had meant to ask this for a while, but that night I finally felt comfortable enough with Theo to speak. “When are you going to take a trip of your own? See some other dimensions for yourself?”

He was quiet as he placed another plate in the dishwasher. Finally he said, “I don't know that I ever will.”

“Not ever?” During the past two years, Theo had been more psyched than anyone else at the thought of seeing new worlds.

He turned to me, and I'm not sure I've ever seen his expression so serious. “I've seen what it's like from the other side, Marguerite. That part isn't as much fun.”

Last fall and winter, whenever we talked to Theo, whenever he persuaded us to do something—we weren't talking to
our
Theo. It was his body, but the consciousness inside belonged to the Theo Beck from another universe—acting as Conley's ally and his spy. That Theo was the one who arranged my father's kidnapping and framed Paul for his murder. The one who turned me into Conley's ideal
“perfect traveler,” then persuaded me to take my first voyages with the Firebird.

The one I clung to after I thought my dad was dead—the one I kissed in another dimension, and at my weakest moment nearly slept with—and the one Theo blames for destroying whatever the two of us might have had.

Theo's wrong about that. For me it was always Paul; it could never have been anyone else. But the other Theo's shadow hangs heavy between us.

“I still crave it sometimes, you know.” Theo stared out the kitchen window into the darkness beyond. “The Nightthief.”

Nightthief is the one and only way to cheat the rules of traveling between universes. It's a drug—emerald-green, injectable, invented in the Triadverse—that allows a dimensional traveler to maintain control. See, a traveler on Nightthief remains as much in control as I am. But the drug has certain serious drawbacks. One, it's addictive and can cause seizures. Two, Nightthief can be made out of what we'd consider common household chemicals—but if you're in a universe where those aren't common, you won't be able to supply yourself. (While consciousness can travel through dimensions easily, it's very, very hard for physical matter to travel. So forget bringing any Nightthief with you.) Three, the drug wears off after a day or so, which means if you don't have more on hand, you're screwed.