The Secret Sea (20 page)

Out in the main office, Dr. Bookman was methodically emptying the contents of his white paper bag onto his desk, one item at a time. Two bagels, neatly sliced, a container of cream cheese, a bottle of something pinkish that looked like juice, and a tub of something black and pebbly.

“I assume you've not eaten,” Dr. Bookman said, “so you can do me the favor of preventing me from eating both of these bagels. With or without roe?”

Khalid's stomach rumbled, and it took everything he had to ignore it. “My friend is dying. I need medicine. For his heart.”

Dr. Bookman looked up from his process of spreading cream cheese on the first bagel. “His heart.”

“Yes.”

“What, exactly, do you expect me to do about this?”

“You're a doctor!” Khalid's mouth watered at the sight of the food, and his stomach contracted so painfully that he winced and bent over slightly. “You can help him.”

Bookman finished decorating the bagel and handed it across the desk to Khalid, who crammed it into his mouth and chewed and swallowed so fast he hardly tasted it.

“I'm sorry if you've misunderstood,” Bookman said, cutting into the cream cheese for the second bagel, “but I'm not
that
sort of doctor. You'd be better off calling 911.”

Khalid inhaled the rest of the bagel. “I'm not sure…” It was oddly comforting that they had 911 in this world, but he couldn't call 911, because he had no phone. None that would work in this universe, at least. There was a slab of gray plastic and metal on Dr. Bookman's desk that looked like some species of telephone, and he imagined the doctor would let him use it. But he wasn't 100 percent sure exactly
where
he'd left Zak and Moira. They'd roamed through the night from the Broadway Canal to the alleyway, and he hadn't paid attention to the street signs when he left the alley.

“I can backtrack and find my way back there,” he explained, “but I'm not sure how to tell them…”

Dr. Bookman nodded. He set aside his bagel without biting into it and rummaged in his desk drawer for a moment, producing a very thin, cloudy sheet of glass. He laid the glass on the desk. “Put your hand on this.”

Khalid did as he was bid, laying his right hand flat on the glass. Dr. Bookman touched the edge of the glass and muttered something under his breath that Khalid couldn't quite make out. After a moment, the glass felt warm, too warm to be just the result of body heat. As he watched in amazement, the cloudiness dissipated, clearing the glass until it was almost invisible.

Dr. Bookman spread some of the black, bumpy stuff—roe, he'd called it—on his bagel and took a satisfied bite. “Very well, then. I believe you. Take me to your friend, and we'll call 911 on my phone.”

Tears gathered in Khalid's eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

He just hoped he wasn't too late.

 

THIRTY-FIVE

Zak's eyes fluttered open, then closed, then opened again.

He was looking into a mirror, but there was no mirror.

He widened his eyes, but his reflection's expression remained impassive.

Tommy?
he asked.

Zak.

It's you!
He lunged forward—

And he didn't. He couldn't move. He was stuck, frozen in space no more than two feet from his twin. He remembered the reflection in the police station. A universe away. A lifetime ago.

Why do we look the same?

We're twins, Zak.

But you died ten years ago.

I'm still connected to you. I've changed along with you.

He reached out again, but didn't. He
wanted
to, he yearned to, but his limbs wouldn't function.

Tommy, why can't I move?

The rules are different here.

In this universe, you mean?

Tommy shook his head.
No. You're not there anymore. You're not back home, either. You're in a … freshet. A current. I'm not sure of the right word. It's a whitecap breaking on the surface of the Secret Sea.

I don't understand.

Between and betwixt and above and beneath. You're in the no-space, Zak. That's where I am. Where I've been. Dreams come here.

He remembered Dr. Campbell:
“So, we decided to go walkabout, eh?”

Walkabout …

Dr. Campbell, who had lied to him, too, but at least she'd tried to help. She'd tried to explain to him what had happened. More than his parents had done.

“Walkabout is something the Aborigines do in Australia,”
she'd said.
“They leave their villages or their towns on foot and they wander in the wilderness until they have a vision from what they call Dreamtime.”

Is that where I am? Dreamtime? Is that what I'm experiencing? Are you real? Am I?

Real is not applicable. We
are
.

Why can I see you now? Why can we talk?

Tommy looked down and shook his head sadly.

You're close to death, Zak. Close to
me
. That's how I can talk to you.

Zak had no body in the no-space, but he felt a shiver nonetheless. He'd known he was close to death

—I just want to see him—

but hearing it from the mouth that was identical to his, in a voice so like his own

—I just want to see him again—

made it true.

What do I need to do?
he asked.

Tommy shrugged.
Don't trust him, Zak. You know that already.

Don't trust who?

I can only tell you things you already know.

But before, back home, you said, “They're lying.”
They.
Now it's just
him?
I don't understand.

Zak, you have to go. You have to move. It's not safe for you here.

But I can't move!
He tried to lift his feet to prove the point. Nothing.
I'm stuck!

Not here
, there
. Back in the world. You have to leave the alley.

But I'm …

If you don't leave the alley, you'll never finish your mission. And you'll never see me again.

No! I can come back here! If I die, I'll come back here and we'll be together!

It doesn't work like that. I'm tethered to the world. I've been locked in the no-space because of our connection. You're what keeps me from moving past the living world. When you die, there won't be a twin around to tether you. You'll—
Tommy grimaced, trying to find the right words
—you'll drift away. Up. You'll leave the Secret Sea and everything it contains. That's death.

But—

Go, Zak. There's still a way. But you have to go
now.

*   *   *

In the alley, Zak kicked away the shelter Moira had built around him.

The night air had gone humid and rank.

Zak began to crawl.

 

THIRTY-SIX

Moira's head throbbed and her throat was dry. She lay facedown on something cold and rough. The right side of her chest hurt all the way up to her shoulder. As she rolled over, she realized why—the buttons she'd pinned there had been pressing into her for who knew how long. They clicked at her movement.

“Mornin', Red,” a voice said.

Moira blinked, then blinked again. The world was fuzzy and indistinct. Her glasses were gone, and everything farther out than two feet might as well have been a smear of paint on a canvas. Figures moved out there in the myopic mist, and she curled her knees in to her chest for protection.

“Here ya go,” the voice said, and a chunk of the blur broke off, leaning in, becoming a woman with woefully blond hair tied back in a ponytail and acne pits arrayed along her forehead. She held out Moira's glasses.

Moira took them gratefully and slipped them on. She was in a cage of some sort, something very like a jail cell, as best she could tell. At first she thought maybe she
was
in jail, but the bars of the cell were sloppily welded into metal flanges that had been bolted to the floor. She couldn't imagine an actual police department tolerating such shoddy workmanship.

She pushed herself into a sitting position and forced her attention past the headache that pulsed along the back of her head. There were five other people in the cell with her. All women, she realized now. Which made sense for a prison, but what was the point of
this
place?

Before she could ask anything, she heard the squeak of unoiled hinges. Her cellmates all scurried to the very back of the cell, leaving Moira on the floor up front. She peered around. The cell fit within a slightly larger room, lit by plain old lightbulbs that made her miss home. A heavy metal door at the farthest end of the room had opened, and the leader of the Dutchmen—Jan, she remembered—entered, talking over his shoulder to someone else.

“… decent enough crop. Not promising you anything outstanding, mind.”

“I shall adjust my expectations accordingly,” said a new voice, this one belonging to the man who followed Jan into the room.

He was tall and slender and caramel-colored, with salt-and-pepper hair slicked back over a high forehead and round, green-tinted spectacles over piercing black eyes. He carried a walking stick with a gold tip and an ornate eagle carved into the handle, but he did not use it, its end never touching the floor.

Moira had a ball of hate lodged in her gut for Jan, but that paled in comparison to the instant revulsion she felt at seeing this newcomer.

Jan stepped aside and gestured to the cell. The tall man strode over as though only barely tolerant of the necessity of touching the floor, then planted his feet a yard from the cell. His walking stick finally came down, clanging against the cement floor; he folded his hands over the eagle.

“Well, well,” he cooed, gazing into the cell. “Well, well.” He gave only a cursory glance at the women in the back before his eyes fell on Moira and lingered there.

“What have we here?” he asked, leering. “‘One Hundred Percent Girl,'” he continued, reading from her shirt. “‘One Hundred Percent Geek.' Of the former, I'm certain. Of the latter … Why would one be proud of a carnival background?”

Moira blinked in bafflement. Before she could retort, the man inclined his head toward Jan. “A little younger than the usual for you Dutchmen.”

Jan came up beside him and shrugged. “True. Normally, we'd keep one like this for ourselves. Not much right now, but she'll grow up fine. We need cash. For equipment.”

“Ah, yes. Word on the street is that you boys are up to something.”

“How's that different from any other time?” Jan snorted.

The tall man, clearly bored with the repartee, cleared his throat. “Ladies,” he said, “my name is Sentius Salazar.” Here he inclined his head, as if too busy for a full bow. “I want to assure you all that you will be well cared for and given every possible consideration while in my possession. I regret that you will need to remain thus … discomposed for another half day whilst I complete travel arrangements. Once we arrive at my Nut Island estate, you will be given ample opportunity to bathe, rest, and in general comport yourselves with dignity prior to the companion auction.” He smiled in what Moira supposed was to be a reassuring manner. To her horror, she saw—when she checked over her shoulder—that her cellmates had all taken up relaxed positions, nodding and murmuring contentedly to one another.

“Not so bad as all that,” one of them said.

“An auction?” Moira couldn't help it. She stood up and grabbed the bars of the cell, staring up at Sentius. “You're going to
sell
us?”

“My dear, what
else
would I do with you? You all were found alone on the streets, uncompanioned, in dire straits. And you, in such immoral attire … It would be the very heart of cruelty to turn you back to that life.”

Uncompanioned …
Why would it matter if the Irish or redheads or whichever were alone or in a group? It didn't make any …

She paused to turn and spare a moment's gaze at her cellmates. One of them was Asian, another black. They weren't all Irish in here. They were all …

And it hit Moira. Struck her like a cannonball, and she chided herself for her earlier idiocy. Stupid. So stupid. If she hadn't been running for her life since hitting the waters of the Houston Conflux, if she hadn't been trying to figure out the physics of their transition to another universe, she would have known earlier.

The cop and the gondolier … Their reactions had nothing at all to do with her hair color.

It was her sex.

“Women are slaves here!” Moira breathed, her voice choked with outrage, shock, and sheer terror.

Sentius clucked his tongue. “Tut-tut, dearie. Someone's been filling your head with femalist propaganda and similar rot.”

“You can buy and sell—”

“I am not surprised to find that your education in this area is lacking. A little knowledge is a terrible thing. All the more reason to keep it from you. Allow me to elucidate: Slavery,” he went on, “was outlawed in the Federal States back in 1782, and all indentured servants and suchlike were manumitted by 1784. Women aren't enslaved—they're
protected
.”

“From what?” Moira asked brittlely.

“Why, from themselves!” Sentius exclaimed, as though it was the most obvious answer in the world. “Women are prone to all manner of emotional, hormonal, and psychological traumas. To leave a woman—or even a girl such as yourself—without the support of a man would be the basest sort of villainy. Imagine the horrors of life without shelter, without food or money. Without a firm, guiding masculine hand!” Sentius shuddered. “You're young yet, but fear not—someone will take pity on you. Perhaps to hold in abeyance until you come of age. Or perhaps as a playfellow for a daughter. Nonetheless, I promise you this: Your nightmare is nearly over.”