---Chapter 5
Their walk led them deeper into the city, which changed around them as they went. The streets became less respectable, the buildings closer together and grimmer in appearance. Often, they came to wide lots, factories bubbling with smoke in the center of them. They were clearly not in the ‘good’ part of town any more.
“Jax, where are we going and what are we looking for now?” Lenny inquired, feeling once again that their trek was for nothing.
“Someone who knows more about the power center, of course,” the traveler returned impatiently.
Lenny stopped in the middle of the street. “How do you know that we’ll find someone like that here? How do you know that we’ll find someone to help us at all? We’re just wandering around willy-nilly. You can’t expect to recognize the right person by the color of their hat, can you?”
“Of course not.” Jax kept trudging stolidly along. “It’s all instinct. See, I just wait until the right person turns up. You did, right? And so did Raggsy. I think that, if I want a certain sort of person, they’ll simply show up when I need them. It might not be today, or tomorrow, but it always works out in the end.”
“Great.” Lenny crossed his arms, staring up at the ragged balcony of the house across the way, which had laundry hanging out on it to dry. “So we’re wandering around here, in these dank alleyways, just waiting for the right person to show up. You’re crazy.”
Jax grinned maliciously. “Not as crazy as you are. You’re the one following me for no reason.”
“I hoped that you were doing something reasonable,” Lenny explained coldly, “not waiting for your fairy godmother to turn your pumpkin head into a coach.”
Suddenly, they were both angry. Lenny in a cold, level manner, with little expression on his face but hard dislike.
Jax’s triangular features slowly turned red, before he threw his hands in the air and shouted, “alright, you don’t like my methods, huh? Well, you can just go your own way, then. Run back to the happy, safe part of town and see how far you get there. And don’t come back to the park until you’ve found something useful, if that’s all you want out of life!”
“Very well, I will.” Lenny turned abruptly about, stalking stiffly down the street back the way they had come from. He knew that the argument was a silly one. He didn’t have any better method for finding wise people to help them than Jax did. In fact, he hardly had a goal in traveling through dimensions except to escape his past.
But Jax’s casual approach to thinking about seemingly everything set him on edge. And the taunt about wanting something useful out of every part of life stung him to the quick, though he would not have admitted it.
“Silly boy, he doesn’t have any point in life but to have fun and go on adventures.”
That wasn’t entirely true, and Lenny knew it. But it made him feel better to say it aloud all the same. He was so full of angry thoughts and confusion that he did not realize he had walked back into the brighter parts of town until he looked up and saw it all around him. Jax was far out of sight behind him.
“If only I could find someone to help us,” Lenny sighed, “then I wouldn’t mind forgiving him so much. Because he would have to forgive me first.”
“Help, sir? Are you lost?”
Turning about at the sound of a voice, Lenny found a young pair walking behind him. They were only a few steps behind, though he hadn’t noticed them at first. It was a lad and lass of about sixteen years, obviously brother and sister. Both were dressed in white tops, while the girl had a skirt and the boy leggings made of dark, checkered cloth. Their hair was identically golden, though trimmed to different lengths, and both had large, blue eyes which watched him with a touch of shy laughter. He took them for school kids, as they both had books under their arms.
“A little lost,” Lenny admitted, not sure where he should claim he was trying to get to.
“Are you looking for the hall where Doctor Quanire is giving his speech on natural science?” the boy asked stoutly, displaying his papers, “that’s where we are going.”
“Yes,” Lenny agreed, seeing an easy way out. “Could you show me the way?”
The boy nodded and the two younger people began to lead the way down the walk. Lenny figured that a doctor giving a learned speech might be just the sort of person he was looking for. If natural science had anything to do with the way the world was made, as it sounded, then he might even know something about other dimensions. Or he might mention the purple spot that was found on the wall and be able to give an explanation of it.
The hall where the doctor was giving a speech as a large one. After showing Lenny to it, the twins went to find their own seats near the front. Lenny sat in the back, straightening up to get a view of the speaker. He was a small, round-headed old man with spectacles on his nose and a sheaf of very large, very coarsely printed papers in his hands. Lenny, using a touch of his own energy to increase the zoom on his optics, could make out the writing through the back of the pages from where he sat. The letters were so large that only a few paragraphs could fit on one sheet, accompanied by diagrams and drawings which showed through even darker.
But if Lenny had any hope of finding someone who would give a speech on interdimensional powers, Quanire was not part of that hope. His explanations of simple things such as why water flows downhill and how people’s lungs work were full, tedious and speckled with large, almost incomprehensible words. Lenny soon realized that nothing of value to himself was going to be discussed here today, and vacated his chair.
Out in the street, he wondered what he should do next.
“Perhaps they have a library here,” he said to himself, looking up and down the street, “there should be people of learning in a library. Or at least books to look at while I wait.”
The last words he said as a joke, but it did not make him laugh. By now he was beginning to feel hungry and thirsty with walking, but as he had no gold on him, he did not think to go looking for a shop. All he had in his wallet were the Electro Credits of Belltoh, which he was fairly sure would not be accepted there.
After traversing a few more streets he came in view of a railroad track near one edge of town. A colorful steam engine was just thundering past, followed by its many cars. They were all for freight: wooden boxcars, cattlecars with slats on the side and flat cars with goods covered in canvass on them. Lenny watched it go by with a feeling of amazement, though he had seen much more sophisticated rail vehicles before. But this train, running on steel rails with its many, many clattering wheels, was so full of brute power and cold force that it drew his admiration anyway. Its noisy, metallic passing had much more of a presence than any vehicle he had seen before.
It was not far from the train depot that he found the city library. It was a large, domed structure with a roof made of glass panes, held together by narrow, shining strands of metal. The door was round, with a model ship’s wheel as the opening device. Inside, a short hall just as round as the door led into the main space of the library.
Once there, the building did not seem only large. It felt vast. In the center was a circular space with banisters around it, which contained a giant globe of the world. It was made of wood, with all of the continents carved in relief so that the highest mountains and lowest valleys could be seen on it. The oceans were painted in different shades of blue, with strange creatures depicted swimming on them. Lenny was surprised to see that the continents were not so different from those on his world.
An island misplaced here, tip of land different there, lakes eating up places that would be land on his: nothing that a great flood could not have changed.
Hanging from long, narrow strings from the roof were models of airships and ornithopters, suspended all around the giant globe. As Lenny watched, this huge sphere was slowly rotating, displaying all of its land forms in turn.
Stepping closer, he saw that many of the lands had words in golden scrollwork on them. One said, ‘Upper Amerland, Middle Amerland, Lower Amerland’ while ones across the seas had such titles as, 'Rusland, Angelo, Frettaricus’.
“Quite a contraption, isn’t it, sir?” A dry voice remarked off to one side.
Lenny turned to see a librarian who had gray hair, round glasses and a narrow face, standing behind her desk with a quill in hand.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s spectacular.”
“May I help you find anything today?”
Following his whim, Lenny replied, “yes, if you can. I was looking for books on interdimensional travel, or teleportation.”
The librarian blinked behind her glasses for a moment. Not stupidly, but with a sort of disapproving sternness. “I suppose by 'interdimensional’ you mean those modern works of literature dealing with travel to other worlds. Such as Gilly I. Popkin’s popular 'The Moon Is Mine’ or that adventure novel by Fredrice Waters, 'Mars Isn’t Far For a Hero’. I have not heard the term ‘teleportation’ before, though I can gather the meaning from the root words.”
Lenny gave her a reckless smile, unconsciously thinking of how Jax would handle the situation, “actually, I was hoping for nonfiction on the subject. Studies, you know.”
The librarian’s glasses were far too big for her to stare over them at him, but she gave him the same sort of look with a pursed mouth and thoughtful eyes. “Studies, hmm? Perhaps the works of Gregory Simpkin-Hazard would do...please follow me.”
She bustled out from behind her desk (the library seemed quiet and almost empty at the moment) and showed him across the space to a tall set of shelves. The library had two levels, one of them a balcony above the second floor. Near the end of the shelves, a set of coiling, Gothic metal stairs led up to the upper spaces. At the back of the shelves next to it, the dry librarian showed him a small section of books with titles like 'Classic Science, Rationally Applied’ or 'What is Matter?’.
“These might do you, sir,” she told him, touching one book’s spine with a wrinkled, twig-like finger, as if it were a pet that must be reassured before a stranger handled it.
“Thank you.” Lenny took off his hat to her politely, before setting it back in place once she was gone. Carefully, he took one of the books off of the shelf. Its spine crinkled with disuse as he opened it, while the pages had a dusty, warm odor akin to the smell of a friendly attic. On his world, he rarely looked at printed books of any sort. All the information he had needed was easy to find on the computer network. There had been plenty of entertainment there, too, between electronically written pieces by authors or movies made by expert animators. He had rarely held a printed page in order to look at it, other than the foolish little safety pamphlets which always came with new objects bought from a store. And those had never been worth reading.
Now he scanned the lines of black ink on creamy, swishing paper, reading down the ‘Contents’ list to see what the book held for him. It was strangely delightful to feel the hard line of the book’s spine in his hand, its weight laying across his palm as he flipped the pages delicately with the opposite hand. The light was dim in the back corner of the aisle, so he moved out nearer the staircase when he started reading one of its pages.
'Because we now know that structure comes from small particles of matter called molecules rather than from the smallest piece of element which can be seen, we can infer that these molecules can be manipulated separately. One molecule can be replicated in a distant location, while the first is removed. Hence, the effect of transmutation is limited in--’
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Lenny’s attention was suddenly jerked from the book by the sound of footsteps on the staircase. Marking his place with a finger, he looked up. It was a young woman ascending the staircase, many books under her arms. Lenny just caught a glimpse of brunette hair and leather breeches, before the figure disappeared above. But in that moment he thought that he recognized her.
“Sara...” His book forgotten, he folded it under one arm and ran up the stairs. A woman with brown hair, who would not be wearing a skirt and was spending her time doing research. It sounded like his lost friend.
Hurrying to catch her, he clanked up the steps onto the balcony. The woman was moving quickly and had all but disappeared behind a row of shelves by the time he was on the landing. Dashing after her, he rounded the corner so quickly that he was right behind her almost before he realized it.
The dome being so close let bright, late-noon sunbeams fall directly on that part of the library floor. The woman had stopped, turning half-around at the sound of footsteps following behind her. Lenny skidded to a stop as well, feeling a deep pang of disappointment. This woman was not Sara. Upon a closer look, he saw that her hair was more of a bronze color than chocolate-brown, while her eyes were a bright copper shade. Though she was near the same age and height as Sara Lancaster, her face was more oval in shape and sharply drawn.
“And now that you’ve caught up to me?” she asked, with an expression of playful mockery.
“I--” Lenny felt his own face turn hot with embarrassment, “I’m sorry, I thought that you were someone else.”
At that, the young woman’s face became more serious and sympathetic. “Oh, I see. Was she supposed to meet you here?”
“No, I just thought that you were her,” Lenny explained simply, pulling himself together, “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
“It’s better than the things of the night.” She started to turn away, before stopping and shifting back. It was then that Lenny noticed her right arm for the first time. It had thin, gold bands around it at two places, almost like bangles. But connected to the bands was a series of thin, flexible iron tubes running up the outside of her arm. These were connected on one side to a small backpack over her shoulder, while the other side ran down to her hand. Here the tubes were held to a smaller series of bands over her fingers, like gold rings. Upon looking closer, Lenny saw that only two of those fingers were natural. The thumb and index were flesh, but the last three were made of jointed pieces of metal, fine wires and cables. It reminded him of his own secret implants, though much more obvious and less refined.
He blinked, looking up as he realized that she was speaking to him again, “is that Gregory Simpkin-Hazard’s Dimensional Journeys that you are reading? Forgive me, but I rarely see anyone besides myself holding books like that.”
“What? Oh, oh yes.” Lenny remembered the book under his arm and held it out. “The librarian suggested it to me. You see, I’m...studying the idea of traveling between dimensions. To other worlds, you know.”
He had expected a laugh, a shrug or mention of more science fiction books. Instead, her eyes fastened on to him sharply. “Really? That is interesting. So am I.”
She held out her own books, metal fingers closing with a soft hiss and click around the covers. He tried to ignore them and look only at the book’s covers, but failed. The intricate metal joints, moving cable and similarity between that crude prosthetic and his own cybernetic hands made it hard for him not to study the three fingers. Seeing his interest, the girl laughed and grasped the books with her left hand, which was wholly natural. “I see you’ve noticed my accident. A boiler blew about, oh, two years ago and I lost those fingers. Luckily, I’m an inventor. I just built some new ones.”
She held out the hand, air hissing softly from the backpack as she spread the fingers out flat. The last three fingers opened in concert, uncurling at the same moment. The tips of each finger had a pad of leather fastened onto them, to make gripping things easier. In between the two joints, each also had a thin piece of copper plating.
“How do they work?” Lenny asked, his curiosity aroused to the point where he did not consider if it was rude to ask or not. But the girl did not seem offended. Instead, she showed him the tubes running into her pack, explaining that there was compressed air in a small tank there. It was forced through tubes into tiny pistons, which in turn pulled fine cables that ran through the lines along her arm. These were connected to pulling points inside the fingers, making them open or shut.
“I have a pair of wings at home that run off of the air tank as well,” she claimed calmly when she was done, “but they do not run for very long off of such a small amount. They’re mostly for gliding. Are you interested in technological advances of that sort?”
“Oh yes.” Lenny nodded, completely in earnest. His technological advances were far ahead of hers, but he had still worked on the same concepts in his own world as she appeared to have invented in hers.
“I suppose you must be an inventor, of course.” she smiled apologetically. “Or else you would not be studying how to travel to different worlds. Have you ever read Thomas Gank’s Time Travel theory?”
She held out one of her books again and this time he saw that the title was 'Is it Possible to Travel in Time?’.
“No, I’ve just started studying it at all. Do you know much about it?”
“A little. Though I have not yet heard of a way to make a power source strong enough to send someone through time. What do you think would work?”
“How about electricity?”
“Like they are experimenting with in lights and to replace mechanical telegraphy?”
Without more ado, they fell into a long discussion about the powers of electricity versus steam, methods of transporting matter through space and what Time really was made of. They found a table nearby and took it to look through the books they had respectively found, sitting across from each other while they chattered and pointed out paragraphs. Lenny was enjoying himself so much that he forgot all about Jax, their quest and the time.
Once, he found himself saying, “the Di-jump machine doesn’t use a transportable power provider. It taps into a central core of power in the universe.”
Then he caught himself and paused, afraid that he had gone too far. Luckily, the girl (who had introduced herself as AmberRose Mayflower Pamelia Pyncheon or just Amber to friends) seemed to think that he was speaking of a theoretical experiment rather than something he had actually used. She just asked how he knew there was a central power core, other than the sun.
“I don’t, really,” he admitted honestly. It was Jax’s idea that it was what held the worlds together and energized his Di-jump, while Lenny did not have any proof of the matter as of yet.
Looking up at this point, he realized that the light was getting dim outside the window, and he could hear the librarian calling loudly below, “closing time, ladies and gentlemen! Closing time!”
Amber looked up from her book with a gasp and a jerk. “Oh!”
“We’ll have to leave.” Lenny jumped up, closing his book on the table.
“Yes...” Amber stood up as well, but more hesitantly.
Lenny took a step towards the staircase, then looked back at her. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s getting dark. The things of the night will come out soon. You may live nearby, but I have a long walk down through the city to get to my home,” Amber explained. Her face had turned pale and her expression was one of controlled fear. Lenny thought over the long roads he had followed between this place and the park. He could just remember the way, but it was not a short walk.
“What are these things of the night?” He could guess, having seen the Battlehounds in Raggsy’s world and heard of things with giant teeth attacking garbage cans in his own.
Another call came from below and they had to walk toward the exit doors as Amber said, “you don’t know? Well, I’ll tell you. The waking world seems sunny, calm and innocent. Most people just lock up their houses and never see the night. But I have seen it. Strange people, creatures like phantoms and ghouls...machines gone mad, even.”
She looked over her shoulder at him as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “haven’t you even heard of these things?”
Lenny shook his head. “I come from far away. This is my first day in the city.”
“I see.”
A small frown made a line across her forehead, but she turned away so quickly that he hardly saw it. “People are starting to wonder what is going on, those who have seen the things especially. There is no record of these things on our world before a few weeks ago. It used to be fairly peaceful at night. Now it is dangerous to even cross a street once the dark comes on. It will not be easy getting home. Where are you staying, the Frostheart hotel?”
“No...I haven’t found a hotel yet.” Lenny was starting to become alarmed. Jax and Raggsy were both out in the night, oblivious of what happened once darkness fell. He would have to locate them, warn them of what was going on so that they could find a place to stay indoors for the night.
Amber also seemed to be thinking deeply as they walked into the round entrance hall of the library. Near the door was a jacket rack which she stopped at, taking down a coat of stiff red material with a rose-petal pattern. After slipping it on, she added a leather belt from the same place. The belt had a holster and a sheath on it, one containing a long, black-powder pistol while the other held a dagger.
This she strapped onto her left side, as her right hand was not flexible enough to fire a gun properly. The jacket had a rectangular hole in its back which puzzled Lenny at first, until he saw her put it on. Then he realized that it fit right over the backpack, so that she did not have to take it on and off to add warmer layers of clothing.
“The nearest hotel is on forth street, just a few blocks from here,” Amber explained once she was ready to go, “I’ll show you. But be careful, even going that far we might run into trouble. Do you have a weapon?”
Lenny looked down at his right wrist ruefully. With energy to spare, he had weapons better than any this world could supply. Without power, he was as helpless as any unarmed man. He shook his head, upon which she unsheathed the dagger and gave it to him. It had a long blade of about ten inches, gracefully curving to a sharp point. The edges were also plentifully sharp, while the grip was ornamented with a red jewel and comfortable to the grasp.
“Take this for now. Just in case of an attack. Come.”
As they went out of the door, Lenny was trying to think of ways to explain to her that he could not stop at the nearest hotel. He had to go on and find his friends, where ever they may be at the time. Not only that, but it would have seemed cowardly of him to have accepted an easy way out while letting her walk the streets alone at night.
By now the sun had gone entirely beyond the horizon, the last of its golden rays dying away from the sky. Eerily, the night sky had a dark purple tint to it, as if the power core’s corruption had reached up and covered the whole world in a thin layer of tainted air. The stars had just barely started to come out, but even they seemed dimmed by a thick haze.
The lone pair’s footsteps echoed on the paved walks as they turned away from the library and strode down the nearest street. Shadows were pooling in between buildings, held back by the gas lamps which had been lit on posts every few hundred feet. The darkness felt cold to Lenny as he walked through it, shade pressing against his arms in a tangible form. In contrast, the light felt warm, holding back the shadows every time they crossed its path. But when they were in the lamplight the darkness appeared even thicker, as if barring their way from progressing beyond.
“That is the Frostheart,” Amber said tensely, stopping in one of these pools of brilliance to point out a building just ahead. It had wide balconies, tall turrets on every corner and blue trim. Though she did not hesitate or tremble, Lenny could tell that Amber was fighting down her fear of what might be waiting for her when she went on alone into the darkness.
“I’m not stopping at the Frostheart.” Lenny shook his head decidedly, grasping the dagger tighter in his hand.
“You’re not?”
“No. I have to meet some of my companions at the park. Besides, I can’t let you go on alone after you have been so kind as to warn me about the danger.”
Amber ignored the second part of his sentence, though he could see her relax just a fraction. “Which park are they waiting at? The Grand Marshal Honorary park?”
Remembering seeing that name on a stone near the park entrance, Lenny agreed that it was the right one.
“We had better hurry. My home is not far from the park at the moment, but your friends probably don’t know about the danger at night here any more than you do. Do they?”
“Not exactly,” Lenny shook his head as they hurried on out of the light into the shadows. Jax and Raggsy both knew that the worlds were being changed and attacked by the power core, but this one seemed so peaceful and unaffected during the day that they might not guess how it changed at night. He certainly hadn’t.
Not long after they passed the Frostheart, Lenny heard someone, or something, walking towards them down the sidewalk. It was in the shadows between lamps, so that he could not make it out. Amber stopped, hearing it also, and he heard her pull the gun at her side from its holster. Using just a touch of his own power, Lenny activated his night vision optics for a moment.
Numbers flashed into the corner of his vision, recounting the compass directions in points compared to where he was looking at. Everything turned green and flickering, with even the deepest shadows appearing only like light shade in the daytime.
In this flash of vision, Lenny saw a figure coming down the sidewalk towards them. At first it seemed to be only an elderly man out for an evening’s walk, his wide-brimmed hat on his head and jacket buttoned tightly up the front. But in the last seconds of his brief use of night vision, Lenny could make out a strange pack hanging on the man’s back, apparently made of a tangle of large, copper tubing. And when the figure glanced up for just a moment, he had no face. Only a pale mask with black slits for eyes, fit snugly to his head.