A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (9 page)

Walking
through the weird purple trees was a dinosaur.

It was some
sort of raptor, if Liv had paid close enough attention to
Jurassic Park
. It stood about fourteen feet high as it walked
upright on its hind legs, with large forearms tucked close to its chest and
wicked claws on its fingers. Its head was just taller than the purple branches,
and it glanced casually from side to side as it walked. It didn’t appear to
have spotted them yet, but if its eyesight was as good as most predators’, she
knew it wouldn’t take long.

Connor
whispered, “Everybody
quiet
, we’re
going to Travel right from here. Done with that test, Liv?”

“Yeah,
results all saved,” she whispered back.

“I saw this
movie,” Ben breathed. “Let’s go now.”

The raptor’s
head whipped toward them as Liv put the last scanner in her pocket. Its
nostrils dilated and its snort sounded loud in the still air. Then it rushed
them, and the ground trembled with each footstep. Either this was some
super-dinosaur or
Jurassic Park
had
grievously underestimated their speed, because this one was
flying
their way. And she’d thought the
pygmies were fast.

Connor
rapped out, “Safe-World-one-two-three-mark,” and Liv gratefully swirled into
nothing.

“Frigging
dinosaurs?” Ben said as soon as they reappeared on the deserted plain. “Are you
kidding me?”

Connor
swirled into solidity, looking a bit pale.

“You okay?”
Gin asked as she caught sight of Connor’s face.

Connor just nodded.

Liv sent
Connor a questioning look, but he ignored her. “Actually,” she said in response
to Ben’s comment, “it makes sense. Those people were not people; they’re
reptilian.”

“What does
that have to do with dinosaurs?” Ben asked.

Jordan said,
“That world evolved the way it did because the dinosaurs didn’t die out.
Mammals never gained ascendency and reptiles continued on a parallel
evolutionary path, becoming advanced bipeds with opposable thumbs and
tool-using brains. The waxy consistency of the plants probably evolved to fend
off the people’s fire-breath, although I don’t have any idea how
that
could have developed.”

“How would
dinosaurs turn into people who spit fireballs?” Trent asked. “What could have
had such a radical impact?”

“I don’t
know,” Jordan said. “In Home World, three billion years ago, a single organism
appeared that began producing a toxic chemical that killed off almost all other
life on the planet. It was the most catastrophic die-off to date, and it shaped
everything that came after.”

“What was
the chemical?” Ben asked.

“Oxygen.”

“What,
seriously?” Gin said.

Liv
interjected, “Yeah, but this isn’t like that. Everything we saw there evolved
to fend off fire.”

Jordan said,
“And everything on Home World evolved to use oxygen.”

Trent
argued, “But it couldn’t have all evolved just because of the people, or
whatever they are. If they followed Home World’s human development, they’ve
only been around for a few hundred thousand years.”

Connor
cleared his throat, and said, “About that. Before I left, that dinosaur—”
He laughed. “Sorry, it’s hard to say that with a straight face. It opened its
mouth as it was running at me. I expected it to roar, but it spit a huge glob
of fire at me instead. I barely Traveled out from underneath it.”

“Aww, come
on!” Ben said. “We have to explore there for at least two weeks. We could have
drawn Fluffy Bunny World, but no, we got stuck with Hostile Fire-breathing
Dinoman World!”

Connor
raised an eyebrow. “Are you done?”

Ben blew out
an irritated breath. “Yeah.”

“I’m not
surprised,” Jordan said in response to Connor’s revelation. “Everything in that
world evolved to fend off fire. Like Trent said, that didn’t happen recently.”

Connor nodded.
“We’ll get back to base and let them know what we found. Let R & D figure
out the how. Next trip, we’ll go far from the US pygmies and see what the other
citizens in ‘Hostile Fire-breathing Dinoman World’ think of us.”

“That’s not
going to help us against the dinosaurs,” Ben muttered. Connor leveled a stare
at him. Ben hiked a false smile onto his face. “Hoo-yah, mastuh chief!”

Liv smiled
as Connor shook his head. “Damn straight, Flyboy. Home World on mark.”

*
         
*
         
*

They were cleared for further exploration of Fluffy Bunny World, as Trent
started calling it to mock Ben, but they found nothing new in the whole
corresponding US.

Friday, they flew to Europe to Travel from France. The landscape there was
markedly different from the corresponding US. Rocky hillsides clustered around
volcanic-looking peaks, and while the ever-present orange lichens also grew
here, there were ornamental-looking shrubs in a variety of yellows as well as
blood red. There were also some variations on the waxy purple octopus trees,
and a type of yellow-skinned flowering plant with purple growths like boils on
its surface.

As they watched smoke rising from one of the volcanoes, Gin asked, “Why
would dinosaurs being alive make volcanoes erupt in France?”

Jordan answered, “The dinosaurs wouldn’t cause them, but whatever allowed
them to survive also caused the volcanoes to form. It’s been at least
sixty-five million years since this world split off, although I would guess
it’s actually been much, much longer. Plenty of time for more than one drastic
difference in the timeline. What we have to wonder is why didn’t the dinosaurs
die? Which of the five mass extinctions didn’t happen? And why? Maybe the whole
solar system or even galaxy is different here.”

Liv’s mind reeled at the thought of a whole different universe. She’d never
given much thought to parallel solar systems. Leave it to Jordan to force her
brain to bend into new and interesting shapes.

Just then, a small orange-furred animal scampered across their path. It was
nearly invisible against the burnt-orange lichens coating the ground. Jordan
stopped and watched it for a moment.

Liv said, “I’d been wondering if any mammals survived. Looks like they have.”

“So I stopped into R & D this morning,” Gin said casually. Liv bet she’d
been waiting all day to tell them this news. “They’re mondo excited about the
flaming pitch ball analysis. They’re still breaking down the compound’s
chemical structure from the gas chromatography and acid-reactor results, but
they think they’ll be able to synthesize it. Something small that we can take
with us, and throw at enemies to envelop them in instant wildfyre.”

“Cool,” Connor said.

“Not cool,” Trent argued.

“Why not?” Gin asked.

Trent frowned. “It’s not controllable. What if it backfires—pun
definitely intended—and spreads to us?”

“Well, I’m sure they’d make it safe before they sent us out with it.” Connor
smiled. “Besides, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I don’t call it adventure when our own weapons attack us.” Trent scowled.
“Remember the Widget?”

Liv definitely remembered the Widget. It had been a highly classified remote
spy plane, with sampling machinery to test atmospheric conditions, compartments
to transport supplies, and defense capabilities to respond to an attack or
cover an escape. It performed flawlessly in tests, but the first world they
brought it to for field-testing had an unfortunate mix of atmospheric
conditions which were read by the plane as an attack. It dropped its payload on
their test camp and they barely escaped annihilation. R & D engineers swore
they could correct the problem, but so far, they hadn’t had any luck.

“Yeah, well,” Connor said. “We made it out, right?”

“Right.” Trent said darkly.

As they walked, Liv analyzed samples and tried to scan small wildlife,
although everything she saw was both shy and fast-moving, so the scans were
only partials. They saw several dinosaurs, but they were apparently vegetarian
and non-fire-breathing. At least they didn’t attack. There was no evidence of
dino-people. The DEPOT hoped T36 could find some people who were uncorrupted by
Home World scientists and form liaisons.

They reported back at the end of the day, and Gin said brightly, “So, it’s
Friday night! You guys are all coming over. I’ve got the best new game.”

“I hope it’s about blowing up your family,” Liv said, drawing a snicker from
Ben that he quickly turned into a cough.

“What?” Gin said. “Oh, that’s right, your family reunion is this weekend!”

“Yeah, and I’ve already had calls from three of my aunts and two of my
sisters about what I should wear and what I should bring, and they’re all
asking about my date, and should we have a bedroom. Ugghh!”

“Are you bringing a date?” Jordan asked.

Was he just interested because he was her friend, or because of the new
weird thing that was going on in her head? Liv tried not to let her heart jump
and kept her voice light. “Yeah, Ben. He’s practically part of the family
anyways; he should be there to share the misery.”

Ben put his arm around her shoulder and then grabbed her in a headlock.
“It’ll be fun, sis. I can’t wait to hear all about Aunt Darma’s garden.”
Instead of giving her a noogie like he used to when they were kids, he just
ruffled her hair and released her as she groaned.

She considered the DEPOT her true family. She’d been isolated from her
relations since the age of ten when she’d learned she was a Traveler. Ben had
been the only one she could ever tell that secret to, and it had only made her feel
more isolated once she learned what being a Traveler actually meant.

As far as the world’s governments were concerned, Travelers weren’t even
considered citizens.

She had never belonged anywhere until she’d found other Travelers and become
part of this group, this society, and began this job which she considered
incredibly important. It made it worse to have to go home and be reminded about
how she didn’t actually fit into the family she was genetically related to. Plus,
there were so many of them. She had over eighty first cousins just on her
mother’s side.

“How come you’re not intimidated by my family, Ben?”

“Please. My dad had twelve kids in his family and my mom had seven. I have
one sister and seven billion cousins.”

“There aren’t seven billion people in the world,” Trent said.

“There are very nearly seven billion people in the world, and I am directly
related to every single one of them.”

Liv laughed, then sobered. “Thank God you’ll be there to save me.”

He was still grinning broadly at her discomfort. “I can’t wait to talk with
Aunt Dottie about her cat.”

Liv groaned again. “She thinks the Men in Black tried to steal it. You’ve
heard that story at least a hundred times.”

“I know.” Ben laughed.

Liv tossed in her sleep, almost but not quite waking up.

She was ten. She and Ben were playing
soldiers and Indians in her backyard. She summoned the courage to tell him
about how she could think about going to a different place and actually end up
somewhere else. She made it sound like a dream, just in case he thought she was
crazy.

To her surprise, his face split into a
huge smile and he said, “Me too!”

They compared notes and realized
they’d been to some of the same places. He said, “Let’s go somewhere right now.
I know this great place. Can you follow?”

“I think so,” she said.

He grabbed her hand. “Come on.”

They went to Mai Tai, although they
didn’t know what it was called then. He called it Coney Island. She took in the
sights and sounds and smells, all so different from Home.

As they walked down the boardwalk past
a carnival on the beach, they saw some older kids who were dressed just like
them: jeans and t-shirts. The locals preferred weird woven hippie pants. The
older kids told them this place was called Mai Tai, and Liv knew that, for the
first time, she’d met other Home World Travelers. The kids told them the rules
of Travel: never tell anyone what you are, never get caught. They told them
horror stories about experiments done on Travelers in past eras, and how
governments wanted to unlock the secrets of Travel and hoard the power for
themselves.

And they told them about the DEPOT.

“It’s this group,” said the leader.

“Like a secret military group,”
another said breathlessly.

The leader threw him a sullen look,
but decided to let the interruption slide. “They are the elitest of the elite.”

“The best of the best,” said the third
boy.

“What do they do?” Liv had asked.

“They pretty much run the whole
Travelers’ world.” The leader tried to look as if he was unimpressed, but he
clearly hero-worshipped them. Liv could tell.
 

“They make sure the secret is kept,”
said the second boy.

“Yeah,” said the third. “If you step
out of line, they make sure you disappear like that!” He snapped his fingers.

The leader glanced contemptuously at
them. “They explore. They search for new things, go places nobody from Home
World has ever seen before! They don’t disappear anybody.”

“They do too!”

“Who do you know who’s disappeared?”

“I heard it from Tina. Her friend said
she heard it from a cousin.”

“The cousin got disappeared?”

“No, but she knew somebody who did.”

Liv followed this conversation with
interest, turning her head from one to the other as if watching a tennis match.
Ben, standing next to her, whispered, “What do you think?”

An air horn went off. None of the kids
seemed to notice as they bickered amongst themselves. Liv turned to Ben to ask
what he thought it was, but he suddenly disappeared and Mai Tai went dark.

Liv became aware that the air horn was actually her phone. She rolled over
and blearily opened her eyes: 4:43 am. What the hell?

Maybe it was Ben, reading her mind. She picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Liv, you’ll never believe this—or maybe you will, you might have
suspected it—I just got the results in and you’ve got to get down here to
see them!”

“Jordan?”

“Yeah. How soon will you be here?”

“Where are you?”

“The base.” He said it as if she’d asked him what color the sky was at his
house.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“No.” Liv glanced at the clock again. “It’s four forty-five.”

There was a pause. “Sorry, my watch must be broken. I’ll let you go back to
sleep.”

“No, I’m awake now. I might as well look at whatever it is. You’re at your
lab?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, see you in a bit.”

“See you. Sorry again.”

She hung up the phone and remembered it was Saturday, and her family reunion
was in a couple of hours. She groaned and flopped back into her pillow. Time
for the once-a-year onslaught of This Is Your Life And It’s Not What Your
Family Would Choose. She would never be satisfied to settle down and be a
doting mother and supportive wife. She wanted success of her own, on her own. And
she was successful; she was a world-renowned (although top secret) expert on
Travel, she was top in her field, especially as cognitive neuroscience
pertained to her own research on actual structural function of the brain, and
her yearly salary was more than her sister Lorie’s husband the dentist.

Unfortunately, her family judged her by none of her measures of success.

She sighed, dragging herself out of bed. It was probably best to get it over
with. At least Jordan could provide a diversion until it was time to leave. She
wondered what he was so excited about; she hadn’t thought to ask.

She climbed into the shower, and after the water woke her, decided she’d better
dress for the reunion in case she didn’t get to come back home and change. She
had to meet Ben at the base to get her ride to Georgia later this morning
anyway—he kept a jet at the Ranch, a special honor his former Air Force
brigadier general had granted when he was still a First Lieutenant there.

At least she would get to spend her wait time with Jordan instead of pacing
her living room while second-guessing her outfits. She had, of course, packed
the night before. She grabbed her suitcase and headed out the door.

When she got to Jordan’s lab, he was busy on his computer, and the usual
chaos prevailed. If possible, she thought it was even messier than usual.

“Knock knock.”

Jordan started talking before he looked up. “Oh good, you’re here! You’re
going…to…”

He trailed off as his eyes rose from the mountains of paper on his desk and
fixed on her. Liv looked down at herself, making sure she wasn’t living a
naked-in-school dream.
Nope, just the
dress.
She raised an eyebrow and Jordan shook his head like someone who’d
just been sucker-punched. Then his gaze landed on his computer screen, and he
focused again on his work. “What was I…oh right, you’ll love this. Come look.”

She shifted a huge stack of scrolls and sat on the counter behind his desk
so she could see the computer screen over his shoulder. “I’ll love what?”

“I’ve been running simulations since you told us about Elachai, and I
finally figured it out!”

“Figured what out?”

He turned in his chair, beaming at her. “I figured out how a Singularity arises.”

She leaned forward to better see the computer. “Really? There’s a natural
explanation?”

His smile disappeared. “Actually, no.”

He brought up multiple screens on his computer, charts and data flows that
Liv read easily through long familiarity with the evolutionary extrapolation
program Jordan had developed and written himself, with a little input from Gin.
He pointed to a fluctuating 3-D graph. “This is nature. There’s no way that in
an infinity of worlds, a Singularity simply happens.” He pointed to another,
distinctly different graph. “He had to be made into a Singularity.”

“Made.” Liv stared at him for a minute as he stared gravely back. “But
Jordan, the number of worlds is infinite. There would never be a way to make
something happen only once. It’s inconceivable. Infinity means all
possibilities exist.”

“Including the one where a Singularity happens?” He gave her a sly smile. Leave
it to Jordan to speak her own language—logic—to trap her in an
argument.

She smiled despite herself. “Possibly. Or including the one where a Mirror
is created through some freak chance.”

“I thought of one scenario that would significantly reduce the odds of a
freak chance Mirror in some other world. A Traveler mates with someone not of
his world. As long as none of his Mirrors are Travelers who find the same
Mirror in another world and do the same thing, a Singularity is born. If that
Traveler planned this, if he used force and picked a potential mate that none
of his Mirrors would ever get to, it might have happened.”

Liv considered, but then shook her head. “No. If he did it, so would at
least one of his Mirrors. Mirrors think alike. They hatch the same plans in
different worlds.”

“Okay, then there is another explanation. It might be tough to take for a
physicist operating on the Many Worlds hypothesis of string theory,” Jordan
warned.

“I think I can take it,” she said dryly.

“There isn’t an infinite number of worlds.”

Liv was inclined to disbelief given all the evidence for infinite worlds,
but she always gave Jordan the courtesy of treating his side of a scientific
debate as factual. He did the same for her. They each had enough working
knowledge of the other’s field to make a perfect foil for defending a
hypothesis. She sat back, reaching for impartiality. “What’s your evidence?”

“A Singularity exists.”

She sighed. “That’s not scientific proof, Jordan.”

“I know. Would he be able to tell he was Singular, do you think? I mean, how
would he even know?”

Liv was startled. “I don’t know. I never even considered that.”

Jordan smiled grimly. “I know. But I did. And I think this could be
important. If there’s somebody out there engineering people…”

“We don’t know that someone is. Given all the evidence, I’m going to
continue on the assumption that the multiverse is infinite.”

“So we’re back to an infinity of possibilities means a Singularity could
exist.”

She thought it through. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean someone is responsible.”

Jordan looked steadily at her. “My program says otherwise. It takes into
account everything anyone has ever known about the multiverse and evolution,
including my own not-inconsiderable first-hand research, and yours.”

Liv stared back, allowing the possibility to penetrate. “Who would do such a
thing?”

He gave her a relieved smile. “We know one group that’s hunting a
Singularity.”

“Demons.”

Jordan shrugged. “It makes sense.”

“Yeah, it does. Thanks for the info.”

“Anytime. Hey, do you want to go get breakfast? It’ll help make up for
waking you so early.”

“Sure, but then I have to get to my stupid reunion.”

“Ah, that explains the—” Jordan waved a hand at her “—ensemble.”

“Yeah.” She hid a smile as they walked out of his office and turned toward
the elevator. She knew Jordan missed nothing, but it was nice to catch him off
guard. “What were you doing here so early, anyway?”

“Couldn’t sleep. I figured I may as well be doing something useful, and this
has been bugging me. I couldn’t think of any natural way it could happen, even
though I hoped I’d come up with one. The idea of demons…engineering…this guy,
it’s enough to keep anyone awake.”

“I’ll say.”

They walked into the cafeteria on level two, chose food from the buffet, and
found an empty table in the corner of the room.

“So, family reunion?”

“Yeah,” Liv said with a grimace. “I tried to play the I’m-working card, but
I did that last year and the aunts got suspicious.”

Jordan shifted in his chair, hesitated, then said, “If you need any moral
support, I could, you know, fly interference.”

Liv smiled. “Run interference?”

“Sure, whatever.”

“Well….” She thought of Aunt Dottie and her crazy UFO conspiracies, Aunt
Darma and her garden fixation, Uncle Dale and the creepy way he liked to carry
candy in his pocket and offer it to all the girls as if they were still five,
Uncle Darren who pinched her cheeks every time he saw her and told anyone who
would listen about the time she had wet his couch when she was three. She
pictured her three married sisters ganging up on her and asking when they would
get to be her bridesmaids. Then there was the fact that the aunts’ eyebrows
would practically fly off their heads if she showed up with a new guy.

She said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea. You don’t want to meet
the Lancasters anyways. They’re a bunch of nutjobs. Seriously.”

Jordan shrugged. “Maybe I do.” She had the uncomfortable thought that his
incredible blue eyes could see into her mind.

An image of Nathan intruded, from a place in her mind she’d kept locked
tight for years. He had always made her feel like he was catching her in a lie
when he looked at her like that. Turned out he’d been the liar. Bastard. Her
stomach was seriously considering rejecting the couple bites of bagel she’d
just eaten.

Get out!
a faint voice screamed.

“I should go,” she said, jumping up. “See you Monday.”

Jordan looked both startled and worried. “Yeah, Monday.”

She left the remains of her breakfast and fled.