Flux Read online

They were sitting at the kitchen table, the remains of breakfast spread around them, listening to the house walls creak in a rising wind. Outside the window deep clouds grumbled across the sky, and the rooms above Nellie’s head whispered with doubt and misgivings. How many gates had Fen opened in this house? she wondered silently. What had he seen before he was taken?

  “I don’t really understand it,” she said quickly. “I’ve never gone that far into the levels before. Usually I go just one, to get what I want, and then I come back. When I was first learning about them, I’d go four or five levels to see if anything changed but it never did much, so I stopped. The two gates that led to Fen ... “ She paused, screwing up her face as she thought. “Well, their vibrations were way quicker than anything I’ve seen. Usually the vibrations of the next level are a bit quicker, but not like that.” She paused again. “It’s like something from far away, from a place where the vibrations are a lot faster, moved in close to us. That’s probably why it’s different, not a copycat level of this one.”

  “How far did Fen go?” Deller asked hoarsely.

  “Ten levels,” said Nellie. “But the men who came through and grabbed him—they weren’t coming from the eleventh level or the twelfth. Their vibrations were way too fast.” She looked at them, expecting to see understanding open their faces, but Deller and his mother continued to stare blankly at her. Then Deller turned to his mother.

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” he said eagerly. “The way he’d go to his room, and then we’d go looking for him and he’d be gone. And we never heard him leaving his room or coming down the hall. I tried to get it out of him, how he pulled his vanishing act, but he’d just look at me and grin.”

  “When did he start vanishing?” asked Nellie.

  Deller frowned, thinking. “Not long. Couple of months, maybe.” His mother poked at a fried egg on her plate. “Can anyone learn to do this?” she asked, not looking up. “Could you teach me?”

  Nellie darted her an assessing look. “Maybe,” she said dubiously. “But I don’t think it’s like other things, like cooking or driving a car.” Seeing the woman grimace, she added hastily, “Or using a computer or flying an airplane. It has something to do with the way you see and hear.” She stumbled over her words, thinking. “Like seeing sound or hearing light. You can’t teach someone that, not really.”

  She wasn’t going to reveal anything further—nothing about the energy that danced at the core of every molecule, or the way humans showed up as figures of living light in the molecular field. That was hers.

  “Fen talked about something like that once.” Deller leaned forward excitedly. “We were listening to the radio, and he said he could see the radio waves moving through the air. Zillions of them, he said. All in different colors. I tried to get him to say more, but he shut up, like he’d let out some kind of secret.”

  “Your father was like that too,” Deller’s mother said, gazing out the window. “Saw things the rest of us couldn’t. Heard things. Fen must’ve gotten it from him.”

  Deller nodded. “Like his eyes.” As he spoke, his gaze drifted across Nellie’s face.

  “What about my eyes?” she asked, instinctively ducking her head.

  Deller shrugged. “It’s their shape,” he said. “People with eyes like that are called ‘sarpa’ in the old speech. It means ‘knower of secrets’.”

  “What secrets?” demanded Nellie.

  “How should I know?” shrugged Deller. “I don’t know them.”

  “You have the kind of eyes my husband had,” added his mother quietly, and Nellie thought of the picture of the man on the living room mantel. “We used to say he was descended from one of the Goddess’s five other children.”

  “Five other children?” demanded Nellie, astounded. She hadn’t known the Goddess had children other than the twin sons.

  “Here in the Outbacks there’s a story that the Goddess actually had seven children,” said Deller’s mother. “The two twins that died, and five others that went on to live normal lives. Their children married and had children, and their children had children, and all of them had the same curious slant to their eyes.”

  “But I’m not one of the Goddess’s children,” said Nellie, her hands lifting to touch her eyes.

  “It’s just a story,” Deller said quickly. “Probably made up to go along with the Constellation of the Five Children.”

  “The what?” gaped Nellie. Never, in all her classes in the Interior, had she heard of a star sign that had to do with children.

  “Never mind,” said Deller impatiently. “I’ll show you sometime.”

  “Oh,” said Nellie. “Yeah. Well.” She hesitated, then blurted, “What’s a rerarren?”

  A hooded glance passed between Deller and his mother, and then she said, “‘Walker between worlds.’ Very few have that power, even among the sarpas. My husband couldn’t, though if you say Fen can, perhaps he could too and just never said. Perhaps that’s why ... “ Another glance passed between mother and son, and then a long silence fell upon the three while the upstairs rooms whispered over their heads. With a shuddery sigh, Deller’s mother got to her feet. “I want you to take me there,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “To the place they stole my son.”

  Nellie shifted and scratched nervously. This was exactly what she’d feared would happen if she talked about the levels—others wanting to hone in on what she knew, steal her private world. “I can’t,” she said, her face twisting. “Those men we saw will notice if too many start traveling the levels. I know what I’m doing and how to keep quiet, but someone new at it ... “ She fell silent, watching their faces hook onto her last words. Someone new at it. Fen.

  Deller’s mother stood staring down at her hands. “So there’s no way through?” she asked hoarsely. “They’ve destroyed the way to Fen?”

  “It’s all closed over,” said Nellie. “A big burn scar.”

  “Just like the place you used to live,” Deller added.

  “And even if it wasn’t,” said Nellie, “the gates that lead to Fen are different. They aren’t ordinary gates to ordinary levels.” She paused. “Maybe Lulunar brought them in.”

  Deller’s mother moaned and leaned heavily on the table. Outside, the wind came at the house in a rush, sending a long creaky sigh through the walls.

  “Well, I have to go to work,” she said. “But I’ll be back around five to make us some supper. We’ll talk more then.”

  Taking a quick breath, Nellie surged to her feet. “I think I’ll be going too,” she said rapidly, staring intensely at a spot on the opposite wall. “I can come back later and talk if you like, but there are things I’ve got to be seeing to.” She’d lain awake for hours before she’d gotten up, pondering her way through this short speech. Last night had been foolish, letting a great raw wound come open so others could see it. She couldn’t go around blubbering and playing at hope like that. From now on she would keep her mind fixed firmly on reality. Family meant herself and her dead mother. And the Goddess, of course.

  It was Fen they wanted, not her.

  “Thank you for supper and breakfast,” she added politely to the stunned faces staring at her. “Have a good day.” She stepped back from the table.

  The front legs of Deller’s chair hit the floor with a crash. “What are you talking about?” he demanded, jumping up. “Where are you going to go?”

  “That’s my business.” Nellie’s eyes slitted dangerously. “I can take care of myself.”

  Deller’s mother took a step toward her and Nellie danced backward. An odd look crossed the woman’s face, a mix of dismay and interest. Then she crossed her arms and put on a firm motherly expression. Warnings ran softly up and down the back of Nellie’s neck.

  “Now Nellie,” she said. “You’re not going anywhere, d’you hear? You’re a young girl, a mere scrap of a thing, and the world out there is too big for any one of us on our own. We’ve got an extra bed and enough food to keep you. You’ll stay here with
us.” Plucking her purse from the top of the fridge, she continued, “Now I expect both of you to be in your chairs for supper at five sharp, no excuses. Deller, I’ve got a few things at the front door I need carried to the car.” Without another look at Nellie she walked out of the kitchen, Deller trailing uncertainly in her wake.

  A hot sad breath gusted through Nellie and she sagged against the table, listening to their footsteps cross the living room floor. It had been a good act, she thought admiringly. Most adults ranted and threatened to hit, but Deller’s mother had just gone real quiet and given her speech as if she actually believed it. Of course she didn’t, not really. No adult thought they could actually make a kid do something. What Nellie couldn’t figure out was why an adult never asked a kid to do something. If Deller’s mother had looked her in the eye and asked her to stick around, well, that would have been a different situation entirely.

  She was wearing a pair of pants and a T-shirt that probably belonged to Fen. Slipping through the back door, she stood listening as a car started up at the front curb. The wind came at her in a twisting whine, splattering her with a gust of rain. For a moment she considered filching Deller’s bike, then decided against it. Ducking her head, she took off down the alley, carried along on a long moan of wind.

  NELLIE HEADED TOWARD the river and the deserted warehouse that housed the Skulls’ headquarters. Though she’d decided not to continue living in Deller’s home, there was something in her that couldn’t quite give him up, not yet. Images of his face kept flashing through her head, tense with excitement as he’d talked about Fen’s disappearing act, or tracked with tears when she’d first told him about the cubicle. What would it be like to have a brother waiting for you like that, hoping and dreaming after you? There had never been anyone but a mother in Nellie’s life, her face tense and strained, peering through a series of endless windows. Had her mother ever cried for her? The question dropped through Nellie’s mind like a pebble through water, her thoughts rippling into silence. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother cry.

  The gusting wind and rain were herding most people indoors. Now and then someone rushed past, hidden beneath an opened newspaper or umbrella. Days like this meant food was more difficult to come by, the weather forcing street vendors to take time off. Turning into a back alley, Nellie spied a delivery truck idling with its back door open as the driver darted into a store’s service entrance, carrying a load of bread. Without hesitating, she scrambled into the truck and snatched several packages of baked goods, then hit the ground running. Shouts erupted behind her, but she veered onto the nearest street without looking back. No one ever caught her. Most adults were too fat, and none of them knew the back alley network like she did. Give her two backyard fences, and she could lose anyone.

  Tucking the baked goods under her T-shirt, she took off at a steady lope and reached the Skulls’ headquarters within ten minutes. Halfway down the block, a lone truck was pulling out of the only factory still in operation, and she ducked behind an office building as it drove past. By now the rain was pelting down. Lifting her T-shirt, Nellie checked the top package of doughnuts. Damp, but not soaked. If she managed to get out of this rain soon, she’d have more than mush for lunch.

  Most of the office building’s first floor windows had been smashed. Draping a moldy tarp over a windowsill to cover the broken glass, Nellie heaved herself through the gap, then hauled in the tarp. In the dim light all she could see was dust, broken by rodent tracks and the odd vague footprint left by previous tenants come to spend a few nights like herself, but nothing appeared to be recent. Slowly she walked through empty rooms so thick with gloom, it was like moving through the inside of a headache. Climbing a staircase to the second floor, she settled in a bare room with a row of windows that overlooked the Skulls’ headquarters. Here she would be able to watch Deller come and go, and feel out her thoughts about him from a distance. Getting close to people complicated things and messed up her brain so she couldn’t think straight.

  Gusts of wind came through a broken side window, but the ones facing the street were undamaged. Rain swilled the glass, clearing away the dirt. Right here, thought Nellie, touching the sill. Here would make a good place to set the statue of Ivana that she’d found in the Sanctuary of the Blessed Goddess’s storage room.

  The groan that took her then almost sent her to her knees. The statue was gone. Clear as anything she could remember placing it inside her knapsack yesterday morning before leaving the shack, then setting the knapsack on the bedroom dresser in her room last night. And she recalled, just as clearly, the sensation of slipping out of the house this morning without any knapsack on her back. In her rush to escape she’d forgotten the Goddess, pure and simple. Ivana would never forgive her for leaving Her holy image in a pagan house like that.

  For it had been a very pagan house. Nowhere had Nellie seen a statue of the Goddess, not over a doorway or in a single window, and no altar had graced the living room or kitchen. And that talk about the Constellation of the Five Children—probably blasphemy, all of it. Made-up nonsense. Otherwise how was it possible she’d never studied the sarpas in her classes or heard the priests mention them? Her eyes were weird, that was all there was to it.

  Fuming, Nellie paced the row of windows and stared down at the Skulls’ headquarters. What would Deller do when he found the statue in her knapsack? Desecrate it by drawing a beard on its face? Or something worse? She shook her head. People who lived in houses were just fooling themselves with their furniture and hot water and hamburgers and such. All of it was emptiness without the Goddess. Only She could turn a house into a home. Everything outside of Her love was illusion, and she—Nellie Joan Kinnan— had just about fallen prey to that illusion herself.

  Illusion. Nellie played the word over her tongue. It was a slippyslidey word, sounding just like what it meant. And it sure described the way her life had been since her mother’s death. Everything—the city around her, the people coming and going on its streets—had felt like pictures on a wall, a thin surface loneliness, until she’d learned to tune into the molecular field and see the Goddess’s love at the core of things. That ability had come to her one night as she’d been sitting cold and alone in a deserted rusty old truck, thinking about dying and how it would reunite her with her mother. It had been one of her deepest darkest moments, but in the middle of it her mind had suddenly tilted to the right and the molecular field had appeared all around her, glowing like love. That was the moment she’d first felt the Goddess reach out to her, and began to understand who She truly was. Rerarren. Sarpa. Nellie clucked and shook her head. The only knower of secrets was Ivana, no one else.

  Whispering an incantation to the Goddess, she let her mind tilt and watched the room’s molecular field ooze into focus. A quick scan showed her two gates snaking the east wall, several that hovered midair, and another that ran along the floor. Idly, she studied the closest midair gate. It looked as if it hadn’t been used in ages. Would it give off a flash of pain if she tried to open it? None of the gates in Deller’s house had shown any signs of pain. The one at the Sanctuary of the Blessed Goddess must have been a fluke. Or maybe ... Nellie’s heart quickened. Maybe it had been a lesson sent by the Goddess to teach her reverence for a holy place—a kind of “Keep Out” sign. After all, the Goddess must have loads of divine secrets in Her holy house, secrets She wouldn’t want just anyone stumbling across, certainly not that pagan Deller.

  An eager grin took over Nellie’s face. This place wasn’t holy. No one would take a hissy-fit if she opened gates in this dump. Probing the midair gate, she felt it open without the slightest twinge of pain. Almost giddy with relief, she stepped through the gate and adjusted to the new level’s vibratory rate, grinning at her astonished double who was sitting in a corner cramming doughnuts into her mouth. “Don’t mind me,” she singsonged grandly, sending her mind into the molecular field and slowing it down, her grin growing as her dumbfounded double froze int
o position. It was such fun to play this trick and watch her doubles become speechless zombies. “Sweet dreams,” Nellie sang to her double, then returned the molecular field to its normal vibratory rate, opened another of the midair gates and stepped through.

  She was on a roll now, back in her element as she chose from the various gates in each level, repeating the prank time after time. Man, are you dumb, she thought, staring at the seventh double she’d frozen into position. So dumb you deserve to be easy prey. With a grin she reversed the slowdown process. Then before her dozed-out double could react, she reached into a box of pastries and smeared a mustache of whipping cream across the girl’s upper lip—just so the double would know this had all been real, not a dream, when she finally got her head back together.

  “See?” Nellie gloated, staring directly into her double’s astonished eyes. “I am real. I am here. You’re just too dumb to know about it.”

  Standing, she approached one of the midair gates, about to move on to another level, when a sudden thought hit her and she swivelled back to stare at her gaping double. At every level she’d entered in this office building, she’d found everything as she’d expected—one broken window on the far side, a thick layer of dust undisturbed except for her double’s footprints, and her double, caught in the throes of stuffing a soggy doughnut into her ravenous mouth. Traveling the levels was always like this—every level contained a double of herself and anyone who’d been in the immediate vicinity when she’d exited her home level.

  So where had Fen’s doubles been last night? In the ten levels she’d passed through, the only doubles she’d encountered had been her own. Had the lab-coated men come back through the levels after they’d kidnaped Fen, hunting down his doubles, or had the doubles automatically vanished when he was taken through the last gate?

  Swallowing, Nellie stared at the gate in front of her. How many levels had she passed through today? Was she close to the tenth? Hastily she headed back the way she’d come, sealing each gate behind her. At the last two levels she paused and snatched the top box of pastries from her double’s lap before moving on. Why should she go hungry tomorrow if there was so much food around, begging to be eaten? So what if a few of her doubles went without supper? They were way too fat and needed to go on a diet anyway.