Bridgers 3_The Voice of Reason Read online

  “I need to talk to the mongrels again,” Desmond said.

  “Talk to the mongrels again,” a warbling voice repeated.

  Infinity shook her head. “That’d be pushing your luck.”

  “Pushing your luck.”

  Infinity waved her arms, shooing the diminutive creatures. “Go bother someone else!”

  The creatures jumped to their feet and scampered off.

  She turned back to Desmond. “Seriously, don’t even think about it.”

  “I have to know if the mongrels intend to accommodate the entire colony.” He hadn’t told her about the mongrels’ mention of a key hidden in the Outlander’s signal.

  Infinity gazed at him, her lips pursed. Finally, she said, “Then I’ll do it this time.”

  Desmond shook his head. “That’s a bad idea. When the mongrels speak to someone, they have this ritual. Apparently it helps them better understand the person they’re speaking to. Somehow they force you to live as alternate versions of yourself—spending just a few seconds as each version. Hundreds of alternate versions, each in a different timeline. The process is unsettling, to say the least.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have to go through it a second time. It’s my turn.”

  “That’s my point, though,” Desmond said. “Since they’ve already done it to me once, I don’t think they’ll see a need to do it again. And even if they do, I seem to have recovered from it relatively well. The feral I talked to, the guy they call Reason, he became permanently despondent after the mongrels did it to him. I don’t want you to take that risk. It’s kind of like you not wanting me to take doses of both pain and rapture. You were concerned that I wouldn’t handle it as well as you have, which was probably true. Well, I’m concerned you may not handle the mongrels’ shenanigans as well as I have.”

  Infinity thought about this for a moment. She nodded. “Good point.” She was silent for a moment. “I know what probably happened to that guy, Reason. From what you said about the ferals, they live in a constant state of deprivation and starvation. I bet every one of those alternate versions of himself was far better off than he was. How would you feel if you found out your own life was the worst of all possible versions of yourself?”

  Desmond blinked at her. “Now you’ve made a good point.” He rolled to his side and pushed himself up onto his feet, wobbling a bit. “But I’m still talking to the mongrels.”

  “I see you ain’t dead yet.” It was Abel. The creature was walking by, carrying three venomcrooks in his upper left hand and one—presumably his own—in his lower left hand. He stopped next to the mongrel bubble and deposited the extra weapons on a pile of others. “I reckon that’s dang near all of them. I sure as shooting stars ain’t gonna abide their presence around here. I reckon—at least for the moment—that I’ve convinced the painted herd that unfettered access to rapture ain’t in their best interest. But soon they’ll be singing a different tune. They’ll be hankering for rapture like they got no recollection of what happened here today.”

  “I want to thank you, Abel,” Desmond said. “Without you, I don’t think our colony would have much of a chance in this place.”

  Abel came closer, ambling on two feet and two hands. “Every dawn brings a new day. Every day brings new prospects, presumptions, and perils.”

  “Okay,” Desmond said. “Is that good or bad?”

  “Good one day, but only for some folks. Bad another day, but only for other folks.”

  In spite of the circumstances, Desmond had to smile. “Thanks for clarifying.”

  “It’s a matter of fickle fancies,” Abel said. “If this here herd can amuse the mongrels’ fickle fancies, and if they can do so day after day, then they may live to see the sprouts of spring. And maybe other springs after that.”

  “I hope you’ll remind our people of that whenever they need reminding,” Desmond said.

  Abel seemed to fix his black eyes on Desmond, but it was impossible to know for sure. “A musk monkey’s job ain’t never done. I’ll do what I can do. Either way, old Abel’s life will be more interesting for it.”

  “What are you going to do with all these little musk monkeys?” Desmond asked, nodding toward one that had been following Abel.

  “Mongrels don’t typically keep but one musk monkey per bailiwick. But I reckon I’ll be needing help around here, this being such a plenteous herd. If the mongrels don’t further transfigure them into varmints, they may prove useful.”

  “I be useful,” said the little creature at Abel’s feet.

  Abel blew out a puff of air. “That’s yet to be reckoned.”

  Abruptly, ten yards away, group thirty-six appeared at the bridge-in site, the last of the refugees. They cried out in alarm, doubling over with dry heaves, and half of them went to the ground in a heap. A few dozen refugees and painted natives approached the newcomers and began the almost impossible task of explaining the world in which they had just arrived.

  “That’s all of them,” Infinity said. “One hour until bridge-back. Anything we need to do, we’d better do it now. I need to give one last pep talk to the colony.” She glanced at the mongrel bubble and then eyed Desmond. “For the record, I don’t want you going back in there. But you probably will anyway. If so, be damn careful. I’m not convinced those things can be trusted.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Infinity turned and headed away from the bridge-in site, stepping over a few miniature musk monkeys that seemed undecided about whether to follow her or stay near Desmond. Her movements were labored and stiff, and Desmond wondered if this was partially caused by his mental projections of his own suffering. He hadn’t intended to hurt her like that—it had been out of his control—but he was grateful beyond words for her dogged determination to ease his torment.

  She stopped about thirty yards from the bridge-in site and stepped up onto a fallen log. “I need everyone except for the new arrivals and the people who are briefing them to come over here.”

  Refugees and natives alike began moving toward her.

  Desmond turned to Abel. “Where does the painted herd actually live? Where do they take shelter in the winter?”

  “There’s a cave two hollers that way.” Abel pointed. “Much bigger than that feral cave you seen. But a herd this size? That’ll be a mite bit interesting.”

  Desmond swept his gaze over the hundreds of naked natives and refugees. “Well, hopefully they’ll be building structures for a village soon.”

  “That would be a day unlike any I’ve been a witness to.” Abel gestured to the translucent bubble looming nearby. “If you’re buggy enough to go in there and chew the fat with them mongrels again, you best watch what you say. A few foolish words might just nullify the deal previously haggled between you and them.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Desmond said. “But I need to talk to them.”

  “Chaos and clutter,” Abel said. “You’ve an aptness for chaos and clutter.” The creature then wandered off, presumably to continue searching for the last of the venomcrooks.

  Desmond walked around the edge of the bubble until he was out of the herd’s sight. Then, he stopped and held out his right hand, his palm inches from the membrane. Seconds later, swirling eddies in the fluid indicated one of the mongrels had moved into position. Was it staring back out at him? Did it even have eyes?

  Wasting no time, he took a breath and uttered the sequence of animal sounds Reason had taught him. The membrane bulged out, and he pressed his palm against it. His hand passed through almost immediately. A mongrel grabbed hold of it and pulled until his entire body had passed through the membrane.

  “Breathe,” the voice said in Desmond’s head as the force on his hand continued pulling him toward the middle of the mongrels’ domicile.

  Easier said than done. Even though he’d been through this before, and even though he was determined not to wait until his lungs were on fire, it took tremendous willpower to give in and blow out his air. But he did, and the
n he sucked in the fluid, triggering involuntary bodily spasms. Before long, he was able to relax enough that he could begin steadily drawing in oxygenated fluid.

  “You perplex us,” the voice said. “You seem to have persuaded our herd. How in tarnation did you effectuate such an accomplishment?”

  Did the mongrels suspect that Abel had provided assistance? Could they tell that Desmond’s mind had been altered by Abel’s venomcrook? Desmond would need to choose his words carefully. “As I told you before, my people are skilled at forming relationships with other humans. These relationships are what I believe you’ll find most fascinating about humans now that you are going to allow both herds to coexist in a natural state.” He hesitated. “You are going to allow this, right?”

  “You do perplex us,” the voice repeated. “We are curious. We reckon we’ll observe. Perhaps your people will live in harmony with the natural state of the land, perhaps they won’t.”

  “My people want to survive. They’ll do whatever it takes. Will you provide sustenance for both herds? There are now more than eight hundred between the two.”

  “We will, until your herd is no longer heedful of our conditions.”

  “Please be understanding of the fact that they will make some mistakes in their endeavors. Mistakes are part of the learning process for humans, part of their natural state. Please do not kill them or banish them when they make these mistakes.”

  The mongrels did not respond to this.

  Desmond decided he’d better not push them too hard. Plus, there was something else he needed to know. “When I last talked to you, you told me about a key to the bridging machinery. And you said you might share it with me if my people and I were able to convince your herd to cooperate with us.”

  “We’ve a notion to do just that. Perhaps when you return to your world, you will make some use of the key. Though from what you’ve said, it seems your world is wanting for salvation but is beyond healing.”

  “I—we—would appreciate anything that might give us the slightest chance.”

  “Fair enough,” said the voice.

  Several seconds of silence followed. But then Desmond was overcome by an onslaught of mental noise, like a dozen metal gears grinding at the same time. It was chaotic, and if it contained information, he could make no sense of it.

  He put his left hand to his temple. “Stop!”

  The grinding noises stopped.

  “Whatever that was, I couldn’t understand it,” Desmond said. “And there’s no way I could reproduce it when I return to my own world. Could you represent the information visually? Something I can see with my eyes?”

  “Perhaps you ain’t configured to make heads nor tails of the key.”

  “Maybe not, but I’d like to try.”

  “Honestly, you’re as persistent as a three-year drought. Perhaps this cipher will suit your fancy.”

  A grid of symbols appeared in Desmond’s mind, as clearly as if it were being displayed before his eyes, although his eyes were closed. The symbols were unfamiliar to him, but they were relatively simple, most with only a few lines and curves. They were arranged in a grid with about thirty rows and thirty columns.

  “This is the key to the bridging machinery?”

  “The key is what you asked for. Why in thunder would we show you anything else?”

  Desmond opened his eyes, instinctively wanting to gaze upon the face of the being who had spoken with such sarcasm. But of course he saw only blurry fluid beyond the grid of symbols. “What I meant was, is this all there is? It looks like there are less than a thousand symbols here.”

  “It’s all you need. The key ain’t thorny, knotty, or complicated. And the cipher is mathematical. If you can’t make heads nor tails of it, you ain’t suited to hold the key in the first place. Like we said before, it’s about thinning the herd, in a rather grand way.”

  “Understood,” Desmond said. He focused his attention on the grid of symbols before him. There were a lot of them, but he had memorized more than this before. One time, as part of a bet with Lenny and Xavier, he’d memorized the first two thousand digits of pi, resulting in them taking over the dishwashing and apartment cleaning for two months.

  Abruptly, the symbols disappeared.

  “I need more time!” Desmond said. “Will you allow me to study the symbols until I have committed them to memory?”

  “Goodness gracious,” the voice said. “Drudgery and toil.”

  The symbols returned.

  “Thank you,” Desmond said. He then set to work memorizing the grid. He had no idea whether the characters were supposed to be read by rows or by columns, from the top or from the bottom, from the left or from the right. Regardless, he needed a system to help him remember them long enough to scrawl the entire grid onto paper immediately after bridging back. Maybe no one would be able to decipher the symbols, and maybe the information they contained would be of no value. But so much was at stake—he had to try.

  And he had less than an hour to do it.

  22

  Tobias

  September 3 - 11:42 AM

  Infinity squinted through the bubble’s membrane. She could make out Desmond’s form, perhaps twenty feet in, but suspended particles in the fluid made it impossible to see finer details. He was still moving every few seconds, so at least she knew he was alive. How long had it been? Half an hour? What the hell could they be talking about for that long?

  A chorus of voices drew her attention away from Desmond. She walked around to the other side of the sixty-foot bubble, where refugees and painted natives were gathering near the membrane.

  One voice rose above the others. “It is just as you have said it would be. Bounty beyond reckoning!”

  Infinity pushed her way through the crowd of naked bodies to see what the fuss was about. As she approached the membrane, she saw that the bubble was in the process of secreting a granular, brown substance through a six-inch opening. The substance was accumulating on the ground in a pile that was already several feet tall. Painted natives, smiling broadly, were scooping up armfuls of the stuff and carrying it off through the throng of onlookers.

  It was food, what the natives called sustenance. But to Infinity, it looked like the bubble was taking a massive crap on the ground. She pushed farther forward and scooped up a handful of the stuff. It was surprisingly dry, like powder, but the particles clung together, like brown sugar. Its smell was not unpleasant, reminding her of mixed nuts. She watched a few of the refugees—people no doubt accustomed to eating high-dollar meals at fancy restaurants—take tentative bites. Their faces seemed to indicate that the stuff tasted about like it smelled, not bad but certainly not good. But perhaps the refugees’ lukewarm expressions revealed more about their acceptance of their new normal than about the food’s taste.

  But there certainly was a lot of the stuff. The mongrels were making good on their promise, at least for now.

  Infinity withdrew from the crowd and began pacing back and forth, looking into the mongrel bubble at every turn. On the fourth repetition, she looked beyond the bubble and noticed a figure with yellow limbs and a black torso, reclining against a tree, one hand pressed against his side. She picked her way through the brush and kneeled beside Nehemiah.

  “Your ribs are probably cracked,” she said. “It’s happened to me before. Hurts like hell for a few weeks. Make an effort to keep breathing deeply, even if it hurts, otherwise you might get pneumonia.”

  Nehemiah gazed at her silently for a moment, but then he nodded.

  “By the way, I’m sorry,” Infinity said. “My job is to protect my people, and things were kind of, you know, going to hell at the time.”

  Again, Nehemiah nodded.

  “How’s the other guy I hurt? The man who was painted all green?”

  “His name was Tobias,” Nehemiah said. “You maimed his face and diminished his dignity. He will no longer burden the herd.”

  She blinked. “What does that mean?”

 
“His share of the allotted sustenance will be available for another, as he has gone to the wild land to live as a feral.”

  “He left your herd because of what I did to him?”

  “As I will, when I am able to walk. It is our way. Our allotted sustenance is only for the proud and the strong. I am no longer either.”

  Infinity stared at him. “Limited sustenance isn’t something you have to worry about anymore. The mongrels will now provide for your herd and mine, over eight hundred people. All of your lives are about to improve.”

  Nehemiah glared at her. “Leave me in peace, woman. You and your kin are from a different land. You come here with your mind trickery, giving false hope to those who ain’t ever gonna have nothing more than what the mongrels want them to. You’re poison, that’s what you are. Leave me be!”

  Infinity sighed and rose to her feet. “It sounds to me like you’re afraid of change. But change is coming whether you want it or not.” She turned and started walking back toward the bubble.

  Nehemiah’s words had darkened her mood. Before talking to him, she had begun allowing herself to think this colony had a good chance of surviving. It hadn’t occurred to her there might be an insurmountable cultural gulf between the refugees and the natives.

  When she was back near the bridge-in site, she stood and silently watched attorneys, civic leaders, politicians, and business people interacting with natives who’d had their civilization destroyed a hundred years ago. Just yesterday, Infinity had considered these refugees to be the worst possible candidates for establishing a colony in a hostile environment. Now, though, in spite of Nehemiah’s words, she was beginning to suspect they might be better-suited to the challenges of this world than any other group could have been. If they could continue to hold the interest of the mongrels, and if they could form a civilization that meshes with the new natural state of this land, they would have a chance.

  Infinity made her way around the mongrels’ bubble until she was as close as she could get to Desmond. She gazed through the membrane at his distorted form. He was still moving occasionally, gesturing as if he were talking to the mongrels. Or perhaps contemplating something. What in the hell was taking him so long?