“Just polishing the lenses.” That’s Dad, who must be beside Mom upstairs. “Tonight promises to be clear, which means we’ll finally get a good look at Jupiter!”
My parents: always different, always the same. I want to see them wearing their medieval clothes—this could provide prime fodder for teasing later on, once we’ve gotten through all of this. I need to feel like eventually I will laugh again.
But first we have to get through it, which means continuing the chase the very first moment I can.
Probably Wicked won’t have moved on yet. That last scenario of hers was crafty, so I think she’s taking her time. Planning things out more carefully. Setting traps within traps. That’s not the kind of thing you accomplish in only an hour or so. (This world’s technological level allows for more sundials than clocks, so I can only estimate how long I’ve been here.) Still, I have to try. So I sit down on one of the benches by the table, take the Firebird from my robes, and hit the controls to jump.
I don’t shift universes. Not surprising.
But at that moment—the exact same instant—the ground lurches, sending crockery tumbling to the floor and making my parents cry out. I hear yells from outside, too. We’re experiencing an earthquake.
As a native of the Bay Area, and therefore someone who has spent most of her life perched directly atop the San Andreas Fault, I’m familiar with tremors. The one that just shook Rome wasn’t even that strong.
Still, it happened the very moment I activated the Firebird.
In my head I can hear both my parents saying, as they have a hundred times before, Correlation is not causation. Just because two things happen in proximity to each other doesn’t necessarily mean one of them caused the other.
When one of those things is a device capable of destroying entire dimensions, though . . .
That’s incredibly unlikely. They all said so, and I know them well enough to understand that they’d never even have considered building a Firebird if it weren’t absolutely true.
Unlikely. But not impossible.
The ground shudders again, longer this time. Longer earthquakes are more powerful.
What if—what if this was Wicked’s plan? What if she came up with a way to destroy this dimension without my help, set it in motion, and fled?
This time she might not be murdering me. She might be murdering this entire world.
12
COME ON, I SAY TO MYSELF AS I SWEEP THE PLANK FLOOR after the shaking dies down. If this dimension were collapsing, it probably would be a whole lot more dramatic than an earthquake that’s barely a five on the Richter scale. And I didn’t do anything unusual or weird with the Firebird, just hit the exact same function I’ve hit dozens of times before.
Besides, the tremors have stopped. It’s been at least twenty minutes since the earthquake. That’s long enough for my family and the rest of the neighborhood to start cleaning up.
“If we could only understand the principles that cause these tremors,” Mom says. She’s wearing what looks like a workday dress of brown cloth, and her hair is tied up in a kerchief much like mine. Given how haphazardly she dresses at home, honestly, this getup doesn’t even look that much different. “But I have never hit upon an explanation that could satisfy all the possibilities. People are so willing to declare them the work of God, without ever asking how God accomplishes his will on Earth.”
Dad has on breeches, a loose white shirt, and a cap that looks so much like an elf’s that, despite everything, I nearly laughed out loud when I first saw it. As he examines the plates on the floor for chips or cracks, he says, “I feel certain it is connected to mountains, somehow. Does not the terrain rise or fall after some earthquakes? Are not new crevasses cut into the ground?”
“It’s definitely connected to mountains,” I babble as I brush the dust over our threshold, into the street where neighbors are mending shutters or soothing startled horses. Right, yes, think about the textbook explanation of an earthquake. That’s the reason. It doesn’t have anything to do with your Firebird. Not a thing. “I’m guessing that, uh, the surface of the earth is made up of enormous tectonic plates that cover large sections of the globe. When the plates move together or apart, they create earthquakes. Over time the friction between plates builds mountain ranges. Volcanoes, too.”
There is nothing more priceless than the looks on my parents’ faces as they stare at me. For once, I actually know more science than they do. If only I could enjoy this more, instead of struggling to swallow my panic.
“Remarkable,” my mother finally says. “When did you begin to draw such conclusions?”
Oh, man. How did people figure out plate tectonics again? “Um, logic, I guess. And it’s not like you can’t see on a map how Africa and South America used to fit together.”
My parents exchange confused glances, and Dad asks, “What is ‘South America’?”
Whoops. “Oh! That’s just—it’s irrelevant. But you should look into the whole plate tectonics thing. I bet my theory checks out.”
Mom’s and Dad’s big genius brains go into simultaneous overdrive, a state of mind that can leave them in conversation for hours, their words and thoughts overlapping so fast that nobody else could ever understand.
My mood darkens again as I recall the first tremor, and the way it exactly followed my attempt to use the Firebird. No matter how convincing the plate tectonics explanation is, this coincidence is too neat for me to dismiss. Nor have I tried to leap out of this dimension again. It’s going to be a while before I feel safe doing that.
Not causation, I think. But correlation can be meaningful in other ways. Maybe my Firebird didn’t cause this. Maybe my device and the earthquake were just . . . linked, somehow.
Oh, no. My eyes widen as I recall what Paul told me back in the Spaceverse. He said that once Triad had really, truly given up on my ever working for them, they would begin to create new perfect travelers. People they could convince, or deceive, into doing Triad’s dirty work—namely, destroying universes.
What if that’s what happened here? What if something about my attempt with the Firebird signaled this other perfect traveler that it was time to begin the final countdown?
My gut churns, and I have to lean against the plaster wall. I try to talk myself down. This dimension is still here. The shaking ended. Sometimes an earthquake is only an earthquake.