Ten Thousand Skies Above You

Okay, great, you’ve learned that in this world you guys get your carrots from your own yard. I’m sure that’s exactly the information Wyatt Conley wants. You’ll have rescued Paul in no time.

I take a deep breath and try to stay focused. Maybe Conley sent me to the wrong universe. Very dissimilar worlds are sometimes “mathematically similar”—so sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get where you want to go.

Then Theo whispers, “Check it out.” I look over my shoulder and realize what’s sitting in the far corner of the room: a computer.

A real computer, not some antiquated thing the size of a fridge with reels of tape and blinking lights. The slim black rectangle of the screen rests so deep in shadow that I didn’t see it before. It seems bizarrely out of place, but the main thing is that I now have a chance to learn a whole lot more about this world. To figure out if this is where I’m supposed to be or not. To look for Paul.

I touch the screen, but nothing happens. Theo gives me a look before grabbing the mouse.

One click and the screen lights up. Instead of the usual folders over my dad’s Sergeant Pepper wallpaper, there’s a flat red-and-gray box with the header ARPANET. The cursor blinks at the front of a line asking for a password I don’t know. “Can you get into the system?”

Theo nods. “Maybe, given time. I want a chance to check it out first; you only get so many tries before you’re locked out.”

ARPANET. I know that word, don’t I? Then I recall the grad student who taught Josie and me about the history of computing. The ARPANET was essentially the first version of the internet—a version that existed only for military use.

Since when are my parents in the military? Them and Theo?

That’s when I see what’s hanging on one of the hooks by the door. I get to my feet, unable to believe what I’m seeing until I touch it and feel heavy rubber, thick plastic lenses. “What is that?” Theo says, not able to see past my shoulder.

“It’s—a gas mask.”

“Why do we need a gas mask?”

The puzzle pieces suddenly come together, the solution instantly taking shape in front of my eyes. The gas masks, the cheap paper, the vegetable garden—the fact that everybody I know seems to be in some version of the armed forces—

A siren begins to shriek, so loud the vibration ought to shatter the windows. Both Theo and I clamp our hands over our ears. It doesn’t help much.

Tsunami alert, my mind supplies. Or wildfires, or maybe a tornado. That’s what sirens would mean at home.

But we’re not at home.

“What the hell—” Theo starts to say, but then Dad dashes into the living room in his pajamas.

Instead of asking why Theo’s here after midnight, particularly with both of us this rumpled, my father yells, “Come on! We’ve no time to waste!”

Mom runs behind him, a plain beige robe knotted over her nightgown. She goes for the desk and slides open a panel on the computer to withdraw the hard drive. “What are you two waiting for?” she says. “Move!”

I start running after them, Theo only steps behind as we exit the house. Josie’s the last one out of the house, racing past us with a helmet under one arm. “I’m headed to the base!” she yells, racing for a small black car that must be ours. “I love you!”

“We love you, too!” Dad says, looking back over his shoulder for only an instant.

By now dozens of people have joined us on the sidewalks, all of them running like hell. Parents hold their small children in their arms, to make better time; one little boy, maybe nine years old, clutches his kitten to his chest. Nobody has changed out of their nightclothes. Nobody has brought any physical object, except Mom and her hard drive. And everyone’s headed in the same direction.

“What the hell is going on?” Theo yells, his voice almost lost in the shrieking of the sirens.

“I’m not sure,” I say, “but I think—I think it’s an air raid.”

“What?”

That’s when we hear the buzzing overheard. Thunder that is not thunder. Fire in the sky illuminates the clouds so that we can see the outlines of airplanes overhead.

Bombers.

I realized as soon I saw the gas mask—this is a world at war.

7

I’M RUNNING AS FAST AS I CAN, BUT IT’S NOT FAST ENOUGH.

Shouts and even screams echo through the streets as we race toward whatever counts as safety. By now hundreds of people have joined the stampede. If I stumbled and fell right now, I’d get trampled to death.

Worst of all, over the din, I can hear the distant thunder of bombs.

“What do we do?” Theo yells.

“Follow Mom and Dad!”

“I mean—do we stay here? Do we leave? What?”

He’s hoping I’ll say we should leave this universe altogether, leap away and escape the consequences of the bombing. Go home.

When I’m the reason one of my other selves is in trouble, I feel obligated to stay so they don’t have to face the consequences of my actions. Here, though, this Marguerite would be screwed no matter what. I didn’t endanger her in any way; this is just the reality of her world.

But if we leave this dimension without completing Wyatt Conley’s work—without retrieving this splinter of Paul’s soul—then Paul is lost to us forever, and Theo might die.

“Keep going!” I shout back to him. “Hang on!”

If this gets bad enough, I’ll send Theo back to safety, and face whatever comes.

The sirens scream louder now, sound reverberating from every building until my ears hurt. I’d had a vague impression of this street as derelict, run-down; only now do I realize that these buildings haven’t fallen apart over time. They’ve been bombed.

“Come on!” shouts a man standing at the door of what looks like a warehouse. He wears a bright red armband and a helmet, which I hope means he knows what he’s doing. “We’ve got to seal the doors in four minutes!”

People press in desperately. Mom tries to reach for me, but the crush pulls us apart. Suddenly I’m wedged in among dozens of strangers in nightclothes, in regular outfits, even a few in their underwear; I’m not even facing forward anymore, being carried along by the tide of bodies around me. It’s hard to breathe. Gasping, I try to push myself toward the doors, only to get an elbow to the chin from someone who didn’t even realize I was there.

“Hey!” Theo’s voice cuts through the shouts. I crane my neck to see him shouldering his way toward me. One of his arms hooks around my waist, so tightly not even this crowd can tear us apart. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Which is not even close to being true, not with bombers flying overhead, but thanks to Theo, I can at least stay upright.

I shove myself forward and somehow manage to slip us through the doors. Then it’s a mad scramble down concrete steps, into a basement. Though the space is enormous, it’s crammed full of people—all of them breathing hard, sobbing, or both—and more are behind me. The only thing we can do is try to reach one of the walls so we won’t be knocked over.

Once my shoulder makes contact with one of the cinderblock walls, I take a deep breath. Stay calm. There’s nothing you can do now but hang on.