Run or Hide or Something Else • The Pit • Wildlife Preserve • A Temptation • Negotiations • Bad Faith

Luckily we were streets away from our point of arrival, so we weren’t in imminent danger of discovery, but who knew what resources the Lector and his psychotic sidekick had to track us down? If nothing else, we’d probably left a discernible trail in the crystals we’d walked through – they didn’t take tracks as clearly as fresh snow or even damp earth, but you could see the traces if you looked closely, and the Lector was excellent at observation.

“What do we do?” Minna said. “Sleep again?”

I considered. We only had so many instant sedatives, and I liked to save them for situations when escape was the only option, not just the most attractive one. “We could try to hide, wait them out, hope they move on?” That left us open to potential ambush if we ended up in the same world after them, though. I wished Vicki was right: I wanted to be able to steer. Being buffeted by the randomness of the multiverse had been terrifying at first, and later become exciting (at least sometimes), but most of all it was just frustrating.

“There is an option besides running or hiding,” Vicki said.

“I told you, I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“It doesn’t have to come to killing. I’ve done a passive scan of the environment, and I have an idea, if the two of you are willing to provide the manual dexterity I lack…”

“I know you’re here, Zaxony!” the Lector shouted. “I used your blood to make more than just the travel serum. I also made… call it a compass. I have a device that detects your presence. It’s leading me right to you.”

“Oh no,” Minna whispered.

“He may be lying.” I spoke softly into her ear. We were crouched in a dark and dirty storage room on the ground floor of a building that might have been apartments before the world crystallized. Heaped boxes formed a barricade in front of us, with enough gaps in the pile for us to see the door. We’d chosen this position carefully, at Vicki’s instructions, and prepared as well as we could. “He does that a lot. He probably yells ‘I know you’re here’ in every world, just on the off chance he’s right.”

“Given the level of technological prowess you described, we can’t rule out a tracking device, though,” Vicki said. “We’ll know soon enough.”

We waited, and it wasn’t long before I heard the crunch of feet approaching through the crystals. We’d left a trail on purpose this time, detectable but not too obvious. The Lector had underestimated me for a long time, but it was possible, after getting the better of him in our last meeting, that he was more cautious now.

A figure appeared in the doorway: the Lector, wearing a white coat, all dirty and smeared. He cocked his head, considering the scene: a small room, the floor covered with a messy spread of flattened cardboard, with boxes stacked messily at the far end. He held some kind of gleaming metal pistol in his left hand. “There you are, Zaxony. I smell you.” The Lector rushed into the room, eager to capture us – and then howled as the floor dropped out from underneath him. I waited a moment to see if Polly was going to race in to his aid, then, when there was no sign of her, rose and went with Minna to the edge of the pit.

Many of the buildings here were in decay and disarray, with assorted structural damage. Vicki had scanned the surroundings and found the perfect site for a trap. A room with a hole in the floor about three meters across that dropped the same distance down into some sort of basement room. The exits down there were blocked by rubble, Vicki assured us. We’d trapped the Lector. Which didn’t stop him from shooting – there was a thwap and something blurred out of the pit, past my head, and embedded itself into one of the cardboard boxes. Minna went to investigate. “A little dart.”

“Some sort of tranquilizer?” Vicki said. “That doesn’t make much sense. Knocking you unconscious would only allow you to escape. Perhaps… Minna, would you pluck that dart free? I’d like to take a look at it later. But be wary of the tip.”

She carefully worked the dart – it was small, half the length of my pinky finger – out of the box, then fished in her bag and came out with a bit of cloth, bundling up the dart and stowing it away.

“You filthy meat-thing!” the Lector howled, and then… his face changed, the flesh melting and shifting, and soon it wasn’t the Lector down there at all, but a vaguely humanoid fungal creature. “I will eat you!”

Oh, no. Polly. Which meant the Lector was–

“I thought it best to send a scout ahead,” a voice said. I looked up, and the Lector was there, leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, looking casual and comfortable. Polly howled wordlessly from the pit. “I don’t recognize that other voice. You’ve made new friends, Zaxony, but I don’t see them. Don’t you want to introduce me?”

We said nothing.

The Lector shrugged. “Your new companions are cowardly trap-setters, it seems. Those vines a few worlds back! Very interesting specimens. It took me forever to hack them away – they kept growing almost as fast as I could slice them. I wonder, in that world with the standing stones, and the peculiar dome that surrounded us, preventing us from venturing out – did you have something to do with that, too?”

“I don’t want to fight you,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt you, either. I just want to live in peace.”

The Lector shook his head sadly. “This has become an existential matter for me, Zaxony. I must get more of your blood, or I might find myself stranded in some horrible place like this, where my talents would be wasted.”

Minna began creeping around one side of the hole, and I began to move around the other side. I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking it, too: there were two of us, and only one of him. He didn’t have a confederate holding a knife to Minna’s throat this time. “Oh, are you planning to rush me?” he said. “Drop me in a hole with my pet? Adorable. I urge you to try.”

I lifted the hand with the ring on it and said, “Blind him.” Vicki obligingly lanced a searing blast of light, narrow and focused, directly into his face, and Minna leapt at him.

She passed right through his body, landing with a squawk in the corridor beyond.

The Lector grinned, not in the least discomfited by the light or anything else. “I broke apart the stones in that world with the dome – nothing much else to do there – and found the most interesting technology, projectors that create very realistic illusions. It was a small thing to integrate those projectors with some of the microdrone technology I brought from my home world. Zaxony, this would all be easier if you would just accept that I am much smarter and more capable than you are.”

“Minna, you can sense life, yes?” Vicki said. She stood behind the image of the Lector, nodding. “How precisely can you locate that life?”

“Who is that talking?” the Lector said. “Are they broadcasting from some other location? If so, they’re a brave companion, to be more than an arm’s length away from you. What if you get sleepy and strand them here?”

We ignored him as Minna shook her head. “Maybe… a direction, and near or far, strong or faint, but it is not a map in my head with a dot flash flash flashing. There is something alive…” She gestured toward the pit, then gestured out the door behind her. “Somewhere over there. I thought the man of light was real because he was close enough.”

“I can scan for structural details, but finding living things is beyond my abilities,” Vicki said. “Perhaps if Minna and I combine our powers, we can track him.”

“Let’s do it.” I’d had enough of this. My life was hard enough without being pursued. It was time to do the pursuing.

“You really shouldn’t ignore me like this,” the Lector said.

“Let me out!” Polly howled.

None of us responded to either of them, or looked back when we walked past the projection of the Lector. I wondered if it was murder to leave Polly in this world, but I thought not. She would be able to extend tendrils to the top of the pit, given time, and crawl out. I hoped it wouldn’t happen until my friends and I, and the Lector, were all long gone. Let this crystal world be Polly’s prison. A lifetime of solitary confinement was arguably cruel, but it was mild punishment for the gleeful killer of a whole civilization. I wasn’t comfortable sitting in judgment, but I supposed Vicki and Minna and I could be a sort of tribunal of last resort, and I knew they would have advocated for a harsher sentence than banishment.

The illusion of the Lector walked along with us as we navigated a series of narrow halls. “Zaxony, I believe we can reach an accommodation. While I would personally undergo a minor surgery without anesthetic to further the cause of science, I understand your reluctance to do the same. My impatience and frustration led me to act… precipitously. I apologize.”

“Apology not accepted.”

“I have seen the error of my ways. I implore you to work with me, rather than against me. Travel with me again, and eventually we’ll find a world with sufficiently advanced biotech to allow me to clone you, or pursue other avenues of study to discover the source of your power. In the meantime, all I’ll need is the occasional blood sample to replenish my supply of serum–”

“Why would I want you to have that power?”

“Because in exchange, I’ll find a way to cure you.”

I stumbled at that, but kept going.

“Think of it,” he said. “Once I’ve unlocked your secrets, I can remove this curse from you. You can travel with me, then, until you find a nice world where you can settle down and become a… guidance counselor, or whatever it was you wanted to be back home. Then I’ll head out into the vastness of the multiverse to make my mark, and you can have a nice, small life, no longer forced into a nomadic existence that doesn’t suit you. I’ll even solemnly swear, connected to any lie detector you like, to leave your new home world out of my plans for conquest once I learn to control where I travel. That world can be a sort of wildlife preserve. You’ll never see or hear from me again. You and Minna and your… talking jewelry, it appears… can be very happy together, I’m sure. What do you say?”

I want to say I wasn’t tempted, but the idea of being able to stay somewhere quiet, without danger or fear, was naturally appealing. They say you always want what you can’t have. When I lived at home in the Realm of Spheres and Harmonies, all I wanted was to venture out to places of danger and conflict, so I could help them achieve peace and accord. The center of the Realm where I lived was settled, and only ever required minor adjustments to keep everyone within the acceptable parameters of satisfaction, but I always gravitated to the bigger problems – the ones that required more inventive and dramatic decisions. There were precious few of those problems in Central, but in outlying regions of Realm space, and in newly annexed regions, there were plenty of serious conflicts – clashes of cultures, struggles for resources, sometimes even acts of violence. Those were territories where the “Harmonies” part of the name of our Realm was still purely aspirational, and I aspired to help achieve that aspiration. I had plans to continue my career in those dangerous places once I’d attained a higher level of seniority and proven myself, fueled with the zeal to make the Realm a better place.

Now, though, that my life is a succession of dangerous places, often with problems that even the most highly trained harmonizer would find insurmountable without completely rebuilding the structure of a given society, I desperately crave peace, and comfort, and quiet.

Even if I did trust the Lector to do as he promised, rather than jumping on me again, scalpels drawn, at the first opportunity, there was a problem: the infinity of worlds the Lector would poison with that kind of power, the lives he would trample without even noticing them, and the people he would toy with and spoil for amusement and spite. I couldn’t doom people, worlds, to that kind of fate. “No. You don’t get to win.”

“That’s a very childish response, Zaxony. I thought you believed in fostering scenarios where all parties involved get to win–”

Minna slapped her palms together, and the Lector abruptly vanished. “Got it.” She opened her hands, and a little sprinkle of sparkling glass and metal sifted down.

“That drone was so small or well-shielded I couldn’t even detect it,” Vicki said. “Well done, Minna.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes you have to kill pests to save the crop.” She pointed. “There is life still in this direction.”

We made it to the lobby of the building, and opted not to leave by the door we’d broken our way through. That was too obvious a point of egress, and the Lector might be watching. Soon we found a side door, covered in crystals like the rest, but unlocked. We’d make noise smashing through it, but if we moved fast, we could get out of sight quickly. Of course, the Lector could have drones flying around watching us, but I doubted he had very many of those left. I knew from my time in his world that they were expensive and prone to malfunction.

“Let’s take a moment to plan our next moves,” Vicki said, and we hunkered down by the door for a few minutes, talking about possibilities. Vicki made some interesting suggestions, and Minna and I talked about the best way to put their ideas into action. The main approach Vicki had in mind was worryingly direct, but we were short of options.

“I hope this works,” I said.

“I estimate a sixty-five-percent chance of success,” Vicki said. “Don’t be discouraged by that. My analytical engine built in a lot of doubt because you and Minna aren’t professional operatives, but I am confident in your abilities.”

“That’s reassuring,” I muttered. I kicked the crystal covering the door, making it rain down jewels, and strode out into the waning light of the crystalline sun. “Lector!” I shouted. “Come out, and let’s finish this!”

“How do you propose we do that, Zaxony?” The voice came from a nearby building, the same one where Minna and Vicki had agreed the Lector was most likely located. I imagined a sniper rifle, pointed at my head, but I knew he wouldn’t want to kill me – not as long as he needed an unlimited supply of my blood.

“I’ve considered your proposal,” I called. “I don’t like it, but you’re right – my whole purpose is to bring people into accord. We might be able to reach a compromise. But I’ll need assurances, and safeguards, and you have to treat this as a negotiation, not an opportunity to make threats.”

“You dropped my friend into a pit, Zaxony, and now you want to be polite and courteous?”

As if the Lector had friends. I’d believed I was his friend, once. “You threatened to murder my friend not so long ago. I’ll let the past go if you will.”

A pause. “Fair enough! I’m coming out.”

The Lector approached me from the base of the building, smiling faintly, and stopped two meters away. We stood together in a bare square of crystal-covered earth, the buildings around us casting long shadows. “No more ambushes planned?”

“We used up all our cleverness already,” I said.

“If you hadn’t snagged me with those vines, I might have underestimated you and blundered into your pit, so perhaps you’ve been too clever, hmm?”

I took a deep breath and adopted the soothing, attentive tone I’d learned to use in my training. “Lector. We’re here to negotiate an end to our hostilities, and find a way forward that will satisfy us both.” I stepped toward him and held out my hand.

He looked at my outstretched hand and frowned. “You want me to touch you now?”

I kept my hand out and my eyes on his. “It’s traditional in the Realm of Spheres and Harmonies to begin such negotiations with a handshake.”

“A primitive act, but if it makes you happy.” He grinned. “Remove the ring, though. Once upon a time, handshakes were a way to tell if the other party had a dagger hidden up their sleeve, but the effectiveness of that tactic ended once rings with hidden needles were invented.”

I twisted Vicki off my finger and passed them to Minna, who stood solemnly behind me.

The Lector reached out and clasped my right hand. Then I reached out with my left hand, enfolding his hand in both of mine.

Minna had hollowed out a hole in the center of my left palm, which was, after all, living wood underneath, not flesh. She’d concealed the dart Polly fired at us in the hole, so only the very tip of the needle protruded. The Lector had been closer to correct than he realized.

I squeezed the Lector’s hand as hard as I could, and watched his eyes widen.