27

WITH SHAKING HANDS, I SET THE COORDINATES MY PARENTS gave me—the ones that are supposed to lead to the final splinter of my Paul’s soul. I close my eyes, press down—

—and slam into myself just in time to wobble out of control.

I’m riding a bike, I think, in the split second before I crash into a ditch.

Groaning, I scoot out from under my bicycle to see my knee red and raw, tiny droplets of blood beginning to bead up. Someone walking nearby says, in an English accent, “You all right, love?”

Honestly, at the moment, it’s almost a relief to have my biggest problem be a skinned knee. “I’m fine, thank you.”

That came out with an English accent too. Do I live in London in this world as well? Seems really green for that . . .

I look up and recognize where I am right away. Most people wouldn’t, but most people didn’t grow up surrounded by graduate students, who often carried brochures from the best physics departments in the world while they tried to figure out where to do their postdoc work.

When I see the Bridge of Sighs, I know I’m in Cambridge.

This makes sense. Both my mother and my father could easily have wound up teaching here; in this world, they did. Now I have to figure out what else has changed.

My first task on leaping into a new dimension is always to understand the essentials as best I can: where I am, who I am. In this case, I desperately want to find Paul right away. I need him more than I ever have before. But for a moment I can only sit there in the grass, shaking, thinking of the lunatic versions of my parents I just left behind and what they want from me.

Green trees. The beautiful old university. Faraway sounds of traffic. Students laughing as they run across the grass. Triad might destroy this universe too.

Focus, I tell myself. Freak out later. Find Paul now. Start by learning about this world.

First I take a look at what I’m wearing: denim skirt, knee socks, Mary Janes, and a scratchy gray woolen sweater (should I say jumper)? Ordinary enough, if a little plainer than what I’d usually pick on my own. I like the floral scarf around my neck, though. The bicycle looks like one I’d pick in my world too—old-fashioned with fat tires, painted a happy shade of turquoise.

My purse is a cross-body bag in black leather; I open it up to see what I find. My hand and arm hurt as I riffle through things; maybe I banged myself up worse in the crash than I thought. This Marguerite must be more practical than I am, and thank goodness, because one of the first things I pull out is a Band-Aid. I put it over the skinned place on my knee, then go back to searching. Lipstick: some brand I don’t know called Sisley, but about the same color I’d wear at home. Sunglasses, cheap drugstore version, which is what I always buy because I never go more than two months without losing a pair. An e-reader—not a model I’m familiar with, but I can figure out how it works later. My phone, rock on. When I check to see whether it’s a tPhone, however, I’m momentarily confused; in this world, I seem to own something called an iPhone. I wonder who makes this one.

And, yes, a wallet. I open it up to find a driver’s license, complete with address. Plenty of British money, the queen staring serenely at me from bills in different sizes and colors.

A red mark mars the skin of my right wrist. When I push up the sleeve of my sweater, I reveal a long, livid scar. It’s not grotesque or anything, but the sight still makes me wince in sympathetic pain. From the look of it, this happened sometime in the past several months; maybe the scar will fade over time.

But when I close my fist, I feel the ache quivering up my arm and realize how serious the injury was. More than the skin was broken. This tore through muscle and bone.

Still, it’s obviously healing, and for now I can manage. I start spelunking through the phone, which turns out to have as intuitive an OS as my own tPhone back home. The camera shows plenty of pictures of my family—Josie too, I’m relieved to see—and various friends I haven’t made in my own dimension.

But a quick search shows no pictures of Paul, and none of Theo.

Time to search contacts. Nope, neither of them is listed.

Josie is, though—and after learning what happened to her in the Home Office, I need to talk to her. So I go ahead and hit dial. After a few rings she answers, out of breath. “Marge?”

Marge? Thank God my Josie never thought of that nickname. “Hey. How are you?”

“Well, I’m fine.” She sounds so weird with an English accent. “Is something wrong at home?”

“No, no!” Hopefully that’s true. “I just—I don’t know—I wanted to talk to you.”

Her voice gentles. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. But I was wondering how things were with you.”

“I’m having the greatest time.” It’s as if I can see Josie’s grin. “The River Findhorn is seriously underrated for its whitewater rafting—it’s brilliant, Marge. Absolutely brilliant!”

Doesn’t matter how different the accent is. This is definitely the Josie I know. “Glad you’re having fun.”

“You’ll have to come up with me next time. I know you’re not sporty, but I promise, you’d adore it. And—I really do think you could manage. Despite everything.”

Once again I glance at the nasty scar on my wrist. “Next time’s a promise.” What the hell. I bet this Marguerite would enjoy rafting too. And surely whatever’s wrong with my arm will improve sooner or later.

“You’re sure everything’s all right?” Josie obviously finds it weird that I called her in the middle of her big adventure for no reason.

I try to cover. “Really, it is. But—um—last night I had this weird dream where you were gone, and I guess it made me miss you.”

After a long moment, Josie laughs. “You’d never admit that to my face.”

“Nope. So enjoy it now.”

A little more chitchat—mostly about the smoking-hot Scotsman leading the rafting party—and then Josie hangs up. Simply hearing her voice for a few minutes was enough to make me feel better; it’s like I have her back again.

For now, I think, remembering what the Home Office wants. What they might do to this dimension, or another like it.

A shiver passes through me. I stand up, righting my bike, because it makes me feel a bit stronger—but I don’t ride off yet. First I open a web browser and search for Paul Markov, physicist. The results light up immediately, and I smile. He’s here, at Cambridge.

He’s here. I’ll be with him before the day is out, maybe even as soon as I get home. I don’t understand why I don’t have any pictures of him yet—but maybe he didn’t begin grad school quite as young in this universe. Paul might be new here.

I’m going to make everything right, I think. If you ever thought I didn’t love you for yourself, Paul, you’re wrong. And you can help me figure out how to stop Triad.

Then I search for Theo Beck, physicist, because Theo should have jumped into this dimension right after I did. While I trust that Paul’s mercenary group in the Home Office meant what they said, I’ll still feel better after I’ve spoken to him. When the results come up, though, I frown.

Theo’s in Japan?

I email him, trusting that his leap into his other self will have woken him up. Sure enough, my phone rings only a few moments later.

“The hell?” Theo says, instead of Hi there. “I’m sleeping on the floor in some kind of group lodge. There aren’t even any beds—”

“That doesn’t sound like any Japanese dorm I ever heard of.” Not that I’m steeped in the legends and lore of Japanese dormitory life, but if their students all lived communally without beds, I think I’d have heard about it.

“Hang on. I don’t want to wake anyone up. Let me get out of here.” I hear some shuffling, and the sliding of screens. Finally, Theo speaks again. “Okay. I’m on a porch. Proverbial dead of night, and—hang on, there’s some kind of brochure or something out here in a few languages—holy crap.”

He sounds freaked out. My hand tightens around the handlebars of my bike, until my wrist aches and I have to relax. “What? What is it?”

“I’m on Mount Fuji.”

“How are you—” Giggles bubble up inside me. Some of the terrible tension drains away. “What are you doing climbing a mountain?”

“I do not know. But for some reason, I decided to do it today.” Theo sighs. “In related news, I’m not going to be able to reach you anytime soon. From your accent, I’m guessing you’re back in London?”

“Cambridge.”

“Got it. Is Paul there?”

The faint strain in his voice would be inaudible to most people. “Yeah. I mean, he’s not here right this second, but he’s at Cambridge too. I should be able to get to him today.”

“Good. That’s good.” There’s a long pause before Theo says, “Did you get any clarification on the collapsing-dimensions thing?”

Tension returns, a dull weight on my chest. “It’s true. In the Home Office, my parents think—you know, what’s a few universes more or less?”

“That is as effed-up as it gets. How close are they to being able to do it? They’d need a device that could move through dimensions like the Firebird, one that could affect fundamental resonance—”

He’s already theorized that far ahead. It gives me hope that we might be able to outfox the Home Office yet. “They don’t have the device, but they’re heading into tests. So not long.”

“Damn. Maybe I ought to head back home. The sooner I get there, the sooner I can tell Henry and Sophia what’s happening.”

“They need to know.” But it feels weird to say, Sure, fine, go on without me.

Theo’s been by my side this entire trip. More than that: I’ve realized how much more we can be to each other. Paul is the only one I love, but I’ve connected with Theo on an entirely new level. The friend I cared for so much before the Triadverse and the Home Office started screwing with our lives—I have that Theo back. And I’m so glad.

I can’t talk about any of that here and now. Theo wouldn’t want to hear it, not this way, not yet. So I say only, “If I don’t get home within twenty-four hours, come back and get me, okay?”

“Always,” Theo says.

The tone in his voice is supposed to sound casual. It doesn’t. Just beneath the surface lurks a kind of longing I still don’t know how to deal with—but I don’t have to. Theo hangs up without even waiting for my goodbye.

For a moment I stand there, staring down at my phone screen. I wish I could call him back; I almost wish I could say what he really wants to hear. But I shouldn’t, and I can’t.

Instead, I find the Maps app and plug in the address on my driver’s license. It’s time to go home.

My trip takes me along the side of the River Cam almost the whole way, so I’m able to enjoy the scenery and the new warmth of a spring day. Gripping the handlebars makes my right arm ache beneath the red scar, but I can deal with it. In this dimension, it seems we live in a Victorian town house not very far from the university and city center—not far over the river at all. Parked in front is an absurdly small car in brilliant apple green. At first the grand yellowstone edifice of the town house looks so much like someone else’s home that I’m reluctant to walk inside.

Then I see tangerine orange sparkle in one window: a suncatcher, dangling mid-pane just like it does at home. Reassured, I cycle up the driveway, lock my bike, and head inside.

The moment I open the door, I hear this strange jangling sound—and then a black pug runs into the hallway to greet me, all scrunchy nose and dangling tongue. Laughing, I duck down to pet him.

At last a dimension where my parents let us own a dog! I’ll have to figure out how this Marguerite and Josie managed it.

“Who is it, Ringo, buddy?” My father’s voice comes closer with every word. “Has Xiaoting come to see us—oh! What are you doing home already, sweetheart? Did the first showing sell out?”

He looks so like my dad back home, with his fusty cardigan and permanently mussed hair, that I want to melt. No more strange, crazy Dad manipulating and threatening the dimensions—just one like the Dad I know and love. “Yeah,” I say, having no idea what movie I was going to see. “I got there too late.”

“All right, then.” He gestures for me to come farther into the house, as Ringo the pug runs to his side, panting happily. “At least you’re here in time to tell Susannah goodbye.”

Sure enough, as I walk into the small but bright kitchen, I see my aunt Susannah, wearing a leopard-print wrap dress and her trademark fuchsia lipstick. My mother—looking entirely like herself—is nodding in genial incomprehension as Aunt Susannah says, “And if you’re not flying business class, I say, it’s hardly even worth it. Because in coach, you might as well be cattle, you know— Oh, Marguerite, darling? Back so soon?”

“The movie was sold out.” I stick to the excuse Dad supplied; no point in overthinking anything. Besides, I’m truly glad to see her. At home, it’s been years since we visited—but Aunt Susannah was my guardian and caretaker in the very first new dimension I visited, and after hearing about her death in the Warverse, it’s good to see her standing here, alive, well, and flamboyant as ever. “When do you leave?”

“Your dad’s driving me to the train station at quarter past. So I get to tell you goodbye twice!”

She holds out her arms. Normally I’d try to dodge this, but now I walk into her embrace and hug her tightly. Her overripe perfume has never smelled better.

Aunt Susannah laughs, surprised but pleased. “Aren’t you a dear? Henry, Sophia, you must send her to London with me this summer. We can go shopping for all the latest fashions, so you knock ’em dead at Oxford come fall.”

Oxford? I applied to the Ruskin School of Fine Art and got in? Pride and hope swells within me. If this Marguerite could get in, maybe I could too. I don’t know if they take students starting in January—but I could go to their next SoCal portfolio review and find out.

“I think a London trip could be arranged,” Dad says. “But if we’re going to make the six-forty-five train, you and I had better hoof it.”

“Right-o.” After a couple of pats on my shoulder, Aunt Susannah lets go. I’m surprised to feel a lump in my throat as she waves. “We’re off, then. See you soon, my dears.”

“Goodbye, Susannah.” My mother always has this look on her face when she’s around my dad’s sister—slightly overwhelmed, slightly confused—but in this dimension, there’s also a deep fondness.

Once Dad and Aunt Susannah go, it’s just me, Mom, and Ringo the pug. While my mother is busy putting together dinner—a Bolognese sauce by the smell of it, yum—I do some quick reconnaissance of the house. This looks like a place we’d live: books, plants. And my room is filled with oil portraits in a style very like my own back home. Josie, Mom, and Dad form a triptych on the wall, each vibrant in their own way. Yet I recognize the brushstrokes, the blended colors, the light. I could have painted any one of these myself.

Paul wasn’t just being encouraging that night we talked in his dorm room; he was telling me the truth. Have I really been selling myself short this whole time?

If I could get into Ruskin, Paul could do his postdoc either there or here at Cambridge. It doesn’t take very long to get to Oxford from Cambridge, or vice versa. We’d be able to see each other every weekend at least. It can all work out, if we only try.

So I don’t let it bother me that Paul’s portrait isn’t hanging on the wall.

What’s weirder is that my easel isn’t out. I don’t see a box of paints; when I look in the hamper, it contains exactly zero paint-stained smocks. (I’m supposed to wash them separately, but sometimes I forget, with disastrous results for the rest of the laundry.) I’m supposed to be starting at Ruskin soon. Shouldn’t I be practicing?

I head back to the living room, which is smaller than the one we have at home, but equally comfy. Plopping down on the overstuffed red sofa, I’m immediately joined by Ringo, who wants a belly rub. As I oblige him, Mom walks in from the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel. “There,” she says as she sits near me. “We’ll put the pasta on when your father gets back.”

“Sounds good.” If Paul’s a physics student at Cambridge, even if I haven’t met him yet, my parents must have. “Have you seen Paul Markov lately?”

My mother sits up straighter. “Have you seen him around?”

“I—uh, no. I haven’t.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” She scoots closer to put her hands on my shoulders. “Are you still upset? I don’t blame you.”

Upset? “I’m fine. Really.”

“You wouldn’t be asking after Paul, if you really were.” Mom sighs. “Your father and I begged for more stringent measures, but the university code is as clear as it is lenient. Technically, he’d broken no university rules. So we couldn’t expel him from the program. I almost wish we hadn’t already canceled the Firebird project, so we could’ve had the satisfaction of tossing him out of that, at least. But other professors are supposed to be working with Paul from now on! They should have kept him out of your way—”

“I didn’t see him! Okay? It’s all right.” It’s beyond weird to see my mother talking about Paul without a trace of affection, or even grudging respect.

What I see in her eyes is pure loathing.

She rubs my shoulder gently. “I promise you, Marguerite—I absolutely promise—Paul will never come near you again. Never.”

Just when I think I’m home safe, the whole world turns upside down again.