SENALL

11 When Dave and Terl came out of the back room, Dorie sighed in relief. She’d half expected them to have a disagreement, come to blows, or if not that, slip surreptitiously out the back on their own mission, leaving her here with Forno, Rob, and Terl’s other cronies on the porch. Terl smiled at her, and she felt reassured.

Dave, on the other hand, looked like he’d just attended a funeral. His eyes searched the floor, he walked slightly stooped, and his complexion looked like he’d spent days in some dark room by himself. If I’d had to guess, he was having a silent conversation with himself.

Forno picked himself up off the couch and came to Dave, concerned. “You okay?” he said.

Dave looked up, seemed to notice the room for the first time, and shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “But we need to talk.”

“We all need to talk,” Plenko added. “Rob?” He made a slight motion with his head and Rob left the house, joining the other two on the porch.

Dorie felt the tension take over the room as the four of them faced each other in a loose square. She made eye contact with Terl but didn’t say anything.

“Mr. Crowell is going on a dangerous journey,” Plenko said. “He’s going to the Ultra universe.”

Dorie should’ve jumped halfway out of her skin with this news. But no. She’d known this would happen, hadn’t she? If Dave wanted to find his dad, he wasn’t going to find him around here. Not around the Union, not around their universe.

“I’m going with Dorie,” Plenko said. “Morgan is working with someone who wants me to pay for the crimes of the Movement of Worlds Plenko. I don’t know who Morgan’s client is, or why they think they have the power to make that stick, but I’ll go and take care of that. I think it’s more bluster than blunt force. I’m not worried.”

“Terl,” Dorie said, “you don’t know what they’ve planned. They’ve had all this time to prepare. You can’t go. It’s not wise.”

“It’s time, Dorie.” He looked at her tenderly and she lowered her eyes, unable to handle that sentiment. “I need to come clean. The Union needs Terl Plenko now. They all know the false Plenko is dead. They’ll understand what happened.”

“I’m not worried about the Union,” she said. “I’m worried about this client and what he’ll do. He and his followers will operate under a different set of rules for you. You know that.”

“A risk I have to take.” He put a hand to his broad chest. “I’m Terl Plenko. Not a terrorist. Not a Thin Man.”

“I’ll go along,” Forno said. “I can help. In sheer brute strength, two Helks are better than one.”

“No, go with Crowell.”

Dave hadn’t said a word since his meeting with Terl. Dorie wanted to know what the hell they’d talked about in there. What had Dave found out about the Tarot cards? About his dad? Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. She knew that much just by looking at him.

“He can’t go with me,” Dave said.

Dorie shivered to hear his voice now, challenging Plenko’s authority. This was the Dave she knew.

“This is my journey,” he said. He directed the words at Terl. “I have to do this on my own. Those cards were made for me. No one else should have to risk their lives for me.”

“Except for me, partner,” Forno said.

Terl said, “He’ll only go with you part way.”

“But why at all?” Dave said.

“You can’t initiate the travel here,” Plenko said. “You don’t have a person—like a Memor—to help you visualize and lend you power.”

“What do we have then?”

“A noisy world.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“You must get clear of the planet. Clear of the atmosphere. You attempt the journey utilizing these cards, so you’ll need a way to slingshot from a normal relaxed state to the pure essence needed to travel.”

Dave shrugged. “Tell me what that means in plain terms.”

“You need zero interference, and you need a boost.”

“Still not plain.”

Dorie wondered what Dave would have to go through for this trip. On the surface, it seemed he was ready and willing to go, seemed to be taking it all in stride, but she wondered if he was tapping down the part of him who didn’t believe something good could come out of this. A trip to the Ultra universe, for god’s sake. All this talk about interference and boosts confused her.

“It’s simple,” Plenko said. “Go off-world. You need to create a portal and use it to focus the cards, until Mr. Crowell’s destination becomes clear. You need a jump slot.”

Dave said, “I’m sorry, but what?”

“A jump slot. You need to illegally run a jump slot and take over a station to focus the energies of the sleep travel.”

“Take over a station?” Dave said.

“Pretty much,” Plenko said.

The four of them hashed out the early details of a plan, keeping Rob and the others out of it. Dorie thought it a wise precaution.

How did you take over a station? Dave’s goal involved slotting to a station to travel somewhere other than where it normally sent passengers.

Another universe.

As they moved from the easy part of the plan—getting off Barnard’s World—and on to the bigger questions—which jump slot and station would be the easiest to take over (if that distinction even existed)—Dorie found that she’d unconsciously inched closer to Terl.

Her pent-up anger at his choice to disappear and stay hidden from her, as well as her fear of what he had become, slowly dissipated, although she wasn’t at all sure why. Perhaps, because they were all equals here, discussing an audacious plan—getting Dave to the Ultra universe in one piece—that outwardly had no real chance at succeeding. She believed Terl really had understood as far back as that encounter with Ultras in Chicago that what needed to be done now required him to vanish back then from the Rock Dome and leave her alone. Abandon her.

A widow, she’d thought.

She hadn’t been alone for a while now. Not since the new domes went up and she became the governor of New Venasaille. Terl had been absent from her thoughts, but others had taken his place, such as Aditya Thakur, and Ross, her political backers, and new acquaintances she’d met outside the offices of the Brindos Building.

She’d learned to live without Terl.

He was here now, though. He was in earnest about helping Dave. He wanted to help her. He believed he could do some good by revealing himself now to the Union.

I’m not a Thin Man.

This was all okay. She could believe him, even though she held onto some doubts. She could work with him, and she would do whatever she could to return the favor and help him. Leaving Dave behind to do what he needed to do seemed wrong, but the plan seemed set. As a plan, it was insane. Suicidal, in fact. The question still remained: Could she go with Terl, let Dave do his thing, and find peace with it?

She glanced at Terl, then took a step toward him. This time it was a conscious effort.

There weren’t that many jump slots in the Union. Each of the eight worlds had one, and depending on the insertion codes, you could get to any of them from any of the others. However, the Memors had also built long-range multi-use jump slots that were intermediate between some of the worlds. One of them was between Barnard’s and Memory.

Not many people knew about these jump slots. Dorie did, having learned of them while governor of New Venasaille. Some ships, equipped with proprietary Memor technology, had the capability to make last minute decisions to veer from the existing slot between worlds to these intermediate slots and direct the ships to a different world altogether or, if needed, return to the planet of origination.

Dave had told her about the jump slot Greist built in the space between the human universe and the Ultra universe. That was where they found Greist, the Memor who took on the job of building the accompanying station in a forbidden place, out of the loop, with no berths for ships and no obvious use, except as a portal between worlds. It had balanced there dangerously close to the fluctuating slot. It had been an anchor to hold the spheres in place so that matter and antimatter did not cancel out the entirety of their universes.

That jump slot station might have been a good out-of-the-way slot to commandeer, but it had disintegrated when Vanderberg Parr brought the Cara Landry body, with a malfunctioning antimatter core, into the House to destroy the portal and untether the worlds at the cost of his own life.

“Seems to me we want one of the intermediate slots then,” she said. “It has a skeleton crew, and although they have berths, very few ships use them.”

“Why don’t they?” Dave asked.

“Since the trick is to alter course and slide to another slot, and almost no traffic comes there to cause anyone to wait, there’s no reason to sit and wait for a spot in the queue to open up.”

“All makes sense,” Forno said, “but there’s a big problem that makes getting there near impossible.”

Dorie knew what he meant. “The ships that access these slots have Memor slot drive tech that allows the shift.”

“Certainly the Sinai is out,” Dave said. “It’s a basic transport that gets folks from slot A to slot B, nothing fancy, and it wouldn’t have the infrastructure to even handle a Memor upgrade.”

“Oh, well then, no problem,” Forno said sarcastically. “We just hijack a Memor ship, right?”

Terl had said nothing during this exchange, and that made Dorie wonder. Was he searching his brain for answers or just passively listening to them debate whether they had a chance of getting to the intermediate jump slot or not?

Now he gazed pointedly at Forno and nodded. “Good plan.”

Forno said, “No, no. I was kidding.”

“Dorie’s right. It’s the only way to get there.” He held up his hands, palms up. “Unless you want to take over one of the main jump slot stations.”

“We did it before,” Dave said.

Forno waggled his hand. “Well, sort of. With a little help from an NIO agent.”

“I was an NIO agent,” Dave said.

“Yeah, but Jennifer had more pull. And you’ll remember we were on the run. You know—for treason and all that.”

“Point taken.”

“And we didn’t take it over. We basically ran through it, working our way through Ultras and transformed Helks to get to a transport to take through the slot.”

“You’ve had some experience then,” Terl said. “That’ll make things easier at the intermediate jump slot.”

Dorie hoped something could make things easier to hijack a Memor transport to cross over to the slot. If anyone could find a way, it was probably Terl, but she didn’t know how long he’d been out of the loop while in hiding. She wasn’t sure he’d be able to help in this instance. Maybe Dave could contact Jennifer. Call in a favor.

As if in answer to her thoughts, Terl said, “I know a guy.”

“A guy who knows about a Memor ship?” Dave asked.

Terl nodded.

“One equipped to get us to the intermediary station?” Forno asked.

He nodded again.

“I’m guessing he’ll be hard to find,” Dorie said. She was ready to believe him, but the voice inside her head kept doubting. “Hard to convince him.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I know right where to find him, and he’ll do what I say. Without argument.”

So he did have some reach outside this compound, Dorie thought. A reach that showed his hand without revealing his face.

“We need him,” Dave said, “so I say contact him. Who is he?”

“Someone you know a little about,” Terl said.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve been looking for him.”

Dave thought a second, but soon enough, a smile spread across his face. “Heston Teska.”

Terl nodded and Dorie realized the truth. She said, “You took over Heston Teska’s identity, took over his compound, remained anonymous. You have something on him.”

“A little,” Terl said. “You don’t need to know what. We worked things out. He’s ready to jump when I say jump. This way, that way. He’s my arms and legs outside this compound.”

The room fell silent as it sunk in. The hush extended longer than was comfortable for Dorie. Probably for everyone.

Forno broke the silence. “I knew something good would come out of my dance number.”