The globes were still there but now they were crammed full of dark shapes and countless frantically wriggling legs. I cried out and recoiled, backing against the door and slamming it shut.
Vibrations from the slam caused the globes to jiggle, and then…
I watched in horror as they loosened from the sill and tumbled in a cascade to the floor on the far side of the bed where I couldn’t see them.
In the ensuing silence I reached behind me for the doorknob but before turning it I realized Ellie had entrusted these globes to me. I needed to check on them. Just a peek. Carefully, I stepped up onto her bed and edged toward the far side.
Oh, God, they were out. The globes had smashed and the floor was a writhing, undulating carpet of black wriggling forms the size of marbles, marbles with legs, so many legs, and they were…they were eating the broken fragments of the globes.
Slowly, carefully, I backed off the bed and stepped toward the door, but before I reached it they were everywhere, swarming over the bed and under it and around it and flowing toward me in a wriggling black wave. I was barefoot but even with shoes I’d have been defenseless. They surrounded me, blocking my route to the door, and as they closed in I screamed.
And then a voice echoed down the passage.
“That is my mother and she is not to be touched!”
The black swarm froze.
And then the voice said, “Come to me now. Come to me, my kiddlies.”
The black wriggling wave turned en masse and raced through the arch into the passage where Ellie waited.
I stood frozen, awestruck, horrorstruck.
Kiddlies…she’d called them her kiddlies.
And then I screamed again as the boiling kettle let out a high-pitched whistle.
HARI
“Wh-where are we?” Hari said as she stared through the windshield at the alien vista.
“I don’t know!” Donny said, the words still in his upper register as they came tumbling out, “but this isn’t Earth, so turn around and get us the fuck outa here!”
That was Hari’s first instinct as well—get out. And she would do exactly that. But not just yet.
“Hold on, okay? Just hold on and get a grip.”
They’d passed from bright, late-morning daylight to some sort of purple twilight, from a forested hillside to a huge, broad, bare, mountain-rimmed plateau. They’d answered the question of the semis’ whereabouts—at least a hundred were arrayed before them—but Hari had no inkling as to her whereabouts.
“What is that?” she said, pointing to the giant, red-glowing orb that hung over the darkening horizon.
“I’m gonna guess that’s what passes for the sun here,” Donny said, his voice shaking. “Wherever ‘here’ might be. Hari, please—”
“That’s not a sun.”
“The sun’s a star and that’s a star—either a red dwarf that we’re very close to, or a red giant that’s far away. I’m going with close-to-the-dwarf because we haven’t frozen yet.”
Red giant…red dwarf…they meant next to nothing to Hari…terms she’d seen in the Science section of the Tuesday Times. Astronomy-geek talk. The star out there took up a full thirty degrees of the sky and glowed a bright crimson—not bright enough, though, to keep Hari’s eyes off it.
She said, “Okay…say you’re right. How did we get to another planet?”
“Through that fucking passage, which we should be going back through right now!”
“But all the trailers are here. Septimus is hiding them on another planet?”
“Okay, maybe not on another planet per se, but definitely not on our Earth. Maybe this is another version of Earth. One I don’t wish to stay on.”
“‘Another version’?”
“Yeah. The multiverse. An infinite number of alternate realities. Can we leave now?”
Hari twisted in her seat to look back at the dark opening in the sheer rocky wall behind them. Then back to the trailers.
“Just as soon as we see what’s inside those trailers.”
With that she turned off the engine, pulled the keys from the ignition, and jumped out.
Donny wailed, “Hariiiiii!”
“If you check a tanker while I’m checking a freight load, we’ll be done in half the time and on our way.”
Behind her a door slammed and Donny said, “I hate you!”
Hari felt for him. Their situation was beyond frightening, surging into terrifying, mind-boggling, and way beyond, but she’d made this trip to find answers and she wasn’t leaving here without them.
“Seriously,” Donny said as he caught up with her. “If we get out of this alive, I’m going to kill you.”
She pointed to the nearest tanker. “See what’s in there.”
She trotted to the rear of the closest semi and felt winded by the time she reached it. Was the air thinner here?
She examined the rear swing doors where she found the lock shafts engaged but not padlocked.
And why would they be? she thought. No one’s going to steal anything here.
She grabbed the lever handle and swung it out, rotating the long shaft. It popped free and she tugged on the door, swinging it open to reveal neat rows of boxes stacked floor to ceiling. The light wasn’t great and so it took her a moment to decipher the printing on the sides. She backed away when she realized what it was.
She called out to Donny. “Freeze-dried food!”
Donny had opened a spigot on the bottom of a tanker and clear liquid was gushing out. He stuck a hand into the flow and raised it to his lips.
“Water!”
She shivered. The air was colder here. But no matter, she had all she needed to know.
“Let’s get out of here!”
But as they hurried back to the Tahoe she noticed something that damn near stopped her heart. Donny obviously noticed it too as they both simultaneously skidded to a halt.
“Hey!” he said. “Where’s the opening?”
The passage they’d come through was gone. The dark cleft in the mountainside had closed over and they now faced a wall of solid, unbroken rock.
ERNST
Ernst found Slootjes in the lodge basement, hunched over his desk, fairly engulfed in books and scrolls. The loremaster squinted up at him through a pair of bifocals.
“I
