He was desperate for a way back to his reality. He’d considered going floor to floor and room to room in search of another gap in a floor or ceiling, but put it off. He could always do that. What he couldn’t get out of his head was the last button in this elevator. Why was it locked?
Finally one slipped in and turned.
“Yes!” he cried as the cab started down. But down to where?
Well, he’d find out soon enough. For all he knew, it opened into hell itself.
He adjusted the weight of the 172-page manuscript tucked under his arm. Okay, so it wasn’t the Great American Novel, but it sure as all hell was the Great American Novella.
He couldn’t be sure—not without a word processor to do the counting—but he guesstimated the novella’s length at forty-two or forty-three thousand words. He never dreamed he was capable of that kind of output. It seemed almost inhuman. But the words kept flowing faster and faster and his typing kept accelerating to keep up. The pain in his fingers had reached an excruciating level and then they’d gone numb. He looked at his fingertips. They weren’t bleeding but they’d been bruised a deep purple.
He supposed he could have stretched the story another ten thousand words to put it over 50K and make it officially a novel, but that would be padding. Gilding the lily, as it were. Novella was the perfect length for this story.
Now, to get it to a publisher.
Frankie needed a shave and—he sniffed an armpit—a bath too, but most of all he needed to get this story back to his world.
After maybe half a minute, the cab stopped with a lurch and the door parted. Frankie stood and stared. No, not hell. But maybe a passage to hell?
Or a passage to somewhere else?
A rough-hewn, squarish tunnel, maybe eight feet on a side, carved through dark stone, stretched ahead of him, curving off to the left. Smokeless flames flickered in sconces spaced along the walls.
Okay, first question: Who lit the sconces? And second, what were the flames feeding on?
What did it matter? In sharp contrast to the blah, semi-modern, characterless buildings on the surface, this tunnel looked ancient. And that gave Frankie hope. Because it might just lead somewhere else.
Was it unreasonable to hope it led back to Manhattan—his Manhattan? Most certainly. Did he have a better route to follow? No.
With the manuscript of the Great American Novella clutched to his chest, P. Frank Winslow started walking.
ERNST
“Winslow never came back,” Belgiovene said, slouching in the chair opposite Ernst’s desk. “It’s like he vanished from the face of the Earth. But don’t ask me to keep waiting for him. I spent the better part of a day and a half sitting in his crummy apartment with nothing to do. Damn near went crazy.”
P. Frank Winslow’s laptop lay on Ernst’s desk. He drummed his fingers on its closed cover. Belgiovene had stated it was the only computer in the apartment. That didn’t mean Winslow hadn’t backed up his writing to a storage service like Dropbox, but no matter. He hadn’t called Belgiovene to his office to inquire about Winslow. The hack had been demoted to a secondary concern. Ernst had a much more delicate assignment for the killer.
“Let’s put P. Frank Winslow aside for the time being. We have a more pressing concern.”
“Oh?” His ennui was palpable.
“The Council has designated our loremaster a Threatening Presence.”
Belgiovene jerked upright in his chair.
Now he shows some life, Ernst thought.
“What? Slootjes a TP? That’s crazy.”
“I was as surprised as you, but he’s been denigrating the Council and the Order itself, and at noon he plans to spread his vitriol to the entire membership.”
The big man frowned. “What’s vitriol?”
“A fancy word for ‘poison.’” Not entirely accurate, but better that than trying to explain sulfuric acid to this man.
“Today? Of all days he’s chosen today to dump on the Order?”
“I tried to talk him out of it but he’s determined.”
He’d reasoned with the loremaster for half an hour but Slootjes might as well have been stone deaf for all the effect Ernst’s arguments had. When he’d informed him of the Council’s Threatening Presence designation, Slootjes pulled a pistol and ordered Ernst from the archives, saying he’d defend himself against whoever tried to stop his message.
Ernst fixed Belgiovene with a pointed stare. “So I’m afraid it’s up to you to—”
“Take him out? Me?” Belgiovene leaped from the chair. “No way. I don’t whack a brother. That’s a line I will not cross. Find somebody else.”
And with that he strode from the office.
Ernst watched him go, then sighed.
I guess that leaves me.
He’d work himself up to it. On today of all days, the beginning of what he had worked all his life to bring about, he was being forced to eliminate a brother of the Order. He could almost hate Slootjes for putting him in this position.
He nursed the negative feelings, certain that the more he thought about it, the easier it would become.
BARBARA
My mind still reeled from all that Ellie had just told me. We’d strolled the Coney Island boardwalk—down past the Parachute Jump and then back—looking like any normal mother and daughter out to breathe the salty air. But as we walked she’d filled my head with tales that were anything but normal.
She spoke of vast, unimaginably huge forces that spanned the multiverse. So vast and so few in number that they needed no names. Lesser beings with their need to classify and codify had concocted tongue-twisting designations, but the entities answered to no one, not even each other. They searched out worlds populated with sentient and sapient beings where they could toy with the inhabitants. Competition for these worlds put certain entities in conflict as one would try to usurp control of a world controlled by another.
Earth
