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Branches
“This isn’t correct,” I spoke as I scanned my duty file again. “I spent nine weeks in rehab at Saint Anne’s. There’s no record of that here.”
“Because it didn’t happen,” Cybilla said, crossing her arms again. “Not in this branch of the universe. Not this world-line.”
“World-line?” I vaguely recalled the term from a college survey of quantum physics. “You mean like an alternate Earth?”
“Yes.” She spoke in a chilled yet intimate voice. “Alchemic gold opens passage among the Many Worlds, and I’ve situated you on an alternate Earth where your wound does not exist.”
My heart rocked, because I believed her. “How?”
“Everything that can happen does happen in the Many Worlds.” Her voice brimmed with lively horror. “Every possible flutter of every butterfly’s wings is there—and every deterministic outcome to the end of time.”
She ignored my deepening frown and went on: “The light of creation cooling to galaxies shines through the void, shines inside us. Most of reality is lost light, not just out there in the energy divvied up among the vast number of branches we will never know, but in here, in our own minds, as the selves we will never be. Our duty is to see that light, relate with it, and expose all the many worlds of it.”
“How?”
“For now, you must stop asking that.” She stood. “I promise, your questions will be answered. In time. Right now, I’m late for my theater group. Dress rehearsal.”
She caught my surprise as I again took in her extravagant outfit and audacious makeup.
“Oh! You thought—” She flung a laugh at the ceiling. “This is my costume for Titania, queen of the faeries! Local theater.” Her features sobered, and she stepped closer. “We have much to discuss. For the time being, I need you to trust me. All that matters is that you feel that you are yourself again. Yes?”
I sat in mute agreement.
“If you stay here, I will tell you more. You can learn for yourself how this technology directly affects the physical body. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Why your brain works when you wear my gnostech—and doesn’t work so well when you don’t.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Arethusa sent you. You must be important.”
“Important how?”
“I honestly don’t know. But I trust Arethusa. And I would like you to stay for a while. That’s why I’m offering you a job.”
“I’m not sure what you’re hiring me to do.”
“I’m employing you as a medical doctor. You’ve been tried in combat. Your skills are proven. I will double what the military paid.”
My disbelief showed. “I earned over $148,000 a year as a medical officer.”
Without even a blink of her purple eye shadow, she responded, “I will pay you twice that. In advance. If you find that you can’t abide my work, you can leave at any time and keep these funds. Start a new life.”
She accurately read the depth of my incredulity, turned and walked over to the wall racks. From under one of the armadillo shells, she retrieved a small, green velvet pouch.
She sat beside me on the arm of the upholstered club chair and tugged open the sack. It contained a score of cut diamonds.
After rummaging among them, she selected a sizable one. “Here’s a marquise of seven carats with pavilion facets of exceptional fire.” She held it up with thumb and forefinger, and it could have been empty air between those crème crimson nails.
Then, she angled it into a sunray, and delicate fairies spread fragile rainbow wings among the oval’s fifty-eight facets. “Colorless and flawless, it will fetch several hundred thousand dollars. My jeweler in Hastings Street will pay you on the spot.”
She placed the diamond in my palm, and the beauty of it twisted wonder through me. “Where did you get these?”
“Intuition.” She jiggled the pouch in her lap and made a gravelly noise with the gems. “This cache I located some years ago during a trek in Alaska. It was lost in the 1790s by the Golikov Company of Russia. They had been trading diamonds for sea otter furs. Tlingits attacked their trade post, and the coffer with these diamonds fell into the river. I found it where two centuries of estuary currents had buried it, in a marsh on Baranof Island.”
“You just sensed it was there?”
“I sense wealth by feeling for the lost light of gems, precious metals, valuable objects. I follow deep intuition.” She gave a quick disconsolate shrug: It’s what I do. Then added, “Would you rather receive payment in gold? Or emeralds? I have those in the house as well. All found during my travels and legally claimed.”
“No cash?”
“Never.” She stood up, repelled. “Money is a forceful carrier of Sumerian magic. Its binding power is far too compelling for me to manage.”
“You enjoy baffling me, don’t you?” I only half-teased.
The air hummed with the humor in her midnight-painted eyes. “Google it. Sumer invented much of what we take for granted, like geometry, writing, how we measure time—and money. The spell that those magi cast five thousand years ago materialized the manufactured world we live in.”
I moved to return the diamond.
She waved the stone away. “It’s yours.” She replaced the green pouch on the rack beneath the armadillo shell. “I’ll get you the address of my jeweler. He knows this rock. You can convert it to cash today. Then, the Sumerian magic will be yours to deal with.”
She quirked a smile with a hint of pity that assured me she wasn’t kidding.
the Freezine of
Fantasy and Science
Fantasy and Science
Fiction
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