Page 42 of Tidal Creatures

“But I left it there,” says Máni, sounding horrified. “I left her there. Does that mean she’s just going to … what, rot inside the everything forever?”

“Maybe if we found another Aske, we could get them to open the gate to her everything, somehow,” says Artemis. “We’re just now figuring out that the everything is divided, which seems like something we should probably have known before now, and I don’t think we have any duplicated incarnations in Berkeley. So we can’t test whether two iterations of Máni can open the gate to each other’s versions of the everything, or whether they’re locked into their own.”

“If we can find a way to get her body, we will,” says Chang’e, trying to sound soothing. “And if she’s still bleeding divinity, we’ll worry about it then. Right now, though, just to be perfectly clear: you went to the gate, Aske never came out to give you the key. You went home, and later found the key in an envelope with your name on it. David, or Máni?”

“David,” he says, with certainty.

Chang’e nods. “All right. Did you save the envelope? Maybe we could identify the handwriting.”

“You can do that?”

“Judy’s a linguist,” Chang’e says. “That doesn’t make her a forensic handwriting analyst, but she’s taken some courses. The way people write tells us a lot about how they interact with language, so she dabbles.”

“I saved it, but it wasn’t handwriting. They used a label maker.” He sighs. “I guess that should have told me something was wrong, if the person leaving the key didn’t want me to be able to figure out who they were.”

“This is a college campus,” says Chang’e. “Everyone has a label maker.” Judy has three. One that prints in English, one that prints Standard Chinese, and one that prints Traditional Chinese. She’s considered buying one of the big fancy ones that can print labels in dozens of languages; that’s probably going to be a graduation gift to herself, when she finally gets her doctorate.

“I don’t,” says Artemis.

“You just got here,” says Chang’e.

“I don’t,” says Máni, and Chang’e doesn’t say anything at all. If he could tell she didn’t like him, he’ll probably take anything she says about his lack of a label maker as insulting his intelligence. Not the sort of atmosphere she wants to create.

“It’s cool. We can borrow Judy’s if we desperately need to label something,” says Artemis.

Máni laughs, and the odd tension that had come with the label-maker conversation dissipates.

“Can we see it anyway?” asks Chang’e. “There are different brands of label maker. Maybe Judy will be able to tell which kind printed it, and then we just need to keep our eyes out for that brand.”

“It’d be funny if we caught a murderer based on office supplies,” says Máni. “But sure, you can see it. I’ll bring it to the gate tonight?”

“I won’t be there,” says Chang’e. “It’s not my turn.”

“No, but it’s mine,” says Artemis. “I don’t mind a little company, especially not when you’re the one who understands the minutiae of label makers. You can come by.”

“All right,” says Chang’e. “It’s not standard, but … all right.” They always do the escort and hand-off in pairs. The person who goes next meets the previous night’s Lunar at the morning gate to receive the key, then is escorted to the gate in the evening by the next night’s Lunar, who will either wait there until morning or come back just as the sun begins to rise. The chain is maintained, the key is passed, and nothing is lost.

Nothing is lost.

“So we have a plan, then,” says Máni. “I’ll bring the envelope, and Chang’e will take it and figure out who put my name on it?”

“Which will tell us who had the key when it should have been with either you or Aske,” says Chang’e. “To get back to the sequence of events, you found the key in the envelope. You didn’t go back to the gate to make sure that it was closed, yes?”

“Why would I have done that?” Máni sounds genuinely confused. “The gates don’t appear during the day.”

“But sometimes you can see the moon during the day,” says Chang’e. “Maybe we’ve just always assumed the gates don’t appear during the day, because we were never trying to use them. Maybe the key is less about being able to open the doorway into the everything, and more about being able to close it.”

“Can people who aren’t divine go into the everything?” asks Máni.

Chang’e looks to Artemis, who shrugs. She looks back to Máni. “I … I don’t know,” she admits. “I wish I did. It suddenly feels like something I really should know. But the person who taught me the system didn’t mention it, and no one else has ever said anything, other than ‘never open a gate where an alchemist can see you,’ and they’re not divine, so I guess if they’re a danger, then it must be possible. I was able to step down inside the everything, and it didn’t hurt Judy when I did it, but she’s always at least a little divine, because I’m always with her, so I don’t know if that proves anything. And it’s not like we can test the theory. Either it works and we’ve just dragged someone normal into the everything, which is going to raise a lot of questions, or it doesn’t work, and we’ve just killed somebody.”

Chang’e is a giver of immortality, not a committer of manslaughter. She’d really rather not kill someone by mistake for the sake of testing a theory.

“What if we find ourselves an alchemist?” asks Artemis, as if this were the most reasonable suggestion in the world. “They’re not divine. They’re mostly not anything. From what I understand, if you’re involved in alchemy and you start to display any signs of an affinity, even one of the really minor ones like the shoulder seasons, they kick you out of their little club. Usually in a very permanent manner.”

Máni looks confused. Artemis drags her thumb across her throat. His eyes widen, confusion replaced by horror.

“They kill them? But it’s not like you can decide to be affiliated with something! David didn’t wake up one morning and volunteer to be connected to the moon! He and I get along pretty well, but it’s definitely disrupted his life in some ways he couldn’t have anticipated. Killing him because of me would have been pointless!”