Page 93 of Butterfly Effects

The math began wrapping around me like an almost-physical cocoon, pinning my arms to my side and making it feel like I was wearing a snug corset, not enough to make it hard to breathe, but enough that I felt each breath individually, my lungs working harder to expand. The white of Mark’s eyes grew and grew until it washed away everything else, and then it, too, shifted, becoming blackness around me, and blue ahead of me, flashing to red behind. We were racing into the Doppler shift.

And still Mark’s eyes blazed white, and still the colors flickered around us, and then, with a sensation like an airplane dropping toward the ground, it all burst around us. My ears actually popped as the pressure released, and I dropped to my knees, suddenly breathing normally. Raising my head, I saw that Artie and Sam were on hands and knees as well, while Mark was bent forward, his own hands braced against his thighs to keep him upright. The bloodworms were gone. They hadn’t made the crossing with us.

The basement was also gone, replaced by the lush green and brilliant floral brightness of the jungle near the Kairos village. I groaned and staggered upright.

“We need to move,” I said.

“Why?” asked Artie, sounding mulish. “I need to breathe.”

“Because we’re near a bunch of local assholes that I don’t want to deal with right now,” I snapped.

“Too late,” said an amiable voice from behind me, as the tine of a bident was brought to rest against the back of my neck. “The timing told us you’d be here. All we ever had to do was wait.”

Shit.

Twenty-Three

“Love is a form of obsession, absolutely. And some of us never learned how to let go. Didn’t much pay attention during the lessons on sharing, either.”

—Alice Healy

Back on Johrlar, being taken before the Eldest Living of the Kairos

THE GUARDS MARCHED THE FOUR of us at bident-point back through the jungle to their village, and through the village to the home of the Eldest Living. They didn’t seem surprised or concerned about the fact that we had a Johrlac with us now; if anything, they were delighted to have someone else to point their spears at.

By the time we reached the tree and were waved impatiently inside, I was ready for a fight. I balled my hands into fists, pale flames surrounding them. Everything I’d seen when we were here before was flammable. Tree, fabric, little old lady who I really probably shouldn’t set on fire—all flammable. All expendable if they insisted on standing between us and rescuing Sarah.

But when the guards urged us into the tree, the Eldest Living wasn’t atop her mountain of cloth. Instead, we seemed to be alone. I seized the opportunity to straighten and cross over to Artie, who was looking a little green around the edges.

“You all right, buddy?” I asked.

“This is terrifying,” he said. “Who are these people? What do they want with us?”

I paused. Oh, right. Artie hadn’t been with us when we’d encountered the Kairos before, and neither had Arthur. There was no way he could remember any of this. “A long time ago, the Johrlac swiped a bunch of Kairos from their home dimension because they wanted a telepathically resistant service class,” I said hurriedly. “They just didn’t think through the implications of a telepathically resistant service class that happened to be close friends with coincidence and causality, and the Kairos somewhat inevitably got away from their captors and started their own settlements in the deep jungle.”

“Where we’ve been hounded and hunted ever since,” said the voice of the Eldest Living, as she stepped out of the shadows around the edge of the space. “The collective cannot let go of the idea that because our ancestors were not from this dimension, we owe them in some way for our existence. As if the timing would not have seen the ones it wanted born, regardless of the world our parents lived in. Hello, travelers. Some of you are new to me.”

“Your guards were watching for us,” I snapped. “What is your game?”

“Freedom,” she said. “We want to be left alone. We’ve been bargaining with the current collective for a long time, and it’s no longer serving us well. We require a new collective. So we ask and wait for the timing to provide us with the tools we need. You, and the rogue queen, are those tools.”

“The rogue—Sarah?” Artie focused on the Eldest Living, suddenly intense and anxious. “Are you talking about Sarah?”

“The collective took her, and agreed to leave us in peace for a season,” said the Eldest Living, blissfully unaware of how much that statement made Artie want to beat her over the head with the nearest chair. His hands flexed, and I knew he was considering doing precisely that. It would have complicated getting out of here, but after everything this lady had been associated with doing to us, I’d be fine seeing her go down.

The Eldest Living sighed as she looked around at our faces. “It was necessary to spare my people. I apologize, but you would do the same if our positions were reversed.”

“How can you be so sure we’re the tools your timing wants you to use to break the current collective?”

“I’ve spoken to the majority of you, and you don’t become the Eldest Living without learning a thing or two about people,” she said. “Look. We all want something simple. We want to be left alone, here, on Johrlar, and not forced to return to a dimension we don’t remember in order to preserve our peace. You want your queen back. She’s been absorbed into the collective by now, and we can help you recover her. They never see us coming.”

Mark smirked. “No, I guess they wouldn’t,” he said. “I can’t catch hold of your mind at all. It’s like trying to see through mud when I try.”

“From the way you move your head, I can tell you grew up around people who see with their eyes rather than their minds. For those who neglect the physical aspects of their senses, as the Johrlac of this world tend to do, we might as well be invisible,” said the Eldest Living. “They don’t see us unless we move, and even then, they lose sight of us quickly.”

Mark frowned. “That’s terrible operational security. If they know you’re there for people who rely on vision, they should be training up guards who know how to look for you.”

“That assumes a flexibility of thought that the Johrlac lose when a single collective remains in power for too long,” said the Eldest Living. “We’re not asking you to help us harm anyone beyond the collective, which has done harm beyond measure. All we’re asking you to do is help us change an unfair system, so that we may have a moment’s peace before the new system rises to replace it.”