Looked around carefully, then started the ute and drove around, assessing the situation.

  Twelve raiders dead. Three of their trucks. Two completely destroyed, one with holes in the windows and a dead driver . . .

  Got them all. Got all our guys away, hopefully alive.

  If they saw me go down . . . they probably think I’m dead. But they ought to come back and check. Right?

  That flash . . . the old Portalmaker . . . That was a portal collapse, not an orderly shutdown. Damn.

  “It’s been eighteen or twenty hours . . .” He looked at the scattered bodies. “Damn. I may need everything they have. And bury them. Do not want to attract scavengers.”

  He drove around to a spot, more or less central to most of the bodies.

  Dug, mentally, for a bit. Staggered over to a body and stripped it. Sat in the ute and sipped dilute sludge. Dug the grave deeper and wider. Sipped. Got out and stripped another body.

  Napped.

  Kept at it in small increments, all day.

  Had a painful and very disgusting bowel movement. Buried that too.

  Wiped sweat. Desert’s heating up.

  Then chills.

  Couldn’t bring himself to strip the last body. Just roped a foot and used the ute to drag the body out of the truck and to the edge of the hole and tipped him over the edge.

  Threw antibiotic Impressions on himself. Thought about needing a shelter. I have a tarp. No poles to stand it up. He looked over at the pinwheel. I could bring some stuff from the miners buildings . . . or just cut a few saplings from the forest bit.

  He rested, woke up shivering. More antibiotic Impressions. More water and sludge. Drove to the little slice of forest for six poles. Drove back. Parked facing the portal beacon. How many days has it been? Three? Five?

  He dared to eat a meal bar, in very slow increments. Got his tarp tied to the poles and the poles firmly set in molded blocks of sand before he rolled out his sleeping bag and laid down to let himself sleep. Or maybe just pass out . . .

  “Whoo, man! You look like shit.”

  Kon pried his eyes open and blinked at the horse head that filled his vision. “Chaos? Why are you speaking English?”

  He blinked. “Oh, sorry, you’re not Chaos. His blaze is a little narrower, and he’s a bay pinto, not black.”

  “And he doesn’t talk.”

  Kon rolled his head the other direction. A big hairy blond guy. “Doc? Oh sorry, you’re not him.”

  “Nah. I’m Eldon. Here. Try a swig of this.”

  Kon rolled to his left and forced himself up. “Sorry, these raiders . . . opened a portal and came tearing out shooting up the camp and damn shield piercing bullets . . . I got the scientists out of here, but I got shot.”

  “Helios. Cannibals. I hate those ess oh bees.” Eldon put a bottle to Kon’s lips and tipped it up.

  Wine? Then an avalanche of Impressions hit and he reeled drunkenly. “What is that?”

  “Wine of the Gods, every healing spell imaginable, all in a wine base. A von Neumann’s so it spreads. Great stuff. It’ll have you back in shape in no time at all.”

  “I don hurt? Too drunk ta hurt?” He sat up looked from the man to the Horse. “Huh, you do look a lot like Chaos. M’wife’s horse crazy, goes to beeeeg shows. Chaos is the best jumper. People laugh at the pinto, and then he wins. Alla time.”

  Eldon eyed him. “You have many horses?”

  “Nah, just six, no seven. Gladiator’s retired, he’s twenty-four? My wife retired him before he hurt himself. Said he deserved to be comfy lounging around the pasture. I keep thinkin’ I should buy a couple of mares and start raising the next batch of jumpers . . .”

  “You want some foals? I’ve got four in a bubble. I let Zeus, here, grow up. But the others are about six months old.”

  “Ah. Got it. I’m halu, hal . . . I don remember the word in English.”

  “Oh?” He reached out and poked Kon’s arm.

  A static shock.

  “Oww!”

  “Huh, that’s a strong zap. Comet Fall or Empire? Nah, totally wrong accent for anywhere on Comet Fall. I thought all you Oners spoke English. Anyhow, I gotta go. Uh, I could take you with me, drop you off at a hospital . . . somewhere.”

  “In Lala land? Nah, my guys’ll come back soon.” He checked to be sure the horse had hooves and not chicken feet . . . no, that was a house, not a horse. How’d I get so drunk on one swallow?

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “Right, well, hang on a sec.” He took down one of the tarp props, split the stick lengthwise and ran his hands along it then put it back together. “There’s the foals, for you. Let me write down their names and pedigrees . . . you got anything to write on?”

  “Front seat of the ute?”

  He moved out of sight.

  Kon looked back at the horse. “You remind me a bit of Chaos. He’s really smart, understands everything I say . . . well, when I speak German.”

  The horse wickered like he thought that was funny.

  Then Eldon was back. “I put the foals behind the seat. Wrote all the stuff in your notebook. Look, keep the rest of that bottle for emergencies. I think you’re all right now. I gotta go.”

  “Wait a minute, do you know what happened with that weird pinwheel thing? Did those Helios do that?”

  “Nah, that was you Oners and Earth, uh, the Earth invaded the One World, and the One tried to get a nuke through their gate but it blew up in transit. Or something like that.”

  “Really? A nuke?” Kon stood up slowly. That didn’t hurt!

  “Umm, would you like to stay for dinner?” He actually walked around to the back of the ute. “Not that I’ve dared to eat much lately . . . Let’s see, I’ve got a canned ham, too many veggies, and . . . Ah! Chocolate!”

  “Chocolate?” Eldon perked up. “Now you’re talking!”

  Kon kept him talking all through dessert, dinner, another dessert . . . wine . . .

  A Cannibal mini-universe that merged with other worlds, destroyed by a bomb that dissolved entire planets . . . the scrambled up mess from breaking a weird connection between two parallel universes, linked by the nuclear explosion in the portal between them . . . and the mostly successful rescue missions . . .

  They finished off the last of the desert type food, then Eldon moved off a dozen feet and sat on the ground like he was meditating. Looking at the blue and doing something with one of the odd shaped bubbles? A Portal opened right in front of him. He stood up, mounted the horse and trotted through the Portal.

  Kon waved at the hallucination as it shrunk and disappeared.

  He laid back down and went to sleep.

  Woke with a horrible headache. Laughed at himself. “Feels like a hangover. But I don’t think a swallow of hallucinated wine would . . .”

  He sat up and stared at the half-empty bottle of wine sitting on the sand beside his sleeping bag.

  Frowned and wiggled. Discomfort from his back as he stood up and peeled off the shirt wrap. More dried drainage, but when he wiped it down . . . and then got busy with the ute’s mirrors . . . nasty red scars, rather than a weeping, infected, wound.

  “I hope I don’t regret everything I ate yesterday.”

  Magic wine? He pulled the stick out from behind the seat, and pulled the halves apart. A scrambling of startled hooves. Four little horses, in a wooden room. He pressed the sticks back together.

  Then he got out the note book and started writing down everything Eldon had said.

  Stopped for a drink. Thought about it, and hunted down a bucket, grabbed a gallon of water, and opened it again. The foals, still in the same place. He set the bucket down, poured half the water in it, then closed up the room. Propped the stick upright against the ute and looked around.

  One of the Pinwheel sections is grassy. I should go cut some. Lots.

  Or maybe I’m still hallucinating.

  Three hours later, when he opened the stick again, the four foals were right where he’d left them, as if frozen when the stick was closed. The water was untouched.

  It doesn’t feel like a hallucination. It’s just a weird thing. I’ll keep checking, but I think I don’t have to worry about feeding them.

  He explored the ruins, the patches of other worlds, and the desert all around. Shot a hare he was pretty sure was native to the world, cooked it and ate it. And when a storm blew through caught the rain on the tarp and filled everything he could find to fill and stripped and washed, washed his clothes . . . sat shivering through a cold night until his clothes dried . . .

  Checked the foals occasionally, and they really didn’t seem to be experiencing any time at all.

  He wasn’t sure how much time he’d lost to the fever, but somewhere in the vicinity of thirty days later the portal swirled open, and the Siberia Max Special Forces jumped through.

  “A little late to the party, aren’t you?” Kon grinned. Grabbed the small amount of gear he had out, and tossed it in his ute.

  One took his helmet off, yep, his fellow guardian. “Sorry. Your guys came tearing through, then the Portalmaker started coughing, and lost the portal. We had to hospitalize him. None of the other portals could reach you. We just got back in business.” He was surveying the battle site.

  “I’ve got most of their clothes and personal gear and weapons. I’ll let Jaeger’s people analyze it.”

  “Sounds good, your ute working?”

  “Yep.” He waved at the Helios’ wreckage. “That one might be mobile. They came through a Portal. Right over there. Just as ours was starting to shine. I think they must have detected the beacon when we turned it on.”

  Kon took a deep breath. “And not to rush you or anything. But I’d love to let my wife know I’m still alive.”

  He grinned and waved at the portal. “Go ahead. We’re going to take a longer look around.”

  Kon drove through, and out of the bay. Turned and parked. Walked back in, tapping at his phone. The local director raised his brows.

  “Letting my wife know I’m alive. And I’d better let the Director know as well.”

  He sent the first, tapped out a second to Director Jaeger and sent it.

  The armored soldiers returned and the portal spiraled down and shut.

  Kon leaned in the door to the control room; the Portalmaker was in a chair. “Thank you for hunting me down. Vova, is it?”

  The Portalmaker was in worse shape than Marlin. Old, weak. “Heh. My job.”

  “Your trick worked.” Dr. Borodin looked around. “Everyone’s a bit surprised.”

  “It seems much healthier this way.” Kon eyed the techs, who looked disapproving. “Maybe try some physical therapy . . . and real food? Not, you know, that I have any experience, at all.”

  Multiple glares. He sighed. “You’re an experimental Portal. Experiment, while you have this opportunity.”

  He stepped back to catch the Director’s eye. “How about a shower and a medical checkup, then I’ll head home.”

  The shower was heavenly, some kind soul sent clean clothes, all khaki. The doctor in charge of the in–house clinic ran a scan and whistled. “Master Mentalist with a lot of medical training?”

  “Yep. Did I get anything drastically wrong?”

  “Nope. My prescription would have been to eat small amounts frequently, with lots of liquids. Which is probably what you did. Just see your doctor on Home. Let him get a scan, so he has a history, in case of future problems.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, it’s always nice to meet people who can do stranger things than the guys here.”

  Strange? You ought to have seen Eldon. I wonder how much of that was hallucination, and how much was real?

  He drove off the mesa, and through to Regulus. Stopped at a liquor store for a bottle of red wine, and dosed it from Eldon’s bottle. Felt the spreading spells. Yep. A magical von Neumann’s.

  Added the new bottle to the foals’ dimensional room, and tucked the stick back behind the seat.

  I think I’ll leave the foals out of my report. And keep a sample of this “Wine of the Gods” in case of emergencies.

  Then he lined up for the Portal to Orion, then the portal to Trotsky, and then Home.

  First to the farm. To put the stick inside the front door, then head for Intel Tower.

  “You look like Hell, welcome back.” Jaeger studied him. “It must be interesting, if you didn’t either go home or to the hospital.”

  “Umm, in rough sequence of occurrence, the raiders came through a portal that opened barely a mile away from where ours was forming over the beacon.

  “They showed no evidence of Mentalist abilities, other than being unaffected by mental Impressions. But they had shield piercing impressions on their bullets. They had no defense against physical or energy weapons.

  “And . . . they and all their stuff was raggedy and odd. I was shot, held them off while the guards got the injured through our portal, that suddenly collapsed, not a normal closing. I learned later that the Portalmaker suffered a medical crisis.

  “Well, I made use of a large number of healing techniques, and got back on my feet the next day, stripped the bodies and buried them. Then had a few days of trying to fight off infections.

  “While I was sick as a dog, a guy showed up. Speaking English. He doped me up with a huge collection of Impressions somehow imbued on a wine base. I asked about the pinwheel, and he said it was a result of a war between Earth and the Empire of the One. He said it started with a nuclear weapon exploding as it transited a powered portal.”

  Kon shook his head. “Mind you, I’m not at all sure I wasn’t hallucinating. I mean, I thought I saw him sit down and meditate. Then a portal opened right in front of him, and he mounted his horse and rode through.” He reached into the backpack, and pulled out Eldon’s bottle. “So this needs to go to the lab, before we take the rest of the hallucination more seriously.

  “But I stripped the Helios—that’s what Eldon called the raiders who attacked us—and grabbed a bunch of their equipment. It’s in the ute. Might give us some idea where they came from.”

  “I see.” Jaeger touched the wine bottle, brows rising. He tapped at the table. “So, between two to four Dimensionally-able Civilizations. Two at war, and one raiding other Worlds.”

  “Or five. Eldon spoke as if he weren’t from any of the others.”

  “Five.” He eyed Kon.

  “Oh, and the scientists had an arch part from the desert mine?”

  “Research says it’s most likely a beacon. Electromagnets, that could blink in a complex and probably unique pattern. So the red sand desert is probably a mining world belonging to one of the others. Go to the clinic on twelve, then come back up. I’ve got some quick research to get started, then I’ll have someone take you home.”

  The clinic’s medic raised his brows at the scan. “You did this yourself? In the field?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well . . . keep to a soft diet, but there’s nothing that needs to be done until it’s completely healed, then we’ll see if there’s anything we need to do about the muscle damage of the exit wound, and adhesions and scarring in your gut.”

  Back upstairs, Jaeger waved him to a seat. “We’ve had, well in the past, a few wars involving nuclear weapons . . . no records of one exploding in or near a portal . . . but of the wars that were going nuclear . . . eighteen dropped out of contact very abruptly. None were ever found again.”

  “Damn.”

  “Indeed. We may search for them . . . the possibilities are frightening. And we’d better figure them out here before we go further toward these other civilizations.” Jaeger sat back and studied him. “Glad to have you back. Take a few days off and write out the entire encounter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Waiting for News

  Sunday, June 3, 3727

  The Tokyo Show had been hard. To turn off worry and tackle the course . . . Chaos was feeling off too, and rolled a pole to drop him to fifth place. And Ninochka felt too tired to even care.

  And now Moscow.

  With everyone here. The girls had done well, Mischa had sold one of his Class A horses, so she had watched that class from the stands. Arnd had won the Open on Jubilee, and now she and Chaos were going to have to put feelings aside and go jump.

  She leaned her head on him. “Dammit. Well. Let’s get warmed up.”

  She strapped on her regulation vest and reached for her helmet. Her phone dinged, not a familiar tone, so no one she knew. She glanced at it. Forwarding service. Message origin: Siberia Max.

  She stared at it for a long moment. Bad news they would have given in person.

  She braced herself and pushed the accept button.

  Text.

  Hi love. I’m alive. All pieces still attached. Some a bit battered. Should be home tomorrow. Hug Chaos, and kick Warrior for me. Kon

  “It’s from Kon. IT’S FROM KON!”

  Cheers from the crew and Chaos prancing and bumping her with his head.

  And she was crying. Olaf scooped her up and hauled her away from the horse. “Raffaela! Saddle up Chaos and start warming him up. Arnd, go watch the course being set up.”

  Then sat her down on the chest and sat down beside her, while she finished crying. “So, what did he say.”

  She showed him the phone.

  He snorted. “A bit battered. If he’s admitting that, he’s been hurt. Good thing we don’t have Warrior. He may need some time off. We’ll see tomorrow.”

  She took a deep breath. “Yes. Thanks, Olaf. I needed a good cry.”

  “Heh. Go wash your face and start stretching.”

  She found Raffaela standing up on his back, explaining the course to Chaos. In German. And the horse had his head up, and certainly looked like he was listening. So she let them finish while she and Mischa walked the course. Mounted up and rode off to a warm up arena until it was her turn.

 

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