“You mean—it’s a regular thing? It happens to other girls?”
“It does. Because they are what they are: inexperienced trusting. I suspect that some of your classmates have erred similarly. I see the signs in them. But I must say you fooled me; I never suspected. You have remarkable poise in adversity, Colene.”
“Gee.” She was really flattered by his compliment. “So if you don’t want to turn them in, that’s your decision. I won’t push you, on that; it’s not an easy route. But don’t blame yourself to the point of becoming suicidal, when you were guilty only of innocence. I can’t tell you to feel good about it, but you have to understand that you were the victim, not the perpetrator, and that it is wrong to blame yourself.”
“You mean it?” It had never occurred to her that she might not be guilty.
“I mean it. Do what you must, but don’t accept the blame.”
“Gee,” she said again, feeling a deep relief. Then she lurched up and planted a kiss on his mouth.
She sank back onto the chair. Then she realized that he hadn’t dodged back, as he could have. He had accepted the kiss, pretending to be caught by surprise. He winked. “Promise not to tell.”
“Promise,” she agreed.
They closed up the lab, and he took her home. She felt a whole lot better. Only as she watched his car drive away did she realize that she had forgotten to borrow the death-book. But perhaps it didn’t matter. She no longer wanted to die.
Amos didn’t tell, and neither did Colene. They treated each other with almost complete indifference in class, both knowing how to keep a secret. She made an A in science the next semester, but knew she had earned it. Her crush faded, but she retained considerable respect for the man. He was a straight player.
Her suicidal inclination had been beaten back, but as her crush departed, her depression returned. She started scratching her wrists and watching the blood flow. So she hadn’t really accomplished anything by her encounter with Amos, but she didn’t regret it. As far as she knew, no student had ever kissed him. She probably held the record, as far as making an impression on him went. She liked him, and knew he liked her, and perhaps that was the thing that kept the balance slightly to the side of life instead of death.
In such manner she had come to appreciate the significance of the Burgess Shale—and now she was extremely glad of it. Because it enabled her to understand the nature of this new anchor reality they were in. Thank you, Amos, she thought.
When she was fourteen, at the depth of her depression, Darius had come from his other reality, looking for a woman to love and many. That had been Colene’s salvation, because there was nothing left for her in her own reality of contemporary Earth. Indeed, it turned out that he had come because she was one of the few people who could be taken from her reality without affecting it—because she was going to die soon anyway. She had loved him instantly, seeing in him a man like Amos, only more-so, and he had loved her—until he learned that she was not only underage by the standard of her culture, she was depressive. He needed a woman of age and full of joy. She had also doubted him, thinking that he was imagining his fabulous magical home reality. So they had parted—and realized that it was too late. All either wanted was the other.
So Darius had tried to repair things the hard way: by setting up a Virtual Mode, where there were no restrictions on what could be done in another reality. But the Virtual Mode was not a direct connection between their two worlds; it was a reality in itself, set as it were crosswise to the layered other realities. It was anchored in five realities, to keep it stable as a four-dimensional temporary entity. Darius had to walk across it to reach Colene’s anchor-reality, crossing other realities at intervals of ten feet, and everything could change with every invisible boundary. He had a long trek to undertake.
Colene, discovering the Virtual Mode from her own anchor, had set out to join him. She had found the traveling rife with danger. But she had also found Seqiro, the telepathic horse, who sought adventure and a girl to love.
Colene loved horses. It was a match made in heaven—or the Virtual Mode.
But when the two had finally met, they were trapped in one of the other anchor realities: the DoOon Mode, where the Emperor Ddwng had sought to use them to enter the Virtual Mode and conquer the other realities. They had barely escaped, and found themselves in the Julia Mode, with Nona as the new anchor person. Nona was everything that Colene wished to be: lovely, nice, full-breasted, magical, and of age. Both Darius and Seqiro liked her. So now Colene wanted to get man and horse rapidly across the Virtual Mode to Darius’ home reality, before either changed his mind about Colene.
“And that is where we stand at the moment,” Colene concluded. “We’ll be happy to take you along, Burgess. We’d be on our way right now, if that damned mind predator hadn’t zeroed in on me and forced me to get off the Virtual Mode. But it should lose interest in a few days, and then we’ll resume our trek. We’re ordinary folk, like you, just with different bodies and metabolism. By the time we get back on the Virtual Mode, we should know each other well enough to be a decent team, so we can handle whatever other surprises it has for us. I think we’ll get along just fine. Just don’t try to charm my horse and my man from me.”
Then, as an afterthought to Nona: “No offense, damsel.” Because Colene liked Nona too, and knew the woman did not wish to be the threat she was to Colene’s future.
CHAPTER 4—ANOMALY
NONA was amazed. She had had no idea that Colene had such a history. No wonder the girl had such a complex array of traits. Even in the ambience of mind-sharing that Seqiro the horse provided, so much was omitted, because it didn’t come to the surface. For example, this was the first time that Colene had spoken directly of her introduction to Darius and Seqiro.
Colene was indeed depressive, and she tended to see and express things with almost painful candor. Though she addressed Nona as if she were a rival for the love of horse and man, it had been Colene herself who had asked Nona to join them on the Virtual Mode, instead of vacating her anchor and remaining in her Julia Mode. And Colene was not an inferior person. She thought her age to be a liability, but that was only in one particular culture, and in any event she would outgrow it, inevitably, in time. She thought her appearance was modest, when she was actually a lovely young woman. She thought she wasn’t nice, when in fact she had qualities Nona envied, such as intelligence, courage, and generosity. She thought she was in danger of losing the love of Darius to Nona, but Nona had no wish for that sort of relationship with a man. In fact, she had come on the Virtual Mode to escape the need to settle down, marry, have babies, and lose her magic in her home Mode. Nona wanted adventure, and when they reached Darius’ Mode, Nona hoped to remain on the Virtual Mode and continue exploring other realities. She hoped Colene would come to believe that.
By now dawn was showing, and they had to start moving. They didn’t want to sit and wait for another monstrous crab to attack. They had to get to some place that was secure from predators, so they could sleep without having crabs move in.
They consulted with Burgess, with whom Colene had established the best rapport. Increasingly the creature’s thoughts were becoming part of the mind net made by Seqiro. Burgess was alien, but he seemed to really want to communicate, which helped. He normally belonged to a hive of his kind, and needed constant interaction. Now he wanted to interact with them, and this was his right, because he was this reality’s anchor creature. Nona had so recently become part of the Virtual Mode that she appreciated its novelty and promise, and understood why any creature would desire it. She also understood the appeal of joined minds; insecurity faded and confidence increased, because of the constant support by the others. Five minds were much stronger than one.