People, the worst thing is not knowing. Terror festers in the gap between intimation and confirmation, feeds on uncertainty, grows on fancies. There might be a lady behind that door or a tiger—but either way, it’s got to be a relief when it’s finally opened.
Ted carried that light around with him the rest of the day as he readied the house for the moving van’s arrival. He carried it with him most of the evening as he prepared a quick, cold meal for himself. He carried it with him to bed. Half a dozen times, he ran his thumb over the switch without pressing it; but, people, he could no more not turn that light on again than he could hold his breath forever.
One flick: a deserted bedroom. A second flick: a fully furnished room with a carpet on the floor that he had never noticed before. One more try, then stop. No point pushing your luck, right? No telling what might jump out at you.
No telling. The third try showed Sweet Betsy once more lying in bed beside him, swathed in bedclothes that were half pajamas, half duffel bag. She stared into the bed’s canopy with a worried frown. It was not the inconsolable sorrow that he had seen before, nor was it the icy satisfaction of the crossbower, and still more, it was not the pure delight that had tracked the two children up the kitchen stairwell. Perhaps the worm was only beginning to gnaw at her bosom then; perhaps joy was not yet something that could only be remembered.
A hand reached out and stroked her, running down her side and across her stomach, and the woman turned toward Ted. With a sudden shock, he realized that the husband must be lying just where Ted was. Ted fixed the flashlight into a space in the carved headboard so that it spotlighted the bed. His own body was transparent to the ghostlight; so he was not even a shadow on that other world. Insubstantial, he became a ghost himself, and contented himself with conforming to the motions he observed.
The man worked gently and kindly, as if the act were intended for comfort more than pleasure; yet he also worked with a certain urgency. A swift, practiced flip of the wrist, and the drawstring of the overgarment pulled loose, exposing the woman’s strange lingerie of flaps and ties. Those ties were fastened with knots to delight a sailor, and—who knows?—maybe in that world knotwork had become a kind of foreplay. A simple square knot, that was easy; and the fingers that Ted imagined as his own disposed of it in a trifle. But cat’s-paws and hawser bends and blackwalls? And the one that mattered most of all, that was Gordian’s knot itself!
Don’t you believe it! Sweet Betsy had dressed herself in slipknots and bows. Those laces untied themselves. The man’s fingers were not the only ones tugging at the ends. The woman was not the only one needing comfort; nor the man the only one giving it.
It was all visual, of course. Ted could not taste the honey of her mouth, nor smell the musk of her desire. He could not hear her whispered endearments. He could not feel the warmth and softness of her skin or the smooth, enveloping moistness of her love. Anything tactile, he had to supply himself. It was a poor thing that he substituted, though in a strange and weird fashion, he had come to love her, and, barred from all other senses, he did what little he could.
If you flip back and forth through a book, opening pages at random, sooner or later you happen on the last page. Ted’s light brought him glimpses of one tangential segment of congruent space-time. Depending on luck, or on infinitesimal differences in initial conditions, what he saw each time fell earlier or later along that segment. But chaos theory and differential topology, metrics and local continuity, are the last thing that matters here. Make up whatever explanation you want.
Let me tell you what was in that last chapter.
Start with the woman. Start with Sweet Betsy, fallen backward on the hallway floor, one hand gripping a discharged crossbow, her heavy canvas jacket torn by three parallel rents starting near the shoulder and running crosswise down her torso. Start with the blood seeping through in those tears and her labored breathing as she pushed herself slowly to her feet. She staggered and leaned against the wall, but, by damn, she recocked that bow and set another bolt before she let her hands explore her wound! How could you not love a woman like that?
Start with the woman; but look down the hall at the body twitching near the main staircase. A fine specimen of H. leonis, don’t you think? Sure, those leapers are lethal. Humans have always been top predator, and this particular breed has made a specialty of it. But you have to admire the grace and power, the lean, powerful lines. Thighs like pistons; claws like ten-penny nails! Even dead, it looked deadly. You had to admire, too, those eyes that chance had shaped to see another light. It may be that clawing your way between universes is no great feat. Universes are flimsy things; paper bags. It may be that you could do it yourself, if only you could see which way to leap.
Sweet Betsy backed into her bedroom, and Ted saw that she had moved her arsenal there. Whatever game of cat-and-mouse had been played out here—whatever victories the mice had won—it was clearly the endgame now. She was at bay and she knew it. Ted could read that in her eyes.
He couldn’t bear to see her go down. So he flicked the ghostlight off—and tried for an earlier, happier scene.
Hey, what kind of shit do you think Ted was? Do you really think he would let her go down alone? Maybe he couldn’t connect, but he could be there. Every one of Ted’s muscles were tensed, every part of him was ready; but all he could do was stand and watch. Sweet Betsy had lost all hope—she had lost her children, her husband, her neighbors, any thought that she would come through—but triumph still curled her lip. Ted could not help her, and he wept in despair. Helpless is a crueler state than hopeless.
People, lions hunt in packs.
And while you’re watching that one out front, the others are circling around where you can’t see them. On the other side of the grasses.
Space shimmered and tore. It bulged, and the background grew weirdly distorted, as if viewed through a fish-eye lens. For a moment, there were two doorways; there were two dressers against two walls. Then claws like iron raked down, the bubble popped, and space-time parted like a curtain.
It must have made a sound. Hey, you can’t rip the walls of the universe apart and expect to do it quietly! Sweet Betsy spun and swung her crossbow to her shoulder, firing even as it came into line.
H. leonis is human. Sever its carotid artery with a razor-sharp arrowhead, and it pumps its life out as readily as you or I. But it’s fast, and it’s not alone.
The second hunter was through the portal, sprinting across the body of its companion. Oh, that was a leap! Straight and true, claws aching for the throat of its prey.
Straight and true? Not with that ghastly ghostlight shining into its eyes and blinding it! It missed. Betsy didn’t. Hey, H. leonis wasn’t the only hunter in the room! H. sapiens may have been many things, here and there—but never mice.
Betsy dropped the second crossbow. No time to reload now. She seized a rifle. Bolt-action, but it fired a cartridge that could drop a lion. The leapers were dazed, shielding their eyes against a sourceless brilliance. Ted trained the ghostlight on their faces as they squeezed through the rent in space. Their eyes, sensitive to that preternatural light, glowed like charcoal in a blast. Cock. Fire. Cock. Fire. Cock. Fire.