She came to a red light, and stopped. She knew that the rules of the road applied to cyclists the same as cars, and she obeyed them scrupulously. To do otherwise was dangerous. It was ironic that people who wanted to live were suicidally careless about such rules, while she who was suicidal was careful. But she knew how close death was. She didn’t want her blood splattered across the busy highway; she wanted it handled neatly.
She saw a car going through the intersection. It was a limousine. At the wheel was a seedy-looking man; in back was a well-manicured dog, sitting up high as if the car belonged to it. That made her smile.
Then the light changed to blue, and she pedaled across. She was entering a parklike section, with trees growing fairly near the pavement. She liked that. She didn’t remember any park here; in fact, she didn’t remember this neighborhood at all, now that she actually looked at something other than the road in front of her, but that was all right, since she wouldn’t be back.
Blue?
She skewed to a stop. Then she turned and stared back, expecting to correct the glitch in her memory.
No, the green light was blue.
She resumed travel. She had never seen a blue Go light before, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Maybe it was a faulty lens, or maybe somebody had sprayed blue paint on it.
But all the lights thereafter were blue too. Soon the red lenses turned to orange. The color scheme was definitely different!
Move over, human!
Startled, Colene veered off the road. A car zoomed by, with another dog sitting up in the rear. It was as if the dog had yelled at her!
But the yell had been in her mind.
Colene stopped under a tree near another intersection and pondered. Blue traffic lights. Dogs being chauffeured. Telepathy. Was she imagining things, or was reality changing?
A car slowed and stopped near her. The black and white head of a Dalmatian dog poked out of the rear window. Are you lost, human girl?
“No, thank you,” she said before she could think. “Just resting.”
Best get on to your obedience school, the thought came. Then the dog’s head withdrew, the window closed, and the car nudged back onto the road and accelerated.
There was no doubt now! Telepathic dogs! “I don’t think we’re in Oklahoma any more, Tonto,” she murmured, taking brief pleasure in mixing her references.
Heartened but also nervous, she resumed travel. If this was a region where dogs governed people, it wasn’t what she was looking for. Evidently Darius lived somewhere beyond this. She had somehow thought the ramp would proceed straight from her place to his, but of course that wasn’t necessarily so. There could be any number of different realities between, and one with telepathic dogs was among them.
The dog had stopped to check on her, as a person might when seeing a lost puppy. The dogs were evidently in charge here, using human beings as drivers. And people were sent to obedience schools? She had better move on through!
But it was good to have this assurance that the Virtual Mode was in place. She had wanted to die, then had loved Darius, then had lost him and wanted to die again, and now was on her way to find him again. Girl meets man, girl loses man, girl regains man: standard story, happy ending. And if she ran afoul of that one per cent factor, fifteen years down the line, well, at least she’d have the pleasure of wearing out the romance the hard way: by loving him to pieces.
The surface of the road changed. Now it was rougher, and the cars had wheels that were more like caterpillar treads. And the animals riding in them were no longer dogs, but cats—big ones.
She paused at another intersection, waiting for the traffic to clear. Almost all of the vehicles were traveling at right angles to her route, which was maybe just as well. She had heard a couple coming up behind her, but they seemed to have turned off before reaching her.
A car came toward her, slowing. A tiger bounded out. You will make a fine meal, tender girl!
Terrified, Colene pedaled desperately, bumping her bike over the road-ground. The tiger leaped—and disappeared before reaching her.
What had happened? Had someone vaporized it? No, there had seemed to be no violence, other than that being practiced by the tiger. It had just phased out.
She had ridden into another reality, where the tiger wasn’t after her! It looked much the same, but was different. Her ramp evidently made the terrain of the realities merge smoothly, so she could travel along it, but the inhabitants were not continuous in the same way. That was probably just as well; otherwise there might have been an endless chain of Colenes setting out on their bicycles, all heading for the same set of Dariuses. One of each was enough!
Now she knew two more things: there was direct danger to herself in these realities, and she could get out of it by moving quickly forward. But the farther she moved, the stranger things were becoming. She could get into trouble before she knew it, and be stuck. If that tiger had caught her—
She delved into her pack and brought out the kitchen knife. Now it was not to cut her arms, but to protect her! But she doubted she would be very effective against a telepathic tiger.
Surely worse lay ahead.
She realized now why so few cars had been traveling her way. She was going in the “steep” climb through realities, and the cars were remaining in their own realities, so never reached her. But the streets going at right angles were all in whatever reality she was passing at the moment, like long rungs on a ladder.
Should she turn back? She would be safer in more familiar territory. But that would not get her to Darius. So she would have to go on, and hope she found him before she got into an inextricable predicament, as Principal Brown would put it. Or an inedible picklement, as the kids would translate it.
She rode forward. But this just wasn’t cycling terrain. It was more work to ride than to walk. So with regret she walked her bike, hoping to find a better road in another reality.
Suddenly a huge bear was in front of her. It wore a woodsman’s hat and held an axe. A wild human! it thought. Exterminate it!
Colene wanted to run forward into the next reality, but the bear blocked the way. She would have to retreat, and hope it would go away soon. She stepped back, and the bear vanished.
But suppose it didn’t go away? Suppose it brought in its henchbears and waited for her return? She could be caught before she could move! Suddenly her life, so worthless a few hours ago, was excruciatingly precious.
She couldn’t wait here long anyway; something similar to a bear or a cat would come along the road, and nab her. Maybe she could hide in the forest to the side, but there were two problems with that. One was that she didn’t know what monsters were in there, or what bugs. The other was that she didn’t want to drift any farther than she had to from the direct ramp, because she might not be able to find it again. Then she would really be in trouble, lost in shifting realities!
Even if she managed to handle those problems, what about night? When that came, and she got tired, and had to sleep, she would be vulnerable. She had to get somewhere safe before night—and how could she find such a place, in these strange worlds? How could she trust even the safest-looking place?
I’m in trouble! she thought, fearing that she was vastly understating the case. She really should have waited for Darius to come for her!
But was he any better equipped to handle these realities? His realm was magic, not telepathy, not animal dominance.
He had almost died in her reality, because he couldn’t cope without magic. She feared he wouldn’t do any better than she, and might do worse—which would mean that he would not survive the journey. So maybe she had better meet him half-way, or three quarters of the way, to be sure they both were alive to love when they met.