How to Kill a Vampire in Outer Space Page 7

The door on the opposite wall slid open for me and I stepped into the shifter. A shifter’s like an elevator that doesn’t move. Instead, it teleports you to another shifter near your destination. Spanners can’t take you anywhere within the same universe, unfortunately, and it’s kind of a waste of energy to jump out of reality and back just for a shortcut to the cafeteria.

  The shifter door slid shut. “Commissary Three,” I said.

  There was no sensation of movement, but when the door slid open again it was onto the hallway outside my intended destination. I stepped into the corridor and paused to stare out a large window at the landscape outside the complex. The terrain was a deep ruddy bronze, and with no atmosphere to disturb it the rocks, craters and cliffs were still. In the distance I could make out the lights of a few other massive metallic structures, identical to the one I was in.

  The sun was small and dim, less than half the size of Earth’s – or rather, it was about the same size, but much farther away. We were on the fourth planet of the six in this solar system. The planet was named, rather unimaginatively, Four. (You can probably deduce the names of the others.) The sun and the lights from the buildings were the only illumination the surface received – there were no other stars in the sky, just the five pinpricks of light from our nearby planetary neighbors. Millennia ago, the Parallel Council, the founders and big bosses of the Crossroads, had found an empty universe and created their own solar system within it to act as their base.

  Their pockets run pretty deep.

  A heavy, hairy paw came to rest on my shoulder. “The view is still breathtaking, isn’t it? Even with all we’ve seen.”

  “Liz!” I spun around. “Didn’t think I’d see you!”

  Field Agent Apprentices train in trios, and Liz Barry and I had learned the ropes together. She was from an Earth just like mine, so we had bonded pretty quickly, finding a reassuring stability in each other amid all the sudden multi-universal oddities. The only significant difference between our universes was that on her Earth, everyone was a bear.

  Well, not a bear, exactly. Evolved from bears, like I’m evolved from apes. Liz was about six four, a good five inches taller than me, and she was broad and strong. She was covered in a short, soft coating of brown fur, thicker on the top of her head. The “whites” of her eyes were actually a reddish-brown, and her wet black nose sat at the end of a very short snout.

  Liz enveloped me in a...I can’t help it. A bear hug. “My last mission took six months!” she said. “I haven’t seen anyone in forever. It’s so good to see you, monkey!”

  I gasped for breath. “I’ve missed you too, Pooh-bear, but I need these ribs...”

  “Oh!” She let me go. “Sorry. Got carried away. Oh my gosh! I’m meeting Lock for lunch! We’re all together!”

  “Holy crap.”

  Lock was the third member of our training squad, and although I had seen him and Liz individually, the three of us hadn’t all been together in ages. Field Agents’ mission lengths were erratic, plus there was the issue of time running at different speeds in different universes – it made it difficult to schedule get-togethers.

  “Have we all been together since the commissioning ceremony?” she asked.

  I shot a look down the corridor towards the commissary. “Uh...I don’t think so...”

  She laughed. “How long since you’ve seen him, anyway?”

  I snapped my attention back to her. “Oh, I don’t know. Not too long.”

  She took my hand. “Well, let’s not keep him waiting, it’s impolite. And I’m starving.”

  We entered the commissary. It was one of several in the complex, but it was the one the three of us always went to because of the incredible view out of the huge viewport taking up one entire wall of the cavernous seating area, and also because it had the best chocolate cake.

  I scanned the crowd but saw no sign of Lock. Liz and I grabbed trays and wandered among the various stations. Most of them provided food we were familiar with, as this complex predominately served humanoid agents from some version of Earth. I grabbed a plate of spaghetti Bolognese and a glass of some weird pink juice I had grown to love, made from a fruit that didn’t exist in my universe. I hesitated over the garlic bread, but decided against it.

  As we returned to the seating area, Liz nudged me, jostling my juice. “There he is!”

  She waved a paw, and I spotted Lock waving back, indicating a table where he was saving seats. We hurried down the long aisles between rows of benches and I just managed to get my tray down on the table before Lock had his arms around me.

  “Jed Ryland, you son of a gun,” he said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  I squeezed him hard. “Good to see you, too, Lock.”

  Lock – he had no other name – was human, like me. We stood about the same height, but where I was lean, he was more solidly built. If he had been from my Earth I might have described him as African-American, since he had a neutral American accent and his skin was a deep brown, but the names “Africa” and “America” didn’t mean much to him.

  Lock came from someplace called Colossal City on an Earth centuries ahead of my own. I visited there once – to me it was a “science fiction world,” with spaceships and ray guns and skyscrapers reaching above the clouds, whereas my world seemed to him a primitive backwater, something out of a forgotten history book.

  He stepped back, keeping his hands on my shoulders, and looked me up and down. He grinned. “What the hell are you wearing?”

  “What, this old thing?” I spun around, showing off my buccaneer chic.

  Liz sat down on the bench and dropped her tray. “He’s a pirate.”

  Lock tilted his head. “This is what pirates on your world dress like? Seems impractical.”

  I laughed. “Forget it. Here, is this better?”

  I concentrated, and my clothes changed, transforming into the standard Crossroads uniform: a high-collared sea-blue shirt and stiff navy pants with black boots, identical to what my friends and most of the rest of the diners were wearing. Small gold spirals, three on each shoulder, denoted my position as a Field Agent.

  That’s the second trick my spanner can do. It controls the special material of my uniform, allowing me to change it into whatever clothing I want. Within limits – I can’t make chain mail or a parachute or anything out of the ordinary like that, and I have to be wearing the uniform to change it. Comes in useful for blending in with the natives. Also really great on Halloween.

  Lock shrugged. “Don’t change on my account. I liked it, just didn’t recognize the style.” He sat down opposite Liz and looked at our trays. “You guys didn’t get cake?”

  “Was there cake?” I slumped down into my seat on the bench. “I didn’t see the cake.” I lifted my fork. “Can I...?”

  He threw his arm over his dessert, shielding it. “Friendship has limits, Jed.”

  I sighed and tucked into my pasta. I hadn’t eaten since the night before, and the pirate cook’s signature salmagundi hadn’t been particularly appetizing, consisting mostly of onions, anchovies, and the faded memory of a chicken.

  “So what’s new?” I asked.

  “I’ve been home,” Lock said. “Haven’t had a mission in about three weeks, my time. Just checking in to make sure they didn’t forget about me.”

  “And how’s home?”

  He nodded. “No complaints. Work’s good.”

  “Ah, yes,” Liz said. “Your mysterious ‘work.’”

  “I transport cargo...”

  “You’re a smuggler. Please admit it. You’re a smuggler running weapons to the resistance.”

  I jumped in. “Bringing much needed supplies, at the risk of life and limb, to brave freedom fighters struggling against the evil Galactic Empire.”

  Lock shook his head, well-used to our teasing. “My world isn’t some genre cliché, all right? It’s the Interplanetary Union, not the Galactic Empire, and there is no resistance, unless you count whatever political party is in the minor
ity any given year. All I do is ship stuff people want to buy from one planet to another.” He took a bite of cake, then swallowed. “And if that stuff isn’t always strictly legal on the planet I’m taking it to, well...”

  Liz slapped the table, bouncing my plate into the air and sloshing sauce off the side. “I knew it!” She pointed at him. “Space smuggler. You magnificent charming rogue.”

  Lock winked at her. “And how’s everything on Planet Bear?”

  “Everything was fine when I left. I’m supposed to go on vacation with some college friends when I get back, but I’ve been gone so long I can’t remember if I bought a new swimsuit yet or not...oh, well. I’m headed back as soon as I log in my report from my last mission, which went on forever, by the way. I can’t wait.”

  “Sounds fun,” I said. “Where are you headed?”

  “Vermont. My friend has a place on a river.”

  “Nice. Gonna catch some salmon?”

  “I don’t fish. I’m hoping to get some painting...” She stopped, put down her sandwich and glared at me. “Oh, more bear jokes. Hysterical. I’d say something withering, Bonzo, but I’m afraid you’d throw your poop at me.”

  “I might. I’m unpredictable like that.”

  Lock waved his fork at us. “Don’t talk about poop when I’m eating my flarking cake, okay?”

  I met Liz’s eyes, and we both laughed.

  Lock sighed. “It’s just a word.”

  “Just a mother-flarking word,” I agreed.

  “We like when you swear like a future person from TV,” Liz said. “It’s adorable.”

  “Pardon me for not coming from the Stone Age,” Lock grumbled. “What about you, Jed? How’s everything on your primitive excuse for an Earth?”

  “Oh.” I took a bite of pasta. They watched and waited while I chewed and swallowed. “It’s fine.”

  It was their turn to exchange a look. “When was the last time you went home, Jed?” Liz asked.

  “Uh...no time at all, right? That’s how it works.”

  An extremely useful side effect of the way we traveled was that the different flows of time between universes could sometimes be turned to our advantage. The spanners couldn’t time travel, exactly, but they could often return you to a universe at the same moment you left it. It was unpredictable, and not something to rely on during a mission – leaving a universe before your job was done was risky, since you might mess up and come back a year after you left instead of a minute. But the relative calculations between the Crossroads and our home universes were hardwired into our spanners, so as long as we went home from headquarters, we’d arrive no more than a few seconds after we last left.

  I was about to take a sip of juice but Lock took the glass from me. “Yeah, but how long’s it been for you?”

  “Oh, uh...I don’t know. A few months?”

  “And how long was the mission you just finished?”

  “About three weeks.”

  Liz nodded. “And what were you doing before that? Have you been on back-to-back missions?”

  “No.” I looked out the window at the planet’s surface. Still beautiful. “I’ve been doing some sightseeing. Just bopping around to random universes. I made friends with a unicorn. I helped a living star give birth, that was cool...”

  “You need to go home, Jed.” Lock’s voice was uncharacteristically soft.

  “I know. I will.”

  Liz nudged me. “Gotta maintain that whole work/life balance, right? And you know what they say about losing touch with your home universe...”

  I sighed. “I’m not going to forget what I’m fighting for, Liz. I know being a Field Agent isn’t just about having awesome adventures and seeing the multiverse.”

  “Don’t you miss your family?” Lock asked. “And your friends back home?”

  I stood and picked up my plate. “Okay, okay. I’ll go home. I’ll see you guys later.”

  “We didn’t mean right this second,” Liz asked. “You’ve barely eaten anything.”

  “I’ve got to fill out my report. I’ll eat when I go home.”

  I dumped my tray into a nearby recycler and headed down the corridor towards the shifter.

  “Jed! Jed, wait up!”

  I slowed as Lock hurried to catch up. He threw an arm around my shoulder and we continued down the hall into the shifter in silence.

  “Residence Wing Six,” I said.

  The shifter door opened and we stepped out into the hall. Still without talking, we stopped outside Lock’s room. He waved his hand in front of it and the door slid open.

  Our rooms were pretty basic. Just a bed, a desk and chair, a closet, and a small bathroom. We weren’t expected to spend much time in them. Lock hadn’t filled his with much. A holographic image of his parents on the desk was the only decoration. A black leather jacket hung over the back of the chair and the bed was unmade.

  I stood and stared out the small window. There was a building about two hundred feet away. Exterior lights on it lit up the cratered landscape.

  Lock came and stood behind me. “We pissed you off.”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “You don’t wanna go home, don’t go home. What’s so bad about your home, anyway?”

  “Nothing!”

  He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. “It’s me, Jed. Talk to me.”

  I had that sick feeling of unjustified guilt in my stomach, like an innocent man accused of a crime. I looked him in the eyes so he’d know I wasn’t lying. “Honestly, Lock. There’s nothing wrong with my home. I love my Earth, I love my New York, I love the twenty-first century. I love my family and friends. I do miss them.”

  “So why...?”

  “I said I’m going home!”

  “Okay, but you almost never go home! And when you do go, you’re barely there before you’re headed right back here again, waiting for a mission or just jumping to some random universe. There must be something wrong on your world.”

  I took his hand and turned, pulling him to stand next to me, facing out the window. I gestured toward the open space. “I don’t have this at home.”

  Lock tilted his head. “You don’t have a sanitation plant?”

  “No...I mean, yes, but that’s not what I mean. I mean...all of this. I’m on another planet, Lock. In another solar system, in another universe. And I can go anywhere, and do anything, and I help people, and...”

  Lock was looking at me with concern in his eyes, but no real understanding. I stopped. He’d never get it. He had been vacationing on other planets before he could walk.

  But it wasn’t just that. Liz was from a world like mine, but she wouldn’t get it, either.

  I lowered my eyes. “I’m nobody at home, Lock,” I said quietly. “Why would I be that Jed Ryland, underpaid corporate drone and constant source of parental disappointment, when I can be Jed Ryland, protector of the multiverse?”

  Lock put his hands on my cheeks and lifted my face up. “There’s only one of you, Jed. You’re still you when you’re off-duty. You’ve still done amazing things. Just because nobody at home knows that doesn’t take it away from you.”

  I forced a smile. I touched my hand to one of his and nodded. “I know. You’re right. I’ll go home, and I’ll stay there until I’m called for a mission. I promise.”

  He paused, then sighed. “I feel like you’re conning me, but I’ll take it. Only...” He slid his hands down my face, then down my sides, until they rested in my waistband. “You don’t have to go home right this second, do you?”

  My smile became less forced. I took a step forward, towards his bed, and he took a step backwards to match me. “Well, I mean, I do have a report to fill out...”

  He kept walking backwards, pulling me with him. “Uh-huh. But I mean, you don’t have to fill out that report right now, do you?”

  “I don’t know, I got Angie on this one, she’s kind of a hard-ass...”

  He let go of me as he fell backwards onto his bed. He f
olded his arms behind his head. “Oh, well, I mean, if you have to go do paperwork, I understand. Since it’s Angie, and all...”

  I lifted my shirt up over my head and tossed it on the ground. “Flark the report.”

  Lock gave a hoot of laughter and opened his arms to me as I jumped onto the bed.

  Three

  Relationships between Field Agents aren’t exactly against the rules. In fact there are surprisingly few hard-and-fast rules involved with being an agent of the Crossroads. There’s plenty of bureaucracy – so many reports – but for a colossal hierarchical quasi-police organization it’s weirdly hippie-dippie. Our year of training had been very strict, but as full Field Agents we were trusted to do the right thing and to use our own judgment as to what that right thing might be.

  Still, any social structure has its own unspoken rules, and Field Agents getting involved is generally considered a bad idea. Friendships are fine, but our core relationships are supposed to be kept within our home universe. We get a lot of pressure to remember where we came from. There are stories of Field Agents cutting all ties with their home, spending more and more time exploring the endless possibilities of the multiverse, until one day they just never come back.

  That wouldn’t happen to me. I had every intention of going back. When I needed a break. Which I didn’t need yet.

  Anyway, Lock and I first hooked up while we were still in training. We kept it a secret from everyone. We suspected Liz had figured it out, but we never spoke to her about it. I won’t pretend that having to hide what was going on between us didn’t make it a little more exciting.

  I shouldn’t give the impression that Lock and I were in a relationship. We were just friends with benefits. I was having too much fun elsewhere to settle down – a partner in every universe! And Lock wasn’t really the boyfriend type.

  He was, however, the snoring type. Loud, shake-the-roof snores. His world had lasers and spaceships but I guess no cure for sleep apnea. So I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night.

  I lay there, pinned underneath his muscular arm, listening to him snore, staring up at the ceiling. I flexed the fingers of my hand, the one that Rivetbeard had stomped on. The pain was gone, as was the bruising. That was a perk of resting at the Crossroads. There was some kind of healing technology inherent in the atmosphere there. It would heal up cuts and scrapes in just a few hours, could heal broken bones given a little more time, and even purged us of any nasty viruses or bacteria we might have picked up on our travels. But best of all, it reversed aging. It recorded our physical condition at the last time we left our home universe and rejuvenated us to that point. I could have lived with Bleachbeard for sixty years, and after a few days at the Crossroads I’d look in my mid-twenties again. That way I wouldn’t appear to be aging faster than my friends and family back in my New York.