The Universes Inside the Lighthouse Page 12

  “So you’re trying to keep Vik from destroying the Hub,” said Emma.

  “Exactly.”

  “And you’re hoping to keep The Void from spreading to our Earth, too, is that why you’ve been there so much?”

  “Oh, no,” said Eve, shaking her head slowly. “No, Emma, don’t you see? The Void is already there. It’s been there a while.”

  chapter nine

  Emma took this in. This thing, this horrible thing called The Void, already on Earth? She recognized the truth of it right away. People on their phones all the time, not really connecting even when they were sitting at the same table, was that The Void? Critics, both amateur and professional, incessantly judging people (and finding them failing), making people afraid to try new things, was that The Void? Social media, where it sometimes seemed everyone was begging for attention, but no one was listening, was that The Void?

  Not realizing the intense impact of this revelation on Emma, Eve continued. “So, the travel, sure it’s interesting, but it’s also important. Besides,” she said, “there’s more to it. We’re not just looking for Vik.”

  Overwhelmed by everything Eve had said so far, Emma waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. Finally Emma’s curiosity got the best of her.

  “What?” she said. “What else are you looking for?”

  Eve stared hard at Emma, judging, assessing. Emma tried arranging her features to look as trustworthy as possible. Finally, Eve spoke again.

  “We’re looking for my mom,” Eve said.

  Emma was thrown. She’d hardly had time to even wonder where Eve’s mother might be, but yes, come to think of it, where was Eve’s mother? Emma realized she’d just assumed there had been a separation, a divorce, perhaps an untimely death. But the idea that Eve’s mother could be completely missing hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  “Where is she?” Emma asked.

  Eve laughed a cheerless laugh. “We don’t know. That’s why we’re looking.”

  Emma felt a swoosh of guilt for having been jealous of Eve, for having begrudged her Ben’s affection. What kind of existence could it be, after all, risking life and limb on planets such as this, planets that seemed harmless at first but then revealed angry inhabitants and untold dangers? It might be exciting at first, but to imagine that her mother might be lost on a planet somewhere? Emma shuddered at the thought.

  “You see,” said Eve, seeming to warm to the idea of talking about her story for once, “Mom and Dad, their relationship was always difficult. Dad says it’s because they both have such strong personalities. They’re both passionate, opinionated, stubborn people. They loved each other … love each other … but sometimes, they just clash.

  “Mom was—is—a scientist. Great Aunt Doethine, my great great aunt who first discovered elevators, was one of Mom’s great aunts. Mom used to go over to her house, and they’d talk all about the elevators and the discoveries and universes and life. Mom loved it. It was no surprise to anyone when she became a scientist herself.

  “That’s how Mom and Dad met. He’s an archaeologist, see, not an interuniversal scientist. He likes staying home, on our own planet, discovering what came before us. We’re still learning so much on Lero. It seems there may have been a civilization before we got there, even. Amazing, right? I mean, it makes sense. It’s such a great planet.”

  Emma could hear the homesickness in Eve’s voice, and wondered again about all the young girl had left behind to go on this quest with her father. “How many people are on your planet?” She still couldn’t picture a whole other alien world, full of other people, all going about their days, falling in love, going on archaeological digs, being scientists, losing touch with family. It all sounded so very … ordinary.

  “Napori, the mother planet, has about twelve billion people. Lero only has around a hundred thousand, maybe a hundred and ten by now. We’ve grown a lot, but we’re still small. We’re trying to learn from our ancestors’ mistakes, do it right this time.”

  Emma nodded. The chance to start over with a whole new planet, she thought, where would you even begin?

  “Anyway,” Eve continued. “Mom and Dad met because Mom was trying to find signs of ancient writings that might have led them to more elevators, or even something new and undiscovered. They met and fell in love and married and had me, but I was sort of a side note. Raised myself a bit, I’d say. Well, Dad helped. Mom went on a lot of expeditions. There was another scientist she went off with a lot, a man. Dad is the jealous type, or was, and he jumped to conclusions. They separated for a couple years, but they never fell out of love.”

  The normalcy of the story fascinated Emma. “Sounds like some people I know on Earth,” she said.

  “I stayed with Dad because his life was more stable, what with Mom gone all the time. I’d go on excavations and digs with him, I liked that.” She smiled. “I always imagined I’d make some huge discovery that would make Mom so proud she’d come back.”

  The smile left Eve’s face. “That hasn’t happened yet.” She exhaled slowly. “One day, Mom called Dad. This was about a year ago. A year of our years, that is, not yours. She said she’d discovered something.”

  Eve fell silent. Emma waited, impatiently. When again she couldn’t stand it anymore, she asked, “What? Did she say what she’d discovered?”

  Eve looked up at the girl sitting across from her and stared her straight in the eye. “We’ve never told anyone this. Only me, Dad, and Dr. Waldo. And I think Dad told Dr. Waldo’s Secret Garden. That’s it.”

  Emma realized she was holding her breath. “I won’t tell,” she said. Who, after all, would she tell? Everyone? No one? It was entirely possible she would never see another living soul again. Despite Eve’s apparent confidence that they would get out of this situation they were in, this cave, this disaster, Emma was not so sure. Nothing in her past gave her any resources to get herself out of this predicament. With this realization came a rush of both overwhelming sadness, as well as determined resignation. If these were her last hours on Earth—well, on a planet—her last hours in life, she was going to make them count. “I won’t say anything to anyone,” she said.

  Eve, understanding the situation as well, even if she didn’t acknowledge it out loud, relented. “Mom called Dad to tell him she thought she’d discovered a new type of elevator, a new way to travel. That’s all she said. A week later, she disappeared.”

  “No!” Emma gasped. “A new kind of elevator? What does that mean? Is that what happened to her? Did she take a new elevator somewhere and … get lost?”

  Eve nodded. “Could be. We think so. We don’t think she’s on our planet. At first, we suspected the guy she was always with had hurt her, a jealous peer wanting to take credit and all that, but he was cleared. She’s just gone. We think she took the new elevator somewhere. The problem is, where? If everywhere in the multiverse is a possibility, or if she discovered something beyond even the multiverse, where do you begin to look? So, we’re looking for Vik because of The Void, but also to make sure he doesn’t unravel the universes, at least not before we find Mom. We’re looking for Mom, too. Anything. Anything could be a sign, anywhere. We’re just traveling with hope and a bunch of rocks.

  “And that,” she concluded, “is why Dad is so determined to find Vik.”

  Emma was silent. To think of losing a parent to death was bad enough. But to literally lose a parent somewhere in the vastness of everything that exists, that would be devastating. Or Charlie. As much as he drove her crazy, she wouldn’t know what to do without him. He was, simply put, an extension of her own heart. And she hadn’t missed Eve’s statement, “something beyond even the multiverse.” The idea of multiple universes was already difficult enough to comprehend. The idea of something beyond the multiverse was impossible.

  “So where do you start?” asked Emma. Silently, she added, if we ever get out of this cave alive.

  Eve reached to her neck and pulled the wishing rock pendant up from under her shirt. She then
pulled up another cord from around her neck. Dangling at its end was a bright white rock, like the one Emma had found on the beach and like the one Eve wore on a ring on her finger. “This one is Mom’s,” she said. “It’s calibrated to her energy. If we come anywhere near her, I’ll know.”

  Emma nodded. Eve sighed. What more was there to say?

  After that, they sat quietly with their loud thoughts in the small cave for long minutes that dragged into hours, waiting on the sunrise, wishing for morning or a miracle. Both of them slept a bit; both of them grew hungry. Eve pulled out high-protein energy bars for them to share. The bars were almost tasteless, with a mild coconut flavor, but mostly they provided something to chew on and revived their depleted resources.

  Emma looked outside periodically, gauging the transition from darkness to light. She thought the sky seemed slightly less dark, and the app on Eve’s high-tech watch confirmed it. Soon they would head out, but not yet. Emma was eager to find Charlie but did not want to get even more lost herself in the process. She had no idea how they might find the elevator again, after running away from it in such a panic. She was starting to lose hope that she’d ever see Charlie, or Ben, again.

  Trying to distract herself from her growing despair, Emma struck up a lighter conversation. “So I guess people date on your planet?” she asked. “I mean, based on your Mom and Dad, it sounds like Earth, at least what you told me.”

  Eve shrugged. “They do. I haven’t had much time. We’ve been running around the universes since before I turned ten.”

  “Ten!” said Emma. “That’s forever!”

  “Oh, sorry. I forgot. Ten our years. Dad and I calculated it out one time when we were stuck in the elevator. Ten in our years is maybe somewhere around sixteen and a half in your years. It’s because our planet takes longer to go around our sun. Our year is longer. On our planet, we figured people live about sixty years at most, as opposed to one hundred on Earth. Based on that, we decided I’m around seventeen and a half now. But in our years, I’m not quite eleven yet. Dad’s twenty-five. Dr. Waldo is … well, I think he’s around thirty.”

  “You got stuck in the elevator?” This news concerned Emma. “Does that happen a lot? I mean, you got stuck, and now we can’t get through to the Hub … I guess I thought with something as old as time, the bugs would be worked out?”

  Eve shrugged. “It’s not perfect. And sometimes, we don’t know, it could just be the universes’ way of protecting us from something. Have you ever noticed that, sometimes you really want something, and then later you’re really glad you didn’t get it? I like to think that the universes are watching out for me when that happens. So maybe when the elevator isn’t working, it’s for our own good.”

  Emma wasn’t convinced that it was for their own good not to be able to get back to Dr. Waldo, or to be stuck in a cave on a planet with hostile natives, but she had to admit there were times she was glad she hadn’t gotten what she wanted.

  “Tell me more about what it’s like on your planet,” said Emma, rubbing her eyes and yawning. “If … when we get out of here, can we go visit, maybe?”

  “It’s nice,” said Eve, smiling wistfully. “It’s beautiful. All the homes are built into the hillsides, like those hobbits your people like, from those books. That’s real life for us. Because of what happened on Napori, you know. Anyway, no, I haven’t dated much yet. Something to look forward to, I guess.”

  “Do you like Ben?” The words came out of Emma’s mouth before she could stop them. More light was spilling in the crack from outside, but Emma was glad for the cover of shadows.

  Eve sounded surprised. “Of course I like Ben. He’s very nice. He’s sweet.”

  “I mean, do you like him?”

  “I don’t even know how that would work,” said Eve, laughing softly. “Different species? Different universes?”

  “It works on Star Trek,” said Emma, wondering if Eve would recognize the reference.

  Eve held up her right hand and spread her fingers into a “V,” two fingers on each side. “Live long and prosper,” she said. “We watch that in the Hub sometimes. Well, I may be an alien girl, but Ben is not Captain Kirk. It’s not that easy. I mean, talk about long distance relationships. Plus, the bracelets. They don’t just make languages sound familiar. They make beings look familiar. I look more or less human, if you saw me without the bracelet. But not entirely.”

  Not entirely? What did she mean? Emma couldn’t believe Eve would end the conversation there, but Eve didn’t elaborate. Did she have two heads? Five eyes? What could “not entirely” possibly mean? Emma stared at the gleaming curve of the bracelet peeking out from under the edge of Eve’s sleeve. She knew it would be wrong to rip it off Eve’s arm, but nonetheless, for a very brief moment, she was tempted.

  A noise outside halted her thoughts.

  “What was that?” she whispered, her words hardly more than a breath of the wind. She’d become comfortable in the cave, but her senses now all became pinpoint alert.

  Eve replied by shaking her head. She held up her hand to indicate “don’t move,” but Emma was already frozen in place.

  Her brain, however, was spinning. She took a mental inventory of the weapons they had available to them. Eve must have something, mustn’t she? Something that would pop out of the thing on her wrist, all 007-like? Dr. Waldo surely would not let her and Milo go traveling amongst the stars and alien creatures without self-defense of some sort. But what if Eve didn’t have it with her? There were rocks on the floor of the cave, but she wasn’t sure if they were loose. What did she have on her? A shoe, rather dull, no sharp edges. A firm voice, if they were facing an alien that was susceptible to guilt. Fingernails, too short. A bottle of water in her backpack.

  Unless the creature was a Wizard of Oz witch that would melt if she threw some liquid on it, she was more or less defenseless.

  Barely breathing, Emma peeked out of the corner of her eye at Eve. If Eve was afraid, Emma wasn’t sure she’d be able to contain her own fear.

  Eve looked calm. How did she look so calm? Nonetheless, she did. Alert, certainly, as though she’d suddenly generated twice as many cells and all of them were tuned to the noise outside, but still calm.

  Emma decided to courage up and follow Eve’s lead. Or at least, she stayed still.

  After about a minute, the tension flowed out of Eve like water off a duck’s back. A few seconds later, two natives of the planet appeared, followed by Charlie.

  “Hey, neighbors!” said Charlie. His words were jovial but his demeanor was more reserved. Emma could sense something was wrong. “Thought we’d lost you! We were two caves over. Turns out they weren’t chasing us, just trying to keep us from being eaten. Meet our new friends. I’m pretty sure I don’t have their names right. This is Zadra,” he said, indicating the shorter of the two aliens, who appeared to be female. “And this is Yalik.” Charlie patted the taller, sturdier of the two on the back. “Lucky for us, they speak English.”

  Emma frowned.

  Charlie pulled his sister into a tight hug. “Missed you, Emma. I’m so glad you’re safe. What would I do without you?”

  “I missed you too,” said Emma, returning the hug. What would she do without her Charlie?

  “Nice to meet you, Zadra and Yalik. Did Charlie get your names right?” asked Eve, reaching out to grasp Charlie’s hand in welcome and relief.

  “Close enough,” said Zadra, with a grimace that might have been her version of a smile. “We were in our nighttime hunt when we saw you wandering around. It was clear you had no idea there were plassensnares behind you. We were chasing them away, not you. We apologize for scaring you.”

  “Plassensnares?” asked Emma.

  “Sort of angry mini-mammoth-like things. Yalik drew one for us in the dirt to show us what they look like. They chased Ben and me right into our cave, and Zadra and Yalik followed, just to make sure we were safe,” said Charlie. “We’ve been waiting over there. Yalik decided it was light enough
to come out and help us.”

  “The plassensnares only hunt in darkness,” explained Yalik.

  “Zadra thought you might be over this way,” said Charlie. “When we got near, it was pretty obvious. You trampled the ground pretty good.”

  “Charlie.” Emma could not believe he was rambling on this way.

  “Yes?” said Charlie.

  “Ben. Where is Ben? You said he was with you; where is he?” The relief of having found her brother quickly turned to concern for Ben.

  “Oh yes. That.” Charlie looked at Yalik and Zadra as though they somehow might take over the conversation, but it was clear they were impartial observers. “Yup, okay. Well, you know that thing Dr. Waldo gave Ben, that we were only supposed to use if we found Vik, that would send him straight back to Eve’s home world?”

  Emma gasped. “You mean the pigeon, the device that wasn’t very well tested, and on occasion obliterated the objects it sent to Lero?” She hoped he was not going where she thought he was going with this conversation.

  “Yes. Obliterated. Yup. Well, Ben may have been looking at it in the cave, just for something to do while we were waiting for it to get light outside, and, well, he’s gone.”

  Emma stared at Charlie. No. She must have misunderstood.

  “Gone,” said Eve. “To Lero.”

  “One assumes,” said Charlie. “Or I guess one hopes. Better than oblivion, right? Haha?”

  His attempt at humor was met with blank looks from Eve and Emma. Zadra and Yalik didn’t react at all. Clearly this was a more primitive planet. The Earthlings, Eve, and the people of this planet could understand each other because of the bracelets, which was a great help, but as far as technology, it was doubtful they’d find much here. Whatever had happened to Ben had likely been far beyond their understanding. All they knew was that they’d found Charlie.

  “We need Dr. Waldo,” said Eve, becoming more agitated and increasingly less calm. “We have to get back to the Hub. We just have to.”