Нил Гейман – Eternity’s Wheel (страница 10)
“Yeah?” she asked, looking up at me. She didn’t look guarded anymore or angry or like she was about to run. She looked happy, the way I remembered my sister looking when she was having nice dreams. Content. Peaceful.
“Yeah. It’s like when you step into the water, you don’t make any ripples. You just sort of slip in.”
She smiled and shrugged, though I could tell she was pleased to be good at something in particular. I know I would have been.
“Will that be helpful?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her honestly, offering my noninjured left hand. She took it, allowing me to pull her to her feet. “If you do the Walking, we’ll be able to gather up the others without being detected. Gives us a lot more breathing room. Why don’t you give it a try now? Walk back to the world we parked on.”
Usually, when teaching a new Walker how to get back to base, they’re taught a formula. It’s an address, an equation that tells us exactly how to get home, wherever home happened to be. It tells us that no matter where the base is, we are connected to it, and we can find it anywhere.
This future InterWorld—InterWorld Beta, as I’d come to think of it—might or might not have the same address, when it was powered on. Since it wasn’t currently on, I had no way of knowing; I just knew that the address
Josephine kept hold of my hand, closing her eyes and focusing. I kept mine open; it was easier to Walk when you weren’t watching your surroundings change around you, but I was just along for the ride this time.
The scenery shifted; we were standing in shadows one moment, then again in sunlight.
A flock of birds passed above our heads. …
The ground trembled beneath us for a moment, as though a herd of something large was stampeding nearby. …
The brief, salty scent of the ocean and the cry of a seagull from over the mountains …
And then InterWorld Beta rested in front of us, sad and majestic, like a ship run aground. An abandoned city lost to time.
Josephine kept hold of my hand this time, as the world settled back around us. It was lonely, somehow. It was our salvation and our hope; it was part of what let us witness the extraordinary things we’d seen and experience the amazing things we’d done. It was the wind in our hair and the travel dust on our boots, and it wasn’t right for it to be stuck here, dead and lifeless.
She looked at me, subdued and determined, and let go of my hand. We had an understanding, then, and I think she finally knew why I was willing to risk everything. I think she was willing to, as well.
It was a small comfort, at least.
We raided the storeroom, gathering anything and everything that might be helpful. We brought cleaning supplies as well as thick gloves and kneepads into the hallways, and we spent the rest of the morning clearing out the debris and making sure there were easy paths to get to the main places we needed to go.
From the control room to the storeroom, down to the lower decks where we could get out onto our temporary home planet, to the living quarters, the mess hall, and back up to the control room. It took until well into the afternoon, and we were starving despite the few snacks and energy bars we’d taken from our backpacks.
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