Bloodless

72

A revolving tunnel of light surrounded Pendergast, at the end of which was the view of Times Square. It was like being inside a child’s kaleidoscope tube: ever turning, ever changing, disorienting and dizzying. The tunnel was a slice or hole bored through stacked layers of light; he surmised the layers were the edges of parallel universes punched through in order to reach the one at the end. They were constantly shifting, moving, folding and refolding upon themselves, advancing and retreating. And through these folds he could see glimpses of worlds: of strange landscapes and endless seas, parched deserts and mountains that pierced the skies, erupting volcanoes and blue glaciers. At first, his skin felt as if it was burning and yet freezing at the same time. This feeling receded, replaced by a tingling sensation. The feeling grew stronger, until it was as if countless tiny fire ants were crawling over every inch of his skin.

He ignored it; ignored, in fact, everything but the critical task at hand: watching and waiting for the moment when the world he sought came into view.

He took another step, and another: his feet sank into the opalescent surface beneath him, swallowing him up to his ankles before launching him forward with a vertiginous sensation of negative gravity. The air around him suddenly filled with coruscating streams of tiny, almost microscopic particles, glittering like gold dust as they moved in undulating, ever-changing patterns.

All the while, Pendergast watched and waited as the worlds beyond the tunnel of light flickered in and out, one after another, diaphanous as dreams.

Then he saw the universe he wanted — and plunged into it.

First, there was intense blackness, replaced by a brilliant white. Pendergast found himself lying on the ground, unable to remember for a moment where he was, what had happened, or even who he was. The feeling of disorientation quickly passed and he climbed to his feet, scanning the landscape around him. He might have been unconscious for a minute, or for an hour; it was impossible to be sure. His watch — a manual-wind Philippe Dufour — had not fared well in the journey: both the minute and small second hands had apparently spun so quickly that they melted into the guilloche of the dial. As he turned around, examining his surroundings, he nearly lost his footing. Regaining his balance, he realized that the gravity in this place was less than that of Earth — significantly less.

He was standing on what could have been a plain of salt, except for the fact that it was blinding white — and smooth as silk. He took a short step forward, shielding his eyes. As his foot met the ground again, a small cloud of crystals — like glittering snowflakes — rose up and fell back. The sky was salmon pink, grading upward into black. Wisps of strangely shaped clouds seemed to crawl, rather than drift, across. Gingerly, he took a breath: the air had an unpleasant, oleaginous texture, and it smelled strongly of burnt rubber.

He was standing in what appeared to be a shallow volcanic crater. The walls of the crater were dead black, rising abruptly from the white floor. Above its jagged rim, a sun hung low in the sky, smaller than Earth’s and a dusky red. Next to and just above it stood another sun, smaller still, this one greenish-blue: a double star system. And above it all was a black empyrean, torn by tongues of livid lightning, as if a tremendous battle filled the sky: but there was no thunder, and the bolts of energy did not wink out immediately, but rather dispersed outward slowly, morphing into tangled shapes like drops of ink on blotting paper. Dotting the plains around him were crystallized pillars of salt, twisted back upon themselves like corkscrews. They reminded him of Lot’s wife. Here and there the pitiless white of the salt bed was relieved by the green forms of spiky bushes. Except they weren’t bushes at all, but some sort of animal, moving slowly, hunching along like inchworms.

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. A few hundred yards away, he saw movement: a pack of animals had spotted him and were loping over. He drew his Les Baer and gave it a quick examination to make sure it had survived the journey intact. The approaching animals had insectoid heads, not unlike the monstrous thing in Savannah, with bulbous compound eyes and tubelike mouthparts, covered in a leathery brown skin that pulsated with engorged vessels. They spread out like a pack of wolves and began closing in.

Pendergast realized he was being hunted.

He hoped they were intelligent animals: intelligent enough, at least, to be afraid of him. He let them trot close enough to come into range, and then flicked on his laser sights, carefully centered the dot on the chest of the leader, and squeezed off a round. The animal bucked backward in a spray of blood, tumbling up into the air and spinning lazily end over end, leaving a twisted contrail of crimson behind it in the low gravity.

That the creature could be shot was, at least, a reassuring development.

The other creatures immediately bolted, tearing off at tremendous speed and vanishing over the rim of the crater. He went over and looked down at the dead animal, which had hit the ground about ten yards away — the blood on this planet was even redder than his, he thought grimly. He turned the grotesque beast over with his toe. It had eight legs: that would account for the rippling way in which it moved. It looked more insecta than animalia. Perhaps, in the alternate universe, this was a world where insects had evolved into the niches occupied by mammals on Earth.

As if on cue, he felt, more than heard, a vibration; and moments later a vast cloud of insects came streaming over the horizon, millions of them, forming weird, ever-shifting shapes as they flew, until they almost blotted out the sky above him. Just as quickly they passed, surging toward the far side of the crater — but not before several had dropped to the ground around Pendergast’s feet. Kneeling, he saw they were identical to those he’d seen flying out of the portal.

As he glanced back at the receding cloud, forming and unforming, he spotted a creature flying along the serrated rim of the crater. Huge leathery wings; insectoid head; hairy, swinging dugs... quickly, he pulled a compact Leica monocular from his suit pocket, but he was too late. The creature had dropped down below the rim and disappeared.

Still, he was certain it was of the same species that was at this moment reducing Savannah to a charred ruin in his own universe. Maybe even the actual doppelgänger.

He scanned the sky for others, but it was empty.

In his disorientation and surprise, he’d almost forgotten that time was of the essence. The rim was a half mile away, but in the lower gravity he might be able to get there quickly. He tried running and soon discovered that if he bounded ahead, almost hopping like a kangaroo, he could move rapidly. It took him only a few minutes to reach the spot where the white surface met the black, crusted lava base of the crater rim. He began climbing the slopes, jagged with lava and sliding cinders. But once again, low gravity came to his aid, and he found that as long as he was careful where he landed, he could move up the slope in a series of jumps. He avoided the prickly walking things, which on closer look appeared to be part insect, part plant. In another minute he approached the ridgeline, then crept to the top and peered over the edge.

There, in a rugged landscape of solidified lava a thousand yards below him, was a smooth bowl of red sand: a nest. Along its edges squatted half a dozen of the beasts, wings folded like bats. In the center moved a swollen, bloated creature with shriveled vestigial wings, at least three times the size of the others. It was sitting on what appeared to be the cells of a honeycomb, except — as Pendergast noted when he glassed it with his Leica — the chambers were not six-sided, but octagonal. In every cell, Pendergast could see greasy, wriggling yellow larvae, segmented with wart-like tubercules and thick bristles. Their heads were tiny, ending in sharp, reedlike siphons that stuck straight upward. The puffy creature — perhaps the queen? — was squirting a thick treacle-colored liquid down into each quivering tube, like a mother bird dropping worms into the gaping mouths of her young.

Moving the monocular away from this grotesque sight and glassing the surrounding creatures, Pendergast saw that one of the farthest from the queen had exactly the same scar of a cross on its left wing as did the brute in Savannah. This must be it: the double of the creature attacking Savannah; the one he had come to kill.

Having been a big game hunter in past years, he knew what he had to do. This was going to be a classic big-game-style stalk. But armed with only a handgun, he would have to get close — very close. And he would have to find a way to draw it away from the others: whether he could kill one such creature was debatable, but he had no chance at all against the entire hive.

He returned the monocular to his pocket, tested the direction of the wind with a damp finger, and then began creeping over the ridge.