InterWorld

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

We were all there in the Old Man’s outer office: Jai, Josef, Jo, Jakon, J/O and me. We’d been waiting there for almost an hour. The summons had arrived just before breakfast, and we’d come straight down. And then we’d waited.

And waited.

Finally, there was a buzz from the inner office. The Old Man’s assistant went inside, then came back out. She walked over to me.

“He wants to talk to you first,” she said. “You others wait out here.”

I grinned at my friends as I went in. If I didn’t feel ten feet tall it was probably because I felt fifteen feet tall. Make that twenty feet tall. I mean, I may not have been part of InterWorld for long, but I—we—had done something pretty amazing. Six of us had taken out a HEX invasion fleet. We’d destroyed the Malefic. A dozen worlds, at least, would retain their freedom, thanks to us.

I’m not one to brag, but that’s the kind of thing that gets medals.

I wondered what I’d say if he pinned a medal on me. Would I simply say “Thank you” or would I say something about it being an honor and how I had only done what anyone would have done? Would I babble embarrassingly like those actors who win Oscars…or would I say nothing at all?

I couldn’t wait to find out.

And what about promotion? Let’s face it—I’d make a great team leader. I raised my head slightly, sticking out my chin. True officer material.

Nothing had changed in the Old Man’s office. There was the big desk that filled most of the room, still papers, folders, disks, everywhere in piles and heaps. And sitting at the desk was the Old Man, making notes. He didn’t seem to notice me when I walked in, so I stood there.

I stood there for a couple of minutes. Finally he closed the file in front of him and looked up.

“Ah. Joey Harker.”

“Yes, sir.” I tried to sound humble. It wasn’t easy.

“I’ve read your debrief, Joey. There was one thing I was not clear on. Exactly what was the stimulus that returned your memory?”

“My memory?” His question caught me by surprise. “It was the soap bubble, sir. It reminded me of Hue, and with Hue it seemed like everything else just came back.”

He nodded and made a note on the report.

“We’ll need to take that into account for future amnesiac conditioning,” he said. “There’s a lot we don’t know about mudluffs. For now, you will be permitted to keep the creature with you in the base. This permission may be rescinded at any time.”

His LED eye glinted. He made another note.

I stood there. He carried on writing. I wondered if he had forgotten I was there.

This wasn’t going exactly the way I’d pictured it.

“Sir?”

He looked up.

“I was wondering…well, I thought, maybe we would get some kind of…I mean, well, we blew up the Malefic, and…”

I trailed off. Definitely not going the way I’d pictured it.

He sighed. It was a long sigh, weary and worldly-wise. The kind of sigh you could picture God heaving after six days of hard work and looking forward to some serious cosmic R&R, only to be handed a report by an angel concerning a problem with someone eating an apple.

Then he called, “Send the rest of them in.”

Everyone walked into his office, shuffling around to make room.

He looked us over. I found myself very aware that he was sitting down, while we were standing. It felt the other way around. It felt like he was looming over us.

Josef, Jo and Jakon all looked pleased with themselves. J/O had a grin spread like peanut butter over his face. The only one who didn’t look absolutely thrilled was Jai.

“Well,” said the Old Man. “Joey seems to be of the opinion that you six ought to get some kind of medal, or at least some kind of formal recognition for the stellar work that you did. Does anyone here share his opinion?”

“Yes, sir,” said J/O. “Did he tell you how I beat Scarabus in the sword fight? We rocked.”

The others murmured agreement or just nodded.

The Old Man nodded. Then he looked at Jai. “Well?” he said.

“I think we did accomplish a remarkable thing, sir.”

The Old Man’s eye glittered.

“Oh you do, do you?” he asked.

Then he took a deep breath, and he began.

He told us what he thought of a team who couldn’t even accomplish a simple training mission without a disaster. He told us that everything we had accomplished had been due to plain dumb luck. That we’d broken every rule in the book and a few they had never thought to put into any book of rules or book of just plain common sense. He said that if there were any justice in any of the myriad worlds we would all have been rendered down and put in bottles. That we had been overconfident, foolish, ignorant. That we’d taken idiot chances. He said that we should never have gotten into the trouble we’d gotten into. That, having gotten into it, we should have come home immediately….

It went on like that for a while.

He didn’t raise his voice during any of this. He didn’t have to.

I’d walked in twenty feet high, and by the time he had finished I felt mouse height. A crippled, stoop-shouldered mouse. The runt of the litter.

When he finished, the silence was thick enough to fill an ocean, with enough left over for a few great lakes and an inland sea. He looked from one of us to the next in silence. We concentrated very hard on not looking at him—or one another.

And then he said, “Still, as teams go, I think you six may have potential. Well done. Dismissed.”

And we shuffled out of there, not meeting one another’s eyes.

We stood in the parade ground, all in a clump. The sun was halfway up the sky, and a chilly wind blew across Base Town. The perpetually floating city was drifting over a dense forest that looked like it went on for leagues and probably did. We passed by a clearing, and a creature resembling an overgrown rhinoceros with two side-by-side horns looked up at us.

I think we were in shock.

Hue was twisting slowly in the air about thirty feet up. When he noticed us, he drifted down until he was floating a foot above my right shoulder.

Someone had to say something, but no one wanted to be the first.

Finally, Josef shook his head. “What happened in there?” he asked.

Jai grinned suddenly, showing perfect white teeth. “He said we were a team.”

There was a pause.

“And he said we have potential,” said Jakon proudly.

“He said I could keep Hue,” I told them.

“Then we’re seven in the team,” said Jo thoughtfully, spreading her wings against the morning sunlight. “Not six. And he said ‘well done,’ didn’t he? The Old Man said ‘well done.’ To us.”

“You hear that?” I asked Hue. “You’re part of the team, too.” Hue undulated slowly, satisfied oranges and crimsons chasing themselves across his soap-bubble surface. I had no idea whether he understood any of this or not. But I’m pretty sure that he did.

“I still think we rock,” said J/O. “And, anyway, we have potential. Who needs medals? I’d rather have potential than medals any day.”

“I wonder if there’s any breakfast left,” said Josef. “I’m starving.”

We were all starving, except maybe Hue. So we went to breakfast.

We had almost finished eating when the alarm bells went off. We ran to the bulletin screen at the back of the mess hall and watched images shift and form on it.

“There’s a team in trouble,” Josef said. “A Binary attack on the Rimworld coalition. It’s Jerzy and J’r’ohoho.”

The Old Man’s voice blared over a loudspeaker: “Joey Harker, assemble your team for immediate action.”

I looked at my team. They were ready. So was I.

The balance must be maintained.

I concentrated—and the In-Between bloomed before us.

We Walked.