Mayfair

When the door of the booth closed, I found myself in pitch darkness. After a moment, I reached to open the door again, thinking the booth had malfunctioned, but the door didn't seem to be there anymore. It also seemed like the seat of the booth had vanished, along with the floor. In fact, the entire booth had vanished, and I was floating in black nothingness.

Well, finding Mayfair was turning out to be as weird as the rest of the crap that had been going on lately.

I floated awhile before an image began appearing, the kind of afterimage that is imprinted on your eyes after staring at a bright light, but quickly became realistic and lifelike. What appeared was the design that I had seen on Tub'la's book and tattooed on the angel, made of what appeared to be a multicolored diamond of a size that dwarfed me. The colors in the design began to shift and strobe, faster and faster, making my eyes water, until they finally resolved into a picture of Jack and I, sitting in a private room in Grindlebone's bar. I felt a jarring sense of being in two places at once, as I felt like I was both in the scene and watching it from somewhere behind my head.

From my divided perspective I watched my life of the past few weeks run again, from the moment before Tub'la and his men made their entrance to the room at Grin's. The dream of the angel, committing a kidnapping for Jubjub, and the meeting with Vard flashed past. Then came my abduction by and escape from the nightmare creature, which led to my strange arrival on the deck of Sachiko's ship, the Void Dog. Cobo Landing, the Blind Lady, being taken in by the Sig Nomad, my trek across the primordial desert; all of these happened again, and I felt each sensation associated with each experience. Awe, terror, desperation, safety, pain, comfort, thirst; each came back as I lived through the appropriate scene.

Finally, my life came again to the small information booth on the quiet street corner, and again I stepped inside. And darkness enveloped me, again.

Another period of nothingness passed, until finally more images began to appear.

I saw myself as a youngster. Living on the streets of a dingy city, I would snatch purses and wallets for money. I saw myself threading my way through dense traffic, a constable in close pursuit. I dodged and weaved my way across the street, then dove through a tiny hole at the base of a wall. Before the constable could make his way over the wall, I'd sped across the lot behind, kicked open a wooden door that lead out into an alley, and slid through a small window at the base of the building. I'd already skinned the money from the wallet and dropped it in a furnace by the time the constable's feet pounded by the window and out to the alley. Sit tight five minutes, then saunter casual-like somewhere to buy food.

But I could see that this time, I'd cut my left hand good and long on the wall as I rolled through it. And over the next months, I watched the infection spread and kill the hand slowly. Felt it, too, in the hand I didn't have anymore. It hurt, and slowed the younger version of me down enough that I finally got nicked. Time in the Gaol for theft, time in a government home for not having parents, time with doctors getting my dead hand cut off. Time fighting in the yard, finding out how to poke out eyes with my stump, how to hit the solar plexus right on. Then, one day it all went away, except for a flash here and there, nothing I could make sense of, except that the crimson metal hand that replaced my real one would flash by now and again. Then nothingness.

A huge image of the hand appeared, turning in the darkness. I felt a cold interest from the void around me, and I knew that whatever had studied me was studying the hand just as closely.

The angel design reappeared alongside the hand, and images of the angel and the book locket superimposed themselves behind it. Vard the demon swirled into view next to the angel.

As I thought the word 'angel', a sense of wrongness came from the void. An image of mind destroying beauty and light flashed in front of me, a feeling of purity and power came along with it, which made me cry out in shock and pain. The image was too much for any tiny being like myself to bear.

That was an angel.

What I'd seen in my dream was... angelic. That got a feeling of rightness from whatever it was that was surrounding me. It wasn't pure enough to be an angel. And Vard wasn't a demon, he was demonic. Neither one was more than a pale shadow of what the presented themselves as.

After the feeling I'd gotten from the picture of a true angel, I took a moment to feel grateful that whatever was running this show hadn't felt the need to display a true demon.

More images, with accompanying understanding, came to me. The angelic and the demonic didn't want me, really, they wanted... my hand? Yes, something about my prosthetic was what had attracted them. Tub'la and the nightmare creature, too, they had wanted to remove the hand from me. But the void around me, which seemed to know so much, couldn't say why the hand was important. It hadn't been able to unlock the blank period in my memory, which covered the time when I had come into possession of the hand.

As enlightening as this all had been, I had been getting more and more aggravated by the high-handed manner in which I'd been treated since entering the booth. I didn't like having someone, something, rummaging around in my memories. So I closed two of my eyes, and opened the third.

I wasn't in darkness anymore. I was surrounded by coruscating light. The booth, and whatever space I was now in, they were both extrusions of a higher dimensional being. This was Mayfair. It wasn't a person, moving by hidden pathways from world to world, but something above us; not a super-being, but a supra-being. Mayfair was holding me like a man would hold an insect, except that Mayfair could see inside of me, and into my mind.

With my Eye open, Mayfair's messages were crystal clear. It couldn't tell me why the hand was so important, but something in it held the key to something that a lot of people wanted. The hand couldn't be taken from me, or the hand's intelligence would rebel against the taker. But if I gave it up freely, it would be of some use in discovering whatever it was it held the key to. Some who were searching for the hand wouldn't care about that, and would kill me and take the hand just to keep others from gaining access to it. Mayfair had managed to divine one thing from my fractured memory: the name of a place where the hand might have originated.

Seeing the totality of Mayfair was more disconcerting than the rerun of my memories, so I closed my Eye and returned to the blessed darkness.

Home and away again

Forty-eight hours after walking out of the desert, I found myself standing with Van Zandt on an odd street corner in one of the newly opened realities on the edge of Congeries space.

The intervening two days had been quite full. I'd intended to get to Grin's place immediately, but the call of a good night's sleep at my place in Paedarc had overrode that impulse. I'd showered, slept, showered again, burned the remnants of clothes I'd walked the desert in, showered a third time, then made my way to the bar. The welcome from Grin and Van Zandt was equal parts 'we're glad to see you' and 'where the hell has your dumb-ass been', which was seconded by Jack when he ran in a few minutes later. Ever been slapped in the back of the head by an all metal hand? Not a lot of fun.

I gave them the rundown on how I'd come to be missing for three weeks, local time, and we'd spent some time chewing over the various questions all of what I'd been through raised. No one was quite sure what had kidnapped me originally. Van Zandt was fascinated by both the deep ships and the Sig Nomad; Her interest in new cultures most definitely included the cultures of various types of travelers. Everybody was keen on the Sig Nomad's method of travel, and were very interested in Sachiko. Van Zandt and Grin shared a meaningful glance when I mentioned her. Sigh.

Jack had read the crystal I'd gotten from the Jubjub Bird, giving the location of Mayfair the ethnographer. Four different locations, actually, two of which none of us had ever heard of. The closest one was just a hop, skip, and Step away, though. But it did only give the location, not any clue as to who at the location might be the elusive Mayfair. The directions just said to go to a particular city, to a particular street corner, and look in an information booth. I suppose there couldn't be too many people in there.

Jack had also brought back a data stick from Charom, containing a copy of the mind of the recently executed Gundar Tub'la, the man who'd burst in so rudely on Jack and I a few weeks before. So far, all that he'd been able to glean from Tub'la's cyber-psyche was that Gundar was an angry man who didn't feel like answering any questions. The only thing that brought any type of other answer was when he was asked about the locket/book with the angelic design, which only made the display show the design itself. Interesting, but hardly informative.

The four of us talked for a good long time, and proceeded to get pretty well into our cups as the hours waxed on. Van Zandt finally helped Grin stumble out of the room, telling me she'd set me up with a place to sleep once she got the big guy situated. Jack and I chatted, and I was about to ask him if he actually got drunk, or if he just faked it to make his biological pals feel like he was part of the scene, but I fell asleep on the couch first.


I'm not sure what kind of arm-twisting Van Zandt did to Grin that he didn't object when she said she was coming with me to meet Mayfair, but given how sheepish he looked when she said it, it must have been something to see. Jack wanted to come, too, but the info on Milgrum, the just-opened locale where Mayfair was supposed to be, didn't say what the locals attitude towards non-humans might be. Jack could pass for a robot quite easily, but we didn't know if that would be any better. So it ended up being just Van Zandt and me. She was almost giddy when we headed out.

It took a few hours to cross the territory to a place where we could Step into Milgrum. While I'd been away, Grindlebone had used his connections to secure a list of relatively safe transfer points across the outer zone, where the area of the Traveler's Guild gave way to the unknown. Milgrum was right on the edge of the Guild's sphere of influence, at the point on the map where the gray of uncontrolled space turned to the black of the unknown. The Guild would not have been happy they knew where we were trying to go. This wasn't just a case of the Guild being contrary; the uncontrolled worlds didn't have any safeguards in place to minimize the risk of dangerous things crossing into world that weren't ready for them. Our crossing to the very edge of their space did represent a bit of a danger, but we weren't planning on buying any fruit, so I figured we were gonna be OK.

Milgrum turned out to be quite pleasant, all in all. The trees that lined the wide boulevards of the city we landed in were an odd brownish purple color, but otherwise it was like most cities I'd been in; Cobo Landing had seemed more obviously alien.

We landed a short distance from the location Jubjub had given us, and a quick walk got us to a deserted street corner. Oddly shaped vehicles rolled quietly past, but none of the locals seemed to be about. The only thing of any interest at all was a small green kiosk, which had 'Information' written down the side in white letters. Van Zandt and I spent almost half an hour loitering, making small talk, and shuffling back and forth nonchalantly, while no one at all walked by. Finally, out of bored desperation, I asked Van Zandt to go over what she knew about Mayfair.

I nearly jumped out of my skin, because just after I said 'Mayfair', the door of the green booth snapped open. The open door let us see the comfortable, if small, interior of the booth. A small screen above the door flashed to life, and words scrolled across it.

'Questions? Questions about Mayfair? Enter, and ask to your heart's content!'

The Long Walk

Even through my dark goggles, the glare of the desert would burn my eyes when the sun was high. From rise to set, the sun would force my eyes into a tight squint and make them water. By the end of each day, each side of my face would have a line of salt running down it, marking the path my tears had taken. The heat of the sand rose through my boots and scorched my feet, and every breath was like inhaling fire while the sun was up. Time was broken not by seconds and minutes, but by single trudging steps taken up and down the slopes of vast sand dunes. For days I had followed the silent man through the desert, maybe weeks. I had lost track in the unchanging cycle of cruelly hot days and painfully cold nights.

In the few seconds of rest and clear thought I managed, in the moments just before exhausted sleep or just after waking, I would question my choice to follow the silent man into the desert.

When Sachiko had mentioned the Sig Nomad to me as an option for making my way across the unfriendly reaches of the Boundless Realm, she had spoken of them as a group of freedom fighters, striking against the Realm's Jump Cops. When I had actually made contact, though, I found out that the Sig Nomad which fought for free travel in the Realm was only a small part of a large confederation of wanderers, most of whom were only slightly concerned with the actions of the Jump Cops.

The majority of the Sig Nomad were just that, nomads who wandered all the paths between realities, no matter how basic or esoteric they might be. Most weren't concerned with annoyances like the Realm because the Realm's ability to hinder the Sig Nomad's travel was negligible, at best. The Realm simply didn't know enough to be able to stop the nomads from going anywhere they wanted to.

So the small group who, more as a lark than anything else, bedeviled the Jump Cops, had passed me on to other members of the Sig Nomad who they said would be better able to help me. After some discussion, the elder members of the Sig Nomad had decided that I could be helped. Maybe.

I had always thought of my being able to Step across dimensional barriers as a gift, something that set me apart from most beings I encountered in my normal life. Sure, they could travel from place to place by gate almost as easily as I could, but only almost. They had to depend on gates, and spells, and continua craft for their movement, while I could Step at will from place to place, anytime I wished, mostly. But the Sig Nomad thought of my gift as the bare minimum of what would be considered acceptable for a nomad. My ability was circumscribed in ways I didn't always understand, which they found both unacceptable and hilarious in varying degrees. To the nomads, a gate or a bridge or a spell of traversal, and even my ability, were expressions of a misunderstanding about the nature of space.

The nomads saw all places as one, the seeming separation being an expression of the limits of the minds of most beings. They 'walked' from place to place only because that was the easiest way for the three-dimensional brain to convince itself to shift its focus from one 'place' to another. True masters were said to be able to manifest themselves anywhere they wished to, and in as many locations as they wished to. Like masters of any art form, though, nomad masters were rare as true oracles, honest politicians, and real love.

So the Sig Nomad agreed to let me learn to 'walk' from place to place, if I could. I was taken to a town on the edge of a vast desert, presented to the silent man, and told to follow him wherever he went. If I survived, it was possible I'd learn enough to get where I wanted to go.

So I followed the silent man as he walked behind the caravan for days, and I followed the silent man when he left the caravan and walked into the desert.

If all places are one, then all deserts are one. If you walk into the desert, away from anything else but the sand and the air and the sun, and into the place where there is only desert, where you aren't in a desert but in the desert, the desert that is the mother of all deserts, it's just possible that you can pass to another place altogether.

If the desert doesn't kill you first.

The silent man could have lead me through a forest, or out into the ocean, or across frozen wastes. The details would have been different, but the experience would have been mostly the same. Humans, in particular, have to be damn near killed before they can give up the attachment to being in one place, and one place alone. It's remarkably hard to let yourself be... indeterminate.

There was a change, one day that was exactly like the ones before. There was a change in where I stood in the universe. I was nowhere, and I knew exactly where I was.

I knew if I went that way, I'd be near home. So, I walked that way. It wasn't until night fell that I realized that the silent man had been following me.

For two day, I knew I was walking in the right direction, but my destination grew no closer. I'd found my way to nowhere, but I didn't know how to get out. Another day of heat and plodding steps followed, another day of moving without getting anywhere. At midday I stopped, feeling the heat of the sun through my head cover, and the heat of the sand through my shoes, and the pull of the place I wanted to go in front of me, and the feeling of nowhere at my back. I took a step forward, but I didn't move. The pull ahead of me was no stronger, and the feeling of nowhere behind me had not lessened at all.

I stood with my eyes closed. I willed myself towards the pull. Nothing changed. I was suspended between nowhere and somewhere, perfectly balanced.

If all places are one, somewhere and nowhere are both here; Right where I am, I thought. One being in front and one behind was arbitrary. It might as well be that one was above and one below...

Suddenly I was falling. My feet were firmly planted, but the feeling of dropping precipitously was undeniable. I fell, the sand painful against my hands and knees. While I tried to collect myself, something became clear. The pull of my destination was stronger. I hadn't moved, and yet I had.

What if my destination was downhill?

I stood up, and trudged up the next dune, all the time sliding downhill in my mind. When I crested the dune, I could see, shimmering in the distance, a small fort on the edge of the desert; a fort where just a short while ago, I had kidnapped a man in exchange for information. A fort that I knew was only a short series of Steps from home.

I looked back at the silent man. We looked at one another for a long moment until, with a short nod, he turned and walked back the way we had come. Two hours later, I walked out of the desert.