Silence

[PREVIOUSLY ON...] Beneath the dying branches of Yggdrasil, with Venn unconscious on the moss and three silent blows from William's hidden hand still ringing in the air, Archie Moran felt the old reflex rise in him, the shrug, the lowered head. He could use Sera's link to the Gate and shout the truth to Luca. Or he could keep it to himself, hope that Otis would do what needed doing, and carry his friend through the door. He chose the quiet way. He chose to say nothing.

…

They carried Venn between them.

Jin took his shoulders and Archie his knees, and Zoe went ahead with the bow in her fist and the lamp of her small fierce face turned to the dark. He was lighter than he should have been. That was what Archie couldn't get past. A man of six feet three, built like a young tree, and he weighed no more than a bundle of kindling. His head lolled. His lips, in the glow of the arch, were the color of slate.

"Hold the door!" cried Sera.

She stood at the base of the trunk with both arms upraised, the green light running through her fingers, and the whole tree shuddered in time with her breath. The pulses came from above in long dull throbs. Each one tore a new gash in the bark. Each one drove her back a step. Brynja had ridden down from the arches with a dozen of her sisters and stood in a ring about her, spears out, shields locked, facing a sky that held nothing.

"Go!" the Keeper shouted. "Go, Shieldbearer! I cannot hold it long!"

"Sera—"

"Go!"

He went. He stumbled over the threshold with Venn's weight dragging at his arms, and behind him he heard the Keeper's voice rise in a high, clear, ringing note, a wordless song, and the door slam shut with the sound of a great tree falling in a forest.

Then the white took him. And, as it did, he looked back once, and saw her through the closing seam: a small brown figure under a gray colossus, singing, with the fire of the world in her hair.

I should have said something.

I should have said it. Not to her. To them.

He pushed the thought down, where it lay in the dark like a stone.

…

In the lab, Otis Brennan was eating a sandwich very slowly.

It was a ham-and-cheese on rye, from the machine on the third floor, and he had been eating it for twenty minutes. He sat at the far end of the main console with his back to the observation suite, and he chewed, and swallowed, and chewed again. His left hand rested flat on the breast pocket of his lab coat. Under it, folded in eighths, a sheet of dot-matrix paper crackled faintly each time he breathed.

WILLIAM CROSS IS STEALING THE DATA.

He had read it so many times that the words had come loose from their meaning and gone floating, like fish in a bowl. Stealing. Selling. Corvitae. He didn't know what a Corvitae was. He did not know whether the message was true. He had spent three days in a fog of doubt, looking at the back of a gray-suited head and thinking: Surely not. The man had been so kind. He'd bought Otis lunch. He had asked about his thesis. He had called him the most promising young mind in this building, and shaken his hand.

But the message came from Archie.

And Archie is dying in a pod.

"Otis."

He nearly choked.

William Cross stood at his elbow, mild and smiling, with a cup of coffee in each hand. He held one out. "You looked as though you could use this."

"Thanks," said Otis, in a strangled voice.

"Not at all." William sat on the stool beside him, crossed his legs, and sipped. "You've been quiet these last few days. I hope nothing's the matter."

"No. No, I'm. I'm fine."

"You're certain?"

"Just tired."

"We're all tired." William's voice was warm. "It's a great strain, this work. We carry so much. The lives of those four young people, the hopes of Dr. Ferrara. It's easy to feel alone." He set down his cup. "If anything were troubling you, I'd want you to tell me. I consider you a friend, Otis."

Otis stared at the sandwich.

He thought: Now. He thought: Ask him. Look him in the eye and say it. He thought of Archie, gaunt and kind, saying Thanks for the soup in a voice so shy it was almost an apology.

His mouth opened.

"Do you know," said William, mildly, "I was reading something about your thesis the other day. It's remarkable work. The Tanaka-Brennan model. I had a word with a colleague at MIT, a very senior man. He said that with the right backing, a young researcher might expect a position at, well, anywhere." He smiled. "I only mention it. I'd hate for any distraction to get in the way of a bright future."

The words dried in Otis's throat.

"Of course," said William, "you'd never allow that."

"No," whispered Otis.

"Of course not." William patted his shoulder. "Eat your sandwich."

He rose, and strolled away across the lab, whistling softly. Otis sat quite still. His left hand pressed against his pocket. The paper crackled.

He did not take it out.

…

The Mirror World was silent.

Archie knew it before he opened his eyes. It was a different kind of silence from the others, flat and enormous, with no wind in it, no breath, no birdsong. It was the silence of a room whose clocks have all stopped. He lay on his back on something hard and cold. When he sat up, he found himself looking at a sky like pewter.

"Oh," said Zoe, from somewhere to his left. "Oh, that's creepy."

It was Boston.

It was not quite Boston. It was a Boston that had been drawn from memory by someone who'd lost the knack: all the right buildings, in all the wrong places, standing in a long gray grid. The John Hancock Tower rose at the end of a street where no such street had ever been. The Common was a flat green rectangle with nothing growing on it. A trolley sat on its rails, windows dark, its doors open. A row of brownstones marched down a hill, flush with their neighbors, perfectly symmetrical, perfectly blank.

The street signs were backward.

"Mirror," said Jin faintly. He was kneeling by Venn, one hand on the boy's wrist. "It's literal. Everything's reversed. The writing, the traffic. Look at the cars."

They were driving on the left. Slowly, and silently, in a long gray stream, without drivers. In the passenger seats, in the doorways, on the sidewalks, stood people. Hundreds of them. They walked, they waited, they sat on benches and read newspapers and looked at their watches. And none of them had a face. Where the faces should have been there was only a smooth, pale blank, like a thumb pressed into clay.

"Don't look at them," said Zoe.

"I can't help it."

"I know." She put her hand over her mouth. "I know. I just want you to know I'm not looking either."

Archie did not answer.

He was looking at a shop window.

…

It was a bakery, he thought. A small neat shop on a corner, with a striped awning and a name on the glass in gilt lettering that he could not read. In the window stood a tray of rolls. Beside the rolls hung a mirror.

It was an ordinary mirror. A cheap round one, with a gilt frame, hung by a chain. It showed the street, backward and gray. It showed Zoe, and Jin, and Venn on the pavement, and a tall man in a gray coverall with his hair plastered to his forehead.

Then it showed someone else.

He stood behind the reflection of Archie's own shoulder. He wore a suit. It was a good suit, charcoal wool, with a plain white shirt and a dark tie. He was a man of fifty-five, thin, with a high pink forehead and a fringe of colorless hair. His shoulders were rounded. His back was bowed. In one hand he carried a leather portfolio; in the other, a cup of coffee in a paper sleeve, from which he sipped, at intervals, with small, careful, nervous sips.

He was smiling.

It was the smile that did it. It was a happy smile. It was a mild, contented, entirely untroubled smile, the smile of a man who'd known his place for thirty years and had never been surprised. He looked at Archie in the glass, and his eyes crinkled with a sort of warm, confiding delight.

"Morning, Moran," said the reflection.

Archie stepped back.

"Don't be like that." The thin man's voice was soft and amiable. He sounded a great deal like Archie. It was the same pitch, the same cadence, a pleasant light baritone that did not rise. "We've been waiting for you. Graham's got a new project. He wants your thoughts. He says you've got such a gift for the details."

"I'm not—"

"I told him you'd be glad to help."

"I'm not you."

"No?" The smile did not waver. It widened a little. "Funny. You look just like me."

He raised the paper cup, in a courtly little salute, and drank.

Behind Archie, on the pavement, he heard Zoe say his name in a small cold voice. He did not turn. He could not. He stood with his hands at his sides and his heart going like a hammer and stared at the happy man in the glass, who bent his head, ever so slightly, in the manner of one who has just been told what to do.

That's me, he thought. That's who I'd be.

That's who I am, if I stay quiet.