Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

“Today, it was…,” Gary said in a hoarse voice and shook his head. “I didn’t think we’d make it.”

“Not today. You forget about the time shift. It was earlier,” Daphne said, correcting him.

Suzi sat up. She sensed something unusual.

“What happened?” Spig asked.

Gary put down his empty beer can. “The black fog.”

“Like nothing before,” said Daphne. “It was so strange. Those blots everywhere… across the road. They say time passes differently inside them. One of the trucks in front of us fell into a hole. With its load. We saw its trailer going up, straight up, as the fog surrounded it… By the time we got there, the hole had closed up.”

“Holes in the road? But that doesn’t happen. They would have told us on television.”

“Daphne exaggerates. A hole can’t close up that fast. The driver ahead of us simply lost his bearings in the fog and left the road.”

“Once, on television, two experts argued over whether time in a black fog speeds up or slows down,” Suzi said.

“Which is it?” Daphne asked.

“I don’t recall.” Suzi didn’t have a head for things said by experts.

Again the medical van came and the ambulance. Dr. Nott examined Ra Mahleiné and promised there would be an operation if the patient’s condition remained stable. Gavein didn’t believe her.

He looked at the blinking lights of the retreating ambulance. Why still use the siren, he wondered, if there is no more traffic?

At breakfast they sat around a picnic table set up in front of the house. The day was warm, and there was no wind. Spring had come to stay in Central Davabel.

Ra Mahleiné suddenly began acting strange. “Get back to that book, the one with the beads on the cover!” she shouted.

He still had on the plate before him a piece of spongy bread; crackers with three slices of ham, salted in the Davabel way; a half-synthetic cottage cheese made of powdered milk; a hard-boiled egg; and a generous blob of ketchup. Breakfast in Davabel was made up of such oddments, much as the main meal of the day was always pasta and pizza.

“In a minute. Let me finish eating first,” he said coaxingly, wanting to draw the full brunt of her wrath. Perhaps feeling, irrationally, that if she still had the strength to scold, there was hope.

“You eat so slowly,” she said, building up steam. “I’ll get the stabbing again below my belly. When you’re in that book, nothing happens to me. I can read for hours, take a nap, watch TV, and nothing.” She was spelling it out, finally. “When you’re eating or talking… or when we talk together, that’s when the pain comes, the Red Claw that grabs me between my legs.” The Red Claw was her latest euphemism. For two days now that was how she spoke of her disease. “You tell him too, Lorraine. When he reads, isn’t it peaceful for us? We can gossip for hours, knit, lie in the sun.”

Lorraine didn’t look well. She had always had a fair complexion, but now her pallor revealed new blemishes on her face and chest. Short and small, she could hardly be seen at the table. She blinked. Although her lashes were red, she carefully blackened them.

“It’s true, Dave,” she said. “Magda doesn’t feel the pain, doesn’t faint, while you’re reading.”

Ra Mahleiné’s complaining might have had its nonsensical charm. But when a third party repeated her argument, the absurdity ceased to be amusing.

He did not dignify what Lorraine said with a response. Instead, he swallowed the last bites of his meal.

The only wife in the world, he thought dourly, who prefers to have her husband read rather than listen to her. All right, then, she’ll get what she wants.

Without another word he went to his armchair and opened Nest of Worlds .

The day of the move came quickly. Despite his promise to Gary, Spig called several other moving companies as well. It turned out that Emigrant indeed offered the best terms.

The Bolyas sold nothing, since the purchase agreements they had signed clearly stated that if the object was disowned by the buyer, or if the buyer attempted to return it, it became the property of the seller and the sum of the installment payments made by the buyer could not be recovered.

The rig, with two enormous red trailers, pulled up in front of the house. Spig and Suzi carried their furniture out piece by piece. It was hard work. Gary helped them with the bigger pieces. Normally one hired movers to do this, but the Bolyas, after their latest shopping spree, had reached their credit limit, so they had to manage on their own. They paid Gary with two cases of beer, which were put in the cabin of the truck.

The disadvantage of doing it themselves soon became apparent: Gary and Spig had to move some furniture that needed four men to carry it. Spig was out of breath; his face grew hot and red, and it was covered with sweat; his movements became like those of a man in a desperate struggle, violent, jerky. Suzi pushed rather than carried the junk to be moved.

Finally it happened: the Bolyas’ dresser hit the doorframe, plaster fell, and a strip of molding splintered off. Spig caressed the wounded dresser, anguish in his heart.

“Use some putty and brown shoe polish. No one will know,” Gary advised him. “In Tolz half the people have damaged furniture.”

Spig stared, his mouth open.

“Because they were moved from Mougarrie,” Gary explained.

Spig guffawed.

The dresser was only the beginning. The massive dining room table smacked into an edge of the truck’s loading door, taking off some red paint. Spig despaired over the nick.

“The table, that’s nothing,” Gary told him. “If the door doesn’t close now, Emigrant will sue you for the damage.”

Spig blinked his round, frightened rodent eyes. But Gary had said that only to avoid having to listen to more bellyaching. He took a hammer and banged the metal back into position. More of the paint came off.

The little glass doors fell off the great credenza, and one of the panes broke. By some miracle they loaded the giant hutch. The doors of both trailers got dents in several places. Hammering the metal didn’t help much.

The Amido was neatly driven into the dark cavern of one of the trailers. Spig, exhausted, couldn’t keep his nerves under control and turned the wheel the wrong way. A hollow thud broke the right headlight and turn signal and twisted the fender. It was a spike through his tender heart: the Amido would no longer be like new. He had the criminal thought of going back and buying another car.

Gary looked at the fender with a flashlight. “An easy part to replace. It’ll be fine,” he said, comforting Spig. “A good thing you didn’t hurt the truck.”

The rest of the loading went without incident.

“You’re taking empty beer cans?”

“They’re worth something. In Tolz maybe the deposit is higher… It’ll help pay Emigrant for the dents. And there’s room, isn’t there?”

“Don’t take newspapers. In Tolz they don’t recycle.”

The sun sank in the west. It was a pleasant, bright evening after a lovely day. In the east the blue of the sky slowly deepened. Against that blue you could see the exploding copter from General Thompson’s squadron. Yesterday evening it burned, but today—since morning—it was exploding. Gavein, leaning on the windowsill, watched how pieces of metal separated, how the hull expanded into a cloud of fragments, how the growing bubble of ignited gasoline formed a yellow-red sphere. Judging by the speed of the explosion, the pilot had taken the craft to an altitude considerably above seconds. Help was not coming to him—no other aircraft had approached the unfortunate copter over the past few days. Gavein was certain that the experts in the Davabel Air Force had carefully calculated the odds against rescue. Taking the copter to such a height had been the pilot’s mistake, or perhaps his hand had slipped on the control stick. Military machines couldn’t fly at that altitude: the heat would blow up their fuel and ammunition. The copter’s engine had burst, and the fuel from the torn lines had carried the fire to the fuel tank. Gavein wondered if the crew’s agony would also be dragged out for hours. If they were high enough above the altitude of seconds, their death might take days.