Endworlds - Nicholas Read [33]
It was these lapses in dimensional integrity that had kept her and her compatriots so busy of late. During the past 20,000 years or so, Earth had been home to creatures and people both familiar and downright bizarre. It seemed the Builders sometimes tried new stock, new combinations each time the Prime matrix was rebooted, and when any of these non-corporeal beings—human or otherwise—bled through from these holding worlds, the Longcoats were there to help them home again before pathogens, biology, or technology that didn’t belong had a chance to leak through.
More than one pandemic scare had started in recent years as a result of a Longcoat team failing to contain a breach in time. These had all been given exotic names like SARS, bird flu, the H1N1 swine flu and so forth by governments and media unable to account for their sudden outbreaks and alien genetics.
Jax had helped hundreds of animals back where they belonged. Often they were docile, disoriented. Some looked identical to forest creatures of the present Age. Others looked like they’d stepped out of Hell’s Bestiary. Looping them with nets and herding them back through a seam was simple enough.
But at other times a predator came through, like those lumbering aquatic beasts that fit a category they called Krakens, or the many varieties of agile Runners that were most lethal, or the Bats, Moles, Screamers and a dozen other designations they tracked, tried to return home and reluctantly destroyed if they couldn’t.
Occasionally the visitor was a human, someone who had lived on Earth thousands of years ago in the flesh, now continuing in a facsimile of Earth. The languages never matched up, word roots being completely alien, and so Jax gleaned nothing from them about conditions on their version of Earth. These people were often bemused to be surrounded by what to them seemed to be spirits, unaware that it was they who were non-corporeal. She wondered if, when they returned to their own plane, they remembered their visit as a dream.
Naturally occurring vortices had always existed around the globe12, where the membranes that divided the several dimensions stretched thinner than tracing paper. Most of the time it was not possible to step between worlds.
But these vortices had other uses.
With the right tools, people could step in one vortice and out another, skating thousands of miles across the planet’s surface through what were known as Landhatches, like wormholes embedded in the crust of the planet.
Such tunnels could also be opened away from the naturally occurring leylines using artificial devices called Holepunches that latched onto the nearest conduit and served to slingshot the bearer onto it. Holepunches were the Longcoats’ preferred means of patrolling the planet, and all of the planet’s sixty-two Landhatches were patrolled to stop people stumbling through the seams by accident in either direction. But those occurrences were rare. It was the random incursions at coordinates that should be thick enough to keep everything in its place that were perplexing. And these events were happening with increasing regularity.
Standing beside Jax and opposite Lion as she shuffled around a steaming food trolley, the blonde Tucker looked across at the younger boy.
“You know, if he’s lost and this memory thing is a lasting condition, then he’s a perfect addition. Especially with that talent for shredding the Kraken. Not a bad looking little hottie, either.” She smiled. “Have you considered keeping him here in Neverland and teaching this Lost Boy the ropes? I could show him around.”
Demonstrating that in addition to his other qualities he also had excellent hearing, young Eastwood rose from his meal and joined their table.
“What’s more important to you? My being lost, being a Kraken killer, or being a hottie?”
Tucker blushed and turned back to serving herself.
“We’re all lost.” Lion waved expansively at the people milling around. “Some of us are hotter than others,” gesturing to himself, “But all of us are outcasts. Orphans, runaways, kids