Endworlds - Nicholas Read [61]
Who would this Reader pass to next?
It had to be someone behind Gavul in the opposite gallery for the points to neatly align. Scanning the far-side crowd, she saw him immediately, a man too composed, not caught up like the rest of the crowd, as one biding his time until called on.
Then a different man sprang up to the left of the Reader, crying: “If these are natural processes then why are seismic shifts increasing at a faster than average rate?”
To the right of the Reader, another stood: “We have an exponential increase in dimensional breaches, which our agents on Earth Prime are ill-equipped to patrol, let alone control. Brace, what do you say is the cause?”
The Reader had been surrounded and nullified, the argument thrown back to Brace Hurcan Aragenti’s control. He moved quickly, turning on his charm.
“I don’t suggest we doubt the findings of those we trust to read the patterns of the past. However the winter solstice several years hence is a known point in time for us. All that we have been working to is towards this point, where two galaxies meet, where the Line of Judgment will weigh the hearts of all. Into that place, none of us have gone before, no matter the Ages we have seen come and go since it was our race occupying the Prime world. A place we have not before walked is a place we cannot claim certain knowledge of.”
The crowd mumbled its assent, and the Brace took to the floor, taking up position behind Lord Bath Gavul, forming his own set of angles.
“Members of Conclave, there is technology in the other world that the children of our children’s children are employing. Do we want children peering into the places between places where even adults do not look? They are not prepared for what they will find there. And no matter the opinion of my esteemed colleagues, the Fae’rest Nation has immutable evidence that incidents are increasing, and not at a natural rate.”
He spaced three fingers across his thummin and threw the images into the air where they imprinted above the heads of all gathered. As eyes turned to the great glass lens above, he continued to circle Gavul, silently closing the triangle on his own, victor in this round of political jibing.
Well played, my Brace, thought Queen Fae’Elayen silently.
“What you see here are visual images captured from the logs of agents in service to our Cassandra Foundation. They show the beings that have stepped into the Prime dimension, which these agents are enlisted to return to where they belong. Here, you will recognize the faces of our own people who have been drawn to the Fourth Age, and I hasten to stress they appeared there beyond the protection of our embassies and away from the typical geometry Lord Gavul so ably explained. It should not be happening this way.
“See these other images: creatures from our First Age that have no corollary on the current Earth Prime. And so with these,” More images appeared. “People and beasts from the Second and Third dimensions, none of which belong, their species never having seeded there. They are leaking through without control. This planet’s natural order is failing.”
Gavul waved hands high above his head to draw the crowd’s attention, but Aragenti drew thumb and forefinger apart to zoom the next image so broad there could be no mistaking it. The crowd fell immediately silent, and even Gavul staggered backwards as it filled the sky.
“Our scientists are right, most of the flux we see is a natural effect, and for this cause we have recently capped all sixty-two vortices where we didn’t already have measures in place. So if all the portals that connect the four worlds are under our control, where then did this come from?”
It is said that when people experience the same trauma, they sometimes share the same nightmares, bound to each other by a link that goes deeper than what