A A Attanasio by In Other Worlds (epub)

Author:In Other Worlds (epub)
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

At dawn, he was reading the book through for the second time, terrified by the parallel reality of its words. Only the ending was different, for it depicted Eve and Ken, the narrator, going off together blissfully into Timesend.

His eyes were red, tear-torn, and his whole body hollowed, a bubble of silence. He dropped the book and shuffled out of the apartment, needing air. He walked down Fifty-seventh Street to Central Park.

Madness is lonely, he thought at the edge of the pond, dawn spreading on the water like a tree of light. The city of his mind was frenzied with the commerce of implications and ideas. “How could Zeke have known?” was the question that enjambed “What is real, anyway?” This was earth-two. This was a place as alien as the Werld. Nothing was real. Everything was possible. Not even Evoë’s song was his in this place.

Madnesses mingled in him, and he may very well have lost all perspective then and there, but the wild shout that was gathering sound in him was interrupted by the slice of a sharply pitched whistle. It was the furious sound of his mind cracking. Until he recognized what it must be: The whistle was coiling from his left breast pocket.

He reached into his chamois jacket and withdrew the imp card in a hand that went cold with realization. The sound was the warning tone, announcing that something sizable had come through his lynk to the Werld. He looked about him—but, of course, there was nothing Werldlike here: In his amazed stupor he had left his lance back at the apartment!

He sprinted across Fifty-ninth, caroming off braking cars and bounding around pedestrians. Whatever it was, it was back at the suite.

Sheelagh was asleep, but the sound from where Carl had dropped his gear woke her. It was not a recognizable noise. It sounded like oil sizzling in a pan, only louder and with a crackle that was almost electrical.

Sheelagh had left her door open in case Carl wanted to be with her, and she could see Caitlin asleep in her open room. She got out of bed, and the noise crisped sharper. She didn’t bother putting a robe over her negligee but went directly to Carl’s room.

The hot noise was definitely fuming from there. She knocked, and the weird sound went on heedlessly.

“Carl?” The door was unlocked. She nudged it open and saw nothing through the crack. She opened the door wide and only then saw what was making the racket.

The wall above Carl’s empty bed was brown with the thick shape of a giant bug. The huge trilobite shimmered with the vibrations of its complex mouthparts and antennae.

Sheelagh screamed, and the thing scuttled off thewall and onto the bed. Its broad, flat body covered the whole quilt, its many thorn-spurred legs quivering with the insanity of its gnarled perceptions.

Sheelagh’s scream woke Caitlin, and she popped out of her room in time to see the insectile head emerge from Carl’s room. Sheelagh had backed

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