Neil Gaiman & Michael Reaves by InterWorld

Author:InterWorld [InterWorld]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-07-27T18:00:16+00:00

It was like watching a ripple that started in the beacon Jo held—a ripple that spread outward in all directions, washing over everything in its path—including us. I felt nothing except a momentary coldness and disorientation. None of my teammates seemed to be affected either.

But everything else was. That ever-expanding ripple turned into a transparent wave that passed over the equip- ment and scientific paraphernalia, transforming everything as it went. That merciless fluorescent glare gave way to the flickering yellow light of tapers. A long-range surveillance monitor screen wavered and changed into a crystal ball. A rack of chemicals and solutions held in glass retorts and test tubes became an oaken cabinet housing earthen pots and vials full of various powders, salts and elixirs. A radiation and toxic materials containment chamber became a circle of gold bricks inlaid in the floor and stamped with protective cabal- istic signs. The wave—actually an expanding bubble, with us at its center—accelerated as it grew larger, and within sec- onds the futuristic laboratory had been transformed into a sorcerer’s sanctum.

And it didn’t stop there. Looking out the window, I could see the wave spreading across the city in all directions like the radiating blast front of a nuclear bomb. The Art Deco

skyscrapers and spires rippled, wavered, became Gothic tow- ers of mortared stone. The aerial ramps and tubes vanished, while the darting airships metamorphosed into winged drag- onlike creatures who carried human passengers on their backs.

In a matter of a minute or less, the gleaming science fiction city had been turned into a medieval town complete with a castle at its center, with us in its tallest tower. Even the window I was watching through was now an unglazed open- ing with crosshatching iron bars. Everything had changed.

No, I thought then—not changed. You couldn’t change what had always been, and this had always been a world ruled by magic, not science. My subconscious had realized that when Jo had flown up to get the beacon. Her wings were far too small to support her purely in terms of lift and air pressure. Jo’s people had evolved on a world where magic was in the very air they flew in, and she could fly only when such transmundane power was present.

Like here.

“Back to the roof!” I shouted, and turned toward the ele- vator shaft, only to find instead a narrow enclosed stairwell, crowded with guards holding spears, swords and crossbows pointed at us.

I called myself six different kinds of a moron. No wonder there had been no people visible save for the far-off ones fly- ing the airships. No wonder the whole city had looked so

spic-and-span. A glamour had been laid over the whole shebang, just for our benefit—a spell of seeing that mesmer- ized the eyes and brain into visualizing and experiencing a false front. Our taking the first beacon—probably a talisman disguised as the beacon—had triggered the spell’s dissolution and signaled HEX that we were safely in the net.

No wonder everything had been

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