“So,” M-Bot said, “these things are both memories and portals between dimensions?”
“Yes,” I said, closing my eyes. The boundary was weaker than usual in this room. My pocket started to grow warm—my father’s pin.
Time for a test. The somewhere, home, was on the other side of this wall. Could I open the way? I engaged my cytonic senses. With my hands on the wall here…yes, I could feel the somewhere—my reality—pulling on me, trying to suck me through. The rock became as if liquid, and I began to sink into it.
Strangely, I could again feel a presence near me. Like I had when I’d used my powers in the jungle. The one that…that I wanted to believe might be my father. Was it guiding me? Leading me to freedom?
I stopped with a thump. Like the sound your boots made on the floor when you kicked them off at night. I tried again.
Thump.
“What do you feel?” Chet asked me.
“The portal is locked on the other side,” I said. “As you warned.”
“I hoped I was wrong about that,” he said. “And that your hyperjumping powers would let you use these portals to access the somewhere. Alas! Fortunately, that is not our primary endeavor here. There has to be a way to see the memories left for us. Can you…listen to the rock? Spy on it, as you say you can do to the delvers?”
I tried that, closing my eyes and listening. Opening my mind. Yes, there was something here. How did I access it? I asked the rock, pled with it, to open to me. But I failed. With a sigh, I opened my eyes.
To find that the cavern had changed around me.
I could make out the vague outlines of the rooms here, but they were ethereal, insubstantial. It was as if that world had faded, and another had sprung up in its place. In this one I felt like I was floating in darkness.
I stumbled, trying to get my bearings.
“Oh!” M-Bot said. “Spensa? You seem to be experiencing motor control problems. This isn’t related to the rap on the head I gave you, is it? Oh scud, I directly disobeyed my programming mandates by doing harm to—”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m seeing something.”
“Well, you’re probably always seeing something. Even when your eyes are closed, technically. Or maybe not because—”
“Hush,” I said, turning around. Chet still knelt beside me, looking about in confusion.
“Do you see what I do?” I asked. “We’re floating in darkness. Like when in the lightburst.”
“Indeed,” Chet said. “Only, look here. Beside me.”
I knelt, unsteady. I could feel the floor, touch it. Yet it was faint, nearly invisible to my eyes. Near our knees was a small pinprick of whiteness. It was part of the vision. “Is this the lightburst?”
Chet shook his head, seeming baffled. But as we watched, something changed. A substance began to grow around the pinprick of light, obscuring it. Growing like a tiny asteroid, then flattening out, and…
“A fragment,” I said, watching as stone grew. “We’re witnessing the birth of a fragment.”
“Yes…” Chet said. “I believe you are correct. We are watching it grow over hundreds of years, I suspect. It’s as if…”
“As if matter is seeping through,” I said. “That’s what this is, Chet. A tiny weakness between the dimensions. The somewhere is leaking in, forming a fragment like a stalactite forms slowly over time in a cavern.”
And I knew this was happening over centuries, as Chet had said. That information appeared in my mind, because…because it had been left intentionally to inform me. These thoughts, they were the thoughts of ancient cytonics.
“Yes!” Chet said. “I believe you’ve done it, Miss Nightshade! This is the past. The Path of Elders. The secrets of the ancient cytonics.”
Scud, it sounded awesome when he said it that way. As we watched, the fragment expanded into a block of stone perhaps twenty meters wide.
“Look,” Chet said, pointing behind me. “Was that there before?”
I turned around. I didn’t see any other fragments, but I did pick out a faraway white spot. It was the lightburst, but it seemed to have appeared as the fragment grew.
“It’s so small,” I said. “And there are no other fragments around. This must be the distant, distant past.”
I got a sense of this place at the time. A kind of silent tranquility. Nothing dangerous. No feelings of anger. No…
No delvers. The delvers either hadn’t existed at that time, or had been somewhere else.