I’d versed out from a cold winter’s wasteland trying to follow another verser, Kyla, into another universe.



Or had it been Twyla? Years had passed between my talking with her at Menlo Park and seeing her fighting to speak around a mouth full of blood at Duluth Community College, and of course, those two separate incidents were in far apart alternate universes. One happy, and the other almost saw the extinction of the human race.



Twyla claimed I owed her blood debt for rescuing a divergent, an alternate me born in some other universe, from a torture chamber. I did not remember, but I did not doubt her. My memory has a great gaping hole in it, and too, it could have happened in the future of my personal timeline, and still be in her past. Versers jumped from world to world with virtually no limits; they could arrive and find a statue of themselves from an earlier visit which they personally have not done in their own biological timeline yet.



Plus, if Twyla said it was so, it was so. Heavy bones, dense muscles, wide shoulders, black buzz cut hair, a blunt face with harsh eyes, and for accessories boots, chameleon fatigues, a black tank-top, and a Haupt-Reismann four foot long magnetically accelerated dart thrower described her. She did not feel she had to bother with lying as she could stomp most anybody who got on her case about her sharp-tongued opinions.



“I could vaporize a head at five klicks, with Dusty here.” The first time I met her, she had patted the shoulder slung monstrosity of a dart thrower and introduced herself to the crowd of versers at Menlo Park with data about her weapon, rather than her name.



The newness about her since last I saw her was she had a dark-haired and tattoed boyfriend who she had a problem seeing, as he did her. And he thought Twlya beautiful which is not the word that comes to mind when you meet her. Dangerous, healthy, bad-tempered are more natural words. But you could see the love between them.



And for some reason she seemed conditioned to kill herself, and she demanded my help.



So, I opened my eyes and looked about to spy out my new world. Blue-tinged beaches, and purple skies with an orange and a white sun peeking through the cloud cover echoed with the noise of something like a flock of gulls with iridescent feathers. Parakeet gulls, you might call them.



A quiet reaching out with my sense for scriff brought nothing. I waited an hour and tried again with equal results. So, sadly, I drew my knife and readied it, hating to give this world up with its exuberant natural beauty.

“No.” I heard from up the beach, and a pair of inhuman bipedals with exotically large eyes and a lyrical voice came out from where they hid. I touched by accident their thoughts, and found a sweet kindness and innocence there and a curious bewilderment as to what I was.

“I’m not from around here. Gotta go.” And so I used my dagger and fled that world.



The smell of a strange citrus whose precise smell I have never seen elsewhere told me I lay on Naga World. Carefully, I stood up, and hiked over the night-darkened plain in this dangerous and deceptive world.



Umak Tek’s gates opened to a magical “Open Sesame.” And I went in to talk to the Governor and Governess of the place.

I dropped off a copy of my traveller’s log for them to store and to let other’s use as they saw fit.

They told me another verser or two was about, among them a first-timer named Kelly.

“As much as I want to stop and greet the newbie, I don’t have time, I’m on a mission.”

“From God?” The Governor asked with quirked eyebrow.

“From Twyla.”

“That’s worse, God is known to be rather forgiving.” The Governess said. I smiled, and nodded. Then I handed her some vacuum-packed spice packets, and made a charade of slitting my throat.

The Governor nodded, and psionically shut down my body. I versed out.



Twlya is high on the list of versers that I require a very good reason to cross. There are others more powerful such as Whisp, but she brings a professional commando’s perspective to things. The same logic applies to Friend who annoys and befuddles a lot of us warlike types with his pacifistic ways. The fact that he is superhuman mentally and physically and incredibly patient makes his negotiate until consensus work for him, but I cannot do it. And because of his peaceful ways, I am not too afraid to cross him; usually he just negotiates a way for everybody to get what they really want. I think he and the Martian Terraformer from the Twenty-Seventh Century come from the same milliau because they have the same feel to their thought process, and they detest each other.

Some versers are more purely killers than Twyla, but they often lack the skills and the equipment to deal out significant damage. She is a dangerous combination of power and intent hardened by professionalism.



My next world found me deep in space, and breathing oxygen light-years from any planetary star system. I took my time sensing and even did a clairvoyant search, but found nothing alive except for the telepathic stars which burned coal.



They assured me they would keep an eye out for Twlya if she happened by. We talked for several hours as I waited for my body to stabilize after versing since it can be dangerous to verse out too quickly, too often.



The stars had a fascinating view of life, and I could have floated there for several weeks just chatting with them quite happily and practising my telekinesis while telekinetic coal-burning stars soared around me in an intricate dance. I was the first “bacterial level” intelligence they had encountered, and we shared a mutual fascination at our differences, but duty called in a harsh commando’s voice.



Perhaps, I could have stayed on in that world and not been any slower to get to Twlya since time differences did not matter between worlds, but I did not want to try it.



Spiders creep me out, and so when I woke to find a two-foot wide one sitting on my chest, I did not think, I reacted. Lunging for my plasma cannon as the most powerful weapon available did nothing since my arm was bound in spidersilk to a black and tattered tree.



A chittering around me, and I saw dozens of the creatures in the small vale.

Revulsion and terror grasped me, and I reached for a mental strike that would fling them all far away from me.

*It is intelligent. Let it go.* I heard an urbane voice in my mind, as I gathered strength for the fatal blow. So, panting, I stopped and trembled.



Let free, I stood with goosebumps competing for space on my back with cold, wet sweat.

*What are you ugly beastie?*

*Not a beastie; it is smart, see how its brain is listening to the communal chatter*

“Not as smart as us.*

*Probably right, but maybe it is smarter.*

*I am human* I interjected in the flow of words, and caused silence, and then a storm of chatter.

Finally it subsided.

*What do you come here for? To rob our young of life?*

*Uh, no, I seek these two, and I showed them mental images of Twyla and boyfriend.”

*Looks just like you*

*No, they don’t; he has ugly bone hair on top, and they have proper black feathers.*



That was one way to look at it, I supposed.



*We have something strange we find. Looks like something of yours.*



A dozen dozen hands cooperated in passing a yellow, metal tube up through the ranks of the spiders in an eerie harmony that uses scrapes and and clicks as its background music.



The spider who had sat on my chest gave it to me, and I twitched when its two foot long leg brushed my hand.



As soon as my hand touched the cylinder, a message begin to play.



“Taduesz, I hope you are keeping your vow. We need your help desperately. We live in a nice world with much to investigate and little danger. A high level of telekinesis is possible here. So we should be able to stay here for a while. We’ve bounced out of several worlds, but I hope this is a keeper for a while. And that you can catch up with us here.”



*I have to go*

*Probably for the best, your horrific appearance is scaring some people.*



I nodded and versed out with relief.



“About time you arrived.” I heard as I staggered to my feet. The heavy black granite beneath my feet shuddered under the waves of the cries of thousands about me in the darkness. The speaker stood five feet away outside a pentagram. His clothing was a feathered hat, and a turqouise skirt. The torch-lit shadows swallowed up the rest. He pulled a microphone and cable out of a recess in the pyramid top.

“Quiet people, please. Quiet, or we will start sacrificing crowd members to the gods.” The electronically magnified threat boomed out into the dark, and silenced the crowd.

I took out my plasma cannon.

“See, a fighter indeed. The Lord of the Sun will be pleased.” The now breathless voice hardly needed to whip up enthusiasm as the crowd shrieked in ecstasy. Lights came up, and I saw an oblong flat pyramid top with tens of thousands of humans sitting on the hillsides of the natural stadium that surrounded the pyramid. The spectators screaming for blood, my blood, gave me a headache.

Across from me, a dull-eyed Twlya, crusted with blood and scab wounds stared at me in abject misery from inside her pentagram.

“Don’t hurt her, Taduesz! They refuse to heal her.” I heard the scream from the base of the pyramid, and saw her boyfriend tied up in a rack while leering torturers loomed over him. They turned the screw, and whoever had imposed the conditioning had left no stone unturned in their malice. She heard him utter a short, sharp scream in agony, and she bounced to her feet with a killing fury in her eyes.

“A moment of quiet please as we dedicate this sacrifice to the Lord of the Sun. When the demon’s heart is torn loose from his or her rib cage, then will Endless Night be staved off for another year, as long as your regular sacrifices keep coming in. To our worldwide audience, let me say that any gift in excess of two pounds of gold automatically enters you into the lottery to be a member of this crowd of the blessed by the gods.”

The profound silence was broken by Twyla’s words to me.

“I thought it was safe in this world; no one could beat me in a straight fight here. And this was a world that my superiors enjoyed for their own reasons, so they gave me more time with Joyu, my heart when I consented to stay here. But even I must sleep sometime.

Since, I’ve been captured, I’ve killed three versers in the last two years, plus a dimension travelling wizard, and some unlucky dufus who fell through a gate. Their magic keeps me in a berserk state when I enter combat so I cannot just die. You have to kill me. Then Joyu and I can verse out of this world. We can meet up later.”

I bit my lip as I frantically tried to think, and watched magically created madness descend into her face.

“Let’s get ready to rumble!” Roared out across the crowd, and the magical barriers that bounded us in stood, but those that separated us dropped.



Tadeusz