20

Rodrigo had rolled as he landed, and came to a stop as the boot fell. He braced himself for the throw that never came and now never would.
He stared at the wall of rock without blinking. After a minute, he rose to his feet and walked slowly up to the boot, looked through the hedge, looked up at the wall, and then down at the boot. He picked it up and stared at it. He started to understand why Jackson had become so intense. This was not something he could readily understand. He pondered throwing the boot at the wall where Jackson had been, but thought better of it. How else would he prove anything had happened? No one would believe him, but he would let the boot without an owner confuse them as well.
So Angstrom had somehow disappeared the same way? He couldn’t make any sense of it. He took one more look around the scene, and turned to walk further up the road. He was starting to shake as the adrenaline’s effects wore off and he realized Jackson was dead or close to it. He hadn’t wanted it to be that way, but why had Jackson been ready to kill him? What was going on?
He retched once, dropped to his knees, and threw up, violently. It had all happened so fast. He had never killed before but had been prepared to many times, and now he had done it without having time to prepare himself. What if he had just ignored the fact that he was being followed? Would they both be alive now? He suspected that was unlikely.
The retching subsided, he spat, wiped his face on a bandanna, and reached for his water skin. The day was getting warmer. He had to decide what he was going to do next. Was it worth walking further up the track if he was sure he knew what had happened? But how would he explain this and what would Cranby ask for next?
He wasn’t ready to face that question right now. He elected to walk up the track and see what else he could see, and think about what had happened.

* * *
Reckter and I walked off in silence. I tried to keep my thoughts quiet and still but it was easier said than done. I’m sure Reckter was hearing a chorus of “shut up! stop thinking!” if he was trying to find out what I was thinking about.
“Well, what do you think of Therian’s quest? And what other secrets will I be allowed to know about?”
Reckter looked at me, surprised.
“This whole community is a secret. You are a secret. On the other side of that barrier you talk about, there are more than 100 hungry men who would sell their mothers for a chance to explore and exploit this. They don’t know about it now, but what is to keep them from finding out? And what role do you have for me in this?”
Reckter’s face softened, but his eyebrows had never descended from his initial response.
“We don’t know. Things seem to have become diffuse between the worlds, and we don’t know why that should be. There is no record of it happening before. Therian is investigating something that caught his attention on the plains, nowhere near the barrier. That alone is a puzzle.”
“What if I want to go back? I’m not saying I won’t help you but what I wanted to return, to cross back over? Is that possible?”
“Of course, but there are some risks. Your disappearance may have been noted, questions may be asked. I’m sorry to put you in an awkward position, but things have not gone as we had planned or hoped. Many complications that we had hoped to avoid.”
“I think I understand. We find that very little goes as planned or expected in our world, so perhaps we have more in common than we think.”
We walked into the small clearing were the circle had met. It was empty and still. We took seats and sat listening to the gentle whisper of the breeze in the tall pines and the soft shurring of the tall grasses.
“How had you hoped I could be of help to you?”
“It was hoped you could steer these miners, as you call them, to a less risky place to ply their trade. We are worried that the barrier between the worlds could be damaged or somehow changed by the work they do, and a passage opened between the two. There is much to fear for both sides if that were to happen. Things are not as idyllic as they appear on our side. We have or had real dangers to confront, and we have things in hand right now. We would like that not to change.”
“Is that what Therian has gone to see about?”
“Yes, there are . . . things we would rather not see free to move about, and perhaps he felt these things were close to regaining their freedom.”
“What things?”
There was a pause.
“I don’t know if calling them things is right. To us they appear as things or people, but we see more than just the corporeal world. We see things and people, as you might call them, that you cannot see. There are some here now, listening to this conversation. We see and hear things you cannot. And while the people here who are present but not visible are harmless to you, there are others who are not so benign. We have had dealings with some who were troublesome, who threatened our community. We were able to confine them to a place where they would bother no one. Out on the plains we built a compound, physically strong but also bound with thaumaturgical forces, and we confine them there.
“We are concerned that if people from your world were to gain entry to ours, and find this compound, it would only be a matter of time before they ruptured it or compromised the seal. It is a question of balance. We have imbued the structure itself with a force that balances the power of what’s inside. As they try to get out, they empower a more restrictive force to contain themselves. Above all, we are careful to stay away from it. The combined power of the beings inside is strong and the risk of one of us being used by them to break the seal is great even or us. For you and your kind it would be still greater.”
“What are these beings or people? What is to fear from them?”
“No one among our band has seen them. All we know comes down from memory and old writings. But they were known to decompose or disintegrate, to take apart everything, no matter how complex. They would slowly cause rocks to decompose into the materials from which they are made. They would render trees and plants into inert piles of dust. And they would not decompose animals if they could turn them to their will, to use their physical bodies to accelerate the process. They lack form themselves, they are more akin to energy, and cannot interact with physical objects. But they can use the bodies of other things, be they the worms and other creatures of the ground to you and I, if we were close enough and unwary enough.”
“So they don’t dissolve or disintegrate people but use them as proxies, as bodies to do their bidding?”
“Exactly. When they run out of tasks for a body or it has outlived its usefulness — they don’t minister to their physical needs, like food and water — they will consider it expended and render it.”
If these things were to get across to other side, they would immediately find any number of willing bodies to use and worse still, they would meet no resistance at all. They were after the same thing: they both wanted nothing more than to take the very ground under their feet and sift it for its value, with no regard for the consequences.
Reckter looked at me and nodded agreement at my thoughts.
“Can they not be destroyed or somehow made harmless?”
“No, not by any means we know. And we fear the power needed to destroy them would destroy or damage much else.”
“So Therian has gone out there, to this compound, to see if anything has gone wrong? Is that safe? His abilities in the service of these things could be devastating.”
Reckter smiled slightly. “He is, as far as we know, immune to their power. He cannot be controlled by them as you or I could. So he can and will deal with what he finds without us.”
But what if the seal or whatever holds these things in confinement is damaged? Is one of him, powerful and incorruptible as he is, enough to put things right?