“It’s . . . the same,” Nigel said. “But look.”
Glassy patches marred the familiar topography. Spikes of erupted timestone thrust up through the groves of fruit trees, vomiting yellow-hot liquids. Events peeled off the upthrust peaks, unloosing booms and cracks.
Benjamin and Angelina ran outside onto the lawn, shouting. A swirling sphere of darkness like a pulsing bruise came gliding through the air in the distance. “It’s our home, but—it’s changed,” Angelina shouted against a rush of hot wind.
Their raccoon ran out of nearby bushes and scampered onto the porch. It said very clearly, “Welcome back.”
Nigel picked up the ball of fur and found it weighed more than he remembered. He had missed its bandit eyes and pesky personality. With sheathed claws Scooter climbed onto his shoulder without hesitation. When he looked back at the purpling sphere it looked closer. Behind it now loomed a mottled, dusky shape. Nigel stopped breathing.
“Grey Mech!” Benjamin yelled.
“They have been waiting here,” Scooter piped precisely.
“They?”
“Others arrived, fought. One remains.”
Nigel was startled. This simple pet had somehow acquired remarkable speech. “How long have we been gone?”
“A few moments.”
“A few—”
“Forces have contended here, destroying much of this Lane.”
With a black paw Scooter gestured toward smoky recesses in the far distance. The timestone bristled, skinned of its former abundant greenery. Dirty gray fumes spread like foul fog everywhere.
“Why?” Nikka asked the beast, wonderingly.
“The one above waits for you, I believe.”
Nigel eyed the slowly approaching bulk. Planes of slate-gray mass, an air of threat. “The patience of watchdogs. Umm, most admirable. But it’s sniffing up the wrong leg.”
“It knows why you were sent,” the raccoon said.
“Sent?” Nikka asked.
“We could only orchestrate the Grey Mech to begin the process, by deceiving it about the importance of this particular wormhole,” Scooter said.
“You sent?” Nikka shot back. Scooter licked its paws as if searching for scraps of food it might have forgotten, a familiar gesture that contrasted with its suddenly fluent diction.
“Unfortunately, we do not have the means to destroy it,” the raccoon said calmly.
Nikka’s face darkened. “What the hell do you—”
“Still, it is cautious. The wormhole mouth orbits this spot. Such dynamics are a vestigial remnant of the stress tensor which formed with your passage. The Grey Mech fears the worm mouth. It will not kill us without taking care.”
“How comforting,” Nikka said.
Hot winds rising. The bruised-purple sphere jittered in the high air. The family shrank back, looking at Nigel, but he had not the slightest idea what to do. He regretted not listening better when Nikka was explaining all this. He opened his mouth without knowing what he could say.
From the far side of the Lane, mountains split open. It was as though some unseen force had unzipped the entire range of peaks, cutting a crack that widened—and another blue-black sphere burst from it. Yellow energies played around it. Gales rose, stirring dust in the yard.
“The other mouth of the wormhole,” Nikka whispered. “It’s trying to tie itself off.”
Nigel shouted against the gale’s howl, “But you said they can’t—the couch something, how—”
“The Cauchy Horizon. It prevents their linking up—but the elasticity along the worm can whip them toward each other.”
“Why in hell—”
“The energies! Nobody’s ever gone as far as we did. The stored capacitive stress—”
A gust snatched her words away. In the purpling vault above them the two spheres grew, swerving erratically across a wracked sky. Storms yowled. Jagged teeth of timestone wrenched up, sucked by tidal forces.
Nigel felt himself lighten, as though falling. Nearby tree limbs stretched upward, as if beseeching the tumbling horror above. Tides, stretching and drawing.
Screeching winds, tumbling debris. A lump smacked him in the leg. “Inside!” Nikka called.
“No!” he shouted. Something told him that to burrow in now was death.
The raccoon said calmly, “We had planned well, but this eventuality goes beyond our ability to control events. I apologize.”
Wailing winds ripped up the roof of their house. Tiles shattered to the ground and the Walmsleys ducked. Benjamin and Angelina ran inside. The two worm mouths accelerated, veered. Crashed into hillsides and smashed them to spraying stones. Concussions shook the ground. A shock wave slammed Nigel and Nikka to the flooring of the porch and the railing split off. Nigel tasted blood in his mouth and his arm, nearly healed, sent him a spike of livid pain.
“Inside!” Nikka called, yanking him up to his knees.
The purple virulence above crackled and crashed. Twin monstrosities, swerving across a fevered sky. On his knees, he saw the Grey Mech approaching, keeping away from the ripping, darting worm mouths. Still after them.
