lay down restrictions that make those of the aetherial realm seem as nothing.”
“You’re showing but a single image of what may be.”
The uniformed figure shook his head. “You see what is and will be. All time is now.” He gestured, and three men in brown uniforms with red armbands moved toward the pair.
Estafen side-kicked the man in black, then pushed him toward the brown-clad troopers before turning and racing up the steps, dodging between the young people carrying the stacks of books toward the ever-growing bonfire.
He almost made it to the library door before the sky split.
* * *
—
The black shadowed figure found itself flanked by two amber-gold pillars with the last reply from the manual screen still before it.
ENTER MODIFICATION NUMBER.
Before the shadow could even begin to enter anything, the amber pillars began to constrict, squeezing the blackness, but the shadow pressed out the characters and numbers one by one until the line was complete, then expanded against the pillars, and violet white and greenish black flared over everything.
* * *
—
The first thing that Estafen noticed was that the air was damp and filled with undefined scents and less-than-pleasant odors. The second was that he stood on a narrow path in a jungle, surrounded by plants, tall trees shutting out the sky, with shorter trees beneath forming the understory, and thick growth on all sides of the path. He began to walk, following the path, wondering where it led. Strange sounds, rustles, and unfamiliar birdcalls surrounded him, muted by the thick greenery.
After a hundred yards, Estafen looked back, but the path behind him remained fixed, at least for the fifty yards or so closest to him. Beyond that, it curved out of sight. He kept walking until, ahead, he saw a bright oval of light above the packed earth of the path. As he drew nearer, he could see that the path led to a clearing, perhaps even a larger space.
When he stepped out of the jungle, which stretched hundreds of yards on each side of him, he stood at the edge of a space where all the plants and scattered grass had been cut into a rough semblance of a mowed lawn. Ahead of him, roughly in the center of the cleared area, were several rows of cottages. He walked toward them, making his way between two rows near the center of the enormous clearing. As he did, he counted the cottages, painted in colorful pastels of blue, orange, pink, seafoam green. There might have been fifty. Each was an oblong four yards by eight. He walked over to one and peered inside the half-open door. All he saw were narrow identical beds in rows, only beds—what one might expect in a prison camp, except the beds were largely unmade, and the bedclothes varied from bed to bed. He studied the door and windows, but found no bars.
Was the jungle enough to imprison people? So far, he’d seen no one.
In the center of the pastel-painted cottages, there was a square one-story building with its base raised perhaps four yards above the ground by thick wooden posts. On the top of the roof was a windmill, its blades unmoving. Estafen’s first thought was that the building had been a guard tower, but what guard tower had walls painted with seascapes, including bright yellow fish? Or ramps with ladders up to them, ramps that resembled children’s slides?
Where should he go next?
To one side some seventy yards away, he saw a central pavilion, a generous description for a long and wide corrugated metal roof supported by wooden pillars. He began to walk toward the pavilion. As he neared it, he saw the first bodies, bodies of men, of women, and of children. The colors of their skins largely ranged from a deep chocolate to pasty white, although few were white. None of the dead wore uniforms, but all manner of garments in ranges of colors. They sprawled there, some facedown, others faceup, their visages contorted as if they had taken poison and died in convulsions. All around the pavilion, as far as Estafen could see, were bodies and more bodies. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, and far too many were children.