“I’m not sure I understand. What do you mean, they’ve been dropped?” Sandy blinked dumbly at the serval, who looked far too chipper for this early in the morning, and glanced past him at the two tigers in black suits and sunglasses. They weren’t part of the lawyer’s legal team, definitely. Were they the two who’d driven him back to his car from the hangar that first day?
“I mean, the charges have been dropped. The case is over. The government’s no longer pursuing this matter.”
As if on cue, one of the tigers pulled out a sheaf of papers from his suit jacket’s inner pocket and held them out to the serval, who took them and held them out to the ocelot.
“What—why?”
“Ask them.” He jerked a thumb at the tigers and shrugged cheerfully. “I just got the call this morning. And the paperwork.” He waved the papers.
Sandy took the papers. “So…that’s it? The charges against me, or everyone?” The law group had represented Sandy, Dennis, and Tim. Technically, they were Tim’s very good lawyers, working with Gilchrist’s own very good lawyer from another firm: all four of them had been charged as co-defendants on ominous yet ill-defined crimes against national security.
“Everyone. And that’s it on my end.”
“And, uh, the bill?” Sandy still wasn’t entirely clear how much he’d personally be on the hook for, with both Dennis and Tim handwaving that away as if they were going to take care of it. Sandy hadn’t known until the case began that Tim, as the former CEO of a startup Strategic Industries had bought for $35 million, had more money than Dennis and Sandy put together.
“I think that’s taken care of, but talk to accounting.”
“Okay.”
He gestured at the two tigers. “They’ll take it from here. It’s been a pleasure working with you, Mr. Nelson. Good luck.”
“Uh…thank you.” He looked at the tigers.
“Please have the forms filled out by Monday morning, Mr. Nelson,” one said.
“Forms?” Today was…Wednesday, right? Wednesday.
“Background check authorization. Non-disclosure agreement. Tax forms. Employment contract.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Employment…?”
“Your presence was specifically requested.” The other tiger held out a business card. “Call if you have any questions. We’ll pick you up at eight o’clock Monday morning.”
Sandy looked at the card. It had nothing on it but an embossed phone number.
“Okay,” he said distantly.
The tigers nodded, and got back into a black limousine.
Sandy headed back into the apartment, paging through the papers. They mentioned Strategic Industries, and the “DIA” and “IPPA,” without explaining either acronym. The employment contract was for “consulting work” with a company named “Gatekeepers LLC.” The hourly rate was—high. Very high.
And “Gatekeepers?” Like Amarylis, the gatekeeper?
He sat down on the couch, rubbing his head. If Amarylis had actually come back—or sent anyone else back—that meant she trusted Gilchrist’s outburst, the caracal’s promise to pull whatever strings she could. But Brickman turned out to have more pull than she had. She’d been arrested and fired, too.
The following year had been full of harrowing nonsense: anodyne statements about the alien “ambassador” returning home thanks to the valiant combined efforts of capitalism and government. No public statements on anything about aliens or interstellar portals. The impending trial that, according to the attorney who’d just left, was a show to discredit them all so thoroughly they wouldn’t be believed even if they violated the gag order.
So if the Sivra had come back to the shitshow that had been going on the last year, she’d feel betrayed. She’d turn tail and leave forever.
Was SI working on a new gate entirely on their own? Hoping they’d connect in with the existing network and not get blackballed? If that was what was going on, would he want to get involved with that?
Would he want to risk not getting involved with it?
Sighing, he flipped back to the first page, reading more carefully and starting to sign, date, and initial as appropriate.
He got out of the apartment at five before eight on Monday morning. The tigers were already waiting by the black limo.
As he walked toward them, he cleared his throat. “Can I ask who’s setting this all up?”
“Setting what up?”
“This.” He waved the papers. “The employment. Whatever the hell ‘Gatekeepers LLC’ is.”
“Important people,” the second one responded.
“Also aliens,” the first added.
“But we’re not allowed to mention that, unless you’ve signed the papers.”
He squinted at them. “I have.”
“Aliens,” the first repeated.
They’d spoken the last few lines as flatly as everything else they’d said. Sandy squinted as he looked between them. They looked back silently.
“All right.” None of this made sense, but he had to assume this wasn’t a pretext to grab him and throw him into a secret prison or something. If they’d intended to do that, they could just grab him without any extra bullshit.
They drove back toward the Bridgetown Research Campus. Sandy hadn’t been back since the arrest and firing, of course.
A familiar quasi-military checkpoint stood at the main entrance to the campus; they waved the limo on through. Nothing else at the park looked that out of place yet. The parking lot appeared to be full of employee cars, and there certainly weren’t any fires or newly destroyed buildings visible. Building 4, the one destroyed by Amarylis’s entrance, had been completely cleared away in the last year, fenced off to await new construction.
As they headed toward the back of campus, though, a more Secret Military Project vibe crept in. They passed through another checkpoint, past a temporary fence set up across the parking lot; the vehicles became exclusively black and white sedans, with the occasional unmarked van. Building 9’s front facing had been rebuilt. If there were any giant fox’taurs around, they stayed remarkably well-hidden.
The limo pulled into a parking space between two seemingly identical cars, and the agents got out, one opening the door for Sandy.
They walked briskly toward the entrance. Sandy did, too, then stopped dead in his tracks. A sun-bright light had snapped on, visible through the glass walls—a brilliant white ring, a good three stories high, sparks shedding off it as if from an electric welding torch. A deep rattling hum shook all the windows.
The tigers didn’t act fazed by it at all. When they noticed he’d stopped, they stopped, too, one looking back expectantly.
As quickly as it had switched on, the light switched back off, leaving ring-shaped afterimages swimming in Sandy’s vision as he followed the agents inside. They navigated one more checkpoint; this time, they handed Sandy a badge reading TEMPORARY PASS, ACCESS LEVEL 3. The badge had the Strategic Industries logo on it, along with “DIA” and “IPPA” logotypes.
“I’ve never heard of either of those agencies,” he murmured.
“Defense Intelligence Agency,” one of the tiger agents said, “and Interplanetary Portal Administration.”
Sandy raised his brows. “There’s…already a federal agency for it?”
The other agent shrugged. “UN agency. The name may be a placeholder. It may be permanent.”
The soldier—Sandy saw the uniform had a UN logo on it, not any national military force—added, “This badge is only good for today. Before you leave, bring your paperwork to the security office to get a photo badge.”
“Will do. Uh, where do I—”
The soldier pointed off to the right. The agents nodded to him and walked in the other direction.
He walked slowly into the lobby—or what had been the lobby. It had been turned into a makeshift lab, equipment racks standing in random-seeming locations, thick power cables snaking everywhere. Towering over it all was the ring that he’d seen lit up a few minutes ago. Powered down, it didn’t look like much at first glance—maybe a modern art sculpture. A ring of bare metal, brass or copper alloy, thirty-odd feet high and about half a foot thick. No, two rings, one set inside the other, connected by…
His eyes traced the entire circumference. Connected by nothing. Magnets?
“Are you Sandy?”
That wasn’t a voice he recognized. Not that he’d recognized anyone here yet, save possibly for the agents. He looked up and stopped dead in his tracks again.
The person walking toward him looked like—like a mouse. An alien mouse. Blue-tinged fur, violet eyes, silvery black shorts and vest made from unrecognizable fabrics, thin black sandals. Despite the alienness, he was pretty damn handsome, lean and visibly muscular.
And he was about four times Sandy’s height.
“I…uh…yes? Hi?”
“Hello.” The mouse smiled, showing off brilliant and omnivorous teeth, and crouched down. “I’m Rivvi. I’m one of the engineers you’ll be working with.”
Sandy blinked, opened his mouth, and just stood that way. Working with him on what? What the hell was going on?
“On the gate we’re building. I know you know the basics already.”
“I do, but…uh, I didn’t say that out loud, did I?”
“No, but you thought it very loudly, and us Hantu are telepathic.” He held up a hand. “Before you get too worried, I can’t read your mind and pull out deep, dark secrets, only surface thoughts. But we sometimes pick up on what we call ‘loud’ ones unintentionally. The sort of thought you barely stop yourself from blurting out.”
“That’s still, uh, a lot.”
Rivvi grinned. “It makes us good diplomats and negotiators, and also lets us pick up on new languages near instantly. So we’re often the first point of contact for new races.”
“Got it. So, uh…how are you here?”
“We were asked.” He straightened up, motioning for Sandy to follow him. He walked casually, but Sandy had to walk briskly to keep up. “The Sivra got in touch with us about a half a year ago—one of your years, although that’s close to one of ours, too—to tell us about your world. They were preparing for the possibility that you all were going to try again on your own, but when that didn’t happen, they asked us to step in as liaisons. We’ve got more experience at it culturally than they do, and we have more in common with you. Both your world and ours developed along technological lines rather than magical ones, and we’re…” He laughed. “Well, we’re still giant to you, but not as giant.”
“So they sprung you, too, eh?”
Sandy turned at the voice. Dennis Pick walked toward him, grabbing his hand and giving it a firm shake before the ocelot had a chance to react. “Welcome aboard. Assuming you’re going to join us.”
“Uh. Hi. Yes. I don’t…actually know what ‘us’ is. What’s ‘Gatekeepers?’”
“It’s a company Tim and I formed. Honestly, it’s a legal fig leaf; in practice, I don’t know how much the giant mice are going to let us do.”
Rivvi laughed, putting a hand on his hip. “Do you really think we look like mice? We have fur on all our paws.”
“It’s not exact, but yeah, you look like mice. You said we look like your cats.”
Sandy lifted a brow. “You have cats? How big?”
“Oh, a little smaller than you, if you were on all fours.” Rivvi held his hand about three feet off the ground. “They’re lovely pets.”
Sandy opened his mouth, said nothing, then closed it again. Dennis smirked, shrugging.
Rivvi let out a quiet laugh. “Anyway. We want you to do all of it, Dennis. This is as much your technology as it is ours, and you have to be able to run it expertly. What we’ll stay behind to do is more…policy-focused. Monitoring who you give access to the portal and why, and actively shaping it if necessary.”
“So annoying Brickman and Gilchrist, if they’re still involved.”
Tim wandered up from wherever he’d been, waving to Sandy. “Nice to see you again.”
“Nice to see you, too.”
“She is,” Rivvi said, “but he isn’t. We’ve relied heavily on Amarylis’s report of her time here to decide where to set this up, who to involve, that sort of thing. That’s why you’re here.” He smiled. “The short of it is that she believes your world needs, well, guardians for a while. It’s far from the first time this has happened; many civilizations have enthusiasm, but a kind of, hmm, conflict-driven energy that we don’t want on the intergalactic stage.”
“I admit I’m surprised Ms. Gilchrist agreed to it.”
Tim shrugged. “We do it the Hantu way, or we don’t do it at all. Gilchrist would rather have them in charge than Brickman, anyway.”
“Also, she has a tremendous crush on Rivvi.” Pick grinned.
“I…” Sandy blinked, looking up at the mouse for a moment. Should he have mentioned that so baldly?
“Oh, he knows,” Pick said.
Rivvi coughed, nodding. He leaned over Sandy and stage-whispered, “Very, very loud thoughts.”
Sandy laughed self-consciously. He usually didn’t find other guys attractive himself, but he had to admit, he could see what Ms. Gilchrist saw. Wait, really? God, between Amarylis and Rivvi, did he have a thing for giants, or just these two—uh, hopefully he didn’t think that too loudly.
The mouse met his eyes and smiled at him before straightening up, expression back to perfectly neutral.
Sandy’s ears stood straight up, then folded back down flat. He looked away hurriedly.
“So.” Rivvi stepped away and waved at the ring. “This is a test setup. It’s not big enough for Sivra, or for a half-dozen other races, but we’re making sure we understand each other’s science here, that we get all the facts and figures set. Almost no one gets it right on their own the first time—you honestly did better than most.”
“If that was a good first time,” Pick said, “I’d hate to see a bad one.”
Rivvi looked down. “Yes. You would.”
Pick cleared his throat.
Rivvi walked around the ring. “This is about a third of the size that the—Rory. Hello.” He waved.
Gilchrist slowed down a step as she walked up, looking up at him, and smiled, a touch of pink showing in her ears. “Rivvi.” She nodded to the others. “Dennis. Tim. Mr. Nelson, welcome aboard.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“As I was saying, it’s about a third the size of the permanent gate we’re—you’re—going to make once you can agree on a suitable location and settle on how to announce it all to your world.”
“Those are bigger challenges than the technology.” Gilchrist sighed, crossing her arms. “I’m telling myself I’m up for it.”
Sandy tilted his head. “So you’re not running things?” Hmm. Maybe not the most diplomatic way to put it.
“No, I’m a…” She paused for a moment. “We haven’t worked out titles, but I’m going to be a liaison between the gate operations and the governments and corporations involved.”
“Her job is to make everyone happy,” Tim said.
“No, my job is to make sure everyone’s unhappy equally. We’re not going to find a mutually acceptable compromise, but we can find a mutually unacceptable one.”
Rivvi laughed. “That’s a nice phrase.” He crouched and leaned over, starting to adjust controls at the bottom of the ring with finger-taps.
Gilchrist stared right at his rump, then looked away, ears coloring deeply.
“So,” Rivvi said, “I think this is ready for its first real test—sending someone through the gate.”
“Really?” Sandy looked at it dubiously.
“Yes. Whenever you’re ready.”
Sandy furrowed his brow. “Wait. What? When I’m ready to go?”
“I’m sure the agents told you your presence had been requested,” Gilchrist said. “It has.” She gestured toward the gate.
“I…” He ran his hand through his hair. He didn’t think he needed to ask by whom. “You’re sure it’s safe? I don’t know about being the test subject.”
Rivvi nodded. “I’m sure. And I’ll go with you, so we’ll both be test subjects. Although,” he turned to look back down at Gilchrist and winked, “I’ll come right back.”
The caracal cleared her throat. “You make it seem like you’re coming back on my account.”
The giant mouse crouched again, leaning over, and brought his big muzzle down right by her ear, whispering.
Gilchrist’s eyes widened, pupils dilating, and her tail poofed out. Rivvi straightened up slowly, looking extremely pleased with that reaction, and turned back to Sandy. “So what we want you to do is to be your world’s temporary envoy to the Sivra. If you and her,” he paused and grinned slyly, “I mean, you and they, of course, work out amenable arrangements.”
“I’m—I’m–” Sandy spluttered. “I have no qualifications for that at all!” He looked at Gilchrist for affirmation, but she didn’t look as if she’d be moving—possibly even breathing—any time soon.
“Okay, then,” Tim said. “We’ll ring up one of the thousands of people who’ve spent more time with a Sivra than you have. Oh, wait.”
Rivvi moved to stand in front of the ring, while Tim moved to a laptop cart, starting to type commands on what looked like an old text game. The deep rattling hum switched on once more, and the gate came alive, rivers of white light filling the space between the two rings from bottom to top.
“Okay.” Tim hesitated, then typed another command. The whole space in the ring filled with light. “And then the target gate?”
Rivvi nodded. “Yes.” He motioned Sandy to step forward.
Sandy walked to stand by the giant, shielding his eyes from the light.
Tim looked up. “And now?”
“Wait for them to open their side.”
It took close to a minute before anything happened, and when it did, it was subtle. The light faded to near transparency, revealing…a stone floor. And a massive, black-furred digitigrade paw lifting from that floor as its owner backed up a step.
Sandy sucked in his breath.
“Ready?” Rivvi looked down.
Biting his lip, Sandy nodded.
“On three, just walk forward. One. Two. Three.”
Sandy flinched as he walked into the light field, the transparency becoming watery distortion. For a split second, his ears filled with a half-forgotten jet engine noise—then he, and Rivvi, were through.
He’d never fully formed an idea of what the Sivra gate might look like, other than large, and it definitely met that. What he hadn’t fully grasped is that everything being Sivra scale, down to the texture of the stone floor, would make him feel less as if he’d entered a land of giants than as if he’d shrunk.
“Sandy!”
He looked up at Amarylis as she stepped toward him. The wide neckpiece she wore had changed, as had her ankle bracelets, and she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
She reached down, offering her palm. He scrambled on, and before he knew it, she was giving him another nuzzle—far more intense than the one she’d parted with, all but licking him against her palm.
Rivvi laughed from down below. “I’ll leave you two to catch up. I have my own little cat to tease.”
“Take care, Rivvi. And thank you.” Amarylis waved with her free hand. Sandy hadn’t caught his breath enough to do more than mumble a goodbye.
“This is going to be such a fun world,” Rivvi said cheerfully, stepping back through the gate.
“So, uh…” Sandy smoothed his clothes down, knowing how deeply he was blushing and, for once, not caring. “I don’t…know…that I know how to be an envoy.” He looked around the room as much as he could from her hand. It didn’t have the medieval look he’d irrationally pictured it might. It looked more…hmm. Maybe Victorian, but not fussy, not cluttered? Simple furniture, no chairs…no, wait. Some chairs, of small-to-Sivra sizes. They had accommodations for other races. Another Sivra, male, stood at a desk writing with a stylus, occasionally glancing over with a distinctly amused expression.
“What I proposed is that you stay here for some time, at least off and on, to learn about our culture and others.”
Sandy nodded, watching her. “Uh, what about bringing historians and anthropologists and diplomats and…people who know more about this kind of work than I do?”
“And more than I do. We will bring those in, too, of course.” She took a deep breath, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “Let me be honest. I want to have you here, Sandy. Despite my situation on your world, I enjoyed your company, and I want to spend time with you by choice.”
Inside he melted into a happy puddle. “I’d like that, too.”
She broke into a grin, gigantic tail wagging behind her. “I am not sure they have finished constructing quarters for beings your size yet, but they are close, and you can tell the workers if they are getting anything dangerously or embarrassingly wrong.”
“All right. Uh…is it safe for me to tour some of the city first? With you?”
“Of course.” She looked over at the other Sivra. Before she said anything, he nodded, waving a hand and speaking in their own language. Whatever he said made Amarylis’s ears color. She gave her coworker a reproachful but amused look and trotted out of the gate room, putting Sandy on her shoulder.
He nestled in to her fur, looking around as they walked. At the walls, doors, more furniture, other Sivra. They entered a lobby, a towering plaza whose ceiling had to be a football field’s length overhead, with dozens of fox’taurs trotting by, sitting, talking. She headed toward a wide door, open to the outside world, bright sunlight streaming in—
And then they were through, standing on a wide wooden road between one- and two-story buildings, the construction a motley mix of styles and materials, neither offputtingly alien nor comfortingly familiar. Shops? Offices? Residences? A mix? No vehicles that he saw, only pedestrians, often wearing side bags for carrying, sometimes pulling wagons that levitated a few feet off the ground. A warm, slightly humid breeze blew along the thoroughfare.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so small,” he murmured, eyes wide.
She laughed. “You are safe with me.”
“I know.” He gave her neck fur a kiss, purring at the appreciative noise she made in response. “Let’s go.”