I was interested, despite myself. If this was true, even in a sort of metaphorical way, it was extraordinary. “What did they do to you?”

  “Something I have seen, peering into some of these worlds that bind me, is a form of execution that involves rocks, often called ‘pressing’. Sometimes it’s meant as torture rather than execution, to extract a confession. In either case, the condemned or accused is bound on their back, and stones are placed on their body.” The Prisoner sat down on the shore, picked up a pebble, and placed it on top of a larger rock. “No single stone is large enough to do any particular harm on its own, but more stones are added gradually, piling up, until the victim is suffocated, or, for those creatures who don’t breathe, crushed. That is what my siblings did to me. But instead of burying me with rocks… they buried me in worlds. They found a way to protect their little bubbles of creation, to armor them, so they look like spheres of dust and light but feel as solid as myself. I couldn’t snuff them out anymore. My siblings created universe after universe, surrounding me, burying me. Still, I shrugged them off, dug myself free, until one clever sibling found a way to create a… a sort of forge that made more universes, the way their accursed stars forge new elements. Another sibling found a way to make existing universes bud, splitting off duplicates that then grow along their own new trajectory, and become distinct.”

  That explained how I’d found a world similar to, but different from, my own; Ana’s Realm of the Known and the Found and my Realm of Spheres and Harmonies must have started as one universe, and then split. (Could there be other versions of me, ones who hadn’t been infected, who were still living with a version of my family, still working as harmonizers, or even as other things? Could I meet them?)

  The Prisoner banged two rocks together, startling me. “Pay attention! I am telling you the secrets of reality itself.” Once it was satisfied I was paying attention, it went back to piling up rocks, making a cairn. “Those new worlds are still being made, though my siblings have long since left this region of the infinite behind. The worlds pile up on me, more and more.” It looked up at me. “But I am eternal, Zaxony. I feel the weight, but I cannot be crushed.” It hurled a stone into the lake. “Imagine being buried in trillions of pebbles, and all the pebbles are screaming. Because that’s what I experience. The worlds are objects of chaos, spheres of light and dark, and they fill my vision. Where my devoted have traveled, I can peer through the cracks they made, and see the interior of those universes – my vast view becomes local, and I can see things like you.” It shuddered. “I wish I couldn’t see into those universes – but I can’t look away, no matter how much I hate what I see.”

  That was a lie, I thought, though maybe the Prisoner was lying to itself. I think it liked to watch. I think it liked to watch especially when it could also meddle with the things it was watching.

  The Prisoner kicked over the pile of rocks it had made. “As a thinking, feeling entity? I abhor what I see in those worlds my followers have shown me. So much misery, and I’ve seen only the smallest fraction of the total. Untold numbers of creatures, born only to live in misery and die in violence. My siblings are the monsters, Zax. They created you all, and they don’t care about your pain. They don’t even notice it.”

  I had met nihilists before. “It’s not all misery, Prisoner. There’s beauty, too. There’s harmony. Love, kindness, gratitude. I’ve seen it all.”

  “All of those are exceptions, and all temporary,” the Prisoner said. “My view is wider than yours.”

  “What’s your solution, then?” I asked. “Since you’re such a great harmonizer?”

  “I seek to provide the greatest good for the greatest number,” the Prisoner said. “To minimize suffering as much as possible. There are far too many worlds, Zax, with too many people in them. My solution is simple: destroy the walls of my prison. I managed to smash a tiny crack in the First World, enough to whisper through and be heard, and I have gathered my faithful. With effort, exhausting myself each time, I can extend a tiny portion of my essence into that world, and my people venerate that essence as their sacrament.”

  “The worms,” I said.

  “They appear as such to you. They have to look like something, and form follows function. In reality, they are just parts of me.” It held up a hand and waggled its fingers. “I can embed a tiny part of myself inside a creature, and from there, I can push, push, push, and make more cracks, and bore more holes through the armor of the worlds. Once I have pierced enough shells, the universes will begin to leak and flow together, the many becoming one. After a few hundred or thousand are merged, I believe it will cause a chain reaction, and this whole mountain of pebbles on top of me will begin to collapse and disintegrate – and I will burst free.”

  “What will happen to the people in those worlds when they merge?”

  The Prisoner spread its hands. “They will be delivered from sorrow. Snuffed out, never again to suffer pain. I have promised my faithful that I will allow one universe to remain – the First World, the one you see before you now – and to let them dwell there in peace. There was a time when the thought of even one world was repulsive to me, but it would be quite peaceful, compared to my current reality. It’s a trade I’m happy to make.”

  “That’s your plan?” I backed away from it. “To destroy not just a universe, but all the universes? Even the Lector just wanted to rule.”

  “I desire no subjects. I don’t even want worshippers, though they have their uses in my current circumstances. I am on a mission of mercy, Zax. Help me, and you too can dwell in the First World, with Ana, and Minna, and Vicki, and Winsome, and the Pilgrim, and Zaveta, and all your other friends. You can all be happy. I am patient, but now that I can see into so many worlds, I feel the burden of time in a way I never have before. Producing the sacrament is difficult, and slow, and the members of my cult, as you call my fellowship, are not numerous. But if you convince Minna to show us how to make the serum your Lector first developed, we can go to a world advanced enough to make a factory, and I can spread the synthetic sacrament far and wide, and send out hundreds, thousands, millions of envoys to shred the fabric of reality and, finally, tear down these walls.” The light of fervency in its eyes was just like that I saw in the Lector’s when he talked about empire.

  “I will never help you. What you’re describing is so far beyond ordinary genocide there needs to be a new word for it.”

  “We could just call it pest control.” The Prisoner smiled. “I didn’t expect you to go along with me willingly, but I thought I’d give you the opportunity to surprise me – to see if you really mean what you say about helping people. But you’re just a hypocrite. Oh, and about those people you just helped, the burrowers? Do you want to know something funny?”

  “What?”

  “When they burst forth from the ground at the proper time, they appear in a rather different form than you saw – one that is far larger and more lethal. They then spend a cycle in full dominion over their world, breeding and devouring and consuming, destroying whatever civilization managed to arise in the fourteen cycles of their absence. Their rule is so rapacious that they strip the world nearly bare, and they have to hibernate for so long just to allow vegetation and animal life to grow back. The snouted sapients you encouraged Zaveta to murder were fighting for their lives, desperately trying to exterminate the looming insect menace while the monsters were vulnerable, mid-hibernation. How’s that for harmonizing, Zax?”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “Those slavers were laughing, and they were keeping the females alive!”

  “I never said the snouty ones were nice. They hate the bugs, and are quite cruel to the beasts.” The Prisoner shrugged. “I’m not saying you helped the bad ones and hurt the good ones, Zax. I’m saying there aren’t any good ones.” He flicked a hand at me dismissively. “You’d better wake up. Your life is about to become unpleasant. Loath as I am to increase the suffering in the multiverse by even one iota, you leave me no choice.”

  I woke up to Ephedra laughing, which seemed like a bad sign. “Zax!” Zaveta was kneeling beside me, shaking me. “You wouldn’t wake up! I thought you were hurt!”

  “Zax was talking to God,” the cultist said. “Did the Prisoner give you the good news about your total insignificance? Did he tell you how you’re just a plaything created by his brothers and sisters and abandoned? I was born on the First World, the real world, the original universe, the eternal realm, the one stone that will never be shattered–”

  I groaned. “Could we please gag her?”

  “No!” Ephedra said. “I’ll be quiet. You figments are so sensitive.”

  Zaveta gazed at me. “Is this true, Zax? Did you see the Prisoner?”

  “I did.” I sat up and looked around. We were inside a large green canvas tent, with holes in the ceiling showing a burnt-orange sky. “What is this place?”

  She sighed. “If the cultist is to be believed, this was one of the outposts your people set up, to try to prevent the cult from spreading.”

  “This is a Sleeper outpost? But… where is everyone?”

  “Am I allowed to answer?” Ephedra said. “They’re dead, though sadly there were only three of them here – the rest of the force was robots, but we got the codes when we destroyed your world, and we moved fast here, and shut down the defenses before the codes could change. Your people have other outposts, all too close, just a few hops away from the First World. You were trying to build a wall around us, to pen us in, to make us prisoners. This was the weakest, though, so we punched through here, and took this world as our own, giving us a clear route to the world beyond. Ha.”

  “But you’re here now,” I said, trying to piece together the logistics in my mind. “That means you haven’t been to this world before. How did you get out, if this world is the only open path?”

  “I caught a ride, stupid. Why do you think we attacked the Sleeperhold? To get those chariots of yours. You managed to destroy a few and escape with some others, but the Trypophile got one for herself. We have free rein now – we can go up and down and back and forth and everywhere.”

  “Why are you suddenly so willing to share information?” Zaveta said.

  “Because my mission is complete.”

  “Your mission was to take us to Minna,” I said.

  Ephedra cackled. “No, it wasn’t. I was supposed to deliver you here, and tell any old lie along the way to make that possible. Now that we’ve arrived, it doesn’t matter what you figments know or don’t know.”

  The tent flap opened, and–

  The Pilgrim stepped in. “Be quiet, wormling,” he rumbled.

  Zaveta took a stance that promised violence. I couldn’t blame her – the Pilgrim is a menacing figure, a feline humanoid, large and imposing in sand-colored robes, and he had a curved blade at his waist and a high-tech rifle slung across his back.

  “No, Zaveta, it’s OK!” I said. “He’s a friend!” I rushed to the Pilgrim, almost hugging him, but he’s not the hugging type, so I just extended a hand, which he shook gravely in one immense paw. “You survived! I was afraid you died on Sleeperhold.”

  “I… was not harmed there,” he said.

  “Pilgrim, this is Zaveta. I bet you two would get along – you both know a lot about war.” I was giddy. I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever see that serious, familiar face again, and here he was! “I met the Pilgrim worlds and worlds ago. He helped us in our fight against the Lector, and joined us at the Sleeperhold. We found him on this world where he was – well, he was looking for God, the place where God actually lives, and he came with us because he thought he might have a better chance of finding that God somewhere out in the multiverse–”

  “I succeeded,” the Pilgrim said.

  I frowned. “What? What do you mean?”

  The Pilgrim put an immense paw on my shoulder. I was suddenly aware of his strength, and of the claws hidden in those soft pads. His face was so happy, beaming with a fervent light. “My quest reached its end. I found God. God spoke to me, in the space between worlds, while I slept, and Its envoys came to me on the Sleeperhold and told me what God required of me. I have found my true purpose in Its service.”

  Behind me, Ephedra began to laugh.

  Realization seeped into me like blood into cloth. “Pilgrim… no, that thing, the Prisoner, it’s not a god, it’s just an ancient cosmic entity–”

  “Zax. What you are describing is God.”

  “The Prisoner wants to destroy everything!”

  “Who are we to judge the acts of God?” The Pilgrim said. “The Prisoner was there when the foundation stones of the universe were placed. Where were we?” He gripped me more firmly.

  Zaveta growled, cudgel suddenly in her hand. “Let him go.”

  The Pilgrim released me and stepped back. “I don’t wish to harm you, Zax. Or any of you.”

  I closed my eyes. This was the first time a companion, someone I’d trusted, had turned on me since the Lector. My heart was breaking along old fault lines. “Pilgrim, the Prisoner is a liar. He told me himself – he lets his followers believe what they want to believe, and he’s deceiving you. Do you – does your faith have something like an adversary? A deceiver, someone who pretends to be God while working against–”

  “There is only God,” the Pilgrim said. “There is a place for you in the new kingdom, Zax, my friend–”

  “We’ll see about that,” a woman said in Wormspeech, pushing through the tent flap. She wore a hooded black robe with a muddy hem, and when she looked at me, she had no face at all – just an expanse of holes, dozens of tiny clustered cavities in a dark brown surface, like her whole head was a wasp’s nest or a seed pod or infested meat. My heart dropped, and even after I realized she was just wearing some kind of mask, I still found her hard to look at. I don’t experience the profound unease some people suffer at the sight of clusters of small holes, but seeing that in lieu of a face was nevertheless profoundly off-putting.

  “You can call me the Trypophile,” she said. “It’s the least sacred of my names. My proper name would be made profane by your tongue.”

  “You’re in for it now,” Ephedra said.

  “Pilgrim, please set our daughter free?”

  The Pilgrim stepped toward Ephedra, and Zaveta moved into the way. “She’s our prisoner.”

  “You misunderstand the nature of the situation,” the Trypophile said. Suddenly the canvas sides of the tent lifted all at once, and ten people dressed in the ragtag mishmash of cultist garb pointed weapons at us, from pointy sticks to high-tech weapons taken from the sentry machines Toros had imported. “You’re our prisoners now. Zaxony, tell your pet to drop her weapon, or die. I don’t need her alive at all, but if it will make you more cooperative, I’ll spare her for now.”

  “I cannot fight them all,” Zaveta said. “Not without dying in the process.” She paused. “But I can make my life very costly for them.” Her eyes were fixed only on the Pilgrim, and his only on hers.

  I put my hand on her arm. “Stand down, Zaveta. We’ve been captured before.”

  She nodded, and tossed her cudgel away.

  “Wonderful,” the Trypophile said. “We’re going to the First World. You’ll love it there.”

  “I’ve seen it. I don’t think I’ll stay long.” I could sleep my way out of this world right now, but I couldn’t take Zaveta with me, and if I left her behind, she would die. I’d find a way, though, to reach her, and to escape–

  “I heard about your little trick,” the Trypophile said. “You can sleep whenever you want, and stay awake as long as you want, without losing your senses. Your friend Minna will teach us how to do that, too. But you think that power makes you impossible to hold. Wherever we put you, whatever cell, whatever hole, you can always escape, yes?” She stepped forward and grabbed me by the chin, forcing my gaze up, so I had to look into the black holes of her mask. How could she see through them? “But that’s what’s wonderful about the First World,” she said. “In most worlds, there are three or four adjacent habitable realities. But there’s only one acceptable universe adjacent to the First World – only one reality your sacrament would let you enter, because the other options would kill you instantly. We call that place the second world. And Zaxony? We’re going to pass through that world on our way home, and send you into the First World from there.”

  I stared at her. “But… you mean…”

  “The First World is the end of the line,” she said. “The sacrament inside you comes from that place. The blessed seek new worlds above all else, but after you pass through the second world into the first, there’s nowhere for you to go.” She laughed, a sound like crackling dry leaves. “It’s a dead end. You can sleep and wake and sleep and wake and you’ll never find yourself anywhere else. Our First World is your last world.” She ran one sharp fingernail down my cheek, and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “You will die there, Zaxony Dyad Euphony Delatree.”

  Ana

  Toros and Durio traveled with us from the crystal city onward and, while we were on the same world, we could communicate between chariots via radio. I must admit, having some backup felt good: I wouldn’t be stranded again, or at least, not easily. The first part of our group expedition was the same as before: we followed Zax’s ragged trail, and the Lector’s eerie smooth one, pausing briefly in each world, and then moving on.

  That changed when we reached the space station.

  The sleepercar has some sort of safety mechanism, to prevent it from appearing in spaces that are big enough for a person infested with a transdimensional worm but too small for a spherical chariot. In those cases, our point of arrival is slightly offset, and there’s a loud warning buzzer to let us know. That buzzer sounded as we transitioned into orbit around a planet that was – visibly, from space – on fire.

  I turned off the alarm, looked out the dome, and said, “How is this a habitable world?”

  Sorlyn blinked awake, peered down, and said, “Hmm. Check the radar.”