It took me a moment to realize Jianae was addressing me. I was so unused to being addressed like that, like I was in charge, like I was someone who knew what I was doing. Like I was a leader.
Like I was the Old Man.
“It’s Joe,” I snapped. “And don’t look at me like I’m supposed to know what to do.”
Her expression changed, becoming sympathetic. “You don’t have to know what do,” she said, “but you’re the only one willing to try so far. Sir.”
I stared at her, at this girl I barely even knew, who was telling me I was her leader. It was true, and I knew it; I was the one who’d gathered us all together in the tiniest of hopes that we could somehow stop FrostNight. Not that I knew how were supposed to do that . . .
. . . but I had to figure it out. Because I was the only leader they had. Frustrated, I slammed my hand against the wallcom, clicking the link to the engine room. “Jai, are there any extraction teams out currently?”
“I believe Joeb took a team of three out approximately two hours previously.”
“Lock us down once they get back. No teams go out again until I say.”
“Yes, sir.”
“J/O.”
“I’m here.” His voice came immediately from the speaker. “Is everything—”
“Are the information systems online?”
“I’d kept them shut down to save on power, but I can turn them on again. . . .”
“Do it, and meet me in the library.”
“I’m kind of busy driving right now,” he said, though his usual snark was missing. He’d been particularly subdued since Avery had brought him back. I was pretty sure I knew why, but that was a problem for another time.
“Our proximity sensors are obviously working, just set the autopilot.”
“We actually hit something? I knew the readings said we did, but—”
“Something hit us,” I said. “Get to the library and I’ll explain everything.”
Jai’s voice came through the com as I was about to click it off. “Am I to extrapolate from your actions that you have a plan?”
“More or less,” I said. “Though it’ll probably get a bunch of us killed.”
“Better some of us than all of us,” he said solemnly, for once speaking plainly.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Something like that.”
I’d never been much into reading as a kid—some comics and manga, action stories and the like—but the library at InterWorld had been a refuge of sorts. I’d spent much of what little personal time I’d had sitting in the overstuffed chairs by the fire panel (decorative only, something Jaroux the librarian had insisted on for ambiance) and reading up on the histories of a thousand different worlds. It had been interesting to read about Earths where the Roman Empire had never fallen, where World War II had never happened—or, on some Earths, never ended. There were Earths where Jesus had been female and the great Egyptian emperors had conquered half the world before an asteroid wiped out the other half. It was fascinating, and that’s not even counting the histories of the worlds that were nothing like Earth at all.
This was not, of course, the same library—or it was, but far in the future—which turned out to be a blessing, since this InterWorld had had several thousand more years to build up its database.
I sat down near the shattered remains of the fire screen; the chairs were long gone. The words “The place of the cure of the soul” hung faded and smudged on the wall near the ceiling, a nod to the Library at Alexandria, which on some Earths had never burned.
“I need you to access the cataloging system,” I told J/O, who was standing over by the info kiosks.
“Okay,” he said, reaching out a hand. He inspected the port connection, then flipped one of his fingers back (it always freaked me out when he did that) to reveal a modified mini-USB drive. “What file are you looking for?”
“That is the file,” I said. “I don’t mean the title index, I mean the files with all the cataloged planets and dimensions.”
He hesitated and then reached over to plug into the system. Anyone could use the info kiosk without hooking into it, but J/O’s particular body matrix made it easier and faster for him to navigate the system. He could hook his USB finger into the port and traverse it with a thought, not even bothering with voice commands. When we’d been studying together, I’d always found it very unfair that what I had to memorize, he could download straight to his memory banks. That seemed so far away now. We hadn’t gotten along at first, but I’d gotten to know him better during our two years training together. He was a lot like me, just . . . younger. He had a lot to prove, and I know he was probably still beating himself up over getting taken over by Binary and trying to kill me.
“I’m taking a chance that you’re not still corrupted, you know.” I said. He blanched.