I looked at her, basically a vision in wool gabardine, and very nearly burst out laughing. If this was an hallucination, it was a damned fine one, and I'd be crazy not to go along with it.
After all, I was in a small gray room with a cot and a toilet. The scenery looked much better on the other side of the imaginary archway.
She waggled her hand at me. "Come on," she said, urgency creeping into her voice. "We can't keep this open for long. We're taking a big risk even opening this into your location. They'll know within minutes that we've done this."
"They?"
She flared her nostrils and glared at me. "I'll explain later. For now, just come through."
What did I have to lose? It was either stay in the dingy gray room and await unknown tests followed by an unknown fate, all courtesy of an unknown organization, or go through a magic archway with a beautiful woman into what looked like a scene from a 1940s movie.
The math wasn't hard.
I took her hand, and she pulled me through. I felt odd for a moment, kind of tingly, and a bit like I was walking into a stretchy membrane that finally split and reformed behind me. My ears popped as I reached the opposite side of the archway. When I looked behind me, there was nothing but a brick wall?
"It's a bit disorienting the first time," she said. Her smile had returned.
I looked around me. I was standing beside an old building at the end of an alleyway. It wasn't a dingy alleyway like many of those I'd seen in films, where it was the only place the hero could run to escape his pursuers. It wasn't dingy or creepy or damp or anything like that. It was just a narrow street-like entity running between two buildings. The wall through which I had come was at the end of the alley, effectively ending it. Except for people like Irene, who seemed to be able to extend the alley into other places. Perhaps other worlds.
Nothing I was seeing was unfamiliar to me. There were brick buildings, stone buildings, cement buildings. Out the end of the alley could see asphalt, sidewalks, curbs, more buildings, and few automobiles. They were really old automobiles, mind you, but they were recognizable to me. I'd seen their kindred in many scenes of many films.
"Are you all right?" Irene asked.
I looked at her. "Yeah. I'm fine. Just getting my bearings." I glanced around again. "Uh… where are we, exactly?"
She laughed. "Oh, this is Halifax."
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
Her green eyes were fairly dancing with merriment. "I thought that would get your attention."
"Well, you were right. Now what are you talking about?"
"This isn't your Halifax. It's my Halifax."
I didn't reply. I just stared at her for a moment. She had this infuriating habit of making short, simple statements that made absolutely no sense at all.
She could evidently sense my discomfiture, as she immediately took me by the arm and began leading me out of the alley.
"You'll find a lot of similarities between the two, I'm sure," she said. "Based on what I've seen of yours, the geography is quite similar, but of course your world has a lot of… um… advancements, shall we say, that my world doesn't."
"It looks like you're in a completely different time period here," I said.
"I know that's what it looks like," she said, "but that's not the reason. I actually have no idea what the time difference is between our worlds. The main reason for the difference is that there are certain things we don't do here. And there are other things that we do here, that you don't do in your world."
We were now out of the alley and on the main street. We stopped, and she turned to me, an earnest expression on her face.
"You have to promise me something," she said. "While you're here, you must respect certain things."
"Like what?"
"You remember when we were speaking outside your home? You started to say a word, and I stopped you from saying it?"
I thought for a moment, recalling the conversation. "Oh. You mean—"
She put her hand on my lips. "No. You mustn't say it. Not here."
"But it's just a word."
She shook her head. "No. It's not just a word. Not here. It's a forbidden concept. There are consequences for even mentioning it."
I frowned. "But that doesn't make any sense."
"This isn't your world. Remember that."
I nodded vaguely. "Okay. All right."
She nodded sharply, evidently satisfied with my response. "And you mustn't mention any of the things in your world that have come about because of that concept. People here will not understand you, and they will assume that you're some kind of radical. That will end badly for you. Please remember that."
"But how am I supposed to know what things I can mention and what things I can't?"
"It will become evident to you very quickly. You will notice a certain absence of certain types of things. If you don't see it, don't talk about it.
" She leaned towards me and put a hand on my arm. "Okay?"
I let out the breath I'd been holding and gave my head a mild shake. "All right…"
I gave my surroundings another look. I saw doors, windows, locks, fire hydrants, cars, trucks, and a couple of bicycles.
"Well, you have vehicles similar to the ones I know, so your world obviously doesn't forbid mechanical items."
"That's right." Her smile was almost like that of a teacher praising a prize student.
"And you have fire hydrants, so that leads me to believe you also have indoor plumbing."
"Very good."
I frowned. It all looked so normal. Antiquated, but normal. What was missing?
I gave the place another scan. There were houses. There were shops. There were vehicles. I knew that Irene was unfamiliar with movies and television, so I was probably right in assuming that those things had never been developed here. I looked at the houses, trying to imagine what forms of entertainment were inside them. Certainly no pay-per-view and video-on-demand. I saw no cables attached to any of the buildings.
Then it struck me. There were no cables attached to any of the buildings. Not just TV cables. No cables at all. No telephone cables. No power lines. Nothing.
I looked at the street again. There were streetlights, but they weren't electric. They looked like they gas lights.
These people had no electricity.
I looked at Irene. "You have no—"
She put her hand on my lips again. "No. We don't. And if I hadn't visited your world, I wouldn't even know what it was."
So she knew what electricity was, but she didn't know what movies or television were.
I narrowed my eyes at her. "That doesn't make any sense. You know what… um… that is… but you didn't know any of the other… umm… things that I mentioned when we spoke outside my building."
She nodded. "I don't know anything about your world or the strange… umm… objects I saw. But even in my short visit, I figured out that something was making them… umm… do what they do. And we don't have anything like that here."
"Okay. I guess that makes a little more sense. You're obviously a very observant woman. But I still don't understand how you can have a world that looks so much like the past of my world, and still not have�"
"We'll speak no more of it. It's far too easy to misspeak and incur the wrath of some passerby. We don't want that."
I was beginning to get the impression that the laws here were very different from those in my world.
My world, her world… I was beginning to think in those terms, and that bothered me. I still didn't know if I was experiencing something real, or if my mind had simply decided that it had had enough and had transported to me to place of whimsy and intrigue, just to keep me interested.
Then a more solemn thought occurred to me: What if I had actually died? What if everything I'd experienced since taking those pills was a product of my now-deceased mind? What if I had never awakened in Emergency? What if I had never been admitted to the Short Stay Unit and released to go home.
What if I had actually succeeded in my suicide attempt?
I looked at Irene. Her expression was neutral, but something in her eyes told me she had a pretty good idea what I was thinking.
"This is all very strange to you," she said quietly.
I nodded. "Yeah. Pretty damned strange."
"You feel you have lost your mind. Or are in the process of losing it."
"Something like that. Yeah."
"You speculate as to whether you ever survived your attempt to end your life."
"What, you're a mind reader, too?"
She laughed. "No. Good Heavens, no. That would be wrong."
There was something odd about all this. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I was getting a strange feeling about it. They might not have electricity, but they sure as hell had something else.
"Well, you seem to know what I'm thinking."
"We're very intuitive here. We learn how to read each other, to judge others' moods. The very attuned among us can almost tell what a person is thinking."
"And you're very attuned."
She smiled, but she averted her gaze. Her faced reddened slightly. "I do have a gift, yes."
"Does this gift also enable you to travel to other worlds?"
She looked up again, her gaze falling sharply upon me. "No. That is not something I can do alone."
I took her reaction as an indication that I should not pursue this line of inquiry. I put my hands up.
She took a step towards me. "I'm sorry," she said. "I did not mean to react so harshly. I know you don't understand our world yet. So please, when you meet other people here, be careful what you say. Not everyone will be as understanding as I am."
I nodded slowly. "Thanks for the warning."
She took my arm again. "Come on. There's someone you should meet."
——————–
We walked along the street past a few houses and a couple of shops. I knew I wasn't in my home city, but the surroundings felt eerily familiar. At one point, I stopped and turned in a circle to get a sense of the place.
"The harbour's that way," I said, pointing to our right.
She nodded. "See? Not so different from your Halifax."
"I haven't seen any street signs," I said.
She cocked her head and blinked. "Street signs?"
I looked sharply at her. "You know… Signs… posted at interesections… telling people what the names of the streets are."
"You name your streets?"
"Well… yeah. We kind of need street names in order to get around."
She had a strange frown on her face now. "I see. Your navigation of cities is quite different from ours."
"Well, if you don't have street signs, then yes, I guess it is."
"I'm not sure you'd understand our way."
She took my arm again and we continued.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"I told you. We're going to see someone."
"Who?"
"You'll see in due course."
I didn't like the sound of that at all.
Probably the thing I found most unnerving about all of this was the fact that everything looked so normal. Sure, there wer no power lines, but that was a small absence. The buildings looked like any I'd see at home. They looked historical, but they looked "normal" historical. The streets were paved with what looked like asphalt, the trees bore leaves that looked like maples, oaks, elms. The grass was green. The cars were old-fashioned, but they were made of metal and had rubber tires. I couldn't identify any of the makes or models, but they looked like normal antique cars.
But underneath it all, beyond these surface similarities, I now knew there were fundamental differences. Our worlds might have been developing along a parallel course, but somewhere along the way, they took a very drastic departure from one another. I was curious to know what the crucial moment was, and what had happened�or failed to happen�as a result.
We walked a few more blocks. We were now in an area that contained more houses and few shops. My neck was becoming sore from all the turning back and forth my head was doing. I was nearly getting dizzy.
"Wait a minute…" I said, slowing my pace.
"What is it?" Irene asked.
We were walking up a slight hill. To our left was an intersection. Not far ahead was an intersection with a second street. In between the two streets was a grassy area with a couple of benches. The distinctive smell of brewing hops was reaching my nostrils.
"There's a brewery down there," I said, pointing left down the first of the two streets.
She nodded.
I snorted. "That's wild. This is Gottingen Street." I indicated the street we were on. "And that's Young Street." I indicated the street to our left.
She smiled that disarming, ingenuous smile again. "This is a quaint concept, these street names of yours. It's rather pleasant, really, in a curious sort of way."
I was still turning, looking, inspecting. "This is so weird. I know this intersection, but it's also completely foreign to me."
"It will take some time for you get accustomed to that."
I stopped my scanning and turned to face her. "So you've had visitors before."
It was hard to tell in the bright sunlight, but I thought I saw her face go a shade paler. "I… I assume that it will take some time for you to adjust." She turned away. "That's all."
Okay, I thought. That was an interesting reaction. Maybe that was another taboo topic.
I suddenly felt like I was on an episode of Stargate. If I tread on any more of their taboos, I thought, they're going to make me a ritual sacrifice.
I hoped I was wrong. Still, I wished Daniel Jackson was with me. No, scratch that, I thought. I'll take Samantha Carter.
Irene led me two more blocks. Then we turned left down one of the side streets. About a block and a half down she stopped.
"We're here," she said. "Please be careful what you say when we go inside."
"Or else I'll be a ritual sacrifice?"
She rolled her eyes. "Don't be silly."
I stopped her as she turned towards the front door. "Umm… What about my clothes? Are they going to offend anyone, do you think?"
She looked me up and down. "No. I don't think so. They're a bit odd, but nothing offensive. I don't think you need to worry."
She turned and proceeded up the front walk.
"What, me worry?" I muttered to myself.
Irene knocked on the door of the house. A moment later, the door opened. A woman in a maid's appeared. She smiled, greeted Irene, and opened the door.
"This is Jack Richmond. I think the councillor is going to want to speak to him."
The maid nodded and ushered us in.
"Councillor?" I asked.
"Yes. You're about to meet the councillor for this district."
"That's weird. We have city councillors in my version of Halifax, too."
Irene smiled again, and we stepped into main room of the house.
Again, things looked fairly normal. There was a fireplace, a mantelpiece, curtains on the windows, a sofa with a low table in front of it, a few upholstered chairs, a rug in the middle of the floor. There were gaslights above the mantle and numerous candles at various strategic positions around the room.
Except for the slightly more modern furniture, the place almost looked Victorian.
"Please, have a seat," the maid said. "The councillor will be down in a few minutes."
"Are we waking him up?" I asked Irene.
She shook her head. "No. It's afternoon. He has an office upstairs. I assume he's working."
"I don't want to interrupt him…"
"No. It's fine. He will want to see you."
I tried to imagine what a councillor in this world would possibly want from the likes of me. I imagined that I'd be a novelty, but I couldn't very well tell him much about my world if talking about technology was such a taboo here. Maybe they'd had visitors before, but so rarely that it was a major event.
I was still having trouble taking in what I was experiencing. Perhaps I was just numb at the moment, and my hysterics would kick in later.
Whatever was happening, though, it was better than sitting in that grey room, waiting for God-knows-what.
"By the way, Irene," I said. "I never did thank you for rescuing me from that little room I was locked in."
She drew her mouth into a straight line. "I'm glad you're safe. I just hope that the people who were holding you didn't…" She trailed off.
"Didn't what?"
Footsteps coming down the stairs prevented me from getting my answer. Irene stood and looked expectantly at the room's entrance. She flashed me quick glare, and I followed suit. This was evidently an important man.
A moment later, the councillor entered. He was not a big man, not nearly so impressive-looking as I'd imagined. He was actually rather short, and a little bit stooped over. He was thin, not excessively so, but enough that his expensive-looking suit seemed overly roomy. He wore little round wire-framed glasses and had tufts of white hair sticking out like a fringe all around the back and sides of his otherwise bald head.
Irene bowed her head and curtsied. "Councillor Greaves," she said.
I followed suit, bowing towards the man.
"Irene," the man said in a surprisingly strong voice. "Good to see you, my dear."
Irene stepped forward. "Councillor, this is Jack Richmond. He comes to us from another place."
The councillor pursed his lips and nodded slowly, looking me up and down.
