Dissonance Read Online Free PDF Page B

been a big man once, but he’d diminished over the years. Most Walkers developed frequency poisoning as they aged, but his was especially severe. Too much time spent in bad frequencies had left his shoulders bent and his gait slower. He lost time, forgetting my grandmother was gone. Worst of all, his hearing was ruined. Without hearing, a Walker had to rely on touch to navigate through the multiverse. Difficult and dangerous, but it didn’t stop him.
    â€œHey, Grandpa.” I took him by the elbow. “How long have you been out here?”
    â€œI was going out. Where was I going?” He patted his pockets, pulled out a cheap little spiral notebook and a pencil stub. “I wrote it down. I drew a map.”
    Walker maps didn’t look anything like the jumble of lines and musical notes he was peering at. He’d end up lost. Real maps showed only the major, stable branches of an Echo, their important pivots color coded to show strength and stability. Computers had made them easier to maintain—the old bound versions, drawn on onionskin paper, were inches thick and instantly out-dated. Even with technology and experience on our side, tracinga path through the multiverse was no more accurate than charting wind currents.
    â€œYou’re not supposed to Walk by yourself,” I said, taking the notebook. Then again, neither was I.
    A cagey light entered his eyes. “We can go together.”
    â€œI—” The screen door flew open and my mother appeared, anger visible in the rigid lines of her posture. Addie stood behind her like a self-righteous shadow. “Mom—”
    â€œNot a word, Delancey. Not. A. Word.” She pointed to the kitchen table, and I slunk past her to my usual chair. Monty followed me inside.
    â€œFoster!” she called into the twilight. From his office in the garage, my dad shouted back something unintelligible, and then hustled inside. Nobody messed around when my mom used that tone.
    Monty patted my arm. “She’s in a temper, isn’t she? Been snappish all day.”
    â€œDo not move from that spot,” Mom said, her glare nailing me to my seat. Addie smirked as they filed into Mom’s office and shut the door.
    â€œYou’ve been out a long time.” Monty drew two glass bottles out of the fridge. “Root beer?”
    â€œNot thirsty,” I mumbled as he pried off their tops.
    He brought both bottles over and drained half of his. I rolled mine between my hands, listening to the faint hiss and snap of the carbonation.
    â€œI screwed up,” I said. “Big.”
    He belched gently, and I wrinkled my nose. “Nothing’s done that can’t be un-, Delancey.”
    It’s what he’d always said, when I was a kid and we’d gone Walking together. A song he’d invented, special for me.
    Nothing’s done that can’t be un-,
    Nothing’s lost that can’t be found,
    Make a choice and make a world,
    Find another way around.
    It had cheered me whenever our Walks had gone awry, and with Monty, they usually did. But I’d figured out by now that plenty of things—and people—stayed lost forever.
    People like my grandmother. She had been a medic—the Walker equivalent of a doctor—charged with keeping Cleavers like my grandfather and my father healthy during their trips through the multiverse. A few months before I was born, she’d gone out on a Walk and never returned.
    My parents and Addie had been living in New York at the time; Monty and Rose were here, in this house. According to my mom, the Consort’s teams had searched for weeks, but she’d vanished completely. Their official verdict was that Rose had been caught on the wrong side of a cleaving, like we’d been today.
    Monty wouldn’t accept it. They were meant to be together, he insisted—Montrose and Rosemont, two halves of a whole. He’d wandered the multiverse alone, looking for her,