Gateway Read Online Free PDF

was aromatic and soothing, and Daiyu took a couple of cautious sips before she said, “Go on.”
    “It seems that one or two of the gods chose unwisely when they selected their servants,” said Ombri. “And these individuals—with the ability to slip between dimensions, as it were—have upon occasion moved from iteration to iteration and created great havoc. It has fallen to the rest of us to chase them down and return them to our original world. Most of them are now safely contained, but one or two remain unfettered.” Ombri blew on his tea to cool it, and then took a swallow. “One of them resides in this world. His name is Chenglei. We want to send him home.”
    “We?” Daiyu said.
    “Aurora and I. You will meet Aurora soon.”
    Daiyu shook her head and then she laughed. “Everything you say sounds utterly ridiculous.”
    Kalen looked up from his cup and asked diffidently, “I know it’s all very hard to accept, but how else do you explain what’s happened to you?”
    She put a finger to her temple. “Concussion. Coma. At the very least, a bad dream. I figure I’ll wake up tomorrow and I won’t be in Oz any longer.”
    “Oz?” Kalen said in a puzzled voice.
    “It’s an imaginary place where someone went after she suffered brain trauma,” Daiyu said.
    “If you believe that none of this is real, then you may as well accept everything I’m telling you as absolute truth,” Ombri said mildly. “It would at least be true within the logic of your dream construct.”
    Daiyu took a deep breath. “Even if it is true,” she said, in a voice of exaggerated politeness, “what does it have to do with me?”
    Ombri took another sip. “We cannot capture Chenglei without your help.”
    She laughed in disbelief. “You’re a servant of the gods? You can move between parallel dimensions anytime youc hoose? And you need my help? I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense.”
    “Chenglei is much too wily to allow Aurora or me to get anywhere near him,” Ombri said, unruffled by her scorn. “He surrounds himself with the affluent Han of this iteration, and so we need someone who looks like they do to approach him on our behalf.”
    “I saw plenty of Chinese people on the trolley tonight,” Daiyu said. “Why don’t you recruit one of them?”
    “Most of the people of this world are practically transparent to Chenglei—and to Aurora and to me,” Ombri said. “We have little difficulty reading their thoughts and emotions. If we tried to recruit some of the locals, Chenglei would almost certainly be able to read their intentions when they drew near to him.”
    “But he won’ t be able to read my mind?” Daiyu asked skeptically.
    Ombri smiled at her over his teacup. “Well,” he said, “ I can’t. People from your world tend to be more opaque, even to the servants of the gods.”
    “If he can’t read my mind when he meets me, won’t that make him suspicious?” Daiyu said. She could hardly believe she was buying into this fantasy enough to ask the question. “Won’t he guess I’m from another world?”
    “No, for now and then even Aurora and I encounter natives whom we cannot scan. Chenglei will believe you are merely more complex than most of the individuals he has met so far. He may even be drawn to you for that reason—because he will see you as a puzzle, or possibly a challenge.”
    Daiyu remembered the vendor from Fair Saint Louis, the one who had sent her on this journey to begin with. “Is that why that strange old woman extended the invitation to me? Because she couldn’t read my mind?”
    “That was an important consideration,” Ombri acknowledged. “But that ‘strange old woman’ is another servant to the gods, and she has a knack for sensing who might be open to making such a crossing. You have already journeyed a long distance in your short life, from China to the United States.”
    “I was a baby!”
    He shrugged. “There is a part of your soul, no matter how