"All subcollectives," Collective 47 emitted. "Reestablish contact with gates to world 47-15379-ZB.

Initiate twenty-five percent increase in all combat unit systems, ground, air, space and liquid, emphasis on systems level four through seven. Order all slave races to initiate assault plans; deception plan is terminated."

Collective 47 was going to war.

Susan McBain was puzzled.

The portal in Mississippi that had so startled the survey team by its vacuum opened onto a planet. It wasn't quite a vacuum, simply very thin atmosphere. About what you'd expect on Mars. The planet looked a bit like Mars, as well, except for the lambent purple sun that was setting in the east. It was dry and desolate, the ground scarred for miles and miles, somewhat like the outskirts of Newark.

None of that had Susan puzzled.

What was bothering her was the biology of the planet, such as it was. She had received samples from the initial survey team and decided that they just couldn't be right. The survey team was an environmental company that normally responded to hazardous waste spills. It had gone to the far side, collected samples of soil and air, and returned. Then a large metal plate had been put over the gate to prevent more loss of atmosphere.

Despite the fact that the survey team was supposed to avoid contaminating the samples, they had to have done so. Otherwise the biology of the far world made no sense.

Oh, it was alien, to be sure. She had tentatively identified a type of archeobacteria in the soil and it was unlike anything from earth. But what was bothering her was dichotomies. The soil was almost entirely depleted of any form of nutrient; there was no phosphate, nitrate or any trace material useable by plants in it. It was almost, but not quite, pure silica and iron with some traces of elemental carbon.

However, "almost" wasn't "pure." Besides the archeobacteria, there were traces of proteins all over it.

More proteins than you'd get, say, in clean sand in the desert. And the proteins were not the same as those found in the archeobacteria. Not even vaguely the same. They used completely different amino acids for one thing. Amino acids different from Earth's and different from the Mreee. In fact, the only place she'd seen amino acids like those were from Titcher remains. Which was why she suspected contamination. The same company had done some clean-up work with the Titcher and the only thing she could think was that they had contaminated the samples.

So she had leaned on her connection to the Anomaly study and gotten a plane from the Army to carry her up to the site. An airlock had been installed vice the former plate and she had first gotten into an environment suit then had herself decontaminated. Then she went through to the other side.

The Army had wanted to send a security team through with her, but she had cited the possibility of contamination. Actually, she just was tired of dealing with soldiers.

The far side had been as described but Susan had noted something that had passed right by the survey team. Yes, it looked like an abandoned primordial planet from one perspective. But Susan had grown up in the phosphate mining zone of Florida where the highest hill in the region was mine tailings. And if you let your mind wander you could imagine you were in the middle of a giant strip mine. Maybe one that was as big as the world.

She put that aside and walked well away from the gate until she got to the edge of a hill that she was pretty sure the survey team hadn't tested. She got down on her knees and started collecting samples.

Technically she should throw a ring and make sure that it was random sampling but at the moment she was only trying to satisfy her own curiosity.

As she was tipping a sample into a canister it fell over and she noticed that the ground was shaking. She considered the possibility of earthquake but the shaking was rhythmic and rapid, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, more like artillery fire or something. She looked up and around and that was when she saw it.

There were mountains to the east, how far away was hard to tell in the thin atmosphere, and without anything for a comparison she had assumed they were far away, maybe twenty or thirty miles, and quite large. But they must have been closer and smaller because walking around the edge of the nearest was a giant green daddy longlegs. It was half the height of the mountain, at least. Her mind buckled as it tried, and failed, to put the beast into anything like normal reference. Then she noticed that, following it and running among its six legs, were smaller creatures. Even at the distance she could recognize therhinoceros and centipede tanks of the Titcher. There were other things, as well, like smaller spiders, about twice the height of the rhino-tanks. But the thing about all of them were that they were tiny, like grains of sand, next to the giant daddy longlegs. The thing was as big as a mountain, maybe as much as a thousand meters high.

And it was headed this way.

"What happened?" Miller said as his eyes opened. He was in a hospital again. This was getting annoying.

And he had another blinding headache. He pushed that aside, willing himself to ignore it; pain was weakness leaving the body.

"You're in Shands Hospital," a female voice answered. "There was an explosion at the gate."

"Not again," he muttered. "Look, call my wife and tell her I'm alive this time; she was furious the last time I disappeared."

"I'll make sure she knows," the nurse said, giggling.

"How's Dr. Weaver?" Miller said, sitting up. He felt incredibly weak, like he had the flu or something. He put that aside as well. There were things to do.

"I don't know," the nurse replied. She was a mousey female with short brown hair. "There was no Dr.

Weaver admitted with you." She put her hand out as he started to get out of bed. "You're really not in any condition to go anywhere, Mr. Miller."

"The hell you say," the SEAL replied, sliding his legs out of the sheets and sitting up. There was an IV in his arm and he noticed that this time it was a yellowish liquid that he recognized as plasma or platelets.

"Where'd I get hit?"

"You didn't," the nurse replied. "But you did sustain some severe radiation damage. It appears that a nuclear weapon was detonated on the other side of the gate. It apparently sent out a lot of radiation."

"Oh, hell."

"The gates in Eustis, Tennessee and Staunton are all closed, with a big burst of radiation at each. And there's an admiral that's been calling for you every couple of hours."

"Shit, shit, shit, shit . . ."

Bill tried to open his eyes and realized that he didn't have any eyes to open. There was no sensation of heat, of cold, of having a body at all. There was no sound, no light, no sensory input at all. The universe was formless and void.

"Sensory deprivation," Weaver thought. Okay, what happened? He remembered stepping back to the gate. And a flash, he thought. "Am I alive?"

Well, sure, otherwise who is asking the question.

"What am I?"he asked. Where am I? could wait. Get down to base principles."I am a thinking being." Good, so he at least existed in some form. But sensory deprivation was tricky. The brain anticipated continuous feedback, little signals sent down the nerves and received back like a computernetwork that is constantly sending out packets. If it didn't get feedback it sent out more and more packets until it overloaded. Which was why sensory deprivation was such a great tool for torture.

"On the other hand, that assumes I have a brain," he thought. And nerves.

"This really sucks,"he thought, bitterly. So, what had happened? He and Miller had shot the cone thing as they were retreating out the gate. Something had happened after that. There had been quite a few attack units in the gate room, like they were staging for another assault. So the cone thing was probably supposed to follow up the assault. Maybe some sort of weapon. A nuke? Possibly. So had they predetonated it? If so, as close as it was to the gate, the wormhole, it could have destabilized it. If so, what did that mean to him? Maybe hewas dead and this was the afterlife. If so, where were the angels?

Then he thought about a few of his life experiences and considered the alternatives. Okay, where were the demons with pitchforks?

"Neither a particle nor a wave,"he thought. Caught in Schrodinger's box. I'm a cat that might be alive and might be dead. Now if I just had some equivalent of opposable thumbs, or, by preference, a crowbar."Excuse me? Would you let me out of here?"

He suddenly found himself in a car, going down a winding mountain road. There was a huge semitrailer in his rearview, riding right on his tail. He instinctively knew that if he slowed down the semi was going to run him right over and he really would cease to exist. But he couldn't go too fast because around every turn there were low-slung police cars with beady-eyed officers clutching radar guns. If he went too fast the police would catch him and then he would cease to exist as well. He didn't know how he knew that but it was an absolute certainty as strong as the fact that he had to breathe.

He looked down at his speedometer and slowed down, slightly, but nearly ran off the road, actually bouncing off a guard rail and barely regaining control of the car. He got back on the road but by that time he had lost track of how fast he was going and tried to look at the speedometer again. It was impossible; he couldn't know how fast he was going andwhere he was at the same time.

"Oh, shit," he muttered, careening around the twisty road, trying to watch the road and instruments at the same time and failing miserably at both. "I'm an electron."

The crazy road race continued for some time, sometimes uphill and then, crazily, he would find himself going downhill without having reached a crest, the semi always on his tail, crashing into him any time he slowed down too much. When they were going uphill it would fall behind a little bit but it would come barrel-assing up behind him on the downhills. And always there were the police.

He got to a trance-state where he had a vague notion of where he was in the road and also how fast he was going. Not a perfect control of either, but a good approximation. He was all over the road though.

And then, suddenly, the road ended in a guard rail right around a steep corner. He slammed on the brakes but the semi hit him from behind and he found himself flying through open space. Then the car, nose down, hit a wall on the far side and exploded.

He came to, lying on the ground at the bottom of the mountain, pieces of the car all around him. He could barely see them, out of the corner of one eye. He tried to move his head but it was immobile, his vision skewed up and to the left. He rolled his eyes and saw his torso, only slightly bleeding, lying on the ground next to him with a leg on top of it. Then the leg jerked into motion and slid over to the shoulder socket and attached.

"That's not right," Bill muttered, wondering how he could speak without lungs to provide the air. There was more thumping and bumping around him and then he could turn his head. He got to his feet, clumsily, leaning slightly to one side, and looked down.

He had one leg and one arm attached as "legs." He had a leg as his right arm and his left arm was attached, backwards, on his right. One buttock was just below him on his chest and he noticed that it wasn't his chest but his back; his head was on backwards. And there was something tickling his hand.

He pulled the hand around, holding it upwards behind his back where he could see it. What was tickling his hand was Tuffy.

"You're real," he said. He noticed then that there still was no sensation. He hadn't felt the turns on the road or land under his feet. He could see, but there was no sound of wind, no smell, no feel. Except for the tickling sensation from Tuffy's fur.

"What is reality?" The words formed in his head. They weren't even words, just the knowledge that such words had formed.

"I'm a physicist, not a philosopher," Bill replied. "You're real."

"At your level, what is the difference?" The words were like lead weights in his mind.

"We're better at sums," Bill said. "And you're real."

"I thought that physicists hated it when people said 'sums'?" the creature replied, honestly sounding puzzled.

"I'm supposed to have legs where legs go and arms where arms go and you're arguing semantics?"

"Nonetheless, when all was uncertain you clutched for the certainty of philosophy," the creature said.

"Descartes was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time," Bill replied. "I didn't read about him in a philosophy course, I read about him in a tensoral calculus course. His 'I think because I am' thing was just blind panic."

"Yet you continue to use your mind, to apply logic, even when your butt is sticking out of your chest.

Many would have gone insane."

"I made my SAN check," Bill answered. "I was an electron, all that 'I can't know my velocity and location at the same time' bullshit in the car. Now I'm a busted-up electron that has been badly reassembled. I suppose it's a metaphor for something. I'm still trying to figure out the cops. They looked just like Virginia State Patrol, except that Virginia State Patrol doesn't usually have fangs that are dripping venom and yellow eyes."

"Who do you think keeps an eye on the particles in your universe to ensure they don't exceed the speed of light? And who destroys them when they do?"

"Cops with yellow eyes and fangs?" Bill said. "Makes as much sense as anything Einstein ever said." Bill thought about something else and found himself laughing out loud. "And blue lights!"

He found himself back in the car, in the race down the hill. Tuffy was hanging from the rearview like abrown, fuzzy dice, swinging back and forth, attached by a silver thread that looked infinitely thin.

"Uncertainty principle," Bill muttered. "I got it the first time." His body was whole again, two hands on the wheel, bitterly trying to stay on the black stuff.

"All of reality is based upon uncertainty," Tuffy said. "Certainty is impossible."

Bill was certain that the police would kill him if he sped up. So he sped up. Before long he had a chain of police cars following him, blue lights flashing. One pulled alongside of him. He looked over and the cop reminded him of a Virginia State Patrol officer that had pulled him over on I-81 the one time he had been stupid enough to drive to Washington instead of fly. Same fat face, same expression of casual disinterest in his existence. The dripping fangs and yellow eyes like a snake's were at variance, though. So was the cop's action, which was to ram into the side of the car-Bill suddenly realized it was a Pinto-and shove it off the road into space. He'd somehow expected a ticket and a lecture on safe driving on twisty roads.

The cop car followed and the whole line behind it came along, the line of cars flying off into the canyon and impacting on the wall on the far side.

Bill woke up back on the ground. This time both his arms were in the place his legs should be, his torso had been switched for his abdomen and his head was on sideways. Tuffy was perched on his butt, which was about where his shoulder should be. That was when Bill realized he had his head up his . . .

"You're real," Bill said. "I don't know about any of the rest of this Heisenberg stuff and I refuse to believe that I'm an electron, especially one with free will. But you're real. And I think you're trying to tell me something. Couldn't you just send an e-mail?"

"Yes, Bill, I'm real," Tuffy replied. "I'm the realest thing you'll ever meet. Realer than a mountain falling on your head. Realer than a planet, realer than stars. More real, by far, than death. I'm as real as it gets."

"This isn't real, I know that," Bill replied. "I can't be talking without lungs."

"Who says that you're talking?" Tuffy noted.

That was when Bill realized that he couldn't actually hear himself talk.

"So what is reality?" Bill asked. "Really."

"Do you want to see?" Tuffy asked.

"I've always wanted to see," the physicist admitted. "Since the first time I asked myself that question."

"I thought you said you weren't a philosopher," Tuffy said, dryly.

"Well, you were right, at this level theonly difference is that we're better at sums."

"Okay, I'll show you reality."

Bill suddenly found himself squeezed in on every side. There were Tuffys all around him, pressing him in, making it hard to breathe. They were on his back, in his hair, pressing against his mouth.

"SAN check time," he said, noticing that he did not, in fact, have to breathe and that he hadn't actuallyspoken. Just that certainty that he had.

"You're doing well," Tuffy said. It was all of them and one of them at the same time. "This is the ultimate reality."

"What? Fuzzy stuffed animals?" He noticed that while there was a moment of panic it was actually quite comfortable. He also noticed that what he was standing on was Tuffys; they were squirming under his feet.

"Your scientists describe universes as soap bubbles," Tuffy replied.

"For the masses, yeah," Bill said. "I can do the sums, though."

"Equations, Bill."

"Not if you're a high-tech redneck," Bill replied. "Then it's sums."

"As you will. But what they do not ask is: in what medium do the soap bubbles float?"

"Well, they do," Bill pointed out. "But it's like asking what's the whichness of where or what is East of the Sun and West of the Moon."

"This is the reality beyond the universes, the whichness of where."

"Plush children's toys?" Bill asked. He'd had a girlfriend once who had collected Beanie Babies obsessively. It pained him that she might have had a better handle on reality than he did.

"Sometimes, bubbles are created within the bubbles," Tuffy replied. "When they reach the wall of the outer bubble, if there is a bubble on the other side of the wall, they open a hole between the bubbles. Just for a brief moment, or eternity in another way of speaking. This form that you see is obviously not our real form. We are what isoutside the soap bubbles. The child was carried through in the instant of the bubble being formed, caught in the interstices between the walls, wherewe live. She, in a way, made this form, a form that she could understand and love. So, to you humans, yes, reality is plush children's toys."

"And now I'm caught in it, too," Bill said. "That thing exploded and shoved me into the interstice, right?"

"That is as close to the reality as you're going to get, yes," Tuffy answered.

"How do I get back?" Bill asked. "Click my heels together and say: 'There's no place like home'?"

"This is the reality that is everywhere and nowhere. You've always been home."

There was a brief moment of disorientation and Bill was lying on his back. He was in the Wyvern. The cameras were all inoperative but he could see through a small armored plate in the chest. There was blue sky above him with high cirronimbus clouds drifting across it. All of the electronics on the Wyvern were out but he could still move his arms and legs, and fingers seemed to be where fingers were supposed to be and toes were down where toes were supposed to go.