I gave the physicist a tight, insincere smile. If I ever met Dr. March, I was going to have a couple of things to say to him. “So? Does he know why I’m seeing the visions of Juliana?”
“He had a theory,” Dr. Moss said. He paused, carefully considering his next words. “How much do you know about your parents, Ms. Lawson?”
“What’s this got to do with my parents?”
“Possibly everything. Go on, tell me about them.” Dr. Moss regarded me with increasing excitement.
“Um, I don’t know. They were both physicists. Brilliant physicists,” I said with pride. “They died when I was seven, in a car accident. Is that what you mean?”
“Who do you live with now? On Earth.”
“My granddad,” I told him.
“Maternal or paternal?”
“Maternal. Dr. Moss, I don’t understand. Why are you asking me about my parents?”
“Have you ever met any of your father’s family members? Parents? Siblings? Cousins?” Dr. Moss pressed.
“No. His parents were dead by the time I was born. They were both only children, and so was my dad. His only family was my mom and me. Why?”
“What was his name?” Dr. Moss’s fingers worried the edges of the folder he was holding, bending and crushing it.
“George Lawson.”
“Did he have any other names?”
“Of course not.” Why would my father have had other names? He was a scientist, not a spy.
“Did you know that your father has no analog in this world?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thomas said that happens sometimes, that people don’t necessarily have an analog in every universe.”
“That’s true. But there’s another possible explanation.” Dr. Moss opened the folder. There was a photograph on top, clipped to a handful of documents, parts of which were blacked out. “Is this your father, Ms. Lawson?”
“Yes,” I breathed. The man in the picture was unmistakably my dad. “What is this? Why do you have it?” The file read: CLASSIFIED: OPERATION LOOKING GLASS.
“Dr. March and I concluded, after exhaustive analysis of the available data, that the only way in which you could be seeing Juliana through the tether is if you were born with a connection to both worlds,” Dr. Moss explained. “And the only way that we know of for that to be true is if you are a crosser.”
“What’s a crosser?” I demanded. “And why does the KES have my father’s picture in one of their classified files?”
“ ‘Crosser’ is a term I invented this afternoon to describe someone whose genealogy originates from more than one universe,” Dr. Moss said.
“This afternoon?”
He gave me a sheepish smile. “Well, you’re the first one we’d ever heard of. There was no official term for the phenomenon, but of course we needed one.”
“Of course,” I said in disbelief. “Go on.”
“In order for you to be experiencing the visions, one of your parents had to have been born in Aurora. It looks to have been your father. His real name was George Anderson, and he was employed as a research scientist by the KES. He was sent through the tandem on a top-secret assignment, to work with Earth physicists in order to sabotage their attempts to develop the many-worlds technologies that we were trying to perfect here at the Citadel.”
I shook my head. “That’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid it’s more than possible—it’s true. He worked for the KES for several years,” Dr. Moss said. “Until he went AWOL.”
“My father was from Earth,” I insisted. There was absolutely no way he had any connection to this awful world.
“I’m afraid that’s not so,” Dr. Moss said with regret in his voice. “You see, I knew your father. I didn’t realize it when I first met you because he had changed his name, but before he was assigned to Operation Looking Glass, he worked with me in my lab. He was, as you say, brilliant. Beyond his years. I’m sorry to hear that he’s no longer with us.”
I was crying now, a stream of silent tears pouring down my face, surely smearing my makeup. But I didn’t care about that.
“Oh, there, there, dear.” Dr. Moss gave my shoulder an awkward pat. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No, I don’t think so.” It was Thomas I wanted, Thomas I needed to talk to. He was the only person I could tell about this, the only person who would understand what it meant and how it made me feel. “I’m sorry, Dr. Moss, but I need to be alone.”
I kept thinking about my mother. How would she have felt if she knew that she had married an imposter, an invader from another world who’d come to Earth with the express purpose of destroying her work? Because that was where my parents had met, on a research project at Princeton University.
Unless she knew. But she couldn’t have … could she? I tried to put myself in my mother’s shoes, but I knew so little about my parents that I couldn’t imagine how my mother would’ve reacted to the news that George Lawson, gifted physicist, beloved husband, had been nothing more than an alien from Aurora. And if she had known the truth, had Granddad also known? Was this the mysterious reason why he’d always disliked my father?
“I understand. I should go now. I’m not supposed to be in the Castle, and if somebody sees me …”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Thank you, Dr. Moss. For … for telling me, I guess.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Please take care of yourself, Ms. Lawson.”
“I will.” He gave me a sad smile, then left the way we’d come, vanishing into the crowds in the ballroom.
I brushed the tears from my eyes. I didn’t think I could face the queen or Callum in my condition, and didn’t want to. I have to get out of here, I thought. I couldn’t go back into the party—I was a mess. I didn’t want to go to Juliana’s bedroom, just in case someone came looking for me.
I could only think of one place no one would find me.
The king’s room was dark and cold. The only sounds were the occasional mechanical beeps from the machines that measured his vitals and his own raspy breathing. For whatever reason—perhaps it was my state of mind, or the fact that I now had bigger things to be afraid of than the king’s oddities—I felt safer in this room than ever before.
I took a seat and closed my eyes, relishing the silent company of Juliana’s father. I wondered what he would make of me. It was obvious from the fact that one of the Operation Looking Glass files had been in his possession that he’d been aware of the existence of parallel universes, specifically of Earth, and that he had been party to my own father’s assignment. But had he known about me? Was he aware I wasn’t his daughter? A few days ago, I would’ve said no, but now I couldn’t be sure. He’d led me to the Angel Eyes file, even if I hadn’t understood. But perhaps I’d been wrong all along. Maybe his mutterings were random after all. Had I been so desperate for meaning that I’d manufactured a pattern that didn’t exist?
“I found it,” I told him, squeezing his hand. “I found the map. Except I don’t understand. What is it?” But he didn’t answer. He never did, and he never would.
I switched on a lamp and picked up The Odyssey. I began to read, to tell the king of Odysseus’s reunion with his long-lost son.
“ ‘Telemachus,’ Odysseus, man of exploits, urged his son, ‘it’s wrong to marvel, carried away in wonder so to see your father here before your eyes. No other Odysseus will ever return to you. That man and I are one, the man you see … here after many hardships, endless wanderings, after twenty years I have come home to native ground at last …’ ”