Immortal at the Edge of the World

Prologue

It took a lot longer to meet with the physicist than I felt it really should have, possibly because I failed to appreciate how busy a physicist could be.

I’m still under the impression that we’ve discovered almost everything there is to discover, and from my perspective this is kind of true. I was around back when we thought the stars were pinholes in a solid firmament, and when people thought the universe revolved around us rather than the other way around. I can remember heated arguments regarding whether a comet meant we had to kill the king, and if it was possible to turn base metals into gold. I’ve seen science explain a lot of things, is my point, to the extent that every advance nowadays seems like an inconsequential bump. That’s provided I even understand the advance, which is iffy.

I was never interested in doing science, only in the consequences of what had been discovered, especially if the discovery made my life more convenient. This describes basically everything invented in the 20th century that wasn’t designed to kill people, and a couple of the things that were.

I had to go to Switzerland to meet with him. There are plenty of physicists hanging out in the United States I probably could have found that were slightly less busy, but this one in particular had written a book. In that book was something that made me think he might be helpful to me, so he was the one I felt I should talk to.

The book was on pocket dimensions and parallel universes. If I was lucky, he was busy looking for them in Switzerland, when he wasn’t ramming particles together at high speeds.

This did not turn out to be the case.

I’m sorry I kept you waiting, he said, upon arriving at his amazingly unkempt office, which he appeared to share with six other people.

I shook his hand. It’s fine. I’m sure you’re busy.

Always, but I can find time to speak to a donor, certainly. How can I help?

He was an American in his mid-thirties, with the kind of engaging smile one expects to see on a successful author—as he was—more so than on a successful scientist. Scientists, in my experience, are most often looking either down at their feet or at something going on inside their heads, and can make little time for human eye contact. But I knew Newton, and I thought he was a jerk. That has probably colored my opinion on scientists since.

In the eyes of this particular scientist I was a wealthy donor to one of his pet side projects, which might have been why he was inclined to be personable.

Well, I’ve read your books, I said.

Ah! All of them?

I think probably, yes. And I wanted to talk to you about other dimensions.

Of course. You mean, something that didn’t get covered in the book?

I guess that’s true, yes. I was wondering how one might travel between them.

He laughed gently, in a way that managed to not make me feel stupid, which I appreciated. Well no, you see these are bubble universes. We may live in one, and there may be another one beside ours, but there would be no way to travel between them.

No way at all?

"You ... understand that the book we’re talking about is largely speculative, yes? I’m putting forward a theory based on some ideas I had about entropy, and while the ideas are all supported by what we know, we are talking about, at best, a fanciful hypothesis right now. Proving it would be extremely difficult."

Because there’s no way to travel between the universes, and you can’t prove the existence of something you can’t find a way to experience.

He nodded, but in a way that looked almost like he was saying I was wrong. "That’s more or less it, yes. It’s a great deal more complicated only because what we’re doing here right now in this building is testing for things we can’t directly encounter. What we can test for is the predictive consequences of the thing. In principle what you’ve said is accurate, but in practice we spend a lot of time proving things indirectly. My point here is only that we aren’t even at the stage where an indirect proof is possible when it comes to bubble universes."

I understand, I said, somewhat aggravated either with myself or with him, I couldn’t tell for certain. The thing was, his book did say something very much like this but I wasn’t convinced I had understood it well enough. I could have sent an e-mail or a letter or placed a phone call to hear what I had just heard from him directly, but when you have a lot of money and a way to get into the same room with someone it’s often hard to resist the urge to do so.

Let me ask you something else, I said. Let’s say I once saw a person disappear.

A magic trick?

No, it wasn’t a trick. This person was standing in an open field, and then she wasn’t.

His cheerfully helpful expression was starting to deteriorate into something akin to pity.

I would be entertaining a number of questions before coming to me, if I were in your situation.

Yes, I appreciate that perspective. Let’s say I entertained those questions already and after having done so I arrived in this office and told you, a scientist, that it is legitimately possible for a human being to exit this plane of existence materially and to reappear later. You—instead of telling me that I am hallucinating or suffering from a psychotic break or overdosing on sleep medication—believed me and then told me how such a thing could be possible. Can you do that?

He smiled genuinely, and said, Branes, perhaps. Then he spelled it for me so I didn’t confuse it with brains. For about a half a second I thought I was in for a zombie joke. Brane is from the word membrane, and it’s theoretically possible we live within one.

Like the pocket universe.

Different than that. Forget the universe thing for a minute.

All right, how would this work, then? The disappearing.

"If we live in a brane that is bounded by three physical dimensions, it’s possible, in theory, that this brane is attached to another brane that is also bounded by three physical dimensions. And between them is another dimensional space called the bulk. Mind you, that is an extraordinary simplification of a highly complicated idea. I can certainly recommend additional reading for you if you are interested."

I’m interested, but this sounds roughly as made up as your pocket universes.

"Branes are slightly less speculative. The theory was developed to resolve some experimental problems with elementary forces. If some of the particles that make up matter are allowed to travel outside a theoretical brane, the math works much better. Gravity works much better as well. It’s a little like connecting dots on a page by drawing a line that extends off the page. But I can’t even imagine what kind of science would be involved to make an actual journey off the page. The energy required ..."

What if a person just did it on her own, with no equipment?

He laughed again. Well no. I’m sorry, I can speculate only so much but that just isn’t possible.

I nodded, and smiled. I knew he was wrong, because I’d seen it done more than once and there was no machinery involved. But even if the answer to my question was in this brane theory he’d just given me, the rest of what I was looking for would have to be found elsewhere. Knowing it was something within the realm of the possible from a scientific standpoint was comforting, but I needed more than that.

All right, well, thanks anyway, I said, standing.

He stood as well and took my extended hand.

I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for, he said pleasantly.

It’s not a what, it’s a who. And thank you. I have a couple of ideas I haven’t tried yet.

Part I

Along the Silk Road

1

I was surprised he would work with an elf, and told him so.

It’s not that I have anything particular against elves, I said. It’s only that they are pathologically boring.

Juergen Heintz was a pale , skinny man of uncertain age. If forced to guess I’d have put him in his fifties, but it was difficult to tell because his hair, while being mostly white, appeared to have begun as a sunny light blond, and also because it was not very bright in the room. He didn’t seem to be notably wrinkly, but that could have been as much a consequence of his staying out of the sun coupled with a good moisturizer.

I was meeting Heintz face-to-face for the first time despite a business relationship that went back at least ten years. His relationship with my money went back even further, although not as far as the bank’s relationship with it, which spanned about one hundred thirty years. Heintz is my banker because the first time I contacted the bank in more than thirty years he was the one I was transferred to. When I gave him the necessary information to positively identify myself as the account-holder he didn’t hang up, call the police or the bank president, or any of the other things one does when confronted by someone who can’t possibly be alive. This is the kind of flexibility of thought I look for in people.

The only real drawback was that I was pretty sure Mr. Heintz thought I was a vampire.

Please do sit, he insisted, gesturing me toward a stuffed leather chair opposite a nearly empty desk, which he then sat behind. The laptop on the desk lit his face and washed out his coloring even more, especially since the only other illumination in the room was a cool yellow floor lamp near the window. And although it was midday the curtains in the room were drawn. They were some impressive curtains—I wouldn’t have been able to guess it was a sunny day out, or that it was even day at all.

I hope your arrival was to your satisfaction? he asked.

The limo was great, thank you, I said.

I’m glad. We employ them only occasionally, but have never gotten any complaints.

They were very efficient.

The limo ride actually made me feel like something between a visiting head of state and a hostage, but I didn’t think this was a good time to bring that up.

Back when I suggested to Heintz that he and I have this meeting all I said was, the next time you’re in New York. It was an offhand thing, coming not long after he’d mentioned that his very private banking organization had offices in the city, and that he sometimes visited those offices when he needed to conduct whatever it is very private bankers do.

Somehow he took this to mean he needed to hop aboard a jet immediately. And that was all fine. I had just gotten back from a trip overseas but I was growing to dislike the solitude my home offered, so any excuse to get away again was a good excuse. And while New York City is not one of my favorite places—this is an understatement—I had a little business to conduct locally. Plus Midtown can be okay when nobody is actively trying to kill me.

Then he insisted on sending a private car, which turned out to be one of those sedans with completely blacked-out rear windows, operated by the least talkative driver in the history of the profession. The driver took me to a private underground entrance and a private elevator that required a key card and possibly a blood sample to operate.

All of this made perfect sense provided I was a vampire, or doing something illegal, or both. In fairness, I am a private man, as it’s almost never in my best interest to let people know either that I am extremely wealthy or that I’m older than anyone you’re ever likely to meet. I’m just not a vampire. I also don’t know a whole lot about what my money is doing, so I could very well be doing illegal things with it.

I am so glad, given our many conversations, that we have a chance to meet in this manner, Heintz said gently. He said most everything gently, but with a firm undercurrent that gave his words a kind of certitude that made him hard to disagree with.

Me too. It’s good to put a face to the voice, I said. And it was, even if it was also a little disconcerting and weird.

I sincerely don’t know how most people cope with this, but I will never get used to the idea of knowing someone by voice alone. Up until the telephonic age I never met someone whose face and voice didn’t come as a package, and now that happens all the time. I still need for there to be a face, though, so I assign one to the voice. Not once have I been even slightly close to being right.

Heintz tapped out some things on the laptop that caused the screen to change subtly, and then he pulled open a desk drawer and extracted a small stack of papers.

Now then, he began, I’m afraid we have a large number of things that require signing in order to fully realize your latest corporate ventures. You will be using the customary surname, I trust?

Yes, of course.

The surname in question was Justinian, which was not the name I opened the account under. About a year after conducting business for me on a regular basis, Heintz recommended I create an inheritor for my accounts so that it was less self-evident that I was approximately two hundred years old. We created Francis Justinian, which is who I get to be now when I’m playing around in the world of high finance. Heintz even got me the necessary forged documentation to prove my existence; I now have an ID my usual forger is unfamiliar with. Heintz’s man might even be better than mine.

While incredibly convenient, this kind of thing did leave me with some open questions, such as: What sort of client is Juergen Heintz accustomed to dealing with, and will this end up being a problem for me? Possibly, these questions were in the back of my mind when I suggested this rendezvous, although that’s hard to say, as I was not sober when I made the suggestion.

He placed the pile of papers at the edge of the desk and put out a pen.

They are marked as usual, he said.

This meant they had these little sticky arrows all over them indicating where I had to sign. I’d been getting packages full of pages like this in the mail off and on for a while, which was much easier after I got around to establishing a legal address. (On an island. I own an island. Because when you have a chance to own an island, you just do.) Every time I see the removable sticky arrows on the pages I think how incredibly convenient such a thing would have been at just about any point in history.

If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Mr. Heintz, I said, could you make it a little brighter in here? I can’t really see what I’m signing.

My banker friend stared without expression for long enough to make me uncomfortable before saying, Yes, yes of course.

He opened a drawer on the desk and extracted a remote control, tapped a button on it, and coaxed to life the lights embedded in the ceiling.

Is that better? he asked.

Much better, thank you.

Vampires can see very well in the dark and are bothered by bright lights. This is not why they avoid the sun—sunlight actually will cause them to burst into flames; I’ve seen it and it’s gross—but it is why when you meet one it’s generally in a poorly lit location.

In his assumption that I am a vampire, Heintz was only being courteous, just like he was when he gave me the no-sunlight limo-to-elevator ride. Now that I had proven myself to be possessed of somewhat normal eyesight, he was getting nervous.

Being mistaken as a vampire is one of those things that annoys me. In fairness, from Heintz’s perspective it should have been the correct conclusion because I was entirely too old to be anything else. And since the other option is the only immortal man in existence, I can see how he didn’t consider that seriously. But at the same time, nearly all vampires over the age of two hundred are depressed, poorly assimilated, and cranky, and nobody likes being mistaken for one of those.

I probably shouldn’t have done the next thing I did, which was to get up and open the curtain.

The good news was that Juergen Heintz was also not a vampire. I didn’t consider this until after the sunlight splashed across his face and lit up his eyes. However, there are other things out there that are neither vampire nor human, and he happened to be one of those.

Jumping to his feet, a dagger appeared in his hand more quickly than I could follow. In all likelihood it originated in his sleeve, but someone gifted enough with a blade could have conjured one from a number of other places. It was a narrow bit of steel—we used to call them stilettos before ladies’ shoes took over the term—of the sort that was perfect for either stabbing or throwing.

Heintz did neither. Instead, in that calm tone of his, he spoke.

Who are you, sir?

This is what I get for cutting corners.

You know who I am, I said. We’ve spoken on the phone so you know my voice, and you’ve seen photos of me before, so you know my face.

It may go without saying, but the last thing I had expected was having a knife pulled on me by my finance guy. Maybe a very sharp pen.

My client is of the sort to actively despise sunlight, he said.

A vampire, you mean.

I do.

That would be an erroneous assumption on your part. Did I ever tell you I was?

He looked confused. No ...

I didn’t because I’m not a vampire. Never have been. Don’t plan to be.

But—

I think we’ve both made a few hasty assumptions about one another, Mr. Heintz. You took me for a vampire, and I took you to be human.

The tip of the blade quivered ever-so-slightly. I’m sorry?

I laughed. I know a goblin when I see one.

He inhaled sharply through teeth that were slightly pointed, just enough to catch one’s attention if one were checking.

The word I should have used was elf, not goblin, so I’d sort of insulted him.

There are northern goblins and southern goblins, and not only do they not much care for one another, most of the time they will insist they aren’t even the same species. (The north-south thing is a geographic distinction originally made in a region of the Eurasian continent that has been lost to history. I’m not even sure of where it is myself.) I mostly prefer the southern goblins—an earthy, no-nonsense sort of people overall. The northern versions—and Heintz was clearly a northern goblin—are very pale, they tend to be taller than the southern type, and most of them are kind of stuck up.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand years ago, the northern goblins started calling themselves elves, and everyone of goblin descent has been pretty happy with that arrangement. It’s just not true, which is why I find it annoying.

Another time I might blame a slip of the tongue like that on drink, but I was actually sober. Maybe I just wanted to see what he would do.

What he did was put away the stiletto, which I appreciated. Where he put it I couldn’t say for sure. Goblins of all kinds are extremely proficient with sharp things. They make excellent assassins, and teppanyaki chefs.

Heintz composed himself and spoke.

"When your account was opened with this institution, paper currency in the country presently beneath us did not even exist. Your first line of credit had an archduke, two duchesses, and the crown prince of Denmark as guarantors. Your signatures—from the first name you gave us to the ones you have since used—are undeniably of the same hand. You appear to be no older than thirty-two, but everything I have indicates you are at least two hundred and seventeen. And you are standing in sunlight right now. At the risk of offending you further than I have already, sir, what are you?"

I don’t know, I said, leaving the window to return to the chair. Heintz remained standing in the event I did something weird, like sprouted another limb or whatever he thought I was capable of at this point. A person.

A human person?

More or less. I stopped aging some time ago, and I don’t get sick. But that knife of yours would do me some damage. Where did you put it, incidentally?

He ignored the question. How old are you? Truly?

I can’t answer that, I admitted. In the neighborhood of sixty millennia.

I get asked this regularly, and it’s really not possible to answer. I know nowadays we all understand basic things about the planet, like that it spins around the sun and that one spin equals one year, but this is a modern understanding and there are other metrics available to measure time, like seasonal changes and phases of the moon. But the moon’s phases are shorter than a year, and there are some parts of the world where seasonal variation is just not that extreme. On top of that, one needs a civilization that lasts longer than a single human lifespan for there to be a continuous enumeration of years carried down from generation to generation. And there needs to be math, and record-keeping, and symbols for integers.

So really, when I say I don’t know how old I am, I’m not being coy. It’s not a knowable thing.

Heintz sat back down in his chair as if he’d just gained about fifty pounds.

The vampires, they have a name for a person, a legendary figure who can walk by day ...

Apollo, I said. I’ve been called that. They think I’m a vampire too, for some reason.

But you do not drink blood?

I prefer beer. Your kind had its own name for me.

Leewan Sean, he muttered.

That’s it.

I smiled. That particular name had passed through about five cultural histories and ten or twenty spellings, but it still sounded roughly the same in all tongues, even in Heintz’s Scandinavian-colored English pronunciation.

Keeper of the path, he muttered.

Yeah, that too. He was referring to one of the culturally specific legends about me that goblins had been repeating for some time. It’s a long story.

I had no idea. If possible, Juergen Heintz had gotten paler since we’d begun this portion of the conversation.

We should ... maybe get back to business, I suggested. I have all these papers to sign, a—

What should I call you? he asked. You have so many names, some I invented for you. None feel right.

Just call me Adam.

I had tried several times to switch my name over to something else, but in this new age of information I’d found that impossible, so I’ve basically given up.

"The Adam?"

The ... oh! Biblically? No, no. It’s just a name that’s stuck with me recently.

Yes. He rubbed the side of his head like someone trying to forget a bad dream. Yes, silly of me. My apologies ... Adam. My apologies. Please, sign. And we can discuss new business, if you have any.

I nodded, hoping that putting real world tasks in front of him would get his mind running again. He looked like he was either going to genuflect or faint.

And I actually did have some new business. I pulled out a scrap of paper I’d cut from one of the dozens of magazines I now subscribe to. Being on an island and all, I have to have them special delivered monthly by helicopter.

More than one person has pointed out that this is no longer necessary since most magazines are now online entities. I know this, and I know in another decade or two I’m going to have to get used to the idea of reading without paper in my hands, but I’m going to be making that trip kicking and screaming. Maybe that sounds stubborn, but my relationship with the printed word is the longest one I’ve ever had and I’m not ready to quit on it yet.

Anyway, the article in question concerned an archeologist who’d been poking around an area of Turkey that held particular interest to me.

Can you put me in the same room as this man? I asked, handing over the scrap.

He looked it over. Just the man?

No, actually his being there is really optional. I want to spend some time with one of his recent discoveries. He doesn’t have to be there.

You would like a private viewing?

If that sort of thing can be done.

I’m sure it can. Archeologists always need financial support, and so do the museums that support them. How generous do you want to be?

This was an impossible question for me to answer because I have almost no understanding of what a lot of money is.

Whatever works, I decided. This would probably end up with a museum wing being named after Francis Justinian, but whatever.

"Just to clarify, are you looking to purchase something from him?" Heintz asked.

No, I just need a few hours alone with what he found. Preferably soon.

I’ll look into it immediately, he said.

About two years ago , I realized I needed to learn more about money. I happen to have a great deal of money, and I suppose it’s true that, like anything one comes into possession of, I wanted to understand how to use it and what it could be used for. I was the same way the first time I came into possession of a gun, and before that swords, and succubi, and so on. It’s just good practice to know the value and utility of what you own before someone who knows that value and utility better than you do tries to take it away from you.

But really, anyone with a decent financial advisor and a Sharper Image catalogue can figure out what to do with money. I was more interested in understanding it the way Heintz understood it, or more generally the way someone whose job it is to use money to make more money understands it.

I have lived very nearly my entire life with the barter system—I have two things of value and you have two different things of value, and we both agree the things have equivalent value, and so I will give you one of my things for one of your things, and off we go. Money eventually stepped in and became the portable substitute, so now if I want to get one of your things I sell my thing, get cash, and use my cash to buy your thing. It’s still the barter system, but with less carrying around of livestock. I eventually learned to accept this, and even appreciated that I no longer had to find someone who not only had what I wanted but wanted what I had.

It was when money stopped standing for real live objects that I got really confused.

One time, after getting a rough balance of funds total from Heintz I asked him if I could visit my money. This led to a two-hour conversation I’m very certain he did not enjoy a second of, in which he explained that while a portion of the total he gave me was in fact liquid—and we lost twenty minutes as I tried to figure out why my money was, apparently, a large swimming pool—the bulk of it existed in things like stock, stock options, securities, hedge funds, and on and on.

Some of these were things that represented partial ownership of other things, which I sort of understood. But some were investments in things that were bundled with other things that were actually based on a made-up thing that had value only because everyone agreed it did. I didn’t like these things, and when I learned about them I asked him to try and keep my money no more than one step removed from a thing I could theoretically visit and touch. He wasn’t happy about this.

That I have money at all is kind of an accident of fate combined with a long lifespan and the fact that I didn’t know I had it for a long while. Being wealthy is not something I’m unaccustomed to, only because one doesn’t live through the whole of human history without a lucky financial break here and there. At the same time wealth doesn’t last forever—it basically ends when the civilization that recognizes it does—so maybe that’s why I’m indifferent about it. Basically, I’m good as long as I have access to food, drink, and shelter, and if money gets me better food, more drink and nicer shelter, then that’s great.

Lately my education about money has involved setting up companies. Some of these are companies that invest in things that other people make or hope to make, and some are just there to hold money in places where people won’t ask too many questions. I’m nearly positive some of it is illegal, although I couldn’t tell you which country’s laws are being violated and whether that even matters. (I half expect to someday learn that I’ve been running the Mafia all this time.) My only active contribution to the day-to-day is when I bring something specific to Heintz and ask him to arrange it for me. In this way, having a tremendous lot of money and a private banker is like having a concierge for the entire world.

And like any good concierge, Heintz doesn’t know and doesn’t ask why I want these things. This is fortunate. Because one of the things I’m trying to figure out is how a person can vanish into thin air, and explaining that would just be awkward.

The rest of my encounter with Heintz went quickly and nobody was stabbed at any point, which is always the mark of a successful meeting. I signed my fictional