The Temptation of Silence

“Silence can be a shield, a kindness, or a cage—the danger lies in how tempted you are to use it.”

"Well, it's lights out in Clivilius," I declared as I stepped back into the living room.

The Portal had closed behind me, the kaleidoscope of light folding inward until nothing remained but ordinary plaster. The transition from alien dusk to suburban evening jarred—the shift from vast silence to the hum of a refrigerator, from ochre dust to carpet fibres, from a world without history to one drowning in it.

"Clivilius?"

Gladys echoed the word, her brow drawing tight as she squinted at me. Her gaze was sharp despite the alcoholic haze softening her edges. There was something about her stare, even blurred by drink, that cut close to bone—unyielding, as though she could strip away layers of deflection if I stood still too long.

She'd made good progress on the fresh bottle of chardonnay while I'd been gone. The bottle sat significantly lighter on the bench, and her posture had loosened into that particular slump that came after the third glass. Or was it the fourth?

"That's the name of the place where Paul and Jamie are," I said, my hand rising in instinctive emphasis.

I gestured towards the wall behind me, where the air still shimmered faintly, the technicolour glow of the Portal breathing for a brief instant before collapsing back in on itself. A final pulse of violet, a whisper of gold, and then nothing. Just paint and plaster and the ordinary architecture of a house that had no business containing doorways to other dimensions.

The room settled into quiet again, the magic hidden as though it had never existed at all. The concealment was necessary, I reminded myself, yet I felt its loss like a weight pressing in my chest. Every time I closed the Portal, some part of me mourned the severing—that umbilical cord to something vast and strange and utterly unlike anything else in my life.

"What about the truck?"

Gladys asked, her words softened by the blur of wine, her hand lifting the glass in a loose, careless arc toward the driveway. The gesture was vague, but the question carried a curious weight—as though, in her mind, the practical and the extraordinary were beginning to bleed into one another.

Of course. The truck. Still sitting in the driveway, loaded with the supplies she'd gathered. Concrete mix, post hole diggers, all the things on Paul's list. In the chaos of revelations and Portal demonstrations, I'd nearly forgotten the very reason she'd come in the first place.

"Nah, not tonight," I replied, the answer slipping from me with the heaviness of duty. "It's getting far too dark to take the goods through the Portal. There's very little light on the other side."

I paused, my throat tightening around the memory.

"I've never seen night-time like it," I admitted, the words hushed, almost reverent.

The stark blackness of Clivilius rose unbidden in my mind—the way it pressed against your eyes, thick and absolute, stripping away depth and orientation until you felt suspended in a void. It wasn't like night on Earth, softened by stars and streetlamps, tempered by the distant glow of cities and the silver wash of moonlight. Clivilian darkness was something else entirely. Something that consumed.

The memory of it made my skin prickle. That first night. No moon. No stars. Nothing but blackness so complete it felt solid, like being buried alive in velvet.

Dragging myself back to the present, I searched for something normal, something to close the distance between the world we'd just been skirting and the one we still inhabited.

"I'll call you an Uber," I said, my tone brisk.

"Sure."

Her agreement came quickly, simply, the word sliding into the quiet with no resistance. Yet the air between us carried the sense of a night that had already strayed too far from what either of us could reasonably call normal.

"Oh, and Gladys?" I said, the lightness draining from my voice. My face set hard, every muscle taut with the seriousness of what I was about to demand. This was the moment. The pivot point upon which everything might balance or topple.

"You mustn't tell a soul about any of this. No one. Okay?"

"Okay," she replied with a shrug, her shoulders rising and falling as if I'd asked her not to comment on the weather.

The casualness of it struck dissonant, clashing violently with the urgency twisting in my chest. Did she not understand? Could she not grasp what was at stake? This wasn't gossip about a neighbour's affair or speculation about someone's finances. This was a doorway to another world.

"Gladys, I mean it. Promise me, you won't tell anyone."

"Not a soul," she drawled, the words stretched out as though mocking the very gravity I tried to impress upon her.

A loud hiccup followed, spilling inelegantly into her glass. The sound was absurd, incongruous—the crude punctuation of a conversation that should have carried the weight of oaths. She couldn't even keep a straight face, couldn't summon the solemnity the moment demanded.

And why would she? To Gladys, this was still half-fantasy, something glimpsed through a haze of chardonnay that would probably seem dreamlike by morning. She'd tell herself she'd imagined it, or misremembered, or that the wine had played tricks on her eyes. People were remarkably good at rationalising away the impossible.

But what if she didn't?

What if, tomorrow or next week or next month, she mentioned it to someone? A casual comment at the shops. A confused confession to her sister. A whispered worry to a friend who whispered it to another friend who mentioned it to a journalist who—

I turned away, the mask slipping only for an instant.

A grimace flickered across my face before I smothered it with the heel of my hand, rubbing hard at my temple. The headache throbbed in rhythm with my pulse, each thud a reminder of the precarious edge I walked. Gladys knew too much already, and wine had loosened what little grip she had on discretion.

Secrets sat uneasily in her hands, and I had placed a live one there.

The thought I had tried to bury rose again, dark and insistent.

Take her to Clivilius. Trap her there. Contain the risk.

The idea was abhorrent. I knew that. Some part of me—the part that still remembered what it meant to be decent, to be human—recoiled from it with genuine horror. Gladys was Jamie's closest friend. She'd been part of our lives for years, a fixture at dinners and holidays, a steady presence who brought wine and gossip and that particular brand of brash affection that made you feel simultaneously annoyed and loved.

And yet the whisper persisted, quiet and logical, speaking in the cold voice of necessity.

She would be caught, yes—stripped of choice, bound to a world she never asked for. But what was the freedom of one compared to the protection of an entire, nascent universe? Wasn't the sacrifice a necessary evil? If she talked—if the secret spread—everything could collapse. Government agencies. Scientists. Military interests. The Portal would be taken from me, studied, exploited. Jamie and Paul would become subjects rather than settlers. Clivilius would be colonised not by three men building something new but by institutions and interests that cared nothing for its wonder.

One person's freedom against all of that.

Surely, the ends justified the means?

The question gnawed at me, claws raking deep.

My conscience reeled, caught between loyalty to a friend and the instinct to protect something far greater, something still fragile and in need of shielding. The Machiavellian corner of my mind—that calculating, ruthless part I usually kept locked away—had slipped its cage. It paced now, presenting arguments, offering justifications, painting scenarios in which the unthinkable became merely... practical.

She'd have company there, the voice murmured. Jamie loves her. Paul would adjust. They'd all make the best of it, and in time she might even thank you for giving her adventure instead of the slow fade of suburban drudgery.

I could feel myself leaning towards it. Feel the seductive pull of a clean solution, a neat containment of variables. One push through the Portal. One more body in Clivilius. Problem solved.

Yet as the room seemed to tilt faintly around me, the spin of my vision echoing the turmoil inside, I felt the doubt creep in.

Doubt that hollowed out my certainty, whispering that no universe—however wondrous, however full of promise—could truly be worth the price of a single friend's freedom. That the man who could make such a choice, could condemn someone to exile without consent, was not a man building something beautiful but a tyrant laying the foundations of something monstrous.

The thought steadied me. Sobered me.

I looked at Gladys—tipsy, oblivious, hiccupping into her wine—and felt something loosen in my chest. Not resolution, exactly. Not certainty. But enough clarity to step back from the edge I'd been contemplating.

Not tonight. Not like this.