Part Two
Message In A Bottle
He was standing under the broad canopy of a beech tree. It was a sensible place to be, because it offered the only shade for miles around, the sky was blue and the sun was very hot. He was surrounded on all sides by an ocean of ripe grain – wheat or barley, he couldn’t be sure and he didn’t really give a damn. He was holding the bottle in his right hand, which was visible. The clothes he was wearing were quite definitely not the ones he’d had on a moment or so before; in fact, he couldn’t remember ever having seen them, or anything like them, except on the covers of the sort of books he didn’t read; books with dragons and elves and heroes with swords and people whose names were split up with unexplained apostrophes. Not in Kansas any more. Um. So far, the only sound had been the jabbering of song thrushes and the distant cawing of rooks. Now he heard, far away and intermittent, the vaguely comforting drone of an aircraft. He looked up, and saw a white vapour trail, marking the passage of an airliner. He found it reassuring, because they don’t have scheduled passenger services in those books he didn’t read; therefore, normality still prevailed somewhere, even if it was only at twenty thousand feet above sea level. Then the airliner changed course.
It flew in a lazy half-circle; and although from his viewpoint it seemed to take a long time to trace its course against the blue background, once he’d taken relativity and all that stuff into account, he figured that the pilot was taking a hell of a risk banking and turning so steeply at such high speed; if he carried on like that, he’d rip his plane’s wings off. But on it flew, describing an even tighter circle, followed by a loop and a dip and what was presumably something along the lines of an Immelman turn. Theo felt his jaw drop open. Even in a jet fighter, you’d be pulling so much G-force doing that, you’d black out. In a 747 –
He looked at the vapour trail. It was writing.
Just looking at it made him feel sick, but it was unmistakably writing; the first big loop was a capital C, followed by a small o, leading into an n; and now the lunatic was throwing his plane into another tight circle followed by a slingshot, to form the tail of a g. Skywriting, for crying out loud.
It was unbearable to watch, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. The letters continued to form; faster now, so God only knew what speed the plane was making. An r, an a, a t, a u; Congratulations.
Theo staggered backwards until he felt the trunk of the tree against his back; he slid down it and landed in a heap, sitting awkwardly on his left leg. Sure enough, the plane carried on tracing out Congratulations in white vapour against the relentlessly blue sky.
His first thought was, it’s got to be the Nobel people. Somehow they’ve found out I’ve solved the Doomsday equation, and this is their way of telling me I just made the shortlist. Tempting though the hypothesis was, however, it didn’t quite jive with what he knew about the Nobel Committee, who were serious, rather humourless folk, not given to flamboyant gestures. Besides, the plane was still busily writing – on your. No earthly use hypothesising in the absence of hard data. He leaned his head back against the tree and watched. And, because it was decidedly warm, and the tree was surprisingly comfortable, and the distant hum of the aeroplane had a certain soothing quality –
He woke up. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, but it was long enough for the plane to have covered at least a third of the sky with neat, perfectly spaced and fully justified white lettering. Which said –
Congratulations on your purchase of the revolutionary new VGI YouSpace hand-held portable pocket universe containment module, the ultimate in wish-fulfilment reality technology.
Ever been told that you live in a world of your own? Now you can do just that, with YouSpace. Completely real, absolutely genuine, no annoying Virtual Reality gloves and goggles; lovingly tailored to meet your dreams and aspirations by the expert design team at VGI Parallel Universes Inc.
YouSpace: a full-sized alternative reality small enough to carry in your coat pocket, big enough to hold an infinite number of galaxies (NB galaxies not included), entirely self-contained, with its own multiphasic timeline (so that you can spend forty years there in your lunch hour and still have time for lunch), accessed via the VGI XPX5000 E-Z-Port (TM), guaranteed for a lifetime and absolutely safe. All for $49.95*.
He tore his eyes away from the main text and found the footnote, in much smaller letters, hovering over a distant rocky outcrop;
* Electromagnetic containment field sold separately; typically, basic VGI ZX7677 model retails at $ 8.8 bn; terms and conditions apply.
There’s always something, he thought, and looked back at the main text.
YouSpace comes bundled with five default universes plus entry into the VGI Clubhouse (TM) shared universe (for social networking); your YouSpace unit can also accommodate up to 16 custom universes hand-crafted to your exact specifications by our design team. Although VGI makes every effort to ensure that its products are safe to use, it accepts no responsibility for the vicissitudes of fate, M-Space fluctuations or errors caused by careless or slipshod design. Very occasionally, universes may intersect and participants may find themselves in someone else’s fantasy; in which case, they are urged to make their way as quickly as possible to the VGI shared universe, where company representatives will make the necessary arrangements to get them home.
VGI likewise can accept no responsibility for mishaps caused by the use of unlicensed software or the criminal activities of universe hackers. When purchasing additional universes for your YouSpace module, make sure you buy only licensed VGI products, and report all infringements, unlicensed copies and unauthorised intrusions to the company immediately.
YouSpace. You’ve got the whole world in your hand.
While he’d been reading, the airliner had flown straight over his head and was now busily annotating the sky behind the beech tree. He got up, walked round to the other side of the tree and read –
WARNING: The alternative realities accessed via your YouSpace unit are real and therefore potentially lethal environments. Caution should be taken to avoid edged weapons, firearms, orcs, giants, dragons, soldiers, mysterious one-eyed strangers, falling from a great height, diseases, deep water, fast-moving vehicles and animals, carnivores, bogs, quicksands, high-voltage electric currents, thermonuclear explosions, starvation, dehydration, jealous spouses, star-crossed love, political upheavals, earthquakes, mudslides, lava flows, tidal waves, snakes, bears, wolves, various species of insect, pitfalls, landmines, divine retribution, poison, obesity, alcohol, narcotics, old age, royal disfavour, assassination, envy, malice, evil, poetic justice, inflammable materials, lightning, unjust or corrupt legal systems, grief, longing, suicidal tendencies, sharks, crocodiles, blunt instruments, falling trees, collapsing masonry, rope bridges over deep chasms, direct impact from asteroids or other similar extraterrestrial bodies, ice ages, global warming, curses, witchcraft and entropy, all of which can cause severe injury or death. For detailed information on these and other hazards, consult literature available from manufacturer.
He stared at the white letters until they started to grow fuzzy and soft-edged. You missed out thin ice, he thought, not to mention killer jellyfish. His neck was sore from craning his head back, and the thought of sitting quietly in his room or behind the nice desk in Reception filled him with sweet longing. He looked round for a doorway, or a control panel, but there was nothing as far as the eye could see except ripening wheat.
There was that faint droning again. The plane was back. Instinctively he turned to face the only remaining panel of uninscribed sky. Sure enough –
INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE:
1 Input user code, password and your unique 77-digit PIN and product licence number
2 Set all NUM defaults to 0 before selecting PKP outlet port
3 Ensure RET definitions checkboxes are clear and all bouncers are disabled
4 Follow the instructions in the sky
Ah, he thought bitterly, I hadn’t realised it was a Microsoft product. But the plane was still moving –
4 Alternatively, bypass start-up protocols
Definitely a Microsoft product –
5 For further assistance, shout Help
So he did that. Nothing happened. The plane had flown away, nobody came and there was no sound to be heard except the gentle tweeting of a songbird in the branches above his head. He slumped back down against the tree trunk and buried his head in his hands.
Nothing. Still nobody. The bird carried on singing.
After about twenty seconds, he lifted his head. The bird was –
“… And once you’ve done that, you can go home. Got that? Fine.”
It was birdsong, but he could understand it. He jumped up, just in time to see a small brown bird fluttering out of the topmost branch of the tree.
“Hey,” he yelled, “wait, stop, some back!”
The bird flew on, then banked, turned, spread its wings, glided, flapped twice and pitched on a twig above his head. “Well?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t listening.”
“Fine.”
“Will you please,” Theo said, “just say all that again?”
Pause. “All of it?”
“Yes. Please.”
Three seconds’ silence. “This time you’ll listen.”
“Yes. I promise.”
“All right. Ready?”
“Yes.”
“This is your last chance,” the bird said sternly. “Really, I’m only supposed to say it once.”
“I really am very sorry, and it’s extremely kind of you to—”
“Yes, right, fine. OK, here we go. The most important thing you need to know is—”
Directly overhead, there was a rushing noise. A fast-moving shadow covered his face and a great dark shape burst into view, sailing through the air and vanishing behind the interwoven branches of the tree. Theo saw huge outstretched wings, talons, a beak like a meat hook and two perfectly round yellow eyes. There was a whacking sound, like a bat hitting a ball, and a sprinkle of small feathers was floating in the air like sycamore seeds, twirling as they drifted slowly downwards. With two beats of its absurdly broad wings, the eagle dragged itself out of its dive and launched itself upwards, a feathery bundle like a shuttlecock crumpled in its left claw.
“Hey!” Theo yelled. “Come back, I haven’t—” Too late. The eagle was already no more than a T-shaped silhouette against the blue sky. A drifting feather brushed his nose, and he sneezed.
For a moment he stood quite still, frozen and stunned. Then he realised that his legs weren’t capable of supporting him any more, and he folded at the knees and dropped to the ground.
Say what you like about Microsoft (and he did; oh, he did) but even their worst enemies couldn’t claim that their key functions were prone to being snatched in mid-operation by questing hawks. He groaned, and brushed the feather away from his face. It stuck to his finger, and, as he struggled to remove it, he noticed that the red speckles of blood spattered on the feather’s gossamer veins spelled out tiny words, which somehow came into focus and became legible as he stared at them –
Access to Help is restricted to registered users only. To register, input user code, password and your unique 77-digit PIN and product licence number and follow the instructions in the sky.
On the other hand, he thought, why not hawks? If they could do malignant paperclips, they could conjure up hawks if they wanted to. But no. For one thing, the animation was too good.
“Help!” he yelled, lifted his head and watched the skies anxiously. Nothing.
So this was Pieter van Goyen’s idea of fun, he thought bitterly. In fairness, his attitude was coloured somewhat by circumstances; he’d probably feel differently if he hadn’t been stranded here, with only a sketchy idea of what was going on or how it was supposed to work. In spite of everything he couldn’t help being impressed by the achievement, and the implications – for dimensional theory, M-space, the whole of quantum physics – were stunning. On the other hand, he couldn’t help thinking that maybe Pieter could’ve found something slightly more useful to do with his discovery. It was a bit like inventing the wheel with the sole intention of building a superior golf buggy.
Never mind, he told himself sternly, about all that; what I need to do is find the way out of here. Which, apparently, I can’t do; not without my user name, password, PIN and product licence number. He thought about that, and the few scraps of evidence he’d gathered so far about how this thing worked. Then he took a deep breath and shouted:
“HELLO! I’VE FORGOTTEN MY USER NAME, PASSWORD, PIN AND PRODUCT LICENCE NUMBER! HELP!”
He looked round. Just as he was about to give up hope, he felt a tiny pressure on the back of his right hand. He looked down, and saw a butterfly crawling from his wrist towards his knuckles. And, across the insect’s outstretched wings, in tiny letters that grew as he looked at them –
Thank you for accessing VGI YouSpace HelpSwift. Your user name, password, PIN number and product licence number have been emailed to you at your registered address in your default reality.
The butterfly spread its wings and fluttered away before he could squash it, which was probably just as well. Never mind. He wasn’t beaten quite yet. He took another deep breath, and called out:
“HELLO! I WANT TO ACCESS MY EMAIL! CAN I DO THAT FROM HERE?”
This time he wasn’t in the least surprised when a dragonfly materialised a few inches from his nose and hovered for a moment, wings beating invisibly fast, before landing on the lowest branch of the tree. It crawled across a leaf, then flew away. And on the leaf it had chewed:
Accessing your email from a YouSpace pocket universe is quick and easy. Simply input your name, password, PIN number and product licence number, and you’ll be forwarded to your mailbox instantly.
This time, when he shouted, there were no words, just a great deal of feeling. It relieved a certain amount of immediate stress, but that was all. He sat down under the tree and forced himself to get a grip. He’d got here, he told himself, by using straightforward, no-bullshit mathematics. The same agency, it stood to reason, should be able to get him home.
The idiotic costume he was wearing had no pockets; but there was a leather pouch attached to the belt, and, when he managed to get it off and prise open the drawstring, in it he found his handkerchief, a rubber band he remembered picking up off the reception desk, the magnifying glass, the pencil and the brown manila envelope. He sighed with relief and looked at it, trying to figure out how to reverse the effect. The obvious starting point was the seventh stage of the calculation, but he couldn’t quite see –
He wrote a few lines, then realised he’d run out of space. He remembered that Pieter’s letter was still inside, took it out and turned it over to use the back. And saw a scribbled note in Pieter’s writing which he hadn’t noticed before:
PS: you’ll need a user name, password, PIN number and product licence number. These are as follows:
user name: pietervangoyen6
password: flawlessdiamondsoforthdoxy
PIN: 20485205720593724084503266384500923486 233458698743330503400564656452
product licence number: 1
MEMORISE THESE IMMEDIATELY. To input them, just say them aloud and clap your hands three times.
Regards,
P.
So he did that; and nothing happened.
He was about to break down and cry when it occurred to him that he’d logged on but he hadn’t done anything yet. So he yelled “Help!”; and, a moment later, he saw a little man walk out of the edge of the corn and start trudging up the hill towards him. He was old and he had a limp, and he had to stop and rest twice, but eventually he dragged himself up level with where Theo was standing and dropped down at the foot of the beech tree, breathing hard.
“Are you—?”
“Just a minute, got to get my breath.”
He was short, no more than four feet, with a Santa Claus beard and flyaway white hair under a stained and tatty jester’s hat, and he wore black boots with tarnished silver buckles. His doublet was embroidered with question marks.
“You’re Help,” Theo said.
“That’s me,” Help wheezed.
“But a minute ago you were a—”
“Yes,” Help said.
“There was a hawk, and—”
Help nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Just because someone thought it’d be smart to use unregistered software. Only,” he added, with a resentful glance in Theo’s direction, “it’s not the goddamn cheapskate user who gets eaten by the frigging hawk. Oh no. Right,” he went on, sitting up and stretching. “What d’you want?”
“I want to go home,” Theo said. “Now.”
Help shrugged. “Who’s stopping you?”
“I don’t know how.”
“You don’t – oh for crying out loud. Hold on, though.” He looked up at Theo and frowned. “You’re not Professor van Goyen.”
Here we go, Theo said to himself. “Um, no. I’m his heir.”
“His what?”
“Heir. He left me this – this thing in his will.”
Help looked at him as though he was talking in a language he didn’t understand. “The professor’s dead?”
“Yes. Didn’t—”
Help sighed, a long and rather dramatic process in three acts. “Of course, nobody thinks to tell me. Oh no. I find stuff out as I go along, it’s more challenging that way. Dead? Really?”
Theo nodded.
Help thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Rest his soul,” he said. “So, what did he die of, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. Of course you don’t. Ah well. Leaving,” Help said briskly. “Piece of cake.”
“That’s easy for you to—”
“Usually,” Help went on, as if he hadn’t spoken, “a piece of cake. More precisely, a doughnut; though technically a bagel would do just as well.”
Can’t have heard that right. “Doughnut?”
“Yes, doughnut. You can buy them at any baker, patisserie or pavement café. In fact, the first thing you should do on arrival is go straight—”
Theo extended his arms. “Where, for pity’s sake? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Help sighed. “Just over the skyline there,” he said, pointing due north, “there’s a roadside vendor selling a wide range of food products, including doughnuts. Trust me, there’ll always be one somewhere, no matter where you end up, it’s hardwired into the OS. Anyway, so, you’ve got your doughnut. Simply take it in your hand and lift it level with your eyes, and look through the hole in the middle.”
Theo waited for a moment, then said, “And?”
Help shook his head. “That’s it,” he said. “That gets you home.”
“A doughnut?”
“A doughnut. Any doughnut, so long as it’s round and it’s got a hole in it. Don’t,” Help added quickly as Theo drew a deep breath, “ask me how it works, it just does. So,” he added, as Theo shook his head in disbelief, “just to run over the salient points once more. Bakery or similar retail outlet. Doughnut. Lift, look and leave. Now, do you think you’ve got a handle on that, or would you like me to run through it again for you?”
Theo let the deep breath go. “No,” he said, “that’s fine, I’ll give it a go and see what happens.” He remembered something; the contents of his belt pouch. “I haven’t got any money.”
“Doesn’t matter. Just say you want to look at it first. Sure, the baker’ll probably think you’re nuts, but three seconds later you’re going to vanish into thin air right in front of his eyes, so really, image-wise, what’ve you got to lose?” He paused, while Theo treated him to a drowning-puppy stare. “I think it’s a pretty neat idea, actually. Easy, quick, gets the job done, and in a YouSpace universe, anywhere you go you’re never more than a hundred yards from a cake shop.”
Suddenly, Theo remembered the excellent doughnuts in the hotel kitchen. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll just go and get one, then.”
Help nodded. “You won’t be needing me any more, then, so I’ll just—” He mimed walking with his fingers. “We can pick this up next time you visit,” he said.
Next time, Theo said to himself. Absolutely no chance of that. “Sure,” he said.
“Right. Well, ciao for now.” Help turned and trotted away down the hill, still limping, until he was lost to sight against the corn. Theo waited, to make absolutely sure he’d gone, then followed the line the old man had shown him. Sure enough, after about a quarter of a mile, he saw a canvas tent with a table in front of it. Behind the table stood a large, red-faced man in an apron, who was laying out loaves of bread. He looked up as Theo approached and smiled.
“Hello,” Theo said. “Are you a baker?”
“That’s right.” The red-faced man nodded. “Like my father before me. Sixteen generations, in fact. What can I do for you?”
The loaves smelt wonderful. Also there were lardy cakes, strudels, Viennese fingers, baguettes, apple turnovers, eclairs and macaroons. “Got any doughnuts?”
The baker’s smile didn’t falter, but it did sort of glaze over ever so slightly. “Yes.”
“I’d like one, please.”
“All right.” The baker didn’t move. “If you’re sure.”
“Oh yes.”
“You wouldn’t rather have a nice strudel? Gingerbread? Muffin?”
“Tempting, but I think I’ll stick with the doughnut, thanks.”
Still smiling, the baker nodded slightly. “You’re the boss. One farthing.”
Theo could feel his nerve breaking up. “Could I see it first, please?”
The smile was now a mask. “What for?”
“Oh, I just like to see what I’m buying.”
“They’re doughnuts,” the baker said. “Just doughnuts. Precision-baked to Guild specifications. Which means,” he added, “that each one is exactly the same as any other. Guaranteed.”
This isn’t going to work, Theo thought. “Humour me,” he said.
Very slowly, without breaking eye contact, the baker reached behind him into the tent and pulled out a tray of doughnuts. “There you go,” he said, keeping the tray well out of Theo’s reach, “doughnuts. Just the one, was it?”
Theo swallowed. His mouth was as dry as a hot summer in the Kalahari. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like a closer look.”
He could see the baker hesitate. “Look,” he said, still holding the tray, “no offence, but you’re not going to—”
“What?”
The smile was coming unravelled. “You’re not going to do anything weird, are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Like, well—” The baker’s fingers tightened on the tray. “Like, well, vanish. Disappear. Nothing like that?”
“Good heavens, no,” Theo croaked. “Perish the thought.”
The baker breathed out through his nose. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Like I said, no offence. But there’s this nutcase comes round here. Short guy, fat, bald, talks funny. And every time, he asks to look at a doughnut, and as soon as I give him one, he vanishes.”
“You don’t say.”
The baker shrugged. “I know it sounds screwy,” he said apologetically. “Hell, it is screwy. I mean, people don’t just vanish, it’s not possible. Only this guy does. And it’s starting to get to me, you know?”
“I can imagine.”
The baker sighed, and rested the tray on the table. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m thinking, am I going crazy, or what? People vanishing. I don’t dare tell anyone – my wife, the guys down the Bakers’ Guild, they’d think I was nuts or something. I’m not sure I could take it if it happened again.”
Theo nodded. “But I’m not a short, fat, bald man,” he said.
“I know. That’s what’s keeping me from smashing your head in with a baking tin. Because I swear, if that guy shows up round here again, that’s what I’m gonna do. Sixteen generations of bakers, and nothing like that’s ever happened before. Of course,” he added, looking round and lowering his voice, “it wouldn’t have happened under the old duke.”
“Really.”
“You bet your life. It’s only since this new guy’s been in charge that – well, stuff’s been happening. You hear about it all over, only folks are too scared to talk about it out loud. For fear of people saying they’re crazy, you know?”
Theo nodded slowly. “Since the new guy’s been in charge.”
“Exactly. All kinds of screwy stuff. I’m not saying,” the baker added quickly, “that he’s not better than the old duke in a lot of ways, a whole lot of ways. Like, the emancipation of the serfs, ending the civil war, doing away with the whole droyt-de-seynyewer thing, all really good stuff, nobody’s gonna argue with that, he’s done a lot for the ordinary folks. Poor relief. Free visits to the doctor when you’re sick, all that. Real enlightened. But.”
“But?”
“That doesn’t make up for the screwy stuff, that’s what I say.” The baker was sweating. “No way. Me, I’d rather have the old ways back and no crazy stuff. At least you knew where you stood, you know? Like, you take the bakery business, and these new laws.”
“I’m not from around here,” Theo said.
“Ah. Figures,” the baker added, squinting at Theo’s clothes. “Well, one of the laws the new duke passed, every baker in the duchy’s got to have doughnuts available, any hour of the day or night, every day of the year, and there’s got to be a bakery stall every half-mile along all the turnpike roads, we got a duty roster nailed up in the Guild house, it’s murder. Plays hell with business, I’m telling you. But it’s the law, so what can you do?”
Theo nodded sympathetically. “That’s a very strange law,” he said.
“You’re telling me. I mean, take me, when it’s my turn I’ve gotta set up my stall out in the sticks somewhere, no passing trade, complete waste of my time, I’ve got a perfectly good shop back in town, on which I got to pay rent, but instead I got to come out here, waste a whole day, maybe sell a couple of muffins and a slice of shortbread, if I’m lucky. And if I’m unlucky, that fat bastard comes along and vanishes at me. It’s not right, I’m telling you. That’s no way to run a duchy. Well, is it?”
“Barbaric, if you ask me,” Theo said.
“You bet it’s barbaric. And if you say no, I’m not doing it, next thing you know there’s soldiers banging on your door in the middle of the night and you’re never heard of again. That’s tyranny, is what it is, and folks aren’t going to stand for it, I’m telling you.”
“That’s right,” Theo said, his hand creeping slowly towards the tray of doughnuts. “Someone ought to do something.”
“That’s what I keep saying,” the baker hissed back. “Someone damn well ought to—”
With a degree of speed and agility he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of, Theo lunged for the nearest doughnut. If the baker saw him do it, he wasn’t quick enough to react. A split second later, the doughnut was in Theo’s hand, moving through the air, drawing level with his eye. Through the hole he caught of fleeting glimpse of the baker’s agonised face, then –
He sat up sharply, dislodging the bottle, which rolled off the bed and landed, with a thump but unbroken, on the floor. A faint crackle told him he was sitting on the manila envelope. His watch showed eighteen minutes past ten.
The envelope was noticeably thicker than it had been. He peered inside and found a glossy brochure. It was full of beautiful photos of exotic-looking places – beaches, mountains, forests, castles – and the accompanying text was in Russian. Oh well.
Not that it mattered, because nothing on earth would ever induce him to go through all that again. He wasn’t at all sure what had just happened to him, but one thing he was certain about was that it shouldn’t have, whatever it was; it had been weird and impossible, and as a scientist he refused to believe –
Blessed are those who have seen, and yet have believed. Some kind of really advanced computer simulation – no, he couldn’t quite accept that, it had been too real, the smell of the warm earth, the slight stickiness of the doughnut… He rubbed his forefinger and thumb together. Sticky.
Talking of which – he looked down at his right arm, but there was nothing to see. He flexed the fingers. They were sticky too. But the watch on his left wrist appeared to be working perfectly.
Doughnuts, for crying out loud.
Reality? He couldn’t quite accept that, either. The talking bird; the skywriting aircraft; the little man called Help. Stuff like that simply couldn’t happen in real life.
(Yes, but if you had the technology you could have holographic projections doing impossible things in an otherwise perfectly real world. Or, since even the most conservative multiverse theories allow for an infinite number of alternative universes, why not a universe where the laws of physics are different enough to allow for talking birds, skywriting planes that don’t rip their own wings off doing Ws and transphasic portals nestling inside everyday items of patisserie? Shut up, he urged himself, this isn’t helping.)
He licked the ball of his left thumb. Traces of sugar.
Point made: no computer program, however advanced, could deposit traces of icing sugar on your fingers, not without teleportation, which is impossible. Therefore, somewhere over the doughnut, he’d touched a solid sugary sticky thing – a real one. And, if the doughnut had been real, so must the world it came from have been. Sucroferens, ergo est; it’s sticky, therefore it exists, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, working double shifts and funded by a substantial grant from the UN Weirdness Limitation Commission, couldn’t put his comfortable Newtonian world model together again.
Oh boy.
Suddenly an image of Pieter van Goyen floated into his mind, smiling at him, his mute lips forming the words it’s supposed to be fun. True, if Pieter was still alive and within arm’s reach, he’d have strangled him for subjecting him to such a violent dose of Strange. On the other hand, if it really was really real –
Fun, he thought. Fun, for God’s sake. Fun.
And why not?
He screwed his eyes shut, trying to remember what he’d seen written on the sky. The ultimate in reality wish-fulfilment technology. Five default universes, or concoct your own. Suddenly, he felt a desperate need for a detailed, comprehensive user’s manual. A world of your own, for only $49.95.
He leaned forward and grabbed the bottle. It looked pretty much the same as it had done the last time he’d looked at it; a bottle, the label covered in tiny writing: no big deal. A hollow glass cylinder topped with an open-ended truncated cone, conventionally used for storing booze, ships, djinns and messages; just do the math, and immediately it becomes an infinite space containing infinite possibility. He turned it round in his fingers, rotating it like the Earth revolves around its polar axis. You, on the other hand, are going to have a really amazingly good life, thanks to the bottle. Enjoy it, that’s the main thing. Pieter had said that. The wisest man he’d ever known, his friend. And why not?
He heard a rattling noise; someone was turning the handle of the door, not expecting it to be jammed shut. Theo panicked. His only thought was, where can I hide the bottle? “Just a second,” he called out, and plunged the bottle between the pillows. Then he lunged for the door and yanked away the chair.
“The door sticks,” Call-me-Bill said. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem.” Theo realised he was shaking slightly, but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. “What can I…?”
“Time for your shift,” Call-me-Bill said.
“Ah, right. I’ll be there directly.”
Call-me-Bill stayed exactly where he was. “If you wouldn’t mind holding the fort till, say, midnight, that’d be grand.”
Thirteen and a half hours. Still, he couldn’t very well refuse. “No problem. I’ll just—”
“Yes?”
He couldn’t think of anything he could just do, to get rid of Call-me-Bill long enough to hide the bottle properly. “Shave,” was all he could come up with.
“Don’t bother, you’re fine,” Call-me-Bill said firmly. “Look, I hate to rush you, but there’s nobody on the desk right now, and it’s a sort of rule, the desk’s got to be covered at all times. Otherwise it invalidates the insurance.”
“Ah, right.”
“So if you wouldn’t mind going down there right away.”
“Sure. I’ll just—” No, he couldn’t think of anything. “Just a second.” He darted back to the bed, shoved his hand between the pillows, grabbed the bottle and crammed it in his pocket, doing his best to conceal it from sight. It was only after he’d done it that he realised he’d used his right hand.
“Look,” said Call-me-Bill from the doorway, “I really don’t want to hassle you, but—”
“On my way.”
He squeezed past Call-me-Bill, who didn’t move, then remembered the manila envelope. “God, sorry, won’t be a moment.” He squeezed past again, snatched up the envelope, and bolted, leaving Call-me-Bill standing in the open doorway of the room. He grinned as he clattered down the stairs. Let him search all he wanted; there was nothing for him to find.
The desk wasn’t deserted after all. Matasuntha was sitting on it, swinging her legs, reading a magazine. It had a picture of an expensively dressed woman on the cover, and all the writing was in Russian. “There you are,” she said.
“Yup. Sorry if I kept you hanging about.”
She yawned. “That’s all right.” She closed the magazine and put it on the desk. “I’m just off into town,” she said. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks, I’m fine.” She hadn’t moved. “Don’t let me keep you any longer.”
She’d noticed the bulge in his coat pocket. From there, her eyes travelled to the corner of the envelope, sticking out from behind his lapel. “There’s paper and pencils in the drawer,” she said. “And a calculator, and log tables. In case you get bored.”
“Thanks.” He frowned slightly, realising what she’d just said. “Um.”
“Well, you used to be a scientist, you said. You might want to calculate something.”
He smiled at her. “Unlikely.”
“But not impossible,” she replied firmly. “Think of Einstein. He discovered relativity while working as a clerk in the patents office.”
“So he did,” Theo said. “Well, thanks for everything, and see you later. Have a great time in town.”
Reluctantly she slid off the desk and moved away, clearly trying very hard not to look at the bottle in his pocket. “Bye, now.”
“Bye.”
He sat perfectly still and quiet behind the desk for what seemed like a million years, until he was quite satisfied that she’d really gone. Then he pulled out the bottle and looked at it. She wanted it, no possible shadow of doubt about that. So, he guessed, did Call-me-Bill, who was probably ran-sacking his room for it right now. He could understand why, now that he knew what it did. As soon as his shift was over, therefore, he’d have to hide it again. Not in the cellar this time; after his insight into the operation of the wine-cellar stock-control inventory, he had a feeling it wouldn’t be safe there. Outside, in the bramble jungle? He didn’t like that idea either. The depressing fact was that the enemy (it didn’t feel quite right thinking of Call-me-Bill and Matasuntha in those terms; call them the opposition instead) most likely knew the geography of this place far better than he did, and would therefore be wise to all the potential hiding places. The alternative was to carry the bottle and the envelope with him everywhere he went. But what about when he was asleep?
He heard the front door open and looked up. The woman he’d last seen helping bandage up Mr Nordstrom walked in and came up to the desk. She smiled at him and said, “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
She was tall and slim, about fifty years old, with short dark hair; elegantly and expensively dressed. At a guess, Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz, the other guest. “That’s right,” he said. “How can I…?”
“Theo Bernstein.” She nodded slightly. “Matasuntha told me about you.”
“Ah. How can I…?”
“And the name rang a bell,” she went on, “so I looked you up. You’re the man who blew up the Very Very Large Hadron Collider, aren’t you?”
Whimper. “Yup,” he said. “Would you like your key?”
“So.” She gazed at him as if trying to decide whether to keep him or throw him away. “You’re Pieter’s friend.”
Click. “You knew Pieter van Goyen?”
“I was married to him,” she said. “For ten years. Gloria Duchene-Wilamowicz.” She reached out her hand. He extended his left, but she shook her head. “The other one,” she said.
“Ah.” He switched hands, and they shook briefly, like diplomats. “You know about—”
“Pieter told me. We stayed in touch,” she went on. “Fascinating,” she added, releasing his hand. “It feels quite solid.”
“It is,” he said.
“What do you think happened to it?”
“No idea.” She gave him a not-good-enough look, and he went on, “I mean, I’ve got theories, heaps of them. But—” Then, quite suddenly, a question bubbled up in his mind and slipped out through his lips before he could stop it. “Pieter never told me he was married.”
She laughed. “I guess it slipped his mind. It usually did. He was a nice man, though, I liked him.” She said it as if it was an achievement, like walking across Africa. “You were his favourite student,” she went on. “He talked about you a lot.”
“Did he?”
“Oh yes.” She frowned a little. “I wish I’d listened,” she added. “But then, if I’d paid any attention to what Pieter said, I’d have died of boredom inside of a year. Are you married?”
“Extremely,” Theo said. “But not right now.”
“It’d probably be OK now that you’re not a scientist any more,” she said kindly. “Seeing anyone?”
“No.”
“Probably wise. Give it a year or so, if I were you. I heard of an ex-biochemist in Florida somewhere who was normal again eighteen months after quitting science for good, but it doesn’t do to rush these things. So,” she went on, looking at him a bit sideways, as if looking for a seam between his neck and his head, “what’s one of Pieter’s old students doing behind the desk at a fleapit like this?”
“Only job I could get.”
“Ah. That figures. Actually, it’s not too bad here. Bill’s a nice guy, and little Mattie’s just such a doll, don’t you think? You could do worse,” she added with a gentle smile. “In due course. When you’re better. My key.”
Matasuntha; just such a doll. No, he couldn’t really concur with that; not even one of those Russian dolls which turn out to be half a dozen separate dolls, nested inside each other. “Sorry?”
“The key,” she said gently, “to my room. So I can let myself in. Rather than standing outside in the corridor all night.”
“Ah,” Theo said, and pulled open the desk drawer. There was just the one rusty iron key in there this time. “There you go. Is there anything…?”
“I don’t think so. No, belay that. Get me a bottle of champagne. The Veuve Clicquot ’77.”
“Um,” Theo said. “I’m not supposed to leave the desk unattended.”
“No problem.” She leaned over, grabbed the collar of his coat with a grip like a scrapyard crusher, and pulled him up out of his chair. Then she edged past him and sat down in his seat. “I’ll mind the store while you’re gone. See? No problem is insuperable so long as people are prepared to help each other.”
Theo stood frozen for a moment. Then he nodded three times in quick succession. “Veuve Clicquot ’77, coming right up. Um—”
Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz sighed. “Row 9, stack 47, shelf 17B. On your left as you go in the door.”
“Ah. Fine. Won’t be long.”
After all, he thought as he ran down the stairs, why not the cellar? It was huge down there, and now he knew about the catalogue system, he could make sure his hiding place was truly random. Then, once his shift was over, he could nip down again and retrieve the bottle, and –
Yes. Well. Think about that later. Right now, just concentrate on hiding it. Pieter’s wife, for crying out loud. Probably just a coincidence; yeah, sure. Customers who believed that might also like to sample our extensive selection of guaranteed genuine three-dollar bills.
The cellar door creaked when he opened it, but it was just showing off; inside, no coffin draped in red satin, no bats, just a lot of wine, in racks. He found an empty slot, memorised the coordinates and took the bottle and the envelope out of his pockets. And hesitated.
After all, he told himself, his first visit had taken no time at all, literally. And that nice Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz was minding the desk for him. And he needed to know – He turned over the envelope and looked at the equations, wondering what to do next; last time, he’d achieved access by solving the equation, and he’d already done that, so –
The flying knife missed him by an inch, sailed past and buried itself in the tavern door.
Fun, Theo thought furiously, and dived under a table. Pieter’s idea of fun, he refined, as a heavy body crashed down about a foot from his nose and lay quite still. He couldn’t see properly because the table was in the way, but was that an axe buried in the poor bastard’s head?
He wriggled sideways, away from the body, until someone trod on the back of his left leg. That made him sit up, and sitting up made him bang his head on the underside of the table, and after that things were vague for an unspecified time. When the vagueness gave way to a searing headache, he lifted his head and peered out between the legs of a chair. It was much quieter now; very quiet indeed.
Cautiously he crawled out from under the table and stood up. He was in a bar. Not the sort of bar he was used to, because, instead of glass-topped tables and chrome-legged neo-Bauhaus chairs, there were long wooden tables and the shattered remains of benches. The floor was covered in straw and bodies. A small dog was sniffing a pool of fresh blood with evident delight. Apart from the dog, he seemed to be the only living creature on the premises.
Fun, he thought. No, not really.
One of the bodies, a huge man in a leather jerkin, groaned and twitched slightly. Probably not a good idea to be the first thing he saw when he woke up.
At the far end of the room was a long wooden counter, with smashed jars and bottles on top. Sitting on the floor with his back to the counter was another enormous man in a leather jerkin. He was fast asleep, which was probably just as well, since someone had seen fit to pin him to the bar with two knives, driven through the fleshy parts of his ears.
Time to leave; but in order to do that, he needed –
One of the dead men had a moneybag on his belt. Theo hesitated for a moment, then knelt down and, feeling morally inferior to an investment banker cashing his bonus cheque, pried open the drawstring and helped himself to a handful of small silver coins. When he stood up again, he saw a small, round woman walking past him holding a broom. She didn’t seem to have noticed the dead people. She was humming.
He watched her walk to the counter, hitching up her skirt as she stepped over a couple of bodies along the way, and start sweeping broken crockery off the bar top. He thought for a moment, then made his way to the counter and cleared his throat.
The woman looked up and smiled. “Yes, dear?”
“Excuse me,” Theo said, “but have you got any doughnuts?”
She nodded, stooped and produced a tray of doughnuts from under the bar. “Farthing each,” she said. “You’re not from around here.”
“No.”
“On your holidays?”
Somewhere below him and to his right, someone groaned horribly. “Yes.”
She nodded. “You’ll be here for the flower-arranging festival, then.”
“That’s right.” He spread the plundered coins out on the bar top. “Is that enough?”
“What for?”
“A doughnut.”
She smiled at him and took one coin. “Where are you from, then?”
“South.”
“Ah.” That appeared to be all the explanation she needed. “While you’re here, be sure to see the pig fighting. Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the market square.”
“I’ll make a point of it.” His hand, his visible right hand, stretched out towards the nearest doughnut.
“We don’t get many southerners,” the woman was saying. Then she frowned and looked at him. “You remind me of someone, you know.”
“Really.” His fingertip made contact with the doughnut, in roughly the manner shown on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was slightly sticky, and he could feel individual grains of sugar.
“That’s right. There was a young chap used to come in here a while back, looked just like you. Only he wasn’t from the south. Easterner, he was.”
“Well, then,” Theo said. “Our family’s lived down south for ninety-six generations.”
“Max, his name was.”
Theo snatched his hand away as though the doughnut was red-hot iron. “Max?”
She nodded. “Funny name. I guess that’s why it stuck in my mind. Max as in maximum, you see, and him being so skinny.”
There are hundreds of thousands of people called Max in the real universe, Theo thought, and no reason to suppose it’s not exactly the same here. But his brother had been so thin, he was practically two-dimensional. “When did you see him last?”
“Now you’re asking.” She frowned and squidged her eyelids together; you could practically see the white mice running round inside the little wheel. “Can’t say for sure. We get lots of people in here, you know.”
Quite, Theo thought, and by the looks of it, most of them leave in wheelbarrows. A horrible thought struck him. “Was he – I mean, did he die here?”
The frown deepened, until you could’ve hidden a small elephant in it. “Don’t think so,” she said; but her tone of voice suggested a verdict on the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond reasonable doubt. “It can get a bit boisterous in here sometimes. You know, lads larking about.”
The man pinned by his ears to the bar groaned, as if in confirmation. “But this Max character. He—”
“No, I’m pretty sure he made it,” she said. “Because I remember Big Con – that’s him there, bless him,” she went on, nodding in the direction of a crumpled bag of bones near the fireplace. “I remember Con saying, you could chuck knives at that Max all day long and never hit him, cos he’s so thin. No, I think he just stopped coming by after a while, for some reason.” She looked at him. “You know him, then.”
“What? I mean, I don’t know. He could be someone I used to know, but then again, it could be someone else. Did he, um, come in here with anyone in particular?”
She smiled. “Oh yes,” she said. “He was great pals with that wizard bloke.”
“Wizard.” He had to ask, but he already knew, with the resigned foreboding of an infant at the font who knows that his three elder brothers are called John, Paul and George, what the answer would be. “He wouldn’t be a short, fat guy. Bald head.”
“That’s him,” the woman said cheerfully. “Talks funny.” She paused. “Like you do.”
“He used to come in here with this Max.”
“Oh yes. From time to time, you know. On and off.”
“When was the last time you saw the wizard?”
“Not quite sure,” she replied. “I think maybe he was in here last—” She stopped. She was looking over his shoulder. When she spoke again, she lowered her voice. “Don’t want to seem unfriendly, but you might think about getting along. That’s Mad Frad waking up over there, look. I don’t think he likes you.”
“What makes you say—”
“Well, he did throw an axe at you. Mind, you can’t always tell with Frad. Sometimes when he wakes up, all he does is sit in a corner and sob for a day or so. Other times—”
“I’ll be going, then,” Theo said. “Thanks for the chat.”
“Don’t you want your doughnut?”
He’d forgotten all about it. His hand lashed out and connected, and the last thing he saw in that reality was the woman’s face through the hole in the doughnut. And then –