Faller

by Will McIntosh

  Faller followed, huffing in consternation but not daring to refuse.

  Moonlark pulled open the truck’s door, waved Faller inside. It smelled like wet rodent fur inside, and the seat cover was coming apart in strips. Storm and the men had sidled over close to the truck and were watching with interest.

  “Just let your hands go,” Moonlark said, waving toward the controls. “Play around.”

  Feeling like a complete ass, Faller set his cigarette on the edge of the passenger seat and put his hands on the wheel. He turned it left and right. He remembered from the early days, when a few of the vehicles worked for a while, that you needed a key to be in there, and you turned the key. He looked around; there was no key in the truck.

  He jiggled the knob down by his thigh. The shift the voice in the back of his head offered. Fine, the shift. The words were there, but words like shift were just empty sounds that told you nothing.

  He thumped the front (dash) with his fist, poked at buttons on the radio. Voices were supposed to come from the radio. It came to him in a flash of insight that startled him. He felt sure that was right, although he couldn’t say why, or whose voices they would be. He fiddled with a few more knobs, then looked out at Moonlark and raised his shoulders. “Satisfied?”

  Moonlark smiled, acknowledging his own folly. “Yeah. Let’s go home and have a nice supper.”

  * * *

  “A NICE supper” was an understatement. They ate pigeon and potatoes. There was salt. Fucking salt. Then for dessert Hammer brought out three beautiful shiny red orbs. He set one in front of Faller. Faller gaped at it. It was one of those mythical things whose name he knew, that he’d seen in paintings in the museum and in books with pictures, but didn’t exist. Only on this world, it did. An apple. His heart raced as he picked it up, sniffed it, watched Moonlark and Storm grip theirs in their fists and take a bite right out of the side of it. Tentatively, Faller sank his teeth into his, and as a chunk tore away he giggled with delight. It tasted like nothing he’d ever eaten; it was entirely new, and it blew the top of his head right off.

  Moonlark seemed pleased by Faller’s reaction to the apple. “So what were the early days like on your world, Faller?” he asked between bites.

  “They were bad. Too many people. Not enough food. Everyone seemed well fed on Day One, with no idea how they’d become well fed or how to stay that way. About thirty days in, things came to a head and there was chaos—a war with a million sides. Shooting. Stabbing. Gangs going door to door killing everyone and taking their food.”

  He paused, took a bite of his apple to mask the sadness welling up. He didn’t like talking about the early days. He didn’t even like thinking about them, although memories often came whether he wanted them to or not.

  “A lot of people died of disease. Eventually there were fewer people, and things settled down. People mostly get along now. At least, the people who are left.” Neither Moonlark nor Storm seemed surprised by this account. “We have tribes—a hundred of them, maybe. No one can keep track of the alliances, the partial alliances, the feuds. What about here?”

  “About the same,” Moonlark said. “The chaos was more organized. Groups formed early—we called them clans back then. There were maybe fifteen in the early days. Some were wiped out in the early fighting, others merged, now we’re left with seven. Seven boroughs.” He counted them off on his fingers. “Uptown, Riverdale, Bordertown, Carterville, Far Corner, Greentown. And then there’s us—Gateway. We control the center. All trade and movement from one side of the world to the other has to come through us.” He pointed at his chest with both index fingers.

  Faller thought it was interesting that Moonlark used us when clearly this was more a me operation than an us operation.

  “Things haven’t settled down here,” Storm said. “There are always boroughs at war with each other, constant raids. Six months ago Uptown invaded and killed eighty of our people before we were able to drive them back.”

  “Yeah, but we killed a hundred and fifty of their people,” Moonlark added, waving what was left of his apple.

  Moonlark and Storm were sitting close together, making frequent eye contact. Faller tried to glean how permanent their relationship might be, how long it had been going on. He didn’t dare ask.

  “How many people are on your world?” Faller asked.

  “Gateway has about twenty-eight hundred,” Moonlark said. “We don’t have exact counts for the other boroughs, but in total there are probably in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand.”

  Faller’s world had less than that, although he had only a vague idea of how the worlds compared in size.

  “A month before the war with Uptown our estimates were closer to thirty thousand. Who knows how many were here at the beginning. That’s why you’re so important—someone needs to unite the boroughs before they wipe each other out.”

  A flash of impatience crossed Storm’s face. “There are other possibilities that aren’t so all-or-nothing.”

  “Well.” Moonlark pushed himself up from the table, ignoring Storm’s comment. “I need to speak to some people.” He nodded toward Faller.

  “Many thanks for the meal. I’ve never had a better one,” Faller said.

  Moonlark waved it away. “Nah, don’t worry about it.”

  Storm got up as well. Faller hung back, watching from the doorway as Storm turned toward a door while Moonlark continued down the long hallway. When Moonlark was out of sight, Faller followed Storm. The door led outside.

  He found her standing, arms folded, on a patio beside a rectangular pool of black water. Crickets were trilling in the thicket of bushes surrounding the patio.

  “Is this your quiet place?”

  Storm turned. She didn’t seem surprised to see him. “There are plenty of quiet places.” She gestured toward a thirty-story tower a few blocks away. “That’s empty, if you’re looking for a quiet place. Every week there are more quiet places.”

  “Thanks, but I had plenty of quiet time while I was falling. I’m in more of a talking mood.”

  Storm smiled, shook her head in a “what am I going to do with you?” way. “You’d better get some rest. Moonlark has a big day planned for you tomorrow.” She looked at him, smirked. “You’re going to move the tank.”

  “Right.” He didn’t want to talk about Moonlark’s plans, or the shrinking population. He wanted to show her the picture. He was also terrified to show it to her, afraid she would snatch it away and show it to Moonlark. Then Faller would have some real explaining to do, beginning with why he possessed a picture of himself with Moonlark’s girlfriend, or whatever she was, and ending with why he hadn’t shown the picture to Moonlark earlier. He didn’t have good answers for those questions.

  “So how did you and Moonlark meet?” Faller asked.

  He watched Storm’s profile as she watched the water. “Early on, two men got hold of my handgun while I was asleep. They attacked me. Moonlark came up behind them with a two-by-four and beat them both to death. When it was over, he picked up my pistol and handed it back to me.”

  Faller nodded. He could see how that would lead you to trust someone. “Where did you get the handgun?”

  “It was in my belt on that first day.” Storm turned to face him. “So tell me, Faller, have you considered how this all ends?”

  “How what ends?”

  Storm rolled her eyes at the sky. “Let’s say Moonlark convinces the leaders of the other boroughs that you can work machines, and they give him what he wants. Then what happens?”

  Faller waited, eyebrows raised.

  Storm took on the tone Faller used when telling Daisy something she should already have figured out, like not to eat the mushrooms that grew on car tires. “At some point one of three things has to happen.” She pried her first finger open. “One, you drive a tank down the street, or get water to come out of a faucet. We both know that’s not going to happen. Two, Moonlark admits he lied about you to gain more territory, and God knows�
�—she laughed—“that’s not going to happen. That leaves number three.” She dropped her hands, looked at him, waiting.

  Faller squatted, picked up a corner of stone that had chipped off the patio and tossed it into the water. “This is the part where you let me figure it out for myself, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.” She turned the full force of her gaze on him. “So tell me, Faller. If you were smart enough to figure out how to jump from one world to another, this should be easy. What’s number three?”

  Faller had figured out number three in the middle of number one. He wasn’t sure it was in his best interest that Moonlark’s girlfriend knew he knew number three. Of course, it wasn’t in her best interest to flat-out tell him that her husband was planning to kill him, so maybe he could trust her.

  “Number three is that I have an unfortunate accident.”

  Storm pointed at him. “Bingo. You’re not as clueless as you look.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Storm leaned in so close that for a moment Faller thought she was going to kiss him. “Because you’re not the only one Moonlark’s ridiculous plan is going to get killed.” Her breath on his face made him giddy, despite the situation.

  She drew her face away, folded her arms. “If you can disappear back to wherever you came from, now would be a good time.”

  “Well, that’s a problem. I can’t fall up.”

  “Then hide. Climb a wall into another borough where no one knows what you look like.”

  That made sense, but then Faller would be starving again, and there would be a wall separating him and Storm. The truth was, he didn’t mind being in this kind of danger. Well, maybe “didn’t mind” was an overstatement, but he’d rather be an apple-eating somebody with a target on his back than a rat-eating nobody trying to scrounge enough food to stay alive. If things got too dangerous, he could always run and hide then. For now, he’d see how things played out.

  16

  THE TANK was centered in the street, both of its muzzles pointed at the wall separating Midtown and Uptown. Thousands of Gateway residents lined the street. They churned and pushed, trying to see, but anyone who was pushed off the curb and into the street immediately stepped back onto the curb. Moonlark’s men had told them no one in the street, and Faller was learning that the residents always listened to Moonlark and his men.

  “How big a hole would it make?” Moonlark asked, loud enough for even the spectators on the Uptown side of the wall to hear. “Maybe that big?” He made a big circle with his arms.

  Faller shook his head. “It wouldn’t be a hole.” He swept his hand across a big swath of the wall. “It’d knock out an entire section.”

  Moonlark beamed, apparently pleased with Faller’s answer.

  Because the turret looked like a giant gun, Moonlark assumed it would make a hole like a gun. Faller wasn’t sure it made sense to assume a tank was like a gun. Sure, the turret looked like a giant gun, but guns worked. No one understood why guns worked when none of the other machines did. Maybe guns weren’t machines at all; maybe it was better to think of them as tools, like hammers and saws. If his dream of the planes dropping bombs was anything more than his own twisted imagination, the things that came out of the drone tank would be nothing like bullets.

  Faller and Moonlark climbed up to look at the tank’s controls, just as they’d rehearsed.

  “Can you make it move, without firing it?” Moonlark asked.

  “Oh, sure.” Faller stepped up to the controls tucked behind the turret. Trying to appear deliberate, he gripped a handle with one hand, clutched a notched black knob with the other. The crowd hushed as he closed his eyes, as if concentrating deeply. He turned the crank and rotated the knob simultaneously, then, opening his eyes, he released the crank and flipped a series of switches set in a box.

  The tank inched backward. The crowd gasped. It was a pretty sound: a thousand sets of lungs drawing in air all at once. Faller watched the mark they’d made on the street, and when the front wheel touched it he flipped the switches back where they’d been, then turned the crank in the opposite direction. The tank stopped.

  As he hopped from the tank he could hear the men hiding in the manhole beneath the tank reeling in the chain they’d used to drag it those few feet. The manhole cover thunked quietly closed as Faller joined Moonlark and shook his outstretched hand. They posed for the crowd, their hands locked as if sealing a blood oath, their faces turned toward the throngs.

  A face on the edge of the crowd caught Faller off guard. He took in her teardrop eyes and the tight, controlled line of her mouth, and let out a sharp yawp of surprise, dropping Moonlark’s hand.

  “Orchid?” Faller stepped toward her.

  Moonlark caught his elbow, drew him back.

  “Orchid, is that you?” Faller called. It was her, thinner, wearing heavily soiled jeans and a T-shirt, clutching a small boy’s hand. Faller tried to break Moonlark’s grip, but Moonlark only squeezed harder. Faller turned to him. “That woman is from my world! I know her. How did she get here?” He waved frantically to her. “Orchid, it’s me!” Orchid looked over her shoulder, as if she thought he must be talking to someone else.

  Moonlark yanked Faller in the other direction. “Let’s go,” he hissed. Orchid was watching Faller, no hint of recognition on her face.

  “Orchid!” Faller pulled against Moonlark. Others in the crowd were now looking at Orchid.

  Appearing confused and uncomfortable, Orchid pushed into the crowd. The little boy’s hand, clutching a weathered toy race car, was the last glimpse Faller got as one of Moonlark’s men grabbed his free arm and they half carried him away, his feet dancing just above the pavement.

  “Fuck. You told me you didn’t know anyone,” Moonlark shouted when they were out of earshot of the crowd. He looked Faller up and down like he was assessing a turd on his shoe. “You lying sack of shit. You really had me going.”

  “I don’t know anyone from this damned world. But that woman isn’t from this world—she’s from mine.”

  Moonlark stopped. He gawked at Faller. “You’re not a con man, you’re a fucking loony.”

  “No,” Faller said quickly. He could guess what would happen to him if Moonlark decided he was insane. “I promise you, I’m not crazy. You can count on me.” He made an emphatic show of not struggling any more, of standing with them, nice and calm. “I’m sorry about that, it won’t happen again. She must just look like someone I knew. The resemblance is uncanny, really.”

  Moonlark studied Faller. Faller tried to look remarkably reasonable and lucid. Cursing under his breath, Moonlark resumed walking. “I guess I’m in too deep to cut my losses now.”

  Faller nodded as they rounded a corner, stepping into the street to avoid a collapsed wall.

  “Okay, we’ll go with it.” He patted Faller’s back. The pats were a bit hard. “No more surprises, you hear me?”

  VII

  PETER WHEELED Izabella into the lab as the door slammed closed behind them, echoing in the open space. Doing this in the middle of the night made it feel like a crime, and it was possible that, technically, it was.

  “Is this starting to feel like a bad idea to you? Maybe I should take you back.”

  “Let’s not go through this again,” Bella pleaded. “I’m scared to death as it is.” Her speech was a jerking, guttural mess.

  The wheelchair left wet trails across the spotless floor from the rain outside. It was pattering on the big floor-to-ceiling windows, the water leaving trails down the glass.

  Peter leaned Izabella forward, slipped his hands under her arms and lifted her from the wheelchair. Izabella could only watch as he struggled to carry her up the three aluminum steps of the scaffolding. Peter was too small and out of shape. Ugo the weight lifter could have hoisted her effortlessly, but Ugo couldn’t know what they were doing until they were done.

  Huffing, Peter set Izabella at the edge of the scaffolding closest to the iris—the portal to duplication.


  Izabella pried off her wedding ring, handed it to Peter. “I don’t want to lose this.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Peter said.

  “Shit, what about my clothes? I didn’t think about bringing any, for me or for her.”

  The mention of her sent a fresh chill through Peter. He hadn’t considered clothes, either. He was not a detail guy. “Maybe we should go back and get some.”

  “No. I don’t want to risk losing my nerve. I can take off the hospital gown so I don’t lose it. My double can hide in one of the offices until you bring her back some clothes. Shit. My double. Is this real?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. It is real. Too real.” He looked away, untied the bow at the top of Izabella’s hospital gown.

  “Come on, Peter,” Izabella said. “How are you going to drop me through without looking at me?”

  She had a point. He turned his head about halfway back, fixed his gaze on a stain on the scaffold’s steel floor as he slid Izabella’s gown down her hips and pulled it off. Izabella was a blur of pale white skin and dark hair.

  “I need you to look at me, Peter. Look at my eyes.”

  Peter did.

  “I’m scared,” she said. “I need you here with me.”

  He took her quavering hand, squeezed it. “I’m sorry. I’m here. Don’t be scared. Nothing bad is going to happen.” If only he was sure of that. The closer they came to actually going through with this, the more uncertain he felt.

  He got behind Izabella and grasped her under her arms. His right hand bumped against her breast.

  “Sorry.”

  She let out a panicky laugh. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re not hitting on me.” She was trembling uncontrollably; whether it was all prion, or prion on top of fear, Peter couldn’t say. His own heart was hammering wildly. In a few moments there would be two Izabellas.

  “We’re about to make history,” he said. “Do you realize that? You’re like the first person in space. Bigger.”

  “Just lift me, Boy Wonder. We can reflect on the significance of the moment when it’s over.”