Faller

by Will McIntosh

“No, that’s too generous,” Faller said, waving his hands. “I can’t accept all that.”

  Snakebite turned his fierce eyes on Faller. Even now, knowing Snakebite wasn’t a threat, they unnerved him. “I’m coming with you.”

  “What? Why?”

  Snakebite disappeared for a moment, returned clutching a wallet. He dropped it on the table. “Here’s what was in my pocket on Day One. Take a look.”

  There was a laminated card with Snakebite’s photo on it, some cash, a folded-up piece of yellow paper, some plastic squares his mind insisted on calling credit cards, and, tucked in their own compartment, three photos of children. Two girls, one boy. All had Snakebite’s black hair, his reddish complexion, his fierce eyes.

  “You ever see any of them on your world?” Snakebite asked.

  Faller shook his head. “I would remember if I had. Unless they, you know, were gone early.” Faller handed the photos back to him.

  “I never knew what to make of those pictures. Now I understand. You found your woman. I want to find my children.” Snakebite shrugged. “I don’t belong here anyway. I’ve always sensed that. Will you help me make a parachute?”

  “Sure.” Faller was overjoyed at the thought of a traveling companion, especially one with a shotgun and deadly aim. He touched Snakebite’s shoulder. “Come on, we should probably be gone by dawn.”

  Behind what had once been a restaurant, they found a courtyard with steel tables and chairs, sheltered by a fabric canopy that was perfect parachute material. They cut it down and headed back to Snakebite’s shop. Snakebite was carrying his shotgun; both kept an eye out for movement.

  “I’m trying to understand how they got here, and why they came,” Faller said as they walked.

  Snakebite glanced at the sky. “They must have come the same way as you. They’re chasing you, for some reason.”

  “The one man who didn’t look like me thought I was some guy named Peter.”

  “Maybe they have your name wrong, but I bet you’re the one they’re after. You can move from one world to another, and so can they. I doubt that’s a coincidence. Maybe they don’t like that you’re moving from place to place.”

  “The man who called me Peter told me I should have stayed hidden, like he’d been looking for me even before I started falling. Then he said something about a blackout. And just before you fired your first shot, he was starting to say he wanted me to show him where I’d hidden something. I think it’s a case of mistaken identity.”

  “Or maybe your real name is Peter,” Snakebite said.

  The thought of that made Faller’s bones shiver. “How would he know that?”

  “Maybe he didn’t forget.”

  The possibility struck Faller like a brick. If it were true, that man would have all the answers.

  30

  HALF A dozen shops from Snakebite’s store, one shop had burned and been cleared away, leaving a gap like a missing tooth, nothing but a cracked foundation hanging over the edge. Each hefting a heavy backpack, they stood in a silent row along the edge and looked out at the sky. Bystanders hung back on the sidewalk. Storm wasn’t one of them. Faller was relieved; they’d said good-bye, seeing her again would only make jumping that much harder.

  After they’d finished Snakebite’s parachute, Faller had lain awake, his stomach in knots, wishing he could stay on this repressed little splinter of a world with Storm.

  Faller turned to Snakebite. “Ready?”

  Snakebite nodded.

  “On three, okay?”

  “Faller.”

  He turned toward her voice. “Storm?”

  She was dressed in her old outfit—jeans and a white shirt, a pack strapped across her back. Susanna was with her, their eyes still wet with tears.

  “Is there room for one more in your parachute?” she asked.

  Faller raced over, swept her into a fierce hug. “Really? You’re really going with us?”

  “I convinced her she should go,” Susanna said. “The more we talked, the more obvious it was that—” She paused, searching for words. “Her place was with you.”

  Storm broke away from Faller’s embrace. “We’d better get going. Susanna said Stuart is just dying to find you still here.”

  Snakebite laughed gruffly. “Yeah, I’m shaking in my boots. Are we ready?”

  Susanna poked Faller in the chest. “You take good care of her.” She looked at Snakebite. “You, too.”

  They took their places on the edge of the world. This time Snakebite counted to three.

  They jumped in unison.

  He gave Snakebite a few minutes to get accustomed to falling, then he drifted over.

  “Landing lessons,” he shouted.

  Snakebite nodded.

  Faller set out to teach both of them everything he knew about navigating and landing. On the next world, they could fashion a parachute for Storm, then they’d be set.

  XVI

  THE WILLIAM and Mary campus passed on Peter’s left: darkened red-brick buildings spread across a smooth green lawn. The campus was deserted, in the middle of what should have been fall semester. So many of those kids were out West now, on the front lines, or fighting in Southeast Asia, or North Africa. Or dead. So many were dead. The press couldn’t provide even a partially accurate estimate of how many Americans had been killed in the war. Millions was all anyone knew at this point. Millions.

  Pulling up their long driveway, he could see through the fence that the pool area was lit, the fountain spraying a plume of water into the sky. As the sun went down their neighbors would see this decadent display of electricity from their dark houses, as they sat reading books, or playing board games, by flashlight. He felt guilty enough that they had a generator, and enough pull to be able to acquire fuel to run it. Flaunting it wasn’t a great idea.

  Most people thought Peter’s income paid most of their mortgage, but the truth was Melissa brought in more than he did. Peter took a salary, but he felt funny earning too much doing scientific research. Melissa’s work was always in demand, especially the miniature golf courses. Disney World had one, and so did the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  Melissa stepped onto the porch as he came up the walk.

  “We having a party or something?” Peter joked. He gave her a kiss. As they drew apart he noticed something in her eyes—an uneasiness.

  “What is it?” Peter asked.

  “Come on in and have a drink, and I’ll tell you.”

  “I definitely don’t like the sound of that.” He followed her inside, through the high-ceilinged, marble-floored vestibule, down the hall and out onto the verandah that overlooked the pool, where Dalia, their cook and housekeeper, had set three places for dinner.

  “I thought it was just us tonight,” Peter said.

  “That’s what I want to talk about. After you have a drink.”

  Peter stopped in his tracks. “Why? Who’s coming?”

  The expression on Melissa’s face was answer enough. “He doesn’t know you’re going to be here; I told him you were staying at the lab—”

  Peter’s heart began to drum.

  Melissa swept strands of hair out of her face. “I’m sorry I lied. It was the only way I could think to get the two of you in the same room.” She put her hands on her narrow hips, looked through the wide arched doorway into the hall. “He’s family. Whatever’s come between you two, you need to sort it out.”

  The doorbell rang. Peter’s first thought was to slip out the back while Melissa answered it, but he couldn’t do that to her. He and Ugo would just have to tolerate each other’s presence for one dinner. They could discuss neutral topics. Music. Fine chocolates.

  The sound of his booming baritone, the clipped Slavic accent, made Peter cringe. The voice grew louder as Melissa led him down the hall. “I should have called you weeks ago, but I’ve been—”

  When he saw Peter, he stopped in his tracks.

  “Ugo,” Peter said as amiably as he could manage.

  Ugo tr
ied to pull his jacket back on as Melissa took his elbow and all but dragged him toward the table. “Ugo, sit.” Reluctantly, Ugo allowed Melissa to shove him into a seat. She looked at Peter. “Sit. Please.”

  Peter took a seat at the opposite end of the table, with Melissa between them.

  “You two have been friends for ten years. You really want to give that up because of an argument?” She looked from one of them to the other.

  Peter shrugged. “Sometimes people just drift apart.”

  Muttering under his breath, Ugo reached across the table and poured himself a generous martini from a silver shaker. Peter stared off at the brass and silver fountain set in the center circle of their trilevel pool.

  “Remember the time you two city boys decided to go camping in the wilderness?” Melissa asked. “It was freezing out, and it started to rain, so you headed back toward the road in the dark, and you got lost. You spent the night shivering under a tree, and in the morning it turned out you were a hundred feet from a restroom.” She looked at Ugo, then Peter. “Right?”

  Peter tried to smile, but the corners of his mouth just wouldn’t lift. Ugo was staring at his empty dish.

  “The first night we all went out together, Peter traded shirts with you on the way to the bar because a bird pooped on yours.” She waited for some sort of reaction. “You don’t throw away that sort of friendship. You just don’t.”

  Peter mustered a weak nod.

  “You can’t even look at each other.” Melissa turned to Ugo. “Peter says you’re angry with him because he didn’t make a public statement about you deserving to share the Nobel.”

  Ugo plucked a shrimp from an iced dish, popped it in his mouth. “If that’s what he says it’s about, who am I to argue?”

  No words would come to Peter. It was excruciating, to sit here pretending this was about the Nobel, to watch Melissa try to fix something that was not fixable.

  “I should have put more effort into appearing on late-night talk shows, and wheedling invitations to be guest of honor at science fiction conventions,” Ugo said.

  Peter sighed heavily. “You got me, Ugo. I won a Nobel Prize because I cozied up to the science fiction community.”

  Ugo folded his arms. “You painted this image of yourself as a lone-wolf genius who did everything by himself. You’ve done a lot of things behind my back, but research isn’t one of them.”

  Peter tried to mask how badly the insult shook him by trying to look annoyed. He reached for the shaker, poured himself a drink, and spilled half of it on the tablecloth.

  “What do you mean, Peter’s done a lot of things behind your back?” Melissa said.

  “Nothing.” Ugo waved a hand in disgust.

  “Peter certainly did nothing to intentionally get you excluded from sharing the prize. You can’t think he would do that, do you?”

  Ugo looked right at Peter. “No. All of Peter’s mistakes are accidents.”

  Peter took a long swig of his drink, trying to mask how badly his hand was shaking. “Why don’t we talk about something pleasant?” Out beyond the pool, the setting sun bathed Melissa’s miniature golf course in golden light. He pointed toward it. “Melissa just finished her thirteenth hole. Stonehenge.”

  Melissa sprang from her seat. “Let’s play it.” Without waiting, she headed down the winding staircase to the pool area. Peter followed, leaving Ugo sitting alone with his drink.

  Melissa handed Peter a putter and ball, then leaned two spare putters against a bench by the newly completed hole.

  Peter’s ball hit one of the broad, flat stones and ricocheted off to the right. As he turned he saw Ugo standing with his hands in his pockets a dozen feet behind them.

  Melissa’s overshot the hole by about six feet.

  Peter headed toward his ball.

  “Hang on.” Melissa lifted one of the spare putters. “Who’s going to play for Izabella?”

  Peter froze.

  Melissa stood holding the club, waiting for one of them to claim it. “I miss her. I know both of you do, too. Maybe you don’t realize it, but I think a lot of the problem between you two has to do with her. If she were here, I don’t think this falling-out would have happened.”

  Ugo barked a laugh, the harshness of it clearly startling Melissa.

  “What’s funny about that, Ugo?”

  Peter retrieved the extra putter, his knees shaking badly. “I’ll play for Izabella. Let’s just get this over with.”

  As he was setting the orange ball on the mat, the putter was ripped from his hand. He looked up to find Ugo looming over him, clutching the putter.

  “Don’t you dare. I told you to never speak her name in front of me, and I meant it.”

  Melissa pushed her way between them. “What the hell is going on? Someone tell me. Right now.”

  Peter should have insisted they call the police, that night in his lab. He’d taken the easy way out when Ugo offered it, but in a situation like this, there was no easy anything.

  Ugo glared at Peter. “Go ahead. Tell her. I’m tired of our friends thinking I’m the villain in this.”

  He wanted to tell Ugo to shut the hell up. He wanted to run.

  “Tell me what?” Melissa looked at Peter, frowning, confused. Possibilities must be flying through her head, the worst probably being that he and her sister had had an affair. If only it were that simple.

  “Better yet, why doesn’t Peter tell her?” Ugo looked up at Peter. “Why don’t you see if the real Peter can join us? Or is he too ill?”

  The words hit Peter like he’d been punched. Surely Ugo couldn’t know. No one knew, except his doctor.

  Melissa looked from Ugo to Peter, and back again. “If you’re trying to make some sort of profound existential point, Ugo, it’s lost on me.”

  Ugo shrugged. “I’m simply asking if Peter can join us.”

  “He’s right there,” Melissa nearly shouted.

  Ugo shook his head. “That’s not Peter.” He looked at Peter, grunted. “I assumed your wife, at least, was in on that secret. You really haven’t told her any of this?”

  How could Ugo possibly know? Dr. Otero wouldn’t violate Peter’s confidence, would she? If she did, she would have told Melissa, not Ugo.

  Ugo tsked, shook his head as if he were disappointed in Peter. “Do you really think I’d miss the early symptoms of a disease that my own wife suffered from?”

  Peter tried to think of when Ugo would have even seen him. The driving range? Peter hadn’t even known he had Peterson-Jantz that day at the driving range.

  Melissa studied Peter, lingered on his quavering hands. “Sweetie, are you sick?”

  “He’s not sick; the real Peter is sick. Very sick, by now.”

  “Shut up,” Melissa said. “I’m asking Peter.” She turned to Peter, her eyes pleading. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Ugo took a seat on the bench beside the thirteenth hole, leaned back, folding his hands across his belly. “Where should we start?” He cocked his eyebrows.

  “What is it you think you know?” Peter asked.

  “All right. Two weeks ago, you were exhibiting the early symptoms of Peterson-Jantz. Now”—he gestured toward Peter’s hands with a flourish—“they’ve absolutely vanished. Either you’ve developed a cure for Peterson-Jantz—in which case I’m sure the Nobel Committee will have a prize in medicine and physiology for you in no time—or you duplicated yourself.”

  Melissa gaped at Ugo. “What are you talking about? Are you out of your mind? It’s Peter.”

  Peter considered denying it all, insisting Ugo had gone off the deep end. Ugo had no proof. Izabella’s duplicate body was at the bottom of a shaft, deep under the lab. Peter’s body was gone.

  Melissa grasped his arms, her face suddenly close to his. “Do you know what he’s talking about? Because you don’t look confused, you look terrified. And that’s scaring me.”

  Peter looked at Ugo, who raised and lowered his eyebrows. The bastard was enjoying this.

/>   “Can we go sit?” Peter whispered, his voice shaking.

  He followed Melissa back to the verandah, with Ugo trailing a dozen paces behind.

  Before he began, he drained his martini glass in three big gulps.

  “Right before she died, Izabella asked me to duplicate her.” He couldn’t catch his breath; he felt like he’d just been sprinting. “At first I said no—”

  “We said no,” Ugo interrupted. “She asked us together, and we told her no.”

  “Do you want to tell her?” Peter hissed.

  Ugo shrugged. “If you want. But you’re doing fine. Why don’t you go on?”

  Peter wanted to hurl a plate at his bald head. “Later, when I was visiting her alone, Izabella begged me to help her. I kept telling her it was too dangerous. She didn’t feel she had anything to lose at that point. So I agreed to help her.” He looked at the slatted floor, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “And she died.”

  Peter knew she’d be shocked, but he wasn’t prepared for the utter devastation on Melissa’s face. When she’d recovered a little, she turned to Ugo. “You need to go home.”

  Ugo shrugged, rose from the table. “I understand. It was a shock to me, too, when Peter called me in the middle of the night to tell me my wife was lying dead in his lab.”

  “Please. Go,” Melissa said, her voice barely controlled. She was crying, her face down, hidden by the veil of her hair.

  As Ugo turned, Peter saw the hint of a smirk beneath his somber scowl. He was thrilled by Melissa’s reaction; it was exactly what he’d hoped for.

  “You’re such a bastard.”

  “Why don’t you buy her some chocolates? That ought to fix things.” Ugo paused, as if considering. “Better yet, give her a bottle of Zing energy drink.” Ugo stood very still, staring pointedly at Peter as if those words, Zing energy drink, were profoundly significant.

  Peter watched him wind down the staircase.

  Her breathing ragged, head still bowed, Melissa waited for Ugo to be gone.

  Why had Ugo waited so long? If he was going to reveal the truth about Izabella, why wait?

  The only thing that had changed was Peter had contracted Peterson-Jantz. Ugo hadn’t been around to see him popping Motrin like mad, drinking Zing because the caffeine helped the headaches. How could he possibly know?