Parallelities

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Parallelities Page 11

by Alan Dean Foster


  “So do I,” murmured Boles emphatically. “In a way, you two are fortunate. I don’t imagine I’ll ever get to meet any of my para selves.”

  “If you do, I hope it goes better for you than it has for us.” Mitch gestured at the angry figure nearing the front door. “We’re not really crazy about ourselves. It’s more a matter of mutual toleration.”

  Little was said between the two M. Parkers during the drive down the hill. Max barely grunted at the guard as they paused and waited for the gate to swing up. Nor was there any impetus to conversation as he pulled out on the coast highway and headed south, back toward L.A. Evening was advancing upon the coast and the sinking sun turned the smog-saturated sky a pale shade of incandescent orange.

  “There has to be something we can do,” Mitch avowed, as much to break the tension that had gripped the interior of the Aurora as in hopes of receiving a reply.

  “Like what?” Max stared morosely straight ahead, hands clamped to the wheel. It was late, after rush hour. Most commuters were already home enjoying the long daylight-savings-time sunshine. This far north of the city, there was still little traffic. They would not hit much until they reached Malibu.

  “You could wish upon a star,” Mitch suggested.

  “Very funny,” Max responded flatly. “I’m glad you find our situation so amusing.”

  “God, but you’re a pain when things aren’t going your way.”

  “You should know.”

  After that nothing was said. Mitch pressed back in his seat and stared at the road ahead, wondering if in his own world he had already been fired.

  His attention was drawn to a bright light in the south-western sky. It was reflective and moving toward them. As soon as he was certain it was not a hallucination, he mentioned it to his companion.

  Max leaned forward against the wheel and squinted. “Must be a plane coming in.”

  “There’s no airport in Malibu,” Mitch pointed out. “At least, not in my Malibu.” The object was growing larger even as they spoke.

  “Yeah. Not in my Malibu, or in yours, maybe, but how do we know there isn’t one in this Malibu?”

  “Good point.” Still, the more Mitch stared at the approaching light, the less it reminded him of a descending aircraft.

  Its true nature manifested itself as Max slowed to take a sharp curve where the highway ran right along the sea. The object fell precipitously, resolving itself into a three-story tall ovoid lined at top and bottom with a succession of elegant flutings and flanges. As it settled to earth on a jackstraw of seemingly haphazard metal projections, what appeared to be a cold fog wafted lazily from its equator. No windows or ports of any kind marred the otherwise smooth, bronze-hued surface.

  “It’s a weather balloon,” Mitch suggested breathlessly.

  “Don’t try to be funny. We’ve got a story here. Maybe even a legitimate one.” His throat constricting, Max hit the brakes and pulled the Aurora off on the small, narrow shoulder that separated the pavement from the otherworldly, metallic apparition. Gravel crunched beneath the radials.

  Together, both men leaned forward and stared up at the silent monolith. “Nothing’s happening,” Mitch murmured. Mist continued to emanate from the seemingly solid surface, dispersing in the form of gentle curling gray wisps into the warm evening air. Behind them, a car shot past, traveling too fast in the opposite direction. This being Southern California, it did not even slow. Not having seen the ovoid descend, the car’s driver probably thought it was part of some new advertising scheme—or a movie prop.

  Actually, Max was more than half convinced that that was exactly what it was. His conviction lasted until the aliens emerged.

  There were only two of them. A round platform descended from the lowest point of the ovoid, depositing them on the rocky ground. Neither he nor Mitch could see where the platform was attached to the rest of the monolith.

  Upon reaching the surface, the two aliens appeared to converse briefly. Both stood slightly over six feet tall and were clad in elegant, flowing robes of dark magenta. Their elongated, humanoid faces were the color of aged yellow pine, deeply wrinkled by vertical furrows. A single dark slit in the middle of each face might be an extensive nostril, or some other organ. The flanking coal-black eyes were protuberant, pupilless, and the size of hens’ eggs. A single oral aperture was small, round, and toothless. One stood slightly taller than the other and displayed a dark streak of navy blue down the left side of its face.

  The flowing robes concealed whatever passed for alien feet, but the unencumbered hands were clearly visible. The same shade of burnished yellow-brown as the somber faces, these were correspondingly long and flexible. The four fingers or tendrils that sprouted from each knobby wrist joint were spindly and fragile-looking.

  “They’re coming toward us!” Mitch announced tersely.

  “I can see that.” Max grabbed the handle on his side and pushed the door open. “We don’t want to hide from them.”

  “We don’t?” Mitch hesitated before joining himself outside the car. Side by side, they observed the aliens as they approached, shuffling forward, their long graceful robes barely shifting with their subtle movements.

  “How do you interview an alien?” Max already had his recorder out and running.

  “Why ask me?” Mitch was fascinated by the somber extraterrestrial faces. More than anything, they suggested to him the central figure in Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, only on downers.

  “I thought maybe aliens had visited your para.”

  Mitch shook his head. “That’s another area where our paras are the same. Nobody in my world believes in mysterious alien visitations—although I’ve probably gotten ten or eleven stories out of ET sightings and the babblings of those nuts who claimed to have been abducted.”

  “That’s how many I’ve done,” admitted Max. The aliens were very close now. Their black eyes glistened moistly. He could see no evidence of eyelids or of sexual dimorphism. “Maybe this isn’t a para experience. Maybe we just happen to be in the right spot at the right time. After everything we’ve gone through, it’s only fair that we get a real story out of it.” He checked his recorder to make sure it was operating properly.

  “I wonder how they communicate?” A thoroughly absorbed Mitch was staring at the small, round mouths.

  “Through intelligent conversation. How else do sapient species communicate?”

  The response came from the nearer of the two creatures, the small oral opening at the bottom of the face expanding and contracting like a resonating diaphragm as it spoke. The voice was soft, muted, and overlaid with a quite perceptible amalgam of exasperation and irritation.

  Confronted with such unexpected extraterrestrial fluency, the average wayfarer might well have found himself flustered to the point of speechlessness, but Max was conditioned to respond no matter how bizarre the situation.

  “You speak our language!” He thrust the recorder out slightly in front of him.

  The voice of the other alien was somewhat harsher than that of its companion. “Of course we speak your language! We have been speaking it for some time, as you well know.” Turning to its companion, it proceeded to launch into an extended diatribe, the contents of which remained a mystery to the two enthralled human onlookers.

  This lack of understanding soon lost its charm. “Excuse me,” said Max, interrupting in what he hoped was an appropriately deferential manner, “but what’s going on here?”

  Ceasing their private discussion, the aliens looked back at them. “That is what we were contemplating asking you. First you act as if you have never seen a Mithrathian before, then you propound the most absurdly infantile query regarding means of communication.”

  Max and Mitch exchanged a glance. “Actually,” Mitch informed them, “we never have seen a Mithrathian before.”

  For reasons unknown this set the two aliens to furiously debating all over again, though this time it proved unnecessary to interrupt them. They soon ceas
ed of their own accord.

  “This is very distressing.” The taller of the pair now sounded more concerned than critical. “We were wondering if your odd, inexplicable, and unprecedented reaction might in some as yet unfathomable way be connected with the disappearance of the spaceport.”

  Max blinked. “Spaceport?”

  “Yes.” Raising a slim, deeply furrowed arm, the shorter of the two aliens pointed inland and slightly to the south. “Shathri Moi, which you humans refer to in your local dialect as Angeles Metroplex Spaceport.”

  It was Mitch’s turn to respond. “I’m sorry to have to disappoint you guys, but there’s no spaceport in the Santa Monica Mountains, and no place called Shathri Moi, either—unless there’s a new subdivision going in I haven’t heard about.”

  “How can this be? Or not be?” the taller alien wondered aloud.

  “To be or not to be,” Max muttered softly. “That is the spaceport.” He was feeling more than a little giddy. It was unsettling enough to encounter real aliens. Encountering English-speaking, badly confused aliens who had apparently lost their way was much worse.

  “How long is this spaceport supposed to have been here?” Mitch inquired gently.

  “For many of your years. It is near the place where our people first made contact with yours. The port can accommodate half a dozen Mithrathian ships at one time. There should be at least one other already docked, but during our approach we were unable to make contact with its crew, just as we were unable to make contact with the port itself. We finally decided to set down here to evaluate our options.”

  “Yes,” concurred the other. “At least the sea is where it belongs, and acting as it should.”

  Revelation appeared simultaneously to Max and Mitch. “I think I can explain,” Max began. “I can try to, anyway. You probably won’t believe me, but then I’ve been having a hard enough time believing it myself.”

  The aliens listened quietly, taking the news with admirable calm. They were clearly dubious, as anyone would be, but the more Max explained the more they came to accept the insanity of what he was saying. It helped that Mitch was present to corroborate his para’s statements.

  “So you have acquired about you a field that affects the links between multiple parallel worlds, causing objects and individuals from those worlds to slip into yours or you to slip into theirs.” The taller alien contemplated the two humans unblinkingly.

  “That’s how things are,” Max admitted. “Believe me, I wish it were otherwise. It’s getting to the point where I don’t know what belongs where, what’s right, or whether I’m in my world or another.”

  “An extraordinary claim for so primitive a technology.” The shorter alien remained doubtful. “I would find it difficult to believe were it not for your honest naiveté and the utter absence of Shathri Moi.” Black eyes lifted toward the chaparral-cloaked hills. “Spaceports do not vanish.”

  “It’s clear enough to me what’s happened.” Mitch now had his own recorder out and humming. “You guys have slipped into this world just like we have.” He nodded in the direction of his distraught companion. “We don’t have any way of measuring the extent of the field Max is embedded in, how far its effects extend, or even what shape it takes around him. Could be a sphere that expands and contracts, or something that shoots off flares the way the sun shows prominences. It’s like a tornado: it can tear apart a house but leave the settings on the dining-room table undisturbed.”

  “Assuming all is as you claim,” murmured the taller alien, “what are we to do?”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Max told them sadly. “Unless I can find the original of the man who created this effect and get him to cancel it out or turn it off or whatever the hell it is he has to do to return things to normal, all we can do is hope that it wears off of its own accord.”

  “Not a sanguine scenario,” declared the shorter alien. “Aberrations in the structure of the physical universe tend not to be vanquished by wishful thinking. You cannot fill in a black hole with spadefuls of dirt.”

  “Too bad.” Max gazed out to sea, where the sun had already set. The dark oval shadow of the alien craft loomed over them. “You seem like nice folks. I’m sorry you got sucked into this. It’s nice to think that in another para aliens have actually landed, that they’re friendly, and that everyone is getting along.”

  “You would like Mithrath.” The taller alien sounded wistful. “It is a beautiful world, different from your own but with sufficient points of similarity for humans to find visiting there most pleasant. Likewise, we find your own Earth quite exotic—though this business of parallelities is pushing matters.”

  Something began to glow softly within the fabric of the robe that covered the second alien’s midsection. Both of the slender visitors turned and inclined their elongated skulls backward.

  “What is it?” Mitch tried to follow their skyward gaze. “What’s happening?”

  The taller alien replied without altering his posture. “It appears that we may not be so isolated as we feared. Even as we speak, a second ship of Mithrath approaches.”

  “That’s about right,” Max whispered under his breath. “We go from having no contact with an alien civilization to a crowd.”

  A second ovoid was dropping precipitously toward the coast, its base and crest glowing softly. It settled gently to earth quite close to the first vessel, there barely being enough solid ground between the water and the highway to accommodate two interstellar craft and one late-model Aurora. As the two Mithrathians and the humans looked on expectantly, a platform descended from the base of the new arrival and a pair of creatures stepped off.

  After surveying their surroundings for a brief moment they started directly toward the waiting quartet. The new visitants wore long robes and had the same furrowed skin and dark eyes.

  “Fellow Mithrathians,” declared the shorter of the two aliens. “It will be good to have company, and perhaps they will have suggestions as to how we might deal with the astonishing and unprecedented circumstances in which we presently find ourselves.”

  While the two humans looked on in fascination, the four aliens entered into an elaborate exchange of greetings. Not long after this commenced, however, one of the first pair made a noise that sounded like a young elephant assaulting a bassoon. Its obviously upset companion hurried to comfort his shorter companion. Simultaneously, the two new arrivals began arguing vociferously among themselves.

  Mitch leaned over to whisper to Max. “What happened? All of a sudden this doesn’t look like it’s going so well.”

  “I agree.” Max had already taken a wary step backward. “We’ll just have to wait until they’re ready to give us an explana …” He broke off, his eyes widening.

  Mitch frowned at him. “Not you, too. What the hell’s going on?”

  Max raised an arm that felt heavy as pig iron and pointed. “Look at the taller of the new arrivals.”

  Still frowning, Mitch complied. “Looks just like a Mithrathian, surprise, surprise. What about it?”

  “See the dark blue line running down the left side of its face? It’s an exact match to the facial streak on the taller of the two aliens who landed here first.”

  Mitch squinted into the gathering darkness. “Yeah, I see it. So what? So they both have blue streaks on their faces. Am I supposed to be impressed by your knowledge of alien beauty marks?”

  “Same height, same build, same streak.” Max’s tone was flat. “Same kind of ship coming down in the same place.” He turned to face his double. “Suggest anything to you?”

  The full range of expressions that crossed Mitch’s face in a very short period of time was wonderful to see, as if he were running through all the options of his own personal morphing program.

  He swallowed hard. “Are we talking para aliens here?”

  “Why not? I’m a para, you’re a para, they’re a para too. I’ve driven through para landscapes, dealt with para people, talked with a para Barrington Boles. W
hy shouldn’t aliens have paras as well?” He gestured at the now seriously upset quartet of Mithrathians.

  “First two of them arrive on this world, where they don’t belong any more than we do. Then two more of them appear who just happen to be perfect doubles of their predecessors.” He spread his hands. “In a cosmos of infinite para possibilities, it makes perfect para sense.”

  Mitch put his hands to his head. “And this is beginning to drive me para crazy. Look, I’m not a philosopher or physicist or mathematician. I’m just a reporter for a midrange tabloid newspaper, and I’m losing track of what’s supposed to be where.”

  “How do you think I feel?” Max replied emotionally. “No, you don’t have to think about it; you know. I’m as mixed up as you are. I’m beginning to wonder if I’d recognize my own reality if we were dumped back in it right now. And would it really be my reality, or yours?”

  Mitch managed to get ahold of himself. “That one we know how to answer. We just find the world with the Barrington Boles whose machine worked.”

  Max smiled thinly. “I wish it were that easy. There might be dozens, hundreds of parallel worlds where Boles’s machine worked. It doesn’t necessarily follow that any particular one of them is my world. We could find a Boles whose machine worked and ask him to put things right, but what if it’s not the exact right para and a third one of us is running around somewhere else, or at work, or out researching a story? Unable to tell us apart, Boles might turn his machine onto the wrong me. Then there’d be two of us wandering around all screwed up, or two of us permanently in the right para and none of us in another.”

  “Stop it, stop it!” Trying to clear his head, Mitch focused his attention on the baffled, bickering aliens.

  “Yeah, I know.” Max joined him in waiting for the distraught Mithrathians to calm down. “Ponder the possibilities too much and they’ll drive you nuts.”

 

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