Parallelities

by Alan Dean Foster

  The palm trees that normally lined the edge of the bluff-side park were back also; healthy and alive, their fronds swaying in a gentle, warm breeze. As in his para, pedestrians promenaded along the bluffs, taking in the view and the sea air. Their clothing differed from that favored in his own world but not radically so. It was not some wide-eyed 1930s vision of what contemporary casual attire should be. The fabrics and designs looked as natural and comfortable as the people who wore them.

  He found himself the recipient of the solicitous stares and attentions of the four passersby in their mid-twenties who had discovered him lying behind a tree. There were two men and two women; one black, one Asian, the other two white. All fairly glowed with health and beauty. He allowed them to help him to his feet.

  He stood where he had fallen. The green carpet of the park extended all the way to the first buildings that fronted on the promenade. In place of the blacktop that in his world defined the strip of street known as Ocean Avenue, there was another extended lawn. More of the silent silvery hovercraft cruised noiselessly north and south above the undisturbed greensward. Some had their transparent canopies down, and teenagers shouted to one another from the interiors of passing vehicles.

  The buildings that began where the grass ended were enclosed by a crystal wall that varied in height. Gone was the eclectic but somewhat tawdry pastel jumble of fast-food restaurants, souvenir emporiums, T-shirt shops, and beach hotels that he knew so well. Everything was spotless, clean, wholesome, and beautifully maintained.

  If this is the beachfront, he found himself wondering, what must the rest of the city be like? It was the diametric opposite of the unfortunate para he had just left.

  Seeing that their foundling was alert and sensible, the shorter of the two young men performed introductions. “Glad to see you up and about, old man. You look in a bad way, don’t you know. I’m Corey. This is Cheung, Lacy, and Bert.” With each name, extended hands were offered. He shook each one in turn as he identified himself.

  Lacy was giggling at him. “You look like you’re fitted out for a costume party. How do you stand the heat in those pants? And those ridiculous shoes!”

  Automatically defensive, Max glanced down at his two-hundred-dollar Reeboks. “What’s so ridiculous about them?”

  “They’re so big and bulky,” the diminutive Cheung pointed out. “And those little white ropes that hold them together. Eminently retrograde.”

  “The color scheme’s not bad. See the cute little nonfunctional inserts?” Bert was making an effort to be understanding.

  Max noticed that they were all wearing shorts, thin tops fashioned of different, slightly reflective materials, and sandals that seemed to adhere to their feet without the aid of straps, laces, or any other kind of visible binding mechanism. Maybe they glued them on, he thought. Lacy and Corey wore sunglasses that not only changed color according to the intensity of the light, but displayed intimations of moving landscapes across the interior of the lenses, like compact rear-projection televisions.

  A much larger hover vehicle appeared, traveling from north to south. As it turned up Pico, it bent in the middle to make the corner, flexible as a snake. The people within were not affected. Overhead, the sky shone a deep, untrammeled blue. There was not a hint, not a suggestion, of smog, much less the gray-white ash of total devastation.

  Off to the north, something like an amethyst needle thrust impossibly far into the azure sky. Small white clouds trailed inland from its tip.

  “What’s that?” he found himself wondering aloud.

  The two young women looked at one another and giggled. They seemed a bit old to be engaging in so much giggling, he thought. It was the one called Cheung who supplied an answer.

  “You really are from out of town, aren’t you? That’s the observatory, silly.”

  “Is that a fact? And what does it observe?” he inquired tartly.

  “Weather patterns, seismic disturbances, the feeding habits of the local cetacean and pinniped populations, bird migrations—that sort of thing.” Bert’s smile was infuriatingly condescending. “It’s been there for a quite a few years now, old man.”

  So this time I’m a hick in my own hometown, Max reflected. So enlighten me. “I’d think it would be an awkward place to be in a bad quake.”

  “Not at all, old boy,” Corey assured him while the women continued their damned giggling. “The foundation is buried quite deeply in bedrock, and counterweighted besides. It sways, quite a bit sometimes, but it’s quite impossible to topple. There’s quite a good restaurant on top, below the scientific station. You can see all the way to San Diego.”

  “Quite,” added Bert unnecessarily.

  “So on a clear day you can see Mission Bay.” Max gawked at the three-thousand-foot-tall tower.

  Bert made a face. “Oh, I say, old chap, is there any other kind?”

  “You never have any smoggy days?”

  “‘Smoggy’?” Cheung frowned and, for once, did not giggle. “Oh, you mean that air pollution certain places used to have back around the early part of the century. I wouldn’t have guessed you were a history buff, Max.”

  “I’m not, not really. In—some places—I understand that the smog didn’t get really bad until after World War Two.”

  His new benefactors looked at one another. “World War Two? But there was only one world war,” Lacy insisted.

  Max hesitated, not wishing to make any more of a fool of himself than he already had. “We didn’t fight the Germans and the Japanese back in the forties?”

  Corey was eyeing him cautiously now, perhaps wondering if their filthy friend might have escaped from a place not spoken of in polite company.

  “I say, old man, where have you fallen from? Why on Earth would America ever fight the Germans again, much less the Japanese? After Teddy Roosevelt won his third term and pushed through the plan to rebuild Germany following the world war, and the Emperor began to personally supervise the growth of the Keiretsu in Japan, this old world finally started acting sensibly. Except for that momentary hiccough in Russia. But everyone knows this. Have you been living as some kind of hermit since you were born, or something?”

  “Or something,” Max admitted. The women had backed several steps away from him, much as they would have from a large, drooling animal encountered unexpectedly in the woods. “Listen, I’m not crazy, though if I told you the truth about myself you might think otherwise.”

  “Well then,” declared Bert, clapping Max on the back, “don’t tell us. Not that we all can’t use a bit of craziness in our lives now and then.” He winked. “Bit of a social necessity, what?”

  “So the rest of the city looks like this?” Max gestured at the gleaming crystal wall, the manicured grass thoroughfares, and the immaculate pedestrian promenade on which they stood.

  “Pretty much,” Bert told him. “There are the industrial areas, of course, but they’re all out in Barstow and Palmdale.”

  Max eyed him intently. “And there are no racial problems in South Central?”

  “Racial problems?” Bert looked bemused. “What might those be, old chap?”

  I want to stay here, Max decided. Maybe he didn’t belong; not now, not yet. But he could learn, adapt, survive. Let them giggle at him all they wanted. Writing was still an art that transferred effectively from place to place. His other-para perspective might even work to his advantage in this world. What was dull, daily truth to him might be received as quite the novelty here. If it would help him to blend in, he would even surrender his Reeboks for a pair of shiny, stick-on sandals.

  In this para courtesy was still common currency, compassion for even a confused, misclad stranger willingly offered, and the environment—the environment was what it ought to be but what the people of his para could only dream about. Yes, he could live in this world. Settle down and find something to do. His belly growled complainingly. If it was as elegant as the rest of his surroundings, he couldn’t wait to taste the food here.


  “Listen, thanks for your help.” He started away from them, heading south in the direction of his apartment building. He wondered what it would look like, and if his key would work.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” Lacy was smiling now, all honest sympathy. “If you’re not feeling well we can call for medical.”

  “Yes,” agreed the petitely attractive Cheung. “Or if you prefer, you can come home with one of us.” She smiled encouragingly. Neither Corey nor Bert offered any objection.

  Imagine an attractive young woman in his world asking a stranger who looked like his current disheveled self to come home with her, and her friends not objecting. It spoke volumes about the level of crime in this world. If there were any such social aberrations remaining, he mused. Perhaps serious crime here was as hoary a relic as air pollution. Tempted as he was, he badly wanted to immerse himself in the familiar trappings of his own home, his own life.

  “Maybe another time!” He waved, and was gratified to see that they waved back. Not everything in this para was strange and unfamiliar, then. For one thing, certain gestures had been retained. Only the cleanliness was completely alien to him.

  He drew a few curious glances from other pedestrians as he made his way across Pico and down the green fairway of Ocean Avenue. In place of the haphazard, occasionally ramshackle buildings he knew so well, there rose a neat line of new structures that were sleek and spotless and more modern than he could ever have envisioned. Yet for all that, they presented a warm and inviting aspect, and were not in any way cold or distant. Most were painted in soft Mediterranean pastels, and none was over four stories tall.

  The replacement of pavement with turf encouraged the proliferation of birds and other small creatures. Astonishing to one who had spent all his life in the Los Angeles of his world, he thought he saw a fox peeping out from between two wonderfully Art Deco apartment buildings. It was stalking a rabbit. On Ocean Avenue. In the middle of Santa Monica.

  Off to his right, the old familiar public beach was wider than he remembered it and looked as if it was vacuumed daily. The sea broke clean and invigorating against the shore. Gone were the vague chemical smells that often permeated the air along the coast. He wondered if the water was as unadulterated as the beach and the air. Based on what he had observed already, there was no reason to suspect otherwise.

  Unable to believe his good fortune, he squinted out to sea where what looked from a distance suspiciously like an old-time clipper ship was making way for Marina del Rey. The sun momentarily blinded him and he had to blink away tears.

  When he opened his eyes, the retro clipper was gone. The beach remained, and the sea, but he was striding along concrete instead of thick grass. A car came up behind him on the street, honked accusingly, and shot past. It reeked of noise, gasoline, and exfoliating rubber. His nostrils twitched. Out on the beach he could see isolated piles of garbage, and the gleam of scattered sunlight on lumpy plastic bags.

  With the deepest, most regretful sigh of his life (except perhaps for that day his senior year in high school when he had shyly declined the voluptuous Arlene Marishabroda’s offer to spend the night with him), he glanced reluctantly overhead. A faint brown haze, like a background wash applied by some skillful watercolorist, dimmed the blue of the sky. The atmospheric muck was heavier and darker inland. Much darker.

  On the other side of the cracked, soiled pavement rose rank upon rank of apartment houses, old homes, and condominiums of varying quality. No matter which way he turned, he recognized every detail, even to some of the cars parked on the street. The shouts of gamboling children rose from the beach, carried inland on the salt-stained breeze. Somewhere, a man was screaming at his wife. A dog barked, its presence on the beach a violation of city statute.

  He was home. Or, at least, he chose to believe he was home. Time would tell. But for now, he needed to believe that, needed it desperately.

  Yes, he was hopefully back in his own para, with every particular and finite sight fulsomely, tiresomely familiar. The field propounded by the Boles Effect had finally faded away.

  He knew that after what he had been through he ought to be glad. Glad, hell—he ought to fall down and kiss the gum-dotted, cola-splotched sidewalk. But he could not. Could not, because the last para he had visited prior to his return was what the city of Los Angeles should be. Worse, he knew it was what it could be, because in another para, it was.

  Be happy within thine own world, his inner voice admonished him, lest you find yourself embedded forever in one that sucketh.

  At least he knew his key would work. He resumed walking the last couple of blocks to his building.

  A woman on the exhausted side of fifty passed him, walking her poodle. It had been to the hairdresser; she had not. Behind a palm tree, a wino slept silently on a cushion of flowering purple iceplant. Three young boys came blasting by on their skateboards, heedless of pedestrian safety. He was home, all right.

  Ahead, flanking one of the main walkways that led from the beach up to the street, a pushcart vendor was hawking espresso, café latte, bagels, Danish, and hot dogs. Reaching into his pocket, an eager Max fished for his wallet. Changing worlds was somewhat more exhausting than taking off and putting on a new pair of pants. His stomach growled again, just as it had for the elegant inhabitants of a better para. It was some time since he had last eaten, and he was borderline starving.

  Other than not having a wide-brimmed hat, a broad mustachio, and perhaps an attentive trained monkey, the vendor looked like he had just finished working a Manhattan sidewalk. For the merest second Max stood paralyzed, but a quick glance revealed that the Southern California world around him was still the same. Furthermore, when the man smiled and handed him back his change, it was without a hint of New Yawk accent.

  Perversely preferring his tube steak plain, Max disdained the ranked jars of colorful condiments and accepted the hot filled sandwich. Thanking the vendor, he turned to cross the street. As he raised the enbunned meat to his lips, he happened to glance down. His fingers froze.

  The feverish frank was covered with tiny, glistening, millimeter-long cilia that wiggled with energetic internal animation. The casing glowed an electric hot pink. As he stared, a single tiny green eye opened in the middle of the meat, focused on him, and winked.

  Gagging, he threw the abomination into the nearest trash can. Fighting to retain the contents of his stomach, he broke into a doubled-over run as he crossed the street. Behind him, the pushcart vendor stared in wonderment at the inexplicable actions of his now highly agitated customer.

  Everything about his building looked familiar, even to the dog droppings in the hibiscus bushes out front. As he struggled to let himself in through the pedestrian entrance, he saw that his hand was shaking. Mentally, he found time to marvel at the phenomenon. As far back as he could remember, he had never been troubled by shaky hands.

  So badly rattled, so panicked was he that he could not get the key in the lock. He had to stop and turn away from the steel door. Making a conscious effort to regulate his breathing, he stood on the concrete steps and stared out at the ocean, the sand, the cavorting, worry-free beachgoers. Children squealed with delight, L.A. ladies lay prone on the sand clad in narrow strips of brightly colored cloth as they worked silently on their melanomic tans, Frisbees and footballs soared through the faintly stained blue. The world around him looked, smelled, and tasted normal.

  Maybe, just maybe, he told himself grimly, the genetically misshapen hot dog was the last of it—a final burst of broken laughter from the field. Maybe he truly was home now, the effect worn off, his life returned to him. Life, and a simple, normal, uncomplicated existence. Taking a deep breath, he turned back to the door. This time the key slid smoothly into the lock. The barrier opened to reveal a hallway painted dull white that blissfully smelled of nothing more exotic than concentrated pine disinfectant.

  The elevator let him off on the top floor and he hurried toward the far end of the corridor as desp
erately as if in search of some long-lost sibling. The door to his apartment yielded with an achingly familiar click when he turned the key. He was, perhaps at last, home.

  Everything was as he had left it, except that his big TV and stereo were still gone. The burglar and his two paras had not been figments of his imagination. But everything else was unchanged, from the forlorn bachelor contents of the refrigerator to the pleasantly mussed state of his bedroom. Checking out the latter, he saw that the small portable television was still standing by his bedside. That meant the thieves had not returned in his absence to clean out what they had overlooked on their first visit.

  He could go in to the office without fear of encountering the slavering minions of Cthulhu, could go knowing that the office and the rest of the city would be there, could go out to a movie or a restaurant or call up friends knowing they were his friends and not some ever so slightly altered or addlepated paras. The appalling hot dog really had been the last of it, a final flickering flash of parallel otherworldliness.

  The wave of emotion that washed over him as he stood there in the dust and solitude of his own bedroom was as painfully poignant as it was unexpected. The last time he had cried, really cried, had been at the funeral of a favorite uncle who had died tragically young. That had been two years ago. Sitting down on the foot of the king-sized bed that occupied most of his bedroom, his hands in his lap, he sobbed now. Silently and steadily, his shoulders heaving occasionally, he allowed all the emotion that had built up inside him over the past couple of days to spill out all at once. He cried until his eye sockets ached and his head hurt.

  When it finally ceased, leaving him drained but sore, he got up and went into the bathroom. After making some sense of his face, he stripped down, luxuriated in the catharsis of a long hot shower, forced himself to shave and brush his teeth, prepared the coffeemaker to begin making coffee at the appointed wake-up hour, set the alarm timer on the TV, and crawled into bed.