When It's a Jar

by Tom Holt

  “I’m fine,” Maurice replied, a little bit too emphatically. “The new job’s working out really well; they’re very pleased with me. I think I’ve fitted in straight away, so everything’s great.” He smiled, a thin sheet of ice over shallow water. “How about you? Oh, congratulations, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” George grinned at him. “No hard feelings, right?”

  George, of course, was sitting with his back to The Wall, which meant Maurice got the full blast of it, right in his face. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I hope you’re both very happy. It’s the right thing, I’m sure of it.”

  “Yes,” George said; statement of fact, with which only a fool would disagree. “It’s a dreadful cliché to say some things were meant to be, but this is definitely one of them. I’m so glad you see it like that. I know Steve will be pleased. She thinks a lot of you, you know.”

  He wished George hadn’t said that. Somehow, she couldn’t give a damn about you would’ve been better. Still, there it was. Served him right for killing Theo Bernstein.

  “So,” he said, with a brisk let’s-change-the-subject clip in his voice, “how’s that special project coming along? The one you showed me last time I was here.”

  George frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t quite remember—”

  “There was this man,” Maurice said firmly, “in a sort of jar made out of your extra-special invisible glass. He was key, I think, or was he core? Something like that.”

  “Ah,” George said, and he didn’t quite meet Maurice’s eye. “That project.”

  “Yes. You were going to buy up billions of dollars of junk bonds and sell them to alternate realities.”

  George smiled, but it was only a pale imitation of his usual feral grin – still a sabre-tooth tiger, but a vegetarian sabre-tooth tiger with sabre-toothache. “Well, you know,” he said. “I initiate a lot of project, um, initiatives, and some of them pan out and some don’t. That’s the name of the game in R and D: you chuck a handful of gravel at the target and one or two pebbles hit the bullseye. That one turned out to be a complete waste of time, as it happens. Load of old rubbish.” He laughed, a sound like a chair leg grating on a slate floor. “I bet you realised that when I was telling you about it, only you were far too polite to say anything. I mean, the very idea. Multiverse theory. Reality-hopping. How wacky can you get?”

  “I thought it sounded really interesting,” Maurice said. “It set me thinking. I went away and read all about it on Wikipedia.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. And I’m absolutely convinced it could work.” George gave him an elf smile. “All due respect,” he said, “but I’ve got some of the finest minds in the world on retainer here, and they say it’s pants. Great pity, good idea at the time, cut our losses, move on. That’s always been our philosophy.”

  “I read up on that, too. Philosophy, I mean. I think, therefore I am. And the bloke in the jar was doing an awful lot of thinking, wasn’t he? What happened to him, by the way?”

  “Him? Oh, he went home.”

  “Really? I thought he just appeared out of nowhere.”

  George shook his head. “Saffron Walden,” he replied. “That’s where he was from. Got a bump on the head, lost his memory, wandered in here somehow. Then one day it suddenly all came back to him: he’s a self-employed plasterer from Saffron Walden. So we gave him some clothes and money and a train ticket, and off he went. There’s always a perfectly rational explanation, isn’t there? Anyhow,” he went on, “no point in dwelling on stuff, is there? Let’s have some lunch. Roderigo’s doing flash-fried escalopes of glacier-frozen woolly mammoth in breadcrumbs with a rocket, nettle and guava-rind salad, with roly-poly pudding for afters.”

  “I’m not hungry, thanks,” Maurice said. “But I do need to use the toilet.”

  Mercifully, it was one of the few rooms in the building with solid, non-transparent walls and a solid door. Maurice went inside, counted to two hundred, then crept out again.

  He couldn’t see anyone, though presumably everywhere was CCTV’d and monitored. He probably wouldn’t get very far. Still, it’d be interesting to see exactly how far he could get.

  He found one of the horrible no-visible-walls-or-floor lifts. Of course there were no buttons. “Seventh floor,” he said firmly, and the invisible box shot upwards like a mortar shell.

  Of course, he was only guessing it was on the seventh floor, because that’s where it had been in Goblin World. There was a musical ting, an invisible door slid back and he stepped out onto a carpet so lush and thick that hitherto undiscovered tribes could easily be living in the depths of the pile. None of it looked familiar from his last visit, but nevertheless he had a feeling he’d been somewhere quite like it before, with an old man and his perpetually hungry nephew. So; first left then second right then third left—

  He was standing in front of a door. It was a plain grey monolithic slab. Very tentatively, he pressed the tip of a fore-finger against it – a slightly cold, greasy feel. Omskium, like the sub-basement door at work. There was a handle. He let his fingers rest on it, applying no pressure, while his other hand crept to his jacket pocket and touched the roll of soft lavatory paper in which he’d carefully wrapped a single, fresh, pristine, perfectly round doughnut. No intention whatsoever of using it, of course; perish the thought. Also, he had every reason to believe that it no longer worked, now that he’d found his true place in the multiverse and normality had been restored. Still, it was comforting to know it was there, just in case. Shifting his hand to his inside pocket, he tapped his finge rnails lightly against the butt of the plastic ray-gun. It was just a cheap nerdish toy, like the doughnut was only a doughnut, and the man he’d seen in the jar was merely an amnesiac plasterer from Saffron Walden. Perfectly normal, mundane, rational. Quite.

  He tightened his grip on the door handle and pressed down. The door glided open on frictionless hinges. He walked forward; one small step for a lemming, a giant leap for lemmingkind.

  Nothing was remotely the same, but it was all very familiar. A huge empty white space, and in the exact centre – draw diagonal lines from the corners of the room and here’s where they cross – a glass jar. He couldn’t see it, of course, but he knew it was there. Inside the jar, a hospital bed: stainless-steel frame, cantilever adjustment for raising and lowering, small thick-tyred wheels. Next to the bed was a bank of monitors and a complicated rack sort of thing for hanging drip bottles from. Tubes from the bottles fed into the arm of the man in the bed. His eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling. At the foot of the bed, a clipboard with a chart.

  Maurice walked towards him, taking care to be as quiet as possible, although there was no need; the hard white floor seemed to soak up all noise. He stopped about three feet from the end of the bed and peered at the chart, at the top of which was the patient’s name:

  THEO BERNSTEIN

  Well, of course.

  Maurice cleared his throat. “Hello?” he said. “Mr Bernstein. Can you hear me?”

  The man didn’t move, except for one eyelash.

  “You don’t know me,” Maurice said, “I’m Maurice Katz. I think it’s my fault you’re here. Um, is it all right, me talking to you? One blink for yes, two for no?”

  Blink.

  “Thanks, that’s really nice of you. I was wondering. How you got here. Would it be all right if I just sort of ran a theory past you? You wouldn’t mind that?”

  Blink blink.

  “You see,” Maurice went on, “when we were in that other reality, with the goblins—You remember that?”

  Blink.

  “Great. All right, then. We were in that other reality. I guess you’re in all realities simultaneously. That must be—”

  Blink.

  “Yes, quite. Anyhow, there you were, and I came blundering in, and I opened the jar. Not a good idea.”

  Blink blink.

  “Because opening the jar breached the interdimensional whatsit and caused a multiphasic thing, and, um, basica
lly, blew up the universe.”

  Blink.

  “Thought so. And then you got shot.”

  Blink.

  “Mphm. Actually, it was your brother Max who set me thinking. Max is fine, by the way, or was, last time I saw him. He’s here, in this reality. Bet you’re pleased to hear that.”

  No eyelid movement whatsoever.

  “Well, anyway. Max asked, were you dead when I left that reality, or just dying? I couldn’t see what possible difference that could make, since the wound was, like, really bad, but Max seemed to think it was really important. He’s smart, your brother.”

  Blink. Long pause. Blink.

  “Anyway,” Maurice said, “I got to thinking; if the universe ended while you were mortally wounded but not actually dead—”

  Blink.

  “And so you sort of got cut off in the goblin universe, but you’d still be here, and in all the seventh floors of all the other buildings like this in all the other realities in the multiverse—”

  Blink.

  “With a bloody great big hole in you, of course, but not actually dead.”

  Blink.

  Maurice paused. He hadn’t really thought it through past this point, not having imagined he’d get this far. But still.

  “My old head teacher, Mr Fisher-King,” he said. “And my boss, Leroy Pecheur. Which is like medieval French for fisher king. Like in the Arthurian myths.”

  Blink.

  “They’re, um, you, aren’t they?”

  Blink blink. Pause. Blink.

  Maurice waited for a moment. “Sorry,” he said, “but I need to press you on this one. Yes or no.”

  Blink. Pause. Blink blink.

  “Fine,” Maurice said. “Only, on Wikipedia it said that the king of the disordered land gets wounded by the knight of the dolorous stroke, and as long as he’s ill the land stays a right mess, and he can only be healed by the knight who hurt him in the first place. Look, am I barking up completely the wrong tree, or—?”

  Blink blink.

  “Only it all sounds so—”

  Blink blink blink.

  “I’m sorry,” Maurice said anxiously, “I don’t understand. Three blinks—”

  Blink blink blink blink.

  “What does that mean? You agree?”

  Blink blink blink,

  “You disagree?”

  Blink blink blink blink.

  “I’ve got it all completely wrong? You want me to go away?”

  Blink blink blink blink blink.

  “You’ve got something in your eye?”

  Blink.

  “But it’s gone now.”

  Blink.

  “Fine. So—” He sighed. “I’ve forgotten what I was saying now.”

  Blink blink blink.

  “Oh, I see. One blink for A, two blinks for B—”

  “Look,” the man said. “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just talked to you?”

  Imagine the man who goes for a quick pee in a field, only to discover, as he unzips his fly, lifts his head and sighs contentedly that the bushes he nipped behind back onto an open-air theatre staging Coriolanus to a packed audience. That, more or less, was how Maurice felt. “You can talk.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought—Why didn’t you say something?”

  “You told me to communicate by blinking.”

  “Yes, but I thought—No. Time to take a deep breath and move on. “You can talk. That’s good. How’s the memory?”

  “Which memory?”

  “You can remember things.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Such as.”

  “Um. Well, I was in this sort of glass jar thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “And then—” The man frowned. “You were there. And a very tall, plain girl with pointed ears.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a—A goblin?”

  “Yes.”

  “A goblin shot me with a crossbow.”

  “Yes.”

  “It hurt.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then I guess I must’ve passed out, because suddenly I was here, with all these tubes sticking out of me and that thing there going bleep-bloop.” He hesitated, then asked, “Am I all right?”

  “Um.”

  “Am I going to get better? Or—?”

  “You’ll be fine,” Maurice said quickly. He said it with a degree of confidence, because of multiverse theory; because somewhere in an infinite multiverse there had to be a version of Theo Bernstein living in a universe with a real functional Valhalla, where goblin-shot heroes were eligible for free board, lodgings and entertainment in perpetuity. Stretching the definition of fine, maybe, but he needed to get on. “Can I just clear up a point or two?”

  “I don’t know. Can you?”

  “I think,” Maurice said, “that the jar was both inside and outside all the universes in the multiverse. Like,” he remembered, “an embassy; you know, native soil in a foreign country. But when the jar was opened—” He closed his eyes and opened them. “Which was possible because when a jar isn’t a jar, it’s a door, and please don’t ask me to explain that; when I opened the jar, it pulled you out of the embassy into the goblin reality, which I then left through the eye of the doughnut, and because we happened to collide at that precise moment, you came too. Look, I know that makes no sense whatsoever—”

  “You can travel through doughnuts too?”

  Oink. “Excuse me?”

  “I can do that,” Theo Bernstein said excitedly. “You just reminded me. I did that. Several times. Oh, and bagels and Polo mints work, too.”

  “Oh.” Maurice gave him a startled look. “So you think I’m right about all that?”

  Theo nodded. “Sounds pretty reasonable to me.”

  “My God. All right, then, so that’s what happened. And here you are, and—” He stopped. “Your brother Max.”

  “Oh. Him.”

  “You remember him.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “He’s been looking for you.”

  “Has he really.”

  “Yes. Well, he made me look for you, but I guess it’s the same thing. Listen, we’ve got to find him and bring him here. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Max? Are you kidding?”

  Maurice nodded slowly. “I take it you don’t get on.”

  Theo laughed. “You could say that.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I definitely don’t want his help. If I was stranded in an alien universe, destitute and defenceless and surrounded by evil enemies with nobody else to turn to, I still wouldn’t want anything to do with him.”

  “Um. But you are stranded in an alien—”

  “There you go, then. Max can go to hell, though if I was the Devil I wouldn’t let him in.”

  “I see.” Maurice paused for a moment. “So I guess it’s up to me, then. You see, I got you into this mess.”

  Theo blinked at him. “You did?”

  “Afraid so, yes. I got you trapped in the jar thing, and I got you shot.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “No idea,” Maurice said sadly. “It just happened. Destiny and stuff. And I sort of get the impression that I stay stuck here in this universe, which is all wrong for me, unless I sort out the mess.”

  “You.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah.”

  “But that’s all right,” Maurice said, “because I’m a hero.”

  “Yes?”

  “Mphm. A woman in McDonald’s told me. And the head teacher at my school sort of hinted. And there were these other women on a train. Anyhow, that’s what I am, and I got this plastic ray-gun out of a toilet bowl, except that it seems to have stopped working. So you see, there’s nothing for you to worry about. It should all be fine.”

  “Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “Absolutely.” Maurice took a step back and thought for a moment. “Of course, it complicates matters that you’re seriously injured and moving
you right now would be extremely dangerous.”

  “I suppose it does rather.”

  “But we won’t worry about that,” Maurice said. “Now, let’s see, how do you release the brakes on these things?”

  “I imagine there’s a little lever.”

  “You saw that when they brought you here?”

  Theo shook his head. “Worked it out from first principles.”

  There was a little lever. Maurice pressed it with his foot. The bed moved slightly. “You know what?” he said. “You’re smart.”

  “Am I?”

  “Fairly.”

  “Wow.”

  “Definitely smarter than average,” Maurice said firmly. “For someone who’s had his brain wiped a zillion times. I mean, let’s see. Suppose you wanted to work out the area of a circle. Assuming you knew the diameter, of course.”

  “Gosh.” Theo frowned. “No idea. I suppose I’d probably multiply the radius, no sorry, scratch that, the square of the radius by 3.141592653589793238—”

  “There you are, you see. Quite smart.”

  “—46264338327950289—”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Sorry, that should be 950288—”

  “Yes.”

  “Forgot to carry the six,” Theo said sheepishly. “Dumb mistake.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.” Maurice grabbed a big handful of IV bags and draped them over his left arm. “Off we go.”

  The bed moved quite freely when he pushed it, though one of the wheels squeaked. “Where are we going?” Theo asked.

  “Not sure.” Maurice nudged the foot of the bed carefully against the door, then remembered that it opened inwards. “Just a moment.” He dumped the IV bags on the bed, nipped round, opened the door, went back, got the bags, pushed the bed through the door. “Anywhere rather than here, really. You see, I think the man who runs this place is up to something bad.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “Yes, because when I asked him—”

  “Dualistic morality. Each act takes on an ethical dimension. The possibility of evil. Hold on, that rings a bell.”

  “Because when I asked him,” Maurice ploughed on, “about you, he said you were an amnesiac plasterer from Essex and you’d got better and gone home.”