It was just after two o’clock and the Quake-n-Shake, as Bean said, was operating at full capacity. The restaurant clearly catered to families; many of the tables included small humans of assorted lung capacity and throwing ability. Harried waitresses balanced large trays between closely placed tables on their way to and from the kitchen. I wondered what kind of behavior might have made me a memorable customer.
“So that’s you in the photo,” Gretchen A said to me and gave her head another lively shake. “I’ll tell you what I remember most about Y-day—not a thing! It was just an ordinary day. We didn’t know that Professor Singh had made a copy of the universe, not until months later. Then they said it was the day we had the blackout, but we used to have them so often. Never lasted long, a couple of minutes maybe—but they always came at the most inconvenient time, like right in the middle of the lunch hour rush! And the inflation, let me tell you, was something fierce. We gave up on having printed menus and put up a board with prices in chalk. Every day, just before we opened, I’d erase yesterday’s prices and write in new ones. Those were strange times.” She sighed and handed the photo, the eucalyptus one of my parents and me, back to Bean.
Bean put the photo back in her bag, seeming at a loss for a moment.
“What about the time difference?” I nudged her. The Universe A receipts having started to come in, we’d found out that the Quake-n-Shake bill signed by my mother—lunch buffet for two adults, applesauce for one child—had an earlier time on it than the one signed by Felix’s mother. Twenty minutes.
“Time difference, right,” Bean pulled herself together. “Gretchen, what would have caused a discrepancy between a Universe A bill and a Universe B bill? Remember, this would have been shortly after the yabput—”
“The what, dear?”
“Shortly after Professor Singh made a copy of the universe,” Bean said, wincing at the inaccurate description. “A twenty-minute difference in the lunch bills paid by Klara Sayers A and Klara Sayers B.”
“Back than customers paid in advance, when they came in. Seems kind of embarrassing now, but times were hard. So, twenty-minute difference in lunch bills—one party arrived earlier than the other.” Gretchen A picked up several menus and crayon boxes and left her post to seat a family that had just walked in. As we waited for her to return, Bean leaned over to me and whispered, “I wish Arni were here, he’s better at this. He told me to start with ‘Take your memory back to Y-day…’ and to remember to be polite.”
Gretchen came back and said, “Anything else you wanted to know, dears?”
“So people paid when they came in,” said Bean, who seemed to have perked up a bit. “That’s interesting. One final question, Gretchen. A young woman with a stain on her blouse came in, also around lunchtime—”
“Was that Y-day? Oh, I’ve always wondered what happened to her.” Gretchen A clasped a hand to her chest. “Almost in tears, poor thing, on her way to a job interview. She wanted to use the bathroom to wash off the stain on her blouse. Wasn’t successful, for as I could have told her, you can’t just dab pomegranate juice off. I’ve always wondered what happened to her and if she got the job.”
“She didn’t. Not in Universe A,” Bean said.
It was an example of how unalike personal outcomes could be. Olivia May Novak Irving of Universe B, the research benefactress to whose house Arni had gone, had led a life of success, retiring well off after a career of working as an idea developer. Olivia May of Universe A, on the other hand, had not only not gotten wealthy working as an idea developer, she’d never even been heard of in the idea development industry. No one knew why. Bean had said that Olivia May A was last seen by an acquaintance walking into the Quake-n-Shake on Y-day with spilled juice on her shirt.
“You do remember her?” Bean said. “Would you mind not mentioning that to anyone else unless specifically asked? Others will be coming in to ask questions about Y-day. In fact, we’d appreciate it if you denied remembering anything about Felix here at all.”
“I don’t remember anything about him. So the pomegranate lady didn’t get the job and her alter did?” Gretchen sighed in sympathy. “I never like to hear that. That was Y-day, you say? It wasn’t right, you know, for Professor Singh to make a copy of the universe like that without asking anyone. The government put a stop to all that, but look what a mess it’s left! Luckily Gretchen and I get along like two chestnuts in a roaster.” (Instead of retiring, Bean had said, Gretchen A and Gretchen B had tossed a coin, sold one of the Quake-n-Shakes, and joined forces in running the Universe B restaurant. Seemed fair.)
A sudden low rumble quieted all conversation in the dining room. The rumble lingered, then rolled out and dissipated to the tinkling sound of glasses and dinnerware.
Gretchen A sent a calm look over her dining room. “A four-pointer, maybe five?” She bent down to pick up the boxes of crayons that had slipped off the hostess table and I disentangled myself from where I had been crouching under a bar stool. Bean, lending Gretchen a hand with the crayon boxes, asked, “The young woman with the pomegranate juice stain, did she stay for lunch?”
“I don’t think so, dears, just went into the bathroom for a few minutes. Last I saw, she was heading out the door, her shirt wet and stained purple.”
Gretchen B didn’t remember anything of import either. She mentioned the blackout, denied ever seeing me before in her life, and reminisced fondly of the old days as she stood next to Gretchen A, the identical hostess dresses making them seem like giggly twin girls dressed alike by an indulgent mother.
“Good luck, dears,” the Gretchens called out as we headed out of their restaurant.
The doors of the Quake-n-Shake swung shut behind us, Gabriella, James, and Murphina having gone in to talk to the Gretchens. “Maybe Arni will have more luck,” I said to Bean. “There’s a chance Olivia what’s-her-name remembers seeing me when she came in the restaurant.”
“Olivia May Novak Irving,” Bean supplied. “Wrong universe. Arni is at the house of Olivia May B, who didn’t spill her pomegranate juice, never went into the Quake-n-Shake, and got to her job interview just fine and became rich.”
“I don’t know how you keep this stuff straight in your head, A-this, B-that.”
“We could suggest a change from A and B to the Lost Duck Universe and the Happy Baby Universe. Think it’d catch on?”
I pointed to the specialty store whose doors neighbored those of the Quake-n-Shake. “I’ve been looking for one of these.”
We found a bench free of tourists and bird droppings. “You know,” I confided to Bean, offering her a seal-shaped chocolate and unwrapping one myself, “Pier 39 is exactly the same here as it is in Universe A. The tourists, the street performers, the ice cream parlors, the big-bellied sea lions yapping and barking at each other in the marina, the white-and-blue boats, the shops selling factory-made seashells…I’m having trouble processing it all. Being here and not there, it being so similar, if you see what I mean. I keep forgetting where I am.” I broke the head off the chocolate seal. It was hollow.
“I feel we’re getting somewhere,” Bean said, mouth full. “Your family arrived at the Quake-n-Shake early. By a full twenty minutes—in time to interact with Olivia May A.”
“Maybe there was a reason my parents left the bridge early, only we haven’t discovered it yet.” The chocolate was tourist-quality, more sugar than cocoa. I could barely taste it.
“Perhaps they simply cut the walk short because you were crabby.”
“Or maybe Felix B got carsick on the way from the bridge to Pier 39 and his parents had to stop the car to clean him up and it took twenty minutes.”
“That would read well in a research paper.” She took my chocolate wrapper and crinkled it with hers, then leaned across the bench and dropped them into a trashcan.
“Let’s give Arni a call and see if he has any news.”
We reached Arni outside the Nob Hill residence of the benefactress and bihistory aficionado, Olivia May B. A
rni listened to what we had to say, told us he was heading back to the Bihistory Institute to tackle the task of analyzing incoming Universe A receipts with Pak, watched me hand Bean another chocolate-shaped seal, and then disconnected after commenting, “You two do realize that universes with no chocolate in them must exist?”
Bean and I spent the afternoon timing driving routes from the Golden Gate Bridge parking lot to the Quake-n-Shake Restaurant, which yielded little useful information as far as I could tell, only more wear and tear on Bean’s Volkswagen Beetle and an unusual experience for me called filling up the tank. A few of the routes took us through the main part of the Presidio campus, within viewing distance of the Bihistory Institute, others by the winding and scenic seaside roads. They all took about the same amount of driving time, mainly because the direct routes were more congested. No matter how narrow the street or heavy the traffic, Bean drove as fast as possible, carrying on a conversation all the while. She wasn’t alone. Cars zipped along all around us like unusually fast and focused sheep determined on getting back to their meadow a microsecond early.
“Bean,” I whispered urgently at one point.
“What’s the matter?”
“I think someone is following us. Look how close that car is.” I had been following it in the little mirror on my side of the car.
She glanced up at the back-view mirror above the dashboard. “It’s just a tailgater. Why are you so jumpy?”
“No reason.”
“Not to make you more nervous or anything, but objects viewed in the right side mirror are actually closer than they appear to be. Like the back of a spoon, the mirror gives a wider view, but cars look smaller and farther back then they really are. Don’t worry. The car behind us will stop if there is a red light.”
I turned my neck to look at the car behind us as the Beetle shook bravely as we navigated an uneven street. The driver was a little old lady whose head barely reached over the steering wheel. She honked to get us moving faster.
Bean put her foot on the gas, saw me grip the dashboard, and commented, “Cars are handy. How would we perform our timing experiment in a people mover?”
“With difficulty,” I admitted as Bean pulled into the Golden Gate Bridge parking lot and jolted to a stop. “This one will require walking.” She got out and fetched a ticket from the self-service machine and a straw hat from the car trunk. She stuck the ticket inside the front window and the hat on her head. “According to the parking receipt we got off the Bitmaster, your parents parked here at eleven fifteen on Y-day.”
“Which way?” I asked. Walking paths led from the mostly full parking lot in two directions.
“Good question. The paths were here thirty-five years ago, though they’ve been widened recently. One of them—that one—gets you to the bridge quickly, via the elevator. The one over there kind of winds its way uphill through the Presidio, by the old gun battery, and eventually gets you to the bridge.”
“I think I’ve been on it,” I said, frowning at the geography, “though it’s hard to say.” Where I was used to seeing a people mover station, there was a pretty eucalyptus grove—was this where a kind stranger had taken Photo 10, the one of my family?
“At eleven fifteen, you and your parents headed toward the bridge via the elevator or the longer Presidio path. Binary decision. A literal fork in the road.”
“I see. If we took the shorter path, we were on the bridge when Professor Singh made a copy of the universe—when the yabput occurred, I mean—and if we took the longer path, we were in the Presidio somewhere.”
“Correct.”
“And you and I?”
“Split up and time the paths.”
“Great,” I said, pulling in my stomach. “I’ve been feeling a bit sedentary. A walk would be just the thing. I’ll take the longer one,” I added chivalrously.
“Well—all right. See if there’s anything interesting thirty-one minutes into your walk.”
“Thirty-one minutes—?”
“Eleven fifteen plus thirty-one yields yabput time.”
She adjusted the wide-brimmed hat and we split up.
I set a moderate pace. The path started out narrow, zigzagged up a hill, then rolled over an exposed ledge and became wide and flat. On this portion of it there were summer students jogging, rollerblading, and scootering instead of attending whatever classes they were nominally here for. More than a few were recumbent on the well-watered campus lawns working on tans instead of algebra. As I walked along, I alternated between being quite sure that the path still existed in Universe A and that I had been on it at some point and being quite sure that it didn’t and that I hadn’t. Not that it mattered in the least. It’s just that it was a nice path. In my own Universe A, the Presidio was not a university campus but an agglomeration of museums—there was the popular fashion museum, also a nature museum with a pond and an arboretum, a soccer museum, next to it a museum of Universe A accomplishments, and in the middle of it all the tiny but well-known surfing museum. People mover line 66 circled the whole thing.
Occasionally I caught sight of the bridge as the path took me past student dormitories, classroom buildings, an auditorium, and a long row of tennis courts. Beyond the tennis courts I puffed up a steep portion of the path and entered a eucalyptus grove, a large one where the grass was sparse and yellowish. I exited the grove to the sight of an abandoned gun battery with cliff-top views of Baker Beach and its Ferris wheel. The battery was a nineteenth-century remnant of the need to defend the city from attack from the sea; the Ferris wheel, slowly turning basketfuls of tourists, was a record-setting eyesore that must have been difficult to keep stable and upright on windy days. There were plenty of places (like the gun battery) that seemed just right for throwing a duck pacifier at.
That reminded me to check my watch, and I discovered that the thirty-one-minute mark—the one Bean had requested I take note of—had already passed.
“Great,” I said, tried to figure out how long I had overshot the mark by, got muddled in the math, and decided to press on instead of trying to go back.
It was all very complicated, I thought as I began to descend the long wooden staircase that would take me to the bridge, but complicated wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I was keeping my fingers crossed that the professor’s calculation would turn out to be wrong and that Olivia May or a lively egret or sea lion would emerge as the culprit. If that failed, then my only hope was that Felix B would turn out to be the guilty party of the two of us, that is, that his universe was the one that had branched off.
As to the other thing—as the great detective Sherlock Holmes put it so well, it’s a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. I needed to know more, to sneak a peek at Felix’s novel to see if it had that something that makes a book a must-read, high-publicity product that bursts on the scene—or a slow-emerging-but-steady-selling classic that endures for years on reading lists. It occurred to me that Mrs. Noor could probably think of a clever way of obtaining a copy of Felix’s book. “Leave it to me,” she’d say, and that would be that. I felt foolish for calling her off the case but too embarrassed to call back and say I’d changed my mind.
It was time to take matters into my own hands.
As I moved out of the way of a young rollerblading couple on their wobbly way down the staircase, it struck me that it might be nice to invite Bean out for a meal. The Organic Oven, perhaps. I could get her opinion on the dishes I couldn’t taste.
She was at the bridge vista point, lost in thought under her hat.
“There you are.” She checked her omni. “Forty-seven minutes exactly.”
“How long did it take you?”
“Ten. That’s including a five-minute wait for the elevator.” She handed me one of a couple of bottles of water she seemed to have purchased while waiting.
“I didn’t rush,” I defended myself, twisting the bottle open and taking a grateful drink. “I went at what I imagined the pace of a couple carrying an infant�
�for almost fifty minutes!—might have been. By the way, I completely missed the thirty-one-minute mark, sorry. Do you want me to go back?”
“We can get Arni and Pak down here and repeat the timing experiment. Wouldn’t that be something, to find the pacifier you lost all those years ago somewhere on a Presidio path?”
“Not really, no.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be here anyway. We’d have to look in Universe A. Only the bridge is no longer there and the Presidio has been bulldozed into a museum complex. What we can do is at least pinpoint the two potential yabput spots.”
“I have to say, if it was me—well, I was there, but you know what I mean—I’d have taken the shorter path.”
“Probably,” she agreed. “And your family likely would have made a stop here before continuing on to the bridge.”
Here was the vista point we were standing on, a circular patch of cement level with the bridge deck and protected by a wooden railing from the drop below. Tourists milled around reading information panels and taking photos. Who could blame them? The sky was wide; the sailboats, lively; and Alcatraz and the larger Angel Island, squatting in the middle of the bay, picturesque. The bridge, with its brick towers, was more like a whimsical work of art than a bit of connecting road.
“Not a bad view,” said Bean. “If you were going to create a universe, this would be the place to do it.” I noticed she was checking the time again. She saw me watching and, taking her hat off and twirling it on her finger, said awkwardly, “Er—we’ll have to leave finding the two yabput spots for tomorrow. I have to go.”
“Was it something I said?”
“I have a class. It helps me think better if I take an occasional course that has nothing to do with bihistory. Soap Making. Maltese Poetry. Pet Sequencing. That kind of thing.” A pinkish tint spread across her cheeks. “This summer it’s, well—it’s Belly Dancing for Beginners.”
Regarding Ducks and Universes Page 19