This wasn’t one of my best, I know. Certainly better than “Ahoy there Old Woman, what’s for dinner?” but still not good. And it was met with a certain amount of irritation from the gasbag. It wouldn’t be stretching the point to say that thunder rolled in the distance while the matron set to rumbling like those tectonic plates you hear about, right before they dump a slab of cottage country into the sea.
She glowered at me — if “glowered” describes a face filled with black and red clouds and a pair of eyes that could boil water at fifty paces.
“Do you know what could have happened to you?” she boomed, squashing ham-sized fists into her hips and, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible, notching up the intensity of her glare. “Do you have any idea what’s been going on in the hospice? There’ve been attacks! Attacks! Guards and patients hurt! Files stolen! Why — you could — you could have been —”
“Matron Bikerack,” I said, drawing myself up as far as one can draw oneself up while sitting in bed, “I can assure you that, wherever I was earlier, I’m now present and accounted for, and trying to break my fast — although how I’m supposed to do so with matrons in my midst, infesting the Feynman barracks and laying my nutritional aspirations a-stymie, is frankly more than I can envisage. But the point, husky health-care worker, is this: no harm befell the Feynman person. As for my comings and goings in the night, rest assured that nothing sinister was afoot: I merely visited the infirmary. I’m sorry to have worried you, but a busy man like me hasn’t the time to keep the world’s nosy parkers apprised of his whereabouts at all times.”
“Nosy parkers?!” she yowled. “Nosy parkers!” And at this point her words must have failed her, for she abandoned further speech in favour of action. She aimed a sausage of a finger in my direction and, heaving one of those heavy, bosom-swelling breaths, crossed the threshold of the room, making a beeline in the undersigned’s direction.
I braced myself for the worst.
She thundered forward.
I shielded myself with a plate of eggs.
But what she planned to do on reaching me we shall never know. For having taken two longish strides toward the Feynman bed, Matron Bikerack, as stout and sturdy a woman as ever donned a pillbox hat, took one of the finest nosedives it has been my pleasure to see.
It was an awe-inspiring toss — at least a 6.8 as measured on the competitive nosedive circuit. One moment, the matron was amongst us, all thunder and dark intentions. The next, she was aloft, base over apex, registering a plaintive look of dumb surprise.
At the conclusion of this epoch-making tumble, the matron crashed to the tiles below in a tangled heap of arms, legs, blood-pressure cuffs, and stethoscopes, not to mention her hat and shoe, which had parted from their respective moorings mid-flight and followed her earthward in due season.
It was an impact like this one that did in the dinosaurs.
“Oh my stars!” said the matron, in a mystified sort of way, followed closely by “Oh good gracious,” and then “Oh my sainted guide!” She now struggled from position one: the crumpled heap, to position two: something yogic gurus probably call “the recumbent lotus.” And there she sat, right on the white-tiled floor, looking for all the world like a matron who’d been out on a weeklong bender.
“Abe’s drawers!” she said, gasping a bit, mopping the brow and generally what-the-helling. Her eyeballs wobbled like soft-boiled eggs. “How did . . . what did . . . why am I —”
“Hamster ball,” I explained concisely. “You ought to watch where you stomp those size-twelve feet,” I added, cordially.
Tonto shushed me with a gesture and, being the obliging sort of girl who puts others’ needs ahead of her own, shimmered toward the matron’s side, bending over the rubble with a view to offering aid. She cooed over the matron for a space before helping the stricken bird regain her feet as well as the bits of medical whatnot that had hove for the open spaces when she fell.
Assisted by Tonto’s ministrations, the matron stood once more.
“Oh my stars!” she said again — and I don’t know about you, but I felt that this repetition was highly suggestive of a concussion.
“Perhaps you ought to have a bit of a lie-down, what?” I said, helpfully.
She said nothing, but merely swayed to and fro a bit before shaking her head, rubbing her eyes, performing the wobbliest about-face in recorded history and treading quietly into the hall, removing herself from the Feynman presence. And thus it was that Matron Bikerack, who had barged into my room like the lion, now tottered off like a lamb.
Ian shut the door behind her.
“Wow,” he said.
“You’ve said a mouthful,” I replied.
“Gosh,” he added.
“Gosh indeed.”
“You don’t see something like that every day,” he said.
“Not in a month of Sundays.”
“I hope she’s all right,” he added, though I found it difficult to sympathize with this outlook.
“At least it solves one of our problems,” said Tonto.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“I took her pass card,” said Tonto, withdrawing the purloined object from her pocket like a conjuror revealing the missing rabbit. “This ought to make life easier.”
Well, I don’t mind telling you that I goggled at the woman — about as devoutly as one can goggle. I mean to say: withdrawing magnetic whatnots from the unexplored depths of a matron’s uniform wasn’t something I’d care to do even if paid large sums to do it, yet this is just what Tonto had done. Appearing to be the Good Samaritan, helping a fallen woman rejoin the ranks of upright citizens, she had in fact engaged in an artful bit of pickpocketry, snatching up the pass card thingummy and secreting it on her person. Dashed enterprising of her if you ask me. And now, armed with a pass card granting access to the free world, we were in a position to carry on with an escape plan I’d cooked up while I’d been wriggling through the ducts.
This escape plan of mine (which I’ll not commit to paper lest this manuscript fall into the wrong hands) I now laid before those present, and I don’t mind telling you that the plan was a humdinger — one of those strategems you might hear about in epic poems and operas, although mine featured more fire alarms, bottles of seltzer, and Napoleons than you generally get in popular productions. Tonto intervened from time to time with trivial changes here and there — I indulged her of course, as one likes to be civil to women with notable profiles. And within a few short minutes the plan was set. Tonto and Ian were agog, as though my guile and resource had smote them athwart the brow.
“I think it’ll work,” said Tonto.
Ian nodded his agreement.
After a momentary pause, during which each of us caught our breath and bearings, Ian turned toward yours truly and gave speech.
“Erm . . . Rhinnick,” he said, by way of unnecessary specification, “What are you doing?”
“Eating breakfast,” said I, matter-of-factly. I pronged a forkful of egg and saluted him with it illustratively.
“That’s not what I mean,” he said, his eyes focusing on my journal, “I mean, what are you doing with that book?”
“Ah,” said I. “Literary composition. Carrying out the Author’s will and pushing things along, you know. You can’t expect a man to keep his comings and goings stored in his bean until the time is right for sober reflection and picking out the nouns and verbs. One must take notes at all times, jotting down ideas as they come and keeping a record of the gist of current events. Hence the journal.”
“But why would that —” Ian began, still seeming a bit thick.
“I’m preparing the First Draft,” I explained. “The Author will, of course, have to look things over and edit the text to suit His style, but by writing the First Draft I’ll draw His attention to the important bits and save Him some of the effort of composition.
Efficiency, what? I shall do the Author’s will by preparing portions of His Text, thus relieving some of the pain and angst of literary endeavour.”
“Er, Rhinnick,” said Tonto, biting her lip and knitting her brow in that seductive way she has, “How would that help the Author? I mean, if He’s writing you while you’re writing about yourself, doesn’t He still have to write out what you’re writing while you write it?”
This drifted over the Feynman head.
I knitted my brow. “Speak plainly, woman,” I said. “I lost the thread. Give it another go with a few less ‘writings’ and ‘writes’ so close together.”
“You’re not saving the Author any work at all,” she added, patiently. “You’re adding an extra step. Now instead of just describing you doing whatever it is you’re doing, the Author has to describe you writing about it, too.”
“Hmm,” said I.
“Hmm,” said Ian, looking impressed.
“You have a point,” I added, because she did.
Rhinnick laid down his pen.
* * *
26Marriage is a time-honoured institution in Detroit, although an institution that differs fundamentally from the one with which mortal readers may be familiar. For example: lacking the built-in escape clause that applies to mortal spouses (generally known as the “till death us do part” passage), Detroit-based marriage are instead designed as renewable contracts, lapsing after seven years unless both parties opt to renew for another seven-year skirmish. This, it turns out, keeps the populace fairly happy, chiefly because it has prevented the development of divorce lawyers.
Chapter 12
Khuufru’s Multiversal Encyclopaedia, the greatest reference text published in this (or any) reality,27 has this to say on the topic of technology in Detroit:
Detroit’s technology is generally more advanced than the technology found on worlds where humans die. While mortal worlds might strive to make their televisions thinner or to unravel the secrets of crispy-crusted, microwavable pizza, Detroit features artificial intelligence, manufactured weather, photonic weaponry, and instantaneous transportation. This is not, as one might expect, simply because all of the effort typically wasted in the life insurance industry has been marshalled in pursuit of technological advancement.28 On the contrary, Detroit’s advanced technology can be credited to two factors, namely (1) the fact that people in Detroit, with their unusual view of aging, waste no time or energy celebrating youth and ignorance, choosing instead to value education and achievement over the feat of not-having-yet-grown-old: and (2) the fact that in Detroit, leading experts in any scientific field are able to build on their own work for as long as they like.
Consider an example. If Professor Smith discovers, say, a mathematical model for predicting the behaviour of swarms of bees, she can go right on developing this bee-swarming model for millennia, and Detroit can reap the benefit of her bee-related researches rather than waiting for a series of successive generations to master and build upon whatever Smith discovered during a limited, mortal life. In Detroit, you needn’t wait for Jones to build on Smith’s foundational research — Smith can build on it herself. You needn’t hope for later scientists to stand on the shoulders of giants: the giants are still in the lab. Thus it is that while other worlds struggle with fossil fuels, overcrowding, and food shortages, Detroit features advances such as the IPT Network, boson whips, sentient gynoid poets, and the Pleasuretron XTC.29
Still another reason for Detroit’s advanced technology is Isaac. In fact, another of Khuufru’s well-known books, the Quite Large Book of Multiversal Records, claims that Isaac is Detroit’s hands-down leader in patented innovations. Some of his more famous discoveries (widely known as “I-ware”) included the lintless sweater, self-replicating jelly beans, and the cold fusion reactor (an advancement he discovered while experimenting with methods of cooling beer). One of his lesser-known discoveries — the one with which he is toying now — is Isaac’s “Ocular Scanner,” a complicated sort of jeweller’s loop that fits over the eye and provides its wearer with a stream of useful data concerning any object falling under its gaze.
Isaac peered intently through the scanner and struggled to understand what it displayed.
This was strange. Isaac rarely struggled to understand anything.
The scanner was set for temporal analysis. When configured in this fashion the Ocular Scanner could discern the exact age of any examined object — a technique Isaac labelled “absolute dating.”30 This is useful. Consider, for example, its possible application with respect to an artefact like the Shroud of Turin. Without an Ocular Scanner, primitive dating techniques might yield dates for the Shroud’s origin ranging anywhere from 30 AD to the mid-nineteenth century, with results tending to vary with the particular religious sentiments of the observer.
Not so with Isaac’s scanner.
Had Isaac taken the merest peek at the Shroud while equipped with the Ocular Scanner, he could have told you the precise year in which the Shroud was woven as well as the fact that it was made over the course of a six-hour period on a Saturday afternoon, with the finishing touches added at 16:45 GMT.
The Ocular Scanner could determine the age of anything. It could ascertain the age of every stratum of an archaeological dig. It could discern the age of planets. It could determine the age of individual bits of movie stars.
The Ocular Scanner is infallible. The Ocular Scanner is precise.
And this, in a nutshell, is why Isaac was perplexed. The Ocular Scanner didn’t seem to be working.
Isaac was hunched over his roll-top desk in the City Solicitor’s office doing his best to finish a project he’d been assigned nine hours earlier. He was alone — unless you counted the parrot Cyril — and working late into the night, his desk illuminated by an array of dribbling candles.
He could have flicked a light switch if he’d wanted to, but the candles suited his mood. Their flames cast eerie, shifting shadows about the office and reflected off the windows, giving the room the gloomy air of an ancient library or abbey. Isaac might have compared the atmosphere to the ambiance of a crypt — but he’d never heard of a crypt, so he didn’t.
Isaac verified the Ocular Scanner’s settings and calibration. He scanned his hand: 288 years, four months, three days, and six hours. He scanned his desk: thirty years, seven months, two days, five hours. He scanned Cyril, who was sitting in his cage and bobbing his head in time with the strains of some imagined, parrotish tune. Precisely thirty-seven years.
All of these were, Isaac knew, the accurate figures. He would have paused to wish the parrot a happy birthday, but was too puzzled to bother.
He wasn’t puzzled that he’d happened to scan the parrot exactly thirty-seven years from the moment it had hatched — that was simply an odd coincidence, and the universe was full of odd coincidences. Isaac was puzzled because of what the scanner said about the book.
This book had come into Isaac’s life nine hours earlier, when the City Solicitor — seeming more excited and animated than any City Solicitor had a right to be — came striding into the office bearing the most recent fruit of Socrates’ ongoing hunt for “The One Foretold.” The “fruit” — if one could call it that — had been this blasted book, a book that the City Solicitor had eagerly slapped onto Isaac’s desk.
“Test this book,” he had said. “Unlock its secrets,” he had said. “This book could be the key to everything,” he had said.
And then he had said nothing else. He’d simply drifted out of the office, leaving Isaac alone with Cyril and this book.
Isaac examined the book again. Its cover bore a symbol: a symbol that looked a good deal like the one that had been tattooed on the severed members of several members of the Eighth Street Chapter. A symbol Isaac had been studying ever since the meeting with the CoC. The symbol looked like this: Ω.
And here was the symbol once again — now depicted on t
he cover of a book. The book itself was a heavily weathered volume that looked to have been passed through the grubby hands of several hundred readers. The pages were worn, the cover tattered. The text itself was barely legible — large tracts of it were missing, several pages had been torn out, and the entire volume looked as though it had spent a longish time submerged in last year’s laundry water.
It would have made a librarian cry.
To make matters worse, the bits of text that were legible seemed to be written in code. Oh, most of the words were intelligible in a purely literal sense — some passages described perfectly mundane, trivial matters, while others meandered into the realm of metaphysics. But if a series of barely related passages on a wide range of topics from asparagus to voodoo constituted — in the City Solicitor’s words — “the key to everything,” there had to be some deeper, hidden meaning that Isaac had thus far failed to spot.
There had to be a code or cipher — some method of decrypting the text that Isaac hadn’t yet discovered.
Isaac was starting to hate the book.
But what really bothered Isaac about the book — what really got under his skin — was neither the volume’s poor condition nor its indecipherable text. What bothered him was its age — the readout that was generated whenever Isaac analyzed the book with his Ocular Scanner.
The scanner reported that the book — every part of it — was twenty years old, and also four weeks old. This did not, as you might assume, mean that four weeks ago the book had celebrated a birthday. This meant — as far as Isaac could tell — that the book had two distinct ages: the book had existed for twenty years, but also only for four weeks. The scanner had never given a reading like this before.
Isaac continued fiddling with the scanner, testing out its calibration on various items on his desk, until the shadows behind Cyril’s iron cage suddenly deepened.
Beforelife Page 16