She gave her head a quick shake to clear it. Get a grip, she ordered herself, and tightened her hands on the steering wheel as if that would help. She checked the address clipped to her visor again, then paused at the end of the street, craning her neck to read the road sign. It would solve a lot of problems, she thought, if the cheap-ass city would just put GPS navigation in all the goddam cars. She turned right onto the cross street and then wondered if she had made a mistake. Had she already driven along this street? The houses looked familiar.
Well, of course they looked familiar, she realized, irritated—they were all alike. She kept going, watching the street signs carefully. Christ, it wasn’t only the houses themselves that were all like—it was also the cars in the driveways, the front lawns, even the toys scattered on the grass. The same but not the same. Like Alice Nakamura and Betty Mura.
She came to another intersection and paused again, almost driving on before she realized that the street on her left was the one she wanted. The Dread renewed its intensity as she made the turn, barely noticing the woman pushing a double stroller with two toddlers in it. Both the woman and her children watched her pass with alert curiosity on their unremarkable faces. They were the only people Ruby had seen out walking, but the Dread left no room for her to register as much.
The Mura house was not a cookie-cutter mansion—more like a cookie-cutter update of the kind of big old Victorian Jake and Lita lived in with the kids. Ruby pulled up at the curb instead of parking in the driveway where a shiny black SUV was blocked in by a not-so-shiny car that she knew had to belong to Rafe Pasco.
Ruby sat, staring at the front of the house. It felt as if the Dread were writhing inside her now. The last thing she wanted to do was go inside. Or rather, it should have been the last thing she wanted to do. The Dread, alive everywhere in her all the way to her fingertips, to the soles of her feet, threatened to become even worse if she didn’t.
Moving slowly and carefully, she got out of the car and walked up the driveway, pausing at Pasco’s car to look in the open driver’s side window. The interior was impossibly clean for a cop or a geek—no papers, no old sandwich wrappers or empty drink cups. Hell, even the floor mats were clean, as if they had just been vacuumed. Nothing in the backseat, either, except more clean.
She glanced over at the glove box; then her gaze fell on the trunk release. If she popped it, what would she find in there, she wondered—a portable car-cleaning kit with a hand vac? A carton of secret geek files? Or just more clean nothing?
There would be nothing in the trunk. All the secret geek files would be on Pasco’s notebook, and he probably had that with him. She considered popping the trunk anyway and then moved away from the car, stopping again to look inside the SUV. The windows were open and the doors were unlocked—apparently the Muras trusted their neighbors and the people who came to visit them. Even the alarm was off.
There was a hard-shell CD case sitting on the passenger seat and a thin crescent of disk protruding from the slot of the player in the dash. A small string of tiny pink and yellow beads dangled from the rearview mirror along with a miniature pair of fuzzy, hot pink dice. Ruby wondered if Betty Mura had put them there.
She turned toward the front door and then thought better of it. Instead, she made her way around the side of the garage and into the unfenced backyard.
Again she stopped. The yard was empty except for a swing set and a brightly painted jungle gym. Behind the swings was a cement patio with a couple of loungers; under one of them was an empty plastic glass lying on its side, forgotten and probably considered lost.
The sliding glass patio doors were open, Ruby realized suddenly, although the screen door was closed and the curtains were drawn. She edged her way along the rear of the garage and sidled up next to the open door.
“ … less pleading your case with me,” she heard Pasco saying. “Both girls are dead. It ends here.”
“But the other girls—,” a man started.
“There are no other girls,” Pasco told him firmly. “Not for you. They aren’t your daughters.”
Ruby frowned. Daughters? So the girls really had been twins?
“But they are—,” protested a woman.
“You can’t think that way,” Pasco said. “Once there’s been a divergence, those lives—your own, your children’s, everyone’s—are lost to you. To act as if it were otherwise is the same as if you went next door to your neighbors’ house and took over everything they owned. Including their children.”
“I told you, we didn’t come here to kidnap Betty,” the man said patiently. “I saw her records—the man showed me. He told us about her aneurysm. He said it was almost a sure thing that it would kill her before Alice’s heart gave out. Then we could get her heart for transplant knowing that it would be a perfect match for Alice—”
“You heartless bastard,” said a second male voice identical to the one that had been speaking. How many people were in that room, Ruby wondered.
“She was going to die anyway,” said the first man. “There was nothing anyone could do about it—”
“The hell there wasn’t. If we had known, we could have taken her to a hospital for emergency surgery,” a woman said angrily. “They can fix those things now, you know. Or aren’t they as advanced where you come from?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Pasco said, raising his voice to talk over them. “Because Alice died first after all.”
“Yes,” said the woman bitterly, speaking through tears. It sounded like the same woman who had been talking so angrily a few moments before, but Ruby had a feeling it wasn’t.
“And do you know why that is?” Pasco asked in a stern, almost paternal tone of voice.
“The man was wrong,” said the tearful woman.
“Or he lied,” said the angry one.
“No, it was because you came here and you brought Alice with you,” Pasco said. “Once you did that, all bets, as they say here, were off. The moment you came in, it threw everything out of kilter because you don’t belong here. You’re extra—surplus. One too many times three. It interrupted the normal flow of progress; things scattered with such force that there were even natural-law anomalies. This morning, a very interesting woman said to me, ‘Human beings can make a mess out of chaos.’ I couldn’t tell her how extraordinarily right she was, of course, so I couldn’t stop laughing. She must have thought I was crazy.”
Ruby pressed her lips together, thinking that he couldn’t be any crazier than she was herself right now; it was just that she was a lot more confused.
Abruptly, she heard the sound of the front door opening, followed by new voices as a few more people entered the house. This was turning into quite a party; too bad Pasco had left her off the guest list.
“Finally,” she heard him saying. “I was about to call you again, find out what happened to you.”
“These West Side streets are confusing,” a woman answered. This was a completely new voice, but Ruby found it strangely familiar. “It’s not a nice, neat grid like northland, you know.”
“Complain all you want later,” Pasco said. “I want to wrap this up as soon as possible.”
“I don’t know about that,” said another man. “Have you looked out front?”
Pasco groaned. “What now?”
“There’s a car parked at the curb, right in front of the house,” the man said. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
“Oh, hell,” Pasco said. She heard his footsteps thumping hurriedly away from the patio door—probably going to look out the window at the car—and then coming back again. She straightened her shoulders and, refusing to give herself time to think about it, she yanked open the screen door and stepped into the house, flinging aside the curtain.
“I’m right h—” Her voice died in her throat and she could only stand, frozen in place, one hand still clutching the edge of the curtain while she stared at Rafe Pasco. And a man who seemed to be his older, much taller brother. And t
wo identical Japanese couples sitting side by side on a long sofa with their hands cuffed in front of them.
And, standing behind the couch, her newly retired ex-partner, Rita Castillo.
“Now, don’t panic,” Pasco said after might have been ten minutes or ten months.
“I’m not panicking,” Ruby managed in a hoarse voice. She drew a long, shaky breath. Inside her, the Dread was no longer vibrating or writing or swelling; it had finally reached full power. This was what she had been Dreading all this time, day after day. Except now that she was finally face-to-face with it, she had no idea what it actually was.
“I can assure you that you’re not in any danger,” Pasco added.
“I know,” she said faintly.
“No, you don’t.”
“OK,” Ruby said. Obviously he was in charge, so she would defer willingly, without protest.
“The sensation you’re feeling right now has nothing to do with your actual safety,” Pasco went on, speaking carefully and distinctly, as if he were trying to talk her down from a high ledge. Or maybe a bad acid trip was more like it, she thought, glancing at the Japanese couples. The Muras and the Nakamuras, apparently. She wondered which was which. “What it actually is, is a kind of allergic reaction.”
“Oh?” She looked around the room. Everyone else seemed to understand what he was talking about, including the Japanese couples. “What am I allergic to?”
“It’s something in the nature of a disturbance.”
Oh, God, no, she thought, now he’s going to say something about “the force.” I’ll find out they’re all actually a lunatic cult and Pasco’s the leader. And I’m trapped in a house with them. Her gaze drifted over to Rita. No, Rita would never have let herself get sucked into anything like that. Would she?
Rita shifted, becoming slightly uncomfortable under Ruby’s gaze. “Do I know you?” she asked finally.
Ruby’s jaw dropped. She felt as if Rita had slapped her.
“No, you don’t,” Pasco said over his shoulder. “She knows someone like you. Where you come from, the two of you never met. Here, you were partners.”
“Wow,” Rita said, shaking her head. “It never ceases to amaze me, all that what-might-have-been stuff.” She smiled at Ruby, giving an apologetic shrug.
“And where does she come from?” Ruby wanted to know. Her voice was a little stronger now.
“That doesn’t matter,” Pasco told her. “Besides, the less you know, the better you’ll feel.”
“Really?” She made a skeptical face.
“No,” he said, resigned. “Actually, you’ll feel not quite so bad. Not quite so much Dread. It may not be much, but any relief is welcome. Isn’t it?” He took a small step toward her. “And you’ve been feeling very bad for a while now, haven’t you? Though it wasn’t quite so awful in the beginning.”
Ruby didn’t say anything.
“Only you’re not sure exactly when it started,” Pasco continued, moving a little closer. Ruby wondered why he was being so cautious with her. Was he afraid of what she might do? “I can tell you. It started when the Nakamuras arrived here. Ostensibly from the Cayman Islands. When they stepped out of their own world and into this one. Into yours.”
Ruby took a deep breath and let it out, willing herself to be less tense. She looked around, spotted an easy chair opposite the couch, and leaned on the back of it. “All right,” she said to Pasco, “who are you and what the hell are you talking about?”
Pasco hesitated. “I’m a cop.”
“No,” Ruby said with exaggerated patience, “I’m a cop. Try again.”
“It’s the truth,” Pasco insisted. “I really am a cop. Of sorts.”
“What sort?” Ruby asked. “Geek squad? Not Homicide.”
He hesitated again. “Crimes Against Persons and Property. This includes identity theft, which is not a geek squad job in my line of law enforcement.”
Ruby wanted to sit down more than anything in the world now, but she forced herself to stay on her feet. To make Pasco look at her on the same level, as an equal. “Go on.”
“It’s my job to make sure that people who regret what might’ve been don’t get so carried away that they try to do something unlawful to try to rectify it. Even if that means preventing a young girl from getting the heart transplant that will save her life.”
Ruby looked over at the people sitting handcuffed on the sofa. They all looked miserable and angry.
“An unscrupulous provider of illegal goods and services convinced a couple of vulnerable parents that they could save their daughter’s life if they went to a place where two other parents very similar to themselves were living a life in which things had gone a bit differently. Where their daughter, who was named Betty instead of Alice, had an undetected aneurysm instead of a heart condition.”
Light began to dawn for Ruby. Her mind returned to the idea of being trapped in a house with a bunch of lunatic cultists. Then she looked at Rita. Where you come from, the two of you never met.
“Many of my cases are much simpler,” Pasco went on. “People who want to win instead of lose—a hand of cards, a race, the lottery. Who think they’d have been better off if they’d turned left instead of right, said yes instead of no.” He spread his hands. “But we can’t let them do that, of course. We can’t let them take something from its rightful owner.”
“And by ‘we’ you mean … ?” Ruby waited; he didn’t answer. “All right, then let’s try this: you can’t possibly be the same kind of cop I am. I’m local, equally subject to the laws that I enforce. But you’re not. Are you.”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Pasco replied. “I have to obey those laws, but in order to enforce them, I have to live outside the system they apply to.”
She looked at Rita again. Or rather, the woman she had thought was Rita. “And what’s your story? He said you’re from a place where we never met. Does your being here with him mean you don’t live there anymore?”
Not-Rita nodded. “Someone stole my identity and I couldn’t get it back. Things didn’t end well.”
“And all you could do was become a sort of a cop?” Ruby asked.
“We have to go,” said Pasco’s taller brother before the woman could answer. He could have been an alternative version of Pasco, Ruby thought, from a place where she hadn’t met him, either. Would that be the same place that Not-Rita came from? She decided she didn’t want to know and hoped none of them would feel compelled to tell her.
“We’ve still got time,” Pasco said, looking at his watch, which seemed to be a very complicated device. “But there’s no good in pushing things right down to the wire. Take them out through the garage and put them in the SUV—”
“Where are you taking them?” Ruby asked as taller Pasco and not-Rita got the Japanese couples on their feet.
Pasco looked surprised by the question; it was a moment or two before he could answer. “To court. A kind of court.”
“Ah,” Ruby said. “Would that be for an arraignment? A sort of arraignment?”
He nodded and Ruby knew he was lying. She had no idea how she knew, but she did, just as she knew it was the first time he had ever lied to her. She let it go, watching as the other two herded the Japanese couples toward the kitchen.
“Wait,” she said suddenly. Everyone stopped, turning to look at her. “Which ones are the Nakamuras?”
Judging from the group reaction, she had definitely asked the wrong question. Even the couples looked dismayed, as if she had threatened them in some fashion.
“Does it matter?” Pasco said after a long moment.
“No, I guess not.”
And it didn’t, not to her or anyone else, she realized, not now, not ever again. When you got caught in this kind of identity theft, you probably had to give identity up completely. Exactly what that meant she had no idea, but she knew it couldn’t have been very pleasant.
Pasco nodded and the other two escorted the couples out of the room. A few moment
s later, Ruby heard the kitchen door leading to the garage open and close.
“How did you know the Nakamuras would come here?” Ruby asked Pasco.
“I didn’t. Just dumb luck—they were here when I arrived, so I took them all into custody.”
“And they didn’t resist or try to get away?”
“There’s nowhere for them to go. The Nakamuras can’t survive indefinitely here unless they could somehow replace the Muras.”
“Then why did you arrest the Muras?”
“They were going to let the Nakamuras supplant them while they moved on to a place where their daughter hadn’t died.”
The permutations began to pile up in Ruby’s brain; she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, cutting off the train of thought before it made her dizzy.
“All right,” she said. “But what about this master criminal who convinced the Nakamuras to do all this in the first place? How could he, she—whatever—know about Betty Mura’s aneurysm?”
Pasco’s face became thoughtful again and she could practically see his mind working at choosing the right words. “Outside the system, there is access to certain kinds of information about the elements within it. Features are visible outside that can’t be discerned inside.
“Unfortunately, making that information available inside never goes well. It’s like poison. Things begin to malfunction.”
“Is that really why Alice Nakamura died before the other girl?” Ruby asked.
“It was an extra contributing factor, but it also had to do with the Nakamuras being in a world where they didn’t belong. As I said.” Pasco crossed the room to close the patio door and lock it. “What I was referring to were certain anomalies of time and space.”
The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007 Page 76