by Tom Holt
This is the Old Town, the alien was saying, some of it’s almost two years old. They’re on about clear-felling all the way up to the Broadwalk and replanting with affordable low-cost social housing, but I say the hell with that. Some people have no sense of history, you know? Right, we’ll try in here first. It paused outside what was unmistakably a bar, and looked up at Theo with a solemn expression in its eight dark eyes. You want to watch your step a bit in here. Folks are pretty easy-going as a rule, but there’s limits, you know? Just take it easy, and it’ll be fine.
Take it easy in what way exactly? Theo thought furiously, but the alien had pushed open the door and gone in, so he took a deep breath and followed.
There’s always a scene in westerns where the stranger walks into the saloon and the whole place goes dead quiet. The effect is diluted slightly on a planet of mute telepaths, but any loss of intensity was more than made up for by the fact that every one of the drinkers at the bar had four pairs of eyes to stare at him with. All of them except one.
Hey you, said a different voice in his head. Can’t you read?
There was, of course, no way of knowing who was thinking at him, though he had an idea it wasn’t going to matter terribly much in the long run. He looked round for the alien he’d come in with, but the space where it had been standing was now ominously empty. Several of the bar aliens were getting slowly to their feet.
I asked you, can’t you read? You stupid or something?
I’m sorry, he broadcast as hard as he could; and no, I can’t read your—
More chairs scraped. It says, no aliens, the voice translated helpfully. Reckon you’d better leave, while you still can.
Oddly enough, Theo had been thinking precisely the same thing. He reached for the alien doughnut he’d hung on the front of his suit, but it wasn’t there.
It’s all right. He’s with me.
It was another voice in his head; but this time it was a voice, not an array of verbalised thoughts. He spun round, lifting six inches off the ground in the process, and saw –
“Hello, Theo,” Pieter said. “Fancy seeing you here.”
PART THREE
Somewhere Over The Doughnut
“You’re dead,” Theo said.They were sitting in a back I room, on tiny kindergarten chairs, around a table on which rested a green bottle, two green cups and a plate of the weird green doughnuts. “Am I?” Pieter said. “Well, yes, I suppose I must be, if you’re here.” He frowned. “Pity,” he said. “Oh well. Comes to us all in the end, I guess. How did it happen?”
“I don’t know,” Theo admitted.
“You don’t know. Fine.” Pieter shrugged. “But you got my legacy, obviously.”
“Yes.”
Pieter grinned. “And what do you think of it? Isn’t it great?”
Yes, he told himself, that’s all very well, but if I strangle Pieter, how am I going to get back home? So, reluctantly, he didn’t. Instead, he said, “No.”
Pieter stared at him. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s horrible.” The words burst out of his mouth like water from a cracked pipe. “Three times I’ve used it so far, and each time I’ve nearly been killed in a bar. If that’s your idea of a good time, then—”
He broke off. Pieter was gazing at him out of huge round eyes. “You mean to say you haven’t reset the narrative parameters?”
“What?”
Pieter swelled up like a bullfrog, then started to laugh. It took him quite some time, during which Theo nearly burst a blood vessel staying calm. “You haven’t, have you?” Pieter said eventually. “You’ve left them set on default.”
“If you say so.”
“My God.” Pieter wiped the tears out of his eyes with his sleeve. “You halfwit, the default settings are an anti-tamper device. If you go into YouSpace without resetting them you’re launched into a life-threatening scenario designed to scare you shitless. Didn’t you read the manual?”
“What manual?”
“I didn’t leave you a copy of the manual?”
Theo’s fists were starting to hurt. “No, you didn’t.”
“Ah. Well, never mind. Now you know. First thing when you get back, reset the narrative parameters in MyYouSpace. Then you can choose whatever you like. Personally, I always like to start off waking up in bed with a beautiful woman I’ve never seen before, but it’s entirely up to you. All you have to do is—”
“Pieter,” Theo interrupted firmly. “What’s all this about my brother Max?”
Pieter frowned at him. “You’ve got a brother? I didn’t know that.”
“Max. He died, years ago.”
“I’m sorry. Were you close?”
“Pieter.” His head was beginning to throb, but he ignored it. “Everywhere I go in this portable nightmare of yours, people tell me you and Max are hanging out together. What the hell is all that about?”
Pieter rubbed his chin with his fist. “I’m sorry, I haven’t the faintest idea. I never knew you had a brother. You never told me.”
“Didn’t I?” Suddenly, Theo couldn’t remember. It was possible. His brother had never been a subject he’d been happy talking about. “But in that case, if you didn’t—”
He got no further. At that moment, the door flew open and five aliens burst into the room. They were holding silvery things, sort of like small fire extinguishers. When Pieter saw them, he reached inside his coat for something; whatever it was, he wasn’t quick enough. Dazzling jets of plasma shot out of the fire extinguishers and splashed over him. For a split second Pieter was perfectly still, bathed in white fire. Then he shrivelled, like a leaf on a bonfire. His body became a cinder, the cinder became ash, which lost its shape and crumbled in a neat pyramid on the floor.
Theo watched as the aliens shifted their weapons and pointed them straight at him. Fortunately, he saw them through the hole in one of the weird green doughnuts.
When his shift was over, he found a note for him from Call-me-Bill on the reception desk, telling him that he was now in Room 1. This turned out to be the whole of the third floor. It was quite nice, if your idea of a cosy little nest is the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the main thing was, there was a bed. He fell on it and was asleep as soon as he touched the mattress.
He was woken by what at first he thought was a growling noise, but which proved to be a phone on the bedside table. He grabbed it, mostly to make it shut up, and moaned, “Yes?” into the mouthpiece.
“Theo?”
He’d never woken up so fast in his entire life. Usually, his progress from asleep to awake was slow and gradual, like Man evolving from plankton. This time, though, all the lights in his head came on instantly. “Janine?”
“You total shit, Theo.”
Yes, it was Janine all right. “Hey, sis. Long time no—”
“Shut the fuck up and listen.” Pause. Janine had forgotten what she was going to say. “Anyhow,” she said, “how are you? How’s tricks?”
“Fine.” He frowned. Why had he just said that, when it was patently untrue? Force of habit, presumably. “How about you?”
“Awful. Everything sucks. I got kicked out of the clinic, my probation officer hates me and Raoul left me for a seventeen-year-old waitress.”
“Apart from that.”
“Lousy. Anyhow, what do you care? You never gave a damn about me.”
He remembered something. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk to you. The injunction—”
“Screw the injunction.” Another pause. “Theo, I’m frightened.”
He opened his mouth, but all the words had been repossessed by the Vocabulary Bailiff. All of them except one. “Sis?”
“I’m frightened, Theo. Shit, I’m goddamn terrified. I think I’m going crazy.”
Well, he thought. “What makes you think that?”
“I—” Three seconds’ silence. Three seconds is actually quite a long time. “I’m, like, hearing voices.”
Again. “I thought Dr Ionescu had you on med
ication for that.”
“Not those kind of voices, you idiot. I thought—”
“Yes?”
“I got a phone call. It sounded like Max.”
His turn; four seconds. “Remind me,” he said, in a fake-casual voice he hated himself for. “Which one was Raoul? Wasn’t he your tai chi instructor?”
“That was Ramon. Theo, I heard him. I heard his voice.”
He felt as though he was standing in front of a door, through which he definitely didn’t want to go. “How did you find me?” he asked.
“What?”
“How do you know where I am? Where did you get this number from?”
An impatient click of the tongue, crisp as a bone snapping. “I’ve got you under twenty-four-seven surveillance.”
“You what?”
“I’ve been doing it for years,” she replied impatiently. “Oh for God’s sake, Theo. If I’d known you were going to make a fuss about it, I wouldn’t have told you.”
“I’m not making a fuss,” Theo replied gently. “Just out of interest, though, why?”
“To protect myself, of course. Don’t think for a second I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
She laughed, harsh and cold. “About you conspiring with that asshole Ionescu to get me certified insane and locked away so you can get hold of my money. So, naturally, I have you followed. Look, do we have to go into all that right now?”
In the past he’d tried counting to ten before saying anything. Then it had crept up to twenty, then twenty-five. “Sorry,” he said. “I mean, for what it’s worth, that’s a complete figment of your imagination, but—”
“You see? Now you’re saying I’m delusional. Fuck you, Theo, I should’ve known better than to expect any help out of you.”
“Sis—”
Click. Whirr. He sighed, put the receiver back and waited. Ten seconds later, the phone rang again. He picked it up.
“Hi, sis.”
“You’re a total bastard, Theo.”
“If I was a total bastard, you wouldn’t be my sister.”
“Theo.”
“Sorry. Look,” he said, before she could start up again, “about this phone call. You’re sure it was Max’s voice?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“So tell me about it. What happened?”
Pause, while she collected her thoughts. Considering the dreadful things she’d done to her brain over the years, it was still in remarkably good shape. The little brain that tried. “I was sitting by the pool,” she said, “and Lise-Marie – you remember her?”
The vulture-like French Canadian woman who guarded access to Janine with the single-minded ferocity of a dragon in Norse mythology. Like any near-death experience, hard to forget. “Yup. And?”
“Lise-Marie said, there’s a call for you, and I said, who is it? And she said, your brother, so I assumed it was you, so I said, put it through. And it was—”
Long pause. “Max,” Theo said.
“You think I’m crazy.”
“No,” Theo said. “Not this time.”
“Theo—”
“Sorry, sorry. So what did he say?”
Long silence. Just when he’d begun to worry, she said, “Hi, Jan. That’s what he said. And I said, who the hell is this? And he said, come on, Jan, don’t you recognise me? And then I screamed and threw the phone in the pool.”
Like you do. “Ah.”
“Who the fuck else ever called me Jan, Theo?”
Nobody; at least, not twice. “So what did you—?”
“I think I wasn’t very well for a bit after that,” Janine went on, “because the next thing I remember was waking up and Ionescu standing over me saying it’d probably be best to leave the straps on for a while. And then he asked me who the call was from.”
“Right. And what did you say?”
“I said it was from you. Well, I wasn’t going to say I’d just been talking to my dead brother, was I? He’d have thought I was nuts, I’d have been put away. I do not trust that man.
Theo pursed his lips. Dr Ionescu was brilliant and, in his opinion, longer-suffering than Lebanon, but it didn’t do to tell Janine that. “Fine,” he said. “When was this, exactly?”
“What? Oh, two days ago, maybe three. I’ve been trying to get through to you, but your people keep pretending you aren’t there. You know how hurtful that is?”
“You could’ve left a number.”
“What, and have you harassing me? No way.” Another pause. “You believe me?”
“That it might’ve been Max? Actually, yes, I do.”
“So you don’t think I’m crazy.”
“No.”
A very long pause. “You’re just saying that to make me crazier,” Janine said. “You think that if you encourage me in my delusions it’ll be easier to get me put away. Dr Ionescu—”
“Janine. I believe you.”
“Yeah, right. Why?”
“Because—” He clamped his mouth shut just in time. Because people in an alternative universe keep saying Max has been seen with my dead friend Pieter. “Because you’re my sister, and I know you,” he said. “Sometimes you do some rather injudicious stuff, but basically you’re as sane as I am. So, if you say you heard Max, I believe you. Simple as that.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Yet another pause. Then: “What the hell do you mean, injudicious? What have I ever done that—?”
“Well,” Theo said, “having me followed, for a start.”
“You’re upset about that, aren’t you?”
Upset. Oh boy. “A bit, yes.”
“I bet you’re thinking, she must be crazy, to do something like that.”
“Janine.”
“Yes?”
“Promise me,” he said. “If you hear – well, if you hear that voice again, call me, will you?”
“OK.”
“And getting the call traced might not be a bad idea.”
“For fuck’s sake, Theo.” She was starting to feel better, evidently. “Of course I did that. All my calls are traced, naturally. But it was from a cellphone, they couldn’t get a fix, not even which country he was calling from.”
That he could believe. “And if he calls again, for crying out loud, talk to him. OK?”
“Yes, Theo.”
“And then call me.”
“Yes, Theo.” Pause. “Look, about the having-you-followed thing.”
Theo sighed. “It’s all right,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You won’t tell Dr Ionescu, will you?”
“No.”
“You really really don’t think I’m crazy?”
“Really really.”
“It gets so hard sometimes.”
“I bet.”
“You’re just saying that,” she snapped, and the line went dead. He put the phone back slowly, as if afraid of waking it up.
When he reported for duty in the laundry room the next morning, there was nobody there, and all the sheets and towels and pillowcases had vanished. The machines were still in place, but although he crawled all over them trying to figure out what they were supposed to be for, he ended up no wiser than he’d been when he started. He couldn’t even tell if they ran on electricity or something else. He gave up after an hour and went back up to Reception, but there was nobody about. He sat down at the desk and turned the computer screen so he could read it. The screen flickered into life, and he typed YouSpace user’s manual into Google, just in case. Did you mean…? Google asked him reproachfully. He smiled and shook his head. Then, slowly and methodically, he went through the computer, looking for anything that might give him a clue about what was going on. There were lots and lots of files in lots and lots of folders. They were all password protected, but since there was a yellow sticky attached to the monitor with the word PASSWORD on it, followed by Flawless Diamonds Of Orthodoxy, and since the one password opened all the files, that wasn’t
an insuperable problem. Opening the files, though, just made things a tiny bit worse. Nearly all of them were in languages he didn’t understand, some of them in alphabets he’d never seen before. The few in English were mostly to do with laundry collections and the contract for emptying the septic tank. There was one that looked hopeful; it was a list of words, in three columns, and the first three words in the second column were –
Bandits
Cowboys
Spaceman
But directly under those were
Nosebleed
Lyons
Ramayana
August
Thereafter
– which didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Nevertheless, he printed out a hard copy of the list and put it inside the manila envelope. Then he stood up and looked round until he saw what he’d been searching for.
It was a small box on the wall, painted red and with a glass front. He looked around for a suitable heavy object, found a fairly chunky desk stapler, and used it to smash the glass. The result was one of the loudest noises he’d ever heard, including the VVLHC blowing up.
For a surprisingly long time, nothing happened. Then Call-me-Bill came charging down the stairs, wearing a tuxedo and pyjama bottoms, yelling, “Where’s the fire?”
Theo smiled at him. “There isn’t one.”
“What?”
“There is no fire.”
“What?”
Theo pointed at the alarm and tried to mime switch-it-off, which turned out to be harder than he’d anticipated. Eventually, though, Call-me-Bill must have got the general idea, because he opened a panel next to the box and pressed a button, and the horrible noise abruptly stopped.
“Where’s the—?”
“No fire.”
“But you—”
“That,” Theo said pleasantly, “was just to get your attention. Sorry if I startled you.”
“You lunatic,” Call-me-Bill panted, sitting down on the edge of the desk and grabbing at his forehead. “You scared me half to death. I thought the building—”
“Well, it isn’t,” Theo said briskly, “so that’s all right, isn’t it? Now, while you’re here, I’d like to ask you about a few things. Would that be OK?”