by Tom Holt
“Can I?”
“Sure. Go there.”
“What?”
She gave him an even-you-should-be-able-to-understand look. “Tell the bottle you want to go to the universe where Max is hiding out,” she said. “Simple.”
Two voices in his head; one shouting Yes, the other yelling No. “Hold on, though,” he said. “Multiverse theory.”
“Excuse me?”
He took a moment to think it through. “Multiverse theory states that in an infinite multiverse there’s a universe for every possibility. Thus, if I formulate the possibility of a universe where Max is hiding out in YouSpace, it’ll exist and I can go there. Question is, would it have existed if I hadn’t conceived of it, or am I calling it into existence just by thinking about it?”
“Oh, for crying out loud.”
Fair comment. “I was only trying to think of every possible outcome, just in case—”
“Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
For once, the bad thing he was being urged to forestall had already happened; the coffee was tepid, and she’d put in too much sugar. “I still don’t like the idea,” he said.
“You don’t want to find out if your brother’s still alive?”
“I meant the whole idea of fooling around with alternate realities,” he said, though she’d been closer to the mark than he felt comfortable with. “I mean, for all we know there could be the most appalling consequences we haven’t even begun to imagine. Trust me,” he added bitterly, “I know about what happens when things go wrong.”
She looked at him. “Yes, and every time a butterfly flaps its wings, there’s a risk of hurricanes in Kansas. What are you going to do? Tour the Amazon with a can of bug spray? If everybody thought like you, nobody’d ever do anything.”
“Yes, but—”
“And what happened to you,” she went on mercilessly, “was because you made a mistake. You got it wrong. You screwed up. Try not to screw up this time, and it’ll be fine.”
The foul taste in his mouth was probably only the coffee. “Fine,” he said. “That’s your considered judgement on messing around with the nature of causality.”
“Pieter van Goyen thought it was OK.”
And there she had him. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “All right,” he said. “But first I’m going to do the maths. Properly, not rushing. And then I’m going to check it, five times, maybe six. And then—”
He yawned. “Sure,” she said. “That’d be sensible. Maybe you should get some rest first, you look dead beat.”
She had a point. He did feel tired. In fact, for two pins he’d close his eyes again and take a nap right now. “I think I might just lie down for a moment,” he said.
“You do that.”
He looked across the room to the bed. It was ever such a long way away. The floor, on the other hand, was much more conveniently situated, and he could get there simply by falling. So he did that.
“Sorry,” she said, reaching over him and picking up the powder compact. He started to protest, but a yawn took control of his face and stretched it till the skin burned. “Happy landings,” she added, as she picked up the bottle. “Now, then—”
“Wha—?”
“Take care,” she said (and her voice came from a long way away, filtered through a lot of thick soggy mist, which swirled inside his head.) “And no hard feelings, OK?”
In the beginning was the Word.
Hardly likely, is it? In order for it to be a word, it would’ve had to belong to a language; otherwise it’d just have been a random, meaningless noise – zwwgmf, prblwbl, bweeeg. You can’t have a one-word language; words need context. Therefore, of all the things that could possibly exist in isolation at the Beginning, a word is the least plausible. All right, back-burnerise the Word for now, let’s try something else.
In the beginning was (say) the Mouse; fine, except that unless some primeval crumbs happened along pretty soon thereafter, it’d quickly have become first a hungry, then a dead mouse, and the universe would’ve fizzled out almost immediately.
In the beginning was the Lump of Inert Rock; better, except that everything we know about rock tells us that it’s the end of a process rather than the beginning. It’s cold lava or dried, compressed mud, or the shells of a billion tiny shellfish squashed up tight. In the beginning was the Lump of Inert Rock is like saying the empty packet came before the breakfast cereal.
In the beginning was the Ball of Burning Gas; now perhaps we’re getting somewhere, because you might argue that bits of that ball exist to this day, in the form of stars, scattered about the place like a teenager’s possessions, and that could be taken as some kind of corroborative evidence of something, even if it’s just that God is eternally fifteen years old.
It’s still a hell of an ask, though. Since nobody was around to see it, how can anyone really know? Walk into any courtroom and listen to the witnesses, and you’ll soon learn how very, very difficult it is to prove anything, even with the help of the time-burnished machinery of the law and half a dozen extremely well-trained and well-paid lawyers. The ball-of-burning-gas idea, like the lump-of-rock, mouse and word hypotheses, basically relies on blind faith; and, if you’re going to believe in something, the word is a far more elegant and intellectually pleasing choice than a boulder or a fireball.
Even more elegant, not to mention more democratic and egalitarian, would be to say that they’re all true. If we posit a multiverse rather than a mere universe, it’s not only possible but logically inevitable. In multiverse theory, everything exists (somewhere, over the rainbow, presumably, but the best academic authorities have yet to tackle the issue); the only limitation on perfect clarity is our limited ability to imagine. But, just because we can’t conceive of a functional word – or mouse-originated universe, that doesn’t mean to say it isn’t out there somewhere, six degrees up and three left from the indigo band. That’d be like saying that a black cat in a coal cellar doesn’t exist until we turn the light on.
He woke up on a rocky plateau overlooking a dark blue lake. Overhead, a white sun blazed in a cloudless sky. For some reason he was wearing what looked like a pilot’s flight suit. His head hurt.
He stood up, felt dizzy and sat down again. That bloody woman, he thought. Drink up your coffee before it gets cold.
Standing up was a little bit easier the second time. He looked around, but there was nothing to see except blue water on one side and brown rock on the other. No doughnut vendors anywhere.
Why the hell had she done it? Payback, because he’d left her stranded on the beach with Amanda? A plausible enough hypothesis, except she wouldn’t have had time, surely; she’d only been gone a few minutes, to refill the coffee pot. Long enough, he decided. And there was no need to speculate in depth about her motivation in marooning him, because he’d done precisely the same thing to her, not so long ago. A spectacularly dumb move on his part, he couldn’t help thinking, except that at the time he’d been so angry –
In the distance he could just hear a faint sound of voices. So that was all right, then. In a moment, when he’d caught his breath and finished thinking murderous thoughts about Matasuntha (he didn’t want to have to rush that part) he could stroll over and find the statutory doughnut seller, and then he could leave. No problem.
That was, of course, the difference. He knew how to get home, and she knew he knew. He’d left her to figure it out for herself, and she’d only made it back by sheer fluke. Considered in that light, her stranding him here was little more than a prank, and he probably deserved it. In fact, he was only feeling angry because she’d made a fool out of him. How she’d laugh when he got back – in her terms, a fraction of a second after he’d left – and how helpful it’d be to their working relationship (he told himself) if he took the joke in good part. Query: would he feel this way if she hadn’t kissed him before he went off to face the old man and his idiot grandson? He thought about that, and decided not to think about it any m
ore.
He yawned. It was really quite pleasant here. The sun was bright, the rocks were warm and the blue water of the lake was crystal-clear. You could spend a lot of money and waste many, many hours being publically humiliated in airports and end up at far worse places. A beach umbrella and a long, cool drink would be nice. He wished for them, but that didn’t seem to work. Well, it wouldn’t, would it? Once you were here, the experience was real. That was the whole point.
A cool breeze, just enough to be refreshing, blew across the lake, ruffling the surface. Because time didn’t pass inside YouSpace, he could stay here as long as he liked and lose no time at all. He lay back on the rock and absorbed sunlight like a lizard for a while. There would definitely be a public demand for this product, he decided, if it could be made to work safely and reliably. Or even if it couldn’t, he reflected; after all, Microsoft did OK, and their stuff –
The voices were getting closer. Damn, he thought. He was enjoying the solitude, and a large party of tourists would spoil the mood. He looked round. It was a huge lake; plenty of space for them and for him, without anybody having to share. He stood up, but he couldn’t see anyone. The voices were coming from just over the horizon, where a gently inclined sand dune slouched against the sky. From the top of the dune, he ought to be able to see where the tourists (Germans, probably, or Italians, if the racket was anything to go by) were coming from.
The sand was a bit awkward to walk on, but he made the top of the dune without undue effort and looked across a wide valley. About two hundred yards away was a cornfield, on the edge of which he could make out tiny figures. They didn’t seem to be heading his way. In fact, they seemed to be happily engaged in playing in the corn; an odd thing to do, even for holidaymakers. His curiosity piqued, he set off down the slope to get a closer look.
Halfway down, he made out an interesting sight: a red and white striped awning, in the middle of nowhere. As an old YouSpace hand, he reckoned he knew what that was: the local doughnut outlet. Not a bad idea, he told himself, to get his doughnut now, while he thought of it, just in case there was a problem. He altered course a few degrees and headed for the doughnut stall.
He’d covered half the distance when it occurred to him to look back towards the cornfield. He could see the people rather more clearly now. There was something weird about them. For one thing, they were dressed oddly. He stopped for a more deliberate view. They looked like actors or fashion models – they were all young, strikingly tall and uniformly blond – but for some reason best known to themselves they were dressed up as cavemen. Also, they weren’t playing in the cornfield. They were robbing it.
Curious behaviour. They were grabbing handfuls of wheat ears and stuffing them in their mouths. There was, of course, some logical explanation, probably involving a New Age colony or a music video, but the image was disturbing enough to make him quicken his pace towards the doughnut stall. After all, the werewolf scenario had seemed normal enough until the full moon butted in and spoiled everything. He’d had a nice relaxing half-hour, he decided, and it was time to go. No point in ruining an otherwise pleasant experience by hanging around too long or getting involved.
He broke into a gentle trot and arrived at the doughnut stall very slightly out of breath. Under the shade of the awning he could see a long trestle table covered with trays of doughnuts, eclairs, cream horns, buns, cupcakes and flapjacks, which reminded him that he’d skipped a meal or so recently. He couldn’t see a stallholder, so he reached for the nearest doughnut –
Something slammed against the side of his head, and he dropped forward, banging his chin on the edge of the table as he fell. The world had gone all soft and runny, and he heard a voice, above and behind him.
“Damn humans.” The voice sounded more weary than angry. “It’s time they did something.”
“In broad daylight too.”
Um, he thought, but he wasn’t up to doing anything more energetic than lying still and groaning.
“It’s wearing clothes.”
“I swear they’re getting worse.” He heard the sound of a cellphone being dialled. “Hello? Put me through to Pest Control, will you? Thanks, I’ll hold.”
“Never seen one in clothes before.”
It wasn’t sounding good. With a substantial effort, he wriggled round and saw two animals.
No he didn’t. At first glance he’d taken them for animals, but that was because he’d just had his brains shaken up by a powerful blow to the head. Not animals. The word zoomorph floated into his mind from somewhere (he couldn’t help being impressed at his own resilience; how many people could come up with zoomorph a few seconds after being bashed stupid?) Animal-shaped, but not animals as such. More like –
“Look out, it’s coming round.”
Cuddly toys. Two of them. One of them was bear-sized and sort of bear-shaped, except that no bear ever looked anything like that, or ever had fur that distinctly unnatural shade of orangey-lemon, or wore a little red jacket two sizes two small for its shoulders, or had eyebrows. By the same token, the other one wasn’t a tiger, because tigers don’t stand upright, or have anomalously humanoid jaws and pink noses. That was it, he suddenly realised; that was what was so terribly wrong. They weren’t just unnatural, or anatomically impossible. They were cute.
“Yes, hello?” The tiger was talking into a phone pressed to its ridiculously implausible ear. “Yes, I’m calling from the doughnut stand at BY129865, we’ve got a rogue human, could you send a team to—? Right, yes. Only, hurry, will you? We’ve got it cornered, but it looks pretty lively. And…” The tiger hesitated. “It’s wearing clothes. Yes, really. OK. Thanks.”
Then Theo recognised the voice, and it was as though a door had opened, or a light had come on. He knew these creatures. He’d known them all his life.
“Tigger?” he said. “Pooh?”
The bear nearly jumped out of its skin. The tiger froze. “It’s talking,” it whispered.
“Like hell it is,” the bear replied, in a high, brittle voice. “It’s just barking.”
“It said our names.”
Slowly and cautiously, the bear reached out and grabbed a hammer. “Some of them can do that,” it said, trying to sound casual and failing dismally. “People train them to repeat names and simple phrases. My cousin Paddington had one once that could sing all four verses of ‘Bear Necessities’. Didn’t mean it could talk, though. Didn’t make it intelligent.”
The tiger was grimly maintaining eye contact. “If it moves,” it said, “bash its head in.”
This isn’t right, Theo told himself, it’s people dressed up in costumes, like at Disneyland. But he knew instinctively that there was nothing even remotely human under the fur. Another memory stirred; a film, this time. His mouth was completely dry, as if he’d slept with it open.
Behind him, he could hear screams, and gunshots. The bear relaxed. “It’s the patrol,” it said. “They’ll be here in two shakes.”
“You think they’ll be able to catch it?”
“Maybe. Or maybe they’ll just shoot it, who gives a damn?”
I do, Theo thought, and remembered he was a scientist and a mathematician. Let x, therefore, be the time needed for a hammer y held in the paw of a bear P to move the distance Z between the bear’s chest and the head of a human T moving from A to B. Assuming an average speed s for the hammer and s1 for the human –
He did the equation, and got the result s1 = 2.16 metres/second. He wasn’t sure he could move that fast, but it was probably worth a try.
“Hey, it’s getting away!” the tiger yelled as he streaked past. He felt the slipstream of the hammer just behind his ear, but not the hammer itself. He ran.
As he powered up the slope, he realised his tactical error. Instead of running away, he should’ve lunged forward, towards the doughnuts. Damn. There was, however, no chance of going back. Obese and anatomically unworkable it might have been, but the bear had amazingly fast reflexes. Without the element of surprise and the a
dditional element of horrified bewilderment, he’d never have made it past them. He put his head down and made himself run faster, until he reached the top of the slope, where he lost his footing in the soft sand, slipped and fell. Hauling himself to his feet, he looked up and saw –
The humans on the edge of the cornfield were under attack. A dozen enormous jet-black mice, on horseback, were riding round them, shooting from the saddle with carbines. Some of the mice wore red trousers, the others had blue dresses and enormous pink ribbons on top of their heads. The humans were screaming, scattering wildly as the mice pressed home their charge. One or two of them fell and didn’t get up.
Disneyland, Theo thought. Oh shit.
Over to his left he heard a mechanical rattle, the sort of noise you get when you rack the action of an automatic rifle. He turned and saw a horse standing a few yards away. On its back was a huge black mouse, blue-skirted and pink-ribboned. It was looking straight at him down the barrel of its gun.
“No,” he yelled. “Minnie, no!”
The mouse froze. A slow frown creased its incongruously pink forehead. Theo opened his mouth to shout again, but something hit him so hard he was knocked off his feet. The sound wave, moving appreciably slower than the bullet, reached him just before he blacked out.
His head hurt.
He opened his eyes and saw that he was in a cage; wrist-thick bamboo poles lashed together with rope. Very gently he put his hand to the side of his head. His hair was sticky.
Across the room, on the other side of the bars, an enormous duck was sitting on a stool. It wore a blue sailor jacket and a bonnet with dangling ribbons, and it was nursing a rifle. It was looking past him, as if trying very, very hard not to see him.
“Excuse me,” Theo said.
He could’ve sworn he saw the duck wince ever so slightly. Apart from that, it didn’t move, just carried on staring dead ahead as though its life depended on it.
“Um, excuse me. Donald, isn’t it?”
This time, he saw the duck’s hand-like wing tighten on the grip of its gun, and maybe its huge oval eyes widened a little; anyway, they hadn’t blinked once. All in all, he got the impression of a duck determinedly not hearing voices coming from a human in a cage. The plan he’d been working on withered and died. This wasn’t a duck that could be reasoned with.