by Tom Holt
Theo lowered his hand. “I understand,” he said. “And I’m sorry, I didn’t think. Thank you,” he said. “You’re a true scientist, Eeyore.”
The donkey’s lower lip quivered. “You’re just saying that because I sacrificed everything to save your worthless life.”
“Yes.”
“Think nothing of it,” the donkey said gravely. “Well, so long.”
Theo turned quickly away and plunged into the cave. It was dark, and it took him a while for his eyes to adjust. Eventually he saw a rocky floor and a roof fringed with stalactites. And a suitcase.
He blinked. It was a nice suitcase; pigskin, with chromed buckles. It had been around. There were scuff marks, and a couple of flight labels. On the lid, level with the handle, were initials in gold: MCB.
The C stood for Cornelius.
A little voice in his head said: I really wish I wasn’t wearing a pink nappy at this point. He ignored it, cleared his throat and said, “Max?”
No reply. He took a step forward and tried to open the suitcase, but it was locked. He sighed and, feeling suddenly and comprehensively weary, sat down on the floor.
“Theo.”
He jumped up and spun round. A tall, thin figure stepped out of the shadows at the back of the cave. There was a sudden dazzling flare of flame, clouded by drifting blue smoke. The man had lit a cigar.
“Max?”
“Hi, Theo. What kept you?”
Max stepped forward. He was wearing an elegant white silk suit, a white shirt and two-tone fawn and brown shoes. His hair – a trifle longer than it used to be – was beautifully cut and combed, but uniformly silver-grey. It suited him, of course. Everything always suited Max. If he slipped and fell in a slurry pit, it’d only be a matter of time before slurry started featuring heavily in the latest collections from Diesel and Ralph Lauren. A cigar the size of a torpedo jutted out of the corner of his mouth.
“Max.”
“Theo.”
“You fucking evil fucking bastard,” Theo said. “Why aren’t you dead?”
Max removed the cigar and smiled at him. “Pleased to see you too, Theo. And don’t call me a bastard, it’s disrespectful to our mother.” He took a long pull on the cigar and threw it away. “What is that thing you’re wearing? It looks like a—”
“Max.”
“Yes, I think we’ve established that. Sit down, for crying out loud, and have a drink.”
Without looking, Theo backed away until he tripped and landed on his backside. Max leaned back into the shadows and produced a canvas director’s chair, in which he perched gracefully. From his inside pocket he drew a silver flask. “Remy Martin,” he said, unscrewing the cap. “You can’t get it here, of course, so I’m having to make it last. No? Suit yourself.” He took a neat swig from the flask and put it away. “Well,” he said, “I’d like to say how good you’re looking.” He frowned. “But I’m addicted to the truth, so I can’t. You look like shit. How’s Amanda?”
It took Theo a moment to remember the name. “She left me.”
“Pity. She was too good for you, of course.”
“How the hell do you know about Amanda? You died before we got married.”
“I try and take an interest,” Max replied. “Also, I’m not dead.” He yawned, and took out a cigar case. “I tried to call you but you weren’t there.”
“Max, you complete shit,” Theo said gently, “what are you doing here?”
Max lit his cigar with a gold Zippo. “I guess you could say resting. That’s what actors call it, when they can’t get a job. Fortunately—” He puffed at the cigar. “My needs are few and simple. The Seven Dwarves bring me food.” He smiled. “They seem to have got it into their heads that I’m Walt Disney, which makes me sort of like God in their eyes. Of course they’re sworn to secrecy, so they won’t tell the others. And the donkey knows about me, of course. I like him, he’s a doll.” Smoke streamed down through his nostrils. “I expect you’d like me to tell you how I got here.”
“I think you should,” Theo replied. “And then I can kill you.”
Max smiled indulgently. “You’re just saying that,” he said. “Well, let’s see, where to begin?”
“How about my favourite part? The bit where you died.”
“Ah, but I didn’t.” Max smiled. “That was just make-believe. You may recall, I’d got myself into a bit of a jam.”
“You faked your own death.”
Max opened his mouth, put a finger under his top lip and lifted it to show a gap. “I keep getting false ones fitted,” he said, “but every time I move somewhere new, they vanish. No dentists here, of course, or at least not human ones. Actually, I don’t think they have teeth here. In fact, you hardly ever see them eat. And I don’t think they ever shit. Probably don’t have the right plumbing.”
“You faked your death,” Theo repeated. “Then what?”
Max sighed and tipped ash from his cigar. “Well, I was at a bit of a loose end, really. My family had more or less disowned me.” He gave Theo a reproachful look. “I couldn’t really trust any of my so-called friends not to give me away to the bad guys. All I could think of was Pieter van Goyen. He’d always liked me, you know. I wasn’t sure what he could do for me – like, college professors don’t have a lot of money – but I had this feeling that a smart guy like that would be able to think of something. And he did.”
“YouSpace.”
Max shook his head. “We decided not to call it that,” he said. “Too sort of bland. But yes. Or, at least, the first prototype of the technology that’d lead to YouSpace. Pieter warned me, he said it was all mostly theoretical and there was no way of being sure it’d work, let alone getting me back again. But I didn’t really have too many options at that juncture. So I said yes, please, and off I went.”
His cigar had gone out. He paused to relight it, then went on: “In retrospect, I was really lucky. I mean, I could’ve landed up anywhere. But where I ended up was this kind of cute agrarian idyll, sort of like Switzerland only warmer. A peasant family took me in, fed me and looked after me and all. I stayed there for about three months. But then there was a spot of trouble.”
Theo waited a few seconds, then asked, “What?”
“The daughter got pregnant. Shame, she was a nice kid. Anyhow, I had to get out of there in a hurry, so I wandered around for a bit, ended up in a biggish town, got a job in a bank. Well, they called it a bank. It was all pretty medieval. Abacuses instead of computers, you know? I did my best to fly straight, but I guess the temptation was too much for me. I’m forced to conclude I have a rather low temptation threshold. Not my fault, I was born that way.”
“You stole from the bank.”
Max shrugged. “I’d been a tad unlucky playing cards at the tavern,” he said, “and, really, it was like taking candy from a kid. Only some bastard must’ve told on me, because they found out and I landed up in jail. That was bad,” Max added, with a shiver. “Positively medieval. Well, I had a bit of the money still stashed away, but when I tried to make a deal with the warders, they couldn’t understand what I was talking about. Do you know, in that universe they had no idea of the concept of bribery and corruption?”
“You soon taught them, though.”
“You bet. Once they’d caught on, they thought it was a great idea. After that, I travelled for a while. You know me. Restless.”
“One jump ahead of disaster, you mean.”
“Restless,” Max repeated firmly. “I hate to vegetate. Actually, I’d hooked up with this sort of band of pirates when Pieter found me. He’d figured out the next step in the technology, you see; a stable gateway.”
Theo frowned. “What, you mean like horses could go in and out?”
“Stable,” Max said sternly, “as in staying put for more than ninety seconds. So, first thing he did was come and look for me. It took him a while, but he was able to trace me by scanning the resonance pulses for my unique molecular key. Just as well he showed up when he did,
actually, because by then the pirates were sort of miffed at me, for some reason.”
“People can be so unreasonable,” Theo muttered darkly. “What did you do, lose their ship in a poker game?”
“Anyway,” Max went on, “Pieter gave me this.” From his jacket pocket he produced a bottle. At first glance, it looked like one of those miniatures you get in hotel minibars and on planes. When Theo looked more closely, however, he saw there was a tiny little globe floating near the neck of the bottle. If he peered really close, he could just make out Australia.
“Cute, isn’t it?” Max said. “The globe is in fact the acceleration chamber. Originally it was going to be a clock, and the particle diffuser was going to be a little cuckoo that came out on a spring. But the first time he tried it, the cuckoo accelerated to three times light speed and shot down a News International satellite on its way out of planetary orbit. The bottle’s safer.”
“That’s a—” He realised there was no technical term, and for a moment he was struck dumb. A scientist without jargon is like a glider on a still day. “A YouSpace module,” he improvised. “Like the one I’ve got.”
Max’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve got one?”
“Well, yes. Pieter left it to me in his will.”
“Pieter’s dead?”
Years ago, Theo had been trapped at the bar at a conference by an obnoxious semiconductor expert who insisted on telling him about a strip club in Amsterdam where the girls all wore shimmery sort-of-thin-stuff (the right word was diaphanous, but Theo couldn’t be bothered to tell him) dresses; and when the lighting guy did some clever thing with the overhead spots, the light changed direction and it was as though they weren’t wearing anything at all. Annoyingly, that was what Max reminded him of at that particular moment; the angle had shifted just a little, and suddenly there was Max, deprived of his layers of camouflage and armour, a small, frightened man who’s just realised that the last bus has left without him. “Yes,” Theo said. “Didn’t you know?”
“He can’t be. I saw him only a week ago.”
“I saw him die,” Theo replied quietly. “He was killed by space aliens in a bar. They shot him with a ray gun. There was nothing left.”
“My God,” Max said. “And you’re sure it was…?”
“Him? Oh yes. Remember, I knew him much longer than you did. It was Pieter all right. The real Pieter. He’s dead all right.”
“Christ,” Max said. “That’s bad. You know what that means?”
“His second Nobel prize will have to be posthumous?”
“I’m stuck here, is what it means,” Max said furiously. “I can’t get out. That thing” – he jabbed a finger at the miniature bottle – “has packed up, it doesn’t work any more. Brilliant for holding ten cc’s of the liquid of your choice, fuck-all use for anything else.” Suddenly he frowned, then turned his head and stared at Theo with a desperate look on his face. “Just a minute, what am I saying? You got here, right? So, you must have a working YouSpace bottle. Well?”
“Yes.”
“There you are, then.” Joyfully, Max punched his left palm with his right fist. “You can get us both out of here. I always knew there was some purpose to your existence.”
“Not got it with me, though.”
“What?”
Theo smiled at him. “Matasuntha – you know her? Right, fine. Matasuntha put knockout drops in my coffee and stranded me here. The only way I can get back again is if I look through the hole in a doughnut.”
A tragic look appeared on Max’s face. “Theo, please,” he said, “don’t crack up on me now, you’re all I’ve got. What are you talking about?”
“A doughnut,” Theo repeated calmly. “Or, apparently, a bagel, though I haven’t tried that yet. And don’t ask me how or why, but it does work. You hold it like this.” He mimed holding up a doughnut. “And you look through the hole in the middle, and, bang, you’re home.”
Max’s face had crumpled into a little sad mask. “Theo, if you’re jerking me around, so help me I’ll strangle you. A doughnut.”
Theo nodded. “Apparently it’s sort of hardwired into the OS that, wherever I go, there’s always a shop or a stall selling doughnuts within easy walking distance of where I arrive. Actually, that’s true, at least so far. There was one here.”
“So? Why didn’t you—?”
“Staffed by Disney creatures,” Theo said. “They called the police, or whatever the killer mice are supposed to be. That’s how I got caught.”
“You idiot,” Max said sadly, and for a split second Theo actually felt guilty, until he remembered who he was talking to. “Doughnuts, for crying out loud. I’ve been here over a year and I’ve never seen any doughnuts.”
Theo shrugged. “Get your dwarf buddies to bring you some,” he said.
“I could ask them, I guess,” Max said doubtfully. “Mostly they bring bread and cheese. You have no idea how heartily sick I am of bread and cheese. Tell you what,” he went on, “soon as we get back, you’re going to buy me a five-course dinner at Delmonico’s. I can tell you right now what I’ll have, I’ll start with the—”
“You’ll be lucky,” Theo interrupted him. “I’m broke.”
“Bullshit. You got my share of Dad’s money as well as your own.”
“Ah,” Theo said, and told him about Schliemann Brothers. Max stared at him for a moment, then uttered a long, low groan. “You moron,” he said. “Of all the half-witted—”
“Max—”
“All right.” Max sat up straight and clenched his hands into fists. “Us fighting won’t help anything, let’s just concentrate on getting out of here, and then we’ll figure out what to do.” He frowned, then said, “How about Janine? She hasn’t lost her share, has she?”
“No. In fact, she’s—”
“That’s OK, then,” Max said. “Janine’ll see me right, she always liked me best. So, doughnuts.” He clasped his hands together, index fingers pressed to the sides of his nose; his habitual thinking pose. It always made you think you were in the presence of genius in action, which shows how gullible people can be. “In case the dwarves can’t provide, we need a Plan B. You say there’s a doughnut stall close to where you came in?”
“Yes, but there are these psychotic Disney animals—”
“For Christ’s sake, Theo, don’t be such a worrywart. You always did make such a fuss about doing the simplest little thing. No wonder Dad used to get so mad at you all the time.”
“Dad did not—”
Max raised his hand. “Not to mention,” he said reproachfully, “always having to have the last word. I guess it was unrealistic of me to imagine you’d have changed since I saw you last. Still, you ought to try. You owe it to yourself.”
“Max.” Theo stood up slowly. “You know, I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure about this parallel-universe-alternate-reality thing. I don’t see how it could possibly work.”
Max sighed. “Theo,” he said, “this is not the time for—”
“Because,” Theo went on firmly, “if multiverse theory is right and there really are an infinite number of realities out there someplace, then somewhere there’d have to be a universe where you aren’t a shallow, self-obsessed, feckless, obnoxious, arrogant, poisonous little shit. And I just can’t believe in that. Moons made of green cheese and worlds supported in the branches of giant ash trees, yes. A bearable Max, no way. It’s just not possible. So long.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get a couple of doughnuts, where d’you think?”
“Fine,” Max grunted, relighting his cigar. “Don’t be all day about it.”
Outside, the sun was skin-flayingly bright and hot, conspiring with the white sand to burn the inside of his eyelids red raw. He stomped along the beach for a while, trying to remember which way he’d come, until he came to a massive outcrop of rock jutting out almost to the edge of the sea. He walked round it, and saw a statue.
Once, he guessed, it must’ve been twic
e the size, but drifting sand had buried it up to its waist. It was a mouse: twenty feet tall, with circular ears and a cute button nose the size of a diving bell, its lips drawn back in a frozen, sneering grin, its long, elliptical eyes scoured blank by centuries of drifting sand and sea spray. Theo stood and gazed at it for a moment, then shrugged, gave it the finger and trudged on.
After an unspecified time, he staggered, dropped to his knees and rolled over on to his side, unable to go any further. The sea was only a yard or so away, and it looked cool and soothing; he wriggled across to it crab-fashion and plunged his aching feet into the water. The salt bit into the cracks and scratches; the pain startled him out of a vague, resigned doze he’d begun to drift into, and probably just as well. Falling asleep out in the open under a sun that hot would be one way of ending all his troubles, but there might still be a better one.
There was something bobbing in the water, a yard or so out. He watched it for a while, unable to summon up the mental energy to identify it. Then a wave lifted it a little, and he realised it was a bottle. That made him laugh out loud. It would be perfect, he decided, if there was a message in it, but of course there wouldn’t be. It was just a bottle: junk, litter, pollution. If he was home, or if he gave a damn about this rotten planet, he’d feel a spurt of moral indignation about that. Right now, though, he simply couldn’t be bothered.
But the bottle stayed roughly where it was, bobbing energetically up and down like a dog with its lead in its mouth, demanding to be taken for a walk. A bottle, he thought. Actually, a useful commodity. Fairly soon he was going to get dehydrated. If by some miracle he found a source of fresh water, a bottle would come in handy. Groaning self-indulgently (but why not? Nobody there to see) he crawled into the delightfully cool water and reached out until his fingers closed around the bottle’s neck. He lifted it up and looked through it. There was something inside.
A message in a bottle. Oh please.
On the other hand, why the hell not? He unscrewed the cap and shook the bottle; the wedge of brown paper slid forward and lodged in the neck. He looked around for something to winkle it out with, but the seashore was depressingly short on toolkits. In fact, the only artefact beside the bottle within visual range was Piglet’s nappy, secured with a safety pin…