by Tom Holt
The pressure on his elbow relaxed slightly, allowing a tiny trickle of blood to squeeze down into Theo’s almost completely numb forearm. “Where is this?” Theo repeated. “I don’t recognise it.”
“This is my daughter’s house,” Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz said. “It’ll be your place of work from now on. Sorry, didn’t I tell you? You’re working for me now. After all, someone’s got to keep you on the ball. You’re very bright and a good physicist, but you lack focus.”
“You can’t do that,” Theo yelped. “You can’t just steal me.”
“Why not? Besides, it’s not stealing. You don’t belong to anyone.”
“I belong to me.”
“You don’t count. Also, you want to help. You want to get Max back. He’s your brother.”
They train dogs easily enough. Go about it the right way and you can transform a tail-wagging, face-licking man’s best friend into an implacable killing machine just by saying one word. But you couldn’t do that with humans, surely.
Maybe you could. It would all depend, presumably, on the word. Three letters, proper noun, beginning with M, rhymes with ‘fax’ –
“Screw Max. The hell with Max. I hope they catch him and feed him to the cuddly warthog from The Lion King. May meerkats feast on his decomposing—”
He stopped, but only because Lunchbox had stuck a sandwich in his mouth. It took him three seconds to choke and another two seconds to spit it out, by which time his fury had abated a little, and curiosity had elbowed its way in front of the mic. “What do you care about my useless brother, anyhow? Why is everybody obsessed with that lying, swindling, pathetic—?”
Lunchbox sighed tragically and produced another sandwich. Theo took the hint and lifted his free hand in token of surrender. And noticed something.
Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz was way ahead of him. “It’s back,” she said. “Your invisible hand.”
“No, that’s not—” Theo stared at it, then shook his head. “We’re still in a YouSpace world, aren’t we?” he said. “You’re playing games with me.”
“Wait just a moment. You’ll see.”
Theo’s eyes were still fixed on his hand. Was it just his imagination, or was it getting paler? White, pearly white like a light bulb, translucent. “No!” he wailed, but it was no good. He could see the opposite wall through the outline of his metacarpal.
“Radiation,” Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz said. “You did know that, didn’t you? That’s what happened to it when the hadron collider blew up. I imagine when you heard the blast or saw the flash, you instinctively raised your hand to shield your face. Which, on reflection, was probably just as well, or else your normal blank expression would’ve been blanker still.”
“That’s right, I—” Theo’s head snapped up, and he stared at her. “Radiation?”
She nodded slowly. “Rather a stiff dose, I’m afraid. As far as living on borrowed time is concerned, you’re the oncological equivalent of the Eurozone. However – oh, pull yourself together, for pity’s sake.”
Theo looked at her, but all he could see through the tears was a sort of blurry, splodgy mass. “However?”
“That—” She nodded at his hand, which was now just a cartoon outline sticking out of his shirt cuff. “That is an extremely hopeful sign. You see, every time you translocate to an alternative reality, a portion of the radioactive contamination is leeched out of your system. One or two more trips, and—” She shrugged. “No guarantees,” she said. “This is all practically unexplored territory, medically speaking. But it’s your best chance. After all, why else do you think Pieter left you the YouSpace technology?”
Theo’s head had been doing a lot of swimming lately, enough for it to be in serious contention for the 2016 Olympics. This one, though, had it doing butterfly stroke. “Pieter knew—”
“Of course he did. How do you suppose I know about it? Because Pieter told me. It was his way of making it up to you.”
Dead silence, apart from the strange, otherworldly sound of Lunchbox eating a Jaffa Cake. “Making it up to me for what, exactly?”
“For blowing up the Very Very Large Hadron Collider.”
“Um, no. Other way round, surely. It was me who blew up the VVLHC.”
“No.”
“Yes. It was me. Really it was. I moved the decimal place—”
The rest of the sentence melted away, like snow on a hot flue. What was it, Theo couldn’t help wondering, about this woman, anyhow? She had a knack of making him feel like he was five years old and had just flushed the keys to Daddy’s new Mercedes down the toilet. All she’d done was press her lips a tiny bit closer together and, well, look at him, and he felt a sudden urge to sit down and write out I Must Not Talk In Class five hundred times.
“My mistake,” she said eventually. “I said just now you were a good physicist. Obviously not.”
“That’s right. That’s why I blew up the—”
“You did not blow up the Very Very Large Hadron Collider. Oh, for crying out loud,” she added impatiently, “did it never occur to you to check the figures? Yes, you made a boo-boo with your sums. Yes, you moved the decimal point the wrong way. But if you’d bothered to go back and do the maths again, you’d have realised your mistake wasn’t anything like enough to blow the whole shooting match. The worst that would’ve happened was it’d have tripped a fuse and knocked it out for a day or so. Arthur, you can let go of him now. I think he’s changed his mind about wanting to run away.”
Lunchbox let go of Theo’s arm, which lolled bonelessly from his elbow and dangled, unnoticed. “But that’s not right,” Theo said weakly. “I mean, I—”
She was right, though. Even as he’d been speaking, his mind had been running the calculations, and she was right. There had been three fail-safes and two redundant systems standing between his misplaced dot and total meltdown. He’d been so quick to assume that it had been his fault, he hadn’t even considered them. “Hold on,” he whispered. “If I didn’t—”
She looked at him and didn’t say a word.
“Pieter?”
She nodded.
“No. No, I’m sorry, but that’s just impossible. Pieter may be a bit of a jerk sometimes, and slightly more self-centred than a centrifuge, but he could never make a mistake like—”
“It wasn’t a mistake.”
Lunchbox ate a sausage roll, two Garibaldi biscuits and an apple. Then Theo said, “What?”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz said. “It was deliberate. He needed to find out the maximum acceleration stress factor for the antigravitic buffers before he could use the same technology for the single-use module project. The wine cellar,” she translated helpfully. “Anyhow, the only way to do that was by destruct testing. So, he blew up the VVLHC.” She smiled at him. “And blamed it on you.”
The top of Theo’s head was a tooth, and his brain was an abscess. “No.”
Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz shrugged gracefully. “It’s the truth,” she said. “And I know it’s true, because Pieter told me so himself. All your misery and unhappiness, the shame, the disgrace, your wife leaving you, the whole thing, is all Pieter’s fault. All of it.”
“No.” He wanted to hit her, and presumably it showed, because Lunchbox hurriedly gulped down half a cherry Bakewell and flexed his long fingers. Theo didn’t notice. “And even if you’re right, it wasn’t all his fault. I mean, it wasn’t Pieter that made Schliemann Brothers go bust.”
She cleared her throat. “Actually,” she said, “yes, it was. Schliemanns had lent twelve billion dollars to a private consortium working on a roughly similar project to Pieter’s. When the VVLHC blew up, the other backers pulled out, the consortium folded and Schliemanns had to file for bankruptcy. Two birds with one stone, as far as Pieter was concerned. He got his test results and put his only rivals out of business, and you took the blame, got irradiated and lost all the money you inherited from your father. He’s smart, my brother.”
Enough is enough. With
a wail of horrified fury, Theo lunged at her. She sidestepped neatly, and for a moment he seemed to hang in the air, like Tom the cat in the cartoons when he runs off a cliff. Then Lunchbox hit him over the head with a solid-steel thermos full of French onion soup, and for a while all his troubles seemed so far away.
PART FIVE
One Empty San Miguel Bottle To Bring Them All And In The Darkness Bind Them
Subconsciously, he didn’t want to wake up. What, me, his inner being said to his awareness-of-self, go back out there and deal with all that weird, crazy shit, when I could stay in here where it’s nice and snug and nobody wants to tell me anything or make me do stuff that screws up my world view to the core? Get lost, said his inner being. Go pester someone who gives a damn.
But, apparently, he had no say in the matter; and so, some indeterminate time later, he opened his eyes and –
(He’s smart, my brother. Oh boy.)
– saw a pair of flowery chintz curtains drawn across a window, set in a wall with brightly coloured wallpaper figured with nursery rhyme characters. There, for example, was Humpty Dumpty, sitting on a wall, looking uncannily like Dick Cheney; there were the three little pigs in their house of straw, on the point of finding out that good ventilation isn’t always an unalloyed blessing; there was Mary and her lamb, and –
He pulled his arm out from under the sheets and stared at it. Not visible. So he was in his native reality, at least. Small mercies.
“How are you feeling?”
The voice came from his left, and he was horribly afraid he knew who it belonged to. He rolled over, sighed and said, “You.”
The old man beamed at him and nodded. “Young Art’s just nipped out to get a bite to eat,” he said, “so I’m kind of minding the store, so to speak. Talking of which,” the old man went on, “I do hope you’re not going to get violent again, because I am authorised to use lethal force if absolutely necessary.”
“What do you—?”
“Sorry.” The old man tugged at something in his ear. “Hearing aid’s playing up,” he explained. “Say again?”
“What do you mean, lethal – forget it,” Theo sighed. “Look, where am I? What the hell is going on?”
The old man gave him a sympathetic half-smile half-frown. “Sorry,” he said. “Need-to-know basis, that is. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“You’d have to—”
“Say what?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Theo said, and let his head rest gently against the pillows. They were wonderfully soft, perhaps the most luxurious things he’d ever felt. A person could go to sleep, lying on pillows as soft as that.
“Art wanted me to tell you, he’s really sorry he had to hit you like that.”
“Why? Did he spill his soup?”
“He’s a good boy. Mr Bernstein, really he is,” the old man said passionately. “He’s not usually violent, you know, in fact he’s very sensitive and creative. You should see the drawings he done when he was a kid. Trees and sheep and all that. His mum’s still got them stuck up on her fridge.”
He rubbed the back of his head with his invisible hand. “Sure,” he said. “Quite the young Damian Hirst. Where does he put it all, by the way? He should be fat as a pig.”
“It’s his glands,” the old man said sadly. “They never been right, his glands, but he never complains.”
“How could he? His mouth’s always full of sandwiches.”
The old man couldn’t bring himself to answer that, and looked away. So did Theo, who was scanning his immediate environment for something he could use as a weapon. The old man looked reasonably harmless, but Theo had seen enough martial arts movies to know that the deadliest fighters on the planet are doddery ninety-year-old Chinese. The old man didn’t look Chinese, but the way his luck had been running lately, he wasn’t inclined to take chances. Unfortunately, the most lethal object within arm’s reach was a large pink stuffed rabbit, with a satin bow round its neck and a sort of twisted Anthony Perkins look on its face that sent a cold shiver down Theo’s spine. So what. Necessity is the mother of invention, which probably explains why invention’s father left home on the pretext of buying a newspaper and hasn’t been heard of since.
“So,” Theo said, “where exactly are we? Oh, I forgot, you can’t tell me that.”
“Sorry, Mr Bernstein.”
“How about telling me who you’re working for?”
“Sorry, Mr Bernstein.”
“Well, I know the answer to that one. Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz, obviously. You had enough of my sister, then.”
“No comment.”
“God knows I don’t blame you. She was bad enough when she was ten. Tried to letterbomb the local zoo as a protest against man’s inhumanity to small furry animals. Would’ve succeeded too, except she hadn’t quite appreciated that not all fertilisers make good explosives. What they got was an improvised timing device strapped to a bottle of Baby Bio.”
“That’s very sad, Mr Bernstein. Probably she was unhappy at home.”
“No more so than the rest of us,” Theo replied, yawning and stretching, and in the process grabbing the horrible rabbit with his invisible hand. “My mother had the good sense to clear out, but the rest of us were stuck there: me, Janine, Max and Dad. It wasn’t a good combination. We got complaints from the vipers’ nest next door saying we lowered the tone of the neighbourhood.”
“Is that right?”
“You bet.” Slowly, without breaking eye contact, he dragged the rabbit under the covers. “On balance, I guess Max was the worst, but Janine came pretty close, bless her. She never liked me, I don’t know why. It’s not like I ever did anything to deserve it. Quite the opposite. I was always the one trying to keep her from getting into trouble. Don’t do it, I said, you’ll regret it later, it’ll all end in tears. But Max kept egging her on.”
“Some people are funny like that, Mr Bernstein. Not me. I like everybody.”
“Me too. Well, everybody except Max. As far as Janine goes, I try very hard not to bear a grudge. Mind you, when it rains I try not to get wet, but sometimes you can’t get your coat on in time, you know?”
“I got a sister myself. We’ve always got on very well. Would you like to see some photos?”
“Freeze.” With a snake-like movement, Theo pulled Disturbed Rabbit out from under the bedclothes and thrust it at the old man as though it was a gun. “There’s an improvised explosive device hidden inside this toy,” he said. “Try anything and I’ll blow us both to hell.”
The old man frowned. “You sure, Mr Bernstein? I been here all the time and you only just woke up. There wasn’t time.”
“I work quickly.”
“Improvised out of what, exactly?”
“I’m a physicist,” Theo snarled. “It was physicists who split the atom, remember? Well, this thing’s crawling with atoms.”
“Yes, but—”
“Listen,” Theo said. “You know the Very Very Large Hadron Collider? I blew that up using nothing but a pencil and a scrap of paper. Don’t mess with me. I mean it.”
“Now then, Mr Bernstein. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“What, like rescuing my brother? No chance. That’s why I’m getting out of here. In one piece, for choice, but if not, in lots and lots of little tiny bits.” He gave the rabbit a wild shake, and its ears waggled alarmingly. “I’m going to count to three, and then—”
“All right.” The old man’s eyes were wide with fear. “Don’t blow us up, Mr Bernstein, young Art could be back any minute, I promised his mum I’d look after him. Please, Mr Bernstein.”
Grinning, Theo clambered out of bed, the rabbit gripped firmly in his outstretched hand. “I’m going now,” he said. “But first, you’re going to answer a few questions. Who are you working for?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Theo pushed the rabbit into his face. “One.”
“Mrs Duchene-watsername. Honest.”
“Thank you. Where are
we?”
“I don’t know. Really I don’t,” he added, as the rabbit’s ears danced like treetops in a gale. “I got given one of those SatNav things, it said turn left here and take the second exit, I just did like it said. Some place out in the country, is all I know.”
Theo gave him a ferocious scowl, but he was fairly sure the old man was telling the truth. “Where’s the car?”
“Round the back. Keys are in the ignition.”
“Fine. You’re a hostage. Move.”
“Mr Bernstein.”
“Don’t be a hero, old man,” Theo said. “Think of Art. Think of all the bacon sandwiches he’ll never eat if he’s blown to kingdom come.”
“It’s not that, Mr Bernstein. I just thought, you might want to get dressed first.”
A valid point. “Don’t move, all right?” Theo said. “Stay absolutely still. Don’t even breathe.”
“Right you are.”
Theo looked round. “You wouldn’t happen to know where my clothes are, would you?”
“In the wardrobe, Mr Bernstein.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
It was awkward, putting on his trousers and shirt with just the one invisible hand while brandishing Disturbed Rabbit menacingly with the other. Worth it, though. The alternative – staying put and having to cope with what he’d learned – didn’t bear thinking about. With any luck, his old job at the slaughterhouse might still be available. When he thought about it, those happy, stress-free days before he’d ever heard of YouSpace, the nostalgia was almost too much to bear. “Right,” he said, fumbling the last button into its hole, “we’re off. And don’t try anything, understood?”
“Whatever you say, Mr Bernstein.”
Theo waited for a moment, then snapped, “Move!”
“Sorry, I was waiting for you.”
“You go first. I follow you.”
“Ah, got you. Sorry. This is all new to me, I never been a hostage before.”