“Don’t be coy. You know damn well.”
“Let go of me, you big creepazoid!”
Suddenly, a startling possibility occurred to Max, and he reduced the pressure of his forearm against Hochstader’s Adam’s apple. Hochstader tore himself away and staggered to the desk, coughing and massaging his throat. Max noticed now that Hochstader looked different, at least slightly. Max couldn’t pin it down, but possibly the little squirt wasn’t so little today. Had he put on weight overnight? And the hair—shorter? And perhaps Hochstader was slightly better dressed today. Or—Could it be?
“Now,” Hochstader snarled, bracing himself with one hand on the desktop, “would you mind telling me who in the blue blazes—”
“You’re really not him, are you?” Max marveled.
“Huh?” Hochstader took a breath and closed his eyes. “I think I understand.” He went around the desk and plopped into the creaking swivel chair. “You probably had dealings with one of my alternate selves. Somehow I get the feeling the deal wasn’t to your liking.”
“Guess I owe you an apology,” Max said weakly.
Hochstader waved it off. “Forget it. Occupational hazard. Occasionally I take the heat for one of my alternates’shenanigans.”
“Sounds dangerous. I could have strangled you.”
“No kidding,” Hochstader said acidly, loosening his collar.
Max sat down in a mildewed armchair and thought. Presently he asked, “Are you for hire?”
“As your punching bag? Not likely.”
“No. I want to get back to my home world.”
“Yeah? And where is that?”
Max shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I need coordinates. Precise ones.”
Max slumped back in the chair. “Of course.”
“I’m guessing it’s a twentieth-decimal-place variant of this one. That means cutting things mighty close.”
Max began to feel very depressed. He tried to remember his mantra, but it had been years since he’d chanted it.
Hochstader seemed compelled to help in spite of himself. “Are there any landmarks you could look for?”
“Landmarks?”
“Not necessarily physical ones. A big whopping fact that could identify your world?”
Max straightened up. It was worth a try. The agency, Max 2’s agency. If he could find a world in which it didn’t exist . . .?
“Yeah, I think so,” Max said.
“Good.” Hochstader got up and walked past Max and into the other room. “Let’s get you home.”
Max followed him. “You’d do that for me?”
“To get you out of my hair, I’d carry you. Follow me.”
Max obliged, dogging Hochstader’s sneakered steps through the back room, under the arch and out into the mad scientist’s lab. And this one really looked the part. Things had been moved around, new equipment added. The place looked even more spooky than it had yesterday, and Max hadn’t thought that possible.
Hochstader got busy at the computer work station, hitting keys like a concert pianist.
Max looked over the kid’s shoulder. (Well, this Hochstader looked a bit older. Maybe 27. No, 25, tops.) He watched numbers and symbols dance on the CRT screen.
“I think we’ve got it,” Hochstader said.
“We do?”
“Yeah. Try the portal now.”
“The portal? Oh, you mean just walk back into the office?”
“Right. Go through, and you should be in a world that’s like the one you left.”
“Can I use your phone?”
“It’s not mine.”
“It’s not?” Max said as he pushed the curtain aside.
“You’ll see.”
Max passed through the back room and went out into the office.
And there, sitting at what looked like the identical desk, was another Hochstader.
“Jesus Christ,” Max gasped. “Is there no end of you?”
“Nor is there of you, pal,” Hochstader 3 said.
Max swallowed hard. “Have a phone book?” he asked quietly.
“Sure. Right here.”
Max paced frantically through it. Dumbrowsky Taylor Burke was there in bold letters.
“Damn!” Max glared at the curtain in the back room. “That little creep.”
“He’s not back there, you know,” Hochstader said.
“What do you mean? I just left him.”
“No doubt he re-tuned the portal. Go back and look.”
“I will,” Max said.
He strode to the curtain and peeked through.
The lab was there, and again it had undergone a rearrangement. Less clutter, more neatly arranged.
Hochstader 2 was nowhere in sight.
Max returned to the office. “The runt must’ve ducked out.”
“No, I told you,” Hochstader 3 said. “He and his world are gone. You’re in my world now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Max said. “You’ll do. I want to try it again.”
“Try what again?” Hochstader asked.
“Try a different world.”
“You mean play musical bodies with one of your doubles? I’m afraid I don’t indulge in that sort of thing. Very unethical.”
“What? I thought that was your whole shtick.”
Hochstader 3 leaned back in his swivel chair. This variant was different from the other two clones, hair less unruly, clothes impeccable—he wore a jacket and tie.
He said, “I’m well aware of what some of my alternates do. It’s entirely their business. My organization, which is spread out over several million aspects, is nonprofit and dedicated to probability research. We collect and process data on different civilizations.”
“Look,” Max pleaded. “I’m a man without a world. You’ve got to help me. It was one of your alternates who got me into this.”
Hochstader was shaking his head emphatically. “No, I’m very sorry.”
Max paused. “I’m pretty desperate,” he said meaningfully.
“Oh?”
“Very desperate.”
“I see,” Hochstader said cautiously, casually moving his left hand toward the middle desk drawer.
Max sprang. After a short tussle, he managed to wrest the bell-ended weapon out of Hochstader’s small hand.
“You nearly broke my finger!” Hochstader 3 yelped, nursing a reddened left pinkie.
“What’s this thing called, anyway?”
“Did you hear what I said?” Hochstader yelled, then put the hurt finger in his mouth and sucked. He popped it out and snapped, “It’s called a minitranslator, you bloody twit!”
“Sorry to be so rough.” Max leveled the strange pistol at him. “Shall we go?”
“Go where?” Hochstader growled.
“I want you to take me back to the world I came from—my world of origin.”
“I don’t know where you came from! I have never spoken with you before this instant!”
“Sorry, but I’m getting a little desperate. You have to help me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Okay, then. I guess I have to zap you.”
Max raised the minitranslator.
Hochstader’s eyes went wide. “Wait! All right, you’re in trouble and you need help. I’m willing to help, really I am. But finding the exact Hilbert coordinates for the kind of minute variant factors you’re talking about would take a month of calculation.”
“But I have a landmark to look for.”
“Finding the landmark will not guarantee that it’s the exact world you want. You could blunder into that world and find an alternate self occupying it. You might be—”
“I’ll take my chances. Let’s get going.”
“How do you propose we go about this?”
Max thought about it. “How many alternate worlds are there, total?”
“Total? There is no total,” Hochstader said.
“What do you mean?”
“There are an infini
te number of possible worlds. Infinite universes! No end to them.”
“No kidding,” Max said, amazed. “Well, I guess it’s just a matter of spinning the wheel until we hit the right one.”
“You mean, we just randomly . . .?”
“Yeah, just pick a universe, any universe. Come on. Let’s go back to the lab.”
“But searching for it like that could take forever!”
“Time is subjective,” Max said. “By the way, do you know a good mantra?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
it was a long trip back to zin.
After two days the cart’s right wheel came apart. Benarus hammered it back into lopsided shape; then he and Rance proceeded slowly and painfully on their way, the iron sky-stone making a heavy load.
It had stormed most of the first two days, a cold wind pushing a cold stinging rain out of the north. Lightning crackled around them, barely missing Benarus on several occasions.
On the third day out, the rain ceased and an infestation of flies began. Biting flies. The bites first itched like mad, then turned infectious and began to ooze pus. Following close on the flies’heels, as it were, came gnats, swarms of them. They went for the eyes, mostly.
On the fourth day, the mule died. Rance and Benarus took turns hauling the cart. It was backbreaking labor. Benarus pulled a shoulder muscle and spent the night whimpering.
Late on the fifth day they crossed high mountains and came down into the valley of Zin. There mosquitoes attacked, huge mosquitoes the size of moths. These monsters were allied with fire ticks, stinging chiggers, and more gnats, of a variety that liked to fly up the nostrils and nest. The ground crawled with army ants. There was an infestation of toads this year in Zin, and these added to the nastiness. Harmless they were, except if accidentally touched. The toads’skin secreted poisons that produced a suppurating rash. Benarus managed to persuade several toads to leap up against his bare legs. (His pants had been ripped when he had blundered into a rock-strewn defile concealed by overgrowth.)
On the sixth day, Benarus stumbled over a boulder and broke a toe. His left foot bound in rags, he stumped along while Rance dragged the cart.
At last, they reached their destination, the stepped pyramid at the edge of the desert.
Rance let the yoke drop. “Well, we made it, all right. Could have been worse. Something really dreadful might have happened.”
Benarus, covered with sores and lesions, his foot throbbing, gnats plying their stinging trade routes in and out of his eyes, gave him a skeptical look.
“For instance?”
He found Bruce lying against a wall in the crypt with the never-ending inscription. He stooped to pick it up, brandished it, then returned it to its long-empty scabbard.
Ah. You have returned. This is unusual.
“I simply can’t get enough of your hospitality,” Rance informed the disembodied voice that emanated from the gloom.
So happy to accommodate you. Who’s your friend?
“Benarus, meet . . . Sorry, I never did learn your name.”
Mur-Raah. King Mur-Raah. You can call me Murray.
“Benarus? . . . Get away from there!”
Benarus was examining the fine bronze door to the inner tomb. “What? I was just—”
“Don’t go near that door, and whatever you do, don’t try to force it.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Benarus said as he crossed the crypt. “By the way, who are you talking to?”
Rance was puzzled. “You can’t hear him?”
“Hear who?”
Rance opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it. “We’d best get started. If you see a huge scary red thing with eyes that glow in the dark, don’t worry. It only nibbles your toes.”
Benarus regarded him silently for a moment. Then he turned away, shaking his head wearily.
“Like flies to manure. I don’t know what it is about me that attracts ‘em.”
It was hours later when Benarus finally finished inscribing a magical device on the stone floor of the crypt. It was elaborate and complex. Pentacles nested within circles, which in turn were subsumed by larger designs. A web of crisscrossing patterns covered the flagstones.
“You’ll stand there,” Benarus told Rance, pointing to a circle near the center of everything. The partially melted mass of the sky-stone sat amid a reticulated pattern that Benarus had marked off in one corner: a power grid, with the power of the stone feeding the whole device.
“What’s this other, smaller circle over here?”
“Just part of the pattern. Now, let me see . . .”
This is all very interesting, but, I’m afraid, entirely futile.
“Why so?” Rance wished to know.
I’m no magician’s magician, but I know enough to tell that the potentialities are all wrong here. This spell simply will not abrogate my curse. When I curse ‘em, they stay cursed.
“Doubtless so, but this spell is not intended to abrogate any curse.”
Oh? Then what, may I ask, is its purpose?
“To make you sweat.”
Dead men don’t sweat.
“Wait awhile.”
Benarus was looking at him curiously.
Rance said, “So, I’m to stand in the larger circle?”
“Yes, and don’t let your feet go outside the lines. No telling what would happen.” Benarus bent to light a brazier. Flames leaped up, and the smell of incense came to Rance’s nostrils.
Rance asked, “Are we ready?”
“Ready as we’ll ever be. Unless I forgot something.” Hands on hips, Benarus looked over his handiwork, which almost entirely covered the stone floor. He nodded. “Not a bad job if I do say so myself. Yes, everything seems to be in its proper place. No connections missed, nothing botched. Take your station.”
Rance walked out into the maze of patterns and stood in the larger circle.
He asked, “You’re quite sure the spell will do what it’s supposed to do?”
“Sure enough. Now, for the incantation. Good thing I know a little of Zinite magic and a few of the less obscure rituals.”
Benarus rummaged in a satchel and came up with an old book bound in tattered leather. He set it on the floor, opened it, and paged through until he found something.
“Ah, here we are. Now, to begin.”
Benarus started chanting in a tongue that Rance recognized as one of the priestly dialects of ancient Zin.
Well, we’ll soon see if your friend’s spell has any efficacy at all.
“You may be in for a surprise.”
“Be quiet!” Benarus admonished.
Sorry. You still won’t tell me what this is all about?
“No,” Rance whispered. “You might queer it.”
Well, that’s what I intend to do, unless you tell me what it is you’re trying to accomplish. I can’t very well let anyone prance in here and muck about with magic.
“I am to be transported to another world.”
Really? How novel.
“A world where your curse will not be effective. At least, that’s the theory.”
I confess that I can’t offer any evidence to refute it. The spell may work. Which means I must somehow prevent your companion from executing it.
“You really do know how to treat guests.”
It’s a gift. Stand by to be mutilated beyond recognition.
“Oh, you’re too kind.”
“I said shut up!” Benarus growled. “You’re spoiling my concentration! If I muff even a word or two, something vile is likely to happen.”
“Something vile. On the order of, say, this great shambling beast that now approaches?”
“What great sham—? Ye gods.”
Meet Krak, my manservant. Well, he’s really not a man.
The thing called Krak was large, hairy, and had red glowing eyes, but it was indeed manlike in that it walked on two legs, at the extremities of which were two clawed feet. Its face was like that of a bat, its mouth f
earfully fanged to coordinate with the razor-sharp talons of its claws. All in all, the beast resembled the get of an unholy union between an ape and a giant rat.
“Such a beast never lived!” Benarus yelled.
Oh, it’s just something I threw together out of rat carcasses and a dead human or two, all stuck together with bat shit and dried puke. Charming, isn’t he?
“He has his good points, I’m sure,” Rance allowed.
Krak advanced from the shadows and passed near the power grid. A large spark leaped from the sky-stone and struck the beast, enveloping him in a crackling cloud of energy. Krak struggled, but was trapped. He roared in frustration.
“I had an idea we’d be attacked,” Benarus said. “So I added protective measures.”
“Good idea,” Rance told him. “Now, trip the spell.”
“The invocation is done. The spell will trip of its own accord in but a few seconds. Enough time to do what my conscience bids me. I must tell you something. This spell is designed to transport you to a point on the globe directly opposite this one.”
Rance’s eyes widened. He took a step forward. “What? Not to another world?”
“Stay in the circle! If you move you’ll be cast into oblivion!”
“What about those other worlds?”
“There are none! Purest fancy. And if they exist, I certainly don’t know how to get you to any of them. I do know that if you move out of the circle you’ll be transported in an arcane direction.”
“Arcane direction? What does that mean?”
“It means one perpendicular to all the dimensions of the world we live in.”
“How could that be?”
“Never mind. I designed this spell to transport you to the other side of the world, and me safely back home.”
Benarus limped to the small circle and stood inside it, a triumphant smile on his lips.
“You fraud!” Rance snarled. “You hoodwinked me!”
“Need I remind you that I was coerced?”
He does have a point.
“Shut up, demon! All right, Benarus, but I’d rather take my chances here than be transported to some gods-forsaken hinterland on the backside of creation.”
Rance moved out of the circle.
“Don’t do it! The spell will trip at any moment!”
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