"I still don't really understand. It's so crazy."
"Yeah, but try to flow with it."
"Right. Flow with it."
"You know, don't try to analyze. It's a nonlinear, translogical experience. Know what I mean?"
"Nonlinear, translogical. Got it."
"You seem to have trouble with non-Western modes of thinking."
Max nodded glumly. "I always did. All my cultural hangups cause resistance when I try to break through the veil of Maya."
"Sure, that's why I'm saying-Huh? The what of who?" Max folded his arms and regarded the bare metal platform centered among all the strange gizmos. Over it hovered an enormous copper sphere. The sphere was attached by a sinewy counterbalanced crane-arm to yet another huge machine.
"Never mind," Max said.
"Sure." Hochstader turned back to the controls.
Max continued watching over the next several minutes as Hochstader fiddled with the controls. More sparks flew. Great electrical displays leaped from machine to machine and a hysterical howling noise grew and grew until Max had to cover his ears. What drew most of his attention was the metal platform and the copper sphere, which began to exchange energy at an increasing rate. Cascades of sparks propagated in both directions between them. Superimposed over this was a conical column of rays emanating from the sphere, bathing the platform in a pinkish light. Something was taking shape in the middle of all this.
"We're getting pretty close to an overload!" Hochstader shouted. "Come here!"
Hochstader led Max over to a bank of switches and pointed to a gigantic heavy-duty guillotine switch with an insulated handle.
"If she starts to go, break this connection. Lift this up. Got it?"
"What is it?"
"The main switch. I've been meaning to install a circuit breaker here but I've had trouble locating one with a high enough wattage rating. And they just don't make fuses that big."
"Got it."
Hochstader returned to his station, and the strange display of electrical fireworks continued.
Soon, something began to coalesce on the platform, a human shape, gradually taking on more detail. The form was generally cylindrical at first, then became curved. Then it became womanly. At that point Max thought he was viewing some exhibit in a science museum. The skeletal structure became visible, then internal organs, circulatory system, muscle, and finally, bare skin. Clothes formed on the body. The face was still not detailed enough to recognize. The process of conjuration went on. The figure took on more substance, became more real.
Finally, the face was recognizable. Max gasped.
It was Andrea. And she was wearing Max's old buckskin jacket, the one with the tassels.
"Overload!" Hochstader screamed.
Max was frozen, transfixed by the sight of his long-lost Andrea, the Andrea that he had known and loved long ago. "Break the connection!"
"Huh?"
Hochstader dashed over, yanked Max away, and threw open the switch. The sparks died and the howling ceased. The lab grew deathly quiet.
Max stared at the platform. Andrea… "You nearly fried her, you stupid jerk!"
It was a strange-looking Andrea now. Her hair was a fright, sticking straight up, cartoonlike, as if she had stuck her finger in an electrical socket. Smoke rose from the buckskin jacket. Her eyes were closed. She teetered, then fell.
Max came out of the trance and ran for the platform. "Andrea! Darling!"
He climbed up and went to her, knelt, and cradled her head in his hands.
"Andrea, baby, it's Max. Wake up, darling."
Her eyelids fluttered, then opened. Her blue eyes tried to focus.
"It's me, Andrea. Max. You're back. I've got you back." The eyes focused. She sat up. She looked around, at the lab, the machinery, the weirdness.
She screamed the most bloodcurdling scream that Max had ever heard. He jumped back.
"Andrea! Don't be frightened!"
"Wha… what… what the HELL IS THIS?"
"Andrea, listen-"
"WHERE THE HELL AM I?"
"Andrea, I can explain."
She looked at him, as if trying to grasp the strange thing she saw. "M-Max?" she said in a frightened voice.
"It's me, Andrea. It's Max."
"Where… where is this place?"
"It's hard to explain. Why don't we go get a cup of coffee? We have to talk."
She shook her head. "I seem to remember… something… I was on a bus… and… then you… and now I'm here… Max, what happened?"
"It's a difficult concept to grasp, but it has something to do with quantum physics."
Andrea looked around desperately. "It looks like I'm in a Frankenstein movie. Max, why am I in a Frankenstein movie?"
Max chuckled. "You look the part. You look a bit like Elsa Lanchester with that-"
Andrea screamed again. "Max, I want to get out of here!"
"Sure, sure. Let's go."
He helped her up.
"Max, where are we going?"
"Home. But we have to find it first. We'll re-tune the portal, and-"
"Re-tune what? Portal? What's that?"
"Again, it's hard to explain, but if you'll just step down off this platform…"
Andrea was a little unsteady on the stairs, but she made it down with Max's help. He led her to the computer station, where Hochstader was busy typing on the terminal.
"I think I've found you a pretty good world," Hochstader said.
"Really?" Max said, hope buoying up his heart.
"Yeah. It might not be exactly the one you want, but it's as close to normal as you can get."
"Normal? What's normal?"
"Well, hard to say, but I think the problem has been that we've been trying too hard to get things exactly right. What you'll have to settle for is a variant world in which there is no other Max Dumbrowsky. And you just move in."
Max let go of Andrea's hand. "But what would I do there?" Max protested. "There'd be no record of me. I'd have no birth certificate, no Social Security number-"
"Those things can be dealt with. I'm good at that sort of dodge. I can get you a new identity, a whole new life."
"But I don't want a new identity, or a new life. I want my old life."
"Sorry, but the search for the original variant universe you came from would be endless. There's just no way I can calibrate this thing to- Hey, where'd she go?"
Max whirled. Andrea was gone.
"She went through the curtain!" Max wailed. "What world is that?"
"I dunno. I was just sending the computer through a range of frequencies. I don't know exactly when she stepped through. It's stabilized now. She might have gone through this one-Hey, where are you going?"
"I'm going to find her," Max said as he dashed through the curtain.
"Wait, forget that, Andrea! We'll just conjure another one! That one's lost!"
But Max was through the curtain and into another world.
Finally!
After failing to find Andrea-he'd searched the building and the street-he found something else: his home world. It must be! The phone directory listed no ad agency bearing his name, and Fenton Associates, his proper place of employment, big as life on the glass front door of the office.
Max went in. The office looked the same. It had to be the same one he'd left… how long ago was it? Last night? It seemed like aeons ago.
He left the building. There was a good chance Andrea had gone straight to Max's apartment. As far as she knew, she had never left it.
It was about seven o'clock in the evening. The city was quiet. All seemed normal. The cab driver was human, everybody looked human. No lobster creatures, no Nazi flags, no weird business. Fine, wonderful.
He paid the cabbie at the corner and walked the halfblock to his building, a building that contained shabby oneand two-bedroom flats where roaches took numbers and waited in line to rummage through the kitchen cabinets, where silverfish staked out beachfront property in the bathtub.
Max's own place was a charmingly sordid little pied-a-terre. He loved it. He'd sign a ninety-nine-year lease and never leave.
He stood at his apartment door, fishing for his keys. Naturally, he didn't have them. Max 2 had taken them when they had exchanged clothes; and Max 2 was…
He heard voices inside.
The door swung open, and there was Hochstader. "Which one are you?" Max asked calmly.
"Stupid question," Hochstader 109 snapped. "Come on in."
Max went in. Someone was restaging the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera in his apartment. There were scores of Maxes and Hochstaders, all shouting at each other, shoved in shoulder to shoulder, arguing toe to toe. But they were not all of the usual sort. Some were in strange costumes: chainmail, doublets, jerkins, furs. Some were heeled with antique weaponry. Still others wore futuristic garb.
"All right, all right!"
Hochstader 110, standing on the kitchen table, stamped a foot loudly for order.
The shouting trailed off into curses and grumbling.
"OK, this auction is officially opened. My client claims origins rights for this world. He desires a change. What am I bid?"
"Don't do it!" Max 53 shouted. "Don't give it up! You'll be sorry!"
"Right! You don't know the value of-oof!" Max 3 got an elbow in the ribs from Hochstader 111.
"Let's hear from the boondocks," the table-mounted Hochstader yelled.
"I bid the estate and castle of Lord Max!"
Hochstader 110 sneered. "And how many armies are laying siege to them?"
Lord Max looked at the floor and shuffled his feet in embarrassment.
"Come on, let's hear from somebody with something good for a change."
"I have a world where Andrea never left me!"
"Well, that's a start."
"Good riddance, I say."
"You're talking about my wife, pal!"
"Your wife!"
Somewhere in the crowd, one Max turned to another (it doesn't matter which ones they were) and asked: "How many of these good worlds are there-I mean the ones with this crappy apartment?"
"From what I gather, only a few hundred million. Not nearly enough to go around."
About three dozen Maxes sat on the floor, went into lotus position, and tried to remember their mantras.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A doorway magically appeared in a stone wall and out walked a king wearing a jogging suit. (One could tell he was a king: the jogging suit was purple.)
"Your Majesty! Why, we thought something had happened-!"
"Sorry. I purposely picked an aspect with a big negative time differential. I wanted things to settle down here… Hey."
Incarnadine stopped just short of the desk. His double was still hard at work signing papers.
Tremaine said, "Something wrong, sire?"
Incarnadine sniffed the air. "Thought I got a whiff of strange magic. Something's always different when I return to the castle." He sniffed again. "It's probably nothing."
"Greetings!" The king's double said.
"How's it going?"
"Fine, fine. No problems. Enjoy your jog?"
"Well, I napped under a shade tree for most of the afternoon."
"Several days have gone by here in the castle," Tremaine said.
"Yes, and I hope my absence didn't discommode you any, Tremaine."
Tremaine smiled broadly. "Not in the least, sire. Think nothing of it."
"Good, good. Well…" Incarnadine shrugged at his twin.
The ersatz Incarnadine grinned. "Looks like I'm out of a job."
"Hope you don't mind."
"Not at all. Glad to be of service."
"Thanks."
Incarnadine waved his hand. The doppelganger disappeared with a puff of green smoke.
"Astonishing, sire," Tremaine said admiringly.
"I am good, aren't I?" Incarnadine grinned devilishly.
"Indubitably, sire. Now, my lord, if I may broach the subject of the audit of the royal granary-"
The king raised a hand. "Sorry, have to be off again."
"Sire, you just returned."
"I have pressing business in no less than four different aspects. The audit of the royal granary will have to wait." Incarnadine began to walk off, but stopped.
"Damn, there is something screwy. Not anything major, just a tinge of mischief. I think… Hmmm. I haven't checked up at Jeremy Hochstader's shop lately. Think I'll drop in on him."
Incarnadine's gaze wandered back to his executive assistant. "Tremaine, you look a bit dejected."
"It's nothing, sire."
"You're working too hard."
Tremaine sniffed. "Someone must see to the workaday drudgery necessary to run your kingdom, sire."
"I suppose so," Incarnadine said guiltily. He gave Tremaine a small wave of the hand. "Bye-bye."
"The gods be with you, Your Majesty." Tremaine bowed deeply.
"Later."
"So nothing's new?" Linda asked Jeremy Hochstader.
"Not much," Jeremy said. "I've just been fiddling, trying out some ideas."
"Like what?"
"Oh, moving the Earth portal around, for one."
"I thought you had the ability to move it anywhere you wanted to in the castle, or on Earth."
"Yeah, I can pretty much do that. But I wanted to do a few more exotic things with it. And theoretically with any portal, to any world."
The door to the laboratory opened and in walked Lord Incarnadine.
"Hey, it's the boss." He took his feet down from the countertop.
"What's new, Jeremy?" Incarnadine asked.
"I was just talking to Linda about that."
"Linda, hello!"
"Your Majesty."
Incarnadine looked at her for a bit longer than necessary. Had he caught something strange in her eye?
"Jeremy, I wanted to ask you. Have you been doing any experiments lately?"
"Experiments? Not really. I've been thinking of things I wanted to try. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, when I got back to the castle I thought I caught a hint of something cockeyed. Nothing big, no problems, but- Uh, what were you thinking of doing?"
"Well, I got this notion that if you fiddled with the frequency of a portal a little, you could-"
"Whoa!" Incarnadine waved a hand. "Wait a minute, you don't want to do that."
"No?"
"No way, Jose."
Jeremy looked sheepish. "Ooops. I didn't realize it was that big a no-no."
"It is a major no-no. You don't want to get into probability states, close variants of the same universe, that sort of thing. We've already had a few bouts of everybody's double running around the castle causing mischief. Remember?"
"Boy, do I. Actually, I was going to talk to you about it first."
"Glad you did. No, that's totally verboten. I should pass an edict about that. It's just about as bad as trying time travel. Paradoxes, closed loops… weird stuff. No, it's all bad business."
"I'll take your word for it."
"Jeez, just your thinking about it may be causing problems."
"Huh? How?"
"Because if you're thinking about it, one of your alternate selves might be actually doing it, off in some strange variant castle somewhere."
Jeremy whistled. "Wow. That's, like, really bizarre."
"An unsettling notion, isn't it? So don't even daydream about it."
"That's a tough order, sir."
"I know. But do your best."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Good. YE FLIPPING GODS!" Both Linda and Jeremy jumped.
"What is it?" Linda said.
The king looked stricken. "Linda, I completely forgot about your wedding!"
Linda let loose a relieved breath. "Oh, you scared me." She began to giggle.
"What?" Incarnadine looked back and forth between his two guests. "What, what?"
"You didn't miss much," Jeremy said, laughing.
"No? It completely
slipped my mind. I am abjectly sorry, Linda. Did you get the gift?"
"I gave them all back. There was no wedding. Gene didn't show up."
Incarnadine regarded her in all seriousness for a moment. Then he broke into laughter.
"I'm sorry," he said finally.
"No, go ahead. Laugh all you want."
"I didn't think that Don Juan would ever… Oh, but you must feel terrible."
"Not at all. Uh, Your Majesty, could I speak to you in private for a moment?"
"Eh? Well, certainly."
"See you later, Jeremy," Linda said.
"Bye!"
"And no monkey business," the king warned him.
"Yes, sir!"
"Remember, this place still has a torture chamber, down in the cellar."
"Yikes."
"Look, it's about… you know, my official position around here," Linda said when they were out in the corridor.
"Your… official position." lncarnadine narrowed his eyes.
"Yeah. It was nice, you know, what happened. And though I really like you a lot- I mean, I'm… oh, hell, you know I'm in love with you. Despite that, I don't want to be your royal mistress. Or whatever you call it, on a permanent basis."
Incarnadine opened his mouth. He closed it without saying anything.
"So, listen." Linda ran a hand over the velure of his jogging suit. "It was nice. I just wanted you to know that. And if you ever show up in my bedroom again, I'm going to have a hell of a time turning you down. In fact, I don't think I'd want to turn you down. I probably wouldn't. But this thing about-Oh, I don't know. I just don't want to be a little niche in your life. I want-"
Incarnadine nodded, smiling blandly.
Linda took a deep breath. "You know, I really don't know what the hell I want. I never have."
Incarnadine shook his head, frowning.
"I guess I should really do something about that. Soon. Shouldn't I?"
Incarnadine nodded, and again his smile was noncommittal.
She kissed him. "Thanks again. Inky." She walked off down the hall.
He stood there for a long moment, reflecting on the world, the flesh, and various impish things.
"Right," he said.
He walked slowly in the opposite direction, down the long stone corridor, still thinking, taking his time. A man should do this now and then. Most people hurry to early graves.
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