Alternities

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “You lack a sufficiently paranoid imagination. Rich,” Davis said quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

  Davis hooked his interlocked hands behind his neck. “We don’t really know what Rayne and his people were doing here. Maybe they came here to disrupt us, to cripple us. I’m not saying Rayne knows the answer. But his bosses do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s entirely possible that all the different alternities are in competition with each other—a competition that only one can win. That somewhere, sometime, a champion will be crowned to carry forward.”

  “Crowned or chosen?”

  He shrugged. “Your choice. A philosophical preference.”

  “And the rest? What about the other alternities? What about the losers?”

  The ethnologist’s voice was hoarse. “Gone, like we were never here.”

  Bethel, Virginia, The Home Alternity

  Endicott bound Rachel to the standing frame before he said good-bye. Naked, her limbs splayed in an X, she was open to him, and he caressed her lovingly, knowingly, until her body shuddered and strained at the cords which held her. He brought her fragrant wetness to her lips with his fingers, then seized her mouth in a burning, tongue-raping kiss.

  When he stepped back, somehow she knew. “Is tonight the night?” she asked.

  He had intended not to tell her, but he could not he to her. “Yes.”

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  It was easier for her to say than for him to acknowledge. A nod was all he could manage as he felt in the pocket of his robe for the little ring.

  “I thought that was gone from you,” she said, her voice breaking the smallest bit. “I thought that we’d put that—anger to rest. I thought I could tell—”

  “Not anger. Never anger,” he said. Within the privacy of his pocket, he slid the ring on the middle finger, then rotated it so that the soft bulge was turned inward, toward the palm. “Not then. Not now. This is—necessity.”

  He stepped forward and caressed her cheek gently with his right hand. She did not flinch. Her eyes, empty of light but for the brightness of tears, fixed on his.

  Necessity. Not because he was afraid—but because conformity was the price of protection, for himself, for the initiative. Because Madison had decreed, and Robinson concurred. Keep a tidy house, Walter, they had said. This incident is closed, but we can afford no others. In critical times there must be caution. So for caution, he would kill her.

  “Please don’t—”

  “Your victory is that I wish there was no need,” he whispered. “My gift is a death without pain. Madison promised me that.”

  Rachel made a plaintive sound which was both protest and surrender and looked away, down toward the floor.

  Cradling her head in his hands, Endicott kissed her forehead tenderly. Then his hands moved lightly, the left downward to her neck, the right lifting her chin so that he could kiss her lips. She accepted the kiss, and he pressed the ring hard against the side of her throat. The tiny needle pierced its protective shroud and stabbed into soft skin, discharging its minute toxic burden.

  He felt her body twitch in surprise. Then Rachel broke the kiss, pulling her head back. “No. Oh, no,” she said. A faint tremor ran through her body, a cold shiver felt within. Short seconds later, her body sagged against the ropes, her eyes closing as in sleep.

  His own eyes wet with tears, Endicott kissed her forehead one last time, then cut her down with care. He did not have words for what he was feeling, could not imagine that words existed equal to the confused torrent.

  But when the body was gone, entrusted to Evan’s custody, Endicott took ax and crowbar to the room’s damning furnishings with a terrible violence that was all too familiar.

  Somerset County, Pennsylvania, Alternity Blue

  It did not take long for everyone in the safe house to learn that Richard Bayshore was having a bad day. The night had passed without any sign of Warren Eden, and Wallace and Shan came down from their room for breakfast to find Bayshore and Davis locked in a shouting match.

  “Chess? He’s playing a goddamned game of chess?” Bayshore bellowed.

  “What do you want me to do, send the Marines in to kidnap him? You know what Eden’s like.”

  “He’s missed a whole day of sessions. If he’s not on the plane soon, he’ll miss another.”

  “We’ve faxed transcripts of everything we did yesterday to him through the Sacramento office. He says he’ll have them read before he gets here.”

  “And when is that gonna be?”

  “I understand he’s up two pawns.”

  Bayshore threw his hands in the air and stalked out.

  “Rich has a lot of pressure on him,” Davis said apologetically to Wallace. “He’ll pull things together.”

  “That was this Dr. Eden you were talking about?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s going on?” Shan asked. “Doesn’t he understand how important this is? Or doesn’t he believe it?”

  “Oh, he understands. He takes it seriously. He called me this morning at five A.M, to give me a twenty-minute critique of our roundtable last night. Listen, this is a man who thinks so fast that I can hardly hold a real-time conversation with him. It took me an hour after I hung up to pick through what was backed up in my buffer. We’re not likely to leave him behind.”

  “It being five a.m, might have had something to do with your trouble,” Shan said.

  “Charitable child,” Davis said with a smile. “Look, there’s fresh corn muffins and orange juice in the kitchen. Better grab something before the thunder lizard returns.”

  Through most of the morning session, Bayshore’s impatience was evident but not intrusive. He held his tongue as a substitute human counselor picked up where the banished Dr. Adamson had left off, even forgetting his pique long enough to join the conversation when the subject turned to sex laws.

  “Do you mean if two couples get together some Saturday night and swap partners, you’ve got four criminals?” he asked, incredulous.

  “I know things are looser here—”

  “How would anyone find out? It’s not like you have to apply for a permit to have sex, is it?”

  “Gossip gets around. A wife might report her husband. Prostitutes talk to stay out of jail. Mostly it’s when there’s some kind of disease or a baby for proof.”

  “So at least they don’t go breaking down doors to see who’s sleeping with whom,” Shan said, relieved.

  “They’re just trying to protect families.”

  “Great way to help,” Bayshore said. “Throw mom or dad in jail.”

  Wallace grew defensive. “Not jail. There’s weekend work camps for all kinds of little offenses. There was a guy on our street who got caught who ended up on a crew repainting the fire house.”

  “Not that bad an idea, actually,” Davis said thoughtfully. “If family integrity is at the top of your list, that’s not such a bad way to go.”

  After the sexologist came a cultural anthropologist, who also came through unscathed despite substantial overlap with her immediate predecessor. Dating habits. Social legislation. Family migration. Marriage and divorce.

  It was when the team of two educators attempted to put Wallace through a multidisciplinary assessment that Bayshore finally blew up.

  “No, no, no, no,” Bayshore said, slapping the tabletop for punctuation. “We had enough of this yesterday. You aren’t going to know what his wrong answers mean. There’s more than enough people right here who couldn’t tell you half that stuff. Let’s at least focus on what he does know and build from there.”

  “Rich, this is worth doing, believe me—”

  “I want somebody who knows something he knows,” Bayshore said stubbornly. “Get me a—what do you know?” he asked, turning to Wallace. “What’re your hobbies?”

  “Uh… baseball. Music—”

  “So get a sportswriter in here. Get somebod
y from Hot List magazine.”

  “Certainly. Let’s turn this into a trivia contest.”

  “At least we can deal with something concrete.”

  “I told you last night that details don’t matter. We’re trying to get the broader picture—”

  “Then ask him about the other alternities. He’s been to—what, three of them?”

  Wallace nodded.

  “I’m trying to keep the process orderly, the most familiar first—” Davis began.

  Bayshore shot up out of his seat and smashed his clipboard down on the desk with a clatter. “Goddamn it, can’t anyone do what I ask them to?” he demanded. In the stunned silence that followed, he stomped out of the room. A moment later the front door slammed.

  Wallace and Shan found each other’s hand beneath the edge of the table and flashed smiles that were not half as reassuring as they were meant to be. The two educators sat wide-eyed and petrified. Davis just shook his head slowly back and forth.

  “This is not like him,” he said, tight-lipped. “He’s losing it, and things are falling apart.” Davis fixed his gaze on Wallace. “Nothing personal, son, but I wish to God I’d never heard of you.”

  Davis glanced down at the binder propped open on his lap and flipped backward to a divider. “All right,” he said, wearily rubbing his forehead with the fingertips of one hand. “Tell us what you can about Alternity Red.”

  Bayshore had still not returned by midafternoon, when the helicopter bearing Warren Eden lighted on the meadow.

  Wallace and Shan came out on the porch to watch, curious for their first glimpse of their notorious visitor. Davis ran out to the meadow to attend to protocol. But Eden did not stand on protocol. Before Davis was halfway to the aircraft, Eden was out and walking upslope toward the house.

  A slender six feet tall, Eden wore a shapeless gray-green overcoat, a dark-green scarf around his throat, wrinkled blue jeans, white sneakers. His hair was a gray and white lion’s mane, combed straight back from a broad smooth forehead, blowing in the rotor downwash. A short black-streaked beard sprouting from his jawline made him look gnomelike despite his height.

  “Do geniuses have to look scruffy?” Wallace asked. “Is it part of the rules, or something?”

  Shan gave him an elbow in the ribs. “You’re terrible.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be this young wunderkind. He looks older than my dad.”

  “I’ve seen pictures of him. I guess he went gray in his twenties.”

  “Too much heat under the hood,” Wallace gibed.

  Shan frowned instead of laughing. “You’d better get those out of your system before he gets up here.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Inferiority complex?”

  “Maybe a little. I never met a genius before.”

  “Don’t meet one now. Meet a person.”

  Moving with long easy strides, Eden swept through the gap between the hedges and up the stairs to the porch. He almost walked past Wallace and Shan, then hesitated and looked sideways at them.

  “You’re the fellow responsible for all the fuss?”

  “I’m Rayne Wallace.”

  The newcomer gestured toward the door, inviting them back inside. “I’m Warren Eden. Let’s talk.”

  Alone among those who had made the pilgrimage to the safe house, Eden took no notes as he listened to Wallace’s stories. He sat in his chair in an almost meditative state, his eyes and mind alert, his body at rest. His apparent inner peace seemed to exude a calming influence on everyone, and the air of panic which had seized the house earlier in the day melted away.

  Wallace felt the change inside himself with wonder. He did not understand it, but the man seemed to have a tangible presence which extended beyond his physical body, almost as if he was radiating some sort of energy to the room.

  It was nothing as shallow as charisma, nothing as simple as authority. Though Eden said or did nothing overt to accomplish it, from the moment he arrived he was in control. Even Bayshore bowed to it. When he finally returned, half an hour after Eden arrived, he slipped wordlessly into an empty chair, content to be a spectator.

  Long before that, Wallace’s anxieties had been allayed. In the last thirty-six hours, he had been quizzed, interrogated, interviewed, cross-examined, and scrutinized. He had feared that facing Eden would feel like the worst moments of that experience times a hundred—his credibility disputed, his inadequacies revealed.

  But Eden’s voice lacked any note of challenge or skepticism. Before Wallace had spoken a word, he knew that Eden would believe him.

  “I’ve seen photographs of the Indianapolis gate house,” Eden said. “Please tell me about the others. What are they like? Tell me about each one.”

  “The Yellow gate is in England, in a ruined castle. Dunstanburgh, on a hill overlooking the North Sea.”

  “Massive stone,” Eden said. “Masonry, like the Scottish Rite Cathedral.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much of it stands?”

  “The keep. The gate house. Some of the perimeter wall.”

  “Where do you find the gate?”

  “Inside one of the buildings. Usually the keep.”

  “Always inside?”

  “Always—”

  “Talk me through a transit. Tell me what you perceive.”

  “When you come through the gate, there’s a junction—”

  “How many branches are there?”

  “Three. Almost always three.”

  “Close your eyes and see them. Point. Show me.”

  “There. There. And there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Red. It’s the simplest of the routes—”

  “You say you can feel the gate. What does it feel like?”

  “Like being tickled from the inside. A crawly sensation when you get close. When I first pick it up, it seems more like I hear it. But not with my ears. I can cover my ears with my hands and I hear it just the same.”

  “Is the pitch high or low?”

  “It’s not so much a pitch as a… a smear of sound. But it goes higher as you get closer. Until you can’t hear it anymore. Then you start to feel it. That’s how you can track the gate down in a big gate station, like the Bellevue Strat.”

  “Can everyone hear it?”

  “They have to train you. Some can’t learn to pick it out of the background. I heard it right away—”

  “Do you breathe while you’re in the maze?”

  “I never stopped to notice—”

  “Suppose you walk through the Boston gate at noon. What time is it when you come through at Dunstanburgh?”

  “Later.”

  “How much later?”

  “If you go through in the afternoon, it’ll be dark there.”

  “England is five hours ahead of us, sun time. But that’s not what I was asking. How long does a transit take?”

  “Oh. A minute—five minutes. It seems longer.”

  “Is it ever?”

  “There were stories about a cracker that got lost and was in the maze for three hours. Oh—”

  “Problem?”

  “I guess we do breathe in there—”

  “And the policeman simply disappeared?”

  “Like he was eaten up by the maze—”

  “Tell me about the Shadow—”

  The clearing skies over the safe house were dissolving to a violet-black by the time Eden said, “Thank you, Rayne. I have no more questions.” He looked at Bayshore. “You’re the project coordinator?”

  “I’m Richard Bayshore,” was the answer.

  “When can I have access to the Indianapolis site?”

  “We haven’t made a decision about what action to take there.”

  Gracile and expressionless, Eden rose from his chair. “When do you expect to make a decision?”

  “The President wants to hear more from us before scheduling an action caucus.”

  “I see.”

  “Is there
a problem?”

  “No,” the scientist said, collecting his coat and scarf. “You have a room for me?”

  Davis answered, “The first door on the left, upstairs. Your bag is there.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and turned to leave.

  “Wait a minute,” Wallace said, jumping to his feet. “Aren’t you going to tell us what you think?”

  Eden looked back. “I’d like some time to assemble those thoughts. Besides, you realize that without access to the Indianapolis site, anything I might say would be provisional.”

  “Understood,” Bayshore said, also rising. “But I think everyone here would like to hear at least your general impressions.”

  Frowning, Eden looked down at the carpet as he considered. “At this point, there’s only one observation I feel confident enough to share,” he said. His head came up and his eyes found Bayshore’s. “With apologies, Director, I must tell you that questions of who and why remain in order.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because this is not a natural phenomenon. We are dealing with an artifact.”

  WKIR DuMont Network Television

  National Channel 14

  BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT

  Program Title: D.C.

  Broadcast Date: May 12, 1977

  [ ] VIDEO: Studio / POKE: Capitol Building / GRAPHIC: “Black Budget”

  ANTHONY GREEN1: This morning in the House, more questions about the Pentagon’s rumored secret quick-strike commando force. Group 10. During routine budget mark-up hearings in a House appropriations committee, Representative John Simpson2 of Minnesota charged that a requested eighteen percent increase in the Pentagon’s secret operations appropriation, or “black budget,” would be used to create and fund Group 10.

  [ ] VIDEO: Committee chamber / GRAPHIC: This Morning

  SIMPSON: Director, I would like to know how much of Line 900 is earmarked for Group 10?

  [ ] GRAPHIC: Bernard Wills3, OMB

  WILLS: As you know full well, Mr. Simpson, I cannot comment on any Line 900 appropriations.