by Ian McDonald
“They're all the worlds the jumpgun fired people to.”
“Worlds.” Sen still couldn't get her head around this way of looking at the universe. The universe was what you saw when you flew above the clouds on a night run: stars and moons and things. The universe was out there. To Everett Singh, the universe was nothing but Earths, like pearls on a string. Not out there, but over there. Right next to you, close as the breath in your lungs, but you'd never know. “It worked then.”
“It worked, sort of.”
“Oh, Everett Singh…”
“I've got all the locations. There they are.” Everett flicked deep blue air. Stars wheeled between Sen and him. “One of those is my dad. I just don't know which one.”
“But you said the Panpy…thing…that box…You said you could plug it into the jumpgun and it would read all the quantum echoes.” She'd remembered those words. She wasn't thick—she wanted him to know that, more than anything—but that quantum stuff did her head even more than the jillions and zillions of other Earths. It must be hard to be him, head always filled with that stuff, fizzing away.
“Yes, but it doesn't tell me when. It doesn't give a sequence.” Again he spun the stars. He grabbed hold of one and pulled it out to expand it into a knot of code. “This is the time we made the jump from my world to Earth 1, but I only know that because I recognize the code. It doesn't record when we make a jump, only where we go to.” A slap of his hand sent the glowing worlds spinning.
“But he's there.”
“Yes, he's there.”
“Well then, all you have to do is go to every one of them pale blue dots and eventually you'll find him. There. Problem sorted. Ain't that bona. And on the way, if you could take us to a world where I can get some slap and togs…”
“I'm scared, Sen.”
She got up from her little wooden ledge, stepped through stars, and came down beside Everett on the edge of his hammock. The shape of the fabric forced them together, side by side. He was big and warm and hard, and she could feel his fear. You been scared forever, omi, she thought.
“I mean, I was so sure that he's alive and that he's safe and that he's got people looking after him, but I don't know that, do I?” Everett said. “The Agister said to me that the Panoply of Worlds is a very big place. I never really thought about what that means. We've seen what this world's like—there will be worlds out there worse than this.”
Sen took his hand. It was freezing. Oxford snow had piled up at the bottom of his porthole. Working too long alone and not moving. That was bad for you. It was cold here, but not as cold as the last time Everett Singh had spent hours looking at code and trying to make it work. Everness was moored once again among the winter snow on Museum Gardens, powering up from the Oxford wind turbines. Annie and Sharkey were at dinner, guests of the Agisters of all the colleges. That's why Sharkey had double armed himself. Them Agisters, you couldn't trust them. Sen had seen how quickly they could turn. She didn't know what would happen to the Brigadier, but she suspected it wouldn't be good. They were hard people here. They had to be. That was all right. He had hurt Everett. Mchynlyth was out with the troopers, drinking. Sen hoped he didn't get into another fight. She knew what he could be like when he had been on the buvare. Everness belonged to her and Everett, and he had been hiding away for hours in his latty, playing with stars and universes. A polone gets bored, you know?
“But better too, Everett Singh. That's the thing, ain't it? With so many worlds, odds are you'll end up in one that's kind of bona, rather than fantabulosa or really, really meese.”
“You just reinvented the Principle of Mediocrity,” Everett said.
“Hey! You saying I's mediocre?” Sen felt him squeeze her hand.
“It's an important principle in science. My dad taught it to me. It says that there's nothing special about our Earth, our solar system, us. We don't have a special place in the universe, or any universe. We're not at the center of things.”
“I don't know ’bout you, Everett Singh, but I's pretty special,” Sen declared. “And so's you.” Then she felt him catch his breath beside her. “You are all right.”
“I saw his eyes, Sen. He wanted me to stop it. I couldn't do it. He wasn't my dad…but he was.”
“I weren't there, but I seen a thing. There was an omi down in Hackney, a stevedore, ran the Dalston Number Four Dock. He couldn't fly, see, coz he had something wrong with his Aunt Nells. His balance was all meshigener—you can't fly if you can't balance. You'd never be off your dish. But he had a daughter—loved her to the death—an’ she could fly, and did, on the English Rose. She was ’prentice engineer, and he loved her, but she died. There was this accident with the charging arm. Horrible it was. Everyone saw her. She just, like, danced, and then there was nothing, just burned stuff. Horrible, horrible, Everett Singh. But that omi, after that, the light went out in his yews. He had nothing left to live for. One day he went up the dock where she died, and everyone was shouting up, what for you doin’ up there? Come down you meshigener fool, and he fell. An’ he died. Oh, it was so sad, Everett Singh, because everyone knew he'd died long ago. He died when she died. You see it in the eyes. I saw his eyes too, Everett Singh. I did. I sees these things. You told me he lost his wife and everything to that black stuff. That'd kill an omi, inside. He died when she died. He was just waiting to fall over. You done nothing wrong.”
She hugged Everett. He resisted. He could be so stiff and not so. What did they teach them in those Earth 10 families?
“I should have been able to do it,” he said.
“No, you shouldn't have. How old is you? Fourteen? No. Nah. Never. Sharkey did right.” The hammock swung gently as Everness was swayed by a rising wind. A nor’easter, Sen's weather wisdom told her. Comes the snow again. She shivered. “Everett Singh…”
“Why do you always call me that?” Everett asked. “Everett Singh. Never just Everett.”
“Dunno. Some people, they just need two names to anchor them down. But serious, serious now: Everett Singh: back there, the sun gun…”
“The what?”
“The thing you zapped London with.”
“Sun gun?”
“So? It's a better name than hedgehopper. Anyway…” She poked him hard in the ribs, then remembered he still hurt there, muscle deep. “Sorry sorry sorry. Everett Singh. When you had the sun gun lined up on Oxford—here, would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Oh, you're so naff…Would you have fired it? Melted all this to…glass?”
“He was right. I didn't have the power.” But in the blue light Sen could see Everett staring dead ahead of him, at the latty door, and his feet were kicking in that way people do when they lie.
“But if you had—”
“Yes. I would have. I would have because I hated him. I hated the Nahn. I hated this world. I hated the Infundibulum. I hated everything because I hadn't asked for any of it. And for once I could show people what that hate looked like. Like something so bright you couldn't even look at it because it would burn the eyes out of your head. So I couldn't help Tejendra, but this fourteen year old could press a button and empty the sun onto all these people here. But you said something. You said that if I did it I would be just like him. The other Everett. But you were wrong, Sen. Don't you see? I am him already. I am him, and he is me. Everything I am, he is. That's why I couldn't beat him at Abney Park. And that's why he couldn't beat me. Because everything he is, I am too. The hate in him, I have that too. And I saw that button, and I saw the hate, and I saw what it had done to him, and I said, I won't be like that. I won't do what he would do.”
Sen leaned against him, wrapped her arms around him.
“Alamo, Everett.”
“Sen.”
“What?”
“I lied.”
“I lie all the time,” Sen said, leaning comfortably against Everett, swinging her booted feet. Then she realized that Everett wasn't Airish and wouldn't understand who you could lie to and wh
o you could never lie to. “I mean, it's a so thing, Everett…”
“There was power, Sen. There was enough power. The board was green. I lied. I wanted you to think I had no choice, that there was no way for me to do the wrong thing. Because that would then make it all right. I didn't have a choice. But there was, and I almost did. I had a choice.”
“You chose right, Everett.”
“Yeah, I did. But I'm scared that next time—and there will be a next time—I won't do the right thing.” He glanced at her “You called me Everett. Three times.”
“Three times is the magic time,” Sen said, sing-song. “Tap the deck three times. Oh!” She remembered why she had come tappy-scratching at Everett's latty. “Here. Something to show you.” She slipped a card from inside her jacket and laid it on top of the Panopti-thingie. The stars went out. “Just finished this. What you think of it? Bonaroo, eh?”
The card showed an airship, not a sleek, streamlined sky shark like Everness, but an old-school one, the kind you saw in the airship museum at Cardington. One like a big silver sausage. It flew out of the card, prow pointed upward. At the bottom of the card, at the air-ship's tail, was a burst of sunrays. She had found the sunburst in an old magazine they had picked up on the last run to Atlanta. They had this retro-future thing going on there, like everything was supposed to look futuristic but old-fashioned at the same time. The airship came from a history book. The chest under Sen's hammock was full of out-of-date make-up and savaged books and magazines she had cut up for card ideas.
“Nice,” Everett said. “I like the sun. Really 1920s.”
Sen tutted in exasperation.
“That's not the sun. It's a gate. An Ein…Heisenberg Gate.”
“Oh, wow,” Everett said. There was light in his eyes now. Bona. “What's it called?”
“Oh. I haven't finished that bit yet.” Sen took a pen from her pocket and carefully, slowly wrote one word in silver ink. She waved it and blew on it to dry the ink. Stars briefly filled the cabin, then vanished as she set the card down again. Everness. “There. Said I was good with names.”
Everett reached for the card. Sen slapped his fingers away.
“You got yours. This is for me. My card.” She kissed it. It smelled of ink and just-dried glue and old newsprint and futures only guessed at.
“What does it mean?” Everett asked.
“Don't know,” Sen said. “I'll find out.” She took the deck from her jacket and folded the card into it. Once again the latty filled with the stars that weren't stars, but points of hope in the Panoply of All Worlds. “Everett, can I?”
“What?”
“Move the stars around.”
He smiled. He did not smile much, but he was one of those omis who, when they did, lit up rooms and hearts and lives.
Sen put her hand into the glowing star field, moved it this way and that way, pulled it in and pushed it out, eyes wide as the soft thistledown balls of light that spun around her.
“So where are you taking us next?” she asked.
“Like you said, don't know. One place's as good as any other. You choose.”
“Me?”
“Why not?” Everett's breath steamed in the chilly cabin. “Pick a world. Any world.”
The car was black, polished, shiny as oil. A Mercedes S-class. He was learning about these Earth 10 cars. The S65 AMG, with a 5,980 cc biturbo rocking 604 horsepower. Hydrocarbon engines might be resource-guzzling environment trashers, but when they let rip they made a mighty noise you could feel all the way to the pit of your belly. The car was black, polished, shiny. Like Nahn.
Tearing up the motorway from the Heisenberg Gate at Folkestone, now crawling in evening traffic down through Edmonton and Tottenham. A thaw had set in during the two days he had been on other earths. The Mercedes splashed through black slush. Grey snow was piled up in the gutters; pedestrians picked careful paths over half-melted slicks of rotting ice. Welcome to planet Hackney.
The lights were going on down Stamford Hill. The plastic shop signs were bright and gaudy, the bus windows steamed up. A woman with five dogs on leads was leaving Abney Park Cemetery. The dogs all pulled in different directions. The woman was fighting to keep her beanie hat on and keep the dogs under control. Here, in another world, he had run out of this gate for a number 73 bus and a car like this had run him down. The woman beside him had been sitting where she sat now, in the back seat, smartly upright, hands demurely folded in her lap. The man behind the wheel of this Mercedes S-class had probably been driving the one that had cut Everett M down.
As the car passed the bus gates, Everett M felt an itch at the back of his neck. A tickle that he could ignore at first, but it grew fiercer and fiercer. He had to scratch it. It would kill him if he didn't. He tried to ease the itch on the collar of his school blazer. No good. Finally, he reached up and scratched until he felt his skin must tear, his fingernails splinter. As the Mercedes swept past the gates of Abney Park and the struggling dog-walking woman, he felt something slip from his neck into his hand.
Charlotte Villiers shot him a disapproving look. No way are you ever going to convince Roding Road you're Social Services, Everett thought. Not with an S-class and a real fur coat. He waited until she looked away to glance at the thing in his hand.
It looked like a tiny spider. Black, of course, shiny oil black. Nahn black. Too many legs for a spider, and no real front end or back end. It clung to the palm of his hand. The tiniest invader.
For a moment he thought of slapping it onto the back of Charlotte Villiers's hand. There was a tiny oval of exposed skin where her glove was buttoned over. He would enjoy the look of surprise in her eyes as she felt it sink through her skin, her eyes going black as the Nahn ate her from the inside. No. He needed her to get him off this world, back to his real family. The driver had a beautiful five centimeters of targetable skin between the collar of his chauffeur's jacket and the bottom on his chauffeur's cap. No. He was driving. Two car accidents outside Abney Park was too many. Wait. A whole world was his.
Everett M closed his fist as the black car turned onto Northwold Road. Left into Roding Road, up between the bright houses with the melting snow shushing beneath the wheels, and the Nahn spider in his hand. He was still cold, so cold. He knew he always would be.
Palari (polari, parlare) is a real secret language that has grown up in parallel with English. Its roots go back to seventeenth-century Thieves Cant in London—a secret thieves’ language. It's passed through market traders and barrow-mongers, fairground showmen, the theatre, the Punch and Judy Show, and gay subculture. Palari (“the chat”—from the Italian parlare, “to talk”) contains words from many sources and languages: Italian, French, lingua franca (an old common trading language spoken across the Mediterranean), Yiddish, Romani, and even some Gaelic. It's taken in words from Cockney rhyming slang—“plates” for feet, from “plates of meat” = “feet”; and London back-slang—“eek” is short for “ecaf,” which is “face” backward. Many words from palari/polari have entered London English. In Earth 3, palari is the private language of the Airish. In our world, polari still survives as a secret gay language.
GLOSSARY OF PALARI:
ajax: nearby (from adjacent?)
alamo: hot for her/him
amriya: a personal vow, promise, or restriction that cannot be broken (from Romani)
aunt nell: listen, hear
aunt nells: ears
barney: a fight
batts: shoes
bijou: small/little (means “jewel” in French)
blag: pick up/beg as a favor/get without paying
bod: body
bona: good
bona nochy: goodnight (from Italian—buona notte)
bonaroo: wonderful, excellent
buvare: a drink (from old-fashioned Italian bevere or Lingua Franca bevire)
cackle: talk/gossip
capello: hat (from Italian cappello)
carsey/khazi: toilet.
charper: to search (
from Italian chiappare, to catch)
charver: to have sex
chavvie: child
chicken: young male/boy
clobber: clothes
cod: naff, vile
cove: friend
dally/dolly: sweet, kind.
dinari: money
dish: ass, bum, arse
Divano: an Airish ship's council.
dona: woman (from Italian donna or Lingua Franca dona), a term of respect
dorcas: term of endearment, “one who cares.” The Dorcas Society was a ladies’ church association of the nineteenth century, which made clothes for the poor.
doss: bed
drag: clothes, especially women's clothes (from Romani indraka, a skirt)
ecaf/eek: face (back-slang). Eek is an abbreviation of ecaf.
fantabulosa: fabulous/wonderful
feely: child/young/girl
fruit/fruity: in Hackney Great Port, a term of mild abuse
gafferiya: Airish tradition of hospitality and shelter for travelers (from Thieves Cant).
gelt: money (Yiddish)
kris: an Airish duel of honor (from Romani)
lacoddy: body
lallies: legs
latty: room or cabin on an airship
lilly: police (Lilly Law)
luppers: fingers (Yiddish lapa, a paw)
manjarry: food (from Italian mangiare or Lingua Franca mangiaria)
measures: money
meese: plain, ugly, despicable (from Yiddish meeiskeit: loathsome,
despicable, abominable)
meshigener: nutty, crazy, mental (from Yiddish)
metzas: money (Italian mezzi: means, wherewithal)
naff: awful, dull, tasteless
nante: not, no, none (Italian: niente)
ogle: look, admire
omi: man/guy
omi-polone: effeminate man or homosexual
onk: nose
Palari-pipe: telephone/in-ship communication system (“talk pipe”)