“I expect the matter will be resolved forthwith,” said the inspector.
“Yes …” she said. “Yes, I expect you’re right.”
The booth opened for us and we stepped inside.
Arrival back at HQ came with a sinking feeling in my chest. D-mat always did that to me. Plus, the case was almost over. I would have nothing but mundane duties until next the inspector called.
“So, will you notify the hospitals or I?”
“No need, PK Sargent.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not interested in seeing a human-dinosaur hybrid.”
“I would indeed be, if there were such thing.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said. You were not listening properly. Ah!” He stopped and clapped his hands together. “My coat—I appear to have left it behind. Would you mind fetching it for me, PK Sargent, while I start compiling the report … ?”
“Just this once, inspector,” I said, half-annoyed and half-amused at the same time.
“My thanks—but you know you really must not call me that …”
I headed back to the booth and requested a return journey. Our entrance permissions were still valid, but this time there was no one waiting for me when I arrived. Maybe, I thought, I could be in and out before anyone noticed I was there.
The coat was in the office we had briefly occupied, just along the hall from Diana Scullen’s workshop. As I picked up the coat, I heard a soft sound that caught me in mid-step. It was a soft cry or a sob—a sound of distress that the peacekeeper in me could not ignore.
I found Scullen with her lab coat bunched up and pressed to her face. Her shoulders were shaking.
“Are you all right?”
She gasped and jumped backwards.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came back for this.” I raised the inspector’s coat but had eyes only for her. “What’s going on? Is there something you need to tell me?”
She maintained her poise for barely a second. Then she crumpled like a statue that had been hollowed out from within, starting with the muscles of her face and cascading down the length of her body. Billie would’ve loved it. It was like watching someone dissolve.
“I don’t need to tell you,” she said, sagging into a chair. “You know it was me who took those damned bones, and you’ve been toying with me all this time. PK Forest’s little hints and jabs—I told myself I was imagining it, because he said it all with such a straight face, but here you are now, and … What is it you want—a confession? Well, you’ve got it, so take me in and be done with it. I won’t resist.”
It was all I could do not to gape while I processed this revelation. What did she mean by the inspector’s hints and jabs? I hadn’t noticed anything steganographic going on; I was used to his straight face. But he himself had just chastened me for not listening properly. What had I missed?
Well, for starters, Scullen had pointed us at the artisans, and she had been alarmed when the inspector homed in on the fabber. Then she had gone for a reward, and displayed relief at the end, when it looked like she had eluded all blame.
All this didn’t necessarily make her a bad person. I remembered her bitten nails and damp palm: Her nerves must have been shot to pieces. And she hadn’t lied when the inspector had raised the terrible loss to humanity the theft represented.
Given a kick in the right direction, I could see now where the genesis of her crime lay.
“How much,” I asked, “of the skeleton have you leaked to the scientific community?”
She looked up at me, and all I saw in her eyes was stubborn pride. She was a curator, not a thief. She didn’t care about anything as stupid as molecular authenticity.
“Those bits were the last,” she said. “It doesn’t belong here, PK Sargent, locked up in a box where no one else can see it.”
“So you scanned the whole thing in the fabber, and then you put copies of the bones back where they came from?”
“Yes. In my lunch hours, over several weeks.”
“And it was just bad luck he chose that day to look at the metatarsals?”
She nodded. “Until then, Mister Bayazati never suspected a thing.”
I found the thought hilarious, except it wouldn’t have done just then to laugh.
“Kinder that way, I think, Doctor Scullen.”
She hesitated, then nodded again.
“I’ll show myself out.”
When I returned the coat to the inspector, he was wearing that innocent look I knew far too well.
“So,” he said brightly, “the hospitals … ?”
“No need,” I echoed him. “The bones will come back as you promised, and even if Mister Bayazati finds out what really happened, Scullen has his promise of immunity to fall back on. You sewed him up good and tight.”
He inclined his head. “Thank you for tying the bow.”
“What did I do? Apart from the usual, I mean.” People tended to notice me, the big girl in uniform, and that gives the inspector a smokescreen for whatever he’s up to.
“Solving the case without leaving HQ was as easy as you said,” he said. “But I believed the perpetrator was more likely to talk to you, rather than an old dinosaur like me.”
“Oh. That makes sense.” It was good that Diana Scullen didn’t think she’d gotten off scot-free. “As long as you’re not keeping me around to be your audience.”
“Never, my dear friend. Never.”
But his eyes twinkled in a way that not even Billie could program, and I knew that his version of the truth was, as always, somewhat less or more than he was willing to admit to.
© 2012 by Sean Williams.
Originally published in Cosmos Magazine.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Sean Williams is a #1 New York Times-bestselling author with forty novels and eighty short stories under his belt, not to mention the odd odd poem. He writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror for adults, young adults, and children, and enjoys the occasional franchise too, such as Star Wars and Doctor Who. Born in the dry, flat lands of South Australia, where he still lives with his wife and family, he is currently working on the Troubletwisters series with Garth Nix and a PhD exploring the trope of the matter transmitter. He is also the Overseas Regional Director of SFWA. This story is set in the world of Twinmaker, his first original SF novel in four years. Twinmaker will be available from HarperCollins November 2013.
Water Finds Its Level
M. Bennardo
“Would you still love me if I were exactly the same,” he’d ask, “but was a Civil War re-enactor?”
“Shut up,” I’d say.
“What if I were exactly the same,” he’d say, “but refused to eat anywhere except McDonald’s?”
“Shut. Up.”
“Or what if I greased my hair with pomade and went tanning every week?”
That’s when I would give him the death-ray glare. “If you want me to stop loving you right now,” I’d say, “you can keep asking those stupid questions.”
“You know why, Jennifer.”
“But it doesn’t work like that,” I’d say. “You can’t do those things and still be exactly the same in every other way. If you did those things, you’d be somebody else. So just shut up because I don’t want to think about it.”
When people asked where I met Roger, I always told the truth. “We met in the Collision,” I’d say. Then they’d give me that look that people used to give you when you told them you met somebody online. The look that said you must be reckless or naive or desperate, and that no good would come of it.
It got better over time, of course, once more people understood. Once they had to understand. By the time it was all over, I was the weird one—still living a single life, still just one of a kind.
And Roger—I guess they understood him better.
It started in the kitchen of my apartment, like a thin spot in the wall or an echo coming through the ventilat
ion ducts. I didn’t think anything of it at first, since it was the kind of thing you hear in apartments all the time—someone else’s private life bleeding through into your living space.
Usually, it’s a murmur at most, a background drone. Sometimes, it’s suddenly and uncomfortably clear—a laugh or an angry shout that’s hardly muffled at all. I just ignored it. It was just somebody who had moved in next door—somebody on the other side of my walls, somebody who had brought their own new sounds that would become partly my sounds, too.
I knew how it worked. If ever we passed in the hall, we would pretend we didn’t hear each other. I wasn’t the sort to complain. The walls were thin. My kitchen had an echo. That was all.
That was all, at least, until the day I was pulling a casserole out of the oven, singing some Cher to myself. Too loud, I guess, because suddenly and without warning a man’s voice was at my ear. Not through the wall, not above the ceiling, but in the kitchen, at my ear.
“All right,” it said, in tones of exasperation. “Is somebody there?”
I dropped the dish, and the casserole exploded into shards of glass and soggy macaroni. I bolted for the living room, heart pounding, as the voice shouted behind me. The mess sat on my kitchen floor for three whole days before I worked up the nerve to go back in there and clean it up.
It was the news that saved me. That’s how I found out that I wasn’t the only one. They had a whole segment about these strange disembodied voices coming out of the air—in people’s houses, in offices, at the shopping mall, everywhere and anywhere. They started as indistinct mutters, but were growing clearer. Some people said they could make out whole sentences.
Nobody could explain it, but it sounded a lot like what had happened to me. “Despite some frightening encounters,” said the newscaster, “no one has reported any physical contact. The voices appear to be just that—voices.”
That evening I lay alone in my bed, the covers pulled up to my face even though it was a warm night. I could hear footsteps in my apartment, as if somebody were walking from room to room. I could hear doors opening and even the toilet flushing.
At last, the footsteps came into my bedroom. I waited until they came close, and then I took a deep breath. Pulling up all the courage in my body, I called out softly.
“Hey,” I said. “There is somebody here.” Then I paused, feeling stupid. “I’m Jennifer.”
A long minute passed in total silence. Then somebody—a man—said, “Okay.” Then he paused. “I’m Roger.”
He claimed he wasn’t really a disembodied voice. He said he was just a normal guy with a body, and that he’d been hearing the same kinds of sounds in his apartment. But my voice, my footsteps, my shattering casserole dish. Somehow, we could hear each other.
We found out pretty quickly that we lived in the same city. Then on the same street. I didn’t want to tell him my address, but he told me his. It was the same—down to the apartment number. According to Roger, we lived in the same apartment.
At that, I asked the only sensible question. “What year is it for you? What date?”
It was the same date.
That was where we left it that first night. It was getting too spooky. I had been almost willing to believe in a hole in space or time—a ventilation duct through the universe where two people in different places or times could accidentally hear each other. But this didn’t make any sense, and I realized suddenly I was exhausted.
“Well, good night,” I said weakly.
“I’ll try not to snore,” he said.
And then, after hours of talking, that one joke suddenly unnerved me. I realized that this wasn’t like hanging up the phone or signing off instant messaging. When we stopped talking, he’d still be there, or here, or wherever.
A few minutes later, I picked up my pillow and crept as quietly as I could to the living room couch.
Here’s what the scientists said on the news—finally—a few days later.
Every instant, they said, an infinite number of parallel universes are created as an infinite number of decisions are made. Usually, those universes just split apart and go off on their own separate courses, never to touch again.
But sometimes, two universes that had split in the past drift back toward each other. Sometimes, they even get close enough to merge back together again. They said it probably happens all the time, but typically things in the two universes are so similar that we don’t even notice. Maybe, they said, the few anomalies and differences are what have always been reported as ghosts or UFOs.
This time, however, the two universes split some time ago—no one really knew exactly, but maybe five years, maybe fifty years. Because of that, things were different. As the two universes bumped into each other, they wouldn’t just mostly overlap like usual. We would notice all the little and big differences—probably millions of them.
And when they merged—if they merged—well, who knew what would happen?
After hearing the scientists explain it all, I decided to talk to Roger again. I’d been tip-toeing around my apartment, trying to ignore the sounds that Roger made—which were becoming clearer and clearer all the time. The sneaking and daily panic attacks had started to seem almost normal, but then I realized I was being an idiot.
“Hey,” I said again, that night when I was sure Roger was in bed. “There’s still somebody here.”
That same silence followed, and then another single word answer.
“Good,” he said.
We talked almost every night from then on. I got to like it. I got to like Roger’s voice—calm and musical, with something that sounded like a hint of an accent. He said he’d been born in Ireland but moved to the States when he was five years old. Maybe I was just wishing he had an accent.
Eventually, I stopped slipping off to the living room to sleep. Once I got to know Roger better, I realized he was funny and kind. And, to me, he still was just a disembodied voice. There wasn’t really anything to be afraid of. Sometimes, it was even nice, in the still dark hours of the morning, when I woke suddenly from a dream to hear him breathing calmly in the room not far away.
The more people talked between the worlds, the more it seemed like things were mostly the same in both universes—not exactly, but pretty close. According to the news, scientists were working on figuring out when our two worlds had diverged and whether they would likely “bounce off” each other or end up merging.
By this time, Roger and I were talking long into the nights. Not just comparing the differences and similarities of our universes anymore, but just about ourselves. What we did that day, what we hoped to do tomorrow. It seemed natural to us, but we were the exception. Lots of people were still pretending that nothing was happening, still keeping as quiet as possible so the “new neighbors” wouldn’t hear.
Some people had discovered other versions of themselves coming through from the other universe. I was glad that wasn’t the case for me, and I never asked Roger to find out if there was another version of me living in his universe. Whether better or worse, I didn’t want to know what might have been different about my life. I didn’t even want to think about it.
But sometimes I was tempted to see if there was a version of Roger in my universe. I liked him—I wanted to meet him, to see him. I even put his name into Google once and pulled up a Facebook profile.
But I knew right away that this other version was different. Even if I did meet him in the flesh, he wasn’t this Roger—my Roger. So I closed the browser and just kept what I had instead, the calm musical voice in the night as I lay in my bed under the moonlight.
Eventually, the universes got close enough that things started to bleed through, too. I’d trip over something as I came back home to my dark apartment. “Did you leave your boots by the door again?” I’d ask.
Or he’d call to me invisibly from the kitchen. “I think I got your milk in my refrigerator,” he’d say. “Gross. It’s expired.”
As the universes drew closer, it st
arted happening all the time. Sometimes, there’d be two similar objects sitting next to each other—two lamps (mine and his) crowding an end table. Other times, it was like new space had been created for the new objects—my dresser grew extra drawers that were full of men’s clothes. I laughed when I realized he folded his socks.
Then one day I arrived home to find a vase of flowers on my kitchen counter. I didn’t tell him that it had come through—just kept it secret like a stupid grinning schoolgirl while I baked him a tray of cookies. Just as I was pulling them out of the oven, Roger called over and said, “I can smell those!”
“They’re for you,” I said, suddenly shy. “For being sweet.”
Somehow, I was still unprepared for the morning when I woke to find my bedroom twice as large as usual. On one side of my bed, where there should have only been a wall, there stretched another room that was a mirror image of mine—or a mirror image of what mine could have been, had it been furnished and decorated by somebody else.
There was a dresser, a desk, a computer, a bookcase. There was a bed. In the bed was a man.
I shouldn’t have been shocked. I should have been used to weirdness by then. But everything else had felt like a kids’ game—like talking through a tin-can-and-string telephone, or leaving messages and gifts for each other in a hollow tree. But now, everything was suddenly very real.
I sank back down into my own bed, my heart fluttering and my throat tightening. I didn’t dare get up or make any noise. It was Roger, of course—it had to be. It was the man I had been talking to every day, now unexpectedly deposited in my bedroom. Or had I been deposited in his?
I closed my eyes and turned away.
Some time later, I heard stirring from his side of the room. I screwed my eyes tighter shut. Then I heard his voice. “Wow,” he said. It was clear and natural—like a voice sounds when it really is right next to you, not screened through the borders of two different universes.
“Hey, Jennifer,” said the voice again—said Roger again. He sounded like he was in total wonderment. He didn’t sound frightened, only amazed and excited.
“Hey, Jennifer,” he said again. “Is that you? Are you there?”
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 36 Page 20