by Ian McDonald
“Now we're going to go up to the gates,” the guide said. Everett could see excitement ripple through the tourists. Something happening! Not just rooms. Everett loved the rooms. His father was in a room, somewhere in this building. “We operate twenty Einstein Gates on this level,” the guide said as she led the party along a curving corridor. Glass windows on the inner curve gave views over the gate chambers. Sen, dawdling at the back, made sure Everett got a good shot through each window, once the press of curious boys had moved on to the next one. The operation was much more slick than the ramshackle setup hidden in the abandoned Channel test-tunnel. A single curved desk with three seats faced an empty metal ring four metres across. That was all. Nothing could have looked more like a gateway to another universe. “You're in luck,” the guide said, barely audible over the chatter and calling. “We've got a scheduled jump in Gate Twelve.” Sen did not need the hint from Everett. She pushed up as close as she could among the heavy coats and hoods and angled the phone camera through the window. Between the backs of the heads Everett saw the backs of other heads, of the three technicians at their workstations. Light flooded the camera lens. The gate opened. A man in an E3-fashion greatcoat and suit stepped out of the light into the room. The gate closed. The technicians shook his hand, checked his passport, and presented him with paperwork to sign.
“That was a scheduled return jump of one of our diplomatic staff from the embassy on E7,” the woman said. She sounded very pleased with herself, as if she had just performed a great conjuring trick. Make a man appear out of thin air. “And with me, please.” She led her tour group on. Sen lingered to video the diplomat leaving the gate room, entrance formalities completed.
It was a terrible plan. A ridiculous, impossible, foolhardy plan. Sen had told Everett that to his face, on their first stake-out of the Tyrone Tower.
“What, you find where they've got your dad, get into the building, get him out, get to a Ein—Heisenberg Gate, plug in your Infundibbiedabbiedoo, get home, pick up the rest of the family—while someone keeps the gate open—and then use the Infundamentalist to take everyone off somewhere the Plenitude can never find you?”
“Yes,” Everett had said.
“That is the worst plan I have ever heard.”
“Can you think of a better one?”
“No.”
But she had been right. It was a terrible plan, apart from all the others. But it was working. Little by little, clue by clue, it was working. It looked a lot more reasonable than taking the Ring to Mount Doom. Everett giggled. This was his very own dark tower.
The tour guide was saying something about exiting via the gift shop. “Everett Singh,” Sen whispered. “I's trolling off on my ownio. Have a varda round.”
Where? Everett sent.
“Back down to that new embassy they're building for your world.”
Careful… Everett typed. His hand hovered over the send button. Sen didn't need him to tell her what to do. She dawdled behind the tour group until the last one had disappeared round the curve of the corridor. They were happy. They'd seen a minor civil servant make the jump from another universe. Then Sen turned back and headed for the elevator lobby. Everett followed the descending floor numbers on his model of the Tyrone Tower. Sen stepped out into the noise of power drills and nail guns, saws and screwdrivers. The corridor was littered with cardboard packing and discarded fabric wrap, the air thick and grainy with dust. Two construction workers sat on a pile of plasterboard drinking tea.
“You lost, love?”
“Parcel for Alan Pardew.”
“Never heard of him.”
“This is Level Twenty-two?”
“Certainly is.”
“I'll find him.”
Sen continued past them. When they looked away, she ducked into a set of rooms off the corridor. The suite was under construction: lighting fittings dangled unfinished from the ceiling, the power sockets hung from the walls, ducting was exposed, cables ran up the pillars. The Tyrone Tower was a thoroughly modern skyscraper under its Gothic skin. Beyond the incomplete suite was a second, in the middle of fitting out. Sen walked across a newly laid wooden floor, leaving footprints in the sawdust. The walls were wood-panelled; chandeliers hung from the ceiling. She stopped and turned to shoot a panoramic.
“You getting this, Everett Singh?”
U think he's here?
“Best place to hide a thing is right under everyone's noses. Now what's behind those?”
The camera came to rest on a curtain of heavy translucent netting. “Let's have a varda.”
Sen pushed through the hanging dust sheets. The sheeting obscured the lens; then Sen breathed, “Everett.” He could see. This section of Level 22 was complete; complete and fully furnished. Potted plants, paintings on the walls, comfortable chairs and occasional tables in the alcoves, concealed lighting, and soft, fresh deep-pile carpet. Tasteful lifestyle magazines, fresh flowers. It looked like a corridor in a five-star hotel. Everett found he was holding his breath. He remembered to breathe. He remembered to capture images. Sen tried a door handle. Locked. The short corridor ended in a T-junction. Sen shot left, then right. To the right was a service trolley, of the kind chambermaids pushed up and down hotel corridors. Sen was onto it before Everett could hit the keys. On the cart were folded sheets and blankets, pillows and bed linen, a small tray of hotel-style toiletries. Behind the handle hung a grey linen refuse sack. The camera peered inside. What it showed Everett was so ordinary, so everyday that he missed the significance for a moment. A discarded newspaper and a plastic water bottle.
A plastic bottle. Plastic, made from oil. On a world without oil.
Everett's heart turned over. Paper, he texted Sen. She hauled it out and unrumpled it for the camera. REDKNAPP FIELDS MATCH-FIT BALE AGAINST CHELSEA. A Tottenham Hotspur story. In a world where the big stadium sport was rugby. Where Gareth Bale wasn't one of the players and the manager certainly wasn't Harry Redknapp. Sen turned the paper over. The Daily Telegraph. Tejendra would hate that. He was a dedicated Independent reader. She brought the paper up so Everett could read the date. December 21st. Today's date.
Sen put her hand on the doorknob and twisted it. Everett hit the keys.
No!!!!
Sen froze, hand on the doorknob.
The cart. Someone in there.
Her hand drew back from the door.
Go. Now.
Sen was walking away when the phone's tiny microphone picked up the sound of a door opening. She turned. Two figures stood by the service cart. One was a small woman with an apron and a headscarf. The other was a tall, thin, shaven-headed man. The lens's resolution was terrible, but it could not disguise Thug-in-a-Suit.
“Yes?” Thug-in-a-Suit asked.
“Parcel for Alan Pardew?”
“How did you get in here?”
“The workmen—”
“You shouldn't be here.”
“Sorry.”
“You can't be here.”
“Bona. Going now. Gone.”
He's there, Everett thought. He dragged images across to the map of the Tyrone Tower. Level 22 southeast. End of the corridor. He was there behind that door. Like a hotel room you couldn't check out of. A five-star cage. They'd built this entire sector just for him. They brought water and a copy of the Daily Telegraph in from another universe every morning. You're there, Dad. If only the cart hadn't been there, if only he could have got Sen to slide some message under the door. But if the cart hadn't been there Everett would never have known that that was the room where Tejendra was being kept prisoner. I know you're there. I'm coming.
“Whoa!” Everett shouted aloud at a movement in his peripheral. On the feed screen a door had opened ahead of Sen. A woman stepped out. An immaculately dressed woman in heels and a tall fur hat and matching stole, a tiny bag clutched in one of the grey gloves that matched her finely cut suit. Charlotte Villiers.
Sen breezed past. Charlotte Villiers didn't spare her a glance. But at the end of
the corridor, where another dust sheet covered the entrance to the main elevator lobby, Sen glanced back. From the end of the corridor, Charlotte Villiers studied her. Her face was puzzled. She frowned. Then she stared straight into the lens of the camera phone. She remembered. She remembered where she had seen this piece of alien technology.
Go go go! Everett texted Sen. The phone buzzed urgently. Look at it, Everett thought. Look at it. She knows. Sen ran. She burst out of the dust sheet. A final backwards glance through the netting showed Charlotte Villiers walking purposefully towards her. She did not hurry. She seemed to be talking into the lapel of her jacket. At the end of this stretch of corridor was more sheeting. Sen flung herself through and found herself face-to-face with the startled builders.
“Did you find him then, love?”
“Who?”
“The man you were going to give the parcel to.”
“No. Wrong floor after all.” The camera came to bear on the elevator lights. There was nothing even close to this floor.
“Where are the stairs?”
The second workman jerked his thumb over his shoulder. A door swung in Everett's view. For a moment he peered down a bottomless stairwell; then Sen was hurtling down the concrete steps. The speed was extreme and terrifying. One false step and she would tumble and not be able to stop. Round and round and round. The stairs were featureless; the stairs were endless. Down she pounded. God, she was fit. Everett could hear her breathing. Down and down, round and round. Where was she now? Everett had lost count of the turns and landings. There were numbers on the doors, but Sen moved too fast for Everett to read them. With every floor groundwards, a dread grew inside Everett. Charlotte Villiers would have alerted security in the lobby. They would pick her up there. He had to let her know. She was running headlong into danger.
They're waiting for you, he typed. He kept his finger poised over the send key. Round and round, down and down. Suddenly there were no more steps under her. She was on concrete facing a door with GROUND FLOOR written on it. Send. Sen froze, hand on the door.
“Is there another way out?”
Everett did not need to look at his model of the Tyrone Tower. He was out of options. All he could do was warn.
Sorry Sen…
“Doesn't matter. I got a bona plan,” Sen said, pushed the door open and strode out.
“Whoa no!” exclaimed Everett across the street in the warmth of the coffee-and-Christmas-scented cafeteria. He wrapped his arms around his head in dread. He could clearly see on the screen the men in suits at the checkpoint in the middle of the big black marble lobby. There were more of them at the revolving door. They were discreet, just a glance and a nod at the people streaming out of the Tyrone Tower. They knew what they were looking for. Sen's first advantage was that they were looking at the elevator lobby and the escalators. They hadn't thought someone might come galloping down twenty-two flights of stairs. Her second advantage was that she wasn't moving in the expected direction. She wasn't heading down the lobby to the doors. She was moving across—to where? All the jolting camera showed was brightly lit windows. Now her destination was in clear focus. The gift shop.
“You clever girl,” Everett said. He could have hugged himself. The school party was still in the shop. Sen slipped in, slipped off her conspicuous jacket, and stuffed it into her shush-bag. Quickly, confidently, she slipped a bobble-hat off a display and over her big hair. She found the middle of the crowd and blended in. Everett heard the voices of the teachers calling. The bus was waiting. Buy what you're going to buy or you'll get left behind. The stragglers quit the tills; the teachers herded their charges, Sen hidden in the middle of them, out of the gift shop and toward the security post. Like a big noisy rugby scrum the school party bowled past the men in suits. They did not even look twice. Across the lobby, past reception, under the huge wall-sized black-and-silver banner of the Plenitude of Known Worlds, out through the revolving door and on to the street. Everett reeled back on his seat, gasping with relief.
“You got what you need?” Sen said into the phone. Everett texted a thumbs-up emoticon, then typed: OMG OMG. I thought U were dead.
“Nah,” Sen said. “Sharpie's not born can catch Sen Sixsmyth.” Everett could see her now, coming down the steps, pulling on her jacket, pulling off her bobble-hat, and shaking out her great hair. Down on the street she threw the stolen hat out into the traffic. The school kids headed right. She headed left. “Everett Singh, get your stuff and meet me at the taxi rank on Cleveland Street. I hope you got some dinari left, coz I's cruising back to Hackney tonight.”
In the quiet-running electric taxi Sen was still high on adventure. One moment her face was pressed to the condensation-misty window, watching the traffic, the trains, the people on the streets. The next she was fidgeting in the seat, buzzing with adrenaline, hitting Everett with question after question after question after question. Do you think they's following us? Did you see what I did back there? Wasn't I fantabulosa? Do you really think your dad's in there? When are we going to go and get him out? That was easy.
Everett didn't want to say what he feared: that it had been easy because it had been meant to be easy. The game of his enemies—and he still didn't know exactly who they were or what their strategy was—had always been to get him to bring the Infundibulum to them. He had played along every step. They had even got him thinking like them now.
Sen picked up Dr. Quantum and turned the plastic slab over in her hands with a sense of familiarity and ownership that made Everett bristle.
“I mean, it's just a map, what's so special about that?”
“It's a map to anywhere and everywhere. And it's much more than a map, it's a phonebook. You can programme a Heisenberg Gate to connect to any point in any of the universes in there, not just another gate. Do you know how many universes there are in here?”
“A lot?” Sen said. “More than thirty?”
“Ten with eighty zeroes after it. And think about what you could do if you had that power. For a start, if you can jump to any point of any universe, that includes any point in this one. I could dial it up and I could step out of the gate on a planet a billion light-years from here. Well, I could if I had the full working Infundibulum, but that'd be way too big for this computer, or maybe any computer. I mean, every point, everywhere in every universe…” He had worked it out in the privacy of his latty, late when the ship had closed up and he had cleaned the plates and cutlery and put everything away in the galley, rocking in his hammock, lit by the glow from Dr. Quantum, the battery recharging sweetly on the adapter Mchynlyth had built with a few grunts and passes of the soldering iron and glue gun. It couldn't be everything. Everett had once worked out that there were ten to the power eighty atoms in the universe—this universe—no, that universe. A code for each atom. That was a huge quantity of information; much more than Dr. Quantum could hold. Lying in his hammock, quilt pulled up under his chin, listening to the great airship creak around him, Everett had run the numbers in his head. It wasn't an exact science; it was back-of-envelope science, getting-an-idea-of-the-scale-of-the-question science. Say a billion universes, and a code for every point within a thousand-kilometre radius of Imperial College's Heisenberg Gate. All of the British Isles, much of continental Europe, some way out into the Atlantic. That was still a staggering amount of space. The Infundibulum held inside Dr. Quantum was a passport to a trillion alternate Britains. The full Infundibulum, if a machine could ever be built to contain it—Everett's mind had reeled, spinning out from his tiny cabin, little longer and broader than his hammock, through infinities of infinities.
“What I could do is dial it up and step out into your latty in Everness. And I could assassinate you and step back again and no one would ever know who did it. Or maybe I wouldn't have to assassinate you. I could just take you. No one would ever know where you had gone. Or I could just replace you with your double from another universe and no one would even know you had gone at all.”
“Nah,” said Se
n. “I mean, another me? Nah.”
“You think so? Ten to the eighty is a lot of universes. The chances are almost certain there'll be another Sen Sixsmyth out there somewhere. And that Sen Sixsmyth mightn't think like you at all. She might be rich and powerful or she might be homeless. She might have a load of reasons to be you.”
Sen fidgeted in her seat. The adrenaline burn was fading and the realisation that you weren't the unique, fantabulosa person you thought you were was chilling. Everett remembered how he had felt when he understood—properly understood, with his heart and emotions and empathy—what Tejendra had been telling him. Billions of Everetts. It had felt like the bottom was falling out of his world. You're not so special. He learned to live with it by convincing himself that those other Everetts were so far away, so inaccessible, sealed up in their other universes, that he would never know of them, much less meet them. That could never happen. Right.
Sen pulled her feet up onto the taxi's leather upholstery and hugged her knees to her. “But maybe I am the one and only, Everett. There are all those worlds where there are other yous, right? But there are ones where there aren't any Everett Singhs. There's someone else—lots of someones else. And there could be billions of some of those someones elses, and maybe a few thousand of some others, and maybe a hundred of other ones, maybe a handful. And in all those worlds, there have to be some one-and-onlies. That's me. I know it, I feel it. There's no one else like me. I am the special one.”
A loud bang. A chair bounced off the hood of the taxicab. Sen was thrown against the back of the driver's seat as the driver braked hard.
“Okay, end of the ride,” he announced. Everett winkled shillings out of his backpack as Sen got out of the car. She stood, hands on waist, mouth open.
“Fantabulosa!”
The street was full of people. The street was full of men, jammed together, backs turned, oblivious to the taxi, straining to see past each other. All their attention was given to some major event farther up Mare Street. Men were pouring from the warehouses and stores. They abandoned forklifts and goods trains, loaders and trucks, and came running. They came streaming from the Knights of the Air. There wasn't an intact window in the pub. Smashed furniture lay in the broken glass. It was easy to read that the altercation had started there and spilled on to the street. Hands brandished pieces of smashed furniture. Bottles and cobbles flew. There was a huge wordless roar like Cup Tie Saturday at White Hart Lane, a wall of sound.