by Stephen Fry
I lit another cigarette. I couldn’t inhale because of the asthma, but there was a comfort in the synthetic sterility of its sleek, urban poison. I wished I had brought along a rug. Not wool or cotton or anything natural or organic, but a nasty, tacky nylon or polyester mat. It would have been like a raft of civilization over this crawling sargasso.
Jumpy, I was getting decidedly jumpy. I looked at my watch.
Nearly time, very nearly time. In five minutes or so I would know whether Leo trusted me. I would know whether—
OH JESUS, MY LEGS ARE ON FIRE!
What had I done? Set light to the fucking tree with my fucking cigarette?
I slapped at my legs, screaming in agony.
There were no flames and no clouds of smoke. By the time the tears had cleared from my eyes enough to enable me to see, it was plain to me that it was not fire that scorched my legs.
Just ants.
Hundreds of the bastards. Thousands. From the knee down it looked like I was wearing long ant socks of an especially tight weave.
I tried frantically to wipe them off, yelling and kicking and bucking all the while like a maddened bull.
The touch of a human hand on my shoulder as I danced away from the tree, nearly unseated my reason entirely.
Letting out a huge scream, I thrashed with my fist backwards over my shoulder. It met nothing but air, which, as it turned out, was just as well.
“Mikey, what’s the matter?”
Merely the sound of Steve’s soft, easy voice did something to calm me down.
“Ants,” I screeched, turning and falling into his arms. “Ants, rats, mosquitoes. Everything. Oh, Steve, why the fuck did you choose this place?”
He pushed me gently away from him. Over his shoulder I saw Leo’s frightened face peering at me in alarm.
“Fire ants,” said Steve, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. “I’m sorry, guess I should have warned you to look out for them.”
“Fire ants?” I said. “Are they poisonous?”
“They just sting a little. Come on, sit down. I’ll get the rest off you.”
“A little? They sting a little?”
Steve brushed the rest of the ants from my shins. “They’re real smart little critters actually. What happens is they crawl up your leg but they don’t do anything at first. They wait for a signal from the leader and then they all bite at once, in one united attack. See, if the first one bit you as soon as he had gotten there, you would feel him and brush the rest off before the others had a chance to get a feast too. Real smart. You gotta hand it to evolution. I brought along some stuff. Looks like you had an encounter with some poison ivy too.”
“Poison ivy?”
“Yeah,” he started to spread a cold gel all over my legs, neck and arms. “Nasty, huh?”
“I’m sorry,” I said to Leo, as he edged nervously forwards, blinking like an owl. “You must think I’m hysterical. It’s just that I’m not used to the American countryside. I had a vision of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I had no idea it would be more like the dark heart of the Amazonian rain forest. My mistake.”
Leo looked about him uneasily as if he too, wondered what horrors lay within these woods. Steve’s next remark was not helpful.
“Let’s just hope there aren’t any Lyme ticks hereabouts.”
“Lyme ticks?” I said, a new horror dawning. “What the fuck are Lyme ticks?”
“You don’t wanna know, buddy. Trust me on this.”
“Oh Jesus,” I moaned.
Steve screwed the top onto the tube of ointment and slapped me cheerfully on the thigh like a no-nonsense nurse. “Okay. That feel better?”
The gel had soothed me slightly, but I still felt as if I were on fire.
“A little,” I said. There was no use complaining. Too much to do. I got painfully to my feet. “The main thing is, you’re here.”
“Sure we’re here,” said Steve.
“And you weren’t followed?”
Leo shook his head forcefully. “Not followed,” he said.
“It went great,” chirruped Steve, who in his bright red T-shirt and shorts looked like Mephistopheles’s junior apprentice on a seaside holiday.
“Now perhaps,” said Leo, “you will be kind enough to tell me what is the meaning of all this? Who you are. Why you arrange this meeting. How it comes that you know so much of me?”
“I will explain everything to you, sir,” I said. “I promise. But first I have to know something from you. About your work. I have to ask you to confirm a guess.”
There was one detail of my plan that I had not worked out. I think I had been hoping that something would occur to Leo. No doubt it would have done so. It was with great pleasure, though, as darkness fell and we were preparing to leave each other and go our separate ways back to Princeton, that I let out a shout as inspiration hit me with a thrilling kiss.
“Oh shit, not more fire ants?” said Steve.
“No,” I said. “Not ants. I’ve had an idea. I don’t suppose either of you has a container of some kind?”
“Like this?” Steve held up his blue nylon bag.
“Well, I don’t want to ruin it. Something smaller would do. More like a shopping bag. A plastic bag maybe. Or a box.”
“I have many bags and boxes at home,” said Leo.
“That’s no good I’m afraid. I need something right here and now.”
“For why?”
“Hey!” said Steve, who had been hunting through his nylon bag. “How ’bout this?”
He was holding up a silver-surfaced case about half the size of a shoe box.
“That’s perfect,” I said. “What the hell is it?”
“I keep my filters and lenses in it.”
He unclipped the lid and showed me.
“Mm,” I said doubtfully. “The space is all divided up.”
“The partitions just slide out,” said Steve. “See?”
Steve scooped out the lenses and filters and then pulled out the dividing slots.
“Brilliant. Simply brilliant. Better than a bag. With any luck it might be almost airtight. Now, Steve,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Do you think you have a strong stomach?”
He wrinkled his brow in puzzlement. “I guess so,” he said. “Pretty strong. Why?”
“Well,” I said. “Behind that tree stump there, you will find two dead rats. But I warn you, they are crawling with maggots and they stink to heaven.”
Five hours later Steve and I met outside the statue of Science Triumphant and waited for Leo.
“He is coming, isn’t he?” I said. “I mean, he will come?”
“He said he would come. He’ll come,” said Steve.
“Why are you so calm? How come you’re so bloody calm? I’m not calm. I’m jumping like a Mexican bean. But you . . . you’ve been so in control all day. How come? How come you’re calm? I’m not calm. I’m not even slightly calm.”
“You could’ve fooled me,” grinned Steve.
“I mean, this might be a disaster. It might start all over again. I might wake up in the middle of an Iraqi punishment cell or a Siberian gulag. Jesus, I might be destined to do this for the rest of my life, like the Flying Dutchman or Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap. Without even the dubious advantage of Dean Stockwell.”
“I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” said Steve, “but just have faith, buddy. The world you wake up in can’t be worse than this.”
“Oh no?” I said. “I’m not so sure that this world is really so much worse than mine.”
“From what you’ve told me, it’s a lot worse.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t told you about Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch and fundamentalists and infant crack addicts with Uzis. I haven’t told you about lottery scratch cards and m
ad cow disease and Larry King Live. Maybe we should just forget this whole thing.”
“You’ve just got the jitters, is all. You told me about political correctness and gay quarters in towns and rock and roll and Clinton Eastwood movies and kids not having to call their dads ‘sir’ but saying ‘motherfucker’ and ‘no way, dude’ and chilling off in Ecstasy dance clubs. I want some of that. I want to be cool.”
“That’s chilling out, actually, not chilling off.”
“Whatever. I want to wear weird clothes and grow my hair long without being fined by the college or having a fight with my parents. If you want to do that here, you live in a ghetto and the police round you up and harassle you.”
“And that’s hassle, in fact. Hassle or harass. Not harassle. And I’ve a feeling I may have given you a false impression of my world. I mean it’s not all one long party you know. Ecstasy is illegal and people don’t use the word ‘motherfucker’ in front of their parents. I mean, not white middle-class people anyway.”
“Yeah? Well, give me the chance to find out, okay? Give me a chance to use these words and live this life, okay? It’s you that denied me the right in the first place.”
“Mm,” I said, doubtfully. “I just wonder if—”
“Besides,” he interrupted. “That’s just the present we’re talking about. You’re forgetting history. You think you can just leave that?”
“All right, all right!” I said. “I know. I’m being hysterical. But what if something goes wrong?”
“Something has already gone wrong, hasn’t it? We’re gonna put it right.”
“But this time I might wake up and never remember.”
“So what’s the difference? You’ll never know.”
“But what about you? Suppose you find yourself, with your old consciousness in another country with the wrong accent, knowing nothing about it, like I did? People will think you’re nuts. Christ, suppose it’s a country where you don’t even speak the language?”
“That’s a chance I’m gonna have to take.”
“No,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Christ, I’m glad I thought of this. What you’re going to have to do is not be in the room. Nowhere near the event when it takes place. That way, what happened to me can’t happen to you.”
“Hell, Mikey. Don’t say that! We’re in this together.”
“No way, Steve. You have to—”
“Why are you making so much noise!” Leo appeared out of the darkness, hissing angrily. “You want everyone in Princeton should know we are here?”
“Mikey is saying I can’t come in with you,” said Steve, whining like a child denied a treat. “Tell him I can.”
I explained my reasoning to Leo.
He thought about it carefully before speaking. “I think Mikey is right,” he said at last. “If you were caught up in the event horizon and retained this identity it could make your life very difficult afterwards. We cannot take such a risk.”
“But—”
“No. I think it is better you help us by leaving alone,” said Leo with decision. “You have been much service to us already.”
It took ten minutes of argument and wheedling to convince Steve.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, as he sulkily handed me the silvered lens case. “But you do see . . .”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I see.”
I held out my hand. “Cheer up,” I said. “After all, this may never work. For all we know, in two hours time we’ll discover that it can never work in this world. I may be stuck here forever.”
He took my outstretched hand. “Maybe,” he said. “But more likely I’ll never see you again and . . .”
“And what?”
“You’ve been kind to me, Mikey. I know that’s all it was. Just kindness. But you’ve made me happier in the last couple of days than I ever was before. In my whole life. Maybe happier than I ever could be, in any world.”
“What do you mean by saying that’s all it was? It wasn’t kindness. I like you, Steve. You must know that.”
“Yeah. You like me. But back in England you’ll have a girlfriend.”
“I doubt it. I only ever had one and she left me. But back here, when everything is as it should be, you’ll have a boyfriend. Dozens of them. Hundreds. As many as you can handle. More than you can handle. A cute dude like you. You’ll be beating them off . . . as it were.”
“But they won’t be you, will they?”
“Gentlemen, please!” said Leo, who had been listening to this with mounting impatience. “It is almost light already. We may be seen.”
Steve hugged me tightly and disappeared into the shadows.
“He’s very fond of me,” I explained to Leo.
“My glasses I need only for reading,” he replied, somewhat elliptically. “You have the rats?”
“Yup,” I said, showing him the box.
As he input his security code into the panel by the entrance door, I cast my mind back to the night outside the New Cavendish building, when I had raced round on a bike to meet him in the Cambridge starlight, my pocket full of little orange pills.
He led me silently to the elevators whose whooping hum seemed devastatingly loud in the dead silence. Down a maze of third-floor corridors I followed him until we arrived at a door in front of which he stopped.
“How the hell did you come up with Chester Franklin?” I whispered, indicating the nameplate on the door.
“That was Hubbard’s idea,” he answered, as the door clicked open.
It was dark as a cellar inside. I stood, not daring to move, listening to him fiddling with blinds. At last he flicked a light switch and I could look around.
He pointed to a stool, like a sea lion trainer. “Sit,” he said. “Please say nothing to lose me my concentration.”
I sat watching him in obedient silence.
There was a Tim, or a machine not unlike the Tim I had known. But its casing was white, tinged with duck-egg blue. That may have been a trick of the overhead lights, however, whose glow seemed to cast a faint blue over everything.
There was no mouse on this machine, but instead a joystick stuck up from the side like a lollipop. The screen was larger and there was no vestige of keyboard. Instead of Centronix cabling and yards of spaghetti, clear plastic pipes emerged from the rear, like the tubes on an intravenous drip.
A sudden horrible thought struck me and made my mouth go dry.
Suppose the Nazis had abolished the Greenwich meridian?
Leo had not asked me about the coordinates of Brunau when we had talked out there in the woods.
His first idea four years ago, as I had guessed, knowing my Leo, had been to do something to destroy his father’s factory in Auschwitz. Then he had seen that this might not be enough, and he had considered the possibility of assassinating Rudolf Gloder. He did not know how this could be done but, although his heart had been set against murder, he had toyed with the idea of sending a bomb to an early Nazi congress. He decided such a project was too full of imponderables, so he considered next the possibility of sending Brunau Water to Bayreuth to stop Gloder’s birth. He believed it would be a fitting irony. His difficulty was that Brunau Water no longer existed. At least, it might exist somewhere, but he did not know where and dared not ask. Then he heard, through an academic colleague in Cambridge, that there was work being done in Princeton, America, that pointed towards the possibility of contraceptive drugs. Such work was forbidden in Europe on the grounds of “ethics,” a hypocritical irony the macabre humor of which Leo had never been able to share with anyone. So, logical and single-minded as ever, Leo had decided to defect to the United States. He was the same Leo all right. The same overwhelming burden of inherited guilt, the same fanatical belief that he could and must atone for his father’s guilt.
He had found it difficult, however, once i
nstalled in Princeton, to pursue his private quest. The government authorities here believed him to be working on a quantum weapon that would give America the chance to gain a final decisive advantage over Europe. There was no justification for his asking a lot of questions about contraceptives under such circumstances. He had expected to find academic freedom in the United States, freedom of a kind denied European scientists. He had been greatly mistaken. If anything, the security and secrecy here was more intense than in Cambridge.
Then I had shown up. Now he and I were preparing to make the world a better place by ensuring that Adolf Hitler lived and prospered.
The idea of the rats had made him laugh. Steve had laughed too. It was so foolish.
“But it makes sense!” I had protested. “What would you do if you pumped up water one morning and it was full of maggots and bits of dead animal and smelt like a sewer? You wouldn’t drink it, that’s for sure. The whole cistern would be pumped out and disinfected. It stands to reason.”
Neither of them had been able to come up with a better suggestion, so into Steve’s lens box the rats had gone, their suppurating bodies almost falling to pieces as a retching Steve scooped them up between two pieces of cardboard.
Leo had taken the cardboard from Steve and finished the job. His was the strongest stomach of all.
I watched him working now: his strong blue eyes darting over his creation, his long fingers operating switches, his whole restless body almost trembling with the intense concentration of his actions.
He seemed to sense my gaze for he looked up at me.
“It goes well,” he whispered.
“About Brunau,” I said. “You’ll need the coordinates. I’m worried that . . .”
“You think I don’t know them?”
“Forty-seven degrees, thirteen minutes, twenty-eight seconds north, ten degrees, fifty-two minutes, thirty-one seconds east.”
He nodded. “Your memory is good. See. We are looking there now.”
“I remember something else,” I said. “You once told me that in this life you are either a rat or a mouse. Rats do good or evil by changing things and mice do good or evil by doing nothing.”
His eyes flicked over to the silvered lens case. “Most appropriate,” he said. “Now, if you are ready. It is time.”