by Stephen Fry
The tubes that ran from the back of the machine gleamed with shooting pulses of red light. The screen swirled and glowed with color.
“That’s it?” I asked. “Brunau?”
“First of June. Four a.m.”
“The colors are different from last time.”
“They are meaningless,” he replied in that faintly contemptuous tone of voice scientists use with dumb laymen. “The representation can be any color you choose to assign.”
“What are the red lights in the tubes there?”
“Data,” he said, a note of worry and surprise in his voice. “It is data. This is not how it was before?”
“Pretty much the same,” I said, reassuring him. “The wires coming out of the back were different, that’s all.”
“How did they look?”
“Well, they weren’t transparent, that’s all. The data ran through copper wires.”
“Copper wires?” he sounded amazed. “Like old-fashioned telephones? But that is primitive.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” I said, springing rather illogically to the defense of my own world.
He looked back at the screen. “Can it be so simple?” he asked. “I just press this and my father’s factory at Auschwitz never happened?” His finger was stroking a small black button below the screen.
I had not told Leo that in our previous world his father had also been at Auschwitz. I thought it might unhinge him to know that, no matter what he did to history, his father seemed to be destined to supervise the bestial destruction of Jews.
He turned from the screen and from his pocket he took two white masks. He attached one to his face, hooking the strings over his ears, and handed the other to me. I put it on, and great waves of menthol filled my nose and lungs, making my eyes run. I saw that he was weeping too. He blinked back his tears and pointed at the lens case.
I unclipped the lid of the box, opened it, swallowed hard and looked inside.
A huge, flapping, trail-legged insect flew out and hit me in the eye.
I dropped the lid and shouted in terror.
“Quiet!” Leo hissed. “It is not a wolf.”
He handed me two sheets of cardboard with a frown.
I lifted the lid again, keeping my head at an angle, ready to duck any more flying creatures.
There didn’t seem to be many flying creatures in there. A few fleas maybe, but nothing as substantial as that first horrible bug. No, most of the creatures left in this Pandora’s box were of the slithery kind. They had been busy over the past few hours: breeding and busy. The whole box heaved and shuddered with life. It was all too gloopy and broken up to be lifted between two bits of cardboard.
“I think . . .” I said, my voice sounding deep and muffled under the mask, “I think it’s best if I just empty it, don’t you?”
He looked into the box, nodded silently and pointed me towards what looked like a tall church font. The top part, the bowl or basin, was where I supposed the bits of rotting rat should go. From the underside, pulsing data tubes led to the back of the machine.
Leo signaled for me to get it over with and I held my breath and emptied the contents of the box into the basin.
Even through a menthol-soaked mask I could tell how great the stench was. Averting my eyes, I banged the edge of the box against the lip of the bowl and heard the sludging slither of rotting flesh slap out onto the plastic of the font basin, like gruel being doled into bowls by a workhouse matron. I took a quick look at the box and saw that there was more stuck in the corners.
“Could you pass me something to scoop out the rest with?” I said to Leo.
He rose, looked quickly about him and picked up a coffee mug from a table in the corner of the room.
He gave it to me and watched as I scraped at the sides and corners.
“Well, well, well. And just what in consarned tarnation is going on here?”
I looked up in horror. The coffee mug and lens case fell from my hands and hit the floor with a crash.
Brown and Hubbard stood in the doorway. They each held a gun in their hands.
“Now, don’t either of you go moving,” said Brown moving into the room. “I want to find out—Jesus fucking Christ!”
His hand flew to his mouth and he backed away, gagging. I saw vomit leak from between his fingers.
The smell had reached Hubbard and I saw him pull a handkerchief from his pocket. I looked at Leo and I saw that he was staring at the black button below the screen ten yards away from us. The clouds of color were still rolling on the screen. Everything was ready.
I took a small step to my left towards the machine.
“Oh, no you don’t,” said Hubbard, handing the handkerchief to Brown. “Not one step.” He raised the hand holding the gun to shoulder height and pointed it straight at my head.
Brown wiped his mouth and, still holding the handkerchief against his lips, glared at us with fury and distrust. I felt that for some reason he was more angered by his uncharacteristic outburst of profanity than by the throwing up. I had sensed when we had first met that he set a lot of store by his soft-spoken cowboy image. No doubt his underlings celebrated him as a wonderful eccentric Gary Cooper-like kind of eccentric. Gary Cooper never said “Jesus fucking Christ.” At least not in any movie I ever saw.
“I don’t know,” he said, through the handkerchief, “just what sick perversions we have stumbled on here, but I sure as the deuce mean to find out. You stay right where you are, you hear? Don’t say a word. Just nod or shake your head, understood?”
Leo and I nodded in unison.
“Good boys. Now. You got any more of them there masks in this room?”
Leo nodded.
“Where are they?”
Leo pointed to his pocket.
“All right now. You reach into that pocket, nice and slow and you throw them to me, okay?”
Leo shook his head and put up a finger.
“What’s that? You mean you only got one of the suckers?”
Leo nodded. He had thought, I realized, to bring one for Steve, expecting him to be with us for our moment of triumph.
“Shoot. Well, never mind. You throw that one mask over then.”
Leo did so. Hubbard caught it neatly and passed it to Brown, who gave him in return the vomit-filled handkerchief.
Hubbard stared at this offering for a moment and then threw it into the corridor behind him.
Brown adjusted the mask over his face and came fully into the room, his gun at hip level.
“You just make sure these boys are covered,” he said over his shoulder to Hubbard. Hubbard nodded weakly and leaned against the door frame. The smell was getting to him and he didn’t have a handkerchief.
His movement to one side revealed, crouched behind him in the shadows of the opposite doorway, Steve.
I swallowed, not daring to look to see if Leo had seen him too. Brown was moving slowly towards us, his eyes darting suspiciously about the room.
He was now close enough to see the bowl of rats, maggots, lice and other crawling horrors.
“Holy dang!” he said. “Just what in the name of heckfire is going on here?”
I stole another look at Hubbard, who was looking at Brown and trying not to breathe. I let my eyes slide slowly over to Steve. He was staring at me, white-faced and frightened. I swallowed again and spoke, as loudly and clearly as I could through the mask.
“It’s just an experiment,” I said.
“What’s that?” asked Brown. “Experiment? What kind of disgusting, godforsaken, heathen experiment could this ever be, boy? Answer me that?”
“All you have to do is press that black button. The one just below that screen there. The black button. Then you’ll find out.”
“Oh no, son. No one is going to go pressing any buttons round here u
ntil I’ve heard some explanations.”
I flicked my eyes over to Steve again and saw him straighten. He would need a diversion just to start.
“Explanations?” I bellowed. “Explanations? There’s your explanation . . . there!” I stabbed a finger dramatically towards the far corner of the room.
Pathetic really. I mean, talk about the oldest trick in the book. But it’s a good book, and the trick would have been cut from subsequent editions if it didn’t sometimes work.
I won’t say it worked this time. Not fully. Brown did look in that direction for a fraction of a second, but that was the extent of it. In that same fraction of a second Steve, God bless him, hurled himself through the doorway, knocking Hubbard sideways, and threw himself almost lengthways at the screen.
At the same time, Brown turned and fired his gun.
I heard Leo whimper and I heard Hubbard’s body collide with a bookshelf as he tried to regain his balance from Steve’s onslaught. I saw blood and gristle explode from out of the back of Steve’s neck and splatter against the wall. I saw a wisp of blue smoke come from the end of Brown’s gun. And I saw Brown, God rot his soul, raise the muzzle of the gun to his mouth and make to blow the wisp away like the mean, no good gunslinger he was. The mask was in the way, of course, so the noise that should have gone with the gesture, the little flute of triumph, was missing.
And, reader, I saw this. I saw Steve’s flailing hand feel for the little black button below the screen and press it hard with the strength of ten men and I swear, and will swear to my dying day, that as I leaped forwards to catch his falling body, a smile—a radiant smile for me and me alone—flickered on his face as he fell back and died in my arms.
EPILOGUE
The event horizon
“It just doesn’t learn, does it?”
“Exactly the same thing last week.”
“Next time, it’s shandy or nothing.”
“Well, hold him up, Jamie.”
“Me? Why should I hold him up? He’s covered in ick.”
“Don’t call it ick, darling, that’s so twee.”
“Where’s that girl he came with last week? Why can’t she help?”
“Oh, don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“Dumped him.”
“What’s going on?”
“Hark!”
“She moves, she stirs, she seems to feel, the breath of life beneath her keel.”
“Poetry, Eddie?”
“And why not?”
“Well, what are we going to do with it?”
“Mm. No cab is going to accept a mess like this, are they?”
“Where am I?”
“You’re in Cairo, Puppy.”
“In the court of Cleopatra.”
“You’re my body servant.”
“Oh no, I can’t be. Not Cairo.”
“Well, Paris then. In Madame de Pompadour’s boudoir.”
“Double Eddie?”
“Yes, Pups, what is it, sweetie?”
“Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
“Tell me something.”
“Anything, treasure. Anything.”
“Are you gay?”
“Oh Christ, he’s really lost it this time.”
“Shut your face, Jamie. Yes, Puppy. As gay as life, thank you for asking.”
“Thank God . . .”
“Eddie, I swear. If you try to take advantage of him in this state—”
“Shush. Look, he’s absolutely completely gone. Conked right out, poor lamb.”
“Oh poo. Well I suppose I’d better try and take him home.”
“We’ll both go, thank you very much indeed for asking nicely.”
“Are you saying you don’t trust me?”
“I’m not, but I can if you want me to.”
“Morning, Bill.”
“Morning, Mr. Young, sir.”
“This letter in my pigeonhole. It’s addressed to Professor Zuckermann.”
“Just leave it with me, sir. I’ll see that he gets it.”
“No, that’s okay. I’ve got to see him anyway. I’ll take the rest of his stuff too.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? It is very good.”
I walked across the lawn, deciding that I didn’t care a purple sprouting damn whether or not Bill shouted after me to get off the grass.
A window was flung open on the first floor and two voices floated down.
“Well!”
“Someone’s very cheerful this morning.”
“Considering the state they were in last night.”
“Hiya guys,” I said, with a salute. “Great party last night.”
“As if he remembers a single moment of it.”
“Did one of you take me home and put me to bed?”
“We both did.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry I got so wrecked. I’ll see you later.”
I bounded up the stairs to Leo’s rooms and knocked cheerfully on the door.
“Come in!”
He was standing over his chess table, staring at the position and tugging at his beard. The blue eyes blinked up in faint surprise as I came in.
“Professor Zuckermann?”
“Yes.”
“Um, my name’s Young, Michael Young. We’re neighbors.”
“Dr. Barmby has moved?”
“No, just pigeonhole neighbors. Young, Zuckermann. Alphabetic adjacency?”
“Oh, yes. I see. Of course.”
“Your overspill gets stuffed into mine, so I thought I’d—”
“My dear young fellow, how very kind. I am so sadly neglectful of clearing my pigeonhole, I fear.”
“Hey, no trouble. No trouble at all.”
He took the pile of mail from me. I let my eyes wander briefly around the room, taking in the laptop, the Holocaust literature, the mug of chocolate by the chess board.
“You look like a coffee man,” he said. “Would you like a cup?”
“That’s very kind,” I said, “but I have to be running. Hm.” I looked down at the chess board. “Are you white or black?”
“Black,” he said.
“You’re losing then,” I said.
“I’m terrible at chess. My friends tease me about it.”
“Hey that’s cool. I’m terrible at physics.”
“You know my subject?” He sounded surprised.
“Just a wild guess.”
“And what are you reading?”
I smiled. “I know I look too young, but actually I’m just finishing a thesis. History.”
“History? Is that so? What period?”
“Oh, no special period.”
He gave me a quick look, as if suspecting me of some student trick.
“You’ll think me very impertinent,” I said. “But can I give you a word of advice? There is something you absolutely must not do.”
“What?” said Leo, raising his eyebrows in astonishment. “What must I absolutely not do?”
I looked into those blue eyes . . . no, I thought. Not face-to-face. Not again. Maybe a letter one day soon. An anonymous letter.
“Take that pawn,” I said, pointing down to the chess table. “You’ll walk straight into a fork from the knight and lose the exchange. Anyway, sorry to have troubled you. See you later sometime, maybe.”
I pushed the bike up piss alley towards King’s Parade. I had noticed, after waking up, that the kitchen was low on food.
“Oh, yes, there was one more thing,” I said to the assistant in the little grocery story opposite Corpus. “You don’t have any maple syrup, do you?”
“Second shelf, love. Just above the Branston.”
“Wonde
rful,” I said. “Goes very well with bacon, you know.”
I thought maybe I might just try the record shop too. Oily-Moily’s latest album was due out.
“Oily-Moily? Never heard of them.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I’ve bought their albums here before. Oily-Moily. You know, Pete Braun, Jeff Webb. I mean come on, they’re one of the biggest bands in the world.”
“Pete Brown, did you say? I can do you James Brown.”
“Not O-W . . . A-U! Braun. Spelt like the electric shavers.”
“Never heard of him.”
I left the shop in a huff. I would return when they had someone with a brain in there.
But as I crossed the street a memory returned. A profile in Q Magazine I had read somewhere at some time.
Peter Braun’s father was born in Austria, the land of Mozart and Schubert. Maybe that’s why some classical music critics have gone overboard for his songs, making doopy arses of themselves by comparing some of the tracks on Open Wide to Schubert’s Winterreise.
One of Dr. Schenck’s patients had been called Braun.
Don’t tell me, don’t tell me I can have stopped Oily-Moily from being formed. That would be too cruel.
But it didn’t make sense. It had worked. It had all worked.
I was back where we had started. The water wasn’t drunk. Hitler was born. I had seen the books on Leo’s shelves. Double Eddie was back where he should be.
A hip-looking dude with one of those small goatee beards that I had once tried to grow was walking towards me.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“What do you reckon to Oily-Moily?”
“Oily-Moily?”
“Yes. What do you think of them?”
“Sorry, man . . .” he shook his head and walked on.
I tried it a few more times, but with no real hope.
Oily-Moily, no more. Obliterated.
I wound my way back to St. Matthew’s, the spring gone from my step.
At the gates, I collided with Dr. Fraser-Stuart.
“Aha!” he cried. “It’s young Young. Well, well, well. And how proceeds the thesis?”
“The thesis?”
“Curse my hat, damn my socks and call my trousers a fool, don’t give me that innocent look, boy. You promised me your revisions today.”