String City

by Graham Edwards

  A dent in the mattress in the shape of my dead wife. The shape of Laura.

  Lying on the bed beside the dent, a cardboard box.

  I imagined walking over to the box, taking off the lid, peering to see what was hidden inside. Hearing the echo of her laugh as she said what she always said when I couldn’t make sense of things:

  You get too bogged down in the details, baby. You never see the big picture...

  “I believe I have triangulated the position of your assistant in eight of the eleven dimensions,” the Scrutator called from upstairs. “This should be enough to generate an optimal path for acquisition.”

  I took the steps three at a time. The office was nearly as dark as the cellar: another thunderbird had crash-landed outside, splashing the cracked windows with fresh blood. The Scrutator stood in deep red shadow balanced awkwardly on one leg, mechanical limbs extended at haywire angles, gears grinding against gravity.

  “I should be grateful if you would hurry, sir,” it said. “I regret I can maintain this posture for only another seventeen point four seconds.”

  “What can you hear?”

  “I hear a rhythmic non-verbal vocalisation, concurrent with the reflexive intake of breath.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I believe Zephyr is sobbing.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Positioning coordinates are available on the surface of my retinas.”

  I looked into the robot’s eyes. Numbers like tax bills scrolled behind its pupils. I memorised the sequence, not understanding—not needing to understand. Raw data was all I needed.

  I grabbed my coat from the stand, turned it inside-out twice until it was moleskin. Not knowing where I was headed, I went for comfort. I reached in the pocket, took out the Dimension Die.

  “I am afraid Zephyr’s location is not stable,” said the Scrutator, “due to disruption in the branes caused by recent cataclysmic events. The data you have absorbed will be invalid in nine point nine seconds.”

  I closed my fist over the Dimension Die. It bothered me how much I’d come to rely on it. Now there were only three rolls left. At least this time I wasn’t using it as a cheap means of escape. I was using it to perform a rescue mission.

  “Six point seven seconds,” said the Scrutator.

  I thought of Zephyr, and all the places she could have ended up.

  “Two point five seconds.”

  I thought of home.

  “Zero point six seconds. Sir, I advise you to...”

  I filled up my head with the coordinates and rolled the die.

  50

  A WORD ABOUT worlds.

  First you’ve got the strings, then you’ve got the branes. The idea that branes are like sand layered in a jar is good, but look at them another way and you’ll see they’re also like flesh—the deep, damp flesh of the cosmos. The thing is, flesh needs support, otherwise it’s no better than egg custard. The strings help with that. They run through the branes like rebar through concrete. Or ligaments. But they’re not enough. What flesh really needs is bones.

  That’s where the worlds come in.

  Some folk think the worlds ride on the waves of the cosmos, like ships on an ocean. In fact it’s the other way round. Every world’s a bone, part of the unimaginable skeleton that supports the bulk. Like bones, the worlds are all connected. Toe-bone to skull-bone, and all bones between. There’s billions of worlds, all joined up by the strings, each with its part to play. Billions of bones. You should see the anatomy chart.

  Like bones, worlds do different jobs. There’s all shapes and all sizes. Some move, some are locked solid. All have a part to play, some more important than others. Some are hidden, purpose unknown.

  There’s one world that’s different. Plenty seek it; few find it. Not that it’s hidden—it’s just hard to grasp. It’s a slippery world, small like a pebble. An unremarkable world tucked deep in the bulk, just another tiny link in a vast cosmic chain. It’s a place I’ve been to many times, and go to whenever I can, because it’s something special. Like all worlds, it has many names.

  I call it the Wishbone.

  51

  I KNEW THE place at once. Worlds tug you down, each with its different pull; if you want to know where you are in the cosmos, just ask the soles of your feet. Last time I was in this world I went to help a woman whose baby had turned to wood. Another long story.

  I knew as soon as I arrived that was something badly out of step. It was like hearing an untuned piano, or a band playing five-four jazz while everyone danced the waltz.

  I was in an alley. It was raining. No surprise there—weather joins worlds just like the strings. I took off my coat, turned it inside-out three times until it was seersucker, and stepped out into the street.

  To my right rose a sheer rock face. On top of the rock was a Victorian mansion. Scaffolding held up the rock, which was crumbling like cheese, and behind it was a modest city skyline. A full moon lit up evening clouds; beneath it, a terrace of dark houses. Traffic clogged the street, the end of rush hour. The city looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite pin it down. I see a lot of cities.

  My key fob’s got a built-in Kronechtomiser. Just a cheap plastic thing, useless for serious time-slicing, but what do you expect from a breakfast cereal giveaway? Still, it’s handy when you want to glimpse the history of a place.

  I used the Kronechtomiser to scan the rock face. Seen through the little lens, the scaffolding melted away. The mansion faded, was replaced by a Norman castle. Pennants flew, arrows too. I saw carts, a gallows, men in Lincoln green. One wore a hood, although I knew for a fact he was no Fool.

  I put the key fob away. A police car punched a hole in the traffic. Blue lights flashed. Rain fell. I listened, but all I could hear was the police car’s siren. Gradually it faded. The rain eased and I started to search. The moon was bright, nearly as blue as the traffic cop’s flashers.

  It didn’t take me long to find Zephyr. She was crouched under a tree opposite the alley where I’d materialised; the Scrutator’s coordinates had brought me more or less to the bullseye. She was sobbing, just like the Scrutator had said. The tree was in the front garden of a house with no glass in the windows. The garden looked like a scrapyard. Rats gnawed abandoned tires; tarpaulins flapped over mangled bicycles.

  Zephyr was balled up beside a broken washing machine, arms round her knees, crying into the rain. When she saw me, she opened her arms and let me hug her. We stayed like that for a while, cold in the drizzle. Eventually I pulled away.

  “You ready to go back?”

  She looked at me blank. “You came for me?”

  “Who else?”

  Thin shoulders trembled. “It’s too late for that. I’ve been trying to save myself, ever since I got back here. But nothing works. Nothing makes any difference. You might as well go. Leave me here. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

  I showed her the Dimension Die. “You know how it works. I roll this, we’re out of here.”

  Zephyr shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. I meant you can’t save me. You can’t change what I am, what I’ve done.”

  I put the die away, sat next to her, put my palms on the dirt, and let this world’s broken rhythm soak up into them.

  “What did Deliciosa say to you? Just before the tornado carried you off.”

  Zephyr wiped her eyes with her sodden sleeve. “She said, ‘Think of where you want to be.’ That’s all.”

  It figured. Planck tornadoes are a little like the Dimension Die—they feed off your thoughts. If you enter one in a panic, you’ll wind up in Mammon’s mouth. Deliciosa had been smart enough to calm Zephyr down, allowing her to decide her own destination rather than let the tornado do it for her. Looked like the trick had worked.

  Yet it didn’t look like Zephyr was happy about the result.

  “Is this your home?”

  “Yes. Nottingham. England. I’ve lived here long enough to know it inside-out. Only...”

  “Only
it doesn’t feel right? The place feels out of kilter? Like none of the angles fit?”

  Her black-rimmed eyes were brilliant in the moonlight. “That’s right! How did you know?”

  “This isn’t your world. Not quite. It’s a parallel one. Planck tornadoes never move in straight lines—it’s why they’re called twisters. You aim at the gold and end up in the black. Happens all the time.”

  “So you’re saying this might be Nottingham, but it’s not my Nottingham?”

  “Right. It’s close, but nobody’s smoking a cigar.”

  She nodded. “I knew it. I knew something wasn’t right.”

  “Let me guess—the days are looping?”

  “What?”

  “Looping. Are you seeing the same events repeat themselves?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Just tell me what you’ve seen.”

  She smeared a rain-streaked hand across her face. “I’ve been watching myself, coming and going, over and over again. It’s like I’m seeing history repeating itself, but I can’t do a single thing to change it. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve been here for three weeks now, trying every single day to make things different, and nothing’s changed.”

  The rain had stopped. A rat sniffed my boot. I kicked it away. The clouds peeled back from the moon, revealing a sky turned to night.

  “Three weeks?” I said. “But you’ve been gone less than an hour.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. Time twists when you walk the Planck.

  “How can that be?”

  “Never mind. Just tell me what’s going on. Start at the beginning.”

  Zephyr’s eyes filled up with tears again. “There is no beginning. It’s all just a great big circle turning round and round, over and over again.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “You see that house there?” She pointed across the street. “The one with the orange curtains? That’s where we used to live, me and my boyfriend. Raymond, his name was. The house was split into flats; we had the top floor. It was pretty shabby but we didn’t care. It was our place. Our home.

  “We’d been together nearly a year, Raymond and me. We met when he came into the shop where I worked—one of the big department stores in town. He wanted to buy some fancy bath stuff for an aunt, so I helped him pick out a bottle. He asked me on a date, and I went, and that was that. He told me was a waiter.

  “The first few weeks were great. We did all the usual things: movies and pizzas and, well, you know. He took me for a meal at the place where he worked. It was this fake medieval hall that did themed banquets. Every night he’d dress up like Robin Hood and carry great plates of meat about for the punters. We went there on his night off and had the most amazing time, eating suckling pig and greasy venison and, oh, it was wild! When all the punters had gone, we stayed behind, and Raymond got them to turn up the music and turn down the lights and we danced to this amazing minstrel music that was all lutes and harps and bagpipes. We danced and danced, and the funny thing was that the more we went round and round, the more it seemed like it wasn’t us dancing at all. It felt like we were completely still and it was the room doing the dancing. The whole room turning around us. The whole world even. Isn’t that strange?”

  “It isn’t strange at all, honey,” I said.

  “Anyway, toward the end of that first month, Raymond started working longer and longer shifts, so I ended up spending a lot of evenings alone in the flat. He got moody—I assumed he was just tired. I’ve never been good at staying up late, so I just used to go to bed and tell him not to disturb me when he came in.

  “One night I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know—maybe the moon was too bright. I got up, made myself a drink of chocolate and waited for him on the couch.

  “He came in around two in the morning. At first I thought he was drunk, because he smelt awful and couldn’t keep his balance. He kept coughing, like he’d got something stuck in his throat. I waited for him to spot me, but the lights were out. I don’t think he even knew I was there. He took a beer from the fridge and drank it straight down from the can. He’d just grabbed another when he suddenly doubled up with his hands clutched against his stomach. He dropped the beer, which started spurting all over the floor.

  “I jumped off the couch, going to help him, thinking maybe he’d got a cramp or something. I stopped when these things sprang up and ripped open the back of his shirt.”

  “‘Things’?”

  “Quills. It was a row of quills, like on a porcupine.”

  Zephyr stopped, clamped her arms round her knees again. Her eyes were distant, unfocused.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “There was this cracking sound. It was his bones. It was... appalling. He dropped to all fours and his whole body changed shape. His hands melted together into hooves. His shoulders grew taller and narrower, his neck got thicker. A snout pushed its way through the middle of his face, and these two enormous tusks came out of his mouth. I swear I heard his jaw breaking. You have no idea.”

  I’d seen more shapeshifters than she’d seen movies and eaten pizzas and, well, you know. “Go on,” I said.

  “He turned into a boar,” she said. “My boyfriend Raymond turned into a wild animal by the light of the full moon. And there was me, watching, wondering what was going to happen next.” She started crying again.

  “So what did happen?”

  “He saw me. He came toward me. He was sort of... snuffling. I backed into a corner. I was terrified. This great wild boar came right up to me, and when I looked into its eyes it was still Raymond. It was Raymond’s eyes looking out. He looked just as scared as I did. I reached out and stroked his head. His back was all covered in those quills, but the fur on his head was soft.

  “He only stayed that way for a few hours. The next morning he was back to normal—more than normal, really. He was relaxed, cheerful, happier than he’d been since I’d known him. He was... wonderful. I kept trying to talk about what had happened, but every time I was about to say something I just caught his smile and froze up. I just didn’t want to do anything to burst the bubble. After a while, I even started to believe it had just been a crazy dream.

  “The next month it happened all over again. And every month after that.

  “I stayed with him through the transformations. After he’d changed, well, it wasn’t like a werewolf movie or anything. He didn’t go on a rampage or killing spree. It was just sort of sad and ordinary. He kept rooting round the flat, as if he was looking for something. Me, I’d just leave him to it and go back to bed. When I woke up the next day, he was in bed beside me, human again.

  “Then, one morning, I woke to find that this time he hadn’t changed back. I didn’t know what to do. I called in sick at work and hung around the flat, waiting to see what would happen. After the second night he was Raymond again. Gradually it got worse. Each month, he spent more and more time as a boar, and less and less as a man. I had more and more time off work. The flat was a mess—his hooves ruined the carpet, and the smell... it was foul.”

  “You never talked to him about it?” It was a little hard to believe.

  “Never. Talk about the elephant in the room.” She barked out a laugh. “Okay—not exactly an elephant. It’s crazy, I know, but it was like... we both knew what was happening, but neither of us dared to raise the subject. But it was taking its toll. I got depressed, couldn’t sleep, started taking tablets. Soon Raymond was a boar most of the time. Whenever anyone came to the flat I sent them away, or just ignored the door altogether. It was a terrible time. And do you know what the worst of it was? Raymond hated it. Every single second of it. He never said it, but I knew he wanted it to stop. So I stopped it for him.”

  A thin cloud slit the moon. Silver light washed the giant rock that held the remains of Nottingham Castle. Even without the Kronechtomiser I thought I could see the ghosts of older times.

  Zephyr went on. “I was back at work. I was trying to get my life back on track. I’d pretty much decided I
was going to leave him, but I couldn’t pluck up the courage. I got off the bus. I was carrying shopping bags—I’d been to the supermarket. I went up to the flat, found Raymond in his boar-shape, as usual. He saw me and ran at me. He took a swipe at me with his tusks. If I hadn’t moved he’d have opened me up like a sardine tin. He stood there—the boar stood there—steam coming out of his snout, the quills erect on his back. He grunted, and looked as if he was going to charge me again, but then he stopped.

  “He stopped and looked right at me. This horrible, giant, stinking animal looked at me with my lover’s eyes. I could see right inside him, all the way inside to where my Raymond was trapped. He looked so sad. He was pleading with me. He couldn’t say anything, but I knew he was pleading.

  “I went to the bedroom, took my silver christening crucifix out of the drawer and went back into the living room. Raymond hadn’t moved. I didn’t say anything, didn’t even think. I just drove the crucifix into his neck like a dagger. I must have hit an artery, because blood sprayed out, all over the place. He fell to his knees and started panting. I fell with him—my face was right next to those awful boar’s tusks. If he’d wanted to, he could have taken my head off. But he didn’t. Then I held him as he died, waiting for him to turn back into the man I’d loved. That’s what happens in the movies, isn’t it? Doesn’t the werewolf always turn back into the man? But he didn’t. He stayed a boar. I never saw Raymond again. And every day since that day, I’ve had to live with the knowledge that I murdered him.”

  Zephyr’s tears had dried. I held her hand, got nothing back, let go.

  “Raymond was a bosquadrille,” I said. “Shapeshifter, from the wildwood. Time was this whole town was surrounded by deep forest. Just ask Herne the Hunter. Bosquadrilles are were-humans—that’s why they remain as beasts when they die. My guess is he’d been walking the years, waiting for someone like you to come along.”

  “What do you mean, ‘walking the years’?” She was all spent. She asked the question, didn’t care whether or not she got an answer. I gave her one anyway.