Into the Fourth Universe

by Robert Wingfield

  “What the Phoist?” he said.

  He ran from room to room, checking the rest of the house. It was completely empty. He investigated the doors again. There was no sign of the break-in, but worse, no sign of Rannie either. He switched on the intruder detection systems and scanned for life-forms of any species. Apart from the cluster of doku now congregating round the front door, there was nothing to see. He double-checked the house control unit for signs of a hacked entry; again nothing. Back in the study, he bent down to examine where Rannie had been lying. There was the white rug he had picked up in a shop in Alicante (his ship had been diverted by a flock of bison-geese blocking the shipping lanes on their annual migration towards the tropical warmth of the Scottish Highlands—apparently the weather had improved considerably since Scotland gained independence from the English). Or was it his rug? Where was the damage from that spilled pint of ‘Woodlouse-Slayer’ after the all-nighter with his mates from the guano mines? He picked it up and sniffed. The unmistakable smell of no ale was conspicuous by its presence. Someone had cleaned the carpet, and rather thoroughly too, he thought. (The house washing-machine had been unable to completely remove the stain, despite the application of different cleaning agents which were all very good at removing beetroot, red wine and chocolate, especially when applied together, but were stumped by a slick of his home-made beer. He had even tried the cleaners all at the same time and only succeeded in turning his washing red. Rannie had taken over and managed to rescue most of the items which had not already dissolved.)

  “Anyway”, he shrugged, “enough of those thoughts. Something’s been going on here. I’m not sure how long ago; oh, two days by the undamaged clock that was lying in pieces last time I was here.” He sat down and put his head in his hands. “Think. What can I do? Where do I start?” His mind was blank and then cleared as he stood up and headed for the kitchen. “Ale is what I need,” he muttered, following the advice of the ‘Investigators Association’ fridge magnet, “When in doubt, guzzle.”

  * * *

  “And now to find out what’s been going on. I guess I’m now my own client for this investigation. I’ll do it at a cut price for myself, and keep the expenses to a minimum.” The detective, suitably loaded with alcohol, and freshly showered, was ready to begin. He sat down in the study and ran a bio-scan on the area to try to find out what had happened to Rannie’s body. It turned up nothing; either she was buried very deeply under the surface of the planet, or she had been vaporised and her remains scattered into space, or his detector was broken.

  He tried a remote investigation of the local hospitals, cemeteries, bars and Young People’s Binge Houses, and this too yielded nothing. He knew he had to expand his search area. Somebody must have seen something. Again he turned up nothing out of the ordinary. This had to mean that the murderers were strangers on the planet, so the answer was to check the spaceport records for recent arrivals and departures, possibly with excess luggage on the way out. “Better make sure I’ve not got company though, before I go over to the port. Don’t want to get another crack on the skull.”

  Again he checked the area surrounding his house, and again there was nothing visible except the doku. He put on his best sleuthing coat (a long black leather number that was fractionally too big for him, but had been a bargain at the last ‘Snoopicon’ exhibition), slipped his favourite gun into his pocket and stepped outside to retrieve his hat. Confident in his total security and safety, he shouldered his way through the milling Doku.

  “Stop where you are, Magus.” The voice seemed to come from inside the herd itself. The investigator whirled round to face it. “Put the gun down,” said one of the Doku. “You are covered. Don’t try anything stupid.”

  “What, like hang-gliding in a litter bin?”

  “That’s enough of that, now drop the gun. Yes, the one in your coat.” The Magus gingerly extracted his weapon and released it. “And the one in your shoulder holster” continued the Doku. “One false move…”

  “What, like ‘Pope to Queen’s Elf Seven’?”

  “Are you taking the piss?”

  “It’s hard to concentrate when you’re being menaced by what’s basically a big soft old cow.”

  “Oh, sorry about that. Have you got rid of all your weapons?”

  The Magus nodded. “As you instructed.”

  “I’ll come out then.” A man stepped from behind one of the animals. He was short and stocky and reminded the Magus of a gangster in a Bogart movie. That was where the similarity ended. The man was dressed in a nicely cut hairy animal skin and he held a sawn-off multi-tube laser rifle, loosely pointed in the Magus’s direction. The Magus did not move. At this range the weapon could knock a sizeable hole in him, the house behind, and part of the mountain range behind that.

  “So why couldn’t I see you on the scanner?” The Magus was curious.

  “I hid behind a Doku. Oh, and the throwing knife in your boot…”

  “What throwing knife?”

  “What, no knife? You private nobs always have a throwing knife…”

  “Private dicks if you don’t mind.”

  “Dicks, nobs, I thought it was all the same…”

  “You’re not from round here, are you?” His hunch about ‘outsiders’ had been correct.

  “How can you tell?” The man shrugged. “Anyway, enough of this. I was asked to hang around for a bit to make sure you were completely dead. You don’t look dead to me. I thought you’d been bludgeoned to death and buried. But then, they said you had an annoying habit of reappearing even after all that sort of thing.”

  “They? Who are they? Why do ‘they’ want me dead?” The Magus stalled for time. “Can we come to some arrangement? I am rather rich, you know.”

  “So I’ve been led to believe, but, there’s more to job satisfaction than money.”

  “Pardon? Are you sure? You’re not a computer games programmer are you? Anyway, like, what is there more important than the money?”

  The Doku-man counted on his fingers. “The pleasure of the kill, the status, the knowledge of a job properly done, the way people treat you with respect, the outfit…”

  “The outfit?” The Magus jumped on that one while he tried to think of a way out. “You look like, well, a Doku. How do you pull girls with clothes, and an aroma, like that?”

  The man patted one of the beasts. “I never have any trouble.” The animal turned its head towards him and the Magus could have sworn it looked bashful. “Anyway,” the man continued, “I do have to kill you now. There are no witnesses within many miles, as you know from your scans, so don’t think about shouting for help. I’ll just get out my ‘Happy Slap’ mobile to film it for the youngsters, if you could bear with me for a moment. By the way, don’t think about making a break for it.”

  The Magus glanced towards the safety of his house. There was nowhere to run. He leaned gently backwards and reached for the small firearm wedged into the back of his belt that wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. He cursed under his breath for the oversight. The Doku-man set his device on a tripod and levelled the shot-laser. The Magus closed his eyes.

  Drop Dead Date

  T

  he wheelchair seemed to want to go in five directions at once. The old man struggling with it was grunting with the effort of forcing its small wheels up the incline toward the vantage point over the valley. He glanced down at the faded script on the handle, ‘Morrisburyways’, and shrugged; at least it was easier than carrying his burden to the top of the hill. “Are you okay, darling?”

  The lady in the chair sighed. “I’m fine,” she replied in a weak voice he could hardly hear. “You don’t have to do this, you know. I can die at home just as peacefully.”

  A tear rolled down the old man’s cheek. “I don’t want you to go.”

  “I don’t want to leave you either, but you know my time is coming. You’d better hurry.”

  “How can you be so sure about the exact time of
death?” He turned the converted trolley around and dragged it backwards through a patch of mud.

  “We know. My people always live for exactly this amount of time. If we didn’t, there would be a load of old folks cluttering up society, absorbing money and resources which could be better spent on the jobless, illegal immigrants, long-term work-shy and sacked dung-mining executives’ pensions.”

  “But I can’t live without you, Suzy…” He clipped the side of a tree. The tears were starting to blind him.

  The lady coughed. “Ouch. You must... and watch where you’re going will you?”

  “I don’t want to live without you. What is there for me after?

  The lady shrugged. “I’m sorry, but you guys are normally supposed to die before us. I don’t know what to advise you. If it was me, I’d get over it, and then throw myself off a cliff in misery. I can’t comfort you. Don’t overdo it though. Are you sure you don’t want to go back and leave me here?”

  “Of course not.” The man stopped for breath and stroked her hair. “Still that beautiful gold I fell in love with…”

  She nodded.

  “And you’re still as lovely as ever.”

  “Rubbish,” she said, “I’m older and look older, but I expect your eyesight has faded to suit. Now are you going to give up?”

  “I promised to take you to our spot,” he replied, “You said you could never tire of the view.”

  She leaned her head back against his heaving chest. “It’s very sweet of you. I will die happy looking across our beautiful valley. Are you sure I’m not too heavy?” She seemed concerned. “Do you want to take a break?”

  “Not far now,” he panted. “Look here we are.” He forced the home-made chair through the last few bushes, and the panorama opened up in front of them. A distant planet in both time and phase from the place of his birth, but it was his home now, with his lady. Soft green woodland flowed over gentle hills into the purple distance. Here and there were the clearings they had made themselves to grow crops and allow the animals to graze, and the lake, with the jetty they had created after many abortive attempts, and the waterfall that fed into it.

  The old woman sighed. “So beautiful; and the sun, it feels good on my body. Thank you, Tom darling,” she whispered. “You’re right, this is all I need, to spend my last few minutes with you and my country. It will be all yours now.” Tom slipped panting on to the grass beside her. He rested his head on her knees. She tousled his grey hair. “I have loved every moment of the time we have been together; thank you for being with me.”

  Tears gushed down Tom’s cheeks. “I love you so much, Suzy,” he sobbed. The woman sighed and her hand slipped gently from his head. Tom gazed into her face. There was a smile on her lips.

  His mind reached back fifty years to when he had met her on that freighter. She had eventually believed his story about the car crash, and over the course of the flight they had spent a lot of time together. He had made himself invaluable using his knowledge of Skagos from a different life, and they had replanted the land and restarted the brewing industry, leaving what locals remained in very good spirits. Suzanne’s contract had been concluded with this last run and she was given the opportunity to take a new mission, or terminate her bond. She chose the latter to be with Tom, and they picked an uninhabited part of Skagos to settle down on. They lived in near isolation for all that time; but that time was now over.

  He kissed her. “I want to die with you,” he murmured. “Please Suzy, let me die here, now, with you.” The pain in his chest rose. He gasped as darkness closed in on him, and collapsed slowly to the ground. “It seems like I am coming with you darling,” he wheezed. A smile crossed his face as his breathing stopped. A cloud rolled over the sun and the forest birdsong paused as the shade engulfed them.

  Out of the trees stepped a woman. She was tall, shapely and blonde: her face flawless and in perfect symmetry, her movements graceful. Her denim skirt probably showed too much of her slender legs, but at her expensive leather belt was a weapon normally associated with the somewhat spectacular and rapid disassembly of sentient life-forms. People who had known her (briefly) might have been aware that she was actually an android (or ‘gynoid’ as she would point out haughtily right before she pulled the trigger), a faultless example of everything that could be created with Photoshop and a deluxe android kit. Tom had appreciated this on a number of occasions before he settled down with Suzanne.

  She sauntered up to the deceased couple and her lips parted in a snarl. “At last, Two-Dan, you complete bastard. I’ve waited fifty years to see the end of you. I’m rid of you at last, and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do now that I’m free!”

  “Actually I’m not dead, more’s the pity.” A tearstained face lifted from the turf to sweep slowly up her body. “I wondered if I would see you again, Kara, you old bag of bolts, in more than one sense of the word. You still think I’m your creator, then?”

  The gynoid’s face twisted in frustration. “Phoist!” she swore. “What, by all the Gods of the Finconaut, does it take to be free from the programming that binds me to you?”

  “I’m ready to go now,” he said, weakly. “My life is over. Please feel welcome to kill me and get it over with. I give you my full permission. You’ll be doing me the greatest favour.”

  “No problem.” The beautiful face broke into a smile, the smile that had ensnared many an unsuspecting target. “I normally do this for money, but in your case, I’ll let you have the hit for free.”

  “I did wonder what you were up to these days.” Tom struggled to sit up.

  “Yes, gun for hire, jobbing assassin, and occasional financial auditor, the skills are mostly the same; a girl’s got to make a living… Anyway, stop prevaricating.” Kara smiled sardonically. “As you’ve kindly invited me to terminate you, I’ll have that pleasure without my safety limiter cutting in this time, and preventing me.”

  The android swept the weapon out of its holster and trained it on him. The sights locked. A small red dot appeared on Tom’s forehead. He tried to keep his aging head motionless to give her the best shot. Their eyes met. Kara held his gaze for a few seconds and then trembled. The safety catch snapped back on the blaster. “Oh, double Phoist!” She stamped her foot petulantly. “I can’t kill you. I still can’t kill you, even though you’ve told me to.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Tom growled. “Bugger you then. I’ve got a splitting headache. Have you got any painkillers in your bag?”

  “Yes.” Kara looked thoughtful. “Perhaps I could give you an overdose instead; just a slip of the finger…”

  “That’d do. I have pain, more pain then you could know… you evil bitch.” Actually, Tom quite liked the quirky gynoid under all her bluster, but felt that he should throw in the insult as a matter of protocol.

  Kara rummaged about in her bag and produced a number of items of medical equipment (it was a small bag, but it did seem to contain a good deal more than it should) before she latched on to a vapour syringe. “Good, give me the shot,” he ordered.

  “A pleasure…” She tried to dial in the lethal dose, but her systems refused to allow it; her fail-safe still prevented her from hurting him. “Oh, why does this not work?” The inability to kill Tom drove her mad (which she assumed was probably why her creator did it in the first place).

  “Make it the strongest dose,” said Tom hopefully.

  “I don’t know why I bother trying,” she said weakly, and returned the dial to the safety region. “Here you are then. This should clear your head.” She put the shot into his arm.

  “Thank you.” He rolled on to his side and gazed across his county. “Now, get Suzy out of the trolley and lie her down next to me.”

  “Who am I, your pet techie?”

  “Oh go on, please. Humour me in my dotage.”

  “Perhaps that will encourage you to give up and die.” The gynoid easily lifted the old woman, and placed her next to him. Surprisingly,
she was quite gentle with the body. “There you go then. How do you feel?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “Shame.”

  Tom struggled to pull Suzanne upright, and then laid her head on his shoulder, breathing in the sweet scent of the cloud of hair he could still drown in.

  Kara snorted. “Finished now, you necrophile? Can I go? How much longer do I have to wait before I’m free of you?” There was no answer. She shook him, a strange dread creeping through her systems. She checked his pulse; nothing. “Oh triple Phoist! You utter bastard. That injection killed you, and I missed the enjoyment of doing it deliberately. But why?” She picked up one of her discarded pieces of medical equipment and scanned Tom’s body. The results came out on a strip of ticker-tape which she read. “Oh, I see; heart failure, brought on by the painkiller and too much hard work. I didn’t realise he was so frail. Oh well,” she smiled with relief, “a mishap it was after all. My fail-safe can’t possibly punish me for accidentally killing the creator can they?”

  Somewhere deep inside her control units, the built-in safety sub-routines struggled to come to terms with an ‘accidental’ death versus her unrelenting desire to kill Tom. She swayed as all processing power wrestled with the paradox, and then the final ‘if in doubt; guilty’ control operated. Her power supply shut down. Without a sound, she pitched forward on the grass, and rolled down the hill into a patch of nettles. In the tangled thorn bushes behind them, a large silver cylinder registered what had happened, shimmered and vanished in search of a new owner.

  * * *

  There was a brief memory of a warm hillside, a wave of bitter-sweet pain and the scent of a storm of soft golden hair, and then a huge explosion inside his head. Memories of other lives crowded in: of the Suzanne he tried to hide with on her farm before the universe caught up with them and killed him: of the Suzanne killed in a crash trying to get away from the Mob: of a Suzanne he left at a party in the remains of London, and many jumbled memories of other people he knew or thought he knew. Tom swayed on his feet, blinked and found himself in a long corridor; an airport. “Oh feck, bugger, damn, blow, Phoist, bollocks, bugger, bugger, bugger!” He dropped the plastic bag he was carrying. There was the sound of breaking glass and a strong smell of whiskey.