by Dakota Rusk
Everyone nodded. It was a sad reality of the situation we found ourselves in, that Valery Kravstopkin was considered too honest to be trusted.
It all seemed set; and I felt a kind of pride that everyone found the plan I’d conceived to be both strategically sound and still simple enough to adapt to whatever surprising thing might come up next…
…Except for the thing that did come up next—something that hadn’t occurred to me till just then, and that tanked the whole project before it could get under way.
I’d just leaned back in my chair and caught sight of my skirt—and realized it actually wasn’t my skirt at all. It belonged to the other Fabia. When our minds had been switched, mine had ended up here at Parallel U. in her body, while hers had presumably ended up in mine, back at her family’s apartment in Parallel 24.
And that was where Olwen’s phone was: in the pocket of that skirt, on that body. Now far, far beyond my reach.
My feeling of sudden defeat must have shown on my face, because Darius looked at me and said, “What’s wrong, Fabia? What’s happened?”
I was just trying to figure out how to put into words the terrible realization I’d had, when my hand—as if unwilling to accept the truth of what I’d just realized—crept down my thigh and entered the skirt’s pocket.
And it came upon something hard and smooth and cool.
I close my fingers around it and pulled it out.
It was Olwen’s cell phone.
“Is that it?” Darius asked. “That’s phone with the video on it?”
I nodded…but—it couldn’t be. How could it possibly have traveled across the parallels along with my consciousness? My first thought was that whoever had arranged the mind-swap between my body and Fabia’s had also arranged this; but it was too specific—too convenient—too inconceivable. An exchange of something as intangible as thoughts and memories was one thing; I couldn’t bring myself to accept a similar transference of something actually material.
Then a slight pricking sensation in the palm of my hand alerted me to the fact that I’d removed something else along with the phone; and when I turned it over to see what it was, I found something oddly familiar: a small brass clasp, with a fierce looking raven depicted in mosaic. I had seen something like this, just recently; where…?
Then I recalled: it had been on Parallel 17, worn by one of the sentries who escorted Fabia and Eddie and me through the forest-city. Fabia and I had both noticed the clasp, but she in particular had been very interested in it.
And now, I realized, she’d found a way to obtain it.
She’d stolen it.
The way she’d stolen Eddie’s nearly completed Hopper from his desk. And, apparently, the way she’d poached Olwen’s cell phone from right out of my pocket.
“Fabia,” Merri asked, echoing Darius, “are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just…figuring something out…”
And that’s exactly what I was doing. I was remembering how, when I was younger, I’d fallen into the habit of taking small objects…pocketing anything that attracted my interest, including toys and figurines in the shops, rings and bracelets from my mother’s vast collection, little gifts my sisters received that I was jealous of. I knew it was wrong; of course I knew it was wrong. That had been part of the thrill. The more I became famous as both a champion athlete and a pious postulant of the Vestals, the greater the rush of doing something bad…of having a secret, a little strain of wickedness that no one suspected.
But all that changed when I was fourteen. By that time, I’d gotten away with so much theft that I’d almost come to believe I couldn’t be discovered; and in my carelessness I was caught red-handed, stealing an expensive necklace from a silversmith’s shop. It caused a tremendous family scandal; the silversmith threatened to prosecute, and news of my crime would have been a tremendous embarrassment for my uncle, who had just been appointed to the Senate and whose future career there was still vulnerable to something like this. Fortunately, my mother was a regular customer of the silversmith’s and she persuaded him not to prosecute or publicize the incident by agreeing to purchase the necklace outright, and another very valuable broach besides. He agreed reluctantly, on the condition that I also write him a letter of apology which he could hold against my future behavior; if he heard any further news of my misconduct, he’d give the letter to the news journals.
This all took several days to play out, and they were the most deeply humiliating of my life; I actually weighed the idea of killing myself—though that does seem to be an extreme that teenage girls consider pretty easily. In the end I decided to learn from the episode and continue my studies and my training with greater seriousness and focus.
So I was confused and upset by this evidence that my counterpart from the splinter Parallel 24 was still resorting to such spoiled, childish, criminal acting out. (“You know how you are,” Vipsania had said to me, in reference to her suspicion that I’d taken something of hers; now that made sense as well.) Hadn’t my counterpart learned anything from that terrible disgrace...from the devastating shame of being caught stealing like a common crook?
It was almost as if…it had never happened to her at all.
“Fabia?” said Gerrid, echoing the others and snapping me out of my thoughts. “Please tell us what’s wrong.”
“Nothing, nothing,” I said, slipping the phone—and the clasp—back into my pocket. “It’s just…I think I’ve figured out where the other Fabia’s timeline diverged from mine.”
“We can hear about that later,” Darius said. “The thing now is to get you two down to the tunnels without being seen.” He went to the door, cracked it open, and looked out. “No good,” he said, peering back over his shoulder. “The corridor’s filled with people.”
“Never mind,” said Eddie, rolling up his sleeve and firing up the Hopper. “I’ll just jump us down there.”
We all stared at him in slack-jawed wonderment. “You can do that?” Merri asked. “Jump to different locales within parallel?”
He smiled, clearly enjoying her amazement. “Oh, I’ve figured out how to do lots of things with this baby, after being forced to sit and work on it for seven months, day in, day out, no time off for good behavior. I’ll tell you all about it when we’ve got a moment to spare. Meantime, grab hold, Fabia—you too, Overbite Boy. You can show us to this cozy little bungalow you’ve lined up for us.”
I held on to one of Eddie’s shoulders and Gerrid grasped the other; and after Eddie had punched some commands into the Hopper, we experienced the now almost familiar feeling of having the world around us turn into a kind of snowy mist.
The last thing I saw, before the dorm room completely whited out, was Darius and Merri turning to look at each other. And even through the reality-shifting blur, there was no mistaking what that look meant.
I thought I’d had my full share of surprises that day; but here it was—another one, and maybe even the biggest.
I quarter-turned my head to sneak a look at Gerrid; and I could tell by his expression that he’d seen it too.
24
“It’s almost perfect,” said Eddie as he strolled around the large basement room, weaving between the boxes and abandoned desks and other sundry items strewn around its perimeter. “I mean, if we were supervillains instead of superheroes, it’d be absolutely perfect. You know what I mean?” He dropped into a rolling chair and launched himself across the floor; the wheels clattered so loudly, he had to shout above the noise. “But in a way, we’re kind of like supervillains, ’cause we’re out to overthrow the university. So I’m gonna go ahead and call it.” He spun around in the chair, like a top. “We got ourselves a lair! I always wanted a lair!”
A moment later he was on his feet again, and off exploring among the maze of filing cabinets and coat racks, raising a cloud of dust with every step.
I looked at Gerrid, whose eyes seemed even more haunted than usual. “It’s okay,” he said; “we’re de
ep enough here—no one will hear him.” He gestured around the space. “I’m sorry it’s not more comfortable. But at least you won’t be lonely; there’s a whole herd of feral cats who live in this part of the tunnel.”
Only Gerrid would consider that a feral cat would make any kind of companion. It made my feel fonder of him than ever; and since Eddie was now out of earshot, I said in a low voice, “Gerrid, I’m sorry to bring this up, but Merri and Darius…”
“I know, I know,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand, and he turned away from me, clearly not wanting me to see his face. “I’ve been coming to terms with it. I even understand it, in a way.” He looked back and shot me a tragic smile. “She’s not really my Merri. She’s tried to be; but she isn’t.”
Just a week before, I might have argued with him, urged him to fight harder for her; but now I could see that he was right. I’d only just learned—from my experiences with the Fabia from the splinter Parallel 24—that even seemingly identical counterparts may have very stark differences.
I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “I’m sorry.”
I expected him to shrug off my touch; we’d never really been close—in fact, we pretty strongly disliked each other when we first met. But he surprised me by placing his own hand over mine and saying, “It’s all right. In a way, I actually prefer it. My Merri gave her life to save the multiverse; I should honor that, and keep that as a legacy in my heart. Which I can’t do if I’m pretending she never died at all.” He let his hand slide back down to his side. “This Merri is…well, I’ve come to see her as someone entirely separate. But I still love her. I love Darius too. I hope they’re very happy.”
“Did you tell them that?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. But then they haven’t told me yet. I suppose they’re embarrassed, or feeling guilty or something. Though I don’t know how they can think I don’t know. All their little glances and touches and whispers, when they think I’m not looking…”
His face twisted in pain again, and I was searching for something to say when Eddie called from across the room, “Heads up, homies! I’ve just recruited a new member to the team!”
Gerrid and I gave each other a confused look; then I said, “What? Eddie?”
He appeared a moment later, pulling a life-size model of a human skeleton; it jiggled like it was dancing as its platform rode over the floorboards.
“We can call him The Bone Ranger, and he can be our lookout guy.” He took the skeleton’s arm and attempted to make it salute us, like we were its superior officers; but he used too much force, and when the hand hit the skull’s forehead it broke off and flew across the room. The moment it landed the fingers came apart and rolled everywhere, like marbles.
And Gerrid laughed so hard, he had to sit down. So Eddie was able to do what I wasn’t: give our friend the emotional release he needed.
“Okay, fine,” said Eddie as he retrieved the fingers from the floor; “he can’t join the team. First sign of action, the guy goes to pieces.”
Gerrid left a few minutes later, taking Olwen’s phone, which he said he’d leave on President Foxglove’s desk; he knew the way, and was more accustomed to slipping in and out of shadows than we were, making him much less likely to be caught.
And that left me without a phone at all; because my own phone was back on Parallel 24, in the pocket of the tunic the other Fabia now found herself wearing. True, I had her phone—I found it in the skirt’s other pocket—but it was native to Parallel 24 and wasn’t compatible with anything here, so I couldn’t use it…except to access the photos she’d stored of her family, which at least gave me some comfort…because in so many ways they were exactly like mine.
Eddie more than made up for my lack of a digital device with the Hopper, into which he’d programmed a dizzying number of functions, including a complete music library, nearly two dozen videogames, and even some movies. These kept us entertained for the first few days of our (literally) underground existence; too much so, in fact, because we were supposed to be using our secrecy and anonymity to search out clues to President Foxglove’s plans. I kept having to be the grownup who demanded we stop playing Toro Unleashed and Furious Firebombers long enough to actually go out and do our jobs.
Unfortunately we made terrible spies; we tripped over each other, we argued, we blamed each other for every failure…when in fact failure was pretty much a certainty, because we didn’t even have the smallest idea of what we were looking for. Obviously we wanted evidence of the plan President Foxglove had put in motion…but what kind of evidence? Without an answer to even that most basic question, mostly what we did was wander around the tunnels hoping to stumble across something, and occasionally peek our heads above ground, though usually we got nervous and scampered back down the tunnels when anyone approached.
In the meantime, things proceeded pretty much the way we thought they would. President Foxglove sent the video of me with my family (or rather, with the other Fabia’s family) to everyone on campus and to most outside news outlets as well; Eddie picked it up on the Hopper. Naturally there was no mention of Olwen’s disappearance, but we were pretty certain Jocasta must be getting daily more suspicious that something had gone wrong. She’d have to be wondering if even the delivery of the video was part of a smokescreen.
Which of course it was. And Eddie was getting more and more nervous that she’d sent some of her minions back to Parallel 39 earlier than expected, to check on him; and when they found him gone the jig would be up. If only we had time…
And that’s when he came up with his brilliant idea.
“I’ll go back,” he said. “I’ll sit behind the desk and pretend to be producing more Hoppers, and when they show up that’s where they’ll find me—exactly where they left me.”
“But…most of your food will be uneaten,” I said. “And the bedpan won’t be filled.”
“I’ll dump the food beforehand,” he said breezily. “And I’m guessing a less-than-full bedpan will make them feel more gratitude than suspicion.”
“I don’t know,” I said, still dubious. “Can you even do that? Materialize there so that the chain is back around your ankle?”
“Probably not—the chain fell to the ground as we were leaving, so it’s not in the right position. But if I stick it under the desk, and my legs with it, and never get up…nah, they’ll never notice. Come on, Fabia; this could buy us another three, four days.”
Of course I gave in. It was a good idea, after all; risky, but then everything we were doing lately involved risk. I realized that my only real objection was that I’d be left alone—and I didn’t know for how long. Well, I’d just have to tough it out, then.
But it turned out to be more difficult than I ever dreamed. After Eddie jumped back to Parallel 39, I was left, for the first time in my life, with nothing to do, no one to talk to—I couldn’t even text anyone, because I didn’t have a phone. By the third day I would’ve been overjoyed to see a feral cat; but so far I hadn’t encountered any of those beasts. And The Bone Ranger was, of course, no company at all.
Gerrid stopped by every now and then—after all, he used the tunnels every day, so he’d often be passing right by. But he never stayed very long; just enough to give me whatever gossip or news there was that day, which usually wasn’t much. (One of the Hyena Girls had been put on probation for assaulting a freshman; that kind of thing.) I got the impression he was feeling very shy about having opened his heart to me the first night I was here, and was afraid our conversation might go down that road again. So he always took off before it could.
I tried to reassure him by keeping things light, but it was difficult with him; he was so serious. I asked him once, “Where are all these feral cats I’m supposed to be almost tripping over?” but instead of laughing he looked very concerned and said, “Yes, there don’t seem to be as many as there used to be; how odd,” which pretty much brought our conversation to a standstill—which made him nervous—which made him leave.
And in fact, I really wanted to talk to him about Merri and Darius. I wanted to talk to him about love and heartbreak, and all the other things I’d never really had any experience with.
Because I found myself, all alone in that dusty room with nothing to do (except conduct half-hearted “investigations” that got me nowhere), missing Donald. I missed Ntombi too, of course—I even missed Rowella; I missed everybody—but when I closed my eyes, the first thing I saw was Donald’s big, broad face, and that glint of mischief in his eyes that made my knees go weak. I could hear the lovely, musical way he said my name—“Feh-bia”—and if I concentrated hard enough I could even smell him—conjure that heady aroma, something like crushed cumin seeds with little whiffs of clove, that he gave off like a musk.
I wondered if what I was feeling was love. It was certainly longing; but I knew better than to confuse one for the other.
There was only one way to know for sure, of course; and that was to be with him—to explore my feelings by testing them against his presence, every day. And I wanted to do that so much. And he was so close…just a few yards above me, swaggering around campus like he owned the place, lighting it up with his own personal brilliance on even the murkiest day.
I tried to be strong. I tried to accept that I couldn’t see him—not now, anyway; it wasn’t safe for me, and it wouldn’t be safe for him.
But even more confusing was the thought of what might happen if, when the day came and I could spend time with him again, I discovered that I really did love him.
Because that would bring me right back to that decision I’d made when I was little more than a child: to live life single and celibate, never marrying, never bearing children. I was a postulant nun, so I hadn’t taken my final vows; and after freshman year, when my parallel had been erased, it seemed that I never would. But Jocasta Foxglove had caused me to think otherwise; at our first meeting, she’d made me realize that the goddess was so much bigger than any single parallel, and that my vow to her was something I carried within me, not something specific to a certain time and place.
