by John Barnes
Helen said, impatiently, “It does seem like the authorities had some sort of a case against you. Considering you shot Beard dead, with three shots into the head, in a bank, where it was seen by four separate security cameras, I don’t see how the evidence could be any more damning.”
“But that’s just it,” Ulrike said, her hands in her pockets, slowing to a shuffle. “I don’t remember it. I keep trying to but I don’t. I was on the phone, calling a friend, to let him know where to meet me later today, and then I was grabbed from behind by a policeman.” She sounded frustrated, as if perhaps she was used to getting her way and surprised not to get it. She started to cry, sniffling and wiping her face with her hands.
I wasn’t sure what to do, but I handed her my handkerchief, and she wiped her face and blew her nose on it before handing it back to me.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said.
I stuffed it into my pocket and said, “There is something very difficult for me to explain to you. There are many different Lyle Periparts with many different pasts, probably scattered across many universes. There are also many different Helen Perditas, and probably many different Ulrike Nordstroms. Geoffrey Iphwin seems to be in all the universes, too. Anyway, in some but not all universes, each of us works for him, and so we were dispatched to get you out of prison. It happens that neither of us met any version of you, in our home worlds, whatever that might be. So I’m very sorry that I’m not reacting exactly as your ex-husband would, and I’m sorry that we aren’t giving you the kind of attention and support you need and expect from us, but from our standpoint, we just met you, and that’s how we’re reacting.”
Ulrike Nordstrom nodded several times, like a slow student trying to convince her teacher that she is getting it, before she fell over in a dead faint. “Shit,” Helen said.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “If it’s just the shock, she’ll probably come around pretty quickly.” Helen and I carried her over to the front stoop of a building, where we could put her feet up. A few minutes later she sat up, apologized profusely, dusted herself off, and seemed ready to go on. Every few minutes as we walked, she would ask Helen to explain it all one more time. Helen would tell her what we knew, which god knows wasn’t much, Ulrike would whine about it, Helen would tell her that that was just the way things were, and Ulrike would walk along, sniffling just loud enough to be irritating, for a hundred meters or so before again asking, “I’m sorry, can you explain it to me one more time?”
We kept walking, and I became more and more alarmed at the silence and the lack of lights, especially as the dawn came up and it became clear that the streets were going to continue to be deserted. “What do you suppose happened here?” I asked.
“Most people won’t live in an area that’s been so heavily irradiated,” a voice said from behind us. I turned around and saw an older guy, maybe seventy years old, with flowing white hair down to his shoulders and a neat white goatee. He wore a black silk shirt with bunches and wads of silver jewelry, and baggy black silk pants, and he leaned upon a silver-handled cane.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Well, you probably remember me more as the Colonel, but my name is Roger Sykes. You are Lyle and Helen, and I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you but I assume you’re Ulrike Nordstrom?”
Ulrike sighed. “Well, at least I agree that I haven’t met you. Or even heard of you.”
“I thought you were a thousand miles south of here,” I said.
Sykes nodded at me and said, “Normally I am. But Iphwin sent a special representative to get me, and told me to come up here and get you. It took longer because you got out of the police station on the radioactive side, and then you went right into the abandoned part of the city. Took me a while to figure out that that’s what you’d done, and even as slow as you’re going, walking with a cane, it took me a longer while to catch up with you. All the same, here I am.”
“Did you say this area was irradiated?”
“It was. One of those things that’s hard to explain to the average citizen; it was hit with high-energy protons from orbit. Killed everything here, but didn’t make anything radioactive. Most people won’t make that distinction, so the area is abandoned, even though they got the corpses out of it decades ago. Mexican Civil War of 2014, if you know that one.”
“Not in my world,” I said, and the others shook their heads.
“A very, very unpleasant one. You were lucky to have missed it. Anyway,” the Colonel said—now that I was seeing him in the flesh and hearing him talk I was gradually getting reminded of the virtual reality characters he had played in so many chat rooms with me for all these years, and his identity was starting to settle onto his body for me—”anyway, if you all just wait, I’ve called in a ride for us. She’ll be here pretty quick—it’s a nonrobot vehicle, partly because Paula’s too cranky to drive anything else, and partly because that way she can take it through areas where vehicles aren’t supposed to pass.
“I have to tell you, she gave me a real turn. There was this loud banging on my screen door, and I thought it was an idiot neighborhood kid whose favorite joke is to knock on my door and holler stupid questions, so I got out of my shower and wrapped a towel around myself, and I stormed out there to see who it was, and discovered somebody I’d seen killed thirty years ago. I don’t know where the hell Iphwin found Paula Rey—in which world or what world—but it was one hell of a prank to play on an old man.”
“There are plenty of strange pranks being played lately,” Ulrike said. There was a whiny edge in her voice that made me think that if I were stuck with her for any length of time I could easily hate her.
With the soft rumble of tires, a hand-driven bus, like some strange relic of the twentieth century, lurched around the corner. The woman at the wheel, when the bus pulled up, was wearing a green T-shirt and blue jeans. She had thick, dark red, curly hair and a quaint pair of old-fashioned spectacles, like nobody else wore anymore. “Now departing for your hotel,” she said, beaming at us. “Rog, you gotta try driving this thing. Iphwin got us a really good one, and it’s the most fun I’ve had driving in years.”
We had all filed in by then, and taken seats in the little fifteen-passenger bus. “Where did you find a gadget like this?” I asked.
“I didn’t. Iphwin located it in a police garage. I doubt they’ve had it out two times in the last year,” Paula said. “They won’t miss it.”
There was a funny noise beside me. Ulrike had fainted on my shoulder. “It’s extremely interesting that that’s what you married in another world,” Helen said, in a very strange tone.
“I absolutely refuse to be held responsible for that. And you know perfectly well what my tastes are in this world.”
“Actually, I know what several other Lyles’ tastes are, and I’m extrapolating,” she pointed out.
The Colonel looked back at us, and even in the dim light of sunrise I could see one of his white eyebrows rise. He fluffed out his silver hair. “Kids,” he said, “if you’re going to fight, I’m gonna have to separate you.”
As we rumbled through the irradiated part of the city, past one dead building after another as the dawn slowly came up, I couldn’t help but think that I already knew way too much about being separated. Ulrike fell into something more like normal sleep against my shoulder, and Helen leaned back until her head was slumped way over. I looked from side to side, at both of the sleeping women, and thought that there must be thousands of them, and thousands of me, and I was willing to bet that no two of us really understood each other.
The bus rumbled on till we came to a big house with a surrounding wall and a metal gate, just after we started to see people on the street again. The gate opened, and Paula drove through. She pulled around two big trees and into a wide, horseshoe-shaped drive, and stopped. “All out,” she said. “Here’s where you’re going to sleep all this off.”
We staggered inside and Paula guided us to bedrooms, all of which came off a
n upper gallery. With a discreet glance at me, Paula asked about sleeping arrangements. I indicated with a half-nod that Helen and I should go in one room, and Ulrike in a room by herself. Paula, with a puckish little smile that made me almost giggle, probably more from tiredness than from any real humor, indicated she approved of my choice.
The bedroom had brick walls, a high window with bars, and a big old four-poster bed. There were robes hanging on hooks, and a genuine chamber pot under the bed. As soon as I got Helen, who was still staggering and hadn’t really awakened between the bus seat and here, onto the bed on one side, and made use of the chamber pot, I fell across the other side of the bed and was instantly asleep. It occurred to me that this was truly one hell of a way to try to cope with jet lag.
* * * *
I didn’t wake up until three in the afternoon, by the clock on the wall, and when I did, I felt incredibly nasty and dirty from having been in my clothes for so long and from sleeping with my mouth open. Beside me, Helen was still snoring, the bulge of her shoulder holster still visible. I figured she knew more about that pistol asleep than I could possibly know about it awake, and let it stay where it was. I stripped out of my sweaty, foul-smelling clothes for the moment, used the pot again, put one of the robes on, and carefully opened the door.
Down below, on a couch in the great room that the gallery overlooked, looking much too fresh and comfortable, Colonel Roger Sykes looked up and said, “Aha. First one up besides me, Paula, and Esmé, and of course we’re old campaigners and can’t stay in bed late if you pay us to. Bring your clothes down; you can wash them in the basement, and we’ve got your suitcase from the jump boat. Hot shower, too, coffee, and some stuff to eat. Oh, and don’t forget the chamber pot.”
I staggered down the stairs, handed off my clothing and the chamber pot to a maid, and got a small pot of coffee, a cup, a towel, and directions to the shower. Half an hour later, I emerged, feeling like I was no longer distinguishable from human. I got a good thick ham and Swiss sandwich and an orange and took the food upstairs with my suitcase, so that I could alternate between eating and dressing. It felt good to be clean, good to be dressed, and nice to get food into my belly. If I had just had the foggiest idea what was going on or what had been happening to me for the last few days, I could even have been happy.
Helen was stirring, too, so I steered her to the robe and down to Roger, who sent her through more or less the same process I had just passed through. Ulrike emerged about the time I heard Helen’s shower start running, but it turned out that there were multiple bathrooms, and so she was guided to the next one. She looked like she’d spent part of the night crying, which might be typical for Ulrike or not, but was utterly understandable in the circumstances.
With that much taken care of, I sat down to another sandwich and more coffee, and asked Roger, “So where are we?”
“We’re in the house of Esmé Sanderson. Not the one that had arrested you and was going to kill you, another one. Besides being on our side, this one has the further advantage to us of having a great pile of inherited wealth. Coincidentally we’re in the house of the one who was going to kill you—she, like Billie Beard, was an extremely corrupt cop, and therefore could afford a place like this—but that isn’t the one who is acting as our host now. I know it’s confusing, and I’ve had Paula go over things with me a couple of times.”
“And what exactly are we doing?”
“Waiting for the others,” Sykes said, turning a page in his newspaper, and looking things over. “Hmm. Since I left home yesterday the history of Mexico seems to have changed completely three times. I don’t read Spanish all that well to begin with, and now I don’t know the context either. But for some reason all the comics are the same.” He set the paper down and took off the small pair of reading glasses he was wearing. “When everyone is comfortable and dressed, then Geoffrey Iphwin has promised to pay us all a large sum of money to go to a particular cafe—why that cafe, I have no idea—and wait until other people, who I guess we’re supposed to know, turn up. Once we are there, we’re to wait for instructions. Me, I’m just too curious to let all this slide by.
“I guess you two work for Iphwin, and so does Miss Nordstrom. I couldn’t tell you what Paula and Esmé’s motivations are—those two were the two best XOs I ever had, and therefore they made sure that I never had the foggiest idea what they were thinking; all I knew was what they wanted me to think. That’s why everything ran like clockwork. Based on past experience I would say that whatever their reasons for doing whatever they’re doing may be, we will know in good time, when they want us to, and not a second sooner. Jesús Picardin is also coming along, because he’s mercenary, curious, or both.”
After a while, Helen went upstairs in her robe, a towel wrapped around her head. Shortly after that, Ulrike followed and went to her room. Meanwhile I looked at the paper, briefly, and was reminded again that I didn’t know Spanish. Surely there were worlds in which I did? And in those worlds, did I know that I knew, or did I have to check, as I had just done?
It was almost five by the time we were all assembled and ready to go to the cafe. “It’s not far away,” Sykes said, “or so I understand.”
The only person in the room I didn’t recognize was a tall brunette with an abundant scatter of freckles, who nodded and glanced around the room. “I’m Esmé Sanderson. You must be Ulrike, Lyle, and Helen,” she said. “I guess some of you have had bad run-ins with other versions of me, and I’ve had at least one very negative encounter with one of you. Now that we know we’re all on the same side, or at least all invited to the same parties, I hope we can put all that aside.”
Paula, seated in the corner, snorted and said, “ ‘Very negative encounter’ is Esmé’s way of saying one of you shot her. But she made me promise not to say which one. And I think we have to declare a general truce, which is a good point Esmé isn’t making strongly enough. Try to remember that the person you knew may not be the person you’re dealing with, all right? Good.” She got up. “Anyway, there’s plenty of room in the transport, and there’s a real good reason to take it, and not anything else, according to Iphwin. Saddle up, load in, and get rolling. We have a place to be.”
“Should we take our stuff with us?” Ulrike asked, pushing her still-damp hair back from her cheeks.
“I guess everyone should take at least a bag,” Esmé said, “just to be on the safe side. Give priority to medicine, weapons, and ammo, in about that order, plus anything that’s really going to make you miserable if it gets left behind.”
We all scattered back upstairs; my bags were small enough so that I could carry the whole works, and it was the same for Helen. It looked like everyone had reached the same decision, downstairs, and Paula laughed at us. “I don’t want to think about what our teeth-to-tail ratio is,” she said.
Helen gave her the fierce, scary, tight-lipped smile I had not yet gotten used to. “I hope you’re counting me as teeth.”
“I am now,” Paula assured her. “Okay, all in, and we’ll see if I still remember how to drive.”
“You drove last night,” I pointed out.
“Everybody doesn’t know that, and we might as well give ‘em a thrill.” She popped the door of the bus open and hollered “All aboard” much louder than necessary. At least one of us was really having a good time.
The drive was short, and sitting behind Paula I could see what a complicated job it was—she had to work what I figured out must be a shift-and-clutch arrangement, point the wheel, and work a foot throttle and brake, all without looking away from the road. I figured out that the thing in the middle that looked like an old-fashioned clock was the speedometer, and the thing marked E-----F was obviously fuel, but the other gauges were mysteries to me, particularly the one called TACH which didn’t seem to have anything to do with how fast we were going. “That looks awfully complicated,” I said, after watching her for a while.
“It gets to be automatic,” she said, “and a big part of it
is just knowing that you can do it. If we get the chance on the mission, I’ll teach you—we could use more drivers, and I’m afraid it’s just me and Roger that know how to drive. And he hates it, for some perverse reason all his own. If you’d like to learn, having another one of us able to drive could save a life or two.
I shuddered; I liked the idea of learning to drive, I had always enjoyed manually operating vehicles of all kinds, but I didn’t much like being on an expedition where “saving a life or two” could be an issue.
We pulled up at the cafe, and the only person sitting in the outdoor area was Jesús Picardin, wearing a loud floral print shirt, a ridiculous Panama, bright red shorts, and heavy leather sandals. It was the ugliest impression of a tourist I’d ever seen, with his feet up on the table and a mostly empty beer bottle beside him, but somehow he managed to look dapper while doing so.
“If we’re doing what I think we’re doing,” Paula said, “you should be able to leave your gear on the bus. I’d take along a weapon, if you carry, and maybe anything really precious to you.”
I just carried what was in my pockets, but I noticed Helen sliding an extra knife into her pocket. I suppose in some lines of work a person just can’t be too careful.
