Other Worlds Than These

by John Joseph Adams

  She was merging into traffic from the entrance ramp when all at once she found herself wondering what she was so frantic about. Pasco had been inconsiderate, even rude, but he must have figured she’d get the same information from the coroner. Possibly he had assumed she would head over to the Mura house directly from the coroner. He was her partner, after all—why should she be concerned about him going to the girl’s house without her?

  The Dread clutched her stomach like a fist and she swerved halfway into the breakdown lane. Behind her, a horn blared long and hard. She slowed down, pulling all the way into the breakdown lane to let the car pass; it whizzed by a fraction of a second later. The Dread maintained its grip on her, flooding her system and leaving no room for even a flash of fear at her close call. She slowed down intending to stop, but the Dread wouldn’t let her step on the brake.

  “What the fuck,” she whispered as the car rumbled along. The Dread seemed to have come to life in her with an intensity beyond anything she had felt in the past. The maddening, horrible thing about it, however, was that it had not tipped over into terror or panic, which she realized finally was what she had been waiting for it to do. She had been expecting that as a logical progression—apprehension turned to dread, dread became fear. But it hadn’t. She had never suspected it was possible to feel so much dread—Dread—without end. It shouldn’t have been. Because it wasn’t a steady-state universe.

  So what kind of universe was it, then?

  This was it, she thought suddenly; this was the crack-up and it was happening in fast-motion just like she had wanted. The thing to do now was stop the car, call Tommy DiCenzo, and tell him she needed help.

  Then she pressed the accelerator, put on her turn signal and checked the rear-view mirror as she moved back into the travel lane.

  The well-groomed West Side houses slid through the frame of the car windows as Ruby navigated the wide, clean streets. She didn’t know the West Side quite as well as the rest of the city and the layout was looser than the strict, organized northland grid or the logical progressions of midtown and the south side. Developers and contractors had staked out patches of the former meadowlands and put up subdivisions with names like Saddle Hills and Wildflower Dale and filled them with split-level ranches for the young middle-class and cookie-cutter mansions for the newly affluent. Ruby had taken small notice of any of it during the years Jake had been growing up. There was no appeal to the idea of moving to the West Side from downtown—it would have meant two hours of sheer commuting every day, time she preferred to spend with her son. The downtown school district had not been cutting edge but it hadn’t been anywhere near disastrous, either—

  She gave her head a quick shake to clear it. Get a grip, she ordered herself and tightened her hands on the steering wheel as if that would help. She checked the address clipped to her visor again, then paused at the end of the street, craning her neck to read the road sign. It would solve a lot of problems she thought if the cheap-ass city would just put GPS navigation in all the goddam cars. She turned right onto the cross street and then wondered if she had made a mistake. Had she already driven along this street? The houses looked familiar.

  Well, of course they looked familiar, she realized, irritated—they were all alike. She kept going, watching the street signs carefully. Christ, it wasn’t only the houses themselves that were all alike—it was also the cars in the driveways, the front lawns, even the toys scattered on the grass. The same but not the same. Like Alice Nakamura and Betty Mura.

  She came to another intersection and paused again, almost driving on before she realized that the street on her left was the one she wanted. The Dread renewed its intensity as she made the turn, barely noticing the woman pushing a double stroller with two toddlers in it. Both the woman and her children watched her pass with alert curiosity on their unremarkable faces. They were the only people Ruby had seen out walking but the Dread left no room for her to register as much.

  The Mura house was not a cookie-cutter mansion—more like a cookie-cutter update of the kind of big old Victorian Jake and Lita lived in with the kids. Ruby pulled up at the curb instead of parking in the driveway where a shiny black SUV was blocked in by a not-so-shiny car that she knew had to belong to Rafe Pasco.

  Ruby sat, staring at the front of the house. It felt as if the Dread were writhing inside her now. The last thing she wanted to do was go inside. Or rather, it should have been the last thing she wanted to do. The Dread, alive everywhere in her all the way to her fingertips, to the soles of her feet, threatened to become even worse if she didn’t.

  Moving slowly and carefully, she got out of the car and walked up the driveway, pausing at Pasco’s car to look in the open driver’s side window. The interior was impossibly clean for a cop or a geek—no papers, no old sandwich wrappers or empty drink cups. Hell, even the floormats were clean, as if they had just been vacuumed. Nothing in the backseat, either, except more clean.

  She glanced over at the glove box; then her gaze fell on the trunk release. If she popped it, what would she find in there, she wondered—a portable car-cleaning kit with a hand vac? A carton of secret geek files? Or just more clean nothing?

  There would be nothing in the trunk. All the secret geek files would be on Pasco’s notebook and he probably had that with him. She considered popping the trunk anyway and then moved away from the car, stopping again to look inside the SUV. The windows were open and the doors were unlocked—apparently the Muras trusted their neighbours and the people who came to visit them. Even the alarm was off.

  There was a hard-shell CD case sitting on the passenger seat and a thin crescent of disk protruding from the slot of the player in the dash. A small string of tiny pink and yellow beads dangled from the rear-view mirror along with a miniature pair of fuzzy, hot-pink dice. Ruby wondered if Betty Mura had put them there.

  She turned toward the front door and then thought better of it. Instead, she made her way around the side of the garage and into the unfenced back yard.

  Again she stopped. The yard was empty except for a swing-set and a brightly painted jungle gym. Behind the swings was a cement patio with a couple of loungers; under one of them was an empty plastic glass lying on its side, forgotten and probably considered lost.

  The sliding glass patio doors were open, Ruby realized suddenly, although the screen door was closed and the curtains were drawn. She edged her way along the rear of the garage and sidled up next to the open door.

  “...less pleading your case with me,” she heard Pasco saying. “Both girls are dead. It ends here.”

  “But the other girls—” a man started.

  “There are no other girls,” Pasco told him firmly. “Not for you. They aren’t your daughters.”

  Ruby frowned. Daughters? So the girls really had been twins?

  “But they are—” protested a woman.

  “You can’t think that way,” Pasco said. “Once there’s been a divergence, those lives—your own, your children’s, everyone’s—are lost to you. To act as if it were otherwise is the same as if you went next door to your neighbour’s house and took over everything they owned. Including their children.”

  “I told you, we didn’t come here to kidnap Betty,” the man said patiently. “I saw her records—the man showed me. He told us about her aneurysm. He said it was almost a sure thing that it would kill her before Alice’s heart gave out. Then we could get her heart for transplant knowing that it would be a perfect match for Alice—”

  “You heartless bastard,” said a second male voice identical to the one that had been speaking. How many people were in that room, Ruby wondered.

  “She was going to die anyway,” said the first man. “There was nothing anyone could do about it—”

  “The hell there wasn’t. If we had known, we could have taken her to a hospital for emergency surgery,” a woman said angrily. “They can fix those things now, you know. Or aren’t they as advanced where you come from?”

  “It doesn�
��t matter any more,” Pasco said, raising his voice to talk over them. “Because Alice died first after all.”

  “Yes,” said the woman bitterly, speaking through tears. It sounded like the same woman who had been talking so angrily a few moments before but Ruby had a feeling it wasn’t.

  “And do you know why that is?” Pasco asked in a stern, almost paternal tone of voice.

  “The man was wrong,” said the tearful woman.

  “Or he lied,” said the angry one.

  “No, it was because you came here and you brought Alice with you,” Pasco said. “Once you did that, all bets as they say here were off. The moment you came in, it threw everything out of kilter because you don’t belong here. You’re extra—surplus. One too many times three. It interrupted the normal flow of progress; things scattered with such force that there were even natural-law anomalies. This morning, a very interesting woman said to me, ‘Human beings can make a mess out of chaos.’ I couldn’t tell her how extraordinarily right she was, of course, so I couldn’t stop laughing. She must have thought I was crazy.”

  Ruby pressed her lips together, thinking that he couldn’t be any crazier than she was herself right now; it was just that she was a lot more confused.

  Abruptly, she heard the sound of the front door opening, followed by new voices as a few more people entered the house. This was turning into quite a party; too bad Pasco had left her off the guest list.

  “Finally,” she heard him saying. “I was about to call you again, find out what happened to you.”

  “These West Side streets are confusing,” a woman answered. This was a completely new voice but Ruby found it strangely familiar. “It’s not a nice, neat grid like northland, you know.”

  “Complain all you want later,” Pasco said. “I want to wrap this up as soon as possible.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said another man. “Have you looked out front?”

  Pasco groaned. “What now?”

  “There’s a car parked at the curb, right in front of the house,” the man said. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

  “Oh, hell,” Pasco said. She heard his footsteps thumping hurriedly away from the patio door—probably going to look out the window at the car—and then coming back again. She straightened her shoulders and, refusing to give herself time to think about it, she yanked open the screen door and stepped into the house, flinging aside the curtain.

  “I’m right h—” Her voice died in her throat and she could only stand, frozen in place, one hand still clutching the edge of the curtain while she stared at Rafe Pasco. And a man who seemed to be his older, much taller brother. And two identical Japanese couples sitting side by side on a long sofa with their hands cuffed in front of them.

  And, standing behind the couch, her newly retired ex-partner Rita Castillo.

  “Now, don’t panic,” Pasco said after what might have been ten minutes or ten months.

  “I’m not panicking,” Ruby managed in a hoarse voice. She drew a long, shaky breath. Inside her, the Dread was no longer vibrating or writing or swelling; it had finally reached full power. This was what she had been dreading all this time, day after day. Except now that she was finally face to face with it, she had no idea what it actually was.

  “I can assure you that you’re not in any danger,” Pasco added.

  “I know,” she said faintly.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “OK,” Ruby said. Obviously he was in charge so she would defer willingly, without protest.

  “The sensation you’re feeling right now has nothing to do with your actual safety,” Pasco went on, speaking carefully and distinctly, as if he were trying to talk her down from a high ledge. Or maybe a bad acid trip was more like it, she thought, glancing at the Japanese couples. The Muras and the Nakamuras, apparently. She wondered which was which. “What it actually is is a kind of allergic reaction.”

  “Oh?” She looked around the room. Everyone else seemed to understand what he was talking about, including the Japanese couples. “What am I allergic to?”

  “It’s something in the nature of a disturbance.”

  Oh, God, no, she thought, now he’s going to say something about “the force.” I’ll find out they’re all actually a lunatic cult and Pasco’s the leader. And I’m trapped in a house with them. Her gaze drifted over to Rita. No, Rita would never have let herself get sucked into anything like that. Would she?

  Rita shifted, becoming slightly uncomfortable under Ruby’s gaze. “Do I know you?” she asked finally.

  Ruby’s jaw dropped. She felt as if Rita had slapped her.

  “No, you don’t,” Pasco said over his shoulder. “She knows someone like you. Where you come from, the two of you never met. Here, you were partners.”

  “Wow,” Rita said, shaking her head. “It never ceases to amaze me, all that what-might-have-been stuff.” She smiled at Ruby, giving an apologetic shrug.

  “And where does she come from?” Ruby wanted to know. Her voice was a little stronger now.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Pasco told her. “Besides, the less you know, the better you’ll feel.”

  “Really?” She made a sceptical face.

  “No,” he said, resigned. “Actually, you’ll feel not quite so bad. Not quite so much Dread. It may not be much but any relief is welcome. Isn’t it?” He took a small step toward her. “And you’ve been feeling very bad for a while now, haven’t you? Though it wasn’t quite so awful in the beginning.”

  Ruby didn’t say anything.

  “Only you’re not sure exactly when it started,” Pasco continued, moving a little closer. Ruby wondered why he was being so cautious with her. Was he afraid of what she might do? “I can tell you. It started when the Nakamuras arrived here. Ostensibly from the Cayman Islands. When they stepped out of their own world and into this one. Into yours.”

  Ruby took a deep breath and let it out, willing herself to be less tense. She looked around, spotted an easy chair opposite the couch and leaned on the back of it. “All right,” she said to Pasco, “who are you and what the hell are you talking about?”

  Pasco hesitated. “I’m a cop.”

  “No,” Ruby said with exaggerated patience, “I’m a cop. Try again.”

  “It’s the truth,” Pasco insisted. “I really am a cop. Of sorts.”

  “What sort?” Ruby asked. “Geek squad? Not homicide.”

  He hesitated again. “Crimes against persons and property. This includes identity theft which is not a geek squad job in my line of law enforcement.”

  Ruby wanted to sit down more than anything in the world now but she forced herself to stay on her feet. To make Pasco look at her on the same level, as an equal. “Go on.”

  “It’s my job to make sure that people who regret what might’ve been don’t get so carried away that they try to do something unlawful to try to rectify it. Even if that means preventing a young girl from getting the heart transplant that will save her life.”

  Ruby looked over at the people sitting handcuffed on the sofa. They all looked miserable and angry.

  “An unscrupulous provider of illegal goods and services convinced a couple of vulnerable parents that they could save their daughter’s life if they went to a place where two other parents very similar to themselves were living a life in which things had gone a bit differently. Where their daughter, who was named Betty instead of Alice, had an undetected aneurysm instead of a heart condition.”

  Light began to dawn for Ruby. Her mind returned to the idea of being trapped in a house with a bunch of lunatic cultists. Then she looked at Rita. Where you come from, the two of you never met.

  “Many of my cases are much simpler,” Pasco went on. “People who want to win instead of lose—a hand of cards, a race, the lottery. Who think they’d have been better off if they’d turned left instead of right, said yes instead of no.” He spread his hands. “But we can’t let them do that, of course. We can’t let them take something from its
rightful owner.”

  “And by ‘we’ you mean...?” Ruby waited; he didn’t answer. “All right, then let’s try this: you can’t possibly be the same kind of cop I am. I’m local, equally subject to the laws that I enforce. But you’re not. Are you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Pasco replied. “I have to obey those laws but in order to enforce them, I have to live outside the system they apply to.”

  She looked at Rita again. Or rather, the woman she had thought was Rita. “And what’s your story? He said you’re from a place where we never met. Does your being here with him mean you don’t live there any more?”

  Not-Rita nodded. “Someone stole my identity and I couldn’t get it back. Things didn’t end well.”

  “And all you could do was become a sort of a cop?” Ruby asked.

  “We have to go,” said Pasco’s taller brother before the woman could answer. He could have been an alternative version of Pasco, Ruby thought, from a place where she hadn’t met him, either. Would that be the same place that Not-Rita came from? She decided she didn’t want to know and hoped none of them would feel compelled to tell her.

  “We’ve still got time,” Pasco said, looking at his watch, which seemed to be a very complicated device. “But there’s no good in pushing things right down to the wire. Take them out through the garage and put them in the SUV—”

  “Where are you taking them?” Ruby asked as taller Pasco and Not-Rita got the Japanese couples on their feet.

  Pasco looked surprised by the question; it was a moment or two before he could answer. “To court. A kind of court.”

  “Ah,” Ruby said. “Would that be for an arraignment? A sort of arraignment?”

  He nodded and Ruby knew he was lying. She had no idea how she knew but she did, just as she knew it was the first time he had ever lied to her. She let it go, watching as the other two herded the Japanese couples toward the kitchen.