by Penni Russon
Trevor-Trout had tilted his head and was gazing into the stratosphere, still thinking about parallel universes. ‘Okay, well, it would depend on a lot of things. But I guess, say, time might work differently.’
‘Time?’ Undine asked. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, how does time work? Does time just flow smoothly, which suggests one fluid motion, or does it move forward in little hops? If it does hop, then it’s sort of a lot less stable, more complex. Potentially.’
‘So it could hop differently?’
‘Time might pass more quickly in one reality than another,’ Trevor-Trout suggested. It was a disturbing thought, that while she was here, her own Trout, her Lou, her Jasper might be ageing more rapidly. They could be old while she stayed young. Or the other way around: what felt like forever for her might be a blink of an eye for them. Half a blink. ‘It might even jump backwards and forwards, fragmented. Rather than just hopping in one direction like ours.’
Undine nodded, slowly. ‘What else?’
But Trevor-Trout was already into it, nutting it out. ‘And are we talking about one mirror image? Or infinite images, infinite realities, like looking at a mirror inside a mirror reflecting itself back?’
‘What about if someone could move from one to another … like through a bubble …?’
‘A rip in the fabric of space? A black hole?’
‘No. Maybe. I don’t think so. A bubble. A bubble of … magic.’ It was funny, what had become such a strong and potent word to her sounded suddenly thin and weak and silly to her ears.
‘Magic?’ asked Trevor-Trout doubtfully, even scornfully. ‘I thought you were talking about science.’
‘I am. It’s real magic. It really changes things … like science. Like physics.’ Undine was struggling. She remembered something Trout had once said. ‘Like chaos magic. A kind of butterfly effect. But it’s only in the first world. Not in the second.’
‘Like a door that only opens one way?’
‘I suppose so.’
Trevor-Trout raised his eyebrows, clearly intrigued by the notion. But, ‘It doesn’t matter about the magic bit,’ he said. ‘Even the basic principle. Moving from world to world. It brings up other problems. Like matter. Would an alternate Trout be made of exactly the same matter as I am? In which case would we actually be drawn together and become one? Or would I cease to exist if an alternate Trout stepped through the rip? Or would there be two of us? Potentially more, if one Trout comes through, then other Trouts could too. Infinite Trouts.’
‘No, no.’ Undine was trying not to get frustrated with the hypotheticalness of it all. ‘There’s only one of you. But maybe you’ve swapped. You’ve exchanged places. So she … I mean, you would be there and the other Trout would be here – you’d live each other’s lives.’
‘Maybe,’ Trevor-Trout said doubtfully. ‘It sort of depends, doesn’t it? I mean, how do the worlds fit together? Are they side by side, so you step into each one like a room? Or are they kind of all crushed into one spot, layered on each other, like the earth’s crust. Or completely infinite, stretching out forever? Or finite, but kind of boundless, like points in a circle? Or a spiral. Or flower shaped, with one true central universe and then several possible universes growing out of it, like petals.’
Undine felt dizzy at the rapid succession of Trevor-Trout’s questions, which was far too fast for her to even begin to contemplate answering them. But what he was saying made a kind of sense. It seemed unlikely that there would have been a neat swap. Which meant the other Undine could be anywhere. Even, if she was understanding Trevor-Trout correctly, any time.
‘But it would be a huge event,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘What would be?’
‘Crossing from one universe or plane or reality to another. It would kind of ripple through all the universes, really. It would change everything in a way. The potentiality of everything anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Crossing from one world to another … well, then they’re not really alternate anymore, are they? They’re kind of … a continuum. With a continuous sequence – a shared time and space – moving between them. It could, in theory, undermine the integrity of things. What was separate would sort of … bleed in.’
Undine sighed. ‘You mean, it could lead to total destruction of life, the universe and everything?’ she asked despondently.
‘Well, I guess. That’s one possible outcome.’
‘Great,’ Undine muttered. ‘That’s just what I need.’ But it hadn’t happened, she reminded herself. She was still here. Trevor-Trout, the sky above, toast. The white concrete footpath, the black tarmac road, the red brick apartment buildings, the nature strips, roses, cats, cars. It was all still here.
‘But really,’ Trout said seriously, ‘think about it.’
‘What?’
‘The spam olympics. It would be totally totally gross.’
Phoenix felt it, a strumming in him. It was faint, but close. He crossed the university playing fields and headed up towards the union buildings, where the bookshop and the refectory and the uni bar were. At the other end of the union carpark you could cut through to a street that was graced by an elegant weeping willow. He pulled out his cardboard box of broken chalk sticks and selected a stub to write Confluence in the tunnel that linked the two parts of the campus. Most times the writing was just a kind of play; it was the closest thing he had to keeping a diary, though it was a diary that was worn away by the drifts of time.
The words didn’t always mean anything but they didn’t not mean anything. He imagined this was how poetry began, words dropping like stones into the mind, which was sometimes a still pond and sometimes as wild and reckless as a river in a rainstorm. Either way the stones sank, heavy and sure, to settle on the bottom. Sometimes the words were short or ordinary, like brick or dive. Sometimes they were simply pretty, like cluster. And sometimes, like this one, they seemed to evoke a whole mysterious understanding of the world, so deeply and richly contained in one single word that you could spend a lifetime chipping gently away at the surface, tapping into its heart.
It was not important work, the writing. But it was something he felt he had to do, in the same way he’d always been drawn to performing. It was a kind of calling, he guessed. He was called again: Confluence he wrote on the university walls. The chalk letters sparkled white and bright in the sunlight, and even as he wrote it, he felt the word burrowing deep into the wall, into space, into the texture of it. He felt the word take flight, travel, and, like a tourist or a migrant, it took its origins with it, a vestige of the world that had birthed it.
Undine wandered around the fiction shelves of the bookshop, her eye sliding over the spines without reading the titles. Trout was in another section, collecting medical textbooks on anatomy and molecular biology. His knees almost buckled under the weight of them.
‘Aren’t you going to get anything?’ he said to Undine as she dawdled over to him at the counter.
‘Nope.’
‘Good,’ he said, handing her a bag. ‘Then carry these. Shall we get a latte?’ They headed out of the bookshop and across the melting hot carpark towards the refectory.
The campus was more or less empty, just a few kids doing jumps on the refectory steps with skateboards. There were posters around advertising bands at the uni bar. The colours were bright and dizzying. Undine could feel a headache humming in the back of her brain.
A word shimmered in the sunlight, written in white chalk on the university’s orange exterior wall. Undine read it: Confluence. And then she was sick, all over Trevor-Trout’s shoes.
CHAPTER FIVE
Craig had been right. The temperature kept rising and in the late afternoon a hot northerly had sprung up, kicking up dust. Bushfire weather. Craig had knocked off early – he lived on a big bushy block in Hobart’s foothills.
Trout walked down to Salamanca to meet Richard and Lucy for dinner. Richard was at one of the front tables of the p
ub when Trout arrived, with a half-jug of beer and two glasses in front of him.
‘Where’s Lucy?’ asked Trout, pouring himself a glass. He watched the bubbles rise in the amber liquid. He usually preferred watching beer to drinking it – it was gross and kind of sour, and he’d much rather have lemonade – but it was hot so he sipped it gratefully enough and almost understood the point of it.
‘She’s coming, she’s meeting us here.’
‘How’s she feeling?’ Trout asked.
‘Don’t ask. I never knew a woman could be so pregnant. The heat hasn’t been kind to her. Even her hair looks pregnant.’
‘Poor Luce.’
Richard finished his beer with a grimace. ‘What do you think of Scarlett?’
Trout’s brow furrowed. ‘As in the colour?’
‘As in the name.’
‘Oh no.’ Trout held up his hands. ‘I don’t think. You know that. Not after the Percival Incident.’
‘Peregrine. And that was an act of human kindness. Imagine calling a poor defenceless baby Peregrine.’
Trout grunted. ‘When it comes to Lucy, I’m poor and defenceless. That’s the last time I’m saying what I really think. I’m like totally Switzerland.’
‘I just don’t see what’s wrong with a nice normal name like Anna or Michael,’ Richard said glumly. ‘She thinks I’m too conservative.’
Trout covered his ears and started singing the theme from The Sound of Music.
‘Here she comes,’ said Richard, quickly pouring himself another beer and gulping down half of it.
Richard was right. The heat hadn’t been kind to Lucy. She looked puffy all over. Her belly seemed to have grown even more in the few days since Trout had seen her last, she had developed a waddle and was walking with her hands supporting her lower back, so she looked rather like a sitcom caricature of a pregnant person.
‘If one more frickin’ person asks me if I’m having twins—’ Lucy spat, leaving the threat hanging emptily in the air.
Trout glanced around. People were staring. You couldn’t help but stare at Lucy. Even unpregnant Lucy had a presence about her, like a cross between a really impressive yacht and a street brawl.
‘Can we go?’ snapped Lucy. ‘The smell of beer makes me want to vomit.’
They wandered – Lucy lumbered – across the grass. Even though it was evening the heat was still oppressive.
‘Can you smell smoke?’ Lucy asked. Faintly on the air it was there, acridly sweet, like campfire smoke.
‘Someone at the pub said there were fires in the hills above Glenorchy,’ Richard said. ‘But they’re under control.’
‘I heard they were coming up the bush between Kingston and Mount Nelson,’ said Lucy.
Despite the heat and the talk of bushfires, the Friday night crowds lent a carnival atmosphere to Constitution Dock. Restaurants with outdoor seating were full, and people milled about, eating icecreams or chips out of paper bags. At the Elizabeth Street pier a busker was setting up. Trout, Richard and Lucy stopped to watch.
‘I know him,’ Trout said. ‘He looks familiar.’
‘That’s the guy,’ Lucy said.
Trout and Richard waited.
‘Which guy?’ Richard eventually prompted.
‘The one who writes all those chalk words. I’ve seen him do it. He’s cute, in a I’m too sexy for my shoes kind of way.’
‘You’re looking at sexy men?’ Richard said, mock-hurt.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Lucy, grumpily. ‘I don’t think sexy men are looking at me. Or if they are, I can see horror in their faces. And then they rush off to buy lots of condoms. Or become priests. Or something.’
‘You’re beautiful to me,’ Richard said and kissed her.
‘I bloody better be,’ said Lucy. ‘You’ve ruined me for anyone else.’
‘Because I’m so perfect?’
Lucy gave him a withering stare that would have made Trout duck and cover had he been the recipient. She shrugged him away. ‘Go and get me an icecream, would you?’ Richard sighed and joined the long queue at the icecream van.
‘Is he starting?’ asked Trout, watching the busker rummaging through a tatty old suitcase. Trout was still trying to figure out why he looked so familiar when he heard a voice from behind him.
‘Trout.’
Trout turned around. It was Lou, holding Jasper’s hand.
And that’s how it was, and how it always would be. Trout would be coasting along fine, sipping coffee or walking down an empty street or buying a loaf of bread and suddenly she would be there as if she always dwelt somewhere at the edge of him. Anything could conjure the sudden acute memory of her: a smell, a burst of music from a passing car, motes of dust in a shaft of sunlight. Or the sudden appearance of her mother and brother down at the docks on a hot summer night.
‘How are you?’ Lou asked.
‘Good. Good. Fine.’ Trout tried to make himself stop nodding earnestly. He felt as if he was a puppet, controlled by invisible malevolent strings.
‘You look good, Trout. Really well.’
Lucy eyed Lou, openly curious. ‘He’s got this whole zen manual labour thing happening,’ she said.
Lou smiled. At least she turned up the corners of her mouth, but the smile didn’t go far. Trout got the unsettling feeling that Lou didn’t smile much these days. Her eyes seemed flat and dull.
‘Lou, this is Lucy.’
Lou glanced at Lucy’s stomach. ‘You look ready to go,’ she said, sympathetically. Then Lou smiled nervously at Trout and raised her eyebrows.
He barked a dry, humourless laugh. ‘Ah, it’s not mine. Well, it’s sort of partly mine. My niece or nephew to be.’
‘Your niece?’
‘Or nephew.’
Lucy helped. ‘Richard’s baby.’
‘Oh,’ said Lou surprised. ‘Wasn’t Richard the one who …?’
‘The one who what?’ asked Lucy.
‘That’s right,’ said Trout, brightly. ‘Richard’s my oldest brother.’
Lucy scowled. She wandered away to the other side of the crowd.
‘Hi, Jasper,’ Trout said to the small boy who was watching everything with a strange kind of impassive curiosity. He had grown up a lot since Trout had last seen him, shedding the last soft edges of his toddlerhood, his face and body all sharp angles.
Jasper didn’t answer. He turned to stare at the busker who was still busy with his suitcase.
Trout looked back to Lou. ‘How are you doing?’
Lou didn’t answer. Instead she asked, ‘Are you coming on Sunday?’
‘Yes. And I talked to Grunt a few nights ago. He’s flying down for it.’
Lou nodded. ‘Do you need a ride?’
Trout smiled. The journey to the Bay was the only part of the day he was looking forward to. ‘Nah, that’s okay. I can get there under my own steam.’
‘Good.’ Though Lou had barely heard him. She blinked at the ground and then said quietly, ‘The last days of summer, the change of seasons.’ She looked up into Trout’s eyes and said, ‘I miss her more than ever.’
They both nodded now. The sympathy nod. ‘Me too,’ Trout said. It was an automatic response. It was true, in a way, the feeling was always there, as if it might swell up somewhere from the guts of him. But he felt guilty, because it wasn’t completely true. It wasn’t as if he sat around missing her. Life went on.
‘I better go,’ said Trout, looking in the direction Lucy had gone.
Lou’s turn now: nod, nod. ‘See you Sunday.’
And back to Trout. Nod, nod. It was crazy nodding tennis.
Jasper’s eyes were bright but expressionless as Trout said goodbye. Man, thought Trout, the kid had always been creepy but now he looked positively haunted – as if a ghost was walking inside his skin.
Trout edged around the crowd back to Lucy.
‘Was that her mum?’ asked Lucy.
‘Whose mum?’
‘Come on.’
Trout looked at the busk
er. He was doing his spiel now, asking the crowd to applaud and cheer to draw more people in. Trout clapped, not looking at Lucy.
‘She looks wiped out. Must be awful, losing your kid like that. No body or anything. Just … gone. You’d always wonder if …’
‘It was pretty clear cut, Luce,’ Trout said abruptly. He couldn’t look at her, his lies always showed on his face.
‘But don’t you wonder? Don’t you ever think about it? What might have happened to her?’
‘No.’ Thinking about it, that was where it could all go horribly wrong. So Trout didn’t wonder. He busied himself not wondering. Life was good. He let himself be drawn into the busker’s spiel, clapping and cheering. Life was great. Wondering wouldn’t do him any good at all.
CHAPTER SIX
Lou and Stephen strolled along holding hands. Jasper jiggled and bounced, wanting to race.
‘A puppy,’ said Lou.
‘Maybe,’ said Stephen.
Undine liked how her parents talked in these abbreviations. It showed that they finished each other. Idly, Undine wondered if she would ever find someone like that. Someone who understood her so completely and at the same time found her so mysterious and fascinating they wanted to make it their life’s work to be with her.
Up ahead they could hear cheering and clapping.
‘Can we go?’ Jasper said. ‘Can we look? What is it? It might be a circus. It might be a bear. Can we go?’
‘I’ll take him,’ Undine offered.
