by R E McLean
Mike shook his head. “Not over there. The street is lined with condos.”
“Oh.” How had she not noticed that?
Monique raised an eyebrow at Sarita, who nodded. “We can arrange that.” Outside, Madge had stopped walking and was pouring china cups full of tea from a pink and white striped teapot. She handed them round to the detectives, who accepted them as if this were nothing out of the ordinary.
Monique caught Alex staring and turned around. “What’s she doing here?”
As if aware of the eyes on her, Madge turned away from the man she was speaking to and waved at them. She let her gaze rest on Monique for an instant, then mouthed a sorry and scurried away.
Sarita shook her head. “Typical Madge.”
“I don’t want her up here,” said Monique.
“I’ll speak to her.”
“I need to maintain a semblance of normality.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. Sorry.” But Sarita didn’t look sorry at all.
22
Smelly Cat
Berkeley
26 March, 6:23pm
Alex hadn’t been home for nearly twenty-four hours. Schrödinger wouldn’t be happy. She had no way of knowing whether he spent the intervening time alive or dead, or in a state of flux between the two. She pushed the door open slowly, calling his name quietly. She couldn't take a dead night, not tonight.
“Shrew?”
“Meow.”
He stood on the table, glaring at her with a where the hell have you been stare. She bent to pick him up but he slipped through her fingers.
“Meow.”
“I’m sorry. How was your day, Shrew?”
“Meow.”
“Sorry. I'll fill your bowl now.”
He glared at her again, watching intently as she reached into a high cupboard for cat biscuits and overfilled his bowl by way of apology. The sink was half-full of water; he'd turned the tap on.
“Naughty Shrew. I keep telling you not to do that.”
“Meow.”
“Yes, I did leave you water. It's next to your food. Still full.”
He ignored her and carried on eating, then padded into the living area where he arranged himself on the arm of a chair with his back squarely towards her. Sulking again. He'd come round, soon enough.
She went into the bedroom and peeled off her shirt. It was starting to smell. She tossed it onto the overflowing laundry basket. It was wicker, a souvenir from her gap year that she'd regretted when she realized she had to lash it to her rucksack and carry it across Thailand. She pulled a clean t-shirt from a drawer. She gave it a sniff—her washing powder had struggled against her sweaty armpits lately—and decided it would do. Only Schrödinger to smell her, after all.
In the living room, she threw herself into the chair next to the cat, making the arm bounce.
“Meow.”
“Yeah, yeah. Bad owner. I know. You won't believe the day I had.”
He glared at her and jumped down, crossing to the couch where once again he arranged himself to face away from her. This brought his nose so close to the wall that he had to retract his head to avoid it being squashed, like the world's fluffiest and most ginger tortoise. This was one of the things she loved about him; they were both ginger, and it made both of them grumpy.
She thought over her induction into the MIU.
“I met some very odd people today, Shrew.”
Silence.
“You'd have liked Madge. She seems the cat type. She’d have you sitting on her knee in no time, curled up and purring.”
A muffled Meow came from over by the wall. Even sulking, Shrew liked to talk.
“Not sure what you'd make of Sarita though.”
She imagined bringing Sarita back to this flat, pictured Sarita's wrinkled nose at the sight of the purple walls, the threadbare furniture, and the rug that sported a road plan designed for toy cars to zoom around on. A thrift store bargain. A far cry from the shimmering fabrics that Sarita wore.
No, Nemesis would be more at home here. She'd instantly taken to his library/lab/office, wishing she had the space for something like that and the money for all those books. Some of them, she was sure, were antiques. Would she get the chance to work her way through them, between jumps?
“Meow.”
Schrödinger was back, sitting on the floor and looking up at her.
“I spent the day with a man who reminded me of you today, Shrew. Grumpy as hell, turned his back on me.”
Then she remembered they’d met. She lifted the cat onto her knee and gave him a stroke. He arched his back but didn’t relax.
“You liked him, didn’t you?”
“Meow.”
“Why, Shrew? You hate strangers. It’s why you love me so much.”
The cat had started to purr, vibrating beneath her hand like a small ginger drill. She leaned over and touched his ear with her nose.
Then she smelled it. That familiar cat smell she’d experienced in Silicon City. It was just like Schrödinger’s scent. A scent he’d acquired around the time he’d started dying in his box.
She plunged her nose into his fur and inhaled.
She stuck her wrist in front of the cat’s nose.
“Do I smell different, boy?”
He flinched and moved his face away. She wasn’t going to get any answers here.
She needed to find out what that smell was. Whether it had anything to do with having made a jump into a parallel universe. Or taking on quantum properties, in Schrödinger’s case.
She stared at him. When he died in his box, was he really traveling to another universe?
She laughed. Don’t be stupid.
There was only one place she’d be able to check her suspicions. If she was right, it gave her the clue she needed to succeed at this new job. To get away from number crunching forever.
But first, she’d need to crunch some numbers.
She threw her jacket back on and grabbed her dirty shirt from the basket.
“See you later, Shrew,” she called, closing the door behind her.
23
Leo
Silicon City
26 March, 6:35pm
Claire stepped out of the shower and wriggled her feet on the bathmat. It was just as soft as her carpets but had the added benefit of sitting on top of a tiled floor warmed by underfloor heating.
If you were an internet billionaire, spending your every waking moment alone didn’t have to be a hardship. Her dog made it easier. An explanation for any unusual noises around the apartment, a warm body to curl into at night, and someone to talk to.
Normally he came into her bedroom and settled on the bed while she was in the bathroom, ready for a post-shower fuss. He liked to stand on his hind legs next to her glass-topped dressing table and stroke her face adoringly. It was lucky no-one ever saw that her skin was covered in scratches.
But today he wasn’t waiting for her. Maybe he was still asleep in his soft bed under the kitchen island; he did this sometimes after a trip to the dog groomer’s. Claire had no clue why this was necessary, but Tammy insisted on offering it as part of her service and so, every other Tuesday after taking him to the park, she would walk him and the rest of her brood to a groomer’s somewhere in the Haight and have all of them titivated to within an inch of their doggy lives.
When Leo had returned home, Claire told him a pile of barefaced lies. “Hello, handsome,” she exclaimed, opening the door to the outer hall after Tammy had safely closed the one on the other side and retreated to the elevator.
But Leo didn’t look handsome. His normally soft, pale brown Labrador fur was curled and colored so he looked like he’d had a blue rinse followed by a shampoo and set. And the smell! He smelt of patchouli oil mixed with cigarette butts. Straight into the shower, he had gone. It took a while to clean the blue dye from the shower tray but an hour or so later he had been clean and dry, curling up on the couch in front of Lassie.
Yes, Leo was probably sleeping it off.
She dropped the wet towel into the laundry basket and shrugged on her robe. Only Leo would see her moving around the apartment—that was, if the lazy mutt had woken up yet—but still she felt the need to be modest. The robe was made of silk, hand-spun by virgins from some remote Indian village. Or so she’d been told. It probably came from a Chinese factory, much like the product her own company manufactured, the ubiquitous Pearl.
The Pearl had been a brainwave. When the Hive took off, and reached the point where it was impossible to participate in society without an earpiece, she had considered ways to piggyback on this and make some cash, enough to pay for an apartment where she wouldn’t have to listen to the neighbors shouting at each other all night.
She’d considered going into business manufacturing a rival to the earpieces themselves. After all, the software may be locked down to the Hive Corporation, but anyone could use their API to manufacture an access device. But earpieces weren’t changing hands quickly enough. If she designed one with obsolescence built in, she would rightly gain a reputation as just another hack leeching off of the Hivers. And if she didn’t, the money would soon dry up. So she came up with the Pearl, an ornament designed to enhance the earpiece visually, make it unique to the wearer and help people remember which one was theirs when they put it down in a bar.
Pearls took off. And even better, people wanted to replace them every time fashions shifted. And in Silicon City, as in New York, LA and Paris, fashions were like the sands of time. Right now the fashion was for brightly colored, plumed pearls that made their wearers look like a tiny parrot was trying to burrow into their brain.
She slipped a silk shirt over her head and pulled on black jeans. Even a recluse has standards, she thought, smiling to herself. A woman worth one billion, six hundred and forty million dollars and five cents had to keep up standards.
She was hungry. Time for a smoothie. She padded into the kitchen where Leo was rousing from his nap.
“Hey boy,” she purred, bending to him. She ruffled his fur between her hands. He was animal, and warm, and smelly. Everything she should hate. But she loved him.
His collar was on the floor next to his bed, where she had dropped it before shepherding him to the bathroom earlier. She frowned at it; this vestige of the outside world disgusted her, but she knew he couldn’t be walked without it.
She held the red collar at arm’s length, preparing to return it to the hallway where Tammy could pick it up next time. Then she spotted the tag.
Leo wore a tag on his collar—name, Tammy’s contact details. Certainly not her own.
But Leo’s collar was a silvery metal, and this one was bronze.
She held it gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. She would need to disinfect herself after this.
She brought the tag to her face. It was engraved in the same font as the original one.
Maybe he’d lost his tag and Tammy had replaced it? She admired the girl’s initiative, but wished she could find something more tasteful.
She squinted to read it. Instead of the dog’s name and a cell number, it had five words inscribed on it.
Claire. You are in danger.
24
Alcatraz
Berkeley
26 March, 7:05pm
The streets leading to the campus were full of students. Alex always felt out of place when she passed through them. She wasn’t old enough to obviously be a member of staff, but neither was she young enough to disappear amongst them.
And as a postdoc, she didn’t come into contact with many of them. Despite being an undergraduate herself not so long ago, she felt like an alien species now, threading her way through the groups that travelled towards Berkeley’s bars and clubs.
As she reached the edge of campus, her phone buzzed. She grabbed it, knowing who it would be.
It wasn’t.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey,” he replied, mocking the Americanism. “Howya doin’?”
“Stop it.”
He laughed. “Sorry, lass. I can’t resist.”
“I know. Shall we start again? Hello, Father.”
“Aw, bum. Don’t go all English on me. Stick with the yank lingo.”
“How’s things?”
“Oh, alright. Alright.”
She frowned, knowing they weren’t. He didn’t know that she’d been speaking to her Aunty Morag, her mom’s sister. Morag was worried about him, about his ability to cope on his own.
“What time is it there?” she asked.
“Three in the morning. Just home from work.”
“Right.”
Dad worked as a hospital porter, and often took the night shift. It made it easier for them to communicate across the time zones.
“Tough day?” she asked, thinking of her own.
“Ah, not so bad. The usual, you know. You?”
“Usual for me too. Data crunching.”
“Away with you, the fancy scientist. I’m sure it’s more fun than that.”
“It isn’t, Dad. It really isn’t.”
“It’ll get better.”
“Anyway, I’m just on my way to meet a friend. Is there a specific reason you phoned, or can I call you back later?”
“I’m coming to see you.”
She stopped walking.
“What?”
“You heard me. I’ve booked a ticket and I’m coming out in five days.”
“You can’t afford it.”
“I saved up. Besides, I won’t need to pay for accommodation when I get there, will I?”
She swallowed. Her condo had strict rules about overnight guests, and how long they stayed for. More than a few nights would be considered subletting, and could get her evicted.
But he was her dad.
“Of course. But isn’t it easier for me to come home for a visit?”
“Alex lass, when was the last time you came home?”
“Um.”
“Exactly.”
She bit her lip. It was almost a year since she’d last gone home to Gretna, on the Scottish border with England. She loved her hometown, her home country. But she’d come here to escape and doing so just made the memories loom larger when she had gone back.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“It’s alright, hen. I understand. I miss her too.”
“I know.”
This was the closest she’d come to confiding in him since Mom had died. She knew he was drinking, and that he was in danger of losing his job. But she’d never found the courage to ask about it.
She hated herself for it.
She took a deep breath.
“That’s great news, Dad. I’ll show you the sights.”
“Really? Alcatraz?”
“Yes. And everything else.”
“Sounds grand. Call me when you’re done with your pal and we’ll sort it all out, aye?”
“Yes, Dad. Sounds good.”
She put her phone in her pocket. She was outside LeConte Hall now, home of the physics department. The building looked empty, and there was no sign of Rik.
She shuffled between her feet. The air was chilly already and the sun was dipping below the neighboring buildings. She wondered if this was such a good idea. What if Professor Yang was still there?
She checked her watch. Seven thirty.
“Hey.”
She looked up. Rik ambled towards her, crumpling an apple pie wrapper into his pocket.
“Hey. Thanks for coming.”
“No problem. Dana’s expecting me back by nine. We need to be quick. What’s up? And where have you been?”
“I need your help with something. Let’s go in, and I’ll tell you what I need.”
The building was dimly lit, security lighting washing down the walls. Alex looked at Rik. How much could she tell him?
She cleared her throat. “Rik, do you know much about that work Hank Prout is doing on parallel world theory?”
“A bit. Not really our area.”
“Well…”<
br />
He stopped and turned to her. “Is that it? Are you switching teams? They’re insane, over there. It’s not proper science, and you know it.”
“Maybe it’s really…”
He slammed a fist into his palm and she jumped.
“Hell, Alex. I’ll miss you.”
She held up her palms. “I’m not going anywhere. They just need me in the city for something.”
“What kind of something?”
They arrived at the broom cupboard. Rik had a key; he’d been here longer than her and was seemingly more trustworthy.
She waited while he unlocked the door and switched on the lights. The tiny space flickered to life. It was just as she’d left it two nights ago, her desk strewn with printouts.
She felt her body sag.
“OK,” she said. “There’s something I need to look for. In the data.”
“Can’t this wait till the morning?”
She turned to him. “I won’t be here tomorrow. Sorry.”
“Still out on your secret project?”
“It’s not a secret project. They just needed a— an expert witness.”
“What kinda court case requires a witness who’s an expert in the Cheshire Cat phenomenon?”
Alex shook her head. The name of this study was what had attracted her to it; it sounded fun, and quirky. For postdocs like her and Rik, it was anything but. It wasn’t even new research; they were just trying to apply an effect that had already been created in an Israeli university, in different circumstances.
“I can’t tell you. Please, don’t push it.”
“Okey doke. So—tell me if I’m wrong. You have some data you need to check, and you need it for this court case tomorrow.”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Let’s get on with it, then.”
25
Bucket
San Francisco
26 March, 7:25pm
