Alternities

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “You can always go back to Red,” Tackett said, poker-faced. “You aren’t dead there, only missing-and-presumed.”

  “Lovely place, my old home,” the senator grunted. “Brats and bugbombs and other brands of unpleasantness. A business friend of mine was taken hostage and murdered just last week. Thank you, no. I think I can do better.”

  “I think we can all do better,” Robinson said. “I don’t think any of us can see taking a family to Red.”

  “No,” Tackett agreed. “But Blue, Green and Yellow are all excellent candidates for a quiet refuge, temporary or permanent. And we have well-established stations in all three that can provide transition support.”

  Barely aware he was doing so, Robinson made a wet sucking noise by drawing a breath with his teeth pressed against his lower Up. An aide had once pointed out the idiosyncrasy in a critique of a press conference, and Robinson had demanded corroboration from a half-dozen other staffers before he was convinced it was real. “I thought Green was where the mob owned Washington.”

  “It is,” Tackett said. “It makes less difference than you might think.”

  “I’m poor there,” Endicott said, reading from his binder. “Heaven forfend.”

  “I’d hope that the choice of destination for Rathole would turn on those conditions that affect everyone on Alpha List,” Tackett said coldly.

  “Of course it will, Albert,” Robinson said reassuringly. “You have to understand that what catches our eye the first time through the material is the personal dimension. It’s a natural bias.”

  “I understand that, sir—”

  At that moment, there was the sound of raised voices beyond the Oval Office door. The three all turned their focus that way in time to see Gregory O’Neill burst through the doorway, with the red-faced appointments secretary following on his heels. They spoke at once, O’Neill insistent, the secretary apologetic.

  “President Robinson, I have to talk to you—”

  “President Robinson, I told Mr. O’Neill that you—”

  “—and Albert about this business—”

  “—and Mr. Tackett and the Senator had business—”

  “It’s all right, Donald,” Robinson said easily. “Come on in, Gregory. Go on, Donald, leave us. Gregory, find a chair and join us.”

  But O’Neill was too agitated to sit. “This has been going around in my head all morning,” he said. His hands moved jerkily in the air, a silent stutter that underlined his distress. “I don’t understand why in God’s name these alternities exist. What’s the purpose? Albert, you’re living right on top of this thing. What have your people found out? Have you done anything at all to figure out the reason?”

  “We have a research section looking at that issue—” Tackett began.

  “What do they tell you?”

  “They tell me what I told you in the Cabinet Room. Everyone accepts that the alternities are real, but no one can explain them. Frankly, we’re more interested in the ‘what’ than the ‘why’—we have our hands full trying to understand how to best make use of the gates.”

  Robinson was watching O’Neill closely and not liking what he saw. “Perhaps you could outline what you are doing, Albert.”

  His face wrinkling up in a scowl, Tackett complied. “Well—the research section is working with our crackers, trying to gather more data about the maze itself. We close down the maze to everyone but the crackers for six hours out of every twenty-four.”

  “That’s a start,” O’Neill said.

  “But that’s a means to an end—several ends: finding any other exits that might be there, cutting down on our runner losses, finding a way to bring metallic objects through. There are a hundred inventions we could make immediate use of if we could simply buy them there and bring them through. As it is, we have to acquire designs and plans and try to recreate them here, a much slower process.”

  “That’s a philosophical question you’re asking, Gregory,” Robinson said easily. “You’re asking why the world is the way it is.”

  “I know that, but isn’t it worth asking? Don’t you realize what we’re sitting on? How this changes everything? My God, when I think of the revolutions in human thought—the Copernican revolution only changed where we are in the universe. This changes what we are. And the questions for theology, philosophy—how can one soul be split among seven bodies?”

  O’Neill was looking fragile and lost, a condition without precedent in Robinson’s dealings with him.

  “ ‘Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold,’ ” Robinson quoted. “Gregory, we each have to wrestle with that one on our own. It’s not a matter of state interest. It’s a question of private conscience. Albert never promised you wouldn’t have a few sleepless nights about this. God knows I did.”

  “I don’t know that we have the right to keep this to ourselves,” O’Neill said, shaking his head. “I don’t know that we have the right to exploit it this way. This is a… a revelation. It belongs to everyone.”

  “Including General Secretary Kondratyev?” Endicott asked. “Would you like to see it shared with him? I’m sure you don’t mean that.”

  Some of the rigidness left O’Neill’s body, and he seemed to settle back onto his heels. “No. I don’t mean that.”

  “Then you understand that this is being handled the only way it can be handled,” Robinson, suggested.

  “I don’t know.” O’Neill turned on Tackett. “But you’ve got to put this higher on your list of priorities,” he said, the edge returning to his voice. “You’ve got to see that ‘why’ gets the attention it deserves. You’re the only one who can. What you’ve been doing is dangerous, like a kid who’s never seen a gun playing with a new toy he found in his father’s dresser drawer.”

  “Secretary O’Neill, I take this responsibility more seriously than you know,” Tackett said coldly. “No one knows better than I what a queer business this is. I confront it every hour of every day.”

  “But your people don’t. You can’t tell me if this gate is natural or artificial—”

  “How could it be anything but natural?” Endicott scoffed. “For the love of mother, grab your ears and pull your head back on. Copernicus didn’t move the Earth. He just rewrote its biography.”

  “—or why the worlds are so much alike,” O’Neill plunged on, insensible to interruption. “That bothers me. If they’re so similar, why aren’t they identical? There’re so many questions you haven’t even addressed.”

  “There’s a question of resources,” Tackett said.

  “What about some of these alternities where the geopolitics are more stable? Why can’t we approach our counterparts and draw on their resources, attack the problem together?”

  Tackett’s look of contempt had deepened with every word. “Problem? I don’t see a problem. I know which world I live in, and which President I serve. These other realities are our enemies just as much as the Soviet Union is. You’re a dreamer if you think contacting them directly would bring anything but trouble.”

  “They’re us, if what you say is true. How can they be enemies?”

  “They’re not us,” Endicott said with unexpected forcefulness. “Not on any level. Don’t make that mistake, Gregory. Even when they look like us, they’re not us. They have their own lives, and that’s what they care about. Just like we have to care about ours. Albert is right. To protect ourselves, we have to control the maze. That’s Job One. Job Two is to use this resource to our best advantage. That’s what the Guard is there for. Not to provide employment for every crackpot physicist and would-be philosopher.”

  “How can we use it wisely when we don’t understand it?” O’Neill turned to Robinson. “I don’t see any choice but to back off, go slow. Whatever the answer, this can’t exist for such a shallow purpose as giving us a hiding place from a shooting war.”

  Enough. Robinson rose up out of his chair. “Gregory, I think you need to take your own advice,” he said, taking the Secretary by the el
bow and guiding him toward the door. “Back off—go slow. You’re trying to swallow this whole and it’s about to choke you. Break it up into pieces. Digest it. Fit it together with what you already know. Then it’ll be time to wrestle with some of the implications.”

  O’Neill took a deep breath, sighed, and nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It was eating me up. I had to come talk to you. It’s not as though I can go discuss it with my priest.”

  “No, let’s not do that,” Robinson said with an easy smile, pulling up a step short of the door. “It’s a jolt, Gregory. It is for everybody. But you’ll get on top of it.”

  “It’s hard to see how.”

  “It was hard for me, too,” he said soothingly.

  O’Neill was hesitating, reluctant to take his cue to leave. “I wouldn’t have interrupted—”

  “My door’s open to you, Gregory. You know that.”

  Still O’Neill hesitated.

  “We’ll talk later, Gregory,” Robinson said, reaching for the handle and pulling the door open.

  That cue O’Neill could not ignore. His expression still troubled, he reluctantly exited the room.

  The instant the door closed behind him. Robinson’s expression changed. “Arrogant son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath. “He’d better get his head on straight before he comes in here the next time or I’m going to be looking for another Secretary of Defense.”

  “He’s fighting himself,” Tackett said sympathetically.

  “He can damn well do it in his own office,” Robinson said, turning back to his visitors. “Where were we, Albert?”

  “You were asking my opinion on the site selection for Rathole.”

  “And you were doing your best not to give one. All right. We’ll do it your way. I’ll review the report and let you know my decision within a couple of days.”

  Tackett looked unhappily at Endicott. “I would rather this material not have that kind of exposure—”

  “If you expected to take an answer back with you, you should have made the dossier short enough to read in one sitting,” he said curtly.

  “Yes, sir,” Tackett said, chastened. “Would you like me to remain in Washington?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary. You can send someone around to collect the binders. Walter, you’ve got the skinny one. Can you call me by Saturday night with your comments?”

  “I can.”

  “Good. That will do it for now, then. I thank you both.”

  When they were gone, Robinson sat for a moment in the chair, the heavy black book resting on his knee. I should have known, he thought. Reflective type. No sense about what questions aren’t worth answering. What’s the mystery, Gregory? God has been generous. He’s giving us a second chance. And getting lost in philosophy is a good way to box it.

  Precautions. O’Neill would settle down, almost certainly. But if he didn’t, Robinson had to know. He walked to the desk, dossier tucked under one arm, and pushed a button on the phone. “Get me Westheim at the NSA.”

  There was a brief pause, and then the connection was live. “This is the President.”

  “I recognize your voice, sir.”

  “Step up the monitoring on Secretary O’Neill. Blanket him. I want to know when he hiccups and how many times he brushes his teeth at night. I want to know who he sleeps with and what he says in his sleep. Can do?”

  “Can do, sir. I’ll activate the in-place coverage immediately. And we’ll have someone with him within the hour.”

  Boston, The Home Alternity

  There were times that Ruthann Wallace did not understand her own perversity. Hurts were to be shrugged off, not carried forward. Swallow them, bury them, cast them aside—do anything but let them collect in the subconscious to breed more hurt.

  She knew that, and yet sometimes she watched herself do just the opposite. It was easy to turn the hurt to anger, anger that caromed around inside her like a trapped wasp until it found an opening and arrowed straight for a soft spot in Rayne’s ego. And then, warmed by the glow of her vindication, she was ready to be generous. Except then it was too late, the wheel having taken another turn.

  “I could have forgiven him, except he didn’t ask,” she had explained to Rebecca on the phone. No, not explained—complained. “I could even have enjoyed this morning, except he didn’t ask about that, either. He was just all over me before I was even awake. And then when Katie fell and cut her forehead on the coffee table. I actually think he blamed me. There’s blood on Katie and milk all over the living room, and I think he expected me to satisfy him before I cleaned up.”

  ““Even Rayne couldn’t be that much of a jerk.”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  “Honey, you two are just out of sync. Sounds like you’re taking turns being jerks. Nothing personal.”

  Except because it was true, it was personal. “He deserved it,” she said, masking guilt with indignation. “Besides, he’s left me on the edge often enough. It’ll do him good to find out what it’s like.”

  “Honey, it never does any good to leave a man to finish by himself,” Rebecca said with sad-voiced sagacity. “One of you is going to have to break the cycle, or you’re going to turn into one of those women with a regular Monday appointment at the lip-and-shiner clinic.”

  Ruthann did not think Rayne would ever hit her. But there were enough other ugly pictures of the future that were all too believable. Jenny, who’d lived with her husband in the other apartment over the laundry confessing over coffee to dozens of affairs and a cold technical marriage. Donna, just east in the locus, bartered into timidity by her mate’s endless criticism and disapproval. Her own mother, endlessly compromising with her silent, life-embittered father in the name of peace.

  She was too young to resign herself to any of those fates. There were too many years ahead to accept that they had to be unhappy ones. We were happy in Indiana. We can be happy here, if only I’d stop making stupid mistakes—

  In midmorning, Rayne had gone up to the exercise room in the central core. It was past noon now, and Katie was fed and napping. She listened for his return as she sorted through the clutter of a kitchen drawer, a task she could leave in the time it took to push the drawer closed.

  “Katie-cat?”

  She jumped up from her stool and hurried toward the living room. His hair was wet and two shades blacker than usual, the skin bared by the cream-colored sleeveless shirt glowing with a reddish flush. Beautiful, she thought. He really is beautiful.

  “She’s napping, sweetheart. Work-out feel good?”

  “Mostly,” he said, moving his right arm gingerly in a circle.

  “Can I give you a massage? It might help keep you from stiffening up.”

  He looked at her with surprise. “Sure. That’d be nice.”

  While he stripped off his shirt, she spread the soft comforter being used as a throw on the back of the couch on the floor. “On your tummy,” she said, patting the comforter, and he stretched out obediently beside her.

  She straddled his body, one knee on either side of his waist, and centered her attention on his back. As her touch evolved from silky stroking with fingertips to working the deep muscles with the heel of her hand, she could feel him relaxing, accepting her touch, surrendering control to her. At the same time she could feel herself responding to his nearness, to the fresh-sweat fragrance of his body, the radiant heat of his skin against hers.

  “I was talking to Elaine this morning. She says that there’s still a lot of fall color out beyond Sterling, around Mount Wachusett.”

  “Mmm,” Rayne said into the comforter.

  “Since tomorrow is our day with the car, I was thinking that it would be nice to take the family out that way for the day. Maybe if it’s warm enough we could even have kind of a Good-bye-to-Fall last-of-the—season picnic.”

  “Won’t be warm enough. And I’m going downtown to see Jason.”

  Just like that. A flat refusal, as thoughtlessly casual as could b
e. She quelled the impulse to rip gobbets of flesh from his back with her nails. “All day?”

  “Uh-um. Going to pick him up around six. Could you get the left shoulder? Gently.”

  She leaned forward and began to work the shoulder. “That’s okay, then. We’ll still have time for the outing. If we left by ten, we’d be back in plenty of time without having to rush.”

  “That feels wonderful,” he said. “The Indiana-Purdue game is tomorrow. Besides, I really don’t want to be on the run all day. It could be a late night.”

  Break the cycle, she ordered herself as she felt her body start to go rigid. Don’t answer in kind. “Then I guess Katie and I will go by ourselves. I really want to see the colors before they’re gone. We can collect some leaves to press.”

  “Ouch,” he said. “Easy there.”

  “Sorry.” Her hands walked to his neck and began to work the muscles there.

  “I don’t know about you going all the way out to Sterling,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the mileage on the Spirit. We’ve been one of the top two or three shares in the club two months running. I don’t know where you’ve been taking it when I’m not around, but we can’t keep going overbudget on the fuel allowance.”

  With an effort, she sat up straight and tucked her trembling hands under her arms, a precaution akin to sheathing a weapon. “I go visiting. I go shopping. Sometimes I just like to go driving. I take Katie up to Marblehead or Rockport to look at the ocean. Are you telling me I can’t, that I have to stay home?”

  He tried to look back over his shoulder at her. “I’m just asking you to watch the miles. We’re budgeted for fifteen percent of the monthly allowance card. If we keep going over, I don’t know where the money’s going to come from.”

  Retreating still further, she stood up. “Then what did we buy into the club for?” she demanded. “If we can’t afford to drive a car, why did we want to own a piece of one?”

  “Hey,” he said, starting to turn over. “I didn’t say—”