Alternities

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “I understand.”

  “We need to decide what to do about the Guard’s incursion. But that’s almost secondary. We need to find out everything we can about how the world you come from is different from ours. I hope that will help us figure out why it’s different.”

  “You’ll be ahead of me if you do,” Wallace said.

  “What did they tell you when you became part of the Guard?” Davis asked.

  “I can’t say they tried to explain it. They took me through the gate, showed me another alternity. Made me understand that we had to control the gates, control the maze, to protect ourselves.”

  “But didn’t you wonder?” Davis pressed.

  “When you see it right in front of your face, you don’t wonder. You just accept that this is the way the world is.”

  “But why should it start being that way in our lifetimes?” asked Davis.

  “I don’t know.”

  Wallace looked uncomfortable, as though he were failing an oral exam, prompting Bayshore to intervene. “Malcolm’s got a list here of more kinds of experts than I knew existed,” he said lightly hefting the clipboard. “Frankly, I don’t know what questions to ask you. I’m bringing these people here to pull things out of your head.”

  “I’ll do my best to help.”

  “I know you will. I want you to know what to expect. There’ll be some people coming in yet tonight, and we’ll start first thing tomorrow, eight to noon and one to six. By the end of the day, you’re going to think you’ve been wrung out by a three-hundred-pound washerwoman.”

  Grinning, Wallace said, “I can take it. Bring her on.”

  “Malcolm and I and someone you’ll meet tomorrow, a man named Warren Eden, will sit in on everything. After dinner we’ll roundtable, the three of us, to talk through the day’s sessions and figure out what we learned. I’d like to have you part of that, too. Both of you, actually.”

  Shan nodded. “Are you going to have enough bunk space for everyone?”

  “It might get to where it’s a bit crowded around the sinks in the mornings,” Bayshore allowed.

  “Rayne and I will only need one room,” she said, taking his arm. “If that’s all right.”

  Wallace looked startled.

  “I’ve got no problems about it,” Bayshore said. “Except if I send you two upstairs to change and move your stuff, I want you back this century. We need to get started tonight.”

  “Promise.” She tugged at Wallace’s arm and led him away.

  As the sound of their footsteps in the hallway above receded toward the far end of the house, Davis grunted. “I’m impressed,” he said. “Just as you wanted it. How did you know?”

  Bayshore rose from the couch to walk to the window. “Necessity, not sagacity,” he said, peering out. “We had to help him find a better reason to help us than being afraid of his own people. That wouldn’t have lasted long.”

  “Did you tell her that’s what you wanted from her?”

  “It wasn’t her that I was worried about,” Bayshore said. “You finished at the Waterford safe house?”

  Davis nodded. “I am.”

  “And?”

  “As might be expected, Messrs. Robinson, Barstow, and Tackett are all thoroughly confused by having been spirited away to a cabin in the woods to be given a cultural litmus test.”

  “And the test showed—”

  “They’re ours. A Chicago banker, a Stanford English prof, and a Boston drunk, just as advertised. Are you going to hold them?”

  “Yes,” Bayshore said.

  “What on earth do you want them for?”

  “I don’t want them. I just want to make sure that no one who does can find them.”

  Through an endless rainy night, members of Bayshore’s study team continued to arrive. Lying wide awake in the dark with Shan sleeping peacefully beside him, Wallace heard another helicopter and at least three cars.

  Shan’s body was warm against him, and the rich scents of their lovemaking lingered, trapped in the blankets, but those were minor distractions. He knew he should sleep, knew a restless night would dull his wits, but he could not turn off his brain.

  It was Davis who had pushed Wallace to consider matters which he had always found more convenient to ignore. The mysteries were for the men upstairs. Even among themselves, even in private, runners avoided such questions.

  The gates were. You used them. You learned the routes and how to read the changes. You didn’t waste time wondering why. The only exception was the Shadow. A brush with that silent gatekeeper made runners mumble in their beer about devils. But even that was pointless, for there were no answers. As far as Operations was concerned, there weren’t even any questions.

  In truth, Davis’ vision of multiple worlds was foreign to the experience of the runner. The Cairo of Alternity White was more real to Wallace than the Cairo of Home, which he had never seen. With no two gates located in parallel cities, the maze seemed less a link between different realities than a shortcut around a single world. Not until his visit to Hagerstown had Wallace confronted the differences between the alternities—and he had shrunk from the encounter.

  Now Davis and Bayshore and the parade of nighttime arrivals would expect him to confront Hagerstown again. Without understanding how that threatened him. Without knowing themselves the terrible emptiness of being a stranger, an outcast, a nonperson in a familiar land.

  Nor would they ever know, even if he could somehow take them on a tour through all the alternities. They were Common World, all of them, cats with nine lives, or ninety. His grasp on life was frailer than theirs, his existence more tenuous. A candle flame, quivering in the breeze. That was all he was.

  An elemental truth, learned by asking dangerous questions. Foolish questions. Foolish questions with the power to keep his eyes wide open in the dark, the power to deny him the sleep his body craved.

  The morning session began with a pinch-faced linguist quizzing Wallace about a lengthy list of words gleaned from transcripts of earlier interviews. He wanted to know what the words meant, but also when Wallace had first heard each one, where he had heard it, what kind of people used it.

  And when the list was done, there was another list, even longer, ferreting for words which hadn’t come up. What do you call a lumpy white cheese? Is this a common, a median, or a boulevard? What does the water come out of at a sink?

  Before Wallace could find out why any of that mattered, the seat where the linguist had sat was being warmed by a jet-eyed political historian. At her request, Wallace flawlessly backtracked through the modern presidents—Robinson, Robinson again. Rockefeller, Vandenberg, Douglas, Stevenson. That took them back to 1956.

  But all he could remember of Stevenson’s predecessor was that he had succeeded someone who died in office. Yes, he remembered Roosevelt. Something about the war. And Truman sounded familiar. 1952? No, not Eisenhower. That wasn’t the name. Scott Lucas? Never heard of him. Millard Tydings? What kind of name was that for a President?

  Outside the presidential arena, Wallace could name one of Indiana’s two senators, the current mayor of Boston, the premier of the Soviet Union, and very little more. That was not nearly enough to satisfy the historian, who expressed her frustration over his head shakes and “I don’t knows” with sighs and tightlipped frowns.

  “Mr. Bayshore, I can’t make a picture out of this,” she pronounced finally. “He’s politically ignorant. He simply doesn’t know enough.”

  “You’re out of line, Doctor—” Bayshore began.

  “No, that’s all right,” Wallace said, interrupting. “I have a friend—I used to have a friend—who said you can only vote for who the parties put up, and they put up who they want, not who you want. That the Republicans and the Democrats have it worked out to take turns at the top and make sure no one else gets there. He said he would never vote, because none of them are any better or any worse than the rest.”

  “Sometimes it looks that way here, too,” Davis said with
a smile.

  Wallace continued, “Well, I voted the one time I was able to, and I voted for President Robinson. But the truth is I didn’t know much about him, and I still don’t. His name was at the top of the right column. But that’s not the whole story, because there were fifty names underneath his that I knew even less about, and I voted for them, too. So I guess I am ignorant, like she said. Ask your next question.”

  The afternoon session went better, Wallace thought. The technologist, round-shouldered and chipmunk-cheeked, seemed delighted with Wallace’s descriptions of electric runabouts, thermostat-controlled showers, and the weaponry he had seen at Fort Harrison, Camp Atterbury, and the Jefferson Proving Ground. He was curious about everything from kitchen appliances (conventional) to computers (rare).

  When did your family get its first television? (When I was seven.) Were records always ten inches across? (No, most of his father’s records were the old style, larger and thicker.) What were women’s stockings made of? (Silk, and almost no one could afford them.) These were questions Wallace could answer.

  He had a little more trouble with the questions from a Dr. Jo Anderson, though not because he didn’t know the answers. The thirtyish woman was introduced to him as a human counselor, a title which did nothing to prepare him for her questions. She had a little list of inquiries which the linguist had overlooked, which ran him through such delicacies as charlies, pump boys, street sweet, parting the petals, riding lessons, and zipper queen.

  Then things got personal. When did he first have sex? How many partners had he had? Had he had anal intercourse, performed cunnilingus, received fellatio? Had he had any homosexual experiences? Where did he obtain his contraceptives? Had he ever contracted a venereal disease, and who did he report it to?

  Shan’s presence was partly responsible for Wallace’s discomfort, and she read him well enough to realize that fact. After the first half-dozen questions, she tried to excuse herself. But Dr. Anderson called her back.

  “No, please, I’ll need your input as well.”

  “Me?”

  “I’m interested in knowing what differences you perceived between Rayne and your other partners—”

  “Jesus Christ,” Wallace snapped. “If I started asking how long it’s been since you ran wet for somebody, whether you like a long ride or a hard one, you wouldn’t tell me. What gives?”

  “We don’t consider basic human functions state secrets, if that’s what you mean. Healthy adjustment—”

  “Fuck that,” Wallace said. “Could someone explain to me why this matters?”

  “I’d like someone to explain it to me, too,” Bayshore said, looking to Davis.

  “Sexual mores are critical factors in the social construct,” the ethnologist said, frowning. “Sexual competition drives economic systems. Sexual selection determines value systems. The energy’s there. You have to look at how it’s channeled, dammed, diverted. You have to know where it goes. Believe me, it’s not voyeurism.”

  “Then ask him what he knows, not what he’s done,” Bayshore said gruffly. “That’s the only way you’re going to get anything useful out of a sample of one.”

  Dr. Anderson tried to mount a protest. “We need hard data, objective facts, not guesses and impressions. An individual knows his own experiences—”

  Bayshore raised his hands. “That’s it. Thank you. Dr. Anderson. Malcolm, who’s next?”

  I like this man, Wallace thought as the counselor gathered up her papers in stony silence. Not a friend, perhaps, but at least an ally—

  “You can’t fool me,” Shan said, leaning close and whispering. “You just didn’t want me to hear about your other women.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Rich, how about a break? The washerwoman’s starting to wear me down.”

  Bayshore nodded. “Ten minutes, everyone. Malcolm, why don’t you try to find out what’s keeping Dr. Eden?”

  With Bayshore exercising a firmer hand over the proceedings, they managed to squeeze three more interviewers into the afternoon session—a business historian, a specialist in geopolitics from the Department of State, and an epidemiologist.

  Wallace told the historian about Columbia bicycles and Federal Foods, the State analyst about the consolidation of Germany and the ’59 Egyptian war, the epidemiologist about the Guinea grunge and the hepatitis scares. All three seemed more understanding of his lapses than their predecessors.

  And all three focused more sharply on the chronology of the stories they were hearing. What’s the earliest you heard of X? How far back did Y happen? When did Z disappear? The same theme recurred when the core group gathered in the parlor after dinner for the roundtable.

  “I’m going to be heretical. I’m starting to think the details don’t matter,” Davis pronounced.

  Bayshore shot a questioning glance to the other end of the couch. “We spent a good nine and a half hours on details today because you said they were important.”

  “They were. I think they’ve already told us all they can.”

  “Which is what?” Wallace asked.

  “Confirmation of the basic fact we had already.” He uncoiled a finger in Shan’s direction. “You were born when?”

  “June 2, 1951.”

  “And you, Rayne?”

  “August 29, 1952.”

  “A matter of fifteen months between them. And yet she belongs to the Common World, and he doesn’t. Whatever happened, happened then, during that fifteen-month span. When she was conceived, there was one world. When he was conceived, there were many. One root stock, divided into many branches. The way it looks to me right now, at the moment of the Split everything that followed was randomized, right down to the level of which spermatazoan nailed which egg. Every alternity is another roll of the dice.”

  “Then why are they so alike?” Shan asked. “I didn’t hear anything today that couldn’t have happened here or been created here.”

  “There’s an underlying symmetry,” Davis acknowledged, “but that’s to be expected. There’s a limited determinism at work, a certain momentum in human affairs that creates high-order probabilities and weighs against certain other events or turns.”

  “A limited determinism,” Bayshore echoed.

  “Yes. The initial differences were small, trivial even—but the alternities have continued to diverge over time. Now, almost three decades later, they’re more or less independent, children of a common parent, each following its own pattern. Language, customs, politics, geopolitics, mores, technology—they’ve all diverged. By now something approaching half the population of each alternity is unique to that alternity.”

  Bayshore sighed and covered his mouth with steepled hands. “Christ, I knew I didn’t want this job,” he said tiredly. “So you’re saying the Split didn’t happen suddenly.”

  “It could have happened suddenly. It just wasn’t dramatic, and there’s no point in working Rayne over in a quest for the exact moment,” Davis said. “It’s either right there in our history, too, or it passed without any notice at all.”

  “What about the reason?” Shan asked. “Is that there in our history?”

  Davis surprised them all by shrugging and saying, “Who says that there is a reason?”

  Bayshore nearly jumped out of his seat. “Sweet Norfolk, Malcolm—”

  “Maybe Rayne is right,” Davis said. “Maybe this is just the way things are.”

  “You don’t believe that. You didn’t believe it when he said it.”

  Instantly, the ethnologist’s body language went from open to closed. “What do you want me to say? That it’s a fucking miracle? That God got good enough at the game that he decided to play on more than one board at a time? What good does that do?”

  Leaning toward Davis, Bayshore reached for his shoulder. “Malcolm, I’ve got to report to the President on this. I need to know why this happened.”

  Pulling away to avoid the touch, Malcolm left his seat and retreated to the parlor’s wide entry arch. “I don’
t want to know, if you want the truth,” he said.

  Bayshore grunted and slumped against the back of the couch. “Yeah. I understand that, all right.” He blew a breath into a cupped hand and looked toward Wallace and Shan. “Either of you any braver?”

  It was Shan who spoke. “I’ve been thinking that we’re never going to know why, even if we find out when,” she said slowly. “It’s like… like someone called our name just as we were about to step out in the street in front of a car. Whatever was about to happen, didn’t. There’s no way to get the number of the car that didn’t hit us.”

  Bayshore nodded thoughtfully. “I can almost live with that. Except I want to go on and ask ‘how?’ and ‘who?’ And questions like that are just going to keep Mrs. Bayshore’s boy awake at night.”

  “There’s something else to think about, too,” Shan said. “However and whyever it happened, whatever force was responsible—is the Split reversible? Are the alternities going to converge again?”

  “How can they?” Davis said contemptuously, taking a step back into the room. “Think of our extra two billion, and the next alternity’s two billion, and the next, and the next—”

  Shan said, “Maybe it will be gradual. The same child born simultaneously in two or more alternities—then another—”

  Sitting forward, Bayshore rested his chin on folded hands. “Or perhaps time isn’t moving at all. Maybe we’re on some sort of spur. Like a roller-coaster loop-the-loop, carrying us around in a circle back to the moment of the Split.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Davis said scornfully.

  “It makes as much sense as any of this,” Bayshore snapped. “It’s clean and simple, at least. I’m just trying to get rid of the problem of the extra people.”

  “By discarding them?” Wallace said.

  “Nothing personal.”

  “But plenty egocentric,” Shan said harshly. “The Chosen People of a capricious God—”

  “I was just thinking out loud,” he said defensively. “What I want is for Dr. Eden to come tell us this is just a bit of trickery on the part of Mama Nature, so we can put the who’s and why’s to rest.”