by Paula Guran
Until an old dream
Held him down in a stream
And no one could hear him out loud.”
Jack nodded, not sure he could speak. The old woman said, “You may open the box.”
Jack stepped forward. Owls fluttered all around him, their teeth and razor-sharp claws showing, but he paid no attention. He took a breath and lifted the lid of the trunk.
There were stories of what happened when you released what was in the box. Carolien had done it, of course, for Carolien loved knowing more than anything else. She’d told Jack that a bright yellow kabouter in balloon pants and a party hat had leaped out and bitten her tongue, then spoke into her blood so rapidly she remembered nothing until suddenly she began to write it all down, filling up a three-hundred-page journal over four days. Others talked of voluptuous women who surrounded you, singing. None of this happened to Jack. Instead, whispers swirled all around him like smoke until he became so dizzy he had to hold on to the lid to keep from falling over. He could hear fragments of words and nothing else, and he worried it was all useless, he would learn nothing he could use against the Rev. Finally, he slammed down the lid and lay on the floor gasping while the ceiling spun above him. “Shit,” he said. And then he grinned, for suddenly he realized he knew things.
He knew that four hundred years ago, Peter Midnight wrote “the strangest book in the Hidden Library,” titled The Book of Duplicates: A Natural History of Replication, and to do it, Midnight had to travel back in time to the earliest days of the world. Travelers move through time constantly but usually return an instant before they left, so that they forget whatever they saw or did. Midnight broke the barrier by duplicating himself, transferring the block to the Dupe, and destroying it. And he still might not have known he had done it, except that he woke up in bed with a dead body next to him, and when he turned it over it was himself, with a rolled-up scroll in its mouth.
Jack learned that Dupes once filled the world. Originally there was only one person, amorphous and crude, spit out by the Creator, who’d gotten something stuck in Her teeth. This Original pestered its maker so much that He copied it and said, “There. Now talk to each other and leave me alone.” But the two just stared resentfully at each other, each claiming to be the Original, the other a Dupe. To prove the point, one of them made a fresh copy and said, “You see? That’s how I made you.” But the other only laughed and made his own Dupe, saying, “This is how it’s done. You’re just a copy, and a bad one. Look how much better this new one is.” As they argued, the two new Dupes stared at each other. Then each of them made a Duplicate.
Some time later, the Creator stirred Herself from the place where She’d hidden from the world. To His horror, He discovered the world was full of Duplicates! They covered the mountains and valleys, they sat in the trees, they walked or swam in the waters. Furious, the Creator urinated across the world, sweeping the infestation away in the flood. At the last second She rescued the last two Dupes, held them in Her hand until the flood subsided, then made one a man, the other a woman. “There,” He said. “Now if you want to make more you’ll have to do it the hard way. But at least you’ll enjoy it more.” When She set them back on dry land She hid the secret of Replication so Dupes would no longer clog the Earth.
But the power wasn’t lost, for as all Travelers know, nothing is ever lost. Hidden, blocked, but always there. No one knows who discovered it. Some say Peter Midnight, but of course, he wrote the book, and Travelers are notorious braggarts. Others—and this was a claim made in the fifteenth century—others say it was a Traveler named John Shade, who went back to The Very Beginning on a mission to rescue his daughter from The Green Dark Woods. No one knows if he succeeded, but he brought back the Great Secret, though he had to surrender it along the way, some thousands of years back. No, Jack thought, that can’t be right. But he had to let the question go, for more and more knowledge came rushing through him.
He learned of a Traveler whose Dupe cut him up and baked him in a pie, or else swallowed him whole.
And another, who thought she’d dissolved her Duplicate, done all the steps, only to discover that when she looked in the mirror she could never see herself, only the Dupe, and when she tried to speak it wasn’t her voice but the Duplicate’s.
He learned of a Traveler whose Revenant begged to remain. “I won’t challenge you,” the Rev said. “I’ll stay in the shadows. I swear by my maker.” But they both knew that could never happen, for it was the nature of a Revenant to try to take over. And it was the nature of a Traveler to cling to the world. Finally, one killed the other, but then the survivor made love to the corpse and brought her back. For this, too, is the nature of a Traveler, to accept no limits, and to search for whatever seems lost.
He learned that certain Travelers have the power to Duplicate themselves in other people, take them over, at least for a time, and he remembered that day Anatolie had become an old woman on the street, a Chinese huckster, a trio of teenage girls.
He learned that the baby Moses who was found in a basket among the bulrushes of the Nile was a Dupe, and that the original was raised as a Traveler in the desert, waiting for the day when the Dupe would show up and the true Moses could cut his throat and set him on fire to ignite the Burning Bush.
He learned that long ago there lived a Traveler named Loud Sue. The name was a joke, for Sue was one of those obnoxious people who say that nothing worth saying can actually be said. One day, Loud Sue left home (maybe to avoid speaking) and traveled to an orchard where a pair of Shadow Dogs attacked her. To escape, she climbed a tree with ten branches, and on the third branch from the top found a bird’s nest where she could lie down safely and fall asleep. She dreamed that she was not Loud Sue at all, but her Duplicate, Young Sue.
She woke up surrounded by chicks, their mouths open as they waited for their mother to feed them. When she heard a great flapping of wings she clambered down through the branches, back to the Earth. But as she moved, she wondered—was she Loud Sue, who had fallen asleep and dreamed she was Young, or was she Young Sue, even now dreaming she was Loud?
Avoid orchards, the Travelers say. And if you absolutely must enter one, never ever fall asleep.
He learned that sometimes the Dupe takes over—I want to win, the Rev had told Jack—for there was once a great Traveler who left the world and allowed her Duplicate to take her place.
He learned that some claim the universe itself is a copy, an unfinished Duplicate of a lost world, which is why so much of existence is dark—dark matter, dark energy, dark desire.
He learned that sometimes you can attack a Revenant by making more and more Duplicates, and for a moment he thought he had the answer, only to have the whispers tell him that a strong Rev can absorb the new copies into itself and become more and more powerful, until finally, when the original has exhausted himself, the Rev will eat him, and it will be as if he never existed.
The final revelation came not as a whisper but a vision. He saw a woman, barefoot in a loose white dress, standing at an old wooden table. She was dark-skinned, but with long straight hair. She had her back turned to Jack, bent over the table, writing with a long thin pen on small strips of paper. When she finished each one she folded it and inserted it under a fingernail. Finally she stood up, and Jack thought she would turn and face him, but instead, she stood in front of an old full-length mirror, with her fingers at shoulder level, spread like the ribs of a fan. Under her nails the letters flickered and glowed. “Nothing is lost,” the woman whispered.
—and then Jack was on all fours, on a damp concrete floor, an empty steam trunk open in front of him. For an instant he heard the flapping of wings, but when he looked there was no one there, no owls, no old woman, just rows of storage shelves, mostly empty. Jack stood up, shook himself, looked around one more time, then stepped through a dull bead curtain, back into Mr. Kimm’s variety store.
The old man moved some counters on his abacus. Without looking up, he asked “Did you find what
you need, Jack?”
“Not sure,” Jack said. “Maybe too much.”
“Ah. Too much, too little, all the same, yes?” His accent had gotten thicker. It was his way of saying good-bye.
“Thank you,” Jack said.
“Always here for you, Jack. Always here.”
Outside, the day had brightened, and a look at the sky told Jack it was just after 2:00. He glanced at his watch. 11:44. He wondered, not the first time, why Travelers bothered to wear watches at all. What day was it? He walked to a newsstand on the corner and glanced at the Post. Above the blaring headline, the date assured him he’d only lost a couple of hours.
He was about to hail a cab when he noticed the people on the street corner acting strangely. They were looking at their hands, turning them over, staring at the palms, the fingers. They didn’t appear upset, just confused. That would change, Jack knew, and quickly. Sure enough, a man and woman, the man in front of a store selling “designer pet food,” the woman crossing Broadway from the traffic island, became suddenly agitated. They looked all up and down their arms and legs and midsections, whatever they could see of themselves, and began slapping their bodies, as if to swipe away insects.
The woman stopped in the middle of the street, and stayed there when the light changed, oblivious to the horns and shouts and curses of the drivers swerving around her. The man was breathing heavily, raking his arms with his nails. This was phase two, Jack thought, the sense of attack. Invasion. As he took the spray can and the frayed cloth from his messenger bag he could guess what was next. What the Rev might do.
Sure enough, people began to stare at each other. They pointed and poked, saying things like “Why do you look like me?” and, “Why are you imitating me? Why is everyone imitating me?” In fact, they looked nothing at all like each other. They were young and old, male and female, different races, it made no difference. No matter who they looked at, all they could see was themselves.
Jack opened the fringed cloth until it lay in folds all about his feet. Then he shook the can and began to spray the material. He knew that for the best effect he should empty the whole can but there wasn’t time, especially since he had to cover his nose and mouth to avoid inhaling. The spray wouldn’t harm him but it would dull his senses until his Traveler metabolism shook it off. The formula in the can carried some fancy modern name, but like most Travelers Jack preferred the traditional—Spell-Breaker. If used in time it could nullify a casting, and without permanent damage to the victim. Not in time—the symptoms varied, but for these people, Jack suspected, a permanent state in which everyone looked like their double. They would spend the rest of their lives in isolation, sedated through a hospital ventilation system before a nurse or orderly could bring them food.
Don’t think, Jack told himself. Thinking was distraction. Never get distracted, Anatolie had taught him. Jack dropped the cloth and grabbed hold of the smooth side. Then he flipped it open in the air.
A “spread cloth,” as it was called, existed partly in this world, and partly in the “World of Extension.” Inert, it looked about the size of a king-size sheet and folded down to a square foot. “Awakened,” it could stretch so far it appeared to fade into the sky. Jack didn’t need anything that radical, he just wanted the tendrils to be able to touch all those frenzied people filling up the street corner. Soon the filaments were snaking and twisting, making crackling noises as they searched for people to heal. They went into an ear, a mouth, an eye, and the people gasped, or sighed, as the ghost snakes entered their brains.
Jack waited until he was sure the tendrils had reached everyone. Then he snapped his wrists back. The snakes withdrew, the cloth began to shrink, and soon it was small enough, inert enough, for Jack to fold it again and put it back in his bag.
The people in the street stared at each other, then at their own arms and legs. Some touched themselves, their faces or chests, even their groins. Then they looked around, horrified or just furtive, suddenly aware they’d embarrassed themselves on the public street. Some said things like, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what—God, I’m sorry.” Others moved away as fast as possible. A few looked breathlessly at the person next to them, and if they got the right look back, held hands and walked quickly away.
And beyond the crowd, hard to see in suddenly bright sunlight, a man in black stood, holding up a small rectangular object like a sacred relic. It was him, of course, and what he held was the marker, the Guest. Jack’s card.
The Rev said something. Impossible to hear in the noise and traffic, but all Travelers are lip readers. Jack wasn’t that good at it, but this one was easy. I want to win, the Dupe said. Then he turned and strolled away.
For a second, Jack considered running after him, but if he caught him what would Jack do? So he just stood there and pretended to himself he was making himself useful by checking there were no casualties.
From behind him he heard a woman, cold and stiff, like an old-fashioned pre-Siri computer voice. “John Shade,” she said.
Oh fuck, Jack thought. The last goddamn thing . . . He sighed and turned around.
There were two of them, a man and a woman. They often did that, as if satisfying some government directive for gender equity. They were dressed in old-fashioned suits, the way the Supreme Court requires lawyers to appear, dull grey for the man, knee-length black skirt and low-heeled pumps for the woman. Grey and black were a pun, of course. The colors of coal.
For a second, Jack thought they might be the same two who’d come to the house that long night, after Elvis told him he had to call them. But no, efficiency just always looked the same.
The man’s voice came out breathy, little more than a whisper. “This has to stop,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly having a great time,” Jack said.
“That’s no concern of ours,” the woman said. “What does concern us is that this feud of yours has begun to involve non-Travelers. That is not acceptable.”
Jack glanced around, saw that no one was looking at them. Glamours. COLE was good at that. “It’s not my feud,” he said. “If you can tell me how to make the Rev go away, I’ll be glad to do it.”
Jack was surprised to see a half-smile twist the woman’s mouth. “Dissolve it,” she said.
“I did. Apparently, it didn’t take.” No, he thought, I did it right. He brushed the thought aside, for obviously he didn’t.
“There are more advanced methods,” the woman said.
“It’s complicated.”
The man said, “Your Guest.”
Jesus, Jack thought, do you people know everything?
Her tone slightly less techno, the woman said, “We understand your dilemma. Unfortunately, it makes no difference. Preventing the outer population from discovering reality is our sole concern.” She smiled, almost regretfully, but Jack got the message. They would do whatever it took to stop the bleed. Exile, Jack thought. He and the Dupe removed from the world. No passage back. Like his daughter.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
The man turned and walked away, but the woman hesitated. Sympathy seemed to cut through the mask for a moment, and Jack had the wild idea she would make the telephone gesture with her hand next to her ear and mouth, “Call me.” But then she walked off.
Jack stood in the street a moment, head tilted to the left, as if trying to hear a whisper. There was something, some glimmer, in what had just happened. I did it right. But clearly he hadn’t, there was the Dupe. Finally, he let it go and hailed a cab.
Before he got in, he sprayed Spell-Breaker over the car. He could see the driver make a face and reach for the gear shift, but managed to get inside before the taxi could pull away. Trust me, Jack wanted to say, this is for you as much as for me. But that never worked, so he just said, “Forty-eighth Street between Ninth and Tenth.”
No one was sure just how Carolien Hounstra could afford a six-room apartment in the newly chic Hell’s Kitchen. Certainly not from her work
at NYTAS, where she was everything from door watch to record keeper, two jobs that were a lot more complicated than they sounded. Nor did she freelance, like Jack. Family money, some said. Found a djinni in a lamp, others claimed. Jack’s favorite story was that Carolien was unearthed in a coffin filled with pirate gold, in a crypt beneath Amsterdam’s Moses and Aaron Church. She’d been asleep, the story went, until a nun kissed her awake. Smart nun, Jack thought.
The ride passed without any dream attacks, and Jack gave the driver a ten dollar tip. Before he could ring the bell for 6E, the buzzer sounded, and Carolien’s voice came through the scratchy intercom. “Jack! Come up.”
Carolien was standing in the doorway when Jack stepped out of the tiny elevator. She wore light green linen pants and a loose, dark green shirt that came down almost to her knees, but was unbuttoned enough to reveal the wondrous swell of her breasts. Her long, golden hair was braided in a triple pattern that made Jack think of the caduceus. She smiled like the sun breaking through the clouds. There were people who said that the dreary climate of Northwest Europe was a direct result of Carolien Hounstra moving to New York. The smile faded and the blue eyes narrowed as she looked him over. “So,” she said. “Trouble. Come in.”
Carolien’s apartment was decorated in a variety of styles. The living room was fifties “modern,” with kidney-shaped glass tables and uncomfortable chairs. Her kitchen was so full of gadgets Jack suspected it could cook a five-course meal all by itself. Her bedroom featured elaborately carved dressers, an ebony bed—on a north-south axis, of course—and a large gold-framed mirror that could probably identify who was the fairest in the land. The hallway that connected all this would appear to any deliveryman (who was not staring at Carolien) as unadorned walls painted a pale yellow. Jack saw alcoves, some filled with clouds and hidden faces, others with faraway scenes, such as people in animal costumes dancing and laughing.
Without a word, Carolien led him to a closed wooden door at the end of the hallway. A wave of her hand and the door opened without her touching it. Jack followed her into what he called “the Reign of Frogs.” Shelves of all sorts—polished wood, metal slats, stainless steel—covered every wall. And every shelf was covered with frogs. Most were stone, jade and malachite, but there were lots of wood and netsuke as well. The majority were squatting, but some appeared caught in mid-leap. With a jab of guilt, Jack remembered his abandoned errand to Canal Sreet. When this is over, he thought, but then found himself wondering, if the Rev took over, would he go get Carolien a frog?
