by Ian Watson
Ah. But let us consider the malicious-conspiracy explanation. Could Windows have been planted on Mars so that we would find them and lose heart? In actuality the universe was full of faery worlds and wonders, revels and adventures, cities and spires. But after a million Windows we’d never believe it.
Perhaps I was simply growing old. Danny appeared to prefer the empty alien scenes to those of the Arab market. Those seemed to appeal to him more. And to Thea, likewise. Maybe that was because they pictured as landscape the essential emptiness of adolescence, the kind of hormonal elegiac sadness which causes bad poetry to be written.
Our second Window began growing a third to complete the triad.
The final Window switched its view on during an afternoon while I was alone at home. I stepped out on to the patio to inspect.
And I was looking upon a windswept moonlit tundra. A quartet of little moons scattered light. A bright constellation dominated the sky. I immediately thought of it as “the Ape”. The Ape was scratching for fleas, of lesser stars. Maybe our own sun was one of its fleas; probably not.
How charmingly bizarre, on a sunny afternoon, to stand gazing into alien night. Oh yes, how charming. Here was a window upon my own darkness.
Though if that tundra’s sun rose after our own sun had set, how illuminating this view would be! We needn’t use our electric patio lantern any more at night. We would save a few pennies courtesy of an alien star.
When Danny arrived home half an hour later, with Thea in tow, they really admired the moonlit tundra and the grinning itchy ape presiding overhead, bandy-legged, arms tucked in armpits.
Then Danny asked me, “What’s on the inside?”
“Yes, what does the other side show?” demanded Thea.
I shrugged.
“You haven’t looked, Dad?”
“I thought I’d leave it,” I lied, “for you two.”
From our outhouse Danny fetched a tall pair of steps.
“Bring a ladder too,” urged Thea. “I want to climb down inside. We can both climb down inside, Dan.”
A ladder, plus two bodies, crammed into the triangle between three surfaces the size of doors?
“That’ll be a tight squeeze,” I said.
“It’ll be fun. It won’t seem cramped,” she insisted.
“That’s up to you.”
So Danny went to fetch our light aluminium ladder.
Would they kiss and stroke each other, there in the space between three worlds?
I had just visualized—and rejected—the notion of adapting a triad of Windows into a shower cabinet. For who would want to enter or leave a shower by way of a ladder?
This led on to the thought that to date no one had actually tried to incorporate Windows into houses. Well, you could hardly stick one in a window-frame in place of plain glass; not when one sprouted three. But maybe there was some domestic use for Windows?
Or would this be on the same level as turning elephants’ feet into umbrella stands?
Fashion articles and décor manufactured from dead animals—zebras, crocodiles, tigers—were definitely out. Disapproved of. Yet the ancient desire of the human hunter to decorate his cave with trophies had to find some outlet. Thus my success with bestial baths and toilets (made of plastic).
It was at this point that I heard the familiar triumphal growl of arrival of Denise’s Turbo. After pulling up at the end of a journey Denise always raced the engine fiercely once before switching off. As though the car was a child with a cold and she was officiously blowing its nose for it.
I let her in and without enquiring fixed her a customary Campari and soda, and myself a Scotch. Out of the corner of my eye, through the open French windows, I noticed Danny squirming around on top of the steps. Our ladder jutted out from inside the triad. A red head was disappearing from sight.
Why did people drink Campari? It tasted like dentifrice to me. The proper place for Campari and soda, in my opinion, was in a dentist’s surgery as a medicated mouth-rinse (alcoholic, to calm the nerves).
Denise and I clinked glasses.
“Cheers.”
“Salute.”
I was definitely sinking into a deep depression—just as Danny was descending into a tight wedge of alien worlds. Everything seemed fouled and worthless.
Perhaps the ultimately depressing feature was the impossibility of actually stepping through any of those Windows—even if the destinations weren’t worth visiting. Thus they were a double taunt. Suddenly I hated Windows, though perhaps it was only myself I was hating.
A scream cut the afternoon like a knife slicing flesh.
*
I ran outside, pursued by Denise. That had not been the kind of squeal caused by standing on someone’s toes.
“Danny!” I cried.
“Thea!” shouted Denise. She must have noticed red hair vanish too. But why had she called Thea’s name? Was that because I had neglected to? No doubt!
Danny was scrambling out of the top of the triad, on to the steps. “Dad! Help, Dad!” He nearly knocked the damn steps over. I grabbed and steadied them.
“Is Thea all right in there?”
“She’s gone, Dad. Gone. There was a flash of light—and a kind of rushing wind—and … She’s beyond the Windows! She’s on the other side.”
“Get down the steps! Let me up!”
Quickly Danny descended and I climbed to the top. I leaned inside to look.
The golden desert: Thea stood staring about her in horror. She was breathing—she hadn’t fallen, poisoned or insensible. She began to wave aimlessly in one direction then another. She couldn’t see me; or see any Window. The sun beat down.
The savannah: Thea was also standing there, thigh-deep in grass. Some of those flamingo-gazelles were bounding away in the distance. She gazed around, white with shock, rooted to the spot.
The third Window …
Thea again. She was in a city. A city not of Earth. Columns of many-coloured lozenges soared upward, pierced by black spires, towards a cloudy grey sky. Perhaps the lozenges were fastened to the spires, the way a lupin flowers. She was standing by a broad, brown street. Opaque bubble-vehicles rolled along on squashy tyres. Creatures were approaching her, and she was screaming. The creatures were upright grey tubes—eyes and other organs at the top—with tiny waddly legs and thin whip-like arms. Walking worms, that wore sashes and boxes and clusters of small silver balls.
This was the alien jackpot.
The pay-off was instant transportation to that alien city.
And to the desert. And to the savannah.
A jackpot of horror.
How could Thea be in that city, and also in two other places?
I wrenched at the Windows. To see more clearly and easily? To bring Thea back; to rescue her?
The Windows snapped apart. The triad became three separate Windows, leaning together.
I backed quickly down the steps, disposed of those on the lawn, and manhandled the Windows to stand separately so that we could all see Thea, three times over. And the city, with its inhabitants.
“Why did you do—?” Denise gasped.
“Aliens,”, I said.
Danny pawed the savannah Window as though he could follow Thea through. He couldn’t.
“How is she in three places?” Denise asked me numbly.
In the desert, she was beginning to trudge up a dune.
In the savannah, she was stamping down the grass as though to make a nest for herself, a safe place.
In the city, the aliens were forming a discreet and curious circle around her. Their whip-arms pointed at her, waggling and wavering.
“Windows multiply themselves,” said Denise, “And they multiplied her too … Is one of those the real Thea? Are the others only images? She looks real in all three.”
“Doesn’t she?” I agreed. “But where’s she going to go in a desert? Or in a savannah? She might find food and drink in the savannah … but the desert. My God.”
In the city sh
e had stopped screaming. She was shaking as she faced the aliens.
“You broke the triad,” Danny accused me. “You smashed it, Dad. Now she’s stuck on the other side. She can’t get back!”
“I didn’t break anything. We have to be able to see! What makes you think she could get back?”
“I might have been able to follow her—to be with her.”
“In that desert, where you’d die?”
“So that’s the score,” Denise said quietly. “You didn’t want to lose your son. You bastard.”
“I … That isn’t why. How would you be able to follow her, Danny?”
“Not now, he can’t,” said Denise. “You tampered.”
The aliens were opening a gap in their ranks. A larger bubble-car had stopped near by. Thea was herded by waving arms towards the transport.
Danny took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and threw himself at the city-Window; as though with eyes closed tight he might pass through.
His whole weight crashed against the Window. The Window toppled over. It fell upon the steel edge of the barbecue, with Danny sprawling after.
The Window cracked across. The view vanished.
In the desert—and in the savannah too—Thea jerked around as if she had heard a sudden explosion, or had felt something twang and snap. For a while she searched about in puzzlement. Then in the savannah she gave up and continued stamping grass. In the desert she resumed her climb up the golden dune.
The city was gone, the broken Window blank.
“You utter fool,” I said to Danny, as I helped him up.
“Fool? Fool?” He shook himself free.
“You’ve lost the city.”
“Lost her, you mean.”
“Yes, yes. I’m so sorry … that you broke the Window. If I hadn’t separated them you wouldn’t have been able to break it.”
Looking at the expression on Danny’s face I felt the same cold, hollow suction that I’d felt when Ruth was killed. A feeling as if I was being emptied out. I feared that I’d lost my son, after all.
Also, we’d blunderingly lost the alien city, jackpot of millions of Windows. No one else but us three had seen it. Us four, if you counted Thea. How could I count her? She was no longer on the Earth.
Yet of course I could count her.
Thea One, there in the desert, disappearing over the dune crest in search of water, life.
Thea Two, on the savannah, also getting under way. I realized now why she had been trampling the grass. That was to mark the spot where she had arrived, so that she could locate the place again. How long would it take the grass to right itself?
Did each Thea think that she was the only one? She must.
What kind of mad transportation system was it which gave rise to two extra, doomed copies of the traveller?
Never before had Windows transported anything other than views. And likewise, never after? This once, a Window had transported a person. and we had broken the Window.
“Danny! What was it that triggered the Window? What did you two do in there?”
He stared at me bitterly.
“Did you kiss? Did you do more than that?” I spoke with urgency. “Did you—?”
“You’re being crass,” Denise told me.
“I’m trying to work out how it happened.”
“She’s going to die,” said Danny.
“They might treat her well in the city,” I said. “They might even know a way to return her.”
“Through a broken Window?” asked Denise.
“What about the other Theas?” my son asked.
“Maybe those are phantom images. How can a person become three persons?”
“I thought God once managed that trick,” said Denise. “The Holy Trinity, hmm?”
I smiled. I said, “We’ll have to report what just happened.”
“Why should anyone believe us?” she countered.
“We have to, because poor Thea has disappeared. Gone missing. And also because we’ve just glimpsed an alien civilization—which Windows can transport us to!”
“Where’s our proof?”
“If we all swear blind—”
Denise nodded at the two surviving Windows. “The rest of the evidence is busy walking away.”
“She’ll surely come back when she can’t find—”
“I wouldn’t,” said Danny. “I’d carry on walking.”
I groaned. If only I’d thought to rush and bring a camera. Too late now. Thea had disappeared over the dune. In the savannah, in the distance, half-hidden by grass, she might have been any kind of creature.
Danny began to cry. And then he started to curse. Denise made a fine show of consoling. However, Danny wouldn’t let me even try to console.
“Listen,” I broke in at last. “She has disappeared, damn it all! We can’t pretend that Thea walked out of the house, and maybe somebody kidnapped her. We have to tell her parents the truth. We have to explain to the police. We have to be honest!”
All of which was perfectly true, as Danny and Denise were forced to acknowledge, by and by.
Accordingly we confessed; though not to any crime. Parents came. Police came. Government scientists came, and took the broken Window away for tests, along with the other two Windows. News reporters and camera teams arrived; and went.
In their wake, a couple of days later, came Donna-Jean Scott; and for a few confused moments I thought she had flown in specially from Mars.
“Honey,” she said to me on the Windowless patio, “I’m heartbroken for you. I had to come, because in a sense I blessed your Window. Will you tell me every little bitty detail of what went on?”
I knew then that this was no private visit. Nevertheless, to her I told every last nuance of the incident; including my failure to call out Thea’s name. Maybe a woman from Mars might understand my feelings of separation. I’d certainly lost Denise, which perhaps was no disaster. But I’d also lost Danny, though he still lived in the house.
“I might be tempted,” said D-J, “to speculate that a heightened state of consciousness—erotic, right?—can trigger a Window—”
“Danny got out fast,” I interrupted, “and he was fully dressed.”
“Even so. That doesn’t prevent excitement. But the fact is, the alien city was already showing when the pair of them climbed down inside. It was, wasn’t it?”
“The tundra was showing on the outside.”
“Are you positive the worm city was on view beforehand, inside? This is kind of important. If not, maybe the kids’ excitement triggered that, as well as transporting Thea.”
“Danny has been a bit reticent with me; as I’ve told you. Those investigators asked enough questions.”
“I know. And no one challenged that particular assumption. Because everything happened in a flash. I’d like to speak to Danny, if I may?”
“Go ahead. He respects you. He’s upstairs, brooding.”
D-J descended from Danny’s room twenty minutes later.
“The ladder was facing the savannah,” she reported. “So that’s all he saw, as he climbed down. He admits to feeling sexually aroused, as well as filled with a spirit of venture. Thea was just busy turning round. They were jammed together. Danny was still on the bottom rung. He fondled her ass, and there was a flash. She screamed. He looked; he saw the city. Next there came that rushing sensation. And she vanished into the Windows.”
“If Danny had stepped off the ladder, I could have lost him too?”
“Possibly. I’d say what we have here is a repeatable experiment.”
“How do you work that out? The Window’s broken.”
“Take another newly formed triad. Don’t sneak a look at the final view—the one you won’t have seen. Don’t dangle mirrors. Climb down inside with someone who excites you. Caress, and turn round. The alien city might flash on, and grab you. Or maybe a different civilized destination.”
“Plus two others where you could wander till you die. What sort of transport syste
m is that? It’s crazy.”
“It’s one that operates. It delivers. I don’t think Windows are pre-programmed with zillions of views. I think each new Window locks in on a view at random by some kind of action-at-a-distance. And it’s always a view of a planet or moon, isn’t it? Never mere empty space. A mind in a heightened state might direct the random search to a world where there are also thinking beings.”
“Plus two other worlds. Who would take part in an experiment like that?”
“I would. I’ve already visited Mars. I’d kind of like to visit another star system—no matter what the outcome. I guess you need a partner with a hefty emotional charge in them. Preferably one who also has a fierce emotional link with Windows.”
“Danny?”
“You, my friend. I read you. You’re charged with guilt and self-contempt and loneliness and lust.”
“Don’t flatter me so much, Donna-Jean.”
She grinned. “When you’re cooped up with ten other guys in a tin can for two years you get good at reading people’s hearts, and accepting what’s in them with love. Otherwise none of you survive.”
“What you’re proposing doesn’t sound like much of a strategy for survival.”
“There’s a time to survive, and a time to make sacrifices. And to take risks. A time under heaven. How are you going to carry on facing Danny’s contempt and anger if you don’t try to follow his girl?”
“And two years in a tin can makes you an expert at pushing the right emotional buttons?”
“Could be.”
“Where would this experiment of yours be staged?”
“Why not Sam Jakobs’ place? He’s going on a business trip. We’ll install a new Window and let it grow.”
“We?”
“Me and some acquaintances. I’d like your son to be there.”
“So he can watch me head off into an alien wilderness?”
“So he can admire his old man once again.”
The night before the experiment was scheduled, Donna-Jean came round to my place for an intimate dinner. She almost seduced me; but didn’t. Danny was away for the night, by arrangement, already at Sam Jakobs’. Deliberately D-J took me up to a peak of desire and abandoned me there, frustrated. She showed me herself and denied me herself. Had I been a caveman, I would have reached for my club. But we aren’t cavemen, are we?
