Parallelities (11 page)

“We’re calling him Mitch, but he’s me in every respect. He’s not my twin, he’s a para. Until we can figure out a way for him to return to his own parallel world he’s staying with me. It’s not exactly an imposition. After all, we’re more than best friends.” He leaned forward slightly and stared hard at the would-be scientist. “So don’t sit there and try to tell me that your infernal device didn’t work. Mitch is living evidence to the contrary, and I can offer you plenty more.”

Sincerity dominated the inventor’s reply, was writ large on his face. “This is just plain unbelievable. I’m telling you, Max, that you walked out of here a few days ago mildly disappointed in my failure but otherwise unaffected. As much as I’d like to claim credit for it, my setup didn’t work.”

Max sat back and waved at Mitch. “Then how do you explain him, and everything else that’s happened to me? I’ve had to deal with para women, para burglars, para cars, and even para chimpanzees. Not to mention at least one alternate para world in which condors and bighorn sheep still thrive in Southern California. Everything keeps changing around me, and without warning. There are no condors surviving in Mitch’s para Southern California either, so that means that not only did he slip from his world into mine but that together we slipped into a third.”

“You slipped into a third, all right,” Boles agreed readily.
“And in this one, my machine did not work. Don’t you see?” he finished earnestly.

Max finally did, and the shadow that he felt falling over him darkened. He and Mitch were in still another parallel world, all right. Only in this one, Boles’s device had not worked, did not work. Which meant that he was not talking to the same Boles who had told him “he had an idea” on how to fix things and to come back Tuesday. That Boles was waiting on him in his own, original world, waiting futilely for a reporter who had gone slip-sliding away to show up at his house. He could not try out his corrective idea because the subject on whom it was to be tried had gone away—to a parallel world in which the inventor Boles had yet to succeed.

Obviously, Max now realized, he had to return to his own world line and to that particular Boles, or at least to a para in which Boles’s device worked. But how? He did not know how he had slipped from his original world into this one, much less how to get back. Were parallel worlds like an enormous deck of cards that existed in a continuous state of shufflement? How could he gain the attention of the dealer, or was the effect purely random? It was already clear that he had no control over his movements between worlds. He could only hope that he would wake up one day and find himself in one where Boles knew what he was doing.

What if the para effect wore off while he was still in this world, still accompanied by the unlucky Mitch? Would they
both be stuck forever in whatever para Fate happened to drop them in, like a spinning coin finally bereft of its momentum? If that happened then both of them would simply have to cope. But he did not want to cope. He wanted home, wanted his own world back, a world wherein he was the only Max and condors did not roam the skies above the absent Point Dume.

One thing was plain enough. Much as he might want to, this para of Barrington Boles could not help him.

“Do you know how my para self worked out the final settings?” Boles was asking him. “What about the final parameters of the distortion arc?”

Max sighed tiredly. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I didn’t think the damn thing would work, so I didn’t pay attention to any of the operational details. I thought all the lights and electrical discharges were real pretty, and that was about the extent of my formal observations.”

“Too bad.” Boles turned reflective. “Though it is encouraging to know that in another world I succeeded. If you could tell me how, maybe I could duplicate the results here, and then figure out a way to get you back to the world line where you belong.”

“It probably wouldn’t matter.” Max stood. “The frequency of shifts, the intensity of the effect, seems to be increasing. By the time you got it worked out I’m likely to be in another para altogether. With luck, one where you knew what you were doing.”

Shaking his head slowly, Boles rose from his chair. “I have a feeling none of my selves knew what they were doing. If they did, you wouldn’t be here. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry, hell!” Max took a step toward the inventor. “I ought to strangle you.”

Mitch hurried to intervene. “Don’t even think about it. Kill him and you might affect every other Boles up and down the line. Then we’ll have no chance of putting things right.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“I always am.” Mitch smiled reassuringly. “Aren’t we?”

It was a bad idea anyway, Max decided. Though older, the inventor was bigger and in much better shape.

“You can stay here if you like while I work on the machine.” Boles was trying his best to be encouraging.

“No thanks.” Max turned in the direction of the front door. “This place gives me the creeps. You give me the creeps.” He gestured expansively. “Lucky me. Now the whole world gives me the creeps, and I don’t even know which one I’m in. Stay here? I’d rather camp out in the shadow of Chernobyl.” He turned to leave. Mitch hurried to follow him.

“Don’t mind him,” he told their host in passing. “He’s just upset. As am I.”

Boles followed them toward the door. “Pardon my questions, but surely you understand my fascination with the success of my other self. Tell me, do you feel the same emotions simultaneously?”

“Pretty much. We are the same, after all, except that he’s locked into this field, or disturbance, or distortion, and I’m just kind of a fellow traveler. He’s the tornado sweeping between parallel worlds, and I’m one of the pieces of debris that’s been sucked up and dragged along in his wake. Sooner or later the tornado will run out of energy and fall apart. When it does, I hope it drops me where I belong.”

“So do I,” murmured Boles emphatically. “In a way, you two are fortunate. I don’t imagine I’ll ever get to meet any of my para selves.”

“If you do, I hope it goes better for you than it has for us.” Mitch gestured at the angry figure nearing the front door. “We’re not really crazy about ourselves. It’s more a matter of mutual toleration.”

Little was said between the two M. Parkers during the drive down the hill. Max barely grunted at the guard as they paused and waited for the gate to swing up. Nor was there any impetus to conversation as he pulled out on the coast highway and headed south, back toward L.A. Evening was advancing upon the coast and the sinking sun turned the smog-saturated sky a pale shade of incandescent orange.

“There has to be something we can do,” Mitch avowed, as much to break the tension that had gripped the interior of the Aurora as in hopes of receiving a reply.

“Like what?” Max stared morosely straight ahead, hands clamped to the wheel. It was late, after rush hour. Most commuters were already home enjoying the long daylight-savings-time
sunshine. This far north of the city, there was still little traffic. They would not hit much until they reached Malibu.

“You could wish upon a star,” Mitch suggested.

“Very funny,” Max responded flatly. “I’m glad you find our situation so amusing.”

“God, but you’re a pain when things aren’t going your way.”

“You should know.”

After that nothing was said. Mitch pressed back in his seat and stared at the road ahead, wondering if in his own world he had already been fired.

His attention was drawn to a bright light in the south-western sky. It was reflective and moving toward them. As soon as he was certain it was not a hallucination, he mentioned it to his companion.

Max leaned forward against the wheel and squinted. “Must be a plane coming in.”

“There’s no airport in Malibu,” Mitch pointed out. “At least, not in my Malibu.” The object was growing larger even as they spoke.

“Yeah. Not in my Malibu, or in yours, maybe, but how do we know there isn’t one in this Malibu?”

“Good point.” Still, the more Mitch stared at the approaching light, the less it reminded him of a descending aircraft.

Its true nature manifested itself as Max slowed to take a sharp curve where the highway ran right along the sea. The
object fell precipitously, resolving itself into a three-story tall ovoid lined at top and bottom with a succession of elegant flutings and flanges. As it settled to earth on a jackstraw of seemingly haphazard metal projections, what appeared to be a cold fog wafted lazily from its equator. No windows or ports of any kind marred the otherwise smooth, bronze-hued surface.

“It’s a weather balloon,” Mitch suggested breathlessly.

“Don’t try to be funny. We’ve got a story here. Maybe even a legitimate one.” His throat constricting, Max hit the brakes and pulled the Aurora off on the small, narrow shoulder that separated the pavement from the otherworldly, metallic apparition. Gravel crunched beneath the radials.

Together, both men leaned forward and stared up at the silent monolith. “Nothing’s happening,” Mitch murmured. Mist continued to emanate from the seemingly solid surface, dispersing in the form of gentle curling gray wisps into the warm evening air. Behind them, a car shot past, traveling too fast in the opposite direction. This being Southern California, it did not even slow. Not having seen the ovoid descend, the car’s driver probably thought it was part of some new advertising scheme—or a movie prop.

Actually, Max was more than half convinced that that was exactly what it was. His conviction lasted until the aliens emerged.

There were only two of them. A round platform descended from the lowest point of the ovoid, depositing them
on the rocky ground. Neither he nor Mitch could see where the platform was attached to the rest of the monolith.

Upon reaching the surface, the two aliens appeared to converse briefly. Both stood slightly over six feet tall and were clad in elegant, flowing robes of dark magenta. Their elongated, humanoid faces were the color of aged yellow pine, deeply wrinkled by vertical furrows. A single dark slit in the middle of each face might be an extensive nostril, or some other organ. The flanking coal-black eyes were protuberant, pupilless, and the size of hens’ eggs. A single oral aperture was small, round, and toothless. One stood slightly taller than the other and displayed a dark streak of navy blue down the left side of its face.

The flowing robes concealed whatever passed for alien feet, but the unencumbered hands were clearly visible. The same shade of burnished yellow-brown as the somber faces, these were correspondingly long and flexible. The four fingers or tendrils that sprouted from each knobby wrist joint were spindly and fragile-looking.

“They’re coming toward us!” Mitch announced tersely.

“I can see that.” Max grabbed the handle on his side and pushed the door open. “We don’t want to hide from them.”

“We don’t?” Mitch hesitated before joining himself outside the car. Side by side, they observed the aliens as they approached, shuffling forward, their long graceful robes barely shifting with their subtle movements.

“How do you interview an alien?” Max already had his recorder out and running.

“Why ask me?” Mitch was fascinated by the somber extraterrestrial faces. More than anything, they suggested to him the central figure in Edvard Munch’s famous painting
The Scream
, only on downers.

“I thought maybe aliens had visited your para.”

Mitch shook his head. “That’s another area where our paras are the same. Nobody in my world believes in mysterious alien visitations—although I’ve probably gotten ten or eleven stories out of ET sightings and the babblings of those nuts who claimed to have been abducted.”

“That’s how many I’ve done,” admitted Max. The aliens were very close now. Their black eyes glistened moistly. He could see no evidence of eyelids or of sexual dimorphism. “Maybe this isn’t a para experience. Maybe we just happen to be in the right spot at the right time. After everything we’ve gone through, it’s only fair that we get a real story out of it.” He checked his recorder to make sure it was operating properly.

“I wonder how they communicate?” A thoroughly absorbed Mitch was staring at the small, round mouths.

“Through intelligent conversation. How else do sapient species communicate?”

The response came from the nearer of the two creatures, the small oral opening at the bottom of the face expanding and contracting like a resonating diaphragm as it spoke. The
voice was soft, muted, and overlaid with a quite perceptible amalgam of exasperation and irritation.

Confronted with such unexpected extraterrestrial fluency, the average wayfarer might well have found himself flustered to the point of speechlessness, but Max was conditioned to respond no matter how bizarre the situation.

“You speak our language!” He thrust the recorder out slightly in front of him.

The voice of the other alien was somewhat harsher than that of its companion. “Of course we speak your language! We have been speaking it for some time, as you well know.” Turning to its companion, it proceeded to launch into an extended diatribe, the contents of which remained a mystery to the two enthralled human onlookers.

This lack of understanding soon lost its charm. “Excuse me,” said Max, interrupting in what he hoped was an appropriately deferential manner, “but what’s going on here?”

Ceasing their private discussion, the aliens looked back at them. “That is what we were contemplating asking you. First you act as if you have never seen a Mithrathian before, then you propound the most absurdly infantile query regarding means of communication.”

Max and Mitch exchanged a glance. “Actually,” Mitch informed them, “we never have seen a Mithrathian before.”

For reasons unknown this set the two aliens to furiously debating all over again, though this time it proved unnecessary to interrupt them. They soon ceased of their own accord.

“This is very distressing.” The taller of the pair now sounded more concerned than critical. “We were wondering if your odd, inexplicable, and unprecedented reaction might in some as yet unfathomable way be connected with the disappearance of the spaceport.”