Parallelities (16 page)

Behind him, he heard a distant roaring. It might have been a train, or it might have been something equally massive but far more organic in nature. Whatever it was, it was coming up the main tunnel in his direction. He had no intention of retracing his steps in hopes of identifying it. He hurried on.

A fair amount of time had passed and there was still no sign of the Cthulhi or, for that matter, subway service technicians,
construction workers, or anyone else. For the moment, at least, the tunnel was his.

Hurrying along the unyielding path proved hard on his feet. Eventually, he was forced to slow to a pained walk. With luck he’d lost his pursuers, at least for a while. Ahead, a greater volume of light beckoned. Too bright to signify the presence of a station, it probably indicated the location of a new access under construction, perhaps even preliminary excavation. Questions might be forthcoming when he, a solitary pedestrian, came tromping out of the darkness, but he felt confident of his ability to slip away before the authorities could be notified. With so much else being familiar and recognizable in this para, there was no reason to assume that his press credentials would not be accepted as legitimate. They had gotten him out of difficult situations before.

The nearer he drew to the light, the more it became apparent that this was a station or service entrance still under construction. Chunks of steel and blocks of concrete lay strewn about, along with broken rock and piles of crumbled scree. Wiring for overhead lights dangled loosely from the ceiling and the tiled steps shone uncompleted. It was dead silent not only within the station but up on the street as well.

Either a large area up on the surface had been roped off to keep the curious away from the construction site, he decided, or else he had left the busy Wilshire corridor behind. Perhaps this station was being built in a quiet residential section. That could account for the exceptional silence. With a backward
glance to reassure himself that no threat was immediately forthcoming from that quarter, he started cautiously up the broken steps.

The world into which he emerged was not the one he had just left.

It took him only a moment to realize that the condition of the subway station at his feet was due not to an incomplete state of construction but to one of untimely destruction. It was not a station half built but one completely destroyed. As was the street, and the structures that had once lined it, and as far as he could see, the heretofore familiar city around him.

Most of the buildings he knew so well from innumerable drives up and down the roadway had been razed to the ground. Only the fragments of foundations and in places, nothing more than black scars, remained to show where they had once stood. The Ralph’s was gone, as was the
Investigator
tower, and every other store and apartment building and office block that used to line the boulevard.

Turning a slow circle, he saw only a few tattered remnants of well-known office spires sundering the horizon like so many shattered teeth. To the north the Santa Monica Mountains rose from a listless gray haze. The familiar hillsides presented a blasted and bleached appearance, as if the green and brown chaparral that normally covered their slopes had been scoured from their flanks by some gigantic razor, leaving only the folds and creases of obscenely naked gullies behind.

To the east nothing stood: not the carefully aligned steeples
of the Wilshire corridor nor the distant, taller skyscrapers of downtown. Even the San Diego and Santa Monica freeways were gone. As he stood staring, a chill wind sprang up, making him bunch his shirt tightly against his neck. Scraps of paper, some with burnt edges, and gray ash went flying erratically past him.

At least the mountains gave him a means of orienting himself. At his feet, the ruined subway station beckoned. No way was he returning to that dark hole. Not knowing what else to do, he set off westward down the street. No Cthulhi waited to embrace him with their revolting tentacle-ridden faces. Not in this para. Somewhere he thought he heard a dog bark, but it might have been only the wind driving scraps of wood against heaps of metal slag. The wind howled forlornly around him as he staggered off in the general direction of the Pacific.

It had been a long, long time since he had walked so far in L.A., but he had no choice. No buses rumbled past, no immigrant-piloted taxis hailed him. In all that destruction and devastation, nothing moved that was not carried by the wind. Perversely, the blasted solitude gave strength to his tired legs, and he lengthened his stride.

Eventually, undisturbed by man or machine, he reached the coast. He knew it was the coast because he recognized the bluffs on which he stood. Far below lay a thin, shattered strip of asphalt that had once been the Pacific Coast Highway. Beyond was the beach, and beyond that was the ocean.

Should have been the ocean.

The Pacific had vanished. As far as he could see, from Malibu in the north to Palos Verde in the south and all the way to the western horizon, was nothing but sand and dried mud baked hard and unyielding by the sun. For all he knew, the desert that had once been an ocean bottom extended all the way to Japan.

What unimaginable catastrophe had devastated this para? he wondered. What had reduced a great city to little more than ashes, and had dried up even the ocean itself? Dumbfounded, aware that he was confronting a disaster beyond his limited imagination to envision, he stared at the silent, barren horizon. Neither it nor the wind offered up any explanation.

There was nothing to be gained by standing on the edge of the bluffs until he collapsed. Experiencing a sudden urge to view the remnants of his home and wondering at the same time if he would recognize them, he turned south, intending to walk the rest of the way down the coast to the site of his apartment building. From Wilshire, it was only a little more than a dozen blocks.

As he turned to go, there came a voice. It was no auricular hallucination: he heard the words clearly and distinctly. Breaking into a run, he followed the sound, and a few moments later found himself confronting a scrawny, starving individual seated with his back against the dead stump of one of the numerous palm trees whose green fronds had once waved exuberantly from the crest of the bluffs.

The man wore only the shreds and tatters of what had
once been denim pants. He had no shirt, his hair was unkempt and uncut, and the filthy, shaggy growth of his beard reached down to the middle of his chest. Sores and blisters covered his body, the suppurating redness showing noisomely through the mascara of accumulated, caked-on soil. He had been talking to himself, loudly enough for Max to overhear.

“Christ, man, what happened to you?” Max gestured at the devastation around them. “What happened here?”

“Stranger, are ye? Then there’s still a place where the Sicknesses haven’t struck everyone down.” The man trembled as he spoke, and his voice shook in time with the vibrations of his desiccated body. “No matter where you be from, how can it be that you are ignorant of what occurred?”

“Everyone forgets things.” Max spoke as gently as he could. The poor fellow was obviously in the last stages of physical and mental exhaustion.

“It was the Effect that did this, o’ course. The thousand-times-be-damned Effect.” His lips were quivering so badly he could hardly form the words.

Max leaned closer so that the man would not have to expend as much energy talking. “The Effect? What Effect?”

“Why, the Boles Effect, naturally. This is what happens when a man who doesn’t know what he’s doin’ goes monkeying around with the unifying forces o’ the Universe. Curse his careless soul to Perdition forever!”

The Boles Effect. Max swallowed, squinting as the cold wind kicked up ash and debris. “Barrington Boles?”

Rheumy, bloodshot eyes stared up at him. Max was not sure they were focusing. But the survivor’s uncertain gaze did not waver.

“Was there any other? Course, the meddlin’ bastard’s probably dead now. Not that it does the few of us that are left a world o’ good.” A constrained cackle emerged from the depths of the diseased throat. “‘World o’ good,’ get it?”

Keeping his back facing the wind, Max straightened slightly, admiring the skeletal survivor huddled at his feet. “I would’ve expected someone in your condition and situation to have lost their sense of humor a long time ago.”

The woolly head twitched. It might have been a nod. “‘Bout all that’s kept me goin’ this long. Though I don’t know why I bother.” Shaking badly, a diseased arm rose and pointed at the vanished Pacific. “Guess I keep hoping the sea will come back. I miss it more than I do the people. Back before the Effect ruined everything, back when things were normal, I used to come out at night and sit on the old wooden lifeguard stations and just watch it, listening to the waves breaking on the shore.”

Max followed the unsteady finger. “I know what you mean. I used to do the same thing. I …” He broke off abruptly. It felt as if an unseen and especially sadistic assailant had just smacked him in the stomach with a rubber mallet. Ignoring the stinging grit flying through the air, he stared wide-eyed at the seated, trembling figure.

“What—what did you do—before the Effect?”

“Do? Do.” The man considered, as if remembering the smallest detail of what had gone before was a Promethean struggle. “Why, if I be recalling correctly, I used to write. Little articles of no consequence, short stories of no merit. They didn’t matter much then, and they don’t matter at all now.” A hand characterized by broken nails and running sores reached shakily up toward him. “Max be my name. Maxwell Parker.”

“No.” Slowly Max backed away from the sickly, repellent figure. He could see it now—beneath the haggard tangle of hair, behind the wild beard. Could see it in the glassy, half-wild eyes.

He had met another of his paras.

With a cry he turned and ran, ignoring the coughing, hacking entreaties of the devastated stick-figure behind him, not looking back, not turning to see or to listen. He was running north now, his chest pounding, the wind-flung ash and debris stinging his eyes and exposed skin. Running north, toward distant Malibu and, beyond, Trancas. That was where he would find Barrington Boles, who, if a breath still lived within him, Max steadfastly intended to kill.

To what end? He slowed, finally coming to a complete halt. Suppose he did find Boles alive? How could he know if he was killing the right Boles, the right para? What was the point of it, when a million billion Boleses still lived on a billion million parallel worlds? With at least a few million of them working on the machine, how many would eventually get it right? How many would finally stumble on the secret of
the field effect, resulting in the utter and total destruction of innocent paras like this one?

What was the point of it all? What was the point of anything anymore? Was he even the right Maxwell Parker, or was he nothing more than one of dozens of frantic paras all scurrying futilely about in a hopeless attempt to find their way home, when “home” could no longer even be properly defined? For all the sense anything made anymore, he might as well go back and wait to die alongside his poor, bemused, helpless local para. Distraught and disillusioned and pretty near his wits’ end, he turned back into the wind.

Propelled by the angry, moaning mistral, something larger and heavier than ash or grit came flying through the dreary, sorrowing atmosphere. Intent to the exclusion of all else upon his redeeming vision of private justice, Max never saw it coming. It struck him on the side of the head and he went down, instantly rendered unconscious, face-first into the dead earth.

“I
s he alive?”

“Hold off on that emergency request, chaps. I think he may be coming around.”

“The poor dear! What could have happened to him?”

“See all the dirt on his clothes. He looks like he has been wandering around aimlessly in Death Valley.”

Within himself, Max heard the words. They issued from different throats, male and female. None of them shook, none of them were afflicted with a diseased quaver. None of them were filled with the anguish of a ruined world. He fought to open his eyes.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the air smelled of fresh, sweet growing things. While he was unconscious, he had shifted paras once again.

Hands pressed against his back and pulled gently on his
shoulders, helping him to sit up. Strong, healthy hands and arms. Blinking frequently and reaching up to rub grit from his eyes, he was finally able to open them.

Paradise spread out before him.

Well, maybe not Paradise, but a purer, cleaner, more agreeable vision of Los Angeles than he had ever imagined. He knew it was still Los Angeles, because there was much that he was still able to recognize.

His location, for example. He was sitting up where he had fallen, on the bluffs that overlooked the coast highway and the ocean beyond. The ocean, the glorious Pacific, had returned in all its unsurpassed deep blue splendor. As for the coast highway, it was still there. Only in this para it was paved not with asphalt but with grass. Fully enclosed silver-sided vehicles cruised along its wide, unstriped path, traveling silently a foot or so above the undisturbed emerald turf.

The palm trees that normally lined the edge of the bluff-side park were back also; healthy and alive, their fronds swaying in a gentle, warm breeze. As in his para, pedestrians promenaded along the bluffs, taking in the view and the sea air. Their clothing differed from that favored in his own world but not radically so. It was not some wide-eyed 1930s vision of what contemporary casual attire should be. The fabrics and designs looked as natural and comfortable as the people who wore them.

He found himself the recipient of the solicitous stares and
attentions of the four passersby in their mid-twenties who had discovered him lying behind a tree. There were two men and two women; one black, one Asian, the other two white. All fairly glowed with health and beauty. He allowed them to help him to his feet.

He stood where he had fallen. The green carpet of the park extended all the way to the first buildings that fronted on the promenade. In place of the blacktop that in his world defined the strip of street known as Ocean Avenue, there was another extended lawn. More of the silent silvery hovercraft cruised noiselessly north and south above the undisturbed greensward. Some had their transparent canopies down, and teenagers shouted to one another from the interiors of passing vehicles.

The buildings that began where the grass ended were enclosed by a crystal wall that varied in height. Gone was the eclectic but somewhat tawdry pastel jumble of fast-food restaurants, souvenir emporiums, T-shirt shops, and beach hotels that he knew so well. Everything was spotless, clean, wholesome, and beautifully maintained.

If this is the beachfront
, he found himself wondering,
what must the rest of the city be like?
It was the diametric opposite of the unfortunate para he had just left.

Seeing that their foundling was alert and sensible, the shorter of the two young men performed introductions. “Glad to see you up and about, old man. You look in a bad way, don’t
you know. I’m Corey. This is Cheung, Lacy, and Bert.” With each name, extended hands were offered. He shook each one in turn as he identified himself.

Lacy was giggling at him. “You look like you’re fitted out for a costume party. How do you stand the heat in those pants? And those ridiculous shoes!”

Automatically defensive, Max glanced down at his two-hundred-dollar Reeboks. “What’s so ridiculous about them?”

“They’re so big and bulky,” the diminutive Cheung pointed out. “And those little white ropes that hold them together. Eminently retrograde.”

“The color scheme’s not bad. See the cute little nonfunctional inserts?” Bert was making an effort to be understanding.

Max noticed that they were all wearing shorts, thin tops fashioned of different, slightly reflective materials, and sandals that seemed to adhere to their feet without the aid of straps, laces, or any other kind of visible binding mechanism. Maybe
they glued them on
, he thought. Lacy and Corey wore sunglasses that not only changed color according to the intensity of the light, but displayed intimations of moving landscapes across the interior of the lenses, like compact rear-projection televisions.

A much larger hover vehicle appeared, traveling from north to south. As it turned up Pico, it bent in the middle to make the corner, flexible as a snake. The people within were not affected. Overhead, the sky shone a deep, untrammeled blue. There was not a hint, not a suggestion, of smog, much less the gray-white ash of total devastation.

Off to the north, something like an amethyst needle thrust impossibly far into the azure sky. Small white clouds trailed inland from its tip.

“What’s that?” he found himself wondering aloud.

The two young women looked at one another and giggled. They seemed a bit old to be engaging in so much giggling, he thought. It was the one called Cheung who supplied an answer.

“You really are from out of town, aren’t you? That’s the observatory, silly.”

“Is that a fact? And what does it observe?” he inquired tartly.

“Weather patterns, seismic disturbances, the feeding habits of the local cetacean and pinniped populations, bird migrations—that sort of thing.” Bert’s smile was infuriatingly condescending. “It’s been there for a quite a few years now, old man.”

So this time I’m a hick in my own hometown
, Max reflected.
So enlighten me.
“I’d think it would be an awkward place to be in a bad quake.”

“Not at all, old boy,” Corey assured him while the women continued their damned giggling. “The foundation is buried quite deeply in bedrock, and counterweighted besides. It sways, quite a bit sometimes, but it’s quite impossible to topple. There’s quite a good restaurant on top, below the scientific station. You can see all the way to San Diego.”

“Quite,” added Bert unnecessarily.

“So on a clear day you can see Mission Bay.” Max gawked at the three-thousand-foot-tall tower.

Bert made a face. “Oh, I say, old chap, is there any other kind?”

“You never have any smoggy days?”

“‘Smoggy’?” Cheung frowned and, for once, did not giggle. “Oh, you mean that air pollution certain places used to have back around the early part of the century. I wouldn’t have guessed you were a history buff, Max.”

“I’m not, not really. In—some places—I understand that the smog didn’t get really bad until after World War Two.”

His new benefactors looked at one another. “World War Two? But there was only one world war,” Lacy insisted.

Max hesitated, not wishing to make any more of a fool of himself than he already had. “We didn’t fight the Germans and the Japanese back in the forties?”

Corey was eyeing him cautiously now, perhaps wondering if their filthy friend might have escaped from a place not spoken of in polite company.

“I say, old man, where
have
you fallen from? Why on Earth would America ever fight the Germans again, much less the Japanese? After Teddy Roosevelt won his third term and pushed through the plan to rebuild Germany following the world war, and the Emperor began to personally supervise the growth of the Keiretsu in Japan, this old world finally started acting sensibly. Except for that momentary hiccough in Russia. But everyone knows this. Have you been living as some kind of hermit since you were born, or something?”

“Or something,” Max admitted. The women had backed
several steps away from him, much as they would have from a large, drooling animal encountered unexpectedly in the woods. “Listen, I’m not crazy, though if I told you the truth about myself you might think otherwise.”

“Well then,” declared Bert, clapping Max on the back, “don’t tell us. Not that we all can’t use a bit of craziness in our lives now and then.” He winked. “Bit of a social necessity, what?”

“So the rest of the city looks like this?” Max gestured at the gleaming crystal wall, the manicured grass thoroughfares, and the immaculate pedestrian promenade on which they stood.

“Pretty much,” Bert told him. “There are the industrial areas, of course, but they’re all out in Barstow and Palmdale.”

Max eyed him intently. “And there are no racial problems in South Central?”

“Racial problems?” Bert looked bemused. “What might those be, old chap?”

I want to stay here
, Max decided. Maybe he didn’t belong; not now, not yet. But he could learn, adapt, survive. Let them giggle at him all they wanted. Writing was still an art that transferred effectively from place to place. His other-para perspective might even work to his advantage in this world. What was dull, daily truth to him might be received as quite the novelty here. If it would help him to blend in, he would even surrender his Reeboks for a pair of shiny, stick-on sandals.

In this para courtesy was still common currency, compassion
for even a confused, misclad stranger willingly offered, and the environment—the environment was what it ought to be but what the people of his para could only dream about. Yes, he could live in this world. Settle down and find something to do. His belly growled complainingly. If it was as elegant as the rest of his surroundings, he couldn’t wait to taste the food here.

“Listen, thanks for your help.” He started away from them, heading south in the direction of his apartment building. He wondered what it would look like, and if his key would work.

“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” Lacy was smiling now, all honest sympathy. “If you’re not feeling well we can call for medical.”

“Yes,” agreed the petitely attractive Cheung. “Or if you prefer, you can come home with one of us.” She smiled encouragingly. Neither Corey nor Bert offered any objection.

Imagine an attractive young woman in his world asking a stranger who looked like his current disheveled self to come home with her, and her friends not objecting. It spoke volumes about the level of crime in this world. If there
were
any such social aberrations remaining, he mused. Perhaps serious crime here was as hoary a relic as air pollution. Tempted as he was, he badly wanted to immerse himself in the familiar trappings of his own home, his own life.

“Maybe another time!” He waved, and was gratified to see that they waved back. Not everything in this para was strange
and unfamiliar, then. For one thing, certain gestures had been retained. Only the cleanliness was completely alien to him.

He drew a few curious glances from other pedestrians as he made his way across Pico and down the green fairway of Ocean Avenue. In place of the haphazard, occasionally ramshackle buildings he knew so well, there rose a neat line of new structures that were sleek and spotless and more modern than he could ever have envisioned. Yet for all that, they presented a warm and inviting aspect, and were not in any way cold or distant. Most were painted in soft Mediterranean pastels, and none was over four stories tall.

The replacement of pavement with turf encouraged the proliferation of birds and other small creatures. Astonishing to one who had spent all his life in the Los Angeles of his world, he thought he saw a fox peeping out from between two wonderfully Art Deco apartment buildings. It was stalking a rabbit. On Ocean Avenue. In the middle of Santa Monica.

Off to his right, the old familiar public beach was wider than he remembered it and looked as if it was vacuumed daily. The sea broke clean and invigorating against the shore. Gone were the vague chemical smells that often permeated the air along the coast. He wondered if the water was as unadulterated as the beach and the air. Based on what he had observed already, there was no reason to suspect otherwise.

Unable to believe his good fortune, he squinted out to sea where what looked from a distance suspiciously like an old-time
clipper ship was making way for Marina del Rey. The sun momentarily blinded him and he had to blink away tears.

When he opened his eyes, the retro clipper was gone. The beach remained, and the sea, but he was striding along concrete instead of thick grass. A car came up behind him on the street, honked accusingly, and shot past. It reeked of noise, gasoline, and exfoliating rubber. His nostrils twitched. Out on the beach he could see isolated piles of garbage, and the gleam of scattered sunlight on lumpy plastic bags.

With the deepest, most regretful sigh of his life (except perhaps for that day his senior year in high school when he had shyly declined the voluptuous Arlene Marishabroda’s offer to spend the night with him), he glanced reluctantly overhead. A faint brown haze, like a background wash applied by some skillful watercolorist, dimmed the blue of the sky. The atmospheric muck was heavier and darker inland. Much darker.