Parallelities (7 page)

“What I’m saying is that you may now be a kind of nexus, Max.”

The reporter looked alarmed. “Hey, I was raised a Presbyterian and I don’t even want to be that. I’m still not following you.”

The inventor struggled to compose an explanation simple enough for any layman to comprehend. Even a tabloid reporter. “You are the gate now, Max. The effect has settled within you—or around you. Without detailed study I can’t be certain of any specifics. You, or rather the effect now centered on you, drew not one but two parallelities, or paras, of that burglar into your orbit. Into your apartment.

“I want you to stop and think a minute. Did you go any-where near the restaurant where those four ‘sisters’ claimed to have met?”

“No! From here I went straight home. I didn’t stop, I drove straight …” He broke off, sudden realization chiseling at his memory. “The hotel they were staying at is right on Ocean. I went right past there.”

Boles nodded sagaciously. “Obviously that was close enough for the field to affect them. No telling how many others your passing influenced. Fortunately, the strength of the field and its consequent effects appear to be of a highly intermittent nature.”

“I don’t get it. I didn’t feel a thing. I
don’t
feel a thing.”

“Evidently you won’t,” Boles told him. “If you were going to feel anything, you would have by now. It’s others, in other worlds, who are suffering the effects of what happened to you.”

“But I don’t feel affected.” Max’s initial fear was giving way to a growing anger. He was used to being in control of
what was happening around him, not the unwilling carrier of some cryptic, fluctuating physical effect. If what Boles was saying was true, he was more out of control of his surroundings than any man had ever been.

“If I’ve been infected somehow by this whatever-it-is, I want it removed. This effect, or field, or whatever you want to call what I’m carrying, I want it wiped out, erased, neutralized, and cured. Right now.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Max.” Boles sounded genuinely apologetic.

“You can’t? Why not?” His voice rose. “I’ll sue!”

“That won’t change things or put the universe back the way it was before I activated the field. You can’t litigate physics, Max. I can’t fix things because I don’t know precisely how the effect was generated, much less how or why it locused in you. I was trying to open a gate, not make you into one. I can’t fix what I don’t understand.” When the downcast reporter turned to stare worriedly out the broad picture window behind the couch, Boles was moved to comment further.

“Don’t look like that.” The inventor pleaded with his guest. “I know this has to be disconcerting for you. I’m not trying to dismiss your condition as hopeless.”

“Oh, now that’s encouraging,” Max mumbled disconsolately.

“It’s obvious that you’ve got a problem. But I’ll work on it, I promise you that.”

“Great!” Max dropped his head into his hands and used the heels to rub hard at his forehead. “So what am I supposed
to do in the meantime? While you’re trying to figure out how to reverse this, or terminate it, or whatever?”

“Do?” Boles eyed him curiously. “Why, the same things you always do. Live your life, write your stories. Are you in pain? Have you suffered injury because of the effect? Has your health deteriorated?”

“Only my sense of confidence in the stability of the world around me.” The reporter looked up. “Otherwise, I feel okay.”

The inventor looked satisfied. “Then what are you bitching about?”

Max considered before finally offering an indignant reply. “I lost my TV. If those—what did you call them? If those paras hadn’t shown up and decided to cooperate instead of fighting for dominance, I wouldn’t have lost my stereo and my computer.”

“I’ll buy you new ones. I am sort of responsible for what’s happened to you.”

“Sort of!” Max sputtered.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Sure, why not?” Max mumbled. “Anything’s okay, so long as it’s cold and full of alcohol.”

Boles carefully filled two glasses with ice and amber-colored liquid from a corner bar, in the process answering Max’s earlier question about whether or not the inventor was too health-conscious to consume liquor. He presented one glass to his guest and kept the other for himself. Max swallowed urgently.

“This is all so very interesting.” Boles was thinking aloud again.

“So were the first A-bomb tests, but I don’t know anybody who wanted to study them from ground zero.” The harsh yet sweet liquid burned the reporter’s throat.

“I’m pondering possible ramifications. If two of your nocturnal visitors were paras, then that means they have gone missing on two parallel worlds. The same holds true for the four ‘sisters,’ only their absences are much more likely to be noted. Because they’re here and this world is apparently so analogous to their own, they will all be familiar with it. Oh, there’ll be plenty of confusion when they try to apply for the same job simultaneously, or pay bills with one bank account, but I suspect they’ll manage to sort it out. By way of explanation, each of them will ascribe their personal situation to confused memories or some such. That’s what people do.

“But they will have left behind holes in the para worlds they were drawn from. Disappointed boyfriends, angry employers, puzzled parents, and more. It would be fascinating to be able to visit those parallel worlds and observe exactly what the effects of such disappearances are.”

“I’ve got it,” Max informed him sarcastically. “Why don’t you fire up that monstrosity in the basement again and see if it will infect
you
with the unsolicited ability to attract people from parallel worlds?”

Unperturbed, Boles smiled. “For a tabloid reporter you have a delightfully droll sense of humor, Max.”

“Which I am rapidly losing. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

His host shook his head regretfully. “Not without a great deal of additional study, I’m afraid. I can offer one positive thought.”

“What’s that?” The distraught reporter was ready to clutch at the tiniest hint of optimism.

“The effect may be temporary. Given the limited amount of energy available for the experimental run, it most probably is. Even as we sit here discussing the matter, it may already have run its course. The notion of a cure being required may already be irrelevant.”

“Yeah. Right. How will I know if it has? Run its course, that is?”

“I should think the answer to that would be self-evident. Go about your business and see if you run into any more multiples, any more paras. If not, then I think we can safely assume that the effect has worn off. The possibility that any measurable results from the propagation of the conjectural field might be extremely transitory in nature was one that always concerned me. It appears that if confirmed, my greatest worry may turn out to be all for the best.”

“But what if it’s not transitory, or at least what if it takes a couple of days to wear off, or fade away, or dissipate, or whatever it is that it’s going to do? What if the effect is sustained
for a while and I do run into more of these paras? How many should I expect to have to deal with?”

The shrug Boles gave him somehow managed to contain within it all the imposing majesty of experimental physics past and present—or at least something more than insouciant indifference.

“Who can say? Theoreticians have speculated for hundreds of years on the possible existence of worlds that parallel our own. It’s only recently that the math and computing power has become available with which to shape actual hypotheses. I won’t try to explain the algorithms I used to help design and build my system.” His tone grew cold and deep. Suddenly he sounded less like a gracefully aging surfer and more like a highly motivated if slightly addled prophet.

“There could be hundreds of parallel worlds, Max. Millions. Numbers beyond imagining, many exactly like ours or so nearly alike as to be indistinguishable, others different in minor or extreme ways we can’t begin to imagine. For example, you mentioned that the four sisters differed from each other in very minor but distinctive ways.”

He nodded. “That’s right. Three were blondes, but one had red hair. Another had a mole, here”—he tapped his right thigh—“but the others didn’t.” He smiled thinly. “I really wasn’t paying much attention to petty differences. There was too much else to look at.”

Boles was nodding thoughtfully. “Parallel for sure, but not
always identical. A single strand of DNA in one person might be enough to comprise the sole difference between this world and another. At a different level more pronounced differences would appear. A mole, for example. So much possibility for variation!” He downed a long swallow from his glass, but it was an empty gesture, one designed solely to recognize the presence of the tumbler and its contents. His heart and his mind were elsewhere.

“Resume your life, Max. Right now that’s the best advice I can offer you. As long as you are the one drawing paras into our world, into this world, the effect on your existence, and mine, should be minimal. As the locus, you are likely to be the only one who notices them. I know this is upsetting to you, but neither is it like you’ve been cast down into the lower regions of Purgatory. How bad can it be if the worst that happens is that you lose some home electronics that I will gladly reimburse you for, and that four beautiful women want to ask you out on a congruent date?”

Max summoned up his last vision of the four Omaha sisters, sitting on the sand, bright sunshine glinting off their para hair, reflecting from their identical para eyes, casting teasing shadows across their startling para bodies. Maybe being a locus for parallel worlds wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. Especially if Boles was right and the effect would wear off of its own accord.

If that was the case, he reflected, he needed to return to
that hotel and look up his most recent para acquaintances before they snapped back into their pertinent parallel worlds. In the absence of any harmful side effects, it was an experience he ought not to miss. Especially if they all thought like sister Sherri. Some simultaneous notions might not be such a bad thing.

Get on with your life, Boles was telling him. Could be that the old boy’s attitude was as right on as his science was way off. In any event, it would not do any good to sue him—not even in California. What kind of accusation could be brought? “Plaintiff was made an attractant to parallel worlds without his consent and with malicious intent?” Any lawsuit that made even oblique reference to Boles’s bizarre scientific theories would be laughed out of court. Even in California.

“I do have one idea for canceling or negating the effects of the field if it doesn’t dissipate on its own,” the inventor was telling him. “It’s awfully premature and I hate to mention anything so wild.”

“What do you call my condition now?” Max challenged him, waving his glass. By this time it was empty save for melting ice cubes.

“From a scientific point of view, enviable.” Boles’s reply contained not a trace of irony. “I wish I had been the one affected, not you.”

“Finally. Something we agree on.” Max’s concurrence was
heartfelt. “Let’s give your idea a try, whatever it is. The results can’t be any wilder than my current reality.”

“It isn’t going to be that easy. Certain preparations have to be made. The system must be modified and checks run.” The inventor considered. “Come back next Tuesday.”

Sure thing
Doc, Max mused sourly.
After all, I’m way overdue for my yearly reality shot.

O
ther than being passed by two apparently identical black Mercedes E-600 sedans headed north on Lincoln Avenue, a wary Max was not assaulted by any blatant parallelities on his way to work Monday morning. At the office friends and acquaintances remarked on his unusual pallor and a lack of the familiar energy that customarily seemed to radiate from him. Max barely acknowledged their stares and whispered comments. Anything that caught his eye and smacked of unnatural redundancy, from people to pencils, caught and held his attention.

He turned in the medium story for publication, the clever embellishments he had added in the course of reliving his visit to the bereaved Collins household cheering him as he reread them. The brilliance of his own writing never failed to inspire him. He hesitated over the Boles story, finally dismissing his
concerns with a mental shrug. A story was a story, whether it involved him personally or not. He had written selectively about the colorful and lively demonstration of Boles’s equipment, downplaying the laughable aspects of the inventor’s theories. There was a chance that the sharp-eyed Kryzewski would sniff out the omissions, but Max could not laugh at that which he no longer found funny.

By lunchtime, his presence among familiar surroundings and friends had combined to reinvigorate much of his usual easygoing, wisecracking persona. He was almost relaxed, when he saw the twins.

They were seated several tables across the room, in one of the darker sections of the Thai restaurant where he and his friends had gone to eat. The two young men were nearly but not quite identical, and the sight of them was like a big bucket of ice water in his face. Excusing himself from his puzzled companions, he stumbled over to the table that drew him like a fly to a
Rafflesia.

“Pardon me,” he mumbled, interrupting their conversation. They looked to be about twenty, twenty-one. Probably UCLA students on their day off, or on break from class. Sandy-brown hair, slim builds, faces verging on the innocent, they looked up at him curiously. Simultaneously. “I know this sounds crazy, but how long have you guys known each other?”

The two youths exchanged a glance; then the one on the left looked up over his dripping cheeseburger. “Are you kidding? How long does it look like we’ve known each other?”

“All our lives, obviously.” The other brother snickered at the blatantly dumb question.

“So what you’re telling me is that you grew up together? You haven’t been separated and didn’t just happen to bump into one another yesterday?”

“What’s with the interrogation?” Turning bellicose, the first youth set his sandwich aside.

“Yeah, what’s this all about, mister?” inquired his brother. “You some kind of reporter doing a story on twins? Rich and I have been in a couple of twins’ stories before, back home.” He smiled. His personality, if not his face, differed significantly from that of his twin. “We’re from near Cincinnati.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Max was weak with relief. “I’m some kind of reporter. Always looking for a story.”

Now that their visitor had explained himself, the other brother responded enthusiastically. “What do you want to know? About how much we think alike? Actually, except for looks we’re not that much alike. Steve and I have always had pretty different tastes. Some people find that surprising, but you know, just ’cause you’re twins and look alike doesn’t mean you’re, like, the same inside.”

“That’s right,” agreed Rich cheerfully. “For example, I can’t stand Smashing Pumpkins, and Steve loves ’em. On the other hand, Steve’s a Hootie fan, but as far as I’m concerned, they can …”

“I get the idea. I’m afraid that won’t work for me. I’m sort of on the lookout for duplicates who are alike in everything.
Sorry to bother you.” Much eased in mind, Max turned to rejoin his friends.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Steve called to the reporter’s retreating back, “what about the story?”

Max did not respond. Not every set of twins or triplets or quads in the world was the result of a wealthy scientific dilettante’s maladjusted experiment gone awry. Hopefully Boles was right in his suppositions and the effect had already worn off. That did not mean, Max reminded himself, that the beauteous Omaha sisters were fled from their beach hotel. Tonight he would do his best to find out. Feeling very much more like himself, he was finally able to relax and enjoy the rest of his lunch. His friends noticed his newly upbeat mood immediately.

He considered telling them about what he had been through the past couple of days, but decided against it. No one would believe the truth anyway—he hardly believed it himself. Parallel worlds populated by plethoras of parallelities, he told himself. Say that fast three times. Live that fast three times.

“What are you grinning at?” Amee asked him. She was a petite, recent immigrant from France with the tenacity of a pit bull and a waspish pen—an ideal addition to the
Investigator
team.

“Just feeling good,” he told her expansively. “Not to dwell on it, but I’ve had a rough couple of days.”

“Two bylined stories in less than a week.” On the other
side of the table, Harrison grumbled and played with his frijoles. “I should have such a rough couple of days.”

Max bestowed a friendly smile on his friend and fellow scribe. “Just take my word for it: If you knew what I’ve been through you wouldn’t want to trade.”

The rest of the day went exceptionally well—which was to say, normally. No pairs of paras confronted him in the hallways or offices, his two stories were gruffly praised by Kryzewski, and a contact in El Monte whom he had not heard from in months and whom he had pretty much given up on phoned in with a tip on a voodoo faith healer who was working the lower-middle-class neighborhoods in the area south of the San Bernardino Freeway.

By the time he got home he was feeling positively jaunty. He’d had a rough experience but now it was behind him, the actuality of it reduced by a normal day to a scarcely credible memory. He’d have to take a moment to call Boles and tell him the good news. The proposed Tuesday return visit would thankfully not be necessary.

To cap it off, the door to his apartment was properly locked and sealed. No acquisitive evening visitors this time. He slipped the key into the deadbolt.

“Mr. Parker, Mr. Parker!”

He started, but the voice came from down the hall and not from within his apartment. Furthermore, it was one he recognized. Looking to his left, he saw Ginger Bonley from
number eleven waving anxiously in his direction. A sweet old widow in her late sixties, toughened from several years of living on her own at the beach, she often made presents to the building’s other tenants of favorite cuttings from her forest of houseplants. Max’s kitchen boasted two beautiful coleuses and a climbing Schefllera courtesy of Mrs. Bonley’s horticultural expertise.

She started toward him, gesturing with one hand and occasionally glancing back over her shoulder as if Beelzebub himself were after her. He put the door key back in his pocket.

“Ginger, what’s wrong?” He thought suddenly of the thieving triplets. They were just as likely still to be in the vicinity as were the Omaha sisters.

She was having trouble catching her breath. One hand continued to flutter at him while she held the other pressed against her narrow chest. “My apartment, Mr. Parker. In—my apartment!”

“What’s in your apartment?” He looked down the hallway past her but saw nothing. “If you’ve got a problem why don’t you call the manager?”

“He—he’s not here.” She clutched at his wrist. “You come, Mr. Parker! Please, you come.”

“Okay, sure.” He let himself be led along.

The door to number eleven stood open wide. While she cowered apprehensively behind him, he peered in. From what he could remember of the last time he’d paid her a visit, the
apartment appeared undisturbed. Throw blankets covered old, unstylishly comfortable furniture. No one had messed with her TV. Houseplants hung from ceiling hooks and thrust upward from elegant enameled pots, giving the room the air and appearance of an English Victorian seaside salon.

“It’s a little stuffy in here, that’s all,” he told her reassuringly as he entered. “Stuffy and humid. You should really keep a window open more often, Ginger.”

Her fingers clutched at him. “No, no, it’s not that! There’s nothing wrong with the air. You don’t understand …”

Avoiding the sharp edges of the black lacquered coffee table, he strode through the room and unlatched the big sliding glass door. Since eleven was in the back of the building her apartment had no ocean view, but the water could be seen clearly from out on the small concrete patio. He shoved the door all the way open and turned to smile across the room at her.

“You just need some fresh air in here, Ginger. It helps keep the head clear. Now, come on out and have a seat. I’ll make you some coffee if you like.”

“You’re so kind, Mr. Parker.” She warily entered her own living room and closed the door behind her. Her attention, however, was not on him but on the door that led to the back bedroom. “I guess—I guess they’re gone.”

“Guess who’s gone?” He frowned as lingering images of identical burglars once more entered his mind.

“They must have gotten out somehow while I was talking to you in the hall.” Ignoring the look he gave her, she took a tentative step toward the bedroom.

And was immediately swarmed by a screeching, squealing, hysterical cascade of yellow. With a soft scream she threw up both hands to protect her face and head, turning away and trying to duck.

The feathered avalanche winged past Max, beating at his face and upper body as it exploded through the open patio door. Instinctively he threw up his arms, diverting the stream of feathers and beaks around his head. The entire assault lasted only seconds. Then, except for a lingering smell of stale birdseed, it was over.

Breathing hard, he turned to look out the open door as the intensely yellow cloud dissipated, its individual components scattering in all directions. In less than a minute it had vanished, save for a few stragglers who had chosen to perch on palm fronds or telephone wires to take more deliberate stock of their situation and surroundings. If not for their continued presence he might have accounted the entire experience a mad dream.

Mrs. Bonley was standing next to him, eyeing the high wire where half a dozen of the escapees now reposed. “I guess that’s the end of little Bidgee.” She looked up at her stunned neighbor. “I don’t understand it, Mr. Parker. There must have been more than a hundred of them. Where could they all have come from? I only had one canary.”

“I—I don’t know, Ginger. Maybe a pet store delivery truck had an accident nearby and all their cages broke open.”

But there had been no accident involving a pet store delivery truck, he knew, or a pet store, or some unsuspected private aviary. He did not need Barrington Boles’s brain to figure out what had happened. The para effect was still in full flow, only this time it had reached out to not one parallel world, or two or three, but to more than a hundred.

It made perfect sense. Parallel worlds would naturally be inhabited by more than para humans. There would also be para cats, and para dogs, and probably para whales and cockroaches. Only that could explain the sudden manifestation in Ginger Bonley’s nearby apartment of a hundred para canaries. Flocked in her bedroom, they had made a break for freedom as soon as they had detected an opening to the outside.

Elsewhere, in many identical or near-identical elsewheres, a hundred para Ginger Bonleys must simultaneously be bemoaning the inexplicable loss of their plumed pets. Somewhere, a hundred innocent para cats might be concurrently catching hell. The birds had all looked exactly alike, but then, every canary he had ever seen had looked just like every other canary he had ever seen. Scattered and dispersed throughout West L.A., he doubted any coincidences would be remarked upon. To the best of his knowledge, genetic researchers were not in the habit of catching stray canaries to see if they could use them to make a perfect DNA match.

What next? he thought uneasily. A thousand para Pekingese
pitter-pattering the streets of Beverly Hills, two thousand para coyotes massing for a joint assault on the mountain residences of Mulholland Drive? He was a locus, a nexus, helpless to manipulate or mitigate the effect that had settled in, on, or around him.

“Mr. Parker, are you all right?” A concerned Mrs. Bonley was looking up at him, brushing fitfully at the canary poop speckling her hair.

Grim-faced, he stepped around her and into the living room. “I’m fine, I’m all right. Will you be okay?”

“I suppose.” Not surprisingly, she looked and sounded slightly shell-shocked. “If they all came from a broken pet shop truck, how did they get into my apartment? All the windows were closed.”

“Maybe you forgot and left one open.” He was already out in the hall. “It doesn’t matter. They’re gone.”

“Yes, they’re gone.” She snuffled softly. “Along with my little Bidgee.”

He was moved to compassion, a condition that afflicted him but infrequently. “I’m sorry about your birds—your bird, Ginger. But it’s not like you lost a dog you’ve had for twenty years. You can always get another canary. And you still have all your plants for company.”