Regarding Ducks and Universes (18 page)

A couple had emerged from the shadows. They crossed the path and, stopping for a moment to take their shoes off, continued down the beach hand in hand.

“False alarm. I thought I saw someone familiar. What’s at the bottom of the universe tree? Does it have a root?”

She gave the tiniest of shrugs. “There must be a universe that’s still in the primordial state, a universe in which nothing ever occurred except other universes branching off. More like the tree trunk than the tree root, I suppose.”

“Too bad I couldn’t take responsibility for a really pleasant universe, like in one of those science fiction stories where money doesn’t exist anymore and everyone gets to do whatever they want in life. Instead I get one where citizens have to work and warts haven’t been cured yet.”

“I don’t know, both A and B seem pretty good to me. I like to think that we live in average universes. I’m sure there’s much worse stuff elsewhere.”

I stifled a yawn. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me, I’ve slept half the day away.”

She gave me a sympathetic look. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to suddenly find out that you have an alter. I’m sure I’d obsess constantly about which one of us would get her PhD first.” She hesitated. “One more thing—to be honest, I’m not sure it’s even possible to pin the universe maker label on a single person or object. Any chain of events should be traceable if you follow it backward in time, but there are those who argue that it’s all guesswork, that you might as well try to figure out which flutter of which wing of which particular butterfly produced a hurricane years later. In any case, it might take decades to perfect the techniques and pool all the data, by which time we might very well be—well, dead.”

Strangely enough, her words made me feel better.

“So what you’re saying is the practical thing to do would have been to take Past & Future’s offer of up-front money.”

“Well,” she laughed, picking up another pebble and aiming it toward the ocean, “all other considerations aside, yes, I suppose so.”

“Hey, Bean,” I heard Arni’s voice behind us, “are you trying to move the whole beach into the ocean?”

Thursday dawned foggy and cold. I awoke to the first morning song of the warbler outside my window, dressed quickly and warmly, and headed out, closing the room door behind me with care so as not to wake up the other B&B guests. The landing outside the tower room was dim and in the dark I stepped on something—I rolled along with it for an instant and managed to make a last-second grab at the banister to avoid crashing down the stairs. The object responsible for making me lose my balance thumped down step by step, the sound amplified by the morning quiet, and came to a rest at the bottom. I hobbled down the creaky, narrow staircase and picked it up. It was a rubber rolling pin, toy-sized and too light to be of any use in a kitchen. The handles squeaked when squeezed.

Massaging my ankle where I had banged it on the banister, I told myself, I’m having an unusual amount of bad luck on this trip.

Unless—?

Suddenly the black car that had almost mowed me down outside the Bookworm not long after my arrival in Universe B took on a more sinister implication. I had assumed it was just an impatient commuter. And the cherry candies that someone had sent to the Palo Alto Health Center and to which I could have reacted badly—had someone wanted to extend my stay at the health center, perhaps permanently?

I checked the hallway lamp, which sat on a miniature antique table on the middle landing. The bulb was missing, the socket empty.

Only one person stood to gain from my early demise.

Even forming the thought in my mind made me seem like a mystery-writer wannabe with an overactive imagination. I was being paranoid, I decided, seeing shapes in the clouds. A child or the house pet must have left the rubber rolling pin lying around, and Tulip had probably taken out the old bulb during her cleaning routine and forgotten to put in a new one. The other things, the car and the cherry candies, were just narrow escapes from an unlucky twist of fate, like the pet bug that had sent me to the health center in the first place.

I left the toy next to the lamp on the miniature antique table and carefully (I had no desire to go back to a health center) descended two more flights of stairs. There was no one at the front desk at this early hour and the front door was unlocked, but Carmel is that kind of place. The street too was deserted. Keeping to the side of the road, there being no sidewalk, I set a course toward Main Street. There was a crisp, oceany feel to the air that bit at the nostrils and kept my pace at a brisk hobble.

I had some thinking to do.

To say that my trip to Universe B had not turned out as expected was an understatement. Life, of course, likes to throw a wrench (like a pet bug quarantine) into even the most modest of plans—and wrenches frequently landed in my plans, as if a giant celestial spotlight blazed in my direction, inviting fate to pick me, Felix A (though possibly everyone felt that way). And that spotlight seemed especially bright at the moment. For all of Bean’s reassuring words, I had an unshakable feeling that the graduate students, or James and Gabriella, would pin the universe-maker label on me and somehow manage to get the idea past DIM. And I didn’t want it. Didn’t want the fame and the blame, the inevitable exaggerations that would follow about my role in the matter. From that point on, I would be judged by the itty-bitty, baby-sized choice I made at 11:46:01 on Y-day.

Perhaps the best thing to do, then, was to ditch the graduate students and concentrate on practical matters, like getting my hands on some sourdough starter for Wagner. I’d need to get back to San Francisco as soon as possible and make my way to the back door of the Salt & Pepper bakery.

I hobbled along, my ankle still sore where I had banged it on the banister, and made a right onto Main Street and set a course in the direction of the beach. The low-lying fog gave the gently sloping street, lined with cottages and quaint shops, a dreamy, story-like feel. A few bundled walkers getting their morning exercise were out and about, but stores were not open yet for the day, save for a teahouse whose proprietor was in a courtyard arranging tables and chairs. Had that meal not been included in my lodging rate, I would have been tempted to go into the teahouse for an early breakfast. Might grab a hot tea on the way back, I thought, if only to warm up my hands.

Farther down Main Street I paused at a bookstore, one meant for children, judging by the colorful books that sat like unwrapped presents in the store’s windows next to seashells and plush toys. The sign on the door read,
Sorry, we’re closed. Come back after a hearty breakfast of green eggs and ham.
I chuckled and continued on to an intersection. As I waited for a car to pass, an urge seized me, an urge to storm back to the B&B and shake everything concerning me and Felix B out of Pak’s laptop. The same with Past & Future’s computers—the glass building whose employees threatened to bring upheaval into my life came into view briefly as I crossed the intersection.

Was I beginning to feel sympathy for the man and was that why I had called Noor & Brood off the chase? There was a duality to the matter. On one hand, I hoped Felix B wasn’t so unhappy with his everyday life as to be busily working on a novel as a way out. But if it
did
turn out that he was perfectly content with his head-chef, fiancée-boasting, member-of-kennel-club life—well, I was jealous of that too. I wasn’t proud of it, but there it was.

I imagined him sleeping in a good sized hotel room paid for by Past & Future, snoring away warm and snug next to his fiancée instead of wandering Carmel’s streets at this early hour. Or at least I would have, except that there he was.

He was a few steps away, striding uphill from the beach right toward me.

For a moment, he didn’t recognize me. Then shock registered on his face, probably mirrored in my own. Time stopped. And then he opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out, I took two steps forward, jabbed a finger at his chest, and demanded,

“Are you missing a rolling pin?”

H
e staggered back a bit. “A rolling pin? What, at my kitchen at the Organic Oven?”

“No, a rubber rolling pin.”

“Don’t believe I’ve ever owned one. Er—want a hot drink? My hands are freezing. The teahouse up the street looked open.”

I pulled myself together and accompanied him back to the Las Palmas Teahouse. None of the early customers who sat inside reading printed newspapers gave us a second glance. The proprietor wiped his hands on his apron and nodded a greeting at us. “What can I get you, citizens?”

I took a quick glance at the menu on the wall and, at the very bottom, spotted what I had been sorely missing in Universe B.

“Coffee, black,” I said.

“Coffee, black,” said Felix B.

“Two coffees, black, it is,” said the proprietor.

Wordlessly agreeing that it was too cold to sit in the courtyard, where tables waited under a shady grapevine trellis, Felix and I headed to a free table by the window. As we waited for the proprietor to fulfill our order at the lone coffee machine nestled among the many tea brewers and tea bins, my eyes went to the watercolors hanging on the teahouse walls. Eating establishments in Carmel often displayed works of budding local artists. These weren’t bad.

I blew on my coffee to cool it a bit and peered at Felix over the cup. It was like looking in a mirror, only features were not reversed. Morning stubble. Pale brown freckles. Hair, thin and a nondescript brown like mine, though a good five digits longer. A hint of pudginess marked his cheeks, red from the cold morning air, and, without being able to stop myself, I put my hand to my own face to feel for any signs of cheek roundness. Our eyes met and we both looked away.

“So you drink coffee too, huh?” Felix spoke first, wiping a drop off his saucer with his finger.

“Why is it so hard to find here?”

“We overdid it—the magnus, the amplus, the double-amplus, the
triple
-amplus sizes, the vanilla, chocolate, orange, caramel, and mint flavors, the whipped cream, the frothed milk, the steamed milk, the no milk, the extra milk, the low-fat milk, the curdled milk, the decaf, the half decaf, the third decaf…It was too much. Then someone realized that tea comes in a hundred natural variations—and it’s much easier to order. Parsley, hot. Oolong, cold. But I still like the occasional coffee, especially in the mornings. I tend to have a hard time getting out of bed.”

The coffee was strong. I eyed the four small jars sitting in the middle of the table, wondering if any of them contained sugar.

Felix lifted the lid off one of the jars. “Sugar cube?”

“What’s in the other three?”

“Lemon packets, honey, milk.” He handed me a couple of the wrapped sugar cubes and took one for himself.

The man didn’t
seem
like a coldblooded killer—though if he was one then it would have been child’s play for him to feign indifference after planting a rubber rolling pin at the top of a badly lit staircase for me to trip on and fall down the stairs and break my neck. Nor would he be the first to do something of the sort. After crossings were first opened to the public thirty-some years ago, unscrupulous citizens had used the opportunity to switch places with their alters (“to see what it was like”) or, more to the point, to dispose of their alters and take over their lives. Or so the stories went. I’d always suspected they were a bit exaggerated. That was before my run of bad luck.

If Felix B, sitting across the table from me tranquilly stirring a sugar cube into his coffee, was writing a book, murder was one sure way of getting rid of the competition. (I had not once considered knocking
him
off, but perhaps he was more in touch with our dark side.) I cleared my throat. “So, Felix—can I call you that?”

“If you don’t mind if I call you Felix.”

“What kind of car do you drive—one as sleekly black as the inside of a nonstick pan?”

“The inside of a—no, my car is a two-seater the color of a squishy apricot. I don’t have it here in Carmel. Granola James and Gabriella Short drove me down.” He took off his jacket and hung it on the chair back. He was wearing a heather T-shirt underneath. I happened to be wearing one too. Deciding to keep my jacket on, I said, “The graduate students drove me down.”

“That’s right, you signed on with the other camp. Seems fitting. How are they treating you?”

“They are a good bunch. I wanted to help them out. Are we violating Regulation 7?” I suddenly remembered that the DIM official at the crossing terminal had tagged the identicard I’d just used to pay for my coffee with an
Alter in the Area
tag.

“By running into each other in front of a teahouse? Surely not.”

“You haven’t by any chance signed a form giving me permission to contact you?”

“Er—well, I was considering it.”

“So you knew I was here in Universe B.”

“DIM alerts anyone whose alter crosses.”

“And that’s how you found out I existed.”

“No, I’ve known about a month or so. Aunt Henrietta of your Universe A left me a Y-day photo, though I seem to have mislaid it. Did you get one too?”

“I did,” I said.

“And the dolphins?”

“Forty-two of them. Some of them are quite large. To be honest, I was hoping she’d left me some money,” I said in a sudden outburst of honesty.

“I could have used some extra cash too. I’ve been paying for Japanese lessons. My fiancée’s parents are visiting soon and I want to make a good impression when I meet them. Melody—my fiancée—she and I met at a kennel club—here, do you want to see a picture? She’s back at the hotel. I woke up early for some reason.” He went on, “Melody says a honeymoon to Universe A is not in our budget. But you have seen both. What do you think of mine?” he asked, suddenly seeming quite human.

For a moment my mind was blank. Traffic, laptops, suitcases with wheels, they all seemed too ordinary to mention.

“Uh—I met a girl,” I said.

“Well, well. Good for you. What’s her name?”

“Bean.”

“She’s a unique?”

I nodded. Felix was seated nearer to the door and, as the bell chimed and we turned to look at an early morning walker coming in for a beverage, I caught sight of the back of Felix’s head. The experience was like being in front of one of those 360-degree mirrors in a clothing store, only stranger.

Turning back, Felix repeated, “Well, well. An inter-universe romance. That could get tricky. Though since she’s a unique, at least she can live wherever she likes. I wish they’d leave us alone.”

“DIM?”

“Well, yes, though I meant James and Gabriella and your student researchers and their Professor Maximilian who keeps sending me requests for interviews even though I’ve told him I’ve already signed a contract with Past & Future.” He scratched his nose. “Regulation 7 aside, is it even legal for us to be talking about this? As I said, I did sign a contract.”

“I signed a contract too, with the graduate students, but I dare anyone to inform me that we’re not allowed to talk about universes. I mean, that’s—everything.”

“James said that reality is essentially a pie.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I asked him for a kitchen analogy.”

“I wish I’d thought of asking for a kitchen analogy. I’ve been told universes are like bubbles. Also like tree branches.”

“The pie crust, James said to me, is sturdy and dependable, like gravity. The apple always falls to the ground, never veers off into the clouds. Next, he said, is the pie filling—soft, fluid, comes in many flavors. It’s what life brings to reality. We build parking lots and wear ties and compete for survival. And then there is the random stuff, like lightning strikes. The raisins strewn throughout the pie.”

“I’ve never eaten a pie with raisins in it,” I said. “Ugh.”

“I’ve never
made
a pie with raisins in it. But ultimately it’s just a pie, James said—different universes, different pie flavors. And different pie flavors is where our choices and actions are landing us.”

“Bean—the girl—said that they’re looking for a small universe maker. I’m hoping they’ll find a universe-making duck.”

“I know what you mean. Really, what weighty choice could a six-month-old drooler possibly have made? And who needs the spotlight that will shine on us if it turns out to be true?”

“Then you don’t want to be the universe maker any more than I do? I just assumed, since you signed on so quickly with Past & Future—”

“I was merely going along with it. Got a trip to Carmel out of it and some spending money for Japanese lessons. They didn’t tell me about this universe-making business until we got down here, anyway. Besides, you signed on too,” he pointed out, raising an eyebrow at me.

“I did, didn’t I.”

“Thirty-five years ago we happened to be in the vicinity of Professor Singh’s lab and a photo snapped on the Golden Gate Bridge proves it. So what?” He took an irritated sip of his coffee. “How do we know that a seal or a fish swimming by—or as you say, Felix, a duck on a nearby pond—didn’t do it?
Can
wildlife create a universe?” he said, frowning (and making me wonder if I had that many lines on my forehead.)

An omni buzzed and we both reached around our necks.

“Mine,” Felix said.

“Good morning, Chef Felix,” said a familiar voice, accompanied by faint barking in the background. “Ready for a new day of research?”

“Morning, Granola James.”

“Great day, isn’t it? Murphina and I just got back from a jog. Breezy out there. You having a solitary cup of tea?”

“Something like that. Listen, what time do you need me?”

Woof,
woof.

“Murph, I’ll get you a second helping in a minute. As soon as you can, Felix. Gabriella has more questions for you.”

“All right, I’ll be there in a jiffy. By the way, can Murphina create universes?”

“You bet.”

Felix flipped his omni, a classy one that looked like it might have been a recent birthday present, shut. “Sorry, have to go. At least I get to be interviewed by Gabriella Love’s alter. Have you met her?”

I nodded. How terrible to be known as the alter, not the person. Finishing off what remained of my coffee in a single gulp, I asked, “Felix, do you have your sense of smell?”

“Yes, why do you ask? One can’t be a chef without a sense of smell.”

“You’d probably be making a lot of things in your kitchen with cheese, chocolate, and nuts in them. Cherry allergy?”

“Ah, that I have. No cherries in my kitchen.”

He swung his jacket over his shoulder and I followed him out the teahouse door and through the courtyard, taking the opportunity to study his form. His body shape was just like mine. A convex middle. The hazard of working in a kitchen, no doubt.

“What is
that
?” I said once we were back on Main Street. The fog had started to lift, leaving tenuous wisps hovering over sand dunes at the beach end of the still-deserted street. Nearby stood an abominable structure, three stories of stained, dingy cement. I had not noticed it before.

“That? Just a parking structure for beachgoers.”

I thought of Carmel’s orange grove in Universe A, the white blossoms on the trees making their appearance in spring while last year’s blood oranges still hung ripe; the fragrance of the blossoms (I’d been told) outdid the best the Pacific Ocean could produce. A favorite spot for kids during the day and for lovers after dark. The Lunch-Place Rule had promised that things in Universe B would be superior, inferior, or the same. It had been hard to see the old Golden Gate Bridge in its rightful place, an improvement over what was there in Universe A now. Coconut Café had been the same. Worse was the hardest of the three.

“I should call Gabriella and let her know I’m on my way,” said Felix, turning to go and reaching for his omni.

“Wait,” I said. “How’s the book coming along?”

His mouth dropped open and his hand froze midway to his neck. “What did you say?”

“Never mind, it’s not important.”

“How do you know about the book? I haven’t even mentioned it to anyone at work yet. Melody is the only one who’s seen it—unless someone has been checking my computer logs or rifling through my trash for discarded edits. Boy, they’re really digging into our lives, aren’t they?”

“How
is
it coming along, then?”

“Not too bad, I suppose.”

“Oh. Is it cooking-themed, by any chance?”

“Of course. And mystery-themed. Wait—” He paused and looked straight into my eyes. “You’re not writing one yourself, are you?”

“Writing? No.”

“Good. That would have been awkward.
Really
awkward.”