Regarding Ducks and Universes (20 page)

“But you want to write mysteries also,” she said, her eyes on the road, sounding puzzled.

“Why not?”

“It seems, with all due respect, a completely different thing.”

“You said,” I raised an eyebrow, “that there are twenty-seven occupational niches in which a person could be happily employed. Maybe Wagner’s Kitchen was the first and novel-writing would be the second.”

“Touché.”

“Besides, I have a feeling that food and cooking will creep into it one way or another. Not recipes, I don’t like it when novels contain gimmicks like songs or video every other page. Perhaps a culinary competition as the setting and a broiling pan or nutcracker as a murder weapon.”

There was a sudden loud noise.

“Relax, Felix. It’s just the Beetle backfiring.”

I let go of the dashboard. I had briefly forgotten about Felix B—and
his
book. Shading my eyes from the bright sun, I dug out my sunglasses. “Honestly, this San Francisco weather, it’s either wet and too cold, or it’s dry and too hot. There’s never a happy mean.”

“You seem different,” Bean commented, glancing over at me. She changed lanes, taking us out of the Presidio toward Pier 39.

The Quake-n-Shake Restaurant occupied a coveted spot near the water end of Pier 39 and had an entrance flanked by two tourist shops, one selling sweets and the other T-shirts saying, “I’ve been to the ORIGINAL Golden Gate Bridge.” A familiar creature sat outside the windows of the sweet shop, breathing heavily and drooling down one side of her jaw. At the other end of a taut leash was Gabriella Short. Murphina saw us first and, temporarily forgetting about forbidden delicacies, pulled Gabriella in our direction, making her stagger.

“Where’s James, sweetie?” Bean bent down to rub Murphina’s pale head and I edged away just in case Murph was still carrying remnants of the pet bug.

Gabriella, having recovered, tugged on the leash without much luck, the hefty creature outweighing her by a significant amount. She answered coldly, “James is inside getting her a treat.”

Murphina wagged her fluffy stump at the word.

“Not chocolate, I hope,” I said pleasantly. Gabriella’s ice-white hair, arranged in a gravity-defying knot on one side of her head, was the exact shade of Murphina’s coat. It was uncanny.

“They sell pet-safe treats, I’m sure.”

“Have you been inside?” Bean gestured toward the Shake-n-Quake.

“Why James and I are here, and whom we may or may not be interviewing, is confidential information. By the way”—this was addressed to me—“I should mention that
we
don’t make our clients do legwork.”

“Never?” Bean said evenly, still stroking Murphina’s head.

“I don’t mind being here,” I said hurriedly. “I’m on vacation. I’m getting to see the city—”

“Occasionally,” Gabriella went on, continuing to tug on Murphina’s leash, but the almost-dog would not budge, “
very
occasionally, a client’s help is needed—to get into Monroe’s house, for example—Monroe insisted—”

There was a sudden shriek, making us all start.

“I’m not her,” Gabriella snapped. “Go away.”

Murphina growled and a disappointed movie fan slinked away.

James came out of the sweet shop carrying a small lumpy bag. He acknowledged us with a friendly nod. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said as Murphina, tail wagging, received her bone-shaped treat.

“Great minds think alike, or at least follow the same research leads,” Bean said. She went on with barely a pause for breath, “What happens if Past & Future finds the universe maker first?”

James gave Murph another treat, which she wolfed down in a single gulp. “Chew, Murph, don’t forget to chew. That’s the question, isn’t it? Patent the idea, if we can get permission from DIM. Make the Felixes famous. After that, it’s up to the marketing department. I’m sure they’ll think of ways to make myriads of money off the whole thing.”

Bean snickered at the candid statement.

“They are good at making money,” James confided.

“And we’re not,” Bean said. “We merely want to figure things out and write up the results, then move on to the next problem.”

“But why is that?” said James. “Nothing wrong with making money. Comes in handy.”

“I suppose it does. And we do like fame. The science team that found the universe maker. Sounds nice—Nobel Prize nice—doesn’t it? Sadly, not even in the old days, before DIM’s Council of Science Safety dispensed with them, did students get Nobel Prizes. Take astronomer Jocelyn Bell and her discovery of pulsars, or geneticist Fabrizio Minnelli and his invention of giant squirrels while in graduate school—”

“Are we going into the restaurant, Bean?” I said, feeling left out of the conversation.

“Of course,” Bean recollected herself. “Interviews to be done.”

“We’ll wait out here until you’re finished inside,” James said graciously. He stumbled back a bit as Murphina pressed in on him, mooching for another of the bone-shaped treats.

“Citizen Sayers,” Gabriella sent a final remark in my direction, relinquishing the leash to James, “don’t forget that Past & Future would be happy to take you on as a client if you decide to nullify your contract with the graduate students. Feel free to contact James or me at any—”

Bean pulled me into the restaurant.

“N
ow if only you’d asked me thirty-five years ago, I might have been able to help you. You’re a little late,” said Gretchen A, a sturdy, forthright, broad-shouldered woman who gave me a friendly nod acknowledging my A-ness. “Why didn’t you people come by earlier?”

“We didn’t know then,” Bean said, raising her voice to make herself heard above the din of the dining area.

Gretchen A indicated the kitchen with her head. “Gretchen is in the back, if you want to talk to her, but to be honest with you, I don’t think she’ll remember your Y-day customers any more than I do—even if we were allowed to give out customer information. Who are you people anyway?”

“I’m Bean Bartholomew, a graduate student at the Bihistory Institute.” Bean pulled out her identicard and showed it to Gretchen A. “Citizen Felix Sayers here has asked us to research his life story. He wants to know why his alter became a chef and he didn’t.” She paused, then moved closer to the hostess station and lowered her voice. “Gretchen—may I call you that?—if you don’t mind, take your memory back to Y-day. It was a Monday in early January, a chilly day under a partly cloudy sky. Back then, like now, the Quake-n-Shake was a popular tourist spot and operated at full capacity throughout much of the day. On that particular Monday the electricity flickered just before noon and went off for a moment. Some time later Felix’s family came in for lunch. This couple with a baby.”

Gretchen A shook her head at the photo Bean was holding out. “Dears, I wish I could help you. Look around.”

It was just after two o’clock and the Quake-n-Shake, as Bean said, was operating at full capacity. The restaurant clearly catered to families; many of the tables included small humans of assorted lung capacity and throwing ability. Harried waitresses balanced large trays between closely placed tables on their way to and from the kitchen. I wondered what kind of behavior might have made me a memorable customer.

“So that’s you in the photo,” Gretchen A said to me and gave her head another lively shake. “I’ll tell you what I remember most about Y-day—not a thing! It was just an ordinary day. We didn’t know that Professor Singh had made a copy of the universe, not until months later. Then they said it was the day we had the blackout, but we used to have them so often. Never lasted long, a couple of minutes maybe—but they always came at the most inconvenient time, like right in the middle of the lunch hour rush! And the inflation, let me tell you, was something fierce. We gave up on having printed menus and put up a board with prices in chalk. Every day, just before we opened, I’d erase yesterday’s prices and write in new ones. Those were strange times.” She sighed and handed the photo, the eucalyptus one of my parents and me, back to Bean.

Bean put the photo back in her bag, seeming at a loss for a moment.

“What about the time difference?” I nudged her. The Universe A receipts having started to come in, we’d found out that the Quake-n-Shake bill signed by my mother—lunch buffet for two adults, applesauce for one child—had an earlier time on it than the one signed by Felix’s mother. Twenty minutes.

“Time difference, right,” Bean pulled herself together. “Gretchen, what would have caused a discrepancy between a Universe A bill and a Universe B bill? Remember, this would have been shortly after the yabput—”

“The what, dear?”

“Shortly after Professor Singh made a copy of the universe,” Bean said, wincing at the inaccurate description. “A twenty-minute difference in the lunch bills paid by Klara Sayers A and Klara Sayers B.”

“Back than customers paid in advance, when they came in. Seems kind of embarrassing now, but times were hard. So, twenty-minute difference in lunch bills—one party arrived earlier than the other.” Gretchen A picked up several menus and crayon boxes and left her post to seat a family that had just walked in. As we waited for her to return, Bean leaned over to me and whispered, “I wish Arni were here, he’s better at this. He told me to start with ‘Take your memory back to Y-day…’ and to remember to be polite.”

Gretchen came back and said, “Anything else you wanted to know, dears?”

“So people paid when they came in,” said Bean, who seemed to have perked up a bit. “That’s interesting. One final question, Gretchen. A young woman with a stain on her blouse came in, also around lunchtime—”

“Was that Y-day? Oh, I’ve always wondered what happened to her.” Gretchen A clasped a hand to her chest. “Almost in tears, poor thing, on her way to a job interview. She wanted to use the bathroom to wash off the stain on her blouse. Wasn’t successful, for as I could have told her, you can’t just dab pomegranate juice off. I’ve always wondered what happened to her and if she got the job.”

“She didn’t. Not in Universe A,” Bean said.

It was an example of how unalike personal outcomes could be. Olivia May Novak Irving of Universe B, the research benefactress to whose house Arni had gone, had led a life of success, retiring well off after a career of working as an idea developer. Olivia May of Universe A, on the other hand, had not only
not
gotten wealthy working as an idea developer, she’d never even been heard of in the idea development industry. No one knew why. Bean had said that Olivia May A was last seen by an acquaintance walking into the Quake-n-Shake on Y-day with spilled juice on her shirt.

“You
do
remember her?” Bean said. “Would you mind not mentioning that to anyone else unless specifically asked? Others will be coming in to ask questions about Y-day. In fact, we’d appreciate it if you denied remembering anything about Felix here at all.”

“I
don’t
remember anything about him. So the pomegranate lady didn’t get the job and her alter did?” Gretchen sighed in sympathy. “I never like to hear that. That was Y-day, you say? It wasn’t right, you know, for Professor Singh to make a copy of the universe like that without asking anyone. The government put a stop to all that, but look what a mess it’s left! Luckily Gretchen and I get along like two chestnuts in a roaster.” (Instead of retiring, Bean had said, Gretchen A and Gretchen B had tossed a coin, sold one of the Quake-n-Shakes, and joined forces in running the Universe B restaurant. Seemed fair.)

A sudden low rumble quieted all conversation in the dining room. The rumble lingered, then rolled out and dissipated to the tinkling sound of glasses and dinnerware.

Gretchen A sent a calm look over her dining room. “A four-pointer, maybe five?” She bent down to pick up the boxes of crayons that had slipped off the hostess table and I disentangled myself from where I had been crouching under a bar stool. Bean, lending Gretchen a hand with the crayon boxes, asked, “The young woman with the pomegranate juice stain, did she stay for lunch?”

“I don’t think so, dears, just went into the bathroom for a few minutes. Last I saw, she was heading out the door, her shirt wet and stained purple.”

Gretchen B didn’t remember anything of import either. She mentioned the blackout, denied ever seeing me before in her life, and reminisced fondly of the old days as she stood next to Gretchen A, the identical hostess dresses making them seem like giggly twin girls dressed alike by an indulgent mother.

“Good luck, dears,” the Gretchens called out as we headed out of their restaurant.

The doors of the Quake-n-Shake swung shut behind us, Gabriella, James, and Murphina having gone in to talk to the Gretchens. “Maybe Arni will have more luck,” I said to Bean. “There’s a chance Olivia what’s-her-name remembers seeing me when she came in the restaurant.”

“Olivia May Novak Irving,” Bean supplied. “Wrong universe. Arni is at the house of Olivia May B, who
didn’t
spill her pomegranate juice, never went into the Quake-n-Shake, and got to her job interview just fine and became rich.”

“I don’t know how you keep this stuff straight in your head, A-this, B-that.”

“We could suggest a change from A and B to the Lost Duck Universe and the Happy Baby Universe. Think it’d catch on?”

I pointed to the specialty store whose doors neighbored those of the Quake-n-Shake. “I’ve been looking for one of these.”

We found a bench free of tourists and bird droppings. “You know,” I confided to Bean, offering her a seal-shaped chocolate and unwrapping one myself, “Pier 39 is exactly the same here as it is in Universe A. The tourists, the street performers, the ice cream parlors, the big-bellied sea lions yapping and barking at each other in the marina, the white-and-blue boats, the shops selling factory-made seashells…I’m having trouble processing it all. Being here and not
there
, it being so similar, if you see what I mean. I keep forgetting where I am.” I broke the head off the chocolate seal. It was hollow.

“I feel we’re getting somewhere,” Bean said, mouth full. “Your family arrived at the Quake-n-Shake early. By a full twenty minutes—in time to interact with Olivia May A.”

“Maybe there was a reason my parents left the bridge early, only we haven’t discovered it yet.” The chocolate was tourist-quality, more sugar than cocoa. I could barely taste it.

“Perhaps they simply cut the walk short because you were crabby.”

“Or maybe Felix B got carsick on the way from the bridge to Pier 39 and
his
parents had to stop the car to clean him up and it took twenty minutes.”

“That would read well in a research paper.” She took my chocolate wrapper and crinkled it with hers, then leaned across the bench and dropped them into a trashcan.

“Let’s give Arni a call and see if he has any news.”

We reached Arni outside the Nob Hill residence of the benefactress and bihistory aficionado, Olivia May B. Arni listened to what we had to say, told us he was heading back to the Bihistory Institute to tackle the task of analyzing incoming Universe A receipts with Pak, watched me hand Bean another chocolate-shaped seal, and then disconnected after commenting, “You two
do
realize that universes with no chocolate in them must exist?”

Bean and I spent the afternoon timing driving routes from the Golden Gate Bridge parking lot to the Quake-n-Shake Restaurant, which yielded little useful information as far as I could tell, only more wear and tear on Bean’s Volkswagen Beetle and an unusual experience for me called filling up the tank. A few of the routes took us through the main part of the Presidio campus, within viewing distance of the Bihistory Institute, others by the winding and scenic seaside roads. They all took about the same amount of driving time, mainly because the direct routes were more congested. No matter how narrow the street or heavy the traffic, Bean drove as fast as possible, carrying on a conversation all the while. She wasn’t alone. Cars zipped along all around us like unusually fast and focused sheep determined on getting back to their meadow a microsecond early.

“Bean,” I whispered urgently at one point.

“What’s the matter?”

“I think someone is following us. Look how close that car is.” I had been following it in the little mirror on my side of the car.

She glanced up at the back-view mirror above the dashboard. “It’s just a tailgater. Why are you so jumpy?”

“No reason.”

“Not to make you more nervous or anything, but objects viewed in the right side mirror are actually closer than they appear to be. Like the back of a spoon, the mirror gives a wider view, but cars look smaller and farther back then they really are. Don’t worry. The car behind us will stop if there is a red light.”

I turned my neck to look at the car behind us as the Beetle shook bravely as we navigated an uneven street. The driver was a little old lady whose head barely reached over the steering wheel. She honked to get us moving faster.

Bean put her foot on the gas, saw me grip the dashboard, and commented, “Cars are handy. How would we perform our timing experiment in a people mover?”

“With difficulty,” I admitted as Bean pulled into the Golden Gate Bridge parking lot and jolted to a stop. “This one will require walking.” She got out and fetched a ticket from the self-service machine and a straw hat from the car trunk. She stuck the ticket inside the front window and the hat on her head. “According to the parking receipt we got off the Bitmaster, your parents parked here at eleven fifteen on Y-day.”