Falling Sideways (35 page)

He stopped. There were so many things he wanted to write next, things that she wonderfully was, as opposed to all the things she mercifully wasn't, but if he allowed himself to write them, he'd be crossing the line, from self-defence into interference and manipulation. Sneak in, do just enough to keep from being shoved into the elevator, sneak out again. No more; not even a doodle of a heart with an arrow through it, right up in the top left-hand corner.

‘Oh,' she said; and this time, he felt confident, she meant it. ‘I see,' she added.

He stared at her for two seconds. ‘Good,' he said.

‘Except,' she added, ‘there's just one thing. If I'm not his daughter – and I can see now, I couldn't possibly be his daughter, absolutely no way; but why do I keep
thinking
I'm his daughter, and that we came to this planet yonks ago to rip off the natives? It's such a strange thing to believe, if you see what I mean.'

David nodded. ‘All right,' he said, ‘let's do a test. Think back. Can you remember what it was like when you were a kid?'

She frowned. ‘'Course not,' she said. ‘I wasn't a kid, ever. I was born in a glass tank full of mutant tarka dall a couple of days ago, and before that I was a single strand of some dead person's hair.'

‘Yes, but—' He slowed himself down. ‘But you've got some memories, haven't you, carried over in the hair's DNA—'

‘Does Not Apply?'

‘You know. The gene stuff.'

‘Denim? I carry other people's memories around in my trousers?'

‘In the hair's genetic matrix,' he said severely. ‘You said so yourself. Only some of them got a bit scrambled—'

‘Because you couldn't be bothered to set the jumpers when you cloned me. I can remember
that
bit all right.'

‘I'm sure you can.' He scowled at her; she stuck her tongue out at him. It was that gesture that reminded him: a small boy dragged unwillingly to an art gallery on his birthday, a painting that had caught his eye, a trick of his imagination. ‘Do you have any childhood memories?' he said.

‘No.'

‘Now we're getting somewhere. What's the earliest thing you can actually remember?'

‘Tricky.' She furrowed her brow thoughtfully. ‘Waking up in a tank full of goo, I think.'

That took David a little by surprise. ‘Are you sure?'

‘No, I'm lying. Of course I'm sure, you idiot.'

‘Oh. But all the other stuff; about coming to this planet and—'

‘It's all stuff I just seem to know,' she replied, in a distinctly thoughtful voice. ‘In the same way as I know that John Whatsisname isn't my father. Only, before I knew that I knew for a fact that he was. That's – odd,' she concluded. ‘Isn't it?'

But David was way ahead of her; he was back inside her mind, beside the plain white wall, and this time he knew what to look for. Didn't take him long; it was scrawled in green chalk down in the bottom left-hand corner:

– and under that, in smaller letters,

What the hell? he thought; but there wasn't time to hang about there, so he jumped out again. He was just wondering how on earth he was supposed to explain about frogs and telepathy when she smacked him hard across the face.

‘Ouch,' he said, not unreasonably.

‘Bastard!' she explained, kicking him on the left shin. He did what any well-brought-up young man would do in the circumstances, and fell over.

‘Bastard!' she pointed out, kicking him on the right shoulder where he lay. ‘That's for sneaking about inside my mind, you horrible creep!'

He looked up at her in amazement. ‘But how did you—?'

‘You told me. Just now. While you were in my head.' Her foot lashed out again, but this time he managed to wriggle out of the way. ‘At least, you didn't mean to tell me, but you're so damn' noisy I couldn't help overhearing. You're a telepath, and you've been putting stuff into my mind. Like the stuff about Daddy not being—'

‘Yes, but Daddy isn't. I mean,' he added, by now anticipating the speed and direction of her foot and taking the necessary evasive action, ‘Honest John's a telepath, too, and he put the stuff about you being his daughter into your head. But it's not true.'

‘Why should I believe you?'

‘I don't know,' David admitted. ‘It's just true, that's—' He stopped short, suddenly realising that he'd instinctively nipped back inside her mind. This time, however, in front of the wall there was a large, angry-looking Dobermann on a long, flimsy-looking chain. He left, very quickly.

‘You don't like dogs, either,' she said smugly. ‘So I imagined one. Just one, because really I'm just an old softie. Next time, it'll be like Crufts in Hell.'

‘Yes, all right,' he said, cringing. ‘And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that, it just sort of happened.'

‘Well, it had bloody well better not just-sort-of-happen again.' She looked at him for a while, with anger and something else burning in her eyes. ‘But I believe you,' she said.

That surprised him more than anything else. ‘You do?'

She nodded. ‘What you said about no childhood memories and everything,' she replied. ‘It makes more sense than the alternatives. Which means,' she added, as much to herself as to him, ‘that this John person's been playing games with me. With both of us, I guess.'

‘That's right,' David said. ‘You know, I think it's been him all along. Just him,' he added grimly.

‘Just him all along what?'

He stood up. ‘Come on,' he said, ‘let's go and ask him.'

‘Ask him what, for crying out loud?'

But – surprise, surprise – John wasn't there. No sign of him in the workshop, outside the workshop or in the street. ‘He's gone,' David said.

‘Good Lord, I wonder why,' she said. ‘Really, you'd almost think he knew we were going to come looking for him with a view to kicking his head in. Like he's – oh, telepathic, or something.'

‘And the van's gone, too.'

‘I don't think the van's telepathic as well. More likely, he got into it and drove it away. There, how's that for an imaginative hypothesis?'

He turned round and scowled at her. ‘And another thing,' he said. ‘Will you please stop taking the mickey out of me all the time? It's starting to get on my nerves. She looked a little uncomfortable. ‘Well,' she grumbled, ‘at least you've got nerves to get on. More than I have, thanks to someone not a million billion light years away, who forgot to—'

‘Yes, all right.' His scowl deepened. ‘All right,' he said, ‘you were an accident. No, worse than that, you were a mistake. An error of judgement, even. So are thousands and thousands of people. The only difference is, the way you were born.'

‘But I wasn't,' she said. ‘Born, I mean. Instead I came out of a tank of green glop, like Botticelli with mushy peas. And that—'

‘That,' he interrupted, ‘doesn't matter at all. You know your trouble? You think of yourself as a clone instead of a person. Which means you can't take yourself seriously, even when you want to.'

‘What do you expect?' she snapped at him, with a catch in her voice. ‘I'm not a human being, I'm a hi-tech sock puppet. I'm only here because you wanted to make some silly gesture.'

The last dribble of his patience leaked away and evaporated. ‘Fine,' he growled. ‘You're a puppet, so bloody what? You think you've got problems? I'm not even semi-human, I'm a
frog
. You can't possibly begin to understand – what the hell are you laughing at?'

She pressed her lips together tightly, but it didn't help. She giggled again. ‘You,' she said.

‘Me?'

‘Yes, you. You just said you're a—'

‘Frog.' He folded his arms. ‘Come on, then,' he said. ‘Frog jokes, let's get them over with. All right, then, I'll start. Waiter, have you got frogs' legs? No, monsieur, I always walk like this. There was an Englishman, a Lithuanian and a frog, and the Lithuanian said—'

She was laughing even more, though presumably not at the joke. (Defective memory, yes; feeble-minded, no.) ‘I wasn't laughing about that,' she said, ‘it was something else.'

‘Was it really? Such as?'

‘I was just wondering,' she told him, ‘if you're really a frog, what'd happen when I did this.' And she kissed him.

It wasn't one of your great kisses. Hardly surprising, when you think about it, since all she knew about the subject was what had filtered through from the residual memories of a four-hundred-year-old strand of hair. But as far as David was concerned, it was good enough for jazz.

‘And now, you see,' she was saying, grinning like an idiot, ‘you're supposed to turn into something. You know, like in the fairy story?'

He looked at her. ‘You're strange,' he said, ‘did you know that?'

She shrugged. ‘Hardly surprising, really,' she said. ‘So what did the Lithuanian say?'

‘What?'

‘You said there was an Englishman, a Lithuanian and a frog, and the Lithuanian was about to say something. So what was it?'

‘I can't remember,' David admitted. ‘You still haven't told me why you did that.'

She grinned. ‘To shut you up, primarily,' she said. ‘You talk an awful lot, you know, and you were starting to get all stuffy and boring. And because you said you're a frog. Gives us something in common, you see.'

That one jumped right out at him like a stepped-on rake lurking in the grass. ‘It what?'

‘Oh, come on,' she said scornfully. ‘That green goo in the cloning tanks. You do know what it is, don't you?'

‘Well,' he admitted, ‘no.'

‘You idiot,' she said fondly – yes, genuine affection there, though he was almost too preoccupied to notice. ‘It's frogspawn.'

It was one of those infuriating moments when everything feels like it ought to make sense, but it doesn't, quite. ‘Frogspawn,' he said.

‘Yes, you know. Where baby frogs come from. Or were you under the impression that the stork brings them? Because if that's what you were thinking, I've got to tell you, that's
not
the reason why storks are so unpopular among the frog community—'

He frowned, having noticed something unusual. ‘You're babbling,' he said.

‘I am not.'

‘Yes, you are. All this stuff about frogs and storks. People only babble when they're embarrassed about something. What are you—?'

‘Three guesses,' she snapped irritably, and kissed him again. ‘Although,' she went on, disentangling herself, ‘why I'm doing this, I really haven't got a clue. I guess I must like you or something.'

‘It'd certainly fit the available data.'

‘Maybe,' she replied, ‘but it's pretty unlikely, all the same. I mean, look at you.'

‘I'd rather not,' David replied, looking at her instead.

She scowled at him. ‘Look,' she said, ‘we've got to be sensible about this. Because, you see, chances are we're only feeling this strange, inexplicable mutual attraction because somebody's manipulated us into it, the same way they've been manipulating us both all along.'

‘Good for them,' David replied. ‘I definitely prefer this kind of being manipulated to the getting-framed-for-murder sort. And on balance I'd say it's probably got the edge over the being-held-hostage-by-deranged-clones variety as well.'

‘Yes, but it's still not
right
.' Her scowl deepened, and she turned away. ‘We can't let them get away with it, you know.'

‘Really? I mean, after they've been to all this trouble.' He took a step closer; she stayed where she was. ‘And for all we know, maybe the whole point behind all the being manipulated was to bring us together. In which case—'

‘No,' she said firmly, ‘not until we've sorted this out. Sorry, but it's really starting to bug me.'

Oh, for crying out loud, David thought. But what he said was, ‘Right. In that case, let's start by finding Honest John.'

‘I suppose so,' she said. She didn't seem keen. ‘Did he say where he was going?'

‘No.'

‘Well, that pretty well blows that idea out of the water, then. Unless you were thinking of roaming around the streets of wherever this is on the off chance of catching sight of him.'

I love you with all my heart, he thought, but at times you can be so annoying . . . ‘All right, then,' he said, ‘so what do you suggest?'

‘I don't know, do I?' She clicked her tongue. ‘You're the one who wants to go charging off on a quest. That's typical male behaviour, that is, always trying to find solutions to things, like the whole of life's some kind of intelligence test. I suppose that's why men are so difficult to talk to.'

He decided he didn't want to go anywhere near that one. Instead: ‘How do you know it's frogspawn?' he asked.

‘Frogspawn?'

‘In the tanks.'

She shot him a look you could've made yoghurt with. ‘Here's me,' she said, ‘practically throwing myself at you, and all you want to talk about is bloody frogspawn. Oh, thank you very much.'

He froze. ‘I'm very sorry,' he said.

‘Well, don't be,' she snapped. ‘I don't want you to be
sorry
, that isn't going to help. I want to know what's going on.'

‘Maybe we could help.'

Both of them spun round like the
Position Open
notice on a post office counter, just as you finally grind your way to the front of the queue. Standing in the doorway was someone who looked exactly like Honest John. Behind him, they could just see a whole lot of other people who looked identical, apart from a few very minor variations in shoe type.