Regarding Ducks and Universes (2 page)

“Sorry about that, citizen. Murphina’s a—” The A-dweller glanced down for the first time and stopped. The same look that had materialized on the face of the tangerine-dress woman across the room appeared on his face.

Figures, I thought. I’d run into two people who know Felix B and I had yet to set foot in Universe B.

“She’s an almost-dog?” the math woman prodded.

“That she is,” he said, still looking at me. “What extra genes Murphina has—well, I don’t know exactly. We met at the pound a few years ago and I never bothered to get her tested. She is who she is.”

“Good for you,” the math woman said, gently continuing to scratch Murphina’s head. “Too many people are obsessed with nature and trying to get it back to its—well, its natural state.”

“You know, I’ve always thought that myself,” he concurred, letting Murphina’s leash slacken and slicking his black hair back a couple of times.

A dog (even of the almost kind) has always been a time-honored way of meeting members of the opposite sex.

I got to my feet and asked the math woman, “Would you like a chocolate bar? New samples came in at work this morning.”

“Thanks, that’d be nice.” Her stomach rumbled again.

The lanky A-dweller accompanied me to the luggage rack, where he left his suitcase and I bent down and unzipped my backpack, shooing away an expectantly sniffing Murphina. The A-dweller led the pet away and I dug out a chocolate bar, briefly wondering if there was enough dog DNA in Murphina to render chocolate toxic to her system. The fluffy, rabbit-like tail that came into view as she waddled away perhaps explained the pink eyes, the perky ears, and the chubby white torso. Or not. Speculating what creatures contributed to a pet’s DNA based on appearance only was a stab in the dark. You can’t judge a book by its cover, as the old-fashioned saying went.

There was a sudden increase in activity. Murphina and her owner settled into a seat next to the woman in the tangerine dress, who gave Murphina a cold look, and I handed the chocolate bar to the math woman and took my seat again. The crossing attendant came back for a final check of the room, then left. The chamber door closed behind him almost seamlessly and above us the lid moved into place, blocking off the skylight. Muted floor lights heightened the feeling of being packed in a metal crate.

“Any minute now,” I said, trying to reassure myself as much as the math woman, who was looking a bit worried, “any minute now and we’ll find ourselves in San Francisco B.”

“Six.”

“Six what?”

“Minutes. That’s how long it takes to go through. Don’t worry,” she added, one of her cheeks round with chocolate, “time doesn’t run within the vortex and we won’t remember a thing. Um”—she swallowed the chocolate—“um, speaking of remembering, I was wondering if—”

The light music in the seat speakers ceased. “Citizens, we have commenced the crossing procedure. Enjoy your stay in San Francisco B and make sure not to miss any of our popular destinations. Shop at Pier 39 or go to Baker Beach to ride the largest Ferris wheel in both worlds—”

I exchanged a brief look with my neighbor acknowledging the impossibility of further conversation about impending damage to my persona, leaned back in my seat, and closed my eyes. This was it. There was no turning back now. Unraveled like a sweater, the pattern of my being sucked into the vortex, re-knitted elsewhere. I hoped every single one of what Hercule Poirot liked to call “my little gray cells” (or
grey
cells, in his case) would arrive in Universe B. I would need them all. Spying on Felix B without alerting him to my presence—
and maybe even my existence
—was going to be tricky. I had found out about
him
by chance and so was here risking loss of personal detail instead of finishing up the workweek at Wagner’s Kitchen Appliances, Gadgets, and Cutlery. I was pretty sure he didn’t have a clue that I existed.

The seat speakers were still rambling on about tourist sites not to be missed and, across the room, Murphina’s owner was having a heated discussion with the woman in the tangerine dress. I tried to concentrate on something trivial so as not to lose any important thoughts, like a mind-bogglingly clever idea for a mystery story, during the unraveling, but couldn’t think of anything.

Next to me, I heard the whisper again. “Ninety-six…ninety-five…ninety-four…”

S
hapes were in my mind. I was just a shape, and an ordinary one at that.

But that wasn’t what nagged at me.

I thought of the first weeks after Y-day, all those years ago, when nobody knew yet about Professor Singh’s experiment and universes A and B had just began to branch off and change
their
shapes: a car accident here, a mudslide there, different sperm fertilizing a different egg. When the news broke, everyone had to get used to two versions of everything existing now. It must have been something. And me—well, I was just six months old then.

That wasn’t it, though.

It was a particular shape, a convex one, and I was worried about it for some reason. I wanted to lose it, but I also didn’t want someone else to have it.

I catalogued what was in my mind: wheeled suitcases, metal crates, chestnut hair, pink-eyed chubby pets, little dancing men, chocolate bars, Regulation 7—hold, go back one. That was it. Food samples, the hazard of working at Wagner’s Kitchen. Even my diminished taste buds sprang to life when a new cheese wheel or a stack of chocolate-pecan biscotti was brought in (cheese, chocolate, and nuts being foods I could always taste) and this was why my stomach seemed to have forgotten its flat state despite my daily bike commute.

Suppose it turned out that Felix B worked in an equally hazardous job and so had an equally convex stomach—would I be forced to dye my hair green or grow a goatee just to retain my sense of uniqueness?

I realized I was being ridiculous and opened my eyes to find that we had arrived.

Outside the Universe B terminal, personal vehicles—
cars
—filled the road. Bumper to bumper, their gleaming reds and greens and yellows making the street seem like a lively if noisy fruit basket, they moved not much faster than the pedestrians crowding the sidewalk around me. Buses puffed by, traffic lights alternated, a crammed cable car with passengers overflowing onto its platforms clanged closer. Above, a flier was descending on the crossing terminal roof to deposit passengers. The Friday afternoon rush hour. I’d heard about it.

There wasn’t a bicycle in sight. No people movers either.

I glanced at the sign on a nearby streetlamp. Hyde Street, it said, but this was not the Hyde Street I knew so well and biked along five times a week (ten if you counted the return trip) from the people mover station to my office at Wagner’s Kitchen. The day, however, was just as I had left it: cold, windy, and foggy, the norm for a San Francisco summer. I dug my jacket out of the backpack, in the process noticing that the few worn threads hanging off one of the backpack straps had been faithfully reproduced during the crossing. Pushing aside the unsettling thought that I was now sporting someone else’s molecules, I shook the wrinkles out of the jacket and spotted the math woman on the other side of the street. She had the striped hat back on and was standing at the curb looking around as if waiting for transportation.

Aware that a significant nook or cranny in my brain possibly
did
get wiped during the crossing, I decided to go and talk to her. Perhaps she would know where I could find a taxi, I reasoned as I headed for the crosswalk, sliding the jacket on—

“Are you prudent with your power, citizen?”

I swung around, one arm in sleeve. Popcorn-colored robes fluttered in the wind. The leader of the group was cradling a large potted sunflower in his arms. “Join us, citizen, and learn how to be prudent with your power,” he urged as he conjured up a pamphlet from under the sunflower pot and tried to put it into my hands. “We’re Passivists, citizen. We try not to disturb the universe.”

“Really? No thank you in any case.” I finished putting on my jacket and turned away. The crosswalk light was red. I decided I didn’t want to risk my life by sprinting across the busy intersection.

“Careless choices create new worlds, citizen, thoughtless actions spawn new places, a misstep might be the seed to a new universe. We’re universe makers all, yes—”

I chuckled to myself. Well, that was just ridiculous. Professor Z. Z. Singh was the universe maker, everyone knew that. He’d made a copy of the universe in his lab on Y-day and now we were stuck with connected worlds where an alter might throw a wrench into your best laid plans anytime.

“—a word hastily spoken may produce a new dawn—”

The rest of his group stood behind him and I suddenly realized what was odd about their stance. All of them, except for the fluttering robes, were standing very still.
Exceptionally
still, in fact.

“—our very breath can move cosmic mountains,” the sunflower-holder continued, his lips the only thing moving,”—our hands can erect new territory—

The light was taking an awfully long time.

“—but the power, it is dangerous, citizen, dangerous. It must be kept under control—”

A loud buzz came from around my neck. “I have to answer that,” I said. The Passivists gave me a look of disappointment and moved on. Stepping behind a streetlamp to avoid the foot traffic, I flipped open the omni and peered into it, excited to try inter-universe communications.

“Ah, Felix,” said my boss from his desk. “How’s Universe B treating you?”

“Hello, Wagner.”

“How was the crossing? Made it in one piece?”

“Seems so.”

“Speak up, Felix, I can’t hear you. What’s that noise?”

“Traffic. And some group with wacky ideas.”

“Listen, Felix, I don’t want to bother you on your well-deserved vacation,” Wagner said, clearly oblivious to the fact that he was, technically, already bothering me, “but there are a couple of
small
issues I wanted to take care of before the Pretzel Makers competition.”

“What small issues?” I asked. My boss was quite comfortable with his short stature—and got along well with everybody. Spending the weekend watching eager contestants compete in making the largest pretzel the fastest would not have been my cup of coffee. Wagner was going as a judge.

“The Spud Fryer—no one seems to know the whereabouts of the user guide. I talked to Egg, she says it should be here in my office—she and Rocky send their greetings from the Sierras, by the way—but I can’t seem to find it. We need the user guide by the end of the day,” he said, rubbing his chin, a gesture familiar to me from countless office meetings.

I looked up, giving Wagner a nice view of
my
chin, and took a moment. The last thing I’d done before leaving for the crossing terminal was to put the final touches on the user guide for the new Spud Fryer, a countertop potato-peeler-slicer-cooker model available in seven colors and two sizes, then sent messages about it to Wagner and to the company staff, Egg and Rocky. (Even from the Sierras, Eggie and Rocky were really in charge of running the day-to-day operations of the company.) “The user guide should be on your desk. I put it there this morning before I left,” I said to Wagner.

He lifted a fruit juicer off his desk and checked underneath. “You were at work today?”

“Half a day.”

“A customer came by wanting to talk to you, must have just missed you.”

“Huh,” I said. Customers rarely requested to meet with me, a lowly writer of user guides as well as the occasional ad.

Wagner had put the juicer down and was now rummaging through a box of discarded stuff. “Hmmm…don’t see it…I wish we were allowed to make dozens of copies of these things. Sometimes I think we go overboard on security. What color is it?”

“Golden. And you know as well as I do that we’re merely complying with Regulation 10.”

“A fryer of potatoes hardly constitutes an item that needs to be kept under wraps. Golden, you say. Oh, for french fries, I see.” Wagner’s chest, or possibly his stomach, must have covered the omni as he searched, because all I could see was his shirt, peach-colored and probably an expensive Peruvian import. It occurred to me that Wagner must have an alter, unlike Egg and Rocky, my young and carefree coworkers (who, like many uniques, had nature names). For a second I thought about asking Wagner what his alter was like, then decided against it.

Wagner’s face reappeared on the screen. “Found it.” He waved the disk at me. “I’ll take a look at the user guide and dispatch it with the fryer. Now go enjoy your vacation.”

“Wait—what’s the small issue number two?”

“Oh, that—I was thinking, while you’re there, you could pick up some sourdough bread starter for the new bread maker. The good kind. Our sourdough bread here—”

“Is lousy, I know.”

“I have a contact that might be willing to share for a price. When I know more, I’ll be in touch with the details.”

“Well, all right then.”

I let the omni fall back around my neck, zipped up my jacket, and stepped out from behind the streetlamp. Wagner liked to keep his employees busy, even on vacation, but I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to go out of my way to break Regulation 10 (workplace information), especially since I was already well on my way to running afoul of Regulation 7 (alter privacy).

Having made a mad dash across the intersection, which wasn’t particularly pedestrian-friendly even with the walk light green, I ground to a stop next to the math woman, who was talking animatedly on her omni, a cumbersome, older-looking model.

“—Arni, I don’t know—I didn’t see him—the terminal was very crowded—”

I thought the polite thing to do would be to stand by while she finished her conversation.

“—yes, I know—no, I
didn’t
find out—” She saw me and stopped in mid-sentence, mouth open. “Arni, I’ll call you back.” She flipped the clunky omni shut.

“I guess we survived the crossing after all,” I said by way of a greeting. “Sorry to interrupt your call.”

“Not at all.” She grinned. “Was worried there for a second, didn’t see you outside the crossing chamber.”

“That would have made the news, wouldn’t it? Traveler lost during the Friday afternoon San Francisco-to-San Francisco crossing. Scrambled into a hideous piece of luggage with no handles and no wheels. No, I was, uh…delayed. Had to use the restroom,” I blurted out, unable to come up with a more socially acceptable excuse on the spur of the moment. In reality, I had been directed to a separate line for those with alters in town. I didn’t want to admit it to her, however. Nothing wrong with having an alter. It was just that it made me seem—well, not young. Someone turning thirty-five was middle-aged, almost. The line had culminated in front of a morose DIM official who heard me say I was a tourist, added an
Alter in the Area
tag to my identicard, and warned, “Your entry permit expires Saturday afternoon. You have a week and a day. Don’t try to make contact with Citizen Felix Sayers B. Regulation 7.”

We made room for the Passivists to walk by—having crossed the street, they seemed determined not to break stride or veer from their straight path—and she murmured, “People make fun of Passivists, but they have the right idea, really, though
universe maker
is a misleading term. It implies intent.” She pulled out a thin copper-colored shawl from her bag, absentmindedly plucked off a piece of paper stuck to it, then wrapped the shawl around her shoulders and tied a large knot in the front. “Cold today. Do you think they exist?”

“Who?”

“Many universes, like the Passivists claim.” She checked the street again at the clang of an approaching cable car.

“I hope not. Two is enough for me.”

“Why do cable cars always show up in the opposite direction of the one you want? I’m better off walking home to get my car and driving.” She added, “To the Bihistory Institute. I’m carrying some Universe A data that needs to be inputted.”

It was a little odd for her to be revealing workplace details to a perfect stranger, but I had noticed that uniques (of which I used to be one) tended to be less concerned about privacy. Though I had only a vague idea what bihistory was (documenting differences big and small between our two universes, that sort of thing), I said, “Bihistory? That sounds interesting.”

“It is, on occasion. Speaking of which—”

We parted to allow a pair of avocado-uniformed DIM officials through. They were headed toward the Passivists, who had formed a circle around an unsuspecting tourist. One of the DIMs gave me a long stare as they passed, making me nervous that it was somehow obvious that I was here to ignore Regulation 7 and spy on my alter.

“You were saying?” I turned back in a show of nonchalance, but the math woman’s gaze was focused over my shoulder. Behind me I could hear the Passivists attempting to give pamphlets to the DIM officials and regulations being quoted. She pulled her shawl closer around her body. “I’d better go.”

“Oh, okay,” I said.

“Thanks for the chocolate,” she said and turned away.

“Wait, I don’t think you mentioned your name—?”

I thought I heard her say, “Bean,” as she hurried toward the intersection where the cable car tracks turned from Hyde Street onto an uphill lane. She rounded the corner and disappeared from view.