Regarding Ducks and Universes (31 page)

“I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had I
not
spotted your detective agency across the street from the bus depot or if there had been a tour bus leaving immediately. And what if Aunt Hen’s gardener had planted clover instead of cacti—or if Gabriella had been a better shot—or if Dorothy Sayers had written a thinner book than the 331 pages that make up
The Nine Tailors
—”

“Never mind all that. Thinking like that only leads to a state of inaction.”

“The loop,” said Bean. “What does your alter do, Detective Noor? You seem like a good person to have on our side.”

“She started out as a detective and ended up as a DIM agent. What can you do. I’ll send you a bill, Felix,” she added and roared away.

“S
o you’ve started it, then,” Bean said, unwrapping a burrito from its tinfoil package. She had driven to the crossing terminal so speedily that we had time for a quick stop at the Crossing Cantina.

“I’ve written Chapter One.” I felt strangely calm and confident saying it. I hoped the confidence would linger a day or two. “I’m going to try to write the whole thing in words only,” I said, unwrapping a burrito myself.

“Can I read Chapter One?”

“It’s not done. I mean, it’s done, but it’s not ready for reading, not yet.”

“You’d think you’d have gone off mysteries after being—”

“—the victim of repeated murder attempts by a vengeful would-be actress who considers me responsible for her life
not
taking the path it otherwise might have?”

“Well, yes.”

“Luckily I started writing before I found out I was being stalked by a vengeful would-be actress, et cetera. The whole business with Gabriella simply doesn’t seem real. I think I prefer to treat it as if it never happened. Unhealthy, perhaps, but so what?” I popped a corn chip into my mouth and started crunching away. “Besides, in a proper mystery there’s
always
a murder. Attempts—even five of them—do not count.”

“I’m glad Gabriella’s murder attempts were unsuccessful.”

“Me too. Quite relieved actually.”

“When a close call like that happens and everything turns out all right, I end up feeling bad anyway and thinking of the Beans in all the other universes where the outcomes weren’t so good. Can you pass me a napkin?”

“You feel bad for
you
in the universes where Gabriella succeeded?”

“You know what I mean.” She hesitated, napkin in hand. “Er—Felix, I’ve been meaning to apologize for saying you were responsible for paper books being gone from Universe A. It was the link that allowed the omni to be imported from Universe B, so it’s Professor Singh’s responsibility as much as anybody’s. Like Arni said, had events been allowed to run their course, the omni wouldn’t have been invented in Universe A, or at least not for who knows how long.”

“I’ll forget all about it if you come up with a good pseudonym for me. I’m going to need one. To avoid any potential confusion with Felix’s cookbook, should it hit bi-universe status and become a runaway bestseller that everyone buys for their partner on Valentine’s Day.” Also, my recent experience had caused me to become acutely aware of the advantages of anonymity.

“Like Mark Twain?”

“Or Mary Westmacott,” I offered.

“Who’s she?”

“Agatha Christie writing romance novels.”

“Mark Twain chose a pen name from his steamboat days—a call of river depth on the Mississippi—so maybe you can find a phrase from the culinary world.”

“Red Saffron? Serrano Pepper?” I caught sight of the saltshaker sitting next to the bowl of guacamole. “Sal Del Mar?”

“All of those sound like you’re the child of Passivist parents who picked the name by sticking a pin into a list. I can see that the issue will require some thought.” She was watching a group of Passivists shuffle by us on their steady trek through the terminal. I wondered how soon Professor Maximilian’s network of questions and answers would reach people going about their lives, and how long it would take to prove that Passivists weren’t, in fact, nuts but correct in their basic idea. Something occurred to me. “I’m thankful that I got to see Aunt Henrietta again—come back from the dead, so to speak. And if she dies here anytime soon, there’s always the possibility that I could visit her in some third universe, isn’t there?”

“Visit your favorite relatives in universes where they haven’t died yet, that sort of thing? It might catch on. There might even be a universe in which people have figured out how to live forever.”

I offered her more of the guacamole, then scooped up the last bit with a chip. “This whole alphabet soup business, lives A to Z in universes A to Z—does it matter what we do, if our most carefully thought-out actions are on par with the rolling rock and all outcomes occur
somewhere
anyway?”

“Wouldn’t you rather live in a world where you did the right thing,” she said, efficiently crumpling up her burrito wrapper, “than in one where you were a jerk and didn’t stop for pedestrians?”

Even a bicycle rider like me knew what she meant. I took quick stock of my trip to Universe B. I was leaving with a jar and a measly couple of pages of a novel in my backpack, owing my life to my alter, lacking a wheeled suitcase, and Bean—well, Bean did not like crossings.

“Listen,” I began, “I might have misled everyone when I said I don’t have anything from my parents. There are a couple of boxes at the bottom of my hallway closet, one box with paintings and another that their lawyer gave to me after their deaths. Letters, photos, stuff like that. I’ve been meaning to look through it ever since I found out about my real age. I don’t know if there’s anything of interest there or if you even need anything more now that you have Olivia May’s and Meriwether’s story, but I thought you should know.”

She looked down as if wondering whether she should throw her plate in my face, but ended up only thoughtfully rubbing a guacamole smudge off her finger. “Better not risk shipping the box. One of us can cross to Universe A to go through it. Seeing if there’s anything of research value there will take a few days, I suspect.”

My omni beeped. Wagner. Inquiring about the sourdough starter, no doubt. I got to my feet and picked up the backpack, careful not to disturb the glass jar inside. “I better go. My crossing stamp is expiring any minute. Don’t want DIM officials taking any more notice of me than they already have. Er, Bean—one more thing,” I added.

“What?”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t send Arni or Pak for the box. One talks too much—”

“—and the other too little, yeah.”

The three books that I’d briefly had in my possession were on my mind as I waited to be turned into a number again.

Stones, Tombs, and Gourds
, the prehistoric-art book whose pages had harbored a bookmark from a more recent past, was now in the hands of DIM officials. The Christie mystery
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
, with its concealed eavesdropping device, I had destroyed via a smooshed-up fruit drink. The first edition of
The Nine Tailors
, irreplaceable as it was, was beyond repair.

Revenge, that was Gabriella’s motive. I’d found a different one for the story I’d begun on bee-shaped hotel stationary. The woman with the ice-white hair found lifeless by R. Smith after the mountain storm was, I’d decided, an artist. She had been hired by R. Smith to make decorative food sculptures for the upcoming cooking competition. The artist—Griselda? Selene? Nadia?—has an alter, also a sculptor but a shade less talented. And it’s the alter who decides to kill, not to take Griselda’s place—too obvious and overdone as a motive—but because she knew her chances for fame would be greatly improved by having an alter who was the victim of a violent and notorious crime.

Pushing aside the thought that perhaps Felix had gotten it right and I was meant to write a cookbook but had messed everything up by getting a sinus infection years ago, I imagined the final scene of the novel…in the lodge library, a cozy room stocked with comfortable armchairs, with snow gently falling outside and a fire crackling in the fireplace as R. Smith reveals that one Griselda killed the other Griselda to an audience of gathered suspects, after which the remaining Griselda tries to bean him with the fireplace poker and is taken away.

A thought struck me. I had given my victim/murderess Griselda ice-white hair, almost like I’d subconsciously realized all along that the similarly named Gabriella, with her flowing ice-white hair, was somehow involved in the repeated attempts to get rid of me.

Now there was only one question left, I told myself as the crossing chamber door slid shut and the lid started to glide into place across the skylight. Was the idea good enough—for me to quit my job at Wagner’s Kitchen and apply myself to writing full-time, that is? There was no way of telling without sitting down and finishing the damn thing, but the best way to go about doing that
was
to quit. I suddenly felt like a Passivist, trapped in a loop, unable to act.

One decision after another, that’s what life was.

Soup or salad. Elevator or stairs. Shower or bath.

Give Bean a call as soon as I got back, or wait a few days.

You never knew
what
might set off a significant chain of events.

THE END