The Fold: A Novel (17 page)

Mike’s fingers wiggled on the steering wheel. “So, where am I going?”

“Is there anything you don’t like?”

He shrugged. “There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t tried.”

“Thai? Italian? Mexican?” Jamie paused and frowned. “You’re not one of those people who thinks Taco Bell is real Mexican food, are you?”

“I was able to figure that one out on my own.”

She stretched in the passenger seat and put her feet up on the dashboard. “So what do you want?”

“We’re in San Diego,” he said. “I’m guessing there’s good Mexican food?”

“Great food,” she said. “I know a little hole-in-the-wall place. You’ll love it.”

“Where am I going?”

“Freeway. Go left.”

Mike flicked the directional, changed lanes, and made the turn just as the light flipped to yellow. She waved him onto a southbound ramp. “How far are we going?”

“I’ll let you know.”

He nodded, and they drove in silence for a moment. “You want to talk some more about the code?”

“Not really,” she said.

A few dozen responses flitted through his mind. He could push her for more information about the Door. He could be subtle about it and see what she let slip.

Or he could try to let it slide for a night and just enjoy being out with her.

“Here.” Jamie gestured at another ramp. “Stay in the first lane.”

“Okay.”

“So what’s up with Mike?”

He glanced away from the road. “Sorry?”

“Your name’s Leland, right?”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“I’m guessing one of your parents was drunk when picking baby names?”

“Family name. Grandfather and great-grandfather were both Leland. Mom insisted.”

“How do you get Mike from Leland?”

“You don’t.”

She pointed at a sign. “South again,” she said. “Where’d it come from?”

“Why are we talking so much about me?”

“Because I spilled my guts the other night at the bar and all you want to talk about is work. Where’d Mike come from?”

“Reggie gave it to me back in junior high, about a year after we met.”

“Mike? That’s the best nickname he could come up with for you?”

“It’s a nickname for a nickname.”

“Now this sounds kind of dirty,” Jamie said with a grin.

“It’s short for Mycroft. Mycroft Holmes.”

“Related to Sherlock?”

“His older brother. Mycroft was introduced in ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.’ We had to read six of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories for English class in tenth grade. Mr. Jones. Most boring teacher ever.”

“I’m still not getting it.”

“Mycroft was the superior Holmes. Smarter, more observant, better at deduction. But he never did anything with it. He didn’t study or sharpen his gifts, he just used them as a party trick now and then. He was the embarrassment who always frustrated Sherlock.”

“So Reggie called you Mycroft?”

“Everyone else called me Mycroft,” he said. “They’d all been in classes with me for years. Even after I decided I didn’t want to be special, I still couldn’t help blowing the bell curve. And they all knew I wasn’t trying at that point, which made it even worse. We read that story, and they
all had me pegged. Hell, two of the teachers slipped and used it in class when they called on me.”

“Ahhh. No offense, but it sounds like a lot of your formative years sucked.”

He shrugged.

“Get off here,” she said, pointing at another sign. “East exit. The ramp’s almost going to go around in a full circle.”

Mike tugged the wheel and a car behind them honked. He glanced in his mirror and the other driver flashed lights. The car accelerated and pulled around them, roaring off down the freeway.

“So everyone called you Mycroft,” Jamie said.

“Yeah. It went on for about a week and then Reggie put a stop to it. He just started calling me Mike. And, well, he’s one of those guys who can get people to do what he wants, so three weeks later everyone was calling me Mike.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. It was kind of a double blessing. I didn’t have to deal with Mycroft
or
Leland.”

“Follow the road around the curve,” she said.

“Okay.”

“You’re going to turn left at the light up there.”

He glanced over his shoulder and tapped the directional again.

“I would’ve figured you as one of those guys who’d make a name like Leland work for you,” she said. “That you’d just own it and make it cool.”

“There is no way Leland would ever be a cool name. I say this as someone who grew up in the decade of
Twin Peaks.
”

“That’s what people thought about Hugo,” said Jamie. “And then Hugo Weaving came along and suddenly there’s a hundred kids named Hugo.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’d name a kid Hugo.”

The area looked more residential, but with lots of smaller businesses. They passed a coffee shop, a bookstore, and a small garage. “Where am I going now?”

“Go about two more blocks and then start looking for a space.”

“They don’t have parking?”

“I told you, it’s a hole-in-the-wall.”

The car came to rest at a stop light. There was another coffee shop, a corner store, and a Laundromat. He could see a few bars and restaurants ahead, past a street-spanning sign shaped like a trolley car. “Around here?”

She nodded. “It’s right up there on the left. If you see a space, grab it.”

He slowed a bit. Both sides of the street were packed. A few cars crowded driveways. “So why are we here?”

“Because I’m guessing you’ve never had good Mexican food.”

“No,” he said, “seriously. Why are we here?”

Jamie sighed. “Again?”

“Sorry,” he said. “This just doesn’t feel right.”

“How so?”

He turned right onto a side street. “I’ve been here a week, and now out of nowhere you want to know all these little details about me.”

“I’m old-fashioned,” she said. “I don’t like to sleep with strangers.”

“And that,” he said. “The over-friendliness. I just don’t buy it.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she said. She undid her seatbelt and threw her leg across his waist. The car jerked to a halt as she rolled into his lap, wedging herself between his body and the steering wheel. “Stop talking.”

“Are you—”

Jamie leaned into his face and kissed him. Hard. The tip of her tongue darted out to tap his. She found his wrists, pulled his hands up, and pressed his palms against her breasts.

Then, just as fast, she slid off him and back into her seat. “Okay,” she said, “do you still think I’m here just because Arthur asked me to be friendly?”

He pressed his foot down and the car rolled forward. “No.”

“Do you think I have any ulterior motives?”

“Well,” he said, “not the same ones I thought you had a minute ago.”

“Are you hungry?”

“What?”

“Do you still want to get dinner?”

“Does it make me shallow if I say no?”

The corners of her mouth twitched into a grin. “If it does, I’m shallow, too.”

They didn’t speak at all on the drive back to campus. Jamie gestured at road signs and made a point of not looking him in the eyes. He drove around the main building and parked his car by the trailers.

Mike shut the engine off. “Mine or yours?”

“Mine,” she said. “I don’t want to be worried about Magnus spying on us.”

“I don’t think he randomly checks in.”

“You’re talking again,” she said with a smile.

They kept their hands off each other until it was clear there was no one else around the trailers. Then she was kissing him and pulling at his belt, even as his hands slid around her back and beneath her shirt. They paused so she could fumble with her keys and they stumbled into her trailer.

Glitch the cat let out a confused meow. It turned into a hiss as they walked past his food bowl and bumped into the table. He danced around their legs and vanished.

Mike’s heart pounded, and he could feel his pulse in his fingers and his face. He kissed her mouth, her chin, her cheeks, and her ears.

Jamie yanked her own shirt open and then pulled his over his head. She pressed herself against him and kissed him hard. Her kiss was filled with lust and hunger and desperation. They wrestled with each other’s jeans and tangled themselves in the curtains that divided the room.

The back of his legs hit her bed and he fell backward onto the blanket. She didn’t let go, riding him down. The springs squealed under
their combined weight, and Glitch threw himself off the bed with another hiss.

Mike rolled on top of her and pulled away the last bits of her clothing. Her skin was like silk against his. She was warm and moist and wrapped her legs around him. He bent his head to her chest and she gasped and grabbed a fistful of hair.

It was very hard for Mike to get lost in the moment. So many things could set off memories and comparisons, spurring the ants into action. More than a few times he’d had the mood ruined by a deluge of images and sounds inside his head.

This time his mind was blissfully silent.

Half an hour later he heard a thump. A few moments later, Glitch hopped onto the bed, and shoved his head into Jamie’s arm. He meowed, shifted his paws, and leaned his forehead against her shoulder.

“He has no boundaries,” said Mike.

“He’s a little perv,” she said. “He watches me in the shower sometimes.”

She twisted beneath him, and he slid behind her. His arms wrapped around her. Glitch sat on the bed and watched them.

“Does he want to be fed?”

“He wants his treats,” Jamie said. “Whenever I come home late, I give him some extra cat food or Greenies or something. He’s a creature of habit.”

“Sorry to mess up the schedule.”

“It’s okay,” she said. She reached up and held his arms. “I didn’t want to wait on
my
treats.”

“Clever.”

She chuckled and tugged his arms a little tighter around her. “Are you staying for the night?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I wouldn’t complain.”

“We wouldn’t get much sleep.”

“Oh, really?”

“Just being honest.”

“You ready to go again?”

“Give me a few more minutes to catch my breath.”

“I’m not so sure I’m still in the mood.”

“Really?”

She half-turned to him and her teeth gleamed in the darkness. “You can try to change my mind, if you think you can.”

“I think I could make a few compelling arguments.”

“Go for it.”

He kissed his way down her back, tasting her sweat on his lips. She sighed. He stopped at her tailbone and reached up to run his fingertips across the smooth glistening skin of her shoulders, tracing lines alongside her spine.

Then he paused, and frowned.

“Jamie?”

“Mmmmmm?” She closed her legs around his left thigh. She was still wet.

He squinted at her in the dim light of the bungalow. “There’s nothing wrong with your back.”

“Great to know,” she said. “Did you have a problem with the front?”

“No, seriously, where are your scars?”

She twisted around, smiling. “My what?”

He set his hand on her shoulder and gently rolled her onto her stomach again, pushing her into the thin shaft of light that seeped around the blinds in her trailer. He ran his fingers down her spine and looked at her skin. Her flawless skin. There were faint tan lines framing her ass and another one across her back. “Your scars,” he said. “You told me your back was a mess.”

She turned to face him. “What?”

“The motorcycle crash in high school. The awful prom dress. Apologizing for freaking out on me when I touched your shoulders.”

Jamie’s smile dipped at the edges. She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

He rolled onto his knees. “You’re serious? You don’t remember telling me all this at the bar?”

She sat up and leaned against the wall. “I told you about Tramp at the bar, and then we flirted for almost an hour. I thought I freaked you out being so forward, and that’s why you’ve been kind of distant.”

“And you don’t have any scars?”

“Have you noticed any?”

The ants got out.

They carried out pictures and sounds and associations. Jamie in Washington the first time he saw her. Nine other women he’d been casually naked with (seven girlfriends, two friends with benefits). Jamie bending over and showing off the biker shorts under her clothes. Jamie in the bar talking about her cat dying and the motorcycle crash. Taking his own cat, Jake, to be put down. The baseball. Jamie standing on the other side of the three rings, about to step through, knowing she might be walking to her death. His mother dying. Bob dying. Jamie standing in front of him on the pathway, unharmed and uninjured.

The baseball that wasn’t there anymore.

Bob with cancer from months of radiation exposure.

Jamie standing in front of him with no injuries.

Talking about her cat in the bar.

He replayed her crosswalk in his mind. She’d come through okay, so he’d barely studied it. Not the way he’d obsessed over Bob’s. He pulled up before and after images. Her in Washington. The first time he saw her in San Diego. In her trailer. Watching the rings. Driving on the freeway.

“Oh, hell,” he said. The ants carried out Reggie’s words from the other day. What they know, what they don’t know, and what they don’t know that they don’t know.

“What? What’s wrong?”

Mike took her by the hands and tugged her toward the center of the mattress. She rolled onto her knees and shuffled where he guided her. He turned her toward the window. Her skin gleamed in the light.

He brushed her hair away from her face. He shook his head. “Hell,” he said again.

Jamie reached up to feel her cheeks and nose and forehead. “What is it?”

He rolled out of bed and searched for his boxers. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Mike said, “but you’re not the woman I thought I was going to bed with.”

“All right,” Arthur said from the conference room door, “please tell me what is so damned important that I had to drive back down here at midnight instead of hearing it in the morning.”

“No idea,” said Olaf. He sat at the table across from Neil and Sasha. Jamie was in a chair by the corner, wrapped in her sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Mike stood at the head of the table, close to her. He stared at Arthur for a moment. The older man’s returned look was close to a glare. It was the first time Mike had ever seen him without a tie.

“Well?” asked the project head.

“We’ve been waiting on you,” said Mike.

“How gracious of you.” He looked around the room. “Is anyone monitoring the Door?”

Jamie shook her head. “Cameras are all on.”

“I think it’s best if everyone hears this at once,” said Mike.

Arthur simmered for a moment. He glanced at his usual seat, then pulled out the chair near Olaf.

They all stared at Mike. He gazed at each of them. He’d been going over this in his head for almost an hour, since he tumbled out of Jamie’s bed.

“I know what happened to Bob,” he said. “And I know what the Door does.”

Eyes went wide around the table. They shifted in their seats. Sasha looked at Arthur. Arthur and Olaf exchanged a few unspoken words. Neil closed his eyes and sighed.

Jamie kept her eyes on Mike. She’d been annoyed that he wouldn’t talk to her, but she was still giving him the benefit of the doubt. He wondered if she still would when he was done.

“I don’t know what you think you’ve learned,” Arthur said, “but our contracts with Magnus are quite specific. If you breathe a word of what you’ve learned—”

Mike waved him to silence. “I don’t know
how
it works,” he said. “I just know it doesn’t work the way you’ve been telling everyone.”

More uneasy glances from Arthur and Sasha. Olaf shifted in his seat again. “What do you mean?”

Mike waved a hand at the wall, toward the main floor. “You’ve all been assuming that you’re creating a bridge across space-time,” Mike said. “A fold, you called it. The traveler steps through this set of rings and comes out of the one over in Site B.”

Arthur nodded. “That’s a simple way of putting it, but that’s what it does, yes.”

“The Door lets us locate an appropriate fold in space-time,” said Olaf, “and we use that to open a tunnel that extends across another quantum state.”

“No,” said Mike. “That isn’t what it does.”

Olaf crossed his arms.

“If I’m right, and all the evidence says I am, the Albuquerque Door doesn’t extend across alternate quantum states. It extends
into
them.”

Neil straightened up. “That’s not how it works,” he said.

“Yes it is,” Mike said.

“No,” said Arthur, “it isn’t.”

Sasha scowled at Mike. “What the fuck are you talking about? It’s been working fine for over a year.”

“Again, I don’t know enough about the physics of it to explain it technically,” said Mike. He held up his hands and moved the left one toward the right. “It’s more of a thought experiment. When we open the Door, subject A steps through the rings into a quantum state we’ll call X. An alternate reality, for lack of a better term. Subject A enters this other reality and knocks A-X, his or her alternate self, out through the other rings into
our
reality.” His left hand tapped the right and it moved off, continuing the path. “A goes in, A-X comes out.”

“No,” said Arthur with a shake of his head. “Impossible.”

“It’s not impossible.”

“It’s nonsense is what it is,” Olaf said.

“It’s what’s happening.”

“Prove it,” said Arthur. “Where’s this evidence that says you’re right? Did you bring any of it?”

“Almost all of it,” said Mike.

“Is this another one of your mental spreadsheets?” asked Jamie. “That’s not going to make you popular.”

“No, it’s physical evidence,” he said. “Right here.”

Arthur gestured at the empty table. “Where?”

Mike looked at Jamie. “Can you pull your hair back?”

She blinked. “Why?”

“It’ll make sense in a minute. Just pull it all back away from your face.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, but she gathered her hair into a loose ponytail. Mike reached out and touched her forehead on either side. “Here and here,” he said. “Anyone see anything?”

Jamie tried to look up at her forehead. “You’re starting to freak me out,” she said.

“I don’t see anything,” said Neil.

Olaf rolled his eyes. “What’s this supposed to prove?”

Mike took a slow breath. “Her halo scars are gone.”

Jamie pulled away from his fingers. “My what?”

Arthur frowned and leaned forward. So did Neil. “It might just be the light,” said Sasha.

“They’re gone,” Mike repeated.

“Is this supposed to be some kind of ‘angel’ joke?” Jamie asked. “Medical halo,” he said.

She blinked and opened her eyes wide.

“Scars can fade over time,” Olaf said.

“They were there four days ago,” said Mike. “Scars don’t fade that fast. Case in point.” He touched Jamie on the shoulder, guiding her up and out of the chair. “Can you pull your shirt up?”

Her eyes went wide. “What?”

“Just in the back.”

She leaned in to Mike, breathing in his ear. “I don’t have anything on under this.”

“Even better.”

“Seriously,” she said, “what the hell does my back have to do with Bob?”

“Just…just trust me, okay?”

“You’re lucky you’re cute.”

He looked at the others. “You all know Jamie’s got a thing about her back, right? And why?”

She was the only one who didn’t nod in agreement. Olaf shrugged. “What’s your point?”

“All of us were so busy looking deep for problems, we didn’t see the ones right on the surface.” He touched her arm “Go ahead. All the way up, if you don’t mind.”

Jamie reached back and grabbed the shirt between her shoulder blades, gathering it up in two handfuls. She slid it up and shrugged it over her shoulders, crossing her arms over her chest. Her tan lines stood out in the bright lights of the conference room. Mike glimpsed the swell of her breast and felt his pulse jump.

A series of gasps and mutters leaped from the team. Sasha punctuated it with “Oh, fuck.”

“How?” Arthur stared at her bare back with wide eyes.

“It’s not just the scars, though,” Mike said. “She didn’t even argue much about pulling her shirt up, did she? Does that seem normal for her?”

“Stop talking about me in the third person,” Jamie chided him. “I’ve always been a little bit of an exhibitionist. What’s the big deal?”

Neil frowned. Arthur took off his glasses and rubbed his temple.

“The big deal is that Jamie never would’ve shown us her back because it was a mess of scars.”

“That’s what you said back in my trailer.”

Sasha’s eyebrows went up. “Back in the trailer?”

Mike held up his hand to the others. “Who was Kevin Ulinn?”

“Kev…oh, Christ.” A touch of pink colored her cheeks. She rolled her shoulders and shook the shirt back down over herself. “How do you even know about him?”

“You told me about him at the bar.”

“I did?”

“Yep. Whatever happened to him?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. We dated for about four months. Wasn’t even dating, just a lot of teenage sex. I kept it a secret because he was three years older than me. I lost touch with him pretty quick after we ended things.”

Mike nodded. “It might take a phone call or two, but I think we can prove to you that Kevin died in a motorcycle crash seventeen years ago. The girl he’d been seeing was injured in the same crash. She ended up with scars all over her back. Her name was Jamie Parker, a cheerleader from the next town over.”

“No.” Jamie shook her head. “No, that didn’t happen.”

He took her hand, applied a careful amount of pressure, and then let go. “It didn’t happen to you,” he said, “but that’s what happened here.”

“Here?” echoed Arthur.

“Here. In this reality.” He looked at all of them. “Jamie, this Jamie, is from another universe.”

“How?”

“I already explained it,” Mike said. “She came here through the Door.”

“Okay,” said Jamie, “not really sure what you’re trying to prove here, but you can stop now. This isn’t funny.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mike.

“This could just be some sort of renewal effect,” said Olaf. “Her cell structure could’ve been—”

“The Door doesn’t do anything on the cellular level,” Mike said. “That’s what you all keep telling me.”

“There has to be another…”

“This is what happened to Bob,” said Mike. “Our Bob, the guy we knew, went into the rings and knocked another version of himself out. A version from a world, a reality, where things have gone very bad, I’d guess. Maybe there was some kind of war, a full-on nuclear one. Bad enough that he’d be dressed in rags and suffering from dehydration and radiation exposure. That’s why we couldn’t find the baseball. That Bob, the Bob who died here, never had one.”

They looked at one another. They looked at Jamie. She looked at Mike and at all of them.

“You haven’t made a doorway,” said Mike. “You’ve created a huge, interdimensional croquet set.”

“Fuck me,” said Sasha.

Olaf snorted. “There’s a problem with your multiverse hypothesis,” he said. “Why doesn’t it happen all the time? If this is how the Door works, then every single person who goes through should’ve traded places with an alternate self.” He gestured at the room. “We’ve all gone through. Everyone here should be from a different universe.”

Mike shifted on his feet and counted to five. “That’s my point,” he said. “You are.”