Regarding Ducks and Universes (10 page)

“You thought you had plenty of time, then you suddenly found out he existed, and here you are.” She tilted her head to one side in thought. “If it had been me, I think I would have started writing madly. It doesn’t matter what. Anything, really.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said, trying to spread a dab of butter onto the last triangular bit of croissant. The butter stuck to the knife. I gave the knife a firm shake and watched as the butter flew up into the air and landed on the shoe of the DIM official standing next to me.

Having signed the information-halt agreement—”…
the events of July 2020 pertaining to the spread of the North American Pet Syndrome, also known as the pet bug, from Universe A into Universe B via an infected carrier, a household pet of unknown genetic makeup, as well as all related events, including but not limited to the 48-hour quarantine deemed necessary for 22 citizens listed below, are hereby declared government property
…”—having signed the form in three places, I strode back to my room holding my gown pinched in the back with one hand, the sash having come loose again. Write a book together with Felix B or come up with something quickly, she said. Like it was that easy. What did she know about it anyway? You wouldn’t catch
me
going around giving advice to people I barely knew about subjects I had no expertise in whatsoever.

The room door swung shut behind me.

The omni lay silent and unblinking on the bedside table. Great, I thought. Not only did I
not
have the option of sitting down and embarking on the first chapter of the cooking-competition-in-the-Sierras masterpiece on the tiny omni keyboard, I didn’t even have the option of
reading
anything.

I noticed that the bed had been made up while I was at breakfast and that there was a small square box lying on it. I checked for an accompanying card, didn’t find one, and untied the ribbon and lifted the lid off. Candy. Well, that was nice. I selected one of the soft, chocolate-dipped candies, bit into it, then quickly spit it back into my hand and dropped it into the trash bin.

Just as I had finally found where I’d left off in
Evans,
having remembered that I did have something to read after all (the process of locating the page taking unexpectedly long for someone spoiled by the omni bookmarking feature, though at least this version didn’t need batteries to run) there was a knock at the door and Chang came in maneuvering a medical cart.

“Chang, do you like cherries?” I asked him as he wrapped a blood-pressure sleeve around my arm.

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“I have a bad allergy. I don’t think these were meant for me.” I motioned with my free hand toward the candy box. “Have some if you like.”

“Oh, cherry chocolates? These are from the gift shop downstairs. They’re pretty good.” He helped himself to one, then proceeded to pump up the blood pressure sleeve.

“No gift card on the box. It must have been misdelivered. My boss is the only person who knows I’m here, and he knows about my cherry allergy.”

“They do that sometimes, if the order came through a call, forget to put the caller’s name down on a card.”

“Chang, if you don’t mind my asking, what does your alter do?” I asked as the blood pressure sleeve deflated and he reached for a thermometer.

“Chang A? Lives in Iceland and invites me and my wife and kids for a visit every summer. The way I look at it, an alter is a good thing. If for some reason I need a blood transfusion or a donor kidney, there’s an exact match available.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps there
were
a few incidental advantages to having an alter.

“Mmmm mmmm mm mm?” I said.

He took the thermometer out of my mouth. “Normal. How are you feeling today?”

“Better than yesterday,” I said. “What does he do?”

“For a living? He’s a nurse.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“Not really. Gives us something to talk about.” He gave a relaxed shrug, then seemed to think better of it. “Still, I have to admit I’m glad Professor Singh stopped after producing the one copy of the universe. Anything more would have been—too much.”

He took another of the cherry chocolates and wheeled the cart out the door, and I gave my attention back to
Evans.
Having folded in a tiny corner of a page, I was able to find where I’d left off with no problem—Roger Bassington-ffrench, he of the two small
f
’s, had just entered the picture. I felt I was getting the hang of things.

Still waiting for Dr. Gomez-Herrera to sign my release paperwork, I wandered over to the cafeteria and asked Bean, “What’s a mashie?”

She was sitting at a table by the door, a sheaf of papers in front of her, having just finished with her meeting, judging by the fading screen on her omni. Her patient gown had drooped on one side, revealing a patch of bare shoulder.

“Nothing in this universe, I don’t think. Where did you hear the word?”

“I saw it in an Agatha Christie. Also niblick, furze, plus fours, mews—” I ticked off the words on my fingers. I had been trying to read
Evans
with an eye toward learning how the Grand Dame of Mystery had done it but kept losing myself in the story and having to backtrack. I’d also found that I missed the instant dictionary access I was used to.

“Do you know anything about omnis, Bean?”

“You mean how they work? Sure.”

“Good, maybe you can fix mine. It seems to be dead.”

She took the omni from me and turned it over in her hands. “What’s wrong with it?”

“The battery. I forgot to replace it this year.”

“You’ll have to get a new one.”

“Can’t you string a wire here and there and get a little more life out of it, at least until I depart the Palo Alto Health Center?”

“I’m not the hands-on kind of scientist. I could give you a nice exposition on the theory behind event chain-tracking algorithms, if you like.”

“Some other time, thanks.”

I stole a glance at the papers in front of her. They were diagrams of some sort, weblike things interwoven in various colors. Bean didn’t seem to mind my interest, but not wanting to disturb her work, I wandered over to the cafeteria windows. Sunlight streamed in. Below was a pleasant courtyard with wooden benches and a small pond, enclosed on all sides by medical buildings. Several milky white ducks with orange feet and bills frolicked in and around the pond.

A brief call to Mrs. Noor from the hallway infoterminal had yielded news. She had partaken in Sunday brunch at the Organic Oven, where Felix was chef. “
He wasn’t there
. When I requested to talk to the chef so I could compliment his spinach soufflé, the waitress mentioned their usual chef had the week off.”

“You don’t think—?”

“—that he’s in Universe A looking for you? No, the waitress said that something had come up and that Felix B would be going to Carmel for a few days,” Mrs. Noor said from her desk.

“Carmel, did you say?” I leaned into the infoterminal.

“Yes, why?”

“I don’t know anyone in Carmel. I did live there as a child for a bit, though,” I added.

“Felix, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Your Aunt Henrietta left you the Y-day photo and that’s how you found about Felix B, but what about him? Is there an Aunt Henrietta B?”

“There isn’t. Well, yes, I suppose there had to be a Henrietta in Universe B, but not an
Aunt
Henrietta, if you see what I mean. She’s an aunt by marriage, my great-uncle Otto’s second wife. They met and got married when I was at the four-year, long after the universes branched off.”

“It’s possible
your
Aunt Henrietta knew about Felix B and left him something in her will.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Aunt Henrietta’s lawyer said that only half of her dolphin collection went to me. I assumed she left the other half to Uncle Otto, but—”

“We could peek into Felix’s windows and see if we spot the dolphins on a shelf someplace. Is your half of the collection nicely displayed in your living room?”

“Er—not yet. What’s the Organic Oven like, Mrs. Noor?”

“Medium-sized dining area with new cedar-wood tables and handcrafted stone on the walls. Very nice. Open for breakfast, lunch, midafternoon tea, and occasionally for a special dinner. Food is pretty good. I recommend the ice cream bombe.”

“Dark chocolate ice cream topped with chunks of banana and kiwi, with orange juice drizzled on top for extra tanginess and to prevent the bananas from going brown?”

“I—well, yes.”

“My mother’s recipe,” I said. “Was it busy?”

“Mostly, though I didn’t have to wait long for a table.”

We promised to reconnect after I got out of the health center, though I sensed some hesitation on her part and hoped I wasn’t overstepping my client privileges by calling too often. There was nothing to be done about that, at least not until I got a new omni battery and Mrs. Noor could contact me herself.

Her words had brought back memories of my mother’s cooking, an eclectic mix of dishes from all over the world, rather like my favorite lunch place, Coconut Café, now that I thought about it. Obviously Felix had been influenced by our mother’s cooking as well, if anything more so, since I wasn’t much of a cook and the very idea of me feeding paying customers was laughable. I sat at my desk putting together manuals for kitchen products; he wielded them.

I turned away from the window and went back to Bean’s table.

“—Arni, I don’t think the subtle approach is working—no, there hasn’t been a chance, really, there are DIM officials all over the place. Never mind, I’ll think of something before he leaves.” She snapped the omni shut.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—”

“Hello, fellow quarantineers,” James said from behind me. The cafeteria door he had just entered through shut softly. “Or is it quarantiners?” He was dressed in street clothing. Next to him was Gabriella Short, who was still in her pink robe and the clicking of whose heels I should have recognized. James threw a frank look at Bean’s diagrams and, as if not wanting to run afoul of Regulation 10 by revealing too much information about workplace matters, she scooped up the papers and flipped them over.

“Given that we’re all in a quarantine, you’d think we’d be running into each other
constantly,
Citizen Sayers—but we’ve hardly seen you,” Gabriella said, sweeping her ice-white hair back with one hand. Wondering how much she resented being an ordinary mortal and not a celebrity, I replied, “Medication side effects. I spent most of yesterday in my room.”

“You’re leaving already?” Bean indicated James’s street clothes.

“I’m Quarantine Case 1, not counting Murphina. Dr. Gomez-Herrera just signed my paperwork.”

“I’ll have to wait until Dr. Gomez-Herrera gets around to me—I’m Case 21,” I said. I lowered my voice. “I’ve heard that Quarantine Case 3—he’s in insurance sales—sneezed once too often and will have to stay the whole week.”

James grimaced. “Murphina gave him a friendly lick on the face when he bent down to pick up his suitcase in the crossing chamber.”

“I was the last person brought in, right after you, Felix. I’m Case 22,” Bean said. “They had trouble finding me, not that I should have been that hard to find. I was merely at the Bihistory Institute, working. Which is the first place you should look for a graduate student on a Saturday morning. I use the term
morning
loosely, of course. The place doesn’t begin to fill up ‘til noon—”

“I’m Case 2,” Gabriella said. “I’m going to see if Dr. Gomez-Herrera is in her office. She
needs
to sign my paperwork. Citizen Sayers, I hope you can join us,” she called out as she clicked out the door.

I would have never dared to bother Dr. Gomez-Herrera in her office uninvited. “I wonder what Gabriella meant by that,” I said, picking up my silent omni from next to Bean’s upside-down papers and hanging it back around my neck.