Regarding Ducks and Universes (13 page)

I took a sip of the tea, which was strong, strangely satisfying, and apparently named after a British aristocrat, and I reflected that I knew how the Passivists felt. I didn’t want the responsibility either.

“We’ll have to make it seem like you approached us to trace your life story. It’s a plausible scenario. After all, you did just find out that you have an alter and would therefore naturally be interested in influential events in your life. Uniques don’t come by much.”

“How likely is it that DIM will authorize your ideas?”

“It’s just a matter of time,” she said firmly.

“What’s in it for you?”

“My PhD.”

“Do you have to find the universe maker to get your PhD?”

“No, but it would guarantee a lot of people would read my dissertation, wouldn’t it?” She grinned. “If you must know, the title is
Characterizing the Probability Curve of Historical Event Chain Length
—”

“Why not?

“—but I need more data to test my model. It would be nice if we could spawn off additional universes and monitor the development of events in them. Professor Singh’s lab used to be in this very building, did you know? Unfortunately the Council for Science Safety won’t allow any further attempts at establishing new links.”

“To be perfectly honest, that’s one DIM policy I’m grateful for. I feel we have one link too many as it is.” I rubbed my forehead; my stay at the health center had left me with a lingering headache. “Do you really think there are multiple universes, Bean? I don’t see that having only two is any less likely than a preposterously large number of them.”

“It’s not so much that it’s less likely. It’s that if there
were
only two, they would be a more particular pair, say mirror images of one another. No, A and B are not special in any way, other than that Professor Singh happened to link them. Before he did that, everyone was convinced only one universe existed and would ever exist. Singh said, ‘Look around. Everything belongs to a set of similar or identical objects. People and trees and electrons.’” She looked at me bright-eyed. “No, there are more than two.”

She pulled an envelope from a desk drawer. “This is how we found you.”

The photograph had my father standing in front of a steel railing with thick red cables passing vertically behind it. There was a lamppost to his right and some light rain-bearing clouds in the background. Strapped to his chest was a baby carrier. With yours truly in it. All in all, a photo unremarkable to anyone but me (and Felix B, I suppose) except for one thing. I turned it over. On the back, hand-copied from the original, were two items: the photo number, 13, and the date: January 6, 1986. Y-day.

“Mine is missing,” I said. “Disappeared in the health center.”

“We didn’t take it,” she said at once. “We didn’t need to. Someone posted it on the Y-day photoboard. You know, the one hobbyists scrutinize for fun to find the earliest visible differences between universes A and B.”

“Aunt Henrietta must have instructed her lawyer to post it at the same time that it was sent to me. My great-aunt,” I explained. “I don’t think she ever dreamed it would be used in this fashion. I imagine she just felt it belonged in the collection of everyone else’s memorabilia from that day. And this proves—what?” I let the photograph fall down on the desk.

“Photo 13 places you near Professor Singh’s lab on Y-day. The location is the Golden Gate Bridge—within the event radius.” Somewhat unexpectedly, she chuckled. “Arni was floored that a new prime mover candidate had materialized.”

“Was he, Arni?”

“Sorry. I dabble in theory, Pak spends most of his time in front of computers, and Arni is the one who interviews research subjects, gathers data, that sort of thing. After we’d authenticated the photo, we pooled what information we could on you and Felix B; then Arni contacted Felix B, but it was too late. He had signed on with Past & Future. In the meantime, since I was traveling to San Francisco A for a conference anyway, I had the task of contacting you, saving Arni the trip. We have to be careful how we spend our grant money.”

I took in the shabby couch and the mismatched chairs again; only the computer equipment that took up much of the desk space seemed to be up-to-date. She saw, and commented, “Don’t even ask me what I earn. Anyway, I did some discreet poking around when I got to your San Francisco, figured you seemed to be on the level, and decided as good approach as any was to drop in on you at work”—here I suddenly recalled Wagner telling me a client had come in wanting to talk to me on Friday—“but you’d already left. I caught up with you at the terminal—I was scheduled to leave late Friday evening anyway—and, well, here we are,” she trailed off.

“What about my father?” I tapped the photo. “Is he a suspect too?”

“He’s the wrong size.”

Only the steady hum from the samovar and the computer equipment permeated the room; no outside sounds penetrated the basement office. I glanced at the whiteboard by Bean’s desk and noticed a single statistic circled among the equations written on it: 24 libras. My eyes moved to her computer and the palm trees swaying in the screen saver. Behind the palm trees were probably pages and pages of personal data about me—and Felix B.

“All right,” I said, “I’ll do it.” I couldn’t say why, but I had a feeling that something about this universe-making business would turn out to matter. That is, that it would be important in a personal way, beyond any vast-cosmos and birth-of-new-worlds kind of stuff.

Bean got up off the wooden chair. “Are you sure?”

“No. Where do I sign?”

“Well,” she suddenly seemed hesitant, “it’s customary for research subjects to meet Professor Max first. I’m just a graduate student.”

“Can I ask you something?” I said as the elevator, with us in it, ascended to the third floor. “What’s the C in your office number?”

“L-11-C denotes the lower level, room 11, desk C. I know, it makes no sense to label a
desk
, especially if there are only three in the room. Official story is that it’s easier for mail and students to find us that way. Personally I think it’s a DIM thing, an additional way of keeping tabs on citizens.” As the elevator door opened to let us out, she added, “Did you know that at one point DIM wanted to use electronic tags, like we’re genetically modified pets living in the wild or something? Necessary for public security, they argued. They almost got it too because it
sounded
good: no more crime, no worry about people stealing their alters’ lives or swapping them willingly without telling others…Common sense prevailed in the end.”

The professor was not in, but the nameplate on his door, next to which a note was pinned with the words,
In the Lab,
made me stop in my tracks. I must have let out a sound, since I received a puzzled look from Bean.

“Something wrong?”

“Professor
Wagner
Maximilian,” I pointed to the nameplate. “Your graduate advisor is not, by any chance, a rather short, stocky man in his fifties, blond hair, loves to talk? Has connections everywhere—and, I suppose, a side interest in kitchen equipment?”

“Well, yes—you didn’t know, then? I guess there’s no reason you would.” She grinned. “We work for the same boss.”

The absurdity of the situation suddenly hit me and I laughed ‘til tears ran down my cheeks. Bean looked on with a slightly concerned look on her face.

I wiped my eyes. “Right. What do we do now? Wait for Wagner B so I can sign the contract?”

“Let’s not waste any more time. We can get in touch with the professor on the way down.”

“To the basement?”

“To Carmel. Photos 1-12 and 14 and up. We need to find them before James and Gabriella do.”

T
he sun was high up in the sky by the time we managed to track down Bean’s office mates Arni Pierpont and Mike Pak, piled into her bubble-gum pink Volkswagen Beetle, picked up everyone’s overnight bags, and took Route 1 south toward the small picturesque town of Carmel. Though opposing traffic was safely contained by a road divider, I had an unobstructed view from the passenger seat of Bean’s Beetle as the Pacific Coast Highway rose and fell, alternating between cliff-top vistas of the ocean waves crashing on the rocky shore below and sea-level valleys. A knee-high rail guard between road and cliff edge provided laughable protection against disaster.

“I thought you said I shouldn’t go to Carmel,” I said to Bean, surreptitiously wiping my copiously sweating hands on my shorts as the Beetle chugged up a particularly steep portion of the road.

“To be precise,” she answered distractedly, with a glance at the mirror that hung above the dashboard and offered a back view, “I said you shouldn’t go to Carmel with
James
. With Arni and Pak and me, that’s a different matter.”

“A different matter entirely,” Arni concurred from the back seat. I’d noticed that he had a largish nose and shoulder-length curly hair. “Besides, your alter might be in Carmel already. I’m sure you want to meet him.”

“Not really, no. Regulation 7 prohibits it.”

“The privacy and information of alters, yes. Not if he signs a form giving you permission. And yes, there’s also the Lunch-Place Rule, which probably applies to alters most of all. Even so, it seems to me that there is a curiosity that must be satisfied. I don’t have an alter, so I can’t speak from personal experience, but it’s human nature to want to take a peek at one’s alter—”

“Could we stop calling him that?” I grimaced. “Call him Felix or Citizen Sayers or something.”

“Isn’t it confusing to call him Felix?” Arni said, leaning forward so he could see around my seat’s headrest.

“Not to me. It’s not like I call myself Felix inside my head. I don’t call myself anything inside my head. It’s just me.”

“We do assign a number to each research subject, if you’d prefer that. You and your alter are 4102A and 4102B. Culinary-manual-writer Felix and Chef Felix, if you will.” While he carried on the conversation, Arni seemed to be rummaging around in the back, bumping the back of my seat occasionally. As befitting one who spent most of his time chasing down and interviewing research subjects, he was the most dapper of the three students and sported a trendy sweater and slacks in contrast to Bean’s and Pak’s T-shirts, shorts, and sneakers.

“Arnold, what are you doing back there?” Bean demanded, swerving to avoid a pothole.

“Picking up. Do you have a trash bag in the car?”

“Somewhere on the floor. Don’t throw out anything important.”

“I think I’d prefer not to refer to him by a number,” I said after a moment.

“We’ll call him Felix B, then. Should I call you Felix A?” Arni asked, crumpling up an old soda can.

“No. Just Felix.”

“You really don’t want to meet him? But he’s one of your closest relatives—the closest really. Think of all you have to talk about.”

I stared out the window as Bean took the Beetle down a steep grade toward a rolling sand dune portion of the road. Uniques. What did they know about it anyway?

“We’re not likely to see him in any case,” Bean said in a gloomy voice, recklessly taking her attention away from the road to send a resigned shrug in our direction. “Felix B is probably closeted in a Past & Future office telling them all about his childhood.”

“Speaking of childhoods,” Arni said, “is it true, Felix, that you had no idea you had an alter until Photo 13 surfaced? How is that possible? Your name is not nature-based, which is often a tip-off—do you need this research paper, Bean?—all right, I won’t throw it out—Bean and I have nature-names since we’re uniques, of course; then there’s Mike Pak—”

“Wait,” I said. “Arni?”

“Arni is short for Arnold.”

“And—?”

“And an Arnold has the power of an eagle. There’s also DIM’s official list of alters, not to mention your identicard, birth certificate, health records…And how did our trusty and reliable DIM officials fail to notice that your parents shaved six months off your age?”

I sighed. “My parents paid someone to fake my birth certificate right around the time the Department of Information Management was formed. DIM just accepted the new birth date as valid. As for me—I just thought I was a tad taller than the other kids in my class. How was I supposed to know I was older than everyone else?” I was a bit defensive, because he was right. I should have realized it sooner. I had been dejected about having missed out on being unique by a hair, but when you thought about it, six months was hardly a hair.

“Do you think,” asked Arni, who was unstoppable, “that your parents and his parents ever met? Maybe the four of them got together and hatched a plan to protect their offspring from the knowledge they were identical.”

“I think it was sweet of your parents to try to protect you,” Bean said, throwing another glance at the back-view mirror. “People certainly had much stranger reactions to the link. Were they planning to tell you when you were older, do you think, after you finished your schooling and settled into a profession and a stable life?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But then there was the accident.” Bean had told me that Felix’s parents too had been on a Caribbean cruise celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary when a hurricane veered into the ship’s path. The probability of an A storm and a B storm overlapping in time
and
place was so small, Bean said, as to be practically nil, but weather being what it is, storms did quite often anyway.

“So,” I broke the silence which had suddenly descended over the car, “what do we know about Felix B?”

“This and that,” answered Arni. “Much of the data is irrelevant, of course. But that’s the trick, to figure out what’s important and what isn’t.”

“Indeed,” Pak said.

I had almost forgotten he was in the car. The senior of the graduate students had a deep voice, a scruffy exterior, and a worried look, like the world was about to end and he was the only one who knew about it. Bean had introduced him as “Mike Pak. Call him Pak, no one calls him Mike.” Intrigued, I asked why, whereupon Pak replied, “You know at least three Mikes. Everyone does, it’s a connectivity thing. I’m working on a paper on the subject. You probably don’t know any Paks, however, unless you grew up in a household of them or live in Seoul.” He pronounced the initial sound in his name like a cross between a
p
and a
b
. The only other thing I had found out about him was that he owned a bicycle.

I stared at the road ahead, trying to appear not overly interested in what Arni was saying—“The lab computer sifts through batches of data, compiling event chains from old newspapers, subject interviews, city records of every kind, historic footage. Your alter—Felix B—signed a contract with Past & Future and declined to talk to us. Unfortunate. What we have on him was obtained indirectly and is therefore incomplete.” He continued, “It didn’t help matters any that Sayers is such a common last name. We even came across a few other Felix Sayers-es that, as far we could find, were unrelated to the two of you and existed merely to confuse the issue.”

“The only other Sayers I’ve heard of,” I said, “is the Dorothy L. Sayers who penned the Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane mysteries, but she’s no relation. She was British.”

We slowed down briefly to pass through a DIM checkpoint. The officials scanned our identicards and waved us on.

“Yes, but what
did
you find?” I asked as the checkpoint grew smaller behind us.

“The usual stuff,” Arni said, stuffing used gum wrappers into the trash bag. “You want examples?”

“Examples, yes,” I said, expecting to hear the words,
He’s working hard on a mystery novel
…

Arni wiped his hands on a tissue and flipped open the stylish omni hanging around his neck. “Here we go, 4102B, in no particular order: alphabet cookies in rainbow colors, honorable mention, third-grade art fair. Also from his childhood, sixth grade poetry recital, first place. Graduated high school the same year you did and also went on to the San Diego Four-Year. He was a member of the school yearbook committee in high school and of the dog-walking society at the four-year.”

“No spelling bees, though,” said Bean.

I had gone through a brief period in high school of entering spelling bee competitions, until an unfortunate run-in with the word
ukulele
had soured me on the whole idea.

“Jumping to adulthood,” Arni went on, “there is a review of the newly renovated Organic Oven, complimenting the chef on his
pasta e fagioli
and complaining about slow service, and another calling it ‘San Francisco’s hidden gem.’ Name of first childhood pet, Talky. Of second, Chin-Chin. Current member of Presidio kennel club. Owns a dog there—an actual dog—named Garlic.” Arni stopped. “Oh, and he rents a ground-floor apartment in the Egret’s Nest Complex in Palo Alto and attends Japanese for Beginners lessons on Monday afternoons, his day off from the Organic Oven.”

I felt a rising irritation. Alphabet cookies and restaurant reviews. Japanese lessons and dogs. I liked dogs, who didn’t, but a member of a kennel club? Was the man even related to me? “What else do you have about his private life—aggh, Bean watch out!”

A vehicle had suddenly swerved into our lane, almost cutting us off and forcing Bean to slam on the brakes.

Bean recovered and leaned forward over the steering wheel as we picked up speed again. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Who?” I asked, then realized that I already knew the answer. The last time I had seen a car this particular shade of green, its top had been down and an overweight pet had been sitting next to the driver. Today, even though it was a bright and sunny day, the top of the cucumber-green vehicle was up, obscuring the occupants of the car.

“If I had to venture an opinion,” Arni said, “then I would opine that it’s James and Gabriella. I guess the flier sightseeing got cancelled.”

“He’s been more or less behind us this whole time. I thought it was just a tailgater,” Bean said, slowing down and opening additional room between us and the car ahead. “What should I do? Pass them? Take the next exit?”

“What do they want?” I said.

“You,” Arni said simply.

Bean tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “I’ll try to lose them.”

“No,” Pak said in the voice of one dealing with imbeciles. “The contract. All we have to do is show them the contract.”

“Right. Felix, give me your copy.”

I passed her the five-page contract with which I had chartered Professor Maximilian’s group to research the storyline of my life. As if there weren’t three passengers in the car whose hands were perfectly free to perform such tasks, Bean rolled down her window while controlling the steering wheel with her elbow. She stuck her head and the contract out the window and waved it in the air. “He’s signed already,” she yelled out at the top of her lungs, even though there was no way the occupants of the car in front of us could hear her over the road noise. The wind whipped out a single page from the contract; we lost sight of it as it disappeared behind us.

The green car in front of us sped off testily.

“There,” Bean said with satisfaction as if that settled matters. She passed the somewhat thinner contract back to me and rolled up the window.

On sunny days such as the one that saw us arrive in Carmel without any further ado, tourists usually flock in large numbers to the cafés, art galleries, and quaint shops of that seaside town—or at least this had always been the case in Universe A.

Carmel B turned out to be no different. It took us a good twenty minutes to find a parking spot, during which Arni pointed out a multistory glass building squatting in the hills above town, one floor of which housed the local offices of Past & Future. I tried to picture Felix sitting inside a plush office telling Gabriella and James all about his childhood and about our parents, who had spent much of their life in this seaside town. But the image would not come. Nor could I recall a single memory from my early childhood, even though I had spent the first few years of my life here, until my parents had started a new life elsewhere with a slightly
younger
child. They had left their art gallery jobs, rented out the house, and moved the family north to San Francisco, after which we lived in an apartment, and that was home to me. After I went on to the San Diego Four-Year, they moved back to the Carmel house and opened their own gallery, but it was too late for me. I was always just a visitor.

According to Arni, 161 Cypress Lane was still standing, unlike its Universe A opposite—
my
parents’ house—which had burned down in a fire last year, he said. Any answers were here in Universe B.