Regarding Ducks and Universes (15 page)

“Too much lemonade. Had to use the bathroom. Don’t recommend it. Now let’s see what we can recover—” He pulled a sleek black device out of the bag.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Which?” They all looked at me.

“
That
,” I pointed to the object in Pak’s hands.

“A laptop,” Arni said. “Er—it’s kind of halfway between an omni and a desktop.”

“Desktop?”

“Computer.”

“And a laptop is a—?”

“A computer as well. They’ve been a bit forgotten nowadays. Lots of people used to cart them around before we had omnis.”

“And an omni is—?”

“A computer too, a little one.”

“Then why give them different names—never mind.”

As various cables got connected and the computers started churning away, I left the students to it and, stepping over the odd box or two, headed for a skinny wooden object by the far wall. Upon examination I decided that it was a combination coatrack and umbrella stand, but it was impossible to venture a guess as to which century, much less to which owner, it belonged. I didn’t recall my parents ever owning a coatrack.

What I did recall was that after we moved to San Francisco, they had worked as salespeople at art stores and occasionally as museum guides to make ends meet. They had managed to give me a happy, if not particularly abundant with things, childhood. I had never tried to put myself in their place before. A bit of a loner as a child, I had spent much of my time with my nose buried in my omni, reading away.

I wondered what Felix’s childhood had been like.

My eyes rested on a solid shape about the size of a microwave oven which sat under a decomposing woven quilt next to the coatrack. I nudged the filthy blanket off with my foot, raising a cloud of dust in the process and making myself cough. The box underneath had a single word written on it in hurried, middle-of-packing kind of handwriting: BOOKS. Intrigued, I was trying to peel the tape off when I heard Bean exclaim, “Here’s something—”

I abandoned the box and went over. Too fast to be read, numbers were streaming across the screen of the laptop, which wasn’t on anyone’s lap but propped up on top of a handy box.

“Fragments.” Pak furrowed his brow. “I don’t like this.”

“I wonder if Gabriella and James found the Bitmaster in this state,” Bean said, “or if they got what they wanted first.”

“Jane, sweetie,” we heard Monroe calling his catmouse from downstairs, “come get supper…”

“Let’s copy what we can and analyze it later,” Arni urged.

“Jane, sweetie, I have Texas cheese…”

“Hurry,” Arni added. “I keep expecting Monroe to come upstairs and throw us out because we’re taking too long.”

“What’s the matter with Felix’s parents’ computer?” I asked the graduate students.

“Wiped,” said Pak.

L
ate next morning, I took three narrow flights of stairs down to the breakfast room of the Be Mine (“the
Be
is for the universe”) Inn. The bed-and-breakfast where Arni had found us lodging for the night, four closet-sized rooms with a shared bathroom, had been recommended by Franny from the Queen Bee Inn and was run by Franny’s cousin, who looked nothing like her kin and whose name I hadn’t found out yet. Frankly, I was afraid to ask. She seemed a bit put out by my having slept in and gave the impression of being more likely to smack me with a book than make me a present of one. “I’m afraid you’ve
missed
the quiche. There’s cereal and fruit left. Tea and milk over there.” Franny’s cousin stuck her decidedly non-square chin into the air and walked out to continue her day.

Pak was still missing but Arni had already come down, followed by a hoodie-clad Bean a few minutes later. There was no one else around, the other inn guests presumably having gotten up and consumed quiche at a more acceptable hour. In silence we scrambled to pour cereal and milk before Franny’s cousin returned to clear the remaining breakfast items.

I took a look at the bleary-eyed graduate students. Well into the night, huddled around the antique desk in Pak’s room, we had watched him play the laptop like a maestro, typing commands and running recovery programs. Someone had made a good job of wiping Felix’s parents’ computer, Pak had said, but because that someone had wanted to conceal that fact, paradoxically they could not make an
excellent
job of it. Whatever the reason, it meant the recovery task on the data gathered from the memory banks of the Bitmaster 2001 in Monroe’s attic was difficult but not impossible. There was a growing pile of documents on the bed by the time I had retired for the night and left them to it.

A few sips of Earl Grey, whose depth and dark hue were growing on me as a non-coffee option, cleared the grogginess in my brain. Light streamed into the breakfast room through a high window, warming the dark paneling on the walls. Outside, a warbler could be heard chirping. Across the table Bean shook her head dejectedly. “We didn’t find as much as we hoped.”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly,” Arni said and yawned.

“I know, I know. I’m not a morning optimist. Talk to me after breakfast.” She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head and buried her face in the cereal bowl.

“You found photos, then?” I asked Arni.

“Credit card receipts.” He reached for a knife and a rather strangely shaped apple and started peeling it. “Before we had identicards, people used to carry something called credit cards to pay for things, especially once the runaway inflation took hold and coins and paper bills became impractical. You couldn’t carry cash, you needed such large amounts of it, even for little things—prices were high and rose often, sometimes more than once a day. From the receipts that we found, it looks like 4100, 4101, and 4102 went on a drive—”

“Forty-one-oh-oh?”

“Sorry, I’m used to the number reference system. I meant you and your parents, the citizens Sayers, that is, Mr. and Mrs. Sayers—”

“Patrick and Klara is fine.”

He finished peeling the strange apple, offered Bean and me a slice each, then wiped his hands and took his omni off his neck. “I’ve drafted a timeline. In 1986, January 6 fell on a Monday. It was right after the holidays, so there were few tourists around in Carmel. Your parents probably closed their gallery for the day.”

I couldn’t remember my parents taking a day off—even if the gallery was closed, there were always pickups or deliveries to be made, paperwork to be done, or even just regular dusting, rearranging, and cleaning of the gallery space. If they went on a vacation, it would always turn out to be a pretext for acquiring new gallery pieces.

“The first receipt dated January 6 is from a Carmel restaurant called the Big Fat Pancake—it’s not there anymore—the bill was paid just before nine. After that, presumably, you all piled into your parents’ car, little Felix snug in his car seat—”

“It was a brown Chevrolet,” I said. “I remember riding in it.” What I didn’t recall was finding the experience of being driven around as a child as nerve-wracking as I found it as an adult.

“—and headed north. We know this because there is a gas station receipt on the way up and then a receipt from a parking lot within walking distance of the Golden Gate Bridge. The parking lot is part of the Presidio campus nowadays,” he said as an aside. “That receipt was issued at 11:15. The yabput, as we all know, occurred at 11:46:01, and for anything beyond that point in time we have to be careful to refer to 4100B, 4101B, and 4102B, to differentiate those three persons from their Universe A counterparts 4100A, 4101A, and 4102A, the last of which is you.”

“Right,” I nodded.

“Photo 13, the one in your Aunt Henrietta’s possession, was taken on foot near the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge—but whether it was taken
before
the yabput or
after
, we have no way of telling. All we can say for sure is that at eleven fifteen you parked near the bridge for some photo-taking. Unless you stayed for less than half an hour, at 11:46:01
you would have been within the event radius.
” He paused to let that sink in.

“The next and last receipt of the day was signed by Klara Sayers at a Pier 39 restaurant, a driving distance away. The Quake-n-Shake. It’s still there.” He checked his omni screen. “Lunch was fourteen thousand dollars—a ridiculously large amount, but that’s in old dollars, before the devaluation. Paid at 1:05.” He leaned back in the antique chair as far as it would go without toppling and sank his teeth into an apple slice.

I took a look at the timeline displayed on Arni’s omni.

“That’s it? That’s all we have?” I said.

A fresh apple slice in hand, Arni shook his head. “Don’t listen to Bean, it’s a lot. Photo 13 coupled with the receipts puts you in the right place at the right time. Where precisely you were at 11:46:01, we don’t know yet. More photos or receipts would be helpful. Pak is still running recovery programs on the data from the computer in Monroe’s attic—that is, his laptop is, Pak is sleeping. There might be more there. Also, remember that this is just Felix B’s timeline.”

“My parents’ Universe A computer no longer exists,” I reminded him. “The fire.”

“But Universe A gas stations and restaurants keep records. Not much from Y-day was thrown out because everything from newspapers to milk cartons to stamps is a collector’s item. It’ll take a day or two to get authorization from DIM for the receipt from the Universe A Quake-n-Shake Restaurant, if there is a receipt to be had. In the meantime, we should go back to Monroe’s and see if we missed anything. I’d like to look through all the boxes in that attic, for one thing. Monroe claims they are his, but maybe there’s a box or two left by your parents—by Felix’s parents, I mean. I’ll make a call and get Professor Maximilian’s permission for another day here at Carmel and for some extra funds. I have a feeling Monroe is going to charge us for the privilege of searching his attic again.”

“That reminds me,” I said. “I need to make a call.”

I went into the hallway and dialed Wagner.

“Felix,” bellowed Wagner, “
there
you are. Did you get my messages?”

“Sorry, omni difficulties. I’m sending you the Golden Gate Bridge write-up.” I had put something together quickly.

“The bread maker is coming along nicely. I’ve decided that it should be crimson, like the bridge itself, what do you think?”

“Not a bad idea, though the bridge color is international orange.”

“Is it? I’ve found a contact for the sourdough.”

“Can’t do it, Wagner. I’m in Carmel.”

“When you get back to the city, go to the Salt & Pepper Bakery in the Mission District. Mention my name. The rest is taken care of.”

“Are we sure about this?”

“It’s just a yeast culture. Besides, if I could do it the right way, I would.”

“Well—all right. By the way, how did the pretzel competition go?”

“A small disaster. The pretzels were too big for the ovens and stuck to the sides.”

I went back into the Be Mine Inn breakfast room. “Bean, how did you know that our Wagners were the same?”

She looked up from the cereal bowl. “I met him.”

“Wagner? When?”

“When I went looking for you at your workplace. In my clumsy attempt at approaching you as a research subject.”

“Oh, you did quite well,” I said to her and took another slice of the weirdly shaped apple that Arni had peeled. It was very crisp.

“Did I? I didn’t even have a plan. I walked into Wagner’s Kitchen with the vague notion of pretending to be a prospective client with an idea for a cookie maker I wanted to market. Luckily you had already left for your vacation, so I didn’t have to actually, um—lie.”

“So you came into my office, Bean. What about James and Gabriella, did they engineer the pet bug scare just to secure some time with me? What is this? It’s delicious.”

“It’s a papple. Pear-and-apple,” Arni said. He thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t have said that Past & Future operated that way. For one thing, they don’t need to. Money opens a lot of doors and they have it. On the other hand,” he added, “the way Photo 13 appeared out of nowhere made
us
proceed very carefully, and I imagine the same is true for them. Even after we’d made sure the photo was authentic, we’d planned to say nothing until we were confident you weren’t working for DIM.” He glanced pointedly across the table at Bean, who was studying the empty cereal bowl in front of her. “Anyway, here we all are, so I’m guessing you’re not a DIM agent and this isn’t an undercover operation of some sort to ferret out unauthorized research and other Regulation 19–breaking activities.”

“I’m not and it isn’t.” Not only was I
not
a DIM agent, I was pretty sure my name was on a list titled
Suspicious Persons
produced by a desk-bound DIM official. Having a fake birth date will do that.

Having left Pak, who had eventually shuffled downstairs, at the B&B to oversee further data recovery operations, the three of us headed back to Monroe’s house, on the way encountering a group of Passivists sitting still in a circle on a somewhat dry park lawn. One of them called out to us as the sidewalk took us past them, “We are all gods, my friends. Did one of you misuse the power? Did one of you build the dam that sent our two rivers cascading down different canyons—”

“My parents were never like that,” Bean said quietly as we continued out of earshot. “They merely don’t like disturbing nature or making decisions.”

“What do the Passivists mean, did one of us misuse the power?” I asked.

“They believe the universe maker knowingly and deliberately sent A and B on different paths.”

“They are not talking about Professor Z. Z. Singh, are they?”

“No.” She picked up the pace.

Monroe let us in and grudgingly allowed us access to his house again on the premise that if we found anything,
anything
at all, he would be paid accordingly. I had a feeling he had wanted to search the attic himself but was willing to let us do the job.

As Jane darted into the hallway and we followed Monroe’s pet catmouse up the carpeted stairs, I said, “Felix’s parents also moved the family to San Francisco, you said. What about their life there? Was it similar?”

Arni understood what I was asking. “Generally speaking. Differences between alters’ lives—and universes—tend to build up slowly. You end up with many small differences, a few medium-sized ones, and one or two biggies. Oddly, alters who are
not
in contact with each other often end up living lives more similar than those who are. If I had to guess, I’d say your parents and Felix B’s parents didn’t keep in touch, simply because they both moved back to Carmel and opened art galleries. If Felix B’s parents had told
your
parents about this great idea they had about opening a prehistoric art gallery, your parents would have found something else to do.”

“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said as we pushed the attic door open a second time, “how did Carmel get to keep its name in both universes? I thought you said only big cities kept their names.”

“Ours is now Carmel Beach and yours is Carmel-by-the-Sea. As far as I can tell, everyone mostly calls both towns Carmel.”

“Where do we start?” I said, looking around.