By lunchtime, his presence among familiar surroundings and friends had combined to reinvigorate much of his usual easygoing, wisecracking persona. He was almost relaxed, when he saw the twins.
They were seated several tables across the room, in one of the darker sections of the Thai restaurant where he and his friends had gone to eat. The two young men were nearly but not quite identical, and the sight of them was like a big bucket of ice water in his face. Excusing himself from his puzzled companions, he stumbled over to the table that drew him like a fly to a Rafflesia.
“Pardon me,” he mumbled, interrupting their conversation. They looked to be about twenty, twenty-one. Probably UCLA students on their day off, or on break from class. Sandy-brown hair, slim builds, faces verging on the innocent, they looked up at him curiously. Simultaneously. “I know this sounds crazy, but how long have you guys known each other?”
The two youths exchanged a glance; then the one on the left looked up over his dripping cheeseburger. “Are you kidding? How long does it look like we’ve known each other?”
“All our lives, obviously.” The other brother snickered at the blatantly dumb question.
“So what you’re telling me is that you grew up together? You haven’t been separated and didn’t just happen to bump into one another yesterday?”
“What’s with the interrogation?” Turning bellicose, the first youth set his sandwich aside.
“Yeah, what’s this all about, mister?” inquired his brother. “You some kind of reporter doing a story on twins? Rich and I have been in a couple of twins’ stories before, back home.” He smiled. His personality, if not his face, differed significantly from that of his twin. “We’re from near Cincinnati.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Max was weak with relief. “I’m some kind of reporter. Always looking for a story.”
Now that their visitor had explained himself, the other brother responded enthusiastically. “What do you want to know? About how much we think alike? Actually, except for looks we’re not that much alike. Steve and I have always had pretty different tastes. Some people find that surprising, but you know, just ’cause you’re twins and look alike doesn’t mean you’re, like, the same inside.”
“That’s right,” agreed Rich cheerfully. “For example, I can’t stand Smashing Pumpkins, and Steve loves ’em. On the other hand, Steve’s a Hootie fan, but as far as I’m concerned, they can …”
“I get the idea. I’m afraid that won’t work for me. I’m sort of on the lookout for duplicates who are alike in everything. Sorry to bother you.” Much eased in mind, Max turned to rejoin his friends.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Steve called to the reporter’s retreating back, “what about the story?”
Max did not respond. Not every set of twins or triplets or quads in the world was the result of a wealthy scientific dilettante’s maladjusted experiment gone awry. Hopefully Boles was right in his suppositions and the effect had already worn off. That did not mean, Max reminded himself, that the beauteous Omaha sisters were fled from their beach hotel. Tonight he would do his best to find out. Feeling very much more like himself, he was finally able to relax and enjoy the rest of his lunch. His friends noticed his newly upbeat mood immediately.
He considered telling them about what he had been through the past couple of days, but decided against it. No one would believe the truth anyway—he hardly believed it himself. Parallel worlds populated by plethoras of parallelities, he told himself. Say that fast three times. Live that fast three times.
“What are you grinning at?” Amee asked him. She was a petite, recent immigrant from France with the tenacity of a pit bull and a waspish pen—an ideal addition to the Investigator team.
“Just feeling good,” he told her expansively. “Not to dwell on it, but I’ve had a rough couple of days.”
“Two bylined stories in less than a week.” On the other side of the table, Harrison grumbled and played with his frijoles. “I should have such a rough couple of days.”
Max bestowed a friendly smile on his friend and fellow scribe. “Just take my word for it: If you knew what I’ve been through you wouldn’t want to trade.”
The rest of the day went exceptionally well—which was to say, normally. No pairs of paras confronted him in the hallways or offices, his two stories were gruffly praised by Kryzewski, and a contact in El Monte whom he had not heard from in months and whom he had pretty much given up on phoned in with a tip on a voodoo faith healer who was working the lower-middle-class neighborhoods in the area south of the San Bernardino Freeway.
By the time he got home he was feeling positively jaunty. He’d had a rough experience but now it was behind him, the actuality of it reduced by a normal day to a scarcely credible memory. He’d have to take a moment to call Boles and tell him the good news. The proposed Tuesday return visit would thankfully not be necessary.
To cap it off, the door to his apartment was properly locked and sealed. No acquisitive evening visitors this time. He slipped the key into the deadbolt.
“Mr. Parker, Mr. Parker!”
He started, but the voice came from down the hall and not from within his apartment. Furthermore, it was one he recognized. Looking to his left, he saw Ginger Bonley from number eleven waving anxiously in his direction. A sweet old widow in her late sixties, toughened from several years of living on her own at the beach, she often made presents to the building’s other tenants of favorite cuttings from her forest of houseplants. Max’s kitchen boasted two beautiful coleuses and a climbing Schefllera courtesy of Mrs. Bonley’s horticultural expertise.
She started toward him, gesturing with one hand and occasionally glancing back over her shoulder as if Beelzebub himself were after her. He put the door key back in his pocket.
“Ginger, what’s wrong?” He thought suddenly of the thieving triplets. They were just as likely still to be in the vicinity as were the Omaha sisters.
She was having trouble catching her breath. One hand continued to flutter at him while she held the other pressed against her narrow chest. “My apartment, Mr. Parker. In—my apartment!”
“What’s in your apartment?” He looked down the hallway past her but saw nothing. “If you’ve got a problem why don’t you call the manager?”
“He—he’s not here.” She clutched at his wrist. “You come, Mr. Parker! Please, you come.”
“Okay, sure.” He let himself be led along.
The door to number eleven stood open wide. While she cowered apprehensively behind him, he peered in. From what he could remember of the last time he’d paid her a visit, the apartment appeared undisturbed. Throw blankets covered old, unstylishly comfortable furniture. No one had messed with her TV. Houseplants hung from ceiling hooks and thrust upward from elegant enameled pots, giving the room the air and appearance of an English Victorian seaside salon.
“It’s a little stuffy in here, that’s all,” he told her reassuringly as he entered. “Stuffy and humid. You should really keep a window open more often, Ginger.”
Her fingers clutched at him. “No, no, it’s not that! There’s nothing wrong with the air. You don’t understand …”
Avoiding the sharp edges of the black lacquered coffee table, he strode through the room and unlatched the big sliding glass door. Since eleven was in the back of the building her apartment had no ocean view, but the water could be seen clearly from out on the small concrete patio. He shoved the door all the way open and turned to smile across the room at her.
“You just need some fresh air in here, Ginger. It helps keep the head clear. Now, come on out and have a seat. I’ll make you some coffee if you like.”
“You’re so kind, Mr. Parker.” She warily entered her own living room and closed the door behind her. Her attention, however, was not on him but on the door that led to the back bedroom. “I guess—I guess they’re gone.”
“Guess who’s gone?” He frowned as lingering images of identical burglars once more entered his mind.
“They must have gotten out somehow while I was talking to you in the hall.” Ignoring the look he gave her, she took a tentative step toward the bedroom.
And was immediately swarmed by a screeching, squealing, hysterical cascade of yellow. With a soft scream she threw up both hands to protect her face and head, turning away and trying to duck.
The feathered avalanche winged past Max, beating at his face and upper body as it exploded through the open patio door. Instinctively he threw up his arms, diverting the stream of feathers and beaks around his head. The entire assault lasted only seconds. Then, except for a lingering smell of stale birdseed, it was over.
Breathing hard, he turned to look out the open door as the intensely yellow cloud dissipated, its individual components scattering in all directions. In less than a minute it had vanished, save for a few stragglers who had chosen to perch on palm fronds or telephone wires to take more deliberate stock of their situation and surroundings. If not for their continued presence he might have accounted the entire experience a mad dream.
Mrs. Bonley was standing next to him, eyeing the high wire where half a dozen of the escapees now reposed. “I guess that’s the end of little Bidgee.” She looked up at her stunned neighbor. “I don’t understand it, Mr. Parker. There must have been more than a hundred of them. Where could they all have come from? I only had one canary.”
“I—I don’t know, Ginger. Maybe a pet store delivery truck had an accident nearby and all their cages broke open.”
But there had been no accident involving a pet store delivery truck, he knew, or a pet store, or some unsuspected private aviary. He did not need Barrington Boles’s brain to figure out what had happened. The para effect was still in full flow, only this time it had reached out to not one parallel world, or two or three, but to more than a hundred.
It made perfect sense. Parallel worlds would naturally be inhabited by more than para humans. There would also be para cats, and para dogs, and probably para whales and cockroaches. Only that could explain the sudden manifestation in Ginger Bonley’s nearby apartment of a hundred para canaries. Flocked in her bedroom, they had made a break for freedom as soon as they had detected an opening to the outside.
Elsewhere, in many identical or near-identical elsewheres, a hundred para Ginger Bonleys must simultaneously be bemoaning the inexplicable loss of their plumed pets. Somewhere, a hundred innocent para cats might be concurrently catching hell. The birds had all looked exactly alike, but then, every canary he had ever seen had looked just like every other canary he had ever seen. Scattered and dispersed throughout West L.A., he doubted any coincidences would be remarked upon. To the best of his knowledge, genetic researchers were not in the habit of catching stray canaries to see if they could use them to make a perfect DNA match.
What next? he thought uneasily. A thousand para Pekingese pitter-pattering the streets of Beverly Hills, two thousand para coyotes massing for a joint assault on the mountain residences of Mulholland Drive? He was a locus, a nexus, helpless to manipulate or mitigate the effect that had settled in, on, or around him.
“Mr. Parker, are you all right?” A concerned Mrs. Bonley was looking up at him, brushing fitfully at the canary poop speckling her hair.
Grim-faced, he stepped around her and into the living room. “I’m fine, I’m all right. Will you be okay?”
“I suppose.” Not surprisingly, she looked and sounded slightly shell-shocked. “If they all came from a broken pet shop truck, how did they get into my apartment? All the windows were closed.”
“Maybe you forgot and left one open.” He was already out in the hall. “It doesn’t matter. They’re gone.”
“Yes, they’re gone.” She snuffled softly. “Along with my little Bidgee.”
He was moved to compassion, a condition that afflicted him but infrequently. “I’m sorry about your birds—your bird, Ginger. But it’s not like you lost a dog you’ve had for twenty years. You can always get another canary. And you still have all your plants for company.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” She was absently rubbing her chin with the forefinger of her left hand. “After what just happened, I just don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” She looked at him wide-eyed. Ginger could be a little strange. Also, she was from Arkansas. “Do you think they were evil?”
“What?” he mumbled absently, his attention still held by the few remaining birds perched on the telephone line. “No, I don’t think they were evil, Ginger. Some things in this world are just hard to explain, that’s all.”
And you wouldn’t understand the explanation if I took a day to lay it all out for you, he thought. Even if it does make more sense than claiming that they were Satan’s canaries.
What next? he wondered as he stumbled back to his apartment. Around him, the most ordinary everyday objects began to take on ominous overtones. Was he to be overwhelmed in his sleep by a thousand para pillows? Dare he check his pantry for something to eat without expecting to encounter a million para roaches?
Back inside his living room all was calm, serene, and blessedly normal. If he could not relax, at least the chilling panic was beginning to leave him.
He attempted work, but without success. Every time he tried to outline a story, or fix on something appealing from his file of tips and proposals, he found himself blocked by visions of his para selves on a million parallel worlds sitting in the same room bending over the same laptop computer, struggling fruitlessly to conjure the same empty words. From his encounter with the Omaha sisters he knew that slight differences were likely to prevail among his innumerable para selves. The morose mood into which he had fallen notwithstanding, he found himself smiling at the thought that perhaps one or two of the uncountable horde of Max Parkers might be having better luck than he was.
He prided himself on enjoying his free time to the fullest, but even after he quit trying to get any work done, the rest of the day turned out to be a waste. He managed to cook and consume a fitful supper, wondering what his para selves might be eating and how many might be suffering from indigestion due to variations in his frequently uninspired para cooking.
After the sun had set and darkness had enveloped the shore, he donned shorts and a sweatshirt and made his way down to the beach. A cool breeze was blowing in off the Pacific and he encountered only one homeless person (was it that long ago that people used to call them winos? he mused) as he trudged across the deep sand toward the water.
Ignoring the KEEP OFF sign fastened to one leg of the lifeguard tower, he ascended the weathered wooden ramp and sat down, folding his legs beneath him as he rested his back against the door of the locked cubicle. Perched twenty feet above the sand, he gazed at the string of lights that ran south toward the bump of the Palos Verde peninsula and north toward the affluent curving coast of Malibu. Barrington Boles’s house was located farther north, around the point. He found that he was glad he could not see it.
The intermittent but rejuvenating breeze had already swept any lingering smog inland, dumping the pollutants of greater Los Angeles on the unlucky inhabitants of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino valleys. Overhead lay a black sky in which the most prominent stars competed for attention with the pulsating night lights of the great city.
Tilting his head back against the wind-worn, sand-blasted, faded green plywood, he stared upward. Billions of galaxies, the astronomers claimed, within which could be found trillions of planets. Did each and every one of them boast their own infinitude of parallel worlds? Did the concept of universal parallelity espoused by Barry Boles allow for an infinity of worlds multiplied by infinity?
In school he’d had difficulty with any group of numbers that extended beyond three places. Algebra had absolutely defeated him, and trigonometry he had always imagined to be more difficult to learn than Sanskrit. Therefore, the actual numbers he was contemplating presently had less than no meaning and he could barely imagine them in the abstract. It was enough to know that the universe was Big, and if Barrington Boles wa
s right, it could now be multiplied by the figure Bigger Still.
And at the moment it seemed to him as if it was all, all of it, centered on him.
It was too much to think about. His brain was not equipped for the contemplation of such concepts. Such notions acquired life and substance only in the minds of mathematicians and theoretical physicists. To Max, a quantum state was one where gambling was licensed, and Schrödinger’s cat lived somewhere on Laurel Avenue.
He lowered his gaze and watched the white rims of waves roll in and splinter into hissing, dissipating foam. There was nothing he could do but wait it out, wait for the field to vanish of its own accord. At least until Tuesday, he reminded himself. Boles had told him that if the effect persisted, to come back Tuesday. He had an idea, the inventor had claimed.
It better be more than an idea, Max thought tensely as he looked down at the fingers of his right hand. They did not glow, did not flicker with reality-distorting energy. Whatever else the Boles field was, it was not visible.
Three para burglars he could cope with. Four beautiful para sisters he could handle. A hundred emigrating para canaries made for a shocking but not dangerous sight. Thus far his encounters with intruders from parallel worlds had been relatively benign, but what if the next one was not? What if, in pursuing a story in the Hollywood hills, he found himself confronted by a hundred para rattlesnakes? What could a doctor do if someone with a cold sneezed in his face and instead of finding himself conventionally infected, his body suddenly bulged with a billion para germs? Tuesday began to look more and more like a day of salvation.
Meanwhile he would just have to be patient and cope. Act normally, Boles had advised him. Easy to say, when you were not the one looking sideways at every person, every living thing, every object, expecting it at any moment suddenly to multiply and reproduce.
His tormented wave-caressed solitude was interrupted by the hacking sound of a lonely vagabond retching a little ways up the beach.