A Million Worlds With You

  They might have been oceanographers again, I think as I keep going into a large living room where the windows all have heavy white cloth curtains, and look out on what seems to be yet more bamboo plants growing outside. In the distance is an urban cityscape. Or maybe Mom and Dad went into pure math.

  The living room is more casual than the dining room, and about a jillion of my paintings are on the wall. Looks like I even do some sculpture, to judge by the molded clay hand on one bookshelf. And on the sliver of wall beside the main windows, I see some framed magazine covers with Mom and Dad’s faces. One of the covers only has an illustration, though—an enormous aqua double helix, framed on both sides by identical profiles. At the top, just beneath the magazine title, is the bold headline THE CLONE AGE.

  Clones?

  “It’s seven o’clock,” says a voice that sounds familiar and yet strange. “That makes it dinner time, right? Are you going to let me out of prison yet, or do I have to go hungry?”

  I look back to see my mother in the dining room with her hands on her hips, facing a very angry . . . me.

  “Prison.” Mom sighs. She is completely unfazed that my doppelganger just walked in. “Honestly, aren’t you a little old for—”

  “You know what I’m a little old for? Being treated like a toddler who threw a tantrum,” snaps the other me. She’s wearing a skater skirt and a T-shirt in almost identical shades of blue.

  “Apparently you’re not too old to act like one,” Mom retorts. I just stand there, staring.

  There are two of us. Two of me. Do I have an identical twin, or—?

  I look back at that headline, THE CLONE AGE. Now I notice the line at the bottom, which reads WHAT THE CAINE FAMILY MEANS FOR OUR FUTURE.

  I’m a clone. We’re clones. In other words, in this universe, there is more than one person that the Firebird would count as being me. Multiple versions of me exist here, which means more than one Marguerite could travel to this dimension at the same time. . . .

  Hurrying back into the dining room, I stare at this other version of myself. Sure enough, just at the neckline of her T-shirt, I can see the chain of her Firebird.

  When I walk in, at first she’s surprised—as shocked to see me as I was to see her. But then the realization hits her, too.

  Wicked and I are standing face-to-face at last.

  20

  WICKED WOULDN’T HESITATE TO HURT ME.

  I’m going to hurt her first.

  I launch myself at her, sending her smashing into the wall as Mom screams. Wicked tries to claw my face and winds up snagging my damp hair and pulling hard. Wincing, I grab for her Firebird and feel the chain give.

  She pushes me down, but I have time to tug off my own Firebird and throw them both toward the corner before she’s on me. Wicked shoves my head onto the floor, hard, then does it again. This time I grab her hair and yank to the side, hard enough that she topples beside me.

  “Marguerite! Victoire!” Mom goes on her knees beside us, trying to get in the way. “Have you lost your minds? Stop this—”

  Wicked lets go of me long enough to savagely elbow Mom in the face, which is almost as shocking to see as it is for Mom to experience. “This is between us!” Wicked shouts at my stunned mother.

  That moment of distraction lets me roll atop Wicked and pin her arms to the floor. “You didn’t think I’d ever catch up,” I mutter as I try to still her wriggling. “You didn’t count on this world, did—aaah!”

  Wicked’s teeth sink through my skin as she bites down savagely, but I don’t let go. Mom grabs me in an effort to pull me away from Wicked. “Girls! Girls! What has gotten into you?”

  I’m able to shake my mother off, but only for a moment. Nothing will stop her except the truth. “Mom! Listen to me. Did you ever think about studying the multiverse? Parallel realities?”

  Wicked’s eyes go wide. Wow, I look weird when I’m surprised.

  Mom finally says, “Long ago—in undergraduate—why are you—”

  “I’m not from your universe.” I nod down toward the writhing Wicked. “She isn’t either.”

  “You’re insane!” Wicked shouts. “She’s gone psycho, Mom. I noticed a long time ago. I just didn’t want to say anything. But now she’s lost it and you have to stop her, Mom, or she’ll kill us both!”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone,” I promise. “Mom, go look at the Firebirds. The lockets I threw in the corner. You’ll see what they are!”

  Will she? Mom did before, but that was in a universe where she and Dad had worked on that technology for more than a decade. Here, my mother isn’t even a physicist. The Firebird won’t serve as such easy proof.

  “They’re going to toss you in a padded cell and never let you out.” Wicked practically spits the words at me. I knew I got flushed when I was angry, but I had no idea my cheeks reddened so much, or the depth of the wrinkle between my eyebrows that comes with my scowl. But the rage inside Wicked practically glows from her, like heat. That fury belongs to her alone. “You’ll be shut in the loony bin without your stupid necklace and you’ll never get out.”

  Hopefully I can avoid institutionalization—or, at least, get Wicked locked up with me. Though only at this moment do I realize that I have no idea what to do with Wicked now that I’ve caught her. It’s not like we have a prison for Crimes Against the Multiverse.

  “Both of you, get up from there.” Mom has recovered from her astonishment, enough to go Cossack on us both. “Get up!”

  I look up at my mother, hoping she’ll see how afraid I am. How real this is. “I can’t let her up, Mom. If I let her up, she might kill both of us, and I am not exaggerating, I mean kill.”

  “See?” Wicked whines. Tears glimmer in her eyes—probably only from the pain of having her hair pulled, but she’s using them like a master actress. “She’s psycho. Mom, I’m so scared—”

  “Stop this,” Mom repeats. She still hasn’t made a move toward the Firebird lockets, which lie in the corner. Instead she starts backing toward the table, where her cell phone is probably buried among the papers. “I mean it.”

  Then we all hear the door, and footsteps thumping toward us. That’s Dad, probably, or Josie. Will one of them believe about the Firebirds? Or will Wicked finally get her chance to turn the others against me?

  From where Mom’s standing, she can see into the hallway, and she sighs in relief. “Oh, thank God. Help me with these two.”

  “No worries, Sophia,” Theo says as he walks in.

  Theo. My mind fills with the horrible image of the last time I saw his face: Triadverse Theo bloodied and dying in the wreckage of his sports car. This Theo, whichever he is, has the same Chucks on his feet, same faux-vintage Beatles T-shirt, same stubble on his chin. When he sees two Marguerites on the ground, his face goes white.

  That’s when I see the Firebird chain at his neck. It’s not just any Theo—this one is mine.

  He mutters, “What the—”

  “We’re clones,” I say. “We’re clones and so we can both be here at once.”

  “I followed her here and she’s trying to kill me!” Wicked cries, instantly shifting strategy.

  “Do you know what they’re talking about?” Mom says, but nobody answers her.

  Theo pauses, closes his eyes like he’s thinking hard, then asks, “What’s the single most embarrassing thing that happened to us in the Warverse?”

  Wicked only stares. I say, “Finding ourselves in bed together.”

  “Excuse me?” Mom goes pale.

  “It’s not how it sounds!” Theo holds up his hands. “Well. Actually, it is how it sounds. But not between me and my Marguerite—or your Theo or your Marguerite, at least as far as I know—”

  “They’re both crazy,” Wicked growls, but she knows she’s about to get busted. She thrashes beneath me until I think she’s going to throw me off. That’s when Theo sinks down to sit on her legs, and she groans in defeat.

  “Okay,” Theo says, “first of all, Sophia, or Dr.
Kovalenka, whatever I call you here, we need to talk about parallel dimensions.”

  “I already told her,” I say. “But can you make her believe us? Like, with the math?”

  Theo grins at me. “Extremely convincing math, coming up.”

  Half an hour later, Wicked is tied to a chair, the dining room table is covered with about fifty brand-new equations, and my mom’s mind is seriously blown.

  “This is unbelievable.” She sits at the table staring into an unseen distance. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to shock my mother with science twice in the same day. “My God. Henry will be beside himself.”

  “I know how that feels,” I say as I glance at Wicked literally beside me. For her part, Wicked is now ignoring all of us. She points her chin high like a captured soldier willing to give no more information than her rank and serial number.

  Not that any of us have gotten around to asking her anything. Instead, I’m watching Theo compare his Firebird with the one from the Warverse. “This is kinda crude, but to have built it under that kind of time pressure? I’m impressed.”

  “I’m just grateful,” I say. “Without it, I would have died along with the Romeverse.”

  Theo’s dark eyes meet mine for a moment, then he turns back to the Firebird lockets. “If it helps, we think that’s the only dimension Triad has taken down so far.”

  “It helps some.” But not much.

  “Henry was going into physics,” my mother says in her daze, “before we met at Oxford. Then he switched to genetics, mostly so we could be in the same courses.”

  “You guys met at college this time around?” Kind of mundane. I prefer my own universe, where my parents had bonded over shared crackpot theories long before they ever met in person. “In my dimension, you went to the Sorbonne instead.”

  “Oh, that explains it.” Then she shakes her head and is Mom again. “It explains one point of divergence in the realities. But this conspiracy you’ve described, the threat this Triad represents—how do we defend against it?”

  “Knowing is half the battle.” Theo nods his head in Wicked’s direction. “The other half is making your universe sufficiently asymmetric, in terms of your matter-to-antimatter ratios. I can do it with my Firebird and a stabilizer that we can whip up in a jiffy.”

  “How are they supposed to do that?” I gesture toward the wall of magazine headlines about clones. “This isn’t their field.”

  “Or mine, in this universe. Apparently I decided genetics was my bag this go-round. Still, Paul and I should be able to talk them through it.” Theo picks up his phone and inputs the unlock code; the screen shifts into an image of Paul next to his contact info. Surprised, I say, “How did you know the code?”

  “Same one as at home. It’s, um, my mom’s birthday.” Theo looks slightly sheepish at this evidence of his sentimental side, but he moves on. “Always a relief to find ‘Markov’ in a new universe’s contacts list, isn’t it? I’d be even more relieved if I’d actually been able to talk to him. No luck so far either calling or texting, but I assume he’ll show any time now.”

  “Paul?” Mom brightens, no doubt thrilled to once again understand some part of what’s happening. “He went on a scuba diving trip today. The sun’s going down, though, so he should be back soon.”

  Scuba diving? Maybe that’s what Paul does when he lives somewhere that has no mountains to climb. “Where are we, anyway? What country is this?”

  My mom blinks. “Of course—you wouldn’t even know. This is Singapore, sweetheart.”

  Singapore? Theo and I exchange glances, and he says, “This is the place where you can get caned for chewing gum, right?”

  “That’s slightly more draconian than the truth.” Mom pauses. “Slightly. Be on your best behavior. On the plus side, it’s very safe here—at least, from any known threats.”

  Wicked, the previously unknown threat, continues to ignore us all.

  According to Mom, she and Dad were awakened this morning by the sound of Victoire—a. k. a. the clone Wicked leaped into—attempting to sneak out of the house. They had no idea why she wanted to do that, but they grounded her until dinner and made her stay in her room the entire day. She had a bathroom, internet access, and food brought to her, so it’s not like my parents put her in some kind of gulag, but Wicked’s mouth twists in a sneer as my mother tells us that part of the story. No doubt she used the time to research quality methods of committing suicide in a way that might take me out with her.

  But because she was awake so early, and got caught upstairs, Wicked never saw any of the others or the magazine covers. When she heard the other voices in the house, she would’ve assumed they were simply sisters unique to this universe. She had no idea she was a clone, and so she didn’t suspect the danger until the very moment she saw me.

  I turn my head to see Theo studying me instead of the Firebird. He’s noticed my fascination and dread about Wicked. When I smile, he says, “Your face normally looks nothing like that, by the way. We’ve got some serious grumpy overload going on over there.”

  “I can be grumpy,” I say, but we both know he’s talking about something deeper and darker than that. “You must be doing better, huh? The Nightthief remedy is working.” Then I reconsider my optimism. “Or is it—did you need to be in a healthier body for a while?”

  “The Nightthief treatment helps.” Theo takes a deep breath, as if letting that fear go. “Given enough time, yeah, I think I’ll be back to myself again. But I can’t deny, it feels good to be in a version of me who never had to deal with this stuff. I think I work out here, even. All the abs, none of the suffering.” He runs his hand over his taut abdomen with satisfaction. I laugh despite myself, and am rewarded with his warmest smile. Then he turns to Mom. “Sophia, do you think you can keep an eye on—what did you call her again?”

  Mom says “Victoire” at the same moment I say “Wicked.” Then we look at each other, and Wicked huffs in exasperation.

  Unfazed, Theo says, “Can you keep an eye on her?”

  “Indeed I can. I couldn’t manage a houseful of eight teenagers without knowing how to keep them in line.” My mother tosses her hair, focused again.

  But I can’t get over—“Eight?”

  “We tried four sets of twins, thinking we might get two or three live births.” Mom shrugs. “The experiment exceeded our wildest hopes.”

  Theo looks as astonished as I feel. “And the others?”

  “Most of the others wanted to go see some movie, the newest Star Wars thing, I think.” Mom waves her hand around airily. Pop culture is not one of her top concerns. “Henry took them. I suppose they’ll be back in half an hour or so.”

  “It won’t take that long,” Theo promises. He nods toward the front door, and I get to my feet to follow him.

  Stepping outside feels like being slapped in the face with heat and humidity. Our house appears to be even grander than I thought—a bungalow of white stucco about twice the size of our home back in the Berkeley Hills. Yet the bungalow is dwarfed by the skyscrapers beyond, dozens of them, some so futuristic that I could imagine them in the Londonverse or even the Home Office. Palm trees sway along the roadside, where compact cars zip along, and in the distance I can see an elevated train snaking along its track, a silhouette against the setting sun. I tuck my messy, half-dry hair back into the bun Wicked had wrecked so I won’t look like some kind of escapee to any of the hyper-vigilant Singapore cops who might come by.

  “What is it?” I ask Theo as he shuts the door. “Is there some problem at home, something Triad’s doing, that you didn’t want to say in front of Mom?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.” Theo leans against the door. “You look at me like I’m a puppy you’ll have to put down. What happened?”

  At first I want to make up a lie, but why? Theo’s strong enough to hear the truth. I look into his eyes and say, “You killed me. Then you died for me.”

  He listens, slack-jawed, as I explain what happened in the
Egyptverse and then in the Triadverse. “Conley thought that if he ordered you to kill me, it would force you to see me as an enemy,” I finish. “But he was wrong. Once the Triadverse’s Theo had to face what he was really doing, once he actually had to see it for himself—he couldn’t do it anymore. He finally turned against Wyatt Conley, and I think he removed that entire universe as a threat.”

  “Jesus.” Theo runs one hand through his fashionably spiky hair. “I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know how you can look at me.”

  “I can look at you because that wasn’t you.” I touch his shoulder. “Our choices matter more than anything else. And you’ve always chosen to help and protect me.”

  Theo’s smile is crooked. “What about Paul? How’s he doing?”

  “I haven’t seen him since the Spaceverse. We left things badly.” I take a deep breath to get through it. “Paul’s splintering messed up his brain—for real. The scan we ran looked like shattered glass. One of the other Pauls told me that you could recover from being splintered, or compensate for it at least, but you have to try. To try, you have to believe. And Paul doesn’t.”

  “Little brother.” Theo groans and thumps the back of his head softly against the front door. “Don’t worry, Marguerite. You’ll get through to him eventually.”

  “I hope so.” How do you undo the programming of a lifetime? Paul was literally raised to believe there was no such thing as unconditional love, and I don’t know how to convince him otherwise.

  “You will.” Theo’s dark brown eyes meet mine, wistful and resigned. “You’ll be one of those college freshman girls convinced she’s going to marry the guy she’s already in love with. Except all those other girls will have broken up with their long-distance boyfriends by homecoming. You and Paul? You’re going to make it.”

  “Theo—”

  “You’re looking at me like I’m too wounded to ever recover.” He slaps one hand on his chest, exaggerating the wound, even though I can sense the very real pain he still feels. “Trust me, Marguerite, I’m gonna be just fine. I broke enough hearts along the way, so I had it coming.”