Random Acts Part 18

"Today, I swear it . . . that stuff, that thing I said, it's just part of the . . . we can't do anything to female prisoners! Never!"

"You put her in that chair."

"I was doing my job --- I had no choice! Cooper, he's the Man. He made the decision!"

"I've never bought that excuse. Doing something rotten because it's your job and you were ordered to do it doesn't mean you weren't responsible. You can get a different job."

Square nose makes a quick move, perhaps to grab my gun arm, perhaps to grab his own gun --- maybe both. It makes me jump and my finger squeezes by reflex. There's a terrific blast of noise and the gun jumps right out of my hand, nearly taking my finger with it. Square nose bends forward and falls over on his side. I jump up and down, cursing, wringing my hand. There's blood droplets spattered all over the tile of the rest room. I stop jumping, and stand for a moment gritting my teeth and holding onto my hand, then look over at square nose who's lying on his side in a fetal position with blood pooling around his middle. I shot the man. I blew his p.e.n.i.s clean off. I can't believe I did it.

Searching around the bathroom floor, I find my gun and pick it up.

Taking one last look at square nose, I see he's found his gun and is waving it around wildly, but he can't seem to control his arm well enough to aim it at me. I step into the gap in the corner between walls and out of the room.

Square nose leaves in an ambulance just as Cooper comes driving up.

I watch as Cooper opens his car door and steps out, standing and looking back at the retreating ambulance. He slams the door, still looking back, then walks with a distracted expression up to the large iron door. They swing it open for him, and as he's walking in I jump out of the building and run for his car.

The prison and the car are man-made three dimensional objects. The Earth is not. The structure of the Earth itself has as many dimensions as the universe in which it formed, with no convenient gaps for me to use to conceal myself. As I dash toward the car, I am in plain sight of anyone who might be looking. Reaching the car, I squeeze through one of the numerous gaping holes and into the rear, down on the floorboards.

Huddled there, breathing dust from the dirty carpet, I listen for any signs of excitement. There are none, so I take the opportunity to move up onto the rear seat, squeeze through the gap between the seat and the backrest, and find a nice little s.p.a.ce between it and the trunk.

Cooper's visit lasts less than fifteen minutes. I guess the tales about the menacing ghost has spooked him. He's in a hurry as he leaves, the tires kicking up rooster-tails of gravel. We hit the main road doing about seventy, and he accelerates up to the maximum of the car.

After several minutes I roll out of my hidden s.p.a.ce and down to the floorboards once again. My stolen gun, minus one bullet, is in my sweaty right hand. With my left hand I reach up between the front seat and the backrest and s.n.a.t.c.h Cooper's wallet out of his back pocket. He feels this, and it startles him. He gropes for his wallet as the car swerves back and forth across the lanes. I flip through it, learning his home address, studying the pictures of his family. Such wholesome-looking kids.

I sit up in the back seat and lean forward, putting the gun to Cooper's head. He starts, his breath caught in his throat. I drop his wallet in his lap, staring him in the eyes through the rear view mirror.

"I want to know what you did to Heather Clarke," I ask him.

"We let her go," he said.

"Just like that? You torture her, and then you let her go so she can tell people about it?"

"So what if she tells people about it."

"You don't care if the public knows you torture innocent people and starve them to death in prisons?"

"Who questions the government? You really are from another world, aren't you?"

"Another reality."

"How do you expect to get away with this? If you thought you were in trouble before, you're about to find out what real trouble is----"

"You were going to let me die of thirst and starvation in prison!"

I shout at the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. "What can be worse than that?"

"There are a lot of things much worse, and you're going to find out what they are." He grins. "Go ahead, shoot me. Kill me. We're doing two-hundred and ten miles per hour. You shoot me and you'll die with me."

"I can shoot you in the head and disappear from the car, you idiot.

Or didn't they tell you anything at the prison?"

His smile fades. He hadn't thought of that.

"I can also disappear from here and reappear at eighteen-eighty-five Watercress Drive," I tell him, my voice low. "I can tie your wife Marlene up and make her watch as I kill your kids. Then I can drag her back to this car and make her tell you about it."

Cooper is silent. On his forehead, beads of sweat form as he thinks about this.

"I'll offer you a simple deal," I tell him. "You and your buddies leave me alone, I'll leave you and your family alone. I won't say anything about your precious government secrets. But if I ever see one of you or your j.e.r.k.-.o.f.f. co-workers again, I'm going to come out of nowhere and destroy you. I don't care where you go, where you try to hide, I'll know exactly where you and your family are."

Cooper grinds his teeth and stares at the road.

"Think about it," I tell him. Then I fall backwards, rolling through the gap in the back seat and into the s.p.a.ce beyond. Cooper slows the car down and stops, jumping out and walking around the car. I can hear his frantic footsteps, his shoes scuffing across the pavement. He opens the trunk and even the hood looking for me. I can hear him muttering obscenities under his breath.

He climbs back into the car and turns it around, speeding down the highway and heading directly home. It takes a couple of hours, and judging by the swerving and sudden slamming of brakes, he's driving like a maniac. A wreck at these speeds would mean instant death. I resist the urge to pop out again and tell him to slow down. I close my eyes and pray we make it.

The tires squeal as he pulls into his driveway and stops. I hear him open his door and slam it, his footsteps fading as he goes to the house. I slip out and enter from the other side, slipping between the corners of the walls.

His wife is stepping out of the kitchen to greet him, and I come in behind her. He's asking her if she's okay and then he sees me, standing calmly there behind her in the doorway to the bright, clean kitchen. The expression on his face is almost dumb. It's humble, I've got him where it hurts. "Do we have a deal?" I ask him.

His wife gives a start and swings around, staring at me with surprise.

"Yes," Cooper says. He sees I'm still holding the gun, though I'm not pointing it at anyone. His hands are together in front of him, and his shoulders are hunched. He looks like a schoolboy in the princ.i.p.al's office.

"As long as you keep your side of the deal," I tell him, "your family will never see me again." I turn and walk into a corner, disappearing right through the wall.

Heather isn't home when I arrive. It's just as well, as I look and smell awful. I'm also covered in grease and oil from the bus with which I'd snuck a ride. The only hidden cubbyhole I'd found was next to the engine, and I was partially deafened and choking on fumes by the time I got off.

Tossing the prison fatigues in the trash, I scrub myself clean in the shower and then find, thankfully, some of my clothes left in her closet. They fit loose --- it seems I've lost weight over the past several days. I do look thin to myself in the mirror. Well, more than thin. Gaunt.

I help myself to a sandwich and a beer from her 'fridge, and I'm sitting there at her tiny kitchen table when the front door rattles and opens. Heather walks into the kitchen holding a grocery bag, looking weary and dazed. Seeing me she freezes, standing still and staring at me, grocery bag clutched in front of her.

I stand up and walk around the table toward her, and she takes a few steps back. She flinches when I reach out and take the grocery bag from her, like she expects me to hit her. Setting the grocery bag down on the table, I close the door and then slowly reach out to her, gently put my hands to each side of her head. Her eyes close at my touch, and I notice her breathing is hard and her body is trembling. I lean forward and give her a soft kiss on the lips. She kisses back, and when I pull away there's tears on her face.

"I thought you were dead," she whispers.

"No, I'm fine."

"They let you go?"

"Yes, they let me go. They're not going to bother us any more."

"Never?"

"Never again."

Her arms slip around me and she buries her face into my chest.

Quiet, body still shaking, she cries. I hold her, rocking her gently and stroking her hair. I have this odd feeling, a kind of a strange sadness; in the dim light of this dumpy little house there's a haunting familiarity, like a sudden childhood memory coming to mind and you realize you've been to a certain place before. Thin echoes of memories thread through my mind, memories of times spent with this woman, in this reality --- they're somehow filtering in from another version of myself.

A voice in my head, my voice, says, "It's come to this." I don't know what it means, but I open my mouth and speak, saying "We're going to make a fresh start. We're going to put this all behind us."

I feel her nodding, her face still pressed against my chest. Then she pulls her head back and looks up into my eyes, her expression sad but hopeful. She nods again, making sure I know she agrees. The muscles of my face take control of themselves and smile, then my head bends down and my lips kiss her forehead. She closes her eyes and hugs me again.

I'm suddenly confused because I'm not in control of my body. The smile and kiss came from somewhere else.

Across the room, on the wood-patterned paneling above the small refrigerator, is a brilliant point of red light. As I stare at it in surprise, Heather and my body turn and walk out of the room without me.

At the same time the red light jumps out from the wall, elongating from a point to a beam, and spears me through the chest. The details of the room fade into a jumbled confusion of shapes, and I begin drifting forward, following the beam.

11. LITTLE RED BEACON.

The shaft of laser light s.h.i.+nes brilliant red through murky air, down what looks to be a long hallway of corners. As I move down this hallway I have to fight to keep myself from being pulled to one side or the other, as the corners I'm pa.s.sing seem to have a gravity of their own, and following this beam straight down this hyper-direction is akin to walking a tightrope.

The corners I'm pa.s.sing are sets of dimensions, each one an alternate world. I catch a brief glance into each as I pa.s.s them, seeing someone sitting in a chair, seeing a car pa.s.s, seeing a road beside the bay.

I pa.s.s a figure pressed up against the lee side of a corner, which unnerves me. There's not much light in here, and the air is thick with dust motes. I can't see any details of the figure as I pa.s.s, though I get the impression his or her mouth is hanging wide open in the position of a frozen gasp. After several minutes I pa.s.s another figure on the other side. What are they, I wonder? Ghosts? Maybe they're not really there, just figments of my overloaded mind. Staring intently at the third one I see, it loses depth and turns to gray shades of shadow. I pa.s.s silently and shudder. Perhaps that's what will happen to me if I fall off this tightrope.

As I continue, the beam begins to dim and the air itself grows progressively brighter. It feels like sunlight --- the brightness and the warmth are there, but it's like the sun is in my blind-spot, I can't see it anywhere. The light itself is diffuse.

The corners gradually drop below me, and above are more. I'm going uphill, working my way up though another level of corners. It boggles my mind --- an infinity of alternate worlds layered in infinite layers.

Infinity is a hard enough concept to grasp, but to find an infinite amount of different infinities is even worse. As I work my way up among the upper plane, the light ebbs and shadows return. The laser beam brightens. I pa.s.s more ghosts.

It continues like this for three more layers, gradually climbing an uphill tightrope, and then the beam is gone. I stop, feeling suddenly lost and frightened, but when I turn around I see the beam emerging from a point and s.h.i.+ning down the path I'd just followed. I've pa.s.sed the originating point of the beam. Moving closer to where the beam starts, I see an elongated crystal, the hyper-dimensional part of a 4-D prism, poking out of one of the corners. Easing myself down into the corner, I emerge into a room full of electronic equipment. Standing amid this scientific hardware, wearing a lab coat and shaded goggles, is Alvin Laurel.

He pulls the goggles off and shuts down the laser, then gives me a big smile. He looks relieved. "You made it back," he said. "You were a long ways away."

"Where am I?"

"Berkeley."

"Yeah, but which Berkeley?"

"The one you came from."

"How do you know? You weren't a scientist in the Berkeley I came from."

"No?"

I shake my head. "You of all people should know there's thousands of versions of me lost out in that chaos."

"Well, yes, I know that. The best I can hope for is an approximate.

Ask me some questions about this Berkeley and I'll tell you how close you are to being home."

"In this Berkeley, do I live in the Euclid Building, or the Escher?"

"You live in the Euclid Building on Euclid Street, and you have a roommate named Tom Harrison."

"Am I a Herpetologist?"

"Yes, you teach Herpetology right here on campus."

"What are my cla.s.s hours?"

"Your --- I have no idea." He laughs. "We can find out. Lets go to your office."

"Let's go to my cla.s.sroom."

"Whatever you wish."

On the door of my cla.s.s is a hand-printed note telling the students that the cla.s.s has been postponed until further notice, as the instructor was away on urgent personal business. "I told administration you had a death in your family," Alvin says.

Inside, the carpet is the pale blue I remember --- the color it should be. I walk around my desk, savoring the sight of something familiar, then pull out the cla.s.s schedule and look it over. Not only are the starting times the ones I'm used to, I actually recognize the names of several students. Alvin is watching me as I look things over, checking the brand names of pencils, making sure paper clips are the correct shape.

"Is this what you remember?" he asks.

"Yes. At least, here in the cla.s.sroom it is." I think about Pris, wondering what kind of relations.h.i.+p we have here. "Something just occurred to me."

"And that is?"

"I was searching for Pris this whole time."

"Who?"

"A woman I'm in love with. Every time I s.h.i.+fted dimensions in my sleep, I found I was in some sort of relations.h.i.+p with Pris --- but the relations.h.i.+p was always ending. It was like my subconscious was pulling me from one universe to the next searching for a place where Pris and I were together."

"That makes sense. Your subconscious is in control when you sleep, and your subconscious learned to move between planes of the universe before you consciously gained control. I suspect the subconscious is in fact part of the bigger collective."

"The what?"

"The whole human creature. We're like giant four-dimensional starfish----"

"Starfish?"

"The part of us that we perceive in three dimensions is just one segment of the whole, which extends through hundreds --- maybe even thousands --- of planes of the multi-dimensional universe. When you s.h.i.+ft from one 'body' to the next, it's your consciousness s.h.i.+fting along the four-dimensional nervous system, which your brain is a part of --- and when you physically s.h.i.+ft, such as the way you arrived here, you actually moved physically through planes of the universe."

"Starfish?"