Ur (5 page)

Robbie laughed politely and shook Don Allman’s hand. Until that moment, Wesley had planned on asking Don to leave, thinking one witness to his mental collapse would be enough. But maybe this was that rare case where the more really was the merrier.

“Need some privacy?” Don asked.

“No,” Wesley said. “Stay. I want to show you guys something. And if you see nothing and I see something, I’ll be delighted to check into Central State Psychiatric.” He opened his briefcase.

“Whoa!” Robbie exclaimed. “A pink Kindle! Sweet! I’ve never seen one of those before!”

“Now I’m going to show you something else that you’ve never seen before,” Wesley said. “At least, I think I am.”

He plugged in the Kindle and turned it on.

What convinced Don Allman was the
Collected Works of William Shakespeare
from Ur 17,000. After downloading it at Don’s request—because in this particular Ur, Shakespeare had died in 1620 instead of 1616—the three men discovered two new plays. One was titled
Two Ladies of Hampshire
, a comedy that seemed to have been written soon after
Julius Caesar
. The other was a tragedy called
A Black Fellow in London
, written in 1619. Wesley opened this one and then (with some reluctance) handed Don the Kindle.

Don Allman was ordinarily a ruddy-cheeked guy who smiled a lot, but as he paged through Acts I and II of
A Black Fellow in London
, he lost both his smile and his color. After twenty minutes, during which Wesley and Robbie sat watching him silently, he pushed the Kindle back to Wesley. He did it with the tips of his fingers, as if he really didn’t want to touch it at all.

“So?” Wesley asked. “What’s the verdict?”

“It could be an imitation,” Don said, “but of course there have always been scholars who claimed that Shakespeare’s plays weren’t written by Shakespeare. There are supporters of Christopher Marlowe…Francis Bacon…even the Earl of Darby…”

“Yeah, and James Frey wrote
Macbeth
,” Wesley said. “What do
you
think?”

“I think this could be authentic Willie,” Don said. He sounded on the verge of tears. Or laughter. Maybe both. “I think it’s far too elaborate to be a joke. And if it’s a hoax, I have no idea how it works.” He reached a finger to the Kindle, touched it lightly, then pulled it away. “I’d have to study both plays closely, with reference works at hand, to be more definite, but…it’s got his
lilt
.”

Robbie Henderson, it turned out, had read almost all of John D. MacDonald’s mystery and suspense novels. In the Ur 2,171,753 listing of MacDonald’s works, he found seventeen novels in what was called “the Dave Higgins series.” All the titles had colors in them.

“That part’s right,” Robbie said, “but the titles are all wrong. And John D’s series character was named Travis McGee, not Dave Higgins.”

Wesley downloaded one called
The Blue Lament
, hitting his credit card with another $4.50 charge, and pushed the Kindle over to Robbie once the book had been downloaded to the ever-growing library that was
Wesley’s Kindle.
While Robbie read, at first from the beginning and then skipping around, Don went down to the main office and brought back three coffees. Before settling in behind his desk, he hung the little-used
CONFERENCE
IN
PROGRESS
DO
NOT
DISTURB
sign on the door.

Robbie looked up, nearly as pale as Don had been after dipping into the never-written Shakespeare play about the African prince who is brought to London in chains.

“This is a lot like a Travis McGee novel called
Pale Gray for Guilt
,” he said. “Only Travis McGee lives in Fort Lauderdale, and this guy Higgins lives in Sarasota. McGee has a friend named Meyer—a guy—and Higgins has a friend named Sarah…” He bent over the Kindle for a moment. “Sarah Mayer.” He looked at Wesley, his eyes showing too much white around the irises. “Jesus Christ, and there’s
ten million
of these…these other worlds?”

“Ten million, four hundred thousand and some, according to the UR
BOOKS
menu,” Wesley said. “I think exploring even one author fully would take more years than you have left in your life, Robbie.”

“I could die today,” Robbie Henderson said in a low voice. “That thing could give me a freaking heart attack.” He abruptly seized his Styrofoam cup of coffee and swallowed most of the contents, although the coffee was still steaming.

Wesley, on the other hand, felt almost like himself again. But with the fear of madness removed, a host of questions were cramming his mind. Only one seemed completely relevant. “So what do I do now?”

“For one thing,” Dan said, “this has to stay a dead secret among the three of us.” He turned to Robbie. “Can you keep a secret? Say no and I’ll have to kill you.”

“I can keep one. But how about the people who sent it to you, Wes? Can
they
keep a secret?
Will
they?”

“How do I know that when I don’t know who they are?”

“What credit card did you use when you ordered Little Pink here?”

“MasterCard. It’s the only one I use these days.”

Robbie pointed to the English Department computer terminal Wesley and Don shared. “Go online, why don’t you, and check your account. If those…those ur-books came from Amazon, I’ll be very surprised.”

“Where else
could
they have come from?” Wesley asked. “It’s their gadget, they sell the books for it. Also, it came in an Amazon box. It had the smile on it.”

“And do they sell their gadget in Glowstick Pink?” Robbie asked.

“Well, no.”

“Dude, check your credit card account.”

Wesley drummed his fingers on Don’s Mighty Mouse mousepad as the office’s outdated PC cogitated. Then he sat up straight and began to read.

“Well?” Don asked. “Share.”

“According to this,” Wesley said, “my latest MasterCard purchase was a blazer from Men’s Warehouse. A week ago. No downloaded books.”

“Not even the ones you ordered the normal way?
The Old Man and the Sea
and
Revolutionary Road
?”

“Nope.”

Robbie asked, “What about the Kindle itself?”

Wesley scrolled back. “Nothing…nothing…noth…wait, here it—” He leaned forward until his nose was almost touching the screen. “I’ll be damned.”

“What?” Don and Robbie said it together.

“According to this, my purchase was denied. It says, ‘wrong credit-card number.’” He considered. “That could be. I’m always reversing two of the digits, sometimes even when I have the damn card right beside the keyboard. I’m a little dyslexic.”

“But the order went through, anyway,” Don said thoughtfully. “Somehow…to some
one. Somewhere.
What Ur does the Kindle say we’re in? Refresh me on that.”

Wesley went back to the relevant screen. “117,586. Only to enter that as a choice, you omit the comma.”

Don said, “That might not be the Ur we’re living in, but I bet it was the Ur this Kindle came from. In
that
Ur, the MasterCard number you gave is the right one for the Wesley Smith that exists there.”

“What are the odds of something like that happening?” Robbie asked.

“I don’t know,” Don said, “but probably a lot steeper than 10.4 million to one.”

Wesley opened his mouth to say something, and was interrupted by a fusillade of knocks on the door. They all jumped. Don Allman actually uttered a little scream.

“Who is it?” Wesley asked, grabbing the Kindle and holding it protectively to his chest.

“Janitor,” the voice on the other side of the door said. “You folks ever going home? It’s almost seven o’clock, and I need to lock up the building.”

They weren’t done, couldn’t be done. Not yet. Wesley in particular was anxious to press on. Although he hadn’t slept for more than three hours at a stretch in days, he felt wide awake, energized. He and Robbie walked back to his apartment while Don went home to help his wife put the boys to bed. When that was done, he’d join them at Wesley’s place for an extended skull-session. Wesley said he’d order some food.

“Good,” Don said, “but be careful. Ur-Chinese just doesn’t taste the same.”

For a wonder, Wesley found he could actually laugh.

“So this is what an English instructor’s apartment looks like,” Robbie said, gazing around. “Man, I dig all the books.”

“Good,” Wesley said. “I loan to people who bring back. Keep it in mind.”

“I will. My parents have never been, you know, great readers. Few magazines, some diet books, a self-help manual or two…that’s all. I might have been the same way, if not for you. Just bangin’ my head out on the football field, you know, with nothing ahead except maybe teaching PE in GilesCounty. That’s in Tennessee. Yeehaw.”

Wesley was touched by this. Probably because he’d been hurled through so many emotional hoops just lately. “Thanks,” he said. “Just remember, there’s nothing wrong with a good loud yeehaw. That’s part of who you are, too. Both parts are equally valid.”

He thought of Ellen, ripping
Deliverance
out of his hands and hurling across the room. And why? Because she hated books? No, because he hadn’t been listening when she needed him to. Hadn’t it been Fritz Leiber, the great fantasist and science fiction writer, who had called books “the scholar’s mistress?” And when Ellen needed him, hadn’t he had been in the arms of his other lover, the one who made no demands (other than on his vocabulary) and always took him in?

“Wes? What were those other things on the UR
FUNCTIONS
menu?”

At first Wesley didn’t know what the kid was talking about. Then he remembered that there
had
been a couple of other items. He’d been so fixated on the
BOOKS
sub-menu that he had forgotten the other two.

“Well, let’s see,” he said, and turned the Kindle on. Every time he did this, he expected either the
EXPERIMENTAL
menu or the UR
FUNCTIONS
menu to be gone—that would also happen in a fantasy story or a
Twilight Zone
episode—but they were still right there.

“UR
NEWS
ARCHIVE
and UR
LOCAL
,” Robbie said. “Huh. UR LOCAL’s under construction. Better watch out, traffic fines double.”

“What?”

“Never mind, just goofin witcha. Try the news archive.”

Wesley selected it. The screen blanked. After a few moments, a message appeared.

WELCOME
TO
THE
NEWS
ARCHIVE!

ONLY
THE
NEW
YORK
TIMES
IS
AVAILABLE
AT
THIS
TIME

YOUR
PRICE
IS $1.00/4
DOWNLOADS

$10/50
DOWNLOADS

$100/800
DOWNLOADS

SELECT
WITH
CURSOR
YOUR
ACCOUNT
WILL
BE
BILLED

Wesley looked at Robbie, who shrugged. “I can’t tell you what to do, but if
my
credit card wasn’t being billed—in this world, anyway—I’d spend the hundred.”

Wesley thought he had a point, although he wondered what the other Wesley (if indeed there was one) was going to think when he opened his next MasterCard bill. He highlighted the $100/800 line and pushed the select button. This time the Paradox Laws didn’t come up. Instead, the new message invited him to
CHOOSE
DATE
AND
UR.
USE
APPROPRIATE
FIELDS
.

“You do it,” he said, and pushed the Kindle across the kitchen table to Robbie. This was getting easier to do, and he was glad. An obsession about keeping the Kindle in his own hands was a complication he didn’t need, understandable as it was.

Robbie thought for a moment, then typed in January 21, 2009. In the Ur field he selected 1000000. “Ur one million,” he said. “Why not?” And pushed the button.

The screen went blank, then produced a message reading
ENJOY
YOUR
SELECTION! A moment later the front page of the New York
Times
appeared. They bent over the screen, reading silently, until there was a knock at the door.

“That’ll be Don,” Wesley said. “I’ll let him in.”

Robbie Henderson didn’t reply. He was still transfixed.

“Getting cold out there,” Don said as he came in. “And there’s a wind knocking all the leaves off the—” He studied Wesley’s face. “What? Or should I say, what now?”

“Come and see,” Wesley said.

Don went into Wesley’s book-lined living room-study, where Robbie remained bent over the Kindle. The kid looked up and turned the screen so Don could see it. There were blank patches where the photos should have gone, each with the message
IMAGE
UNAVAILABLE
, but the headline was big and black:
NOW
IT’S
HER
TURN
. And below it, the subhead:
Hillary Clinton Takes Oath, Assumes Role as 44
^th
President
.

“Looks like she made it after all,” Wesley said. “At least in Ur 1,000,000.”

“And check out who she’s replacing,” Robbie said, and pointed to the name. It was Albert Arnold Gore.

An hour later, when the doorbell rang, they didn’t jump but rather looked around like men startled from a dream. Wesley went downstairs and paid the delivery guy, who had arrived with a loaded pizza from Harry’s and a six-pack of Pepsi. They ate at the kitchen table, bent over the Kindle. Wesley put away three slices himself, a personal best, with no awareness of what he was eating.

They didn’t use up the eight hundred downloads they had ordered—nowhere near it—but in the next four hours they skimmed enough stories from various Urs to make their heads ache. Wesley felt as though his
mind
were aching. From the nearly identical looks he saw on the faces of the other two—pale cheeks, avid eyes in bruised sockets, crazed hair—he guessed he wasn’t alone. Looking into one alternate reality would have been challenging enough; here were over ten million, and although most appeared to be similar, not one was exactly the same.