Doughnut Read online

  Even then, it took him ten minutes’ worth of patient and not-so-patient fiddling, scrabbling, teasing and high-octane bad language before he was able to get his fingernails closed on a tiny corner of paper and draw the message out. He dropped the bottle and the pin and unfolded the message. It was a map.

  To be precise, it was a map of the beach; because there was the Mickey Mouse statue, there was the rocky pillar, and there was a cross, correlating exactly to his present position, marked U are Hear. Proceeding from the cross was a dotted line, which sprawled and wandered around the beach in a series of long, lazy curves until it reached a crudely drawn O, above which was written donuts.

  He looked back at the beach and saw the dotted line. It was composed of the footprints he’d made getting there and retrieving the bottle. The O marked the spot where he’d stood and stared up at the statue. He scowled at the map, then screwed it into a ball and threw it away. Being rescued is one thing, but nobody loves a smartarse.

  Gathering the folds of the nappy in his right hand (he couldn’t now find the safety pin) he retraced his steps until he was standing once again in the shadow of the colossal mouse. A seagull perched on the mouse’s left ear spread its wings and launched itself into the air, complaining bitterly about the inconvenience. He knelt down and started scrabbling in the sand with his fingers.

  Almost immediately, he connected with something. It proved to be a small tin box, olive-green, on whose lid was stencilled in white, property of US Government, along with a serial number and a hazmat symbol that suggested the box had once contained weapons’ grade plutonium. He was inclined to doubt that, somehow. He flipped off the lid and saw a doughnut.

  Gingerly he prodded it with his forefinger. It was soft enough to be fresh, and still faintly warm, glistening with frying oil. He picked it up, taking care to keep it sideways on, so he wouldn’t inadvertently look through the hole. He hesitated. His moral duty was to take it back to the cave, where Max was waiting. He hesitated a bit longer.

  He’s your brother, said his conscience, but even it didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic. I know that, he thought, and I’m glad he’s alive after all, I guess. But he’s all right here, isn’t he? I mean, the Seven Dwarves are bringing him food and presumably doing his laundry, or else how come his suit is so spotlessly, immaculately white, and at least here there aren’t Mob hitmen gunning for him, like there would be back home. Would I really be doing him a favour, taking him back into harm’s way? Surely it’d be better, kinder, to leave him here for now, go back, figure out a way of taking him from here to a more suitable parallel universe, where he could be safe and happy and a very, very long way away…

  Well?

  His conscience didn’t reply immediately. Perhaps it was wrestling with its conscience, and so on and so forth, like two mirrors facing each other. That was the sort of thing that happened when Max was involved. When it finally spoke, the best it could come up with was Yes, but.

  That, however, was enough. He sighed, stood up, took a firm grip on the hem of the nappy and headed for the rocky outcrop.

  As he rounded it, he felt something whistle past his cheek; swishswishswish, the sound a bullet makes as it spins in flight. A fraction of a second later, he heard the bang. He looked up and saw a bunch of red-jacketed bears on the edge of the cliff. A spurt of sand kicked up a yard or so to his left; another bang. Oh hell.

  He turned to run back the way he’d just come, but he could hear shouting, someone yelling orders. They were behind him as well as in front. Quickly, he assessed the distance to the bears on the cliff: four hundred yards, at least. A moving target at four hundred yards was a pretty tall order. Letting go of the nappy and letting it slide to the ground, he picked a line across the beach and started to run.

  He’d never been much of an athlete, even at school, but the gunshots and splashes in the sand motivated him in a way that a succession of PE teachers and coaches had never quite managed. I’m going to make it, he was just thinking, when a dappled whitetail fawn rose up out of the dunes on his left, about twenty-five yards away, and drew a bead on him with a slide-action shotgun. He skidded to a halt, his feet scouring ruts in the sand, just as the fawn fired. He felt the slipstream of the shot charge, a welcome breath of air on such a hot day. Behind him he could hear hooves thudding. Another volley of shots from the bears on the clifftop bracketed him with admirable precision. For a split second he considered plunging into the sea and swimming for it; just then, half a dozen mermaids burst up through the water and aimed at him with spear guns. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of three elephants, their huge ears flapping like wings, flying directly at him out of the sun.

  He grinned.

  There’s conscience, and there’s brotherly love, and there’s getting your head blown off. Sorry, Max, he said to himself, and slowly raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. All it took was a slight tilt of the wrist to bring the doughnut into line. Through the hole in the middle he saw an elephant bank into an Immelman turn, and then –

  PART FOUR

  Doughnut Go Gentle Into That Good Night

  As he fell out of nowhere, his head hit the side of the desk, which meant that the crucial quarter-second during which he’d have had the element of surprise was wasted in suffering pain and feeling dizzy. By the time all that stuff had run its course, it was too late. Oh well.“Hi,” she said. “Well?”

  He looked up at her. No doubt about it, she was a beautiful woman, with captivating eyes and a lovely smile. A pity she was going to die so young. “You—”

  She wasn’t listening, or even looking at him. She was waiting for something; something that hadn’t happened. Suddenly, Theo knew what it was.

  “He’s not coming,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Max. He’s not coming.”

  Actually, it was far better than merely killing her. The look of pain on her face would’ve touched a heart of stone, provided that it hadn’t just escaped by the skin of its teeth from a posse of blood-crazed Disney folk. “What? He’s not—”

  For a moment he was tempted; but he was a scientist, devoted to the truth. “He’s not dead, if that’s what you mean. He’s still there. I got out, he didn’t.”

  “You left him there.” She was very beautiful when she was angry, but beauty isn’t everything. “Your own brother.”

  “I tried,” Theo said. “But I got ambushed by the bad guys. I nearly didn’t make it.”

  She didn’t seem all that interested. “You left him there,” she repeated. “Oh, swell.”

  Slowly and painfully he picked himself up off the floor and leaned against the desk. All the unaccustomed running about had taken its toll. At least he had proper clothes again. “So,” he said, “you and Max. I should’ve guessed.”

  She dropped into the chair and buried her face in her hands. “I should’ve known better than to rely on you,” she said. “A perfectly simple, straightforward little job.”

  Somehow, though, he found he couldn’t be angry, not now that he knew. Women under the influence of Max, he was aware from long experience, weren’t responsible for their actions. Still, there was one point he felt he had to clear up. “You kissed me,” he said.

  “Yes. Well?”

  “You kissed me,” he repeated, “to get a sample of my DNA, so you could get past the security lockout on the powder compact. That’s how you were able to send the message in the bottle, and the doughnut. Well? Yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re Max’s—”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine.” Which, he realised as soon as he’d said it, wasn’t true at all. It wasn’t fine, not by a long chalk. But, by the same token, it wasn’t her fault. You could no more blame girls for catching a dose of Max than you could find fault with trees for squashing houses when blown down by a high wind. “Well, I’ll be going now, then.”

  Her head shot up like the price of gold in a recession. “You what?”r />
  “I’m leaving. Well, you don’t need me any more, do you? You can get into the powder compact, which means you can read the YouSpace manual, which means you can figure out how to make it work, which means you can go and rescue Max yourself, which means—”

  “You can’t just leave,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “We need you. You’re the only one who can understand all this shit.”

  Theo smiled at her. “By all this shit, presumably you mean Pieter van Goyen’s epoch-making advances in quantum physics?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m leaving,” he repeated. “I think I’ll give the animal slaughtering business another try. You meet a better class of people.”

  “Uncle Bill won’t let you. He knows people.”

  Theo nodded. “So do I,” he said. “I know you, and your uncle Bill, and my brother Max. That’s why I’m leaving. I thought I knew Pieter, but nobody’s right all the time. Have a nice day.”

  He’d got as far as the door; he’d put his hand on the doorknob. “Please don’t go.”

  She was good. Not quite in Max’s class when it came to pathetic wheedling, but you couldn’t blame her for that. She was good enough, which was all that mattered.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I’ll help you rescue my worthless jerk of a brother, and then you and he can make each other thoroughly miserable while I go and try and salvage something from the wreck of my life. Agreed?”

  She nodded brightly. “Sure,” she said. “You won’t regret it, I promise you.”

  “You’d be amazed what I can regret if I put my mind to it.

  She laughed. He recognised the distinctive timbre. It was the noise a girl makes when she’s laughing at a joke her boyfriend’s just made; she hasn’t actually got the joke, or she doesn’t think it’s particularly funny, but she’s doing the best she can. From Matasuntha, it sounded dangerous, and it occurred to him that if Max was rescued and restored to her loving arms, it wouldn’t be all that long before he started thinking wistfully of the quietly idyllic life he’d led in the cave, being waited on hand and foot by Sneezy, Happy, Sleepy, Dozy, Bashful, Grumpy and Doc. In fact, if ever a couple truly deserved each other, they did. You’d need a far darker imagination than Theo could lay claim to in order to dream up any punishment more exquisitely suitable.

  “First, though,” he said, with an entirely authentic yawn, “I’m going to get some sleep. Please go away, using the door provided.”

  She was smiling at him. In any number of parallel universes, many of them only slightly different from this one, he’d have liked that a lot. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll tell Uncle Bill we’re nearly there, he’ll be thrilled.”

  “Oh, and the powder compact.”

  “Yes?”

  “Leave it on the desk on your way out.”

  She paused and looked at him, and he couldn’t quite read what her face was saying. “I was going to see if I could download—”

  “Leave it,” he said. “On the desk.”

  “OK.” There was a slight click as she put it down. “I just thought, I could study it for a bit while you’re resting. One less thing for you to do.”

  “That’s very sweet of you, but no thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” She hadn’t moved. “Anything else I can help you with?”

  “There’s one thing you can do for me.”

  “Yes?”

  “Go away,” Theo said firmly. “That’d be a major contribution to the success of the project.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

  Theo grinned sadly at her. “That’s the trouble with the truth,” he said, “it’s got such appallingly bad manners. Tall rectangular thing over there, hinges on one side, opening and shutting mechanism on the other. Let’s see if you can figure out how to make it work.”

  She still didn’t move. “Why are you so keen to get rid of me all of a sudden?”

  He broadened the grin into a beautiful smile. “Because I don’t like you,” he said. “Bye.”

  She shot him a high-velocity sigh, stalked to the door, dragged it open, walked through it and slammed it behind her. It was a magnificent slam, executed with plenty of wrist and forearm to achieve the maximum terminal momentum, and the aftershock vibrated right through the wall, into the bookshelf over the desk, right down to the bottom shelf, on which she must at some point have placed the YouSpace bottle. It quivered for a moment, walking a millimetre or so towards the edge like an old-fashioned washing machine. Theo only noticed it as it quivered over the point of no return. He dived, his invisible arm extended, grabbing at it as it finally toppled and dropped into empty air. It was a splendid effort, and fell only a couple of centimetres short.

  Theo crunched down on to the desk, heard a crack and felt first his elbow and then his head bash against something hard. The impact jarred his bones and rattled his teeth, but he barely noticed. He was totally preoccupied watching the YouSpace bottle tumble once, twice through the air before catching the edge of the desk. There was a snap, like a bone breaking, and suddenly the carpet was littered with little bits of broken glass.

  “And another thing.” Matasuntha was standing in the doorway. Whatever the other thing was, it never got mentioned. She was staring at the emerald shrapnel on the floor. Her mouth was open, but no sound came out for quite some time.

  “It’s no good,” Theo said for the fifteenth time. “You can’t mend it.”

  Uncle Bill looked up at him hopelessly. He had splinters of glass stuck to his fingers with superglue. “It says on the label, sticks anything,” he said.

  Theo nodded. “In this reality, yes. But there’s an infinite number of realities where it doesn’t, and they were all in the bottle. By the way, you’re kneeling on the tube.”

  “What? Oh.” Uncle Bill frowned, looked down and tried to stand up. The carpet swelled up round his leg like a blister, but he stayed on his knees. “Maybe if we tried duct tape—”

  Theo sighed. “Believe it or not,” he said, “there are some eventualities where even duct tape won’t cut it. Sorry, but this won’t work.”

  Matasuntha made an impatient gesture, emphasised by the large sliver of bottle glued to her wrist. “All right then,” she said. “If you’re so goddamn smart, what do you suggest?”

  “Give up,” Theo said sweetly. “Forget it. Find something else to do. I know,” he went on, “how about turning this place into a hotel?”

  “The hell with that,” Matasuntha snapped. “We’re so close. You actually went there, and we’ve got the user’s manual—”

  “Hold it,” Uncle Bill said urgently. “That’s it, the user’s manual. Look and see what it says. Under broken bottle.”

  Theo shrugged, took the powder compact from his pocket, opened it and traced his finger down the mirror. “Hey,” he said, “there’s an entry for that. If the bottle gets smashed.”

  Uncle Bill surged up to look over his shoulder, but the carpet held him fast; he toppled and landed on his hands. “Well? What does it say?”

  “Just a second.” Theo was scrolling down. “Here, yes. Buy a new one. Right.” he snapped the compact shut and pocketed it.

  “The answer’s obvious,” Matasuntha said. “He’ll have to make one from scratch.”

  An overwhelming urge to laugh hit Theo like a fist in the midriff. “You’re kidding,” he gasped. “Oh, please tell me you meant that as a joke.”

  “You’ve got Pieter’s notes,” Uncle Bull said. “You were his student. I don’t see why you shouldn’t give it a try.”

  “You’re crazy. Tell him he’s crazy,” he snapped at Matasuntha, who gave him a cold stare in return. “Go on, tell him.”

  But Matasuntha was studying him, as if he was half a worm she’d found in an apple. “Of course he can do it,” she said. “He’s smart. They wouldn’t have put him in charge of the hadron collider if he wasn’t pretty damn smart.”

  “I blew it up.”

  “Be
cause you’re careless,” Matasuntha replied. “You can be careless and smart at the same time. No, what you’re thinking of doing is going off somewhere and making a YouSpace thing all for yourself, cutting us right out of the deal.

  “She’s nuts,” Theo yelled. “Tell her, she’s nuts. I have no interest whatsoever in your stupid, lethally dangerous—”

  “You wouldn’t.” Uncle Bill was looking at him with the sort of expression Mother Teresa might have worn if she’d caught one of the novices raiding the petty cash. “That’s so low.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” Theo sat down on the floor and buried his head in his hands. “Fine,” he said. “If that’s what you think, I’ll try it. Doomed to failure,” he added, “a complete and utter waste of time, but so what? Anything so long as you stop looking at me.”

  For three days and most of three nights, Theo stared at Pieter van Goyen’s notes. He might as well have been gazing at the sun, because the experience left him dazzled and blind. No doubt about it, Pieter’s work was utterly brilliant – the equations danced and sparkled on the screen, sometimes surging forward like a tidal wave, sometimes shearing off at an angle like a shoal of tiny, transparent fish – but, after seventy-two hours in their company, he was forced to the conclusion that he now knew considerably less about quantum mechanics than he had when he started. All he could say for certain was that Pieter had succeeded, and that what has been done once can be done again. The notes, however, were to all intents and purposes useless.

  Fine.

  At dawn on the fourth day, he switched off the screen, put the notebooks carefully away in a drawer, grabbed a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and decided to figure it all out for himself, from first principles. It was a fine and noble moment, which lasted for about three seconds. Then he looked down at the paper and saw that it was still blank. So he drew a small blue dot, and wrote above it, You Are Here.