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  She shrugged. “I could do with another coffee. How about you?”

  “Now,” Theo went on. “Consider what conclusions we’ve arrived at about YouSpace.”

  “Sure,” she said. “after I’ve ordered another coffee. Where’s that waiter?”

  “Shifting between realities only works,” Theo said, “if you can go back to the source, the terminal, the bus station. The point at which all possibilities are still implicit. In other words, the moment before the Big Bang. That’s when all the matter and all the energy is still cooped up in one single blob. A second later, and it’s already starting to fly apart. Directions have been chosen, trajectories have been committed to. As soon as the Big Bang goes bang, there’s no going back.”

  She’d forgotten all about coffee. “No,” she said. “No way.”

  Theo shrugged. “If it’s a circle, the beginning can be any point. Also the end. And the end of the universe is exactly what some people said would happen if the VVLHC ever blew up.”

  “Nutcases,” she said. “Journalists.”

  “Maybe they were right. Maybe, when Pieter set off his fireworks, the multiverse ended. And began.” He licked his lips, which had become very dry. “I was there. It was a pretty big bang.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “We’ll come to that,” Theo said drily, “in a moment. Let’s think about what happened next. All across the multiverse, I came across realities that all had one thing in common. A disaster. I think it was the VVLHC. And what’s the only thing every reality in the multiverse has in common? The beginning.” He breathed out slowly. “I think that in the beginning were the words, and the words were, Pieter, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Followed by an explosion. Followed by—” He shrugged. “Genesis.”

  Her eyes were as bright as stars. “Making him—”

  “Him and me. But not Max. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.” He breathed in again. “And that’s why YouSpace works. I imagine Pieter would say something about omelettes and eggs; knowing Pieter, immediately followed by, which came first, the omelette or the egg? To which the only answer has got to be, both.” He looked at her. “Have I missed something? Please tell me I’ve missed something.”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “And on the seventh day, God made himself scarce, hotly pursued by the product liability lawyers. Sorry, I’m not a scientist. I’m not qualified to comment.”

  “Please?”

  “What do you want me to say? It’s not your fault? Earthquakes, wars, mortality, entropy, the perennial paradox of evil in a dualistic moral system? Sorry, I’m not sure I—”

  “Please.”

  She nodded. “It’s not your fault. There. Better?”

  He smiled feebly. “I guess it’ll have to do,” he said.

  “My pleasure,” she said. “Actually, I do feel for you. I remember, when I was a kid, there was an old priest we knew, and I asked him that old chestnut about can God make a rock too heavy for Him to lift.”

  “Yes? What did he say?”

  She grinned. “Yes and no. A good answer, I’ve always thought. One I’ve always tried to live by, at any rate.” She leaned forward a little. “If you really are God,” she whispered, “do you give out lottery numbers?”

  “I can do. The wrong ones, naturally.”

  “Of course.” She leaned forward slightly more; he leaned back. “So,” she said. “What about Max? And Professor van Goyen?”

  Theo signalled to a passing waiter. “I forgave them. Sort of.” The waiter had reached the table. “I’d like six empty beer bottles, please.”

  “Senhor?”

  “Gostaria seis garrafas de cerveja vazias, por favor.”

  “Vindo direto.”

  She scowled impatiently. “Max.”

  “What? Ah yes. I forgave them. For some reason, they seemed rather put out about it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” Theo shrugged. “Though maybe that was because I told them they couldn’t have YouSpace. Or at least, they couldn’t have access to the operating system I’d designed to go with it. And there was no point in them trying to figure it out for themselves, because it’s fiendishly complicated and riddled with the most diabolical booby traps.”

  She frowned. “I thought you said there wasn’t a—”

  “I lied.” A thought struck him and he smiled. “Which must mean I’m not, well, Him, mustn’t it? Needless to say,” he went on, “I’ll relent and forgive them properly in due course, after I’ve taken a few simple precautions so they won’t be able to do any harm to anyone. Ah,” he added, as the waiter came back with five green bottles and one tall brown one on a tray. “Thank you.”

  She looked at the bottles. “Let me guess.”

  “No need.” He patted his pockets. “Got a pen?”

  She took one from her bag. He reached for the bill and tore it into five equal pieces, on each of which he wrote the words terms & conditions apply. Then he put one slip of paper into each of the five green bottles.

  “This one,” he said, picking up the brown San Miguel bottle and slipping it into his jacket pocket, “is for me. No terms and conditions. Complete freedom. I reckon I’ve earned it, don’t you?”

  She was gazing at the five Michelob bottles. “What about…?”

  “One for you.” He pushed a bottle across the table at her. She stared at it but didn’t touch. “And one for Pieter, one for Max, one for your Uncle Bill, since he did put all that money into Pieter’s damnfool project. And one,” he concluded cheerfully, “for fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “Yes, fun.” He touched a fingertip to the neck of the bottle, which glowed blue and vanished. “Hey,” he said, shaking his hand and putting the fingertip in his mouth, “did you see that? That was cool.”

  Her eyes were still fixed on her bottle. “And the one you’ve kept for yourself—”

  “Well.” He made a vague and-why-not gesture. “One empty San Miguel bottle to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. If necessary,” he added. “But it won’t be, I’m sure. After all, I’ve given the others to people of unimpeachable integrity, so what could possibly go wrong?”

  “What about the sixth bottle?”

  “Oh, that.” Theo smiled. “A pound to a penny it’ll end up at the bottom of the sea. In which case, it’ll get eaten by a fish, which in turn will get caught by the seventh son of a seventh son. That’s what usually happens, and we’re all still here, aren’t we?”

  She’d shrunk back when the bottle started glowing blue. Now she leaned forward again. “And what about you?” “Ah. I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “And?”

  He hardly had to think; it just happened. They were standing on a mountainside, looking down on a lush green valley quilted with maize fields. Above them, a white-capped peak rose into a clear blue sky like a helpfully pointing finger.

  “For pity’s sake, Theo,” she said. “You could’ve warned me. It’s freezing.”

  “Not to worry.” He turned his head and saw what he was looking for. “You’re going back home in a moment or so. This way.”

  He headed up the steep slope until he reached the mouth of a cave. Inside, the embers of a fire were smouldering in the middle of the cave floor. At the back of the cave he could see a neatly folded blanket and a big stack of books. “Perfect,” he said.

  She stared at him. “What?”

  “The life,” he said, “of a simple hermit. A chance to catch my intellectual and spiritual breath. Oh, not for ever,” he added reassuringly. “I’ll probably be ready to come down again in, what, five years? Ten at the most.”

  “Ten years? In a cave?”

  “Absolutely. When you’ve spent most of your life wallowing about in unearned money like a mud-wrestler, you need something like this just to get clean. Peace,” he went on, sitting down on the floor and crossing his legs. “Quiet contemplation. And, of course, no material possessions except the absolutely ba
sic necessities of life.”

  A solemn procession was winding slowly up the narrow track towards them. At its head, two old men in peasant garb each held one handle of a basket. Behind them, two more villagers and a second basket; behind them, a third. When they reached the cave they put the baskets down, bowed low three times and withdrew, walking backwards. Theo sat perfectly still until they were out of sight. Then he sprang to his feet and started to rummage.

  “Ah,” he said. “Not bad.”

  In the first basket there was crevice of tuna and scallops with caviar and fennel, crayfish ravioli with artichokes, sea bass braised in wild asparagus and cucumber, assiete of roast lamb, goats’ cheese soufflé, rhubarb and strawberry crumble and a bottle of ’77 Margaux. The second basket contained three designer suits, silk underwear and pyjamas and an inflatable water bed. The third basket was crammed with DVDs, games, the latest model X-Box, a laptop and a selection of upmarket lifestyle magazines. “I’ve always maintained,” Theo said happily, “that the hallmark of a civilised society is how they look after the poor.”

  She helped him unpack and ate most of the ravioli. Then she looked at him. “It’s nice of you to give Uncle Bill a bottle,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Terms and conditions apply.”

  “What terms and conditions?”

  “Ah.”

  She frowned, then grinned. “Anyway,” she said, “it was a nice thought.”

  “I dragged him into it,” Theo replied. “You too. Just out of interest, though.”

  “Yes?”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “You brought me here.”

  “Why would I have done that?”

  She gave him a beautiful smile. “I told you,” she said. “I realised Max wasn’t for me. That made me ask myself where my true feelings lie. So, here I am.”

  He nodded slowly. “You honestly expect me to believe that.”

  “Of course. After all, you chose this version of reality. You wanted to find true love. Admittedly, it was only your third priority, which some people might find just a tad insulting. Still, there it is. Your wish is the multiverse’s command.” She edged a little closer. “What were you thinking of doing about it?”

  Theo yawned. Far below in the valley, thin wisps of smoke were rising from the hearths where the villagers were cooking his dinner. Presumably, if he went beyond the mountains, sooner or later he’d come to the radioactive wastelands left behind by the explosion of the VVLHC, but he couldn’t work up the energy to feel guilty about that. And the morning and the evening were the eighth day. “Not sure,” he said. “Like I said, I’m going to stay here and think about stuff for a while. Then I’ll know.”

  “Oh, wonderful.” She pulled a face. “So you expect me to hang around waiting for you while you do your hermit-on-a-mountaintop gig. That’s so—”

  “I don’t recall asking you to wait for me.”

  “You implied it. Find true love, you said, and your subconscious press-ganged me. And now I’ve got to hang around for five years. Not meaning to be nasty or anything, but what part of the concept of free will are you having difficulty with?”

  “Free will,” Theo said, “is only meaningful in context.”

  “Huh? What context?”

  “… ‘With every personal injury claim over $995’. For a limited period only. Oh, and terms and conditions apply. They always do.”

  She sighed. “So you do expect me to go back home and wait patiently for you.”

  “Yes.” He grinned. “YouSpace, remember? I’ll be back about three seconds after you. You can wait that long, can’t you?”

  “I’m not sure. Don’t push your luck.”

  He shrugged. She stuck her tongue out and vanished.

  He sat for a while, watching the plumes of smoke and hoping they didn’t mean that the simple peasants had overdone the tournedos Rossini. Then he got up, found the third basket and tipped it upside down. As he’d anticipated, there was something left at the very bottom which they’d overlooked earlier. A lump hammer and a cold chisel. And now for a Word from our sponsors.

  He took them in his hands, sat down facing the rock and tried to think of something suitable.

  extras

  meet the author

  Charlie Hopkinson

  TOM HOLT was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines, interests that led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialized in death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. Now a full-time writer, he lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife, one daughter and the unmistakable scent of blood, wafting in on the breeze from the local meat-packing plant.

  For even more madness and TOMfoolery go to www.tom-holt.com.

  Find out more about Tom Holt and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at: www.orbitbooks.net.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  DOUGHNUT,

  look out for

  LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF SAUSAGES

  by Tom Holt

  Polly is a real estate solicitor. She is also losing her mind. Someone keeps drinking her coffee. And talking to her clients. And doing her job. And when she goes to the dry cleaner’s to pick up her dress for the party, it’s not there. Not the dress—the dry cleaner’s.

  And then there are the chickens who think they are people. Something strange is definitely going on—and it’s going to take more than a magical ring to sort it out.

  From one of the funniest voices in comic fiction today comes a hilarious tale of pigs and parallel worlds.

  The old saddleback sow lifted her head and gazed across the yard at the livestock trailer.

  Pigs are highly intelligent creatures, with enquiring, analytical minds. They’re considerably smarter than we give them credit for. The only reason you don’t get more pigs at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and the Sorbonne is that they’re notoriously picky about the company they keep. Lacking binocular vision and opposable thumbs, they can’t read or write; instead, they think – long, complicated, patient thoughts that often take years to mature. The old sow had thought long and hard about the trailer, the metal box on wheels into which her seven broods of piglets had gone, and from which they’d never returned.

  Odd, she thought.

  It always happened the same way. The men from the farm came up early in the morning and lured the piglets into the box with kind words and food; then, when all the little ones were inside, the ramp went up, and the men went back to the house. At that point, invariably, the farmer’s wife came along with the sow’s morning feed, which she put in the trough inside the concrete sty; and after the sow had eaten it, she always had to have a nap, which lasted till midday. When she came out again, the trailer would still be there in the corner of the yard, though (curiously) not in exactly the same place, and the sow would watch it carefully for many hours, to see if the piglets came out again. She’d observed that the trailer had only one means of entry and exit, the ramp that folded up and down, so it wasn’t as though the piglets could sneak out unobserved. But when, shortly after the afternoon milking, the men opened the ramp and went into the trailer to wash it out with the hose, it was self-evidently empty. No piglets in there. Nothing but air and floorboards.

  There had been a time when she’d suspected foul play; that the men did something bad to the piglets. But that quite obviously didn’t compute. They looked after the piglets. They gave them food and water for eight months, mucked out the sty, even called the Healer if one of them fell ill. If the humans wanted to hurt them, even (the sow winced at the blasphemy) do away with them, why go to all that trouble over their welfare?

  Accordingly, the sow reasoned, it was only logical to assume that, whatever the purpose that lay behind putting the piglets in the trailer, it had to be something beneficial. Well, it didn�
�t take a genius to figure that out, let alone a pig. Nor did it have much bearing on the essential mystery of how a dozen squealing piglets could enter a box on wheels and simply disappear.

  To get a better understanding of the factors at work in the mystery, the sow had, over the years, figured out the basic laws of physics: the law of conservation of matter, the laws of thermodynamics, the essential elements of gravity and relativity. Instead of clarifying, however, these conclusions only made the problem more obscure. According to these laws, it was physically impossible for the piglets to enter a box and never leave it. Frustrated, she abandoned scientific speculation and went back over the obvious things. Might there, for example, be a trapdoor in the bottom of the box, through which the piglets descended into an underground passage? No, because she could see the yard quite plainly, and the box (as previously noted) did tend to move from time to time. She could categorically state that there were no manholes or covers in the yard that could possibly open into any sort of passageway or tunnel. Was it possible, then, that the box with the piglets in it was at some point taken out of the yard and emptied of piglets at some other place? That one was easily answered. The box couldn’t possibly leave the yard, because it was too big to get through the little gate, the one the men came in and out of; and the big gate was impassable, firmly secured with a chain. Nothing could get through that. She knew that for a fact. She’d tried it herself, the time her sty door had been left open and she’d got out into the yard. If her four hundredweight of determined muscle and sinew hadn’t been able to force the gate open, how could weedy little creatures like the men possibly hope to get the box through it? She was ashamed of herself for even considering it.

  So, back to square one. She re-evaluated the physical universe and arrived at the conclusion that it was made up of matter and energy. She went a step further and figured out that it was entirely possible to convert matter into energy (the equations were tricky; they’d taken her a whole morning) and thereby achieve teleportation. Which would, of course, explain everything. The piglets went into the trailer and were beamed out to some destination unknown.