‘But that doesn’t mean there was no change,’ I said. ‘Whatever recent past you recalled or saw evidence of would be the recent past that came with the collapse of the quantum wave into an alternative here-and-now, wouldn’t it?’
He ignored me. ‘The music on the audio beam was still the Chopin mazurkas. The clock said 19:59.1 looked all round the room, looked out of the window, looked at Helen. For a moment I didn’t know where I was and whether I’d ever seen that place and that person before. Then I was myself again but feeling weird.
‘The time was on every frame of the videodisc. There was the rat moving around in its cage at 19:48 when I started the camera. At 19:50 when I switched on the VMET it disappeared. When I jumped phase after that there was a blur that came and went. I restarted the disc and went to single-frame-advance. The blur was the very faint transparent shape of the rat as the light seemed to get brighter but it was impossible to say what was happening. The newsfax on the table seemed blurred as well. This ghost-image was only on three frames. I replayed and froze frame. The headline appeared to have another faint headline superimposed on it like a cross-dissolve. I zoomed up the frame and fiddled with the focus but I couldn’t get it clear enough to read. I took prints of those three frames and put them under a magnifier but had no better luck. The next frame after those three showed the newsfax and the half-rat as we’d found them after I switched off the VMET.
‘I said to Helen, “It’s the same world, isn’t it? The rat — half of it anyway — jumped back from whatever it was getting into and maybe the headline started to change but it changed back.”
‘She said, “What do you expect when you send a rat on a man’s errand? We’re not going to get anywhere with this until we do it ourselves.”
‘I said, “I’ll be damned if I want to end up with my arse in one place and my head in another.”
‘She said, “How much difference would it make?”’
Sixe paused there. ‘Not a lot, I guess,’ he said reflectively, ‘not a lot.’ During this long narrative his apparently total recall had transported me to that long-past September; I’d been seeing my mother’s face and hearing her voice that I knew from recordings. She was gone and here I was with this yesterday man whose sadness was evidently little relieved by alcohol.
‘I could see she wasn’t in the mood for a rational discussion,’ he continued, ‘but I kept trying. I said, “I think before we do anything else we should try to figure out what happened here.”
‘She said, “Looks pretty simple to me: the rat chickened out at the last moment.”
‘I said, “Be serious, God knows what the implications of this are.”
‘“God!” she said. “He didn’t care about my arse. Why should He care about a rat’s? He didn’t care about my grandmother’s arse either, when they used her for their so-called medical experiments at Auschwitz. Don’t talk to me about God, He and I aren’t speaking these days.”
‘I said, “I wasn’t talking about whether or not God cares — I was talking about the significance of what happened to the rat.”
‘“Significance!” she said. “What it signifies is: make sure your arse follows where your head leads. If you’re going to do something, then fucking do it.”
‘“Maybe this just doesn’t want to happen,” I said. She didn’t answer; she switched on the videoscan and moved it from station to station around town. There was the Ziggurat in purple standby mode, then Stilt City and Raftville, you could almost smell them. Sleazeworld and the central Fungames complex showing THREE BIG PUKIES TONITE — HORROR LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE! She punched in the street-level view and we saw Prongs and Arseholes, Shorties, Clowns, Funboys, Executives, and Wankers. She zoomed in for a good look at their tattoos and their paint, their shaven heads and their tribal hairdos. She said, “Maybe every world is a rats’ world. Let’s try again.”
‘I said, “What, with another rat?”
‘She said, “With us. Let’s get the oscillators implanted and do a jump before Heale decides to have a closer look at what we’ve been up to.”
‘I said, “But Helen, maybe Izzy and the rat didn’t change their minds; maybe the wrong phase-scaling got fed in both times or the oscillator circuitry wasn’t correct.”
‘She said “I’m sick of all this goddam arithmetic; Elijah didn’t have to piss about with numbers, he just fucking did it and the Lord took care of the details.”
‘“Don’t forget that you and He aren’t speaking these days,” I said.
‘“Maybe He’ll do it for old times’ sake,” she said.
‘I said, “I don’t think we can count on the Lord for that, he’s got a lot on his plate just now. And before I do a jump I’d really like to know where Izzy’s head and the rat’s front half ended up.”
‘“Wherever they are is better than here,” she said.
‘By then of course I realised that she was well and truly unwired and there was no knowing what she might do next. I was feeling pretty crazy myself — I mean, for all I knew we’d replaced the existing world, which was already one head short, with one that was missing half a rat. I was angry at God for creating a universe that could be mucked about like that. Why couldn’t He, She, or It have made something solid and tamperproof?
‘Helen said, “As soon as I can get hold of Ulrike let’s do it.” Ulrike was the neurosurgeon who was going to do our implants.
‘I said, “Helen, don’t be crazy.”
‘She said, “Why not? Where has being sane got me?”
‘I said, “For God’s sake, try to act like a scientist.”
‘She said, “Is that what you are — a scientist? You just don’t have the balls to take a chance. And who are you to advise me anyhow? You’re a loser who’s been getting a free ride on me.”
‘That’s when I left the house for a long walk. I had a key to the Class A walkway but I didn’t use it, I felt like being down on the ground with the Prongs and the Arseholes and the rest of the street life. I was half-hoping I’d get jumped and not have to make any decisions for a while or maybe for ever. I walked as far as Stilt City past people kicking each other’s heads in and breaking whatever was unbroken. The streets stank of vomit and sewage and the air was full of noise but the nastiness of it didn’t seem as nasty as what we’d been doing quietly in our nice clean lab.
‘It was raining; London always looks more itself by night and in the rain — all black and shining and full of lights and colours like a nightmare. People offered me everything from slammo to little boys but nobody bothered me. I think I must have looked a little too weird to take a chance on.
‘I got back to the house about three o’clock in the morning and two guys jumped me at the front door — professionals. They didn’t waste any time talking, they just gagged me and cuffed me and shoved me into a hopper and flew me to a building in the Inner Exec Circle. No blindfold so I knew I was for it. They took me to a lab where they strapped me to a bed and a woman medic gave me an injection. When I came to I heard myself talking and I saw that I was hooked up to a downloader. The medic was sitting by the bed and she whispered, “Listen but keep babbling. I’m a friend of Ulrike’s. I have orders to terminate you as soon as there’s nothing more to be got from you. Be careful when you leave.” Then she took off the electrodes, undid the straps, stuck a card in my pocket, pointed to the window, and said, “Quick, the fire escape — go!” So I went.