“Still.” I took Theo’s free hand then, like I could make him understand how serious I was just by squeezing tightly. “I can follow him to places where you can’t. I extend your reach. I make the chances of finding him a lot better. Don’t argue with me, because you know it’s true.”
Theo breathed out, squeezed my hand back, let it go, and ran his fingers through his spiky hair. He was restless and jumpy as always—but I could tell he was considering it.
When his dark eyes next met mine, he sighed. “If your mother had any idea we were talking about this, she’d skin me alive. I’m not being metaphorical about that. I think she could actually, literally skin me. She gets the wild eyes sometimes. There’s Cossack blood in her; I’d bet anything.”
I hesitated for a moment, thinking of what this meant for my mother. If something went wrong on this trip—if I turned into atomic soup—she would have lost both me and Dad within the space of two days. There weren’t even words for what that would do to her.
But if Paul got away with it, that would kill her just as surely—and me, too. I wasn’t going to let that happen. “You’re already talking about Mom’s revenge. That means we’re doing this together, doesn’t it?”
“Only if you’re absolutely sure. Please think about this for a second first.”
“I’ve thought about it,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true, but it didn’t matter. I meant it then as much as I mean it now. “I’m in.”
That’s how I got here.
But where is here, exactly? As I walk along the street, crowded despite the late hour, I try to study my surroundings. Wherever I am, it’s not California.
Picasso could have painted this city with its harsh angles, its rigidity, and the way dark lines of steel seem to slash through buildings like knife strokes. I imagine myself as one of the women he painted—face divided in two, asymmetrical and contradictory, one half appearing to smile while the other is silently screaming.
I stop in my tracks. By now I’ve found my way to the river-side, and across the dark water, illuminated by spotlights, is a building I recognize: St. Paul’s Cathedral.
London. I’m in London.
Okay. All right. That makes sense. Dad is . . . he was English. He didn’t move to the United States until he and Mom started working together. In this dimension, I guess she came to his university instead, and we all live here in London.
The thought of my father alive again, somewhere nearby, bubbles up inside me until I can hardly think of anything else. I want to run to him right now, right this second, and hug him tight and apologize for every time I ever talked back to him or made fun of his dorky bow ties.
But this version of my dad won’t be my dad. He’ll be another version. This Marguerite’s father.
I don’t care. This is as close as I’m ever going to get to Dad again, and I’m not wasting it.
Okay. Next step: discover where this version of home is.
The three trips I’ve taken to London to visit Aunt Susannah were all fairly quick; Aunt Susannah’s all about shopping and gossip, and as much as Dad loved his sister, he could take about six days with her, maximum, before he lost it. But I was there long enough to know that London shouldn’t look anything like this.
Even as I walk along the street by the South Bank of the Thames, I can tell computers were invented a little earlier here, because they’ve advanced further. Several people, despite the drizzling rain, have paused to bring up little glowing squares of light—like computer screens, except they’ve appeared in thin air in front of their users. One woman is talking to a face; that must be a holographic phone call. As I stand there, one of my wide bangle bracelets is shimmering with light. I lift my wrist closer to my face and read the words, written on the inside in small metallic type:
ConTech Personal Security
DEFENDER Model 2.8
Powered by Verizon
I’m not quite sure what that means, but I don’t think this bracelet is just a bracelet.
What other kinds of advanced technology do they have here? To everybody else in this dimension, all this stuff is beyond routine. Both the hoverships above London and the no-rail monorail snaking along overhead are filled with bored passengers, for whom this is just the end of another dull day.
There’s no place like home, I think, but the feeble joke falls flat even inside my own head. I look down again at the high heels I wear, so unlike my usual ballet flats. Ruby slippers they’re not.
Then I remind myself that I’ve got the most powerful technology of all—the Firebird—hanging around my neck. I open the locket and look at the device inside.
It’s complicated. Very complicated. The thing reminds me of our universal remote, which has so many keys and buttons and functions that nobody in my household—which contains multiple physicists, including my mother who is supposed to be the next Einstein—none of us can figure out how to switch from the Playstation to the DVR. But just like with the universal remote, I’ve learned a few functions, the ones that matter most: How to jump into a new dimension. How to jump back from one if I land somewhere immediately dangerous. How to spark a “reminder,” if needed.
(The idea was that people who traveled between dimensions wouldn’t remain fully conscious throughout—that they’d be more or less asleep within the other versions of themselves. So you can use the Firebird to create a reminder, which would leave your consciousness in control for a while longer. Well, so much for theory. As far as I can tell, the reminders aren’t necessary at all.)
As I look down at the glittering Firebird in my palm, I remind myself that if I learned how to work this thing, I can handle anything this dimension has to throw at me. Re-energized, I start observing the people around me more closely. Watch and learn.
A woman touches a metal tab clipped to her sleeve, and a holographic computer screen appears in front of her. Quickly I run my hands over my own clothes; this silver jacket doesn’t have anything like that on the sleeves, but something similar is pinned to my lapel. I tap it—and jump as a hologram screen appears in front of me. The hologram jumps with me, tethered to the metal tab.
Okay, that’s . . . pretty cool. Now what? Voice commands, like Siri on my phone? Can something be “touch-screen” if there’s no screen to touch? Experimentally I hold out one hand, and a holographic keyboard appears in front of the screen. So if I pretend to type on it . . .