Interzone 251 Read Online Free PDF Page A

part for me in it.”
    A silence falls between us. Then: “Do you remember,” I say, trying not to sound too puffed from the rowing, “you told me you and your parents thought I seemed a bit odd, a bit artificial, not really myself…”
    “I think it even more now.” She lifts a hand to stop me misunderstanding. “No, what I mean is, you’re yourself today. It makes the person I was with in Edinburgh seem even more unlike you. You were like a sort of perfect CGI animation of yourself – it was a precise replica of you, but still we could sense there was something awry. You were
too real
, in a way.”
    I didn’t notice until we climbed into the boat that she’s wearing little black sandals. All the rest that she’s wearing is either white or nearly so. She’s staring at those little black sandals now.
    “Like someone in the wrong world,” she says.
    “Do you think that can be it?” I say nervously.
    “That it was the you from the next-door universe?” She gives a little, unconvincing laugh. “It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?”
    “Yes, but it’d open up a whole lot of new questions, too.”
    She ignores my comment. “You talked about a doppelgänger earlier, but that wouldn’t make sense. I could believe, if I believed in supernatural beasties, that a spirit could…could, you know, make me believe it and I were having carnal knowledge.” She rolls the old-fashioned term on her tongue, relishing it. “But I can’t believe it would leave me pregnant after.”
    I try not to think of
Rosemary’s Baby
.
    She sees me not thinking about it. “I told you, Nick, I don’t believe in ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, and that goes for devils too.”
    For half a minute or longer the only sound between is the creaking of the rowlocks.
    “We should have a DNA test done,” I say. “That would prove it one way or another. If the testing shows the babe has my DNA, then your idea about having encountered a stray from a neighbouring universe…but, no.”
    I raise the oars from the water and we drift for a few yards.
    “I’ve been worrying about that too,” she says. “Why have I never before today heard of Dverna?”

    ***

    It’s not till we’re back on dry land that I think of phoning home. I glance at my watch and find it’s just a few minutes before six. Dverna probably won’t be home yet – most days she stays on late at the school, marking papers or supervising clubs, and it’s especially likely tonight that she’ll stay on, knowing I won’t be home for hours. She doesn’t carry a mobile, so the only number I have to phone is the landline. Even so, I give it a try.
    No answer.
    I’m tempted to stay overnight in London. I feel I should face Connor and Elsa, try to explain to them that really I’m not the cad they must think I am – even though Lindsay has told me they don’t think about it like that. Because, you see, they too don’t know I’m married. So far as they’re concerned it’s just fine their darling daughter is getting it together with someone they’ve known all his life. Of course, perhaps said daughter shouldn’t have got herself knocked up by him in the interim, but modern days, modern ways… So Lindsay says. How they’re going to feel about me when she tells them the new version of history, I can hardly bear the thought of it. They’re going to think Lindsay is the craziest fool in the world for believing my obvious lies. What whoppers I’ve been telling. Land her in the pudding club, then pretend it was my mysterious Evil Twin…
    I should be with her, so we face the music together. But I also need to be with Dverna. If I could speak to her on the phone, maybe it’d be different, but she has to have the option of deciding whether or not I go home to Bristol tonight.
    I explain something of this to Lindsay. As we stand there, the light beginning to fade from the sky, I see a young guy who’s passing helping himself to an eyeful of