Doughnut - By Tom Holt Page 0,102
be insufferably self-righteous about other people’s mistakes, for tomorrow they fry. Isn’t that what being a scientist’s all about?”
“Pieter—”
“Besides,” Pieter went on, slamming his glass down on the table, “I’m beginning to have serious doubts about science in general. I mean, look at this place. Look what they’ve done to it. And who made it possible? Well?”
“Pieter—”
“People like me, is who. People with vision and imagination combined with knowledge, determination, passion and an infinite capacity for taking pains. Geniuses did this, Theo. Not fools, not people who count on their fingers and move their lips when they read. Idiots could never have figured out how to turn oozing black sludge into cheap energy, or designed the internal combustion engine. No, that took the finest minds the human race has ever produced. If we’d left it to the dumb-as-dogshit farmers, all this would be a golden ocean of frigging grain.”
“Pieter—”
“Don’t,” Pieter snapped furiously. “Don’t you dare say I’m wrong, because—”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Theo said meekly. “I just wanted to tell you, I know that woman.”
Pieter blinked at him. “Uh?”
“That woman over there. Tall, smartly dressed, about fifty. She’s something to do with Matasuntha’s Uncle Bill.”
“It’s possible, I guess,” Pieter said. “I mean, this friend of yours could have an exact equivalent in this universe. But the odds against running into the mirror-reality double of someone you know are so vast I never even bothered to consider it.”
“She’s waving at us.”
“No, that’s impossible,” Pieter said firmly. “The odds against knowing the mirror-reality double of someone you know are—”
“She’s heading this way.”
“What?”
“She’s coming to see us. She’s got a wine bottle.”
Pieter’s head slowly turned. “Does she know about—?”
“Oh yes.”
Pieter sat bolt upright so fast he poked himself in the eye with one of the spokes of the umbrella. “That’s crazy,” he said. “Why would anyone in their right mind want to come here?”
“What?”
“The bottles,” Pieter said. “They were sort of like the Mark One version of YouSpace. Each bottle is a one-off return trip to a pre-selected alternate reality.”
“I know. So?”
“So,” Pieter said, “when I chose them, I picked nice places. The sort of place you’d want to go to. Vacation spots. The sort of place, in other words, that this isn’t. So how in hell has one of my bottles brought her here?”
“Hold on,” Theo said. “You’ve been here before?”
“God, no,” Pieter replied. “It was all strictly theoretical. What I mean is, I calculated the probability needed to access a given alternate reality, and programmed the bottle’s guidance parameters accordingly. I didn’t test-drive the things.”
“Think about it,” Theo said. “One of your bottles brought us from the Vatican to here.”
Pieter looked blank. “I suppose it did, at that. Except that those bottles were in an alternate reality, so – oh, the hell with it, I give up. Why does everything have to be so complicated?”
Coming from Pieter, that was a bit like George W. Bush saying, Why don’t people check their facts before plunging into things? Even so, Theo couldn’t be bothered to comment. The woman, who was quite definitely Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz, in an elegant navy-blue suit with matching navy court shoes and shoulder bag, was bearing down on them with a look on her face that would’ve stopped a runaway train. Theo was about to call out to her when he noticed that Pieter had wriggled ninety degrees in his chair and was trying to hide his face behind his hands; curious behaviour, even by his standards –
“Mr Bernstein.”
– but so what? He turned and gave his rescuer a huge smile. “Mrs Duchene—”
“What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”
Ah, he thought. Hostility. Not to worry, though. He’d been in deep trouble so long he was thinking of making it his domicile for tax purposes. “Am I glad to see you,” he went on. “How did you…?”
Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz sat down and put the wine bottle on the table. “Guesswork,” she said. “An extremely speculative long shot. Honestly, we’ve been worried sick about you. What were you thinking of, going off like that without telling anyone? Oh for pity’s sake, Pieter,” she added, “get a grip.”
Pieter winced and edged round, but avoided eye contact. “Hi, Dolly,” he said sheepishly.
Theo had to ask. “You know him?”
Pieter was about to say something, but he got a direct hit from a stare that would’ve done wonders for the planet’s icecaps, and subsided into meek silence. “It was Matasuntha’s idea,” she said. “He’s an idealist, she said. Try the global-warming planet. Don’t be ridiculous,