let the doughnut sail up into the air. It rose, spinning like a space station, and hung for a moment, waiting for gravity to notice it, rotating around its central hole. A fraction of a second later, the door was kicked open and the Special Werewolf Squad burst in. Through the sights of their silver-bullet-loaded machine guns they glimpsed a flying doughnut with what appeared to be a single red eye set in the middle like a ruby. Then they opened fire, but all they managed to shoot was a wall.
“Oh, that,” Call-me-Bill said. “Yes, I remember him talking about it. He’d been at an airport, and the only book on the bookstall that didn’t have a pink cover was Twilight. I guess that’s where he got the idea from. Anyhow,” he went on, before Theo could express himself fully on the subject, “I take it from what you just said that you’re not quite there yet.”
“No.”
“Never mind.” Call-me-Bill clicked his tongue and smiled. “Keep at it, I know you’ll get there in the end.”
Maybe traces of the wolf had come back with him through the doughnut’s eye; he growled, and the hair on the back of his neck bristled slightly. “It’s pointless,” he said. “It’s like there’s some kind of built-in mechanism. As soon as I’m about to find out something useful, horrible things happen and I just about escape with my life.”
“Could be,” Call-me-Bill said thoughtfully. “Pieter was keen on his security protocols. I expect that when you find out the proper start-up procedure, that sort of thing won’t happen any more.”
He thought hard over the next few days. It had been Max’s voice, no question about it. Why, though, was he surprised by that? If YouSpace could project him into parallel universes, then it followed that there were versions of reality out there somewhere in which Max hadn’t died. If he’d survived, he’d be, what, thirty-six; in an infinite multiverse, there’d be an alternative world or two in which Max had never gone off the rails to begin with. Instead, he’d become a physicist, worked with Pieter van Goyen, was now leading a dull, blameless life advancing the sum of human knowledge. True, that version was so profoundly weird and unlikely that it also allowed for the existence of werewolves, but never mind. Infinity is infinite.
In which case, a sort of Max was out there, alive, well and modestly flourishing. Two points to consider. One, would such a Max be his Max in any meaningful sense? Two, did he really want to make contact with any variant or avatar of his infinitely annoying brother? Point one was a bit too metaphysical for his taste, but point two was well worth serious consideration. Provided Max was safe and well and capable of fending for himself, did he really want to see him again? Well?
There was a voice in his head that said: come on, he’s your brother, dammit. There was another voice that said: exactly. The first voice said: he’s your own flesh and blood. The second voice said: so’s Janine. The first voice said: you and Max have got unfinished business to sort out. The second voice said: yes, I never did get around to ripping his lungs out with a blunt spoon, oh well, never mind. The first voice said: be serious, can’t you? The second voice said: I am serious, believe me.
The first voice said: Max might know how to make YouSpace work. The second voice said: how unlikely is that? The first voice said: about as likely as werewolves. Exactly, said the second voice, and realised it had walked right into that one.
Yes, said the second voice, rallying bravely, but the only reason you want to get YouSpace working is so you could see if Max is out there somewhere. Not the only reason, said the first voice, but its heart wasn’t in it; there’s the money as well, if we can get this thing working and make it safe to use, it could be huge, it could be the biggest thing in home entertainment since –
The second voice said: hm.
Some money would be nice, the first voice said. Well, wouldn’t it?
Put like that, the second voice had to concede, there was a case to answer. And besides, the first voice went on, it’s not like you’ve got anything better to do, is it? I mean, before all this started you were sleeping on the slaughterhouse floor and shovelling guts all day, just to