Doughnut - By Tom Holt Page 0,63

stay alive. This is better than that, surely. The second voice muttered something about lynch mobs and werewolves, but the first voice pretended it hadn’t heard.

Yes, but it’s dangerous. You could get –

Theo sat up straight. He’d remembered a scene he’d walked in on, something he hadn’t been supposed to see: Mr Nordstrom lying on the floor in Reception, soaked in blood, with Call-me-Bill and Matasuntha and Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz trying to stick him back together before he fell to bits. And what was it he’d said?

Mr Nordstrom was in his room: Room 3, third floor. It actually looked like a perfectly normal hotel room, right down to the upper half of a pair of trousers sticking out of the wall-mounted trouser press like a blue pin-striped tongue. Mr Nordstrom looked at him, scowled and said, “Yes?”

“Hi,” Theo said. “Can I come in?”

“Why?”

“Because this isn’t a hotel, I’m not a desk clerk, you’re not a guest and the wine cellar sure as hell isn’t a wine cellar.”

Mr Nordstrom nodded. “I can let you have five minutes,” he said, and pushed open the door.

As he walked in, Theo looked round until he saw what he’d been looking for. He recognised it at once, even though he’d never seen one before. Once he’d postulated its existence, figuring out what it’d look like hadn’t been too difficult.

“Pieter van Goyen?” he asked, as he picked it up.

“Yes, Pieter made it, and for Christ’s sake be careful with it.” Mr Nordstrom reached out a hand to take it from him, but Theo held it just out of reach.

“Let’s see,” Theo said. “You put the bottle in this end here, right? Yes, and then you plug this flex into the wall, and this end here—”

“That’s the projector,” Mr Nordstrom said. “It projects the image of an archway on to any flat surface, like a wall.”

“And that’s the way in?”

Mr Nordstrom nodded, and he handed the machine back to him. “And it works?”

“Oh, it works just fine,” Mr Nordstrom said, taking it and putting it carefully down on a table. “So long as you’ve got pre-loaded capsules to go in it.”

Theo smiled and sat down on the bed. “That’s what all those bottles in the cellar are, aren’t they?”

Mr Nordstrom frowned. “You don’t know?”

“No, so I’m working it out for myself.”

“Bill hasn’t—?”

Theo shook his head. “Bill hasn’t told me and I haven’t asked,” he said. “I have the feeling that truth percolates through Bill the way water does through the human kidney. It goes in as truth and comes out as something quite like it, but not exactly the same.” He grinned. “Shoot.”

“What?”

“Talk. Tell me stuff. Or I’m leaving.”

Mr Nordstrom glowered at him, then sank down in a chair. “Fine,” he said. “You know about the parallel universe project?”

“Let’s assume I do. Bits. Who are you?”

“You don’t – right, fine.” Mr Nordstrom looked hurt. “I’m Jake Nordstrom, CEO of Heartless & Amoral Capital Investments. I’ve put three billion dollars into this.”

“Ah.”

“Which is awkward, since I only have two billion dollars.”

“Ah.”

“The other billion – well,” Mr Nordstrom went on, “you get the idea. What else do you want to know?”

“The bottles.”

Mr Nordstrom nodded. “Each bottle contains five standard hours in an alternative reality. You put the bottle in the machine, the arch appears, you walk through, you’re there. Then you come home.”

Theo steepled his fingers. “The other day,” he said, “you were nearly killed playing with that thing.”

“That’s right.” Mr Nordstrom didn’t sound too bothered. “Somehow, I got the wrong bottle. I was expecting a Paris bordello circa 1898. What I got was heavy street-fighting in the closing stages of the Vietnam War. We’re still trying to figure out how it happened.”

“That may have been my fault,” Theo said. “You see, I wanted to hide this” – he took Pieter’s bottle out of his pocket, then put it back again, just in case Mr Nordstrom got ideas – ”and the wine cellar seemed like a good idea. I moved a few bottles around. Presumably—”

“Yes.” Mr Nordstrom breathed out heavily through his nose but didn’t move. “You weren’t to know, I guess.”

“Quite. You’ll notice, I’m managing to cope with the guilt pretty well. I figure, if people don’t tell me things, I can’t be expected to know them. Right?”

“That bottle…”

“Yes?”

“Bill told me. Pieter left it to you, in his will.”

“So he did.”

“Properly speaking, it belongs to me.”

Theo sighed. “You know, if circumstances were just a little different, you could have the frigging thing. All it’s done so far is try