you doing there? You should be on the planet of the Disney creatures, rescuing Max.”
Theo opened his eyes very wide. “You know about that.”
“Of course I do, I’m not stupid. What the hell are you doing in Sydney?”
“I’m the Pope.”
The cardinal made a low moaning noise. “What do you mean, you’re the—? Oh, forget it,” Janine said. “Stop pissing around and go and get Max, right now.”
The acolyte was approaching. He held a golden salver, in the exact centre of which was a doughnut. Theo leaned forward and grabbed at it, but the acolyte held it just out of reach. Then the cardinal handed him a note on a scrap of paper: not till you’ve got us Porto Alegre.
Fine, Theo thought, if that’s what it takes. “I insist you let us have everything south of the Serra Geral,” he said. “Otherwise, the deal’s off.”
The cardinal nodded approvingly. “You what?” Janine said.
“I mean it,” Theo said firmly, his eyes glued to the doughnut. “What? Yes, that’s fine. I’m glad we were able to agree on that. So, if you can picture a line running approximately fifteen degrees forty-five minutes south—”
“Theo, unless you go and rescue Max this minute, I’m going to have you killed, do you understand me? I mean it.”
The doughnut was still just beyond the furthest extent of his arm. “And how am I supposed to go about doing that exactly?”
“Easy. Just do what you usually do. Go there, get Max, come back.”
“What I usually do,” Theo repeated. “You don’t know how it works, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
Years of experience; he knew when she was lying. “Which is why I ended up here,” he said, “instead of the planet of the Disney creatures.”
The cardinal let out a low whimpering noise and grabbed the phone from Theo’s hand. “G’day, Your Majesty,” he said, “sorry about this but His Holiness would appear to have had a heart attack. He’ll call you back soon as he’s feeling better. Cheerio.” He pressed the kill button so hard he splintered the casing, and dropped the phone on the floor. “That does it,” he snapped. “Sorry, Wayne, mate, but this time you’ve gone too far. Nev, get me the Archbishop of Wangaratta.”
Quickly, Theo did the mental arithmetic; distance, time, velocity, angle. Then he lunged.
He almost made it; almost, but not quite. Later he realised that he’d been basing his calculations on the length of his arm in his home universe, whereas in this one it was 0.9 centimetres shorter. His nails scraped the edge of the salver, but that was as close as he got. Then he overbalanced and hit the floor. “The doughnut,” he screamed. “Give me the doughnut.”
The cardinal was staring at him with a mixture of loathing and pity. “Nev,” he said, “His Holiness is having some kind of seizure. Lock him in the dunnee and call Doc O’Shaugnessy.”
Respectful but extremely strong hands attached themselves to the front of Theo’s robes and hauled him to his feet; then the floor and ceiling changed places for a while, as Theo was carried across the room and dumped in a toilet. He tried the door, but it wouldn’t open; presumably Nev had wedged it shut with the back of a chair. Marvellous.
After that, not much happened for quite some time. It was rather a nice toilet, as toilets go; it had a marble floor and gold-plated taps, and the paper was purple, monogrammed with the papal crossed keys. Theo put the seat down and sat on it, and waited for someone to come and let him out.
There was a mirror, which was interesting; the face that stared back at him was more or less his own, but about forty years older. He didn’t feel that old, so presumably the transformation was entirely superficial. His right arm was visible, and he was wearing a big, chunky ring; if he ever got home again and managed to take it with him, it’d be worth good money, but he was fairly sure he wouldn’t be allowed to keep it. That, after all, would be something nice, and YouSpace didn’t seem to work like that.
Janine, he thought. Janine and Max. That’s the problem with being human. We have brains capable of figuring out the universe to a thousand decimal places, we can build machines as tall as mountains or as tiny as specks of dust, we can prise open atoms like walnuts, we can calculate the weights of distant stars, manipulate nature, ride on super-sophisticated fireworks out