Other Worlds Than These

“I can see it,” Andrea answered. She touched the side of his face, steering his view until he was craning up as far as his neck would allow. “It’s an aeroplane.”

Mick waited until the glasses picked out the tiny, moving speck of the plane etching a pale contrail in its wake. He felt a twinge of resentment toward anyone still having the freedom to fly, when the rest of humanity was denied that right. It had been a nice dream when it lasted, flying. He had no idea what political or military purpose the plane was serving, but it would be an easy matter to find out, were he that interested. The news would be in all the papers by the afternoon. The plane wouldn’t just be overflying this version of Cardiff, but his as well. That had been one of the hardest things to take since Andrea’s death. The world at large steamrolled on, its course undeflected by that single human tragedy. Andrea had died in the accident in his world, she’d survived unscathed in this one, and that plane’s course wouldn’t have changed in any measurable way (in either reality).

“I love seeing aeroplanes,” Andrea said. “It reminds me of what things were like before the moratorium. Don’t you?”

“Actually,” Mick said, “they make me a bit sad.”

WEDNESDAY

Mick knew how busy Andrea had been lately, and he tried to persuade her against taking any time off from her work. Andrea had protested, saying her colleagues could handle her workload for a few days. Mick knew better than that—Andrea practically ran the firm single-handedly—but in the end they’d come to a compromise. Andrea would take time off from the office, but she’d pop in first thing in the morning to put out any really serious fires.

Mick agreed to meet her at the offices at ten, after his round of tests. Everything still felt the way it had the day before; if anything he was even more fluent in his body movements. But when Joe had finished, the news was all that Mick had been quietly dreading, while knowing it could be no other way. The quality of the link had continued to degrade. According to Joe they were down to one point eight megs now. They’d seen enough decay curves to be able to extrapolate forward into the beginning of the following week. The link would become noise- swamped around teatime on Sunday, give or take three hours either way.

If only they’d started sooner, Mick thought. But Joe had done all that he could.

Today—despite the foreboding message from the lab—his sense of immersion in the counterpart world had become total. As the sunlit city swept by outside the tram’s windows, Mick found it nearly impossible to believe that he was not physically present in this body, rather than lying on the couch in the other version of the lab. Overnight his tactile immersion had improved markedly. When he braced himself against the tram’s upright handrail, as it swept around a curve, he felt cold aluminum, the faint greasiness where it had been touched by other hands.

At the offices, Andrea’s colleagues greeted him with an unforced casualness that left him dismayed. He’d been expecting awkward expressions of sympathy, sly glances when they thought he wasn’t looking. Instead he was plonked down in the waiting area and left to flick through glossy brochures while he waited for Andrea to emerge from her office. No one even offered him a drink.

He leafed through the brochures dispiritedly. Andrea’s job had always been a sore point in their relationship. If Mick didn’t approve of nervelinking, he had even less time for the legal vultures that made so much money out of personal injury claims related to the technology. But now he found it difficult to summon his usual sense of moral superiority. Unpleasant things had happened to decent people because of negligence and corner-cutting. If nervelinking was to be a part of the world, then someone had to make sure the victims got their due. He wondered why this had never been clear to him before.

“Hiya,” Andrea said, leaning over him. She gave him a businesslike kiss, not quite meeting his mouth. “Took a bit longer than I thought, sorry.”

“Can we go now?” Mick asked, putting down the brochure.

“Yep, I’m done here.”

Outside, when they were walking along the pavement in the shade of the tall, commercial buildings, Mick said: “They didn’t have a clue, did they? No one in that office knows what’s happened to us.”

“I thought it was best,” Andrea said.

“I don’t know how you can keep up that act, that nothing’s wrong.”

“Mick, nothing is wrong. You have to see it from my point of view. I haven’t lost my husband. Nothing’s changed for me. When you’re gone—when all this ends, and I get the other you back—my life carries on as normal. I know what’s happened to you is a tragedy, and believe me I’m as upset about it as anyone.”

“Upset,” Mick said quietly.

“Yes, upset. But I’d be lying if I said I was paralyzed with grief. I’m human, Mick. I’m not capable of feeling great emotional turmoil at the thought that some distant counterpart of myself got herself run over, all because she was rushing to have her hair done. Silly cow, that’s what it makes me feel. At most it makes me feel a bit odd, a bit shivery. But I don’t think it’s something I’m going to have trouble getting over.”

“I lost my wife,” Mick said.

“I know, and I’m sorry. More than you’ll ever know. But if you expect my life to come crashing to a halt…”

He cut her off. “I’m already fading. One point eight this morning.”

“You always knew it would happen. It’s not like it’s any surprise.”

“You’ll notice a difference in me by the end of the day.”

“This isn’t the end of the day, so stop dwelling on it. All right? Please, Mick. You’re in serious danger of ruining this for yourself.”

“I know, and I’m trying not to,” he said. “But what I was saying, about how things aren’t going to get any better…I think today’s going to be my last chance, Andrea. My last chance to be with you, to be with you properly.”

“You mean us sleeping together,” Andrea said, keeping her voice low.

“We haven’t talked about it yet. That’s okay; I wasn’t expecting it to happen without at least some discussion. But there’s no reason why…”

“Mick, I…” Andrea began.

“You’re still my wife. I’m still in love with you. I know we’ve had our problems, but I realize now how stupid all that was. I should have called you sooner. I was being an idiot. And then this happened…and it made me realize what a wonderful, lovely person you are, and I should have seen that for myself, but I didn’t…I needed the accident to shake me up, to make me see how lucky I was just to know you. And now I’m going to lose you again, and I’m not sure how I’m going to cope with that. But at least if we can be together again…properly, I mean.”

“Mick…”

“You’ve already said you might get back together with the other Mick. Maybe it took all this to get us talking again. Point is, if you’re going to get back together with him, there’s nothing to stop us getting back together now. We were a couple before the accident; we can still be a couple now.”

“Mick, it isn’t the same. You’ve lost your wife. I’m not her. I’m some weird thing there isn’t a word for. And you aren’t really my husband. My husband is in a medically induced coma.”

“You know none of that really matters.”

“To you.”

“It shouldn’t matter to you either. And your husband—me, incidentally—agreed to this. He knew exactly what was supposed to happen. And so did you.”

“I just thought things would be better—more civilized—if we kept a kind of distance.”

“You’re talking as if we’re divorced.”

“Mick, we were already separated. We weren’t talking. I can’t just forget what happened before the accident as if none of that mattered.”

“I know it isn’t easy for you.”

They walked on in an uneasy silence, through the city center streets they’d walked a thousand times before. Mick asked Andrea if she wanted a coffee, but she said she’d had one in her office not long before he arrived. Maybe