Other Worlds Than These

later. They paused to cross the road near one of Andrea’s favorite boutiques and Mick asked if there was something he could buy for her.

Andrea sounded taken aback at the suggestion. “You don’t need to buy me anything, Mick. It isn’t my birthday or anything.”

“It would be nice to give you a gift. Something to remember me by.”

“I don’t need anything to remember you, Mick. You’re always going to be there.”

“It doesn’t have to be much. Just something you’ll use now and then, and will make you think of me. This me, not the one who’s going to be walking around in this body in a few days.”

“Well, if you really insist…” He could tell Andrea was trying to sound keen on the idea, but her heart still wasn’t quite in it. “There was a handbag I saw last week…”

“You should have bought it when you saw it.”

“I was saving up for the hairdresser.”

So Mick bought her the handbag. He made a mental note of the style and color, intending to buy an identical copy next week. Since he hadn’t bought the gift for his wife in his own worldline, it was even possible that he might walk out of the shop with the exact counterpart of the handbag he’d just given Andrea.

They went to the park again, then to look at the art in the National Museum of Wales, then back into town for lunch. There were a few more clouds in the sky compared to the last two days, but their chrome whiteness only served to make the blue appear more deeply enameled and permanent. There were no planes anywhere at all; no contrail scratches. It turned out the aircraft—which had indeed been military—that they had seen yesterday had been on its way to Poland, carrying a team of mine rescue specialists. Mick remembered his resentment at seeing the plane, and felt bad about it now. There had been brave men and women aboard it, and they were probably going to be putting their own lives at risk to help save other brave men and women stuck miles underground.

“Well,” Andrea said, when they’d paid the bill. “Moment of truth, I suppose. I’ve been thinking about what you were saying earlier, and maybe…” She trailed off, looking down at the remains of her salad, before continuing, “We can go home, if you’d like. If that’s what you really want.”

“Yes,” Mick said. “It’s what I want.”

They took the tram back to their house. Andrea used her key to let them inside. It was still only the early afternoon, and the house was pleasantly cool, with the curtains and blinds still drawn. Mick knelt down and picked up the letters that were on the mat. Bills, mostly. He set them on the hallside table, feeling a transitory sense of liberation. More than likely he’d be confronted with the same bills when he got home, but for now these were someone else’s problem.

He slipped off his shoes and walked into the living room. For a moment he was thrown, feeling as if he really was in a different house. The wallscreen was on another wall; the dining table had been shifted sideways into the other half of the room; the sofa and easy chairs had all been altered and moved.

“What’s happened?”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Andrea said. “I felt like a change. You came around and helped me move them.”

“That’s new furniture.”

“No, just different seat covers. They’re not new, it’s just that we haven’t had them out for a while. You remember them now, don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“C’mon, Mick. It wasn’t that long ago. We got them off Aunty Janice, remember?” She looked at him despairingly. “I’ll move things back. It was a bit inconsiderate of me, I suppose. I never thought how strange it would be for you to see the place like this.”

“No, it’s okay. Honestly, it’s fine.” Mick looked around, trying to fix the arrangement of furniture and decor in his mind’s eye. As if he were going to duplicate everything when he got back into his own body, into his own version of this house.

Maybe he would, too.

“I’ve got something for you,” Andrea said suddenly, reaching onto the top of the bookcase. “Found it this morning. Took ages searching for it.”

“What?” Mick asked.

She held the thing out to him. Mick saw a rectangle of laminated pink card, stained and dog-eared. It was only when he tried to hold it, and the thing fell open and disgorged its folded paper innards, that he realized it was a map.

“Bloody hell. I wouldn’t have had a clue where to look.” Mick folded the map back into itself and studied the cover. It was one of their old hill-walking maps, covering that part of the Brecon Beacons where they’d done a lot of their walks.

“I was just thinking… seeing as you were so keen… maybe it wouldn’t kill us to get out of town. Nothing too adventurous, mind.”

“Tomorrow?”

She looked at him concernedly. “That’s what I was thinking. You’ll still be okay, won’t you?”

“No probs.”

“I’ll get us a picnic, then. Tesco’s does a nice luncheon basket. I think we’ve still got two thermos flasks around here somewhere, too.”

“Never mind the thermos flasks, what about the walking boots?”

“In the garage,” Andrea said. “Along with the rucksacks. I’ll dig them out this evening.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Mick said. “Really. It’s kind of you to agree.”

“Just as long you don’t expect me to get up Pen y Fan without getting out of breath.”

“I bet you’ll surprise yourself.”

A little later they went upstairs, to their bedroom. The blinds were open enough to throw pale stripes across the walls and bedsheets. Andrea undressed, and then helped Mick out his own clothes. As good as his control over the body had now become, fine motor tasks—like undoing buttons and zips—would require a lot more practice than he was going to have time for.

“You’ll have to help me get all this on afterward,” he said.

“There you go, worrying about the future again.”

They lay together on the bed. Mick had already felt himself growing hard long before there was any corresponding change in the body he was now inhabiting. He had an erection in the laboratory, halfway across the city in another worldline. He could even feel the sharp plastic of the urinary catheter. Would the other Mick, sunk deep into coma, retain some vague impression of what was happening now? There were occasional stories of people coming out of their coma with a memory of what their bodies had been up to while they were under, but the agencies had said these were urban myths.

They made slow, cautious love. Mick had become more aware of his own awkwardness, and the self- consciousness only served to exaggerate the stiffness of his movements. Andrea did what she could to help, to bridge the gap between them, but she could not work miracles. She was patient and forgiving, even when he came close to hurting her. When he climaxed, Mick felt it happen to the body in the laboratory first. Then the body he was inhabiting responded, too, seconds later. Something of it reached him through the nervelink—not pleasure, exactly, but confirmation that pleasure had occurred.

Afterward, they lay still on the bed, limbs entwined. A breeze made the blinds move back and forth against the window. The slow movement of light and shade, the soft tick of vinyl on glass, was as lulling as a becalmed boat. Mick found himself falling into a contented sleep. He dreamed of standing on a summit in the Brecon Beacons, looking down on the sunlit valleys of South Wales, with Andrea next to him, the two of them poised like a tableau in a travel brochure.

When he woke, hours later, he heard her moving around downstairs. He reached for the glasses—he’d removed them earlier—and made to leave the bed. He felt it then. Somewhere in those languid hours he’d lost a degree of control over the body. He stood and moved to the door. He could still walk, but the easy facility he’d gained on Tuesday was now absent. When he moved to the landing and looked down the stairs, the glasses struggled to cope with the sudden change of scene. The view fractured, reassembled. He moved to steady himself on the banister, and his hand blurred into a long smear of flesh.

He began to descend the stairs, like a man coming down a mountain.