Max frowned. 'Me?'
'Yeah, you. Your history, your life story is going to be different in this different Earth. Your situation might be a little different. Or a lot different. Or… well, tell you the truth, I've been in this world before. Did some snooping, some detective work. And I think I have a deal for you.'
'A deal for me.'
'Yeah.'
Hochstader got up and strode to a coat tree in a corner, undraped a blue and white athletic jacket, and slipped it on. He grinned at Max. 'Feel like taking a little night air?'
The taxi made its way quickly through sparse late-evening traffic. It had begun to rain earlier, but now only a light drizzle fell. The cab driver was the silent type, seeming uninterested in the strange conversation that was going on in his back seat.
'Tell me again,' Max pleaded. 'This 'aspect.' It's a whole different world?'
'Universe, actually,' Hochstader corrected. Passing lights briefly illuminated his boyish, perpetually grinning face. 'And really not very different in most respects from the one we came from. But as far as your situation is concerned… well, that's another matter.'
Max slumped back in the seat, his mind full of cobwebs. He looked out, seeing shadows that threatened halfconceived nightmares. 'I don't understand…'
'It's all so simple,' Jeremy Hochstader said. 'Let me ask you this. If you had to state your main problem in twenty-five words or less, how would it go?'
Max's thoughts drifted back to the endless hours of psychotherapy, of soul-searching, of futile digging at the root of his problems.
'Easy. I'm a total failure. Everything I've ever tried or ever done has come to doodly squat.'
'Yeah, I figured,' Jeremy said. 'I can empathize with that. My life's the same way, or would have been if I hadn't discovered the castle. The castle is a fun place to live, don't get me wrong, but there's one thing that's wrong with it.'
'What?'
'It's not Earth. It's not home. I initially got the idea of searching for another Earth that was even better than the one I was born in. So I de-tuned the Earth portal, tried different tunings, each just a couple of decimal points off. At first I couldn't find any differences at all, until I heard a news broadcast. There was a different president, and he was the guy who was vice president in our world. The guy he replaced had a sudden heart attack. And I got this other idea: people have better lives in some worlds than in others.' Max raised his shoulders. 'So?'
'Well think of the possibilities. I discovered another thing, too. That most people are dissatisfied with their lives. No matter how good they got it, they always want something different, they always think the grass is greener on the other side of the road.'
'Fence.'
'Fence, whatever. Anyway-'
Max grabbed the kid's bony shoulder. 'Look! What the hell does all this have to do with me? I want an answer!'
Jeremy indignantly removed Max's hand. 'Get your mitts off the merchandise. I'm getting to that, I'm getting to that.'
'Well, get to it!'
'Okay! Listen to me. What's the obvious cure, the thing that would make your life a lot better?'
'I don't know,' Max said. 'Don't you think if I knew that, I'd be doing it?'
'The cure is success! Nothing succeeds like success. Isn't that incredibly obvious?'
'No. Lack of success is a symptom.'
'Bullshit.' Hochstader crossed his legs sharply and sat back. 'My brand of therapy is, like, real direct. If a client is dissatisfied with his life, I give him a new one. Forget all that crap about early toilet training, parents, arrested development, and the rest. There's nothing like a fresh start to wipe the slate clean. You're a chronic failure, right? And every new botched thing only reinforces your sense of worthlessness, making it all the more likely you'll fail again, and again, and again. It's, you know, a vicious circle.'
'Cycle. Okay, I understand what you're saying, and there may even be some truth in it, but…'
Max thought about it. Hochstader's analysis made as much sense as any other he had heard. 'But what's this alternate world stuff got to do with breaking the cycle?'
'Real simple,' Jeremy said. 'By starting fresh from a base state of success and proceeding from there, we turn the tables on the whole neurotic process. See, I do know something about psychology. I read a couple of books.' He waved a hand disdainfully. 'Forget about what started the whole thing off. To hell with the cause of the neurosis. Seems to me most of this psychotherapy stuff underestimates the factor of chance in a patient's case history. Luck has something to do with it. We're all at the mercy of random forces. It's a tricky universe, Max. And if you don't like the way things have worked out in your universe of origin, you can slip over to a brand-new one.'
'But how…?' Max broke off, shaking his head.
'Don't try to figure it out all at once. I can only explain so much. Not I gotta show you. Just take it as it comes. You'll understand everything in due time.' Leaning forward to the cabbie, Jeremy said, 'Turn right at this next road.'
'I just don't know,' Max said, shaking his head. 'This is all so nuts.'
'Yeah,' Jeremy said. 'The castle's like that. But just go with it.'
'Go with it?'
'Yeah. Go with the nuttiness. Get into the flow, and it'll work for you. It always does for me.'
Go with the flow? Max thought. And what choice did he have? Temporarily giving up any attempt at making sense of all this, he sat back. 'Anything you say, Doctor.' He exhaled and looked out the window.
After a moment Max said, 'You're not a doctor, are you? You don't have any degree at all.'
'Uh, not really, not in the real world,' Jeremy confessed. 'High school, and that's about it. But Osmirik, the castle scribe, gave me an honorary doctorate. A real sheepskin. He said I deserved it.'
'Oh, God,' Max said. 'It'll be okay, really.'
'I'm okay,' Max said. 'I'm going to be okay. I'm fine. I just wish I could remember my mantra.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
'Are we having fun yet?'
Gene did a classic spit take, spraying beer across the picnic bench. Then he alternated guffawing and choking.
'Only Snowclaw could say that in all seriousness,' said Phil Kaufmann, wiping off his sleeve with a paper napkin.
'Well, I am serious,' Snowclaw said. 'This is a party, right? We're supposed to have fun, whatever that is. And since I really don't know much about human stuff, I was simply asking-'
'We know, we know,' Gene said, having recovered. 'And the answer is… no, we're not having a whole hell of a lot of fun yet, but give it time, give it time.'
'I'm enjoying the dancing girls,' Kaufmann said.
The merrymakers, all male, watched approvingly as the dancing women continued their display of terpsichorean skill. Music blared from a boom-box on the table. They were all perfunctorily clad, all beautiful, and all untouchable, protected by invisible magical screens. Not that any of the men had made advances; one of them had simply blundered too near one member of the troupe and had received a mild shock.
The party tables were set up very near the portal entrance to this world, a world that was one of many of its type: parklike, perpetually blue-skied, temperate, and safe. Expansive greenswards spread between stately trees that resembled oaks, but were not.
Gene was bored. He took another swing of beer. It was good beer. Great, in fact. But he was still bored.
'What's the matter, chum?' Snowclaw asked, scratching his white, thick-furred belly.
'Hell, not a thing.'
