He stood at his apartment door, fishing for his keys. Naturally, he didn't have them. Max 2 had taken them when they had exchanged clothes; and Max 2 was…
He heard voices inside.
The door swung open, and there was Hochstader. 'Which one are you?' Max asked calmly.
'Stupid question,' Hochstader 109 snapped. 'Come on in.'
Max went in. Someone was restaging the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera in his apartment. There were scores of Maxes and Hochstaders, all shouting at each other, shoved in shoulder to shoulder, arguing toe to toe. But they were not all of the usual sort. Some were in strange costumes: chainmail, doublets, jerkins, furs. Some were heeled with antique weaponry. Still others wore futuristic garb.
'All right, all right!'
Hochstader 110, standing on the kitchen table, stamped a foot loudly for order.
The shouting trailed off into curses and grumbling.
'OK, this auction is officially opened. My client claims origins rights for this world. He desires a change. What am I bid?'
'Don't do it!' Max 53 shouted. 'Don't give it up! You'll be sorry!'
'Right! You don't know the value of-oof!' Max 3 got an elbow in the ribs from Hochstader 111.
'Let's hear from the boondocks,' the table-mounted Hochstader yelled.
'I bid the estate and castle of Lord Max!'
Hochstader 110 sneered. 'And how many armies are laying siege to them?'
Lord Max looked at the floor and shuffled his feet in embarrassment.
'Come on, let's hear from somebody with something good for a change.'
'I have a world where Andrea never left me!'
'Well, that's a start.'
'Good riddance, I say.'
'You're talking about my wife, pal!'
'Your wife!'
Somewhere in the crowd, one Max turned to another (it doesn't matter which ones they were) and asked: 'How many of these good worlds are there-I mean the ones with this crappy apartment?'
'From what I gather, only a few hundred million. Not nearly enough to go around.'
About three dozen Maxes sat on the floor, went into lotus position, and tried to remember their mantras.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A doorway magically appeared in a stone wall and out walked a king wearing a jogging suit. (One could tell he was a king: the jogging suit was purple.)
'Your Majesty! Why, we thought something had happened-!'
'Sorry. I purposely picked an aspect with a big negative time differential. I wanted things to settle down here… Hey.'
Incarnadine stopped just short of the desk. His double was still hard at work signing papers.
Tremaine said, 'Something wrong, sire?'
Incarnadine sniffed the air. 'Thought I got a whiff of strange magic. Something's always different when I return to the castle.' He sniffed again. 'It's probably nothing.'
'Greetings!' The king's double said.
'How's it going?'
'Fine, fine. No problems. Enjoy your jog?'
'Well, I napped under a shade tree for most of the afternoon.'
'Several days have gone by here in the castle,' Tremaine said.
'Yes, and I hope my absence didn't discommode you any, Tremaine.'
Tremaine smiled broadly. 'Not in the least, sire. Think nothing of it.'
'Good, good. Well…' Incarnadine shrugged at his twin.
The ersatz Incarnadine grinned. 'Looks like I'm out of a job.'
'Hope you don't mind.'
'Not at all. Glad to be of service.'
'Thanks.'
Incarnadine waved his hand. The doppelganger disappeared with a puff of green smoke.
'Astonishing, sire,' Tremaine said admiringly.
'I am good, aren't I?' Incarnadine grinned devilishly.
'Indubitably, sire. Now, my lord, if I may broach the subject of the audit of the royal granary-'
The king raised a hand. 'Sorry, have to be off again.'
'Sire, you just returned.'
'I have pressing business in no less than four different aspects. The audit of the royal granary will have to wait.' Incarnadine began to walk off, but stopped.
'Damn, there is something screwy. Not anything major, just a tinge of mischief. I think… Hmmm. I haven't checked up at Jeremy Hochstader's shop lately. Think I'll drop in on him.'
Incarnadine's gaze wandered back to his executive assistant. 'Tremaine, you look a bit dejected.'
'It's nothing, sire.'
'You're working too hard.'
Tremaine sniffed. 'Someone must see to the workaday drudgery necessary to run your kingdom, sire.'
'I suppose so,' Incarnadine said guiltily. He gave Tremaine a small wave of the hand. 'Bye-bye.'
'The gods be with you, Your Majesty.' Tremaine bowed deeply.
'Later.'
'So nothing's new?' Linda asked Jeremy Hochstader.
'Not much,' Jeremy said. 'I've just been fiddling, trying out some ideas.'
'Like what?'
'Oh, moving the Earth portal around, for one.'
'I thought you had the ability to move it anywhere you wanted to in the castle, or on Earth.'
'Yeah, I can pretty much do that. But I wanted to do a few more exotic things with it. And theoretically with any portal, to any world.'
The door to the laboratory opened and in walked Lord Incarnadine.
'Hey, it's the boss.' He took his feet down from the countertop.
'What's new, Jeremy?' Incarnadine asked.
'I was just talking to Linda about that.'
'Linda, hello!'
'Your Majesty.'
Incarnadine looked at her for a bit longer than necessary. Had he caught something strange in her eye?
'Jeremy, I wanted to ask you. Have you been doing any experiments lately?'
'Experiments? Not really. I've been thinking of things I wanted to try. Why do you ask?'
'Oh, when I got back to the castle I thought I caught a hint of something cockeyed. Nothing big, no problems, but- Uh, what were you thinking of doing?'
'Well, I got this notion that if you fiddled with the frequency of a portal a little, you could-'
'Whoa!' Incarnadine waved a hand. 'Wait a minute, you don't want to do that.'
'No?'
'No way, Jose.'
Jeremy looked sheepish. 'Ooops. I didn't realize it was that big a no-no.'
'It is a major no-no. You don't want to get into probability states, close variants of the same universe, that sort of thing. We've already had a few bouts of everybody's double running around the castle causing mischief.
