Falling Sideways (28 page)

‘Quite right,' David replied, ‘good answer, well done.' The frog swelled a little with pride. ‘All right, you can sit down now. You, middle of the fifth row. What's the work you're supposed to do when you get here?'

Some frog who apparently assumed he was the one being addressed hung his head. ‘Sorry, sir. Forgotten, sir.'

‘Stay in afterwards and clean the, um, lily pads. You in the front row, tell him the answer.'

‘Yes, sir.' The reply came from a small, fat, smug-looking frog with a light brown streak running down its back. ‘We've got to do exactly what we're told to do once we get here, sir. Is that the right answer, sir?'

David hesitated, to the point where he was in danger of communicating uncertainty and weakness. ‘That's about the strength of it,' he said. ‘More or less. Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that, but we won't go into the details now. All right, you're dismissed.'

The frogs stayed exactly where they were, apart from two who hopped apprehensively towards him, stopped a few inches from his toecaps and sat there staring up at him. Creepy, to say the least.

‘Well?' David snapped, edging away a little. ‘What do you want?'

‘Please, sir,' said one of them, ‘you said to see you afterwards.'

‘Oh. Right. Um, I've decided to let you off with a warning this time, but don't let it happen again. You got that?'

‘Yes, sir.' They hopped back into the crowd, much to David's relief. He took a deep breath and picked his way across to the workshop doors. They were still open. What the hell, he thought, and went inside.

No frogs in the workshop, which was a definite improvement as far as he was concerned. As far as the weird things they'd told him, and the implications thereof, were concerned, he was rapidly reaching the point where he could take that kind of thing at face value and believe it, while simultaneously believing something else he'd been told by some other version of the one-eyed man or his daughter, simply because it was easier to believe than to think. The one-eyed man could turn people into frogs? No problem. Frogs are in fact
gastarbeiter
shipped in by the one-eyed man to be used as cheap labour on some unthinkably obscure secret project? Yeah, why not? No skin off his nose whether or not frogs are recycled coppers or illegal aliens or both, just so long as he didn't have to do anything about it.

He sat down on the workbench and turned his head in the direction of the door that led out back, behind which was the gadget he truly believed to be an interstellar lift (non-functional, needless to say; interstellar or not, the natural default state of all elevators is bust mode). Well, he told himself, here we are. No options left: no British Columbia, no escape to the alien Homeworld. There were policemen staking out his home and at least two bunches of identical clones out to catch him and do him no good at all. Not only had he lost the only girl he'd ever loved, he'd lost her in duplicate, like some heartbroken but highly efficient civil servant. He hadn't slept for what seemed like a very long time, and he was seriously hungry. He couldn't help remembering that in prison they feed you and let you snatch a few hours' sleep now and then.

Indeed. Logic dictates that when getting caught is better in pretty well every respect than carrying on running, the very least a sensible person can do is slow down a little.

He looked round. If he'd had the energy, he could have cooked up a nice little theory about how having briefly been a frog himself had left him with the ability to speak their language. (Of course, he hadn't actually been a frog, just a human being intermittently convinced he was a frog; in that case, shouldn't he only be able to manage pidgin frog?) Another line of enquiry he could've followed up: maybe some of the frogs out here were froggified peelers, and the rest were strange visitors from the planet of the duckpond-divers. And of course there was always the question of whether people who believed they were frogs reverted to their human shape when they died, or whether they'd carry on being rani-form for ever and ever. All fascinating stuff; and when the day came when humans and aliens were able to live together and get along with each other, somebody was going to be able to stiff the worlds' universities for enough research funding to last a lifetime.

David stood up—

(Do what they're told, yes, but what on earth could frogs do that'd justify bringing them all this way, taking millions of years? Why frogs, for crying out loud?)

—And wandered over to the bank of goo tanks against the wall. The glare of the strip lights overhead silvered the meniscus of the glop like the back of a mirror, and in it he could see his face . . .

Another him, identical in every superficial respect; but not him, not him at all. Slowly he reached up and teased out a single hair from the top of his head.

Well, it would solve one fairly major problem; it would give the police someone to arrest. If he remembered how these things worked, there'd be plenty of time to fish his alter ego out and tie him up securely before he woke up for the first time. Then all it'd take would be one anonymous phone call; he could be miles away before the squad cars arrived. Of course, the clone would go to prison for something he hadn't done, it'd be monstrously unfair, but if there was a terrible injustice wandering about looking for someone to happen to, that wasn't his fault; effectively, it would be self-defence. Well, no, of course it wouldn't be, but it was the only chance of wriggling off the hook that he was likely to get. He looked at the hair: you or me, he thought, and I haven't done anything wrong, so why should it be me? Whereupon the hair seemed to look back at him, as if to say that he hadn't done anything wrong
yet
.

David sighed. It'd be so easy to let go, watch the little brown wire flop onto the green goo like a hair from a paintbrush. His decision; for once in his life, he had a genuine choice.

No, he decided, I can't. I couldn't live with myself. Either of me.

And that was the moment when someone slapped him cheerfully and hard between the shoulder blades, making him let go of the hair.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
he hair seemed to take a very long time to fall.

‘Hello there,' said a voice in his ear. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?'

David recognised the voice, and the minute part of him that wasn't busy watching the hair fall riffled through the necessary card indices and identified it as Honest John's. The hair landed.

‘Fuck,' David said.

‘What's the matter with you?' asked Honest John. ‘Lost a contact lens, or something?'

‘Something like that.'

John laughed. ‘Just as well it didn't go in the tank, then,' he said. ‘Otherwise—' He stopped. ‘It went in the tank.'

‘Yes.'

‘Fuck.' John sighed. ‘By the way,' he added, ‘are those your frogs out there?'

‘What? Oh, no, they're nothing to do with me. At least, I don't think so.' He turned round. ‘What do you mean, my frogs? I thought they were yours.'

John frowned. ‘What the hell would I want with a thousand frogs?' he asked.

‘But—' David bit off the question. Right now, frogs weren't the issue. In fact, things had gone way, way beyond frogs. ‘One of my hairs just fell in the goo,' he said. ‘Can we stop it?'

‘From growing, you mean?' John shrugged. ‘'Course we can. Just flip the mains switch, that's that. Of course,' he added, ‘it'd be murder. If you look at it that way, I mean.'

‘Murder?'

John nodded. ‘Maybe not in law,' he said, ‘it's what you might call a grey area. And it wouldn't bother me, I couldn't give a toss.
You
might, though.'

‘You're right, I probably would.' David closed his eyes. ‘The bloody stupid,
annoying
thing is, I came this close to putting the damn hair in there on purpose. It'd get me out of a hole, you see, it'd be really convenient not to have to go to jail for the rest of my life. But I decided not to.'

‘Ah, well, then,' John said. ‘Maybe you were meant to drop that hair in that tank after all. Makes you think, really.'

‘Actually, thinking's never been a problem as far as I'm concerned. It's the not thinking that gives me trouble.' He looked away from the tank. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Me?' John laughed. ‘I'm getting as much of my kit out of here as I can before the next load of coppers shows up, that's what. It's extremely expensive, delicate equipment, this is. I can't afford to go buying it all again.'

David pursed his lips. ‘John, can I ask you a question?'

‘You just did.'

‘All right, can I ask you a different question? Like, what's behind that door back there?'

John raised an eyebrow. ‘Nothing,' he said.

‘Nothing?'

‘Nothing,' John replied. ‘Oh, except for a bag of sugar.'

‘Bag of sugar.'

‘That's right. I like two in tea and three in coffee. Why?'

David looked closely at John's one remaining eye. ‘Just a bag of sugar, nothing else,' he said. ‘Nothing like, say, an interstellar elevator or anything like that?'

‘What's an interstellar elevator when it's at home?'

David nodded, very slowly. ‘All right,' he said. ‘Where are you from, originally?'

John did a mild double take. ‘Basildon,' he said. ‘What about it?'

‘Nothing.' David took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. ‘So, have you got somewhere to take all this stuff?'

‘Sure,' John said. ‘I got a unit on an estate up Watford way.'

‘Watford.' David thought for a moment. ‘That's quite a way from here, isn't it?'

‘Doesn't take long on the motorway.'

‘Yes, but it's not
close
.' David smiled. ‘Do you need a hand shifting the stuff?' he asked.

‘Wouldn't mind.'

‘Fine. So, what's first?'

The cloning equipment was heavier than it looked, but with two of them on the job it only took a couple of hours. For some reason, the frogs kept well back as they carried things out to the van; they stood in rows, like kids at school assembly, and made soft rumbling noises. Eventually, there was nothing left in the workshop except one glowing tank.

‘So what do you want to do?' John asked.

‘Don't ask me,' David replied. ‘It's your tank.'

‘Yeah, but it's your clone.'

David shook his head. ‘No,' he replied. ‘He'll be his own clone, when he wakes up. Poor bastard,' he added with feeling. ‘Right. Before we go—'

‘Oh,' John said. ‘You're coming too, then?'

‘Well, you'll need someone to help you unload, won't you?'

‘It'd be a help,' John admitted.

‘There you are, then. But first,' David said, ‘I'd just like to use your phone. Quick call,' he added.

‘Help yourself,' John told him. ‘I'll wait in the van.'

David dialled 999. ‘Police,' he said. He rang off when they asked for his name.

‘All done?' John asked him, as he slammed the van door shut.

‘All done,' David replied. ‘You know, it's a funny thing, but I've never been to Watford.'

John started the engine. ‘Haven't missed much.'

‘Maybe not. But I'm sure it's better than, say, British Columbia.'

‘That's in Canada, isn't it?'

David looked out of the side window. ‘I believe so,' he replied. ‘Though I've heard different.'

‘I think it's in Canada,' John replied. ‘Dunno. I always liked the sound of Canada, myself. Pretty sure it's got to be better than Watford. But then, all depends on what you want out of life, doesn't it?'

As they waited at a T-junction, they saw a fleet of police cars with their sirens blazing, going in the direction they'd just come from. ‘Bloody hell,' John said. ‘Just as well we got out of there when we did.'

‘Isn't it?'

David fell asleep shortly after the Hillingdon roundabout. He was woken up by the sound of a door slamming. It was dark outside. He wound down his window. ‘Are we here?' he asked.

‘Yup. You go round the back, I'm just opening the doors.'

Light flared up on the other side of the windscreen, revealing an empty building with whitewashed walls. David grunted and got out of the van. It took rather less time and effort to unload the gear than it had to cram it all in.

‘Good job,' John said. ‘Right, I think we've earned a cup of tea.'

David nodded. ‘Thanks.'

‘'s all right. Got the kettle,' John went on, ‘and tea bags, should be a tin of powdered milk somewhere. No sugar, though, must've left it behind, sorry.'

David lifted his head. ‘You're sure about that?' he asked.

‘Yeah. Might be some of them sweetener things in that small tea chest.'

‘You're sure,' David asked, ‘that there wasn't another bag of sugar here when we arrived?'

‘Didn't see one.'

‘Ah.' David breathed a long sigh. ‘It's all right,' he said. ‘I'm trying to cut down on sugar. It can be really bad for you, I'm told.'

‘Yeah, well, they say that about everything, don't they?'

Honest John made the tea. It came out dark and strong and fairly horrible, with just a faint savour of cloning goo. It was the first cup of tea David had had in a very long time. He enjoyed it. ‘Want a biscuit?' John asked.

‘Yes.'

John rootled about in one of the tea chests and produced an elderly packet of digestives. They were soft and chipped and crumbly. David ate them all.

‘Excuse me if this is a bad thing to ask,' David said eventually, his mouth still full of mashed crumbs, ‘and please just say no if you like, but would there happen to be any jobs going around here?'