The Portable Door (1987) (27 page)

Paul thought it over as he stared at the thing, still tightly curled like a fine Cuban cigar. On reflection, he could think of various uses for something of the sort, ranging from the innocuous (Left your keys in your other jacket and locked yourself out? Don’t worry; the J.W. Wells portable door…) to the downright larcenous, or worse. Just the sort of thing a bank robber would love to find in his Christmas stocking mask; or the ideal present for the twelfth-level Ninja master assassin who has everything.

(Yes, but it wouldn’t work, went without saying. It had to be some sort of gimmick, like the genuine authentic phaser pistols and lightsabers you saw advertised in the back pages of magazines for sad people. Maybe it was just that: a piece of tie-in marketing for a TV show that bombed or got cancelled before it was ever released. In which case, it’d do no harm just to offer it up against a handy slab of plasterwork, would it?)

Paul was aware of a very strange, though barely perceptible sensation; the nearest parallel he could think of was a desperate nicotine craving, as experienced by someone who’d never smoked. Once again, he had the weirdest notion that he was familiar with this ludicrous object; furthermore, the urge to use it was linked to that memory like a withdrawal symptom, a suppressed addiction yearning for satisfaction in the presence of the forbidden luxury. That was all very well, but whatever it was, it was starting to make him feel distinctly uncomfortable. He felt jumpy, restless, hungry and stuffed at the same time. His hands were actually shaking just a little, and the inside of his mouth was salty and furry. All these unpleasant sensations would, he knew, vanish at once, just as soon as he unrolled the little plastic sheet and pressed it to a wall. At the back of his mind, red-alert sirens sounded as he recognised the intrusion of another slice of supernatural loopiness into his life, but he had to ignore them. He stood up.

He put the instructions down on the seat of Sophie’s chair, and followed them carefully. First he smoothed the thing out on the desktop. It looked just the same as it had a short while ago, except that now there were two tiny keyholes, each with a neatly traced baroque escutcheon surrounding it, above and below the doorknob. Next, he lifted it by the corners in the prescribed fashion, and pressed it against the wall as if hanging a sheet of thin wallpaper. He felt it stick, as if it had magnets on it. Carefully, he pressed out a few small wrinkles and bulges, brushing with the back of his hand in a herringbone pattern. Then he took a step back and looked at it.

Either he was imagining it, or the thing had grown; it was now as tall and wide as a full-size door, and the handle had somehow acquired an extra dimension; in fact, it was brass, polished and shiny. He reached out and touched it with the tip of his forefinger; it felt cold and smooth.

Son of a bitch
, he thought. Then he checked the instructions, to see what the next step was.

You are most earnestly advised to use some convenient object of suitable weight to hold the door ajar during use
.

Ajar. When is a door not a door? Somehow, the old joke struck him as being even less funny than usual. He looked round; and there on the desk, hunched like a thin black rabbit, was the long stapler. He was way past the point where he was surprised to see it there, even though it had been in reception that morning, and he hadn’t noticed anybody bring it into the room. He frowned at it. Definitely an object of suitable weight, and there didn’t seem to be anything else in the room that’d serve as a makeshift doorstop. He picked it up. Then, feeling extremely foolish, he reached out and twisted the doorknob.

The door opened.

As soon as it was open, it had changed. It had weight. Its frame and lintel and the mouldings between its panels stood out in generous relief. No possible doubt about it: Nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This is a door
.

Oh well
, he thought, and peeked through it. But there was nothing to see, only darkness and shadows; if that was the computer bay out there, somebody had switched off all the lights and drawn the curtains. Creepy; but he was painfully aware that he couldn’t stop now, or the withdrawal symptoms would be back, a hundred times worse. Whether he liked it or not, he was going through. But first…He glanced at his watch (01:09:56), opened the door a little bit wider, then stooped down and snuggled the stapler up against it, tight as a cat rubbing against your leg. Then—
Make a careful mental note of all aspects of desired arrival
.

Or, as Bill Gates would put it,
Where do you want to go today?
But that was just plain silly. Either it went nowhere, or it went through into the computer bay. Yes, but if he had a choice, where would it go? If he had the whole world to choose from?

It was like when someone said, “What shall we talk about?” or, “Just say something into the microphone.” He couldn’t think of anywhere he wanted to go, really. (All places are the same, after all; doesn’t matter where you are, if your life is a Polo mint and the only girl you’ve ever really loved is the hole in the middle.) But, all things being equal, he’d always rather fancied seeing Venice.

Paul walked through the door, caught his foot in a coil of rope, and only just managed to avoid falling in a canal.

The first thing he did was look round. There, in the middle of a crumbling red-brick wall, was the door, slightly ajar, with a stapler wedged in it. Next to it was what looked like a theatre poster, but in Italian. He turned slowly back. There was the canal; there was the coil of rope. Below, bobbing up and down on the green water, was a small motor boat. Three Japanese women walked past him, talking very fast, followed by a businessman in an expensive-looking suit. Away to his right, he could see a yellow fingerboard nailed to the façade of a tall, ancient building.
Piazza S Marco
, it said, and an arrow pointed into the distance.

On the other hand, he was feeling a whole lot better; no shaking hands, no salty taste, no squirmy itch. Something prompted him to check his watch. 01:09:56.

Oink
, he thought,
my watch has stopped
. He looked round, and caught sight of a clock high up on the tower of some church or similar building. Ten past one.

(But that wasn’t right, because there was a time difference; Italy was an hour behind, or two hours ahead, or something. He looked at his watch again. 01:09:
55
.) Then he ground his toe against the pavement. It felt solid enough. Also he could feel a slight breeze on his face, and there was also the smell. Salt, fresh algae and vintage fish. Not imaginary.

Not far down the road in the other direction there was a café. He thought for a moment, then, having glanced back to make sure the door and the stapler were where he’d left them, he wandered down the street towards it. There were chairs and tables outside; two men sitting at one of them, both talking loudly into mobile phones. Of course, he didn’t have any Italian money, so he couldn’t buy a coffee or a slice of cake. (They had about nine hundred different varieties of cake in the window. Yum.) Then one of the phoning men stuck a cigarette in his face, reached down to the table, picked up a book of matches, lit one. Paul checked the table nearest to him; sure enough, there was an identical book of matches, in a black shiny cover, with the name of the café in gold letters, its phone number and (God help us) its website address. Paul looked round to see if anybody was watching, then slipped the match-book into his pocket.

Nobody grabbed him or called for the police, so he guessed he’d got away with it. He felt guilty, stealing from inoffensive strangers, but all he could think to do was to reach in his trouser pocket for some English change. He found a twenty pence piece and put it on the table; it was the thought that counted, he asserted.
Like hell
, replied his better self.

It was pleasantly warm. A pair of girls clicked by on monster heels—sunglasses, loud and lilting voices, clothes that looked like they’d cost more than he’d earn in a year, if he lived that long. A waiter came out of the café and cleared away the dead cups and plates. The twenty pence piece puzzled him; in the end, he balanced it on his thumbnail, flicked it two feet up in the air, caught it backhanded and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. He smiled at Paul as he went past; it was just a reflex, but it wasn’t a goblin grin.
A cup of coffee
, Paul thought,
and one of those shiny chocolate things that look like a scale model of the Kremlin; I could really fancy that
.

The slight breeze gusted sharply and something blew against his cheek. At first he thought it was a leaf, but there weren’t any trees in sight. He retrieved it, and saw that it was a banknote.

What the hell
, he thought.

The banknote was blue, and the row of noughts behind the figure five looked like the stream of bubbles left behind by a diving otter; but Italian money was funny stuff, he remembered. Buy £4.50’s worth of peanuts and give the man a flyer, and the change would be enough to make you a lira millionaire. Still; he felt braver than usual, for some reason, and sat down at the nearest table. When the waiter came up, he held out the banknote and said, “Excuse me.”

The slight quiver of the waiter’s upper lip made it obvious that he’d placed Paul as an Englishman; but he was polite and dignified, as all native Venetians are, and didn’t spit.

“Excuse me,” Paul repeated slowly, “but can I buy a cup of coffee with this?”

This time the waiter did grin; no family resemblance, though. “
Si
.”

“Right. Um, uno café, por favor.”

“One coffee,” said the waiter. “Anything else?”

One of the advantages of making a fool of yourself is that you don’t have to worry about looking foolish. “Can I afford anything else?”

The waiter’s grin spread into a smile. “
Si
.”

“I’ll have that, then, please.”

“Coming right up.” The waiter went away, and came back with a coffee and one of the Kremlin buns. Paul tried to give him the banknote, but he looked shocked and handed Paul a little slip of paper, which he took to be the bill. He apologised. The waiter forgave him, and went away.

The coffee was wonderful, and the cake was better, even if it did split its seams and gush confectioner’s custard up his jacket sleeves. He took his time, paying

proper attention to the taste of the coffee and the texture of the pastry. It was only when he’d finished both, and surreptitiously licked the last splodge of errant custard off the underside of his wrist, that it occurred to him to look at the church clock he’d noticed earlier.

Fuck
, he thought. Five past two.

He jumped up, wedged the banknote and the bill under the sugar-cellar, and dashed back down the street. He’d forgotten all about the door, but there it was, patient and steadfast as the HMV dog. He nudged the stapler aside with his foot, pushed the door open and went through.

To his relief, he found himself standing in his office. There, on Sophie’s chair, was the little piece of paper with the instructions. Sophie wasn’t back from lunch yet—A thought struck him, and he looked at his watch. 01:10:02. He’d been away for six seconds. Not even that, come to think of it; he’d stood in the doorway that long. He hadn’t been away at all.

He turned round, just as the door, or rather the little plastic sheet, peeled off the wall and flopped onto the floor.
Shit
, he said to himself,
so I did just imagine it all, after all
. But he’d thought of that, he remembered, and done a proper scientific test. He felt in his pocket, and there was the book of matches, with the name, phone number and website.

Shit
, he thought again.

First things first. He rolled up the plastic sheet and stuffed it, together with the instruction slip, back in its tube. Then he hesitated. Properly speaking, it should go back in the drawer where he’d found it or, better still, in the strongroom.
Yeah, right
, he thought, and tucked the cardboard tube carefully away in his inside pocket.

He looked round for the stapler, but it had vanished again. For a moment he wondered if he’d left it on the other side of the door; but he could distinctly remember stepping over it, on this side, as he came through. Not that it mattered a damn.

Well
, Paul thought,
so that’s a portable door. Not bad
. Just the thing for beating the rush-hour traffic, assuming it could be aimed with anything approaching precision, and perfect for those spur-of-the-moment impulse holidays, particularly if it was really true and the time he’d spent on the other side hadn’t actually happened back here. Nobody had raised the subject of holiday entitlement since he’d been with the firm (presumably, he suspected, for the same reason that maximum-security prisoners on Dartmoor don’t get asked where they fancy going for their annual outing this year); but if the door worked the way it seemed to do, he could have three weeks in Martinique every day in his lunch hour. Of course, spending money and hotel bills might be a problem; or maybe not, if the door could also let him into, say, Fort Knox or the vaults of the bank of his choice. At that point, though, his train of thought jumped the track. It wasn’t just that doing that sort of thing wasn’t right, and if his mother got to hear of it he’d have hell to pay. There was also the unpleasant feeling that that was precisely the sort of thing the door wanted him to do, and maybe it wasn’t quite as user-friendly as he might have supposed. Sneaking off work, he reckoned, was probably all right. Thieving, on the other hand, could well be something quite other; the dark side of the Force, or something to that effect. He could be quite wrong about that, of course, but on balance it’d be better not to risk it, at least not until he’d had the opportunity to run a few more controlled tests, acquire a little bit more data.

Suddenly he realised that he was feeling extremely tired, as if he hadn’t slept for several days. That also put a rather different complexion on the matter, since he felt it was a pretty safe bet that the door was somehow responsible for that, too. Clearly he was guessing, but it seemed likely that if he felt worn out after ten minutes or so on the other side, more than an hour over there would leave him exhausted, and three weeks—for all he knew, it could kill him. Further tests, he resolved, more data. Characters in TV sci-fi series might press unidentified buttons just to see what they do and live to tell the tale, but he didn’t have the comfort of knowing that his name was in the cast-list in next week’s
TV Times
.