Alternities by Michael P. Kube-McDowell Page B

rested.
    “Yes, Walt. How are you? Just a moment.” Robinson looked back toward O’Neill. “Push it, Gregory. Find an answer.” Then he swiveled a half-turn in his chair, turning his back on O’Neill, dismissing him.
    “No, I wasn’t aware of that—”
Bethel, Virginia, The Home Alternity
    The Tower Guard courier was waiting in his usual place, seated on the upholstered bench in the entry foyer. He came to his feet as Endicott came through the front door.
    “Good afternoon, Senator.”
    “Collecting already, Donovan?” Endicott asked lightly. “I thought I already paid you for this month. Well, come on in.”
    It was an old joke, and the young courier answered it with a polite smile as he fell in behind Endicott. In the courier’s brown case was another Cleveland Plain Dealer , also bearing that day’s date. There the similarity ended.
    This was the real paper, the one that described the world Endicott had left behind. This one was feisty, opinionated, defiantly liberal. This one was important enough to justify the trouble involved in getting it into his hands. And this one could not be casually discarded. Donovan would wait until Endicott was finished reading, then take it away again to wherever the Guard filed or destroyed outworld originals.
    At first it had annoyed Endicott that Tackett refused to trust him with permanent custody of so much as a photograph clipped from the social pages. Who did the bastard think he was going to betray the secret to? The house was safe. Divorce was unaccountably difficult in this world, but Grace had effected an equivalent separation by staying behind in Cleveland. Endicott lived alone, and his one live-in servant had long since proven his discretion concerning matters easily as sensitive.
    But his annoyance had fallen on paranoia-deafened ears, and Endicott had fallen into the habit of reading the papers back to back just to be rid of the courier’s presence as quickly as possible. Sometimes, just to twit the courier, he would leave them both lying on the table side-by-side when he was done, both tangibly real, and yet both completely contradictory.
    Invariably, the courier would gather up that which he had brought with barely a glance at the other. It seemed sometimes to Endicott that the Guard selected for a lack of curiosity. Even its leadership was painfully parochial. Their world was real—the others were false, mutants, shadows.
    Well, he had lived in one of those shadows and knew better. It was this world, with history books full of Presidents named Vandenberg and Stevenson, where Tennessee Williams never wrote A Morning of Mourning , where a Triple-Crown winning horse named Stalwart had turned the memory of Citation to a yes—but—it was this world that was hard to take seriously.
    Donovan followed him into the study, politely closed the door behind them, and spun the dial on the pouch’s combination lock. “Here you go, sir,” he said a moment later, handling the paper over.
    “You keep on hitting the flowerbeds, there’ll be no tip for you,” Endicott said with mock gruffness.
    Donovan grinned; that was a new variation, and welcome for its novelty. “I don’t know how many more of them there’ll be,” he volunteered, retreating to his chair by the door. “The director is talking about shutting down operations in Red.”
    “I’d be sorry to hear that,” Endicott said lightly, settling in an armchair which caught the afternoon sun from the sheer-draped windows.
    He said nothing more, but the comment opened a second channel in his thoughts which remained busy until after Donovan was gone. Then he moved to the telephone and dialed a number from memory, a number the very possession of which denoted power.
    “Peter, this is Walter. Yes. I won’t keep you long, Peter. I understand that the Guard is considering terminating its operation in Alternity Red. That’s right. Well, then Albert isn’t doing his job. I want you to know that I wouldn’t be