Rain fell heavily at him: black as tar and unstoppably lethal. It spattered alien pavement with sickening splashes, as if a plague of formless, oily frogs was smashing down. Somewhere inside his ear canal the nano-computer repeatedly warned one drop of the caustic torrent could boil the flesh from his bones and then dissolve the bones afterward.
Luckily he had an umbrella. The silky plume of its canopy was coal-coloured and vaguely bat-like. Its silver shaft terminated in a bulbous pommel carved with feathery whorls, like some gloomy bird’s pinions. Its style suited the rest of his clothes: somber greatcoat with inverness cape, leatherette kid gloves and a belfry topper, which held tight to his anarchic mane of hair.
The whole ensemble had been fashioned by sub-microscopic assemblers pushing one atom next to another until they’d minutely woven his latest lapse in taste. He knew nothing about the technology of these nano-factories, or the programs running them. These came from Worm, which he barely knew anything more about. The Worm was the benefactor who fashioned such things and the tormentor that sent him to lethal, rainy planets like this one.
The rain’s cutting, carbolic smell tickled his nostrils. After hours of hearing the nano-computer’s analysis, he begged it kindly cease.
“Yes, I know. The rain is awful. Just keep it off me.”
In that respect, his umbrella worked. It kept the rain off his head and even somehow chased it from his feet. Drops fled in hasty runnels wherever his boots struck pavement.
It seemed the downpour would never stop. It hadn’t in three days. He’d been walking in it for all that time, somehow not getting tired. Something preserved his vigour. Devices in his clothes pricked his skin—feeding him stimulants, nutritional cocktails and hormones that stopped his muscles from cramping.
Physically, he felt he could walk forever. Mentally, he felt like he had been. After three days, tedium was a powerful vexation. He switched his umbrella from hand to hand not out of fatigue, just for variety. Walking had gotten boring and, frankly, depressing.
Massive aerial billboards cruised overhead, flashing unknowable slogans. His fascination with them had fizzled a couple of days ago.
There was no end, it seemed, to these streets or their featureless buildings, which climbed for kilometres. Silhouettes moved in their windows, but no-one went in or out and there were no visible doors. No-one walked the streets. Not that he blamed them. He wouldn’t be out there if he had choice in the matter.
His only course was to keep walking, until the Worm finally extracted him. Weeks might pass before that. Meanwhile, he’d jettisoned all hope of meeting anyone.
Then he saw a shape approaching, a block or so away. Improbably, it traveled on two legs.
In the great multiverse life was rare, and humanoids more so. He wouldn’t have been shocked at the strange gait of whatever thing oozed or shambled toward him or by how many pincers or tentacles it waved at him. But someone coming with arms, torso and two willowy legs was actually a novelty.
He couldn’t make out the person’s features, but he noted the umbrella passing restively from hand to hand. It wasn’t every day he met himself, but in his type of travels, it happened. His double’s boots clacked with identical rhythm, which felt like unwelcome parody of his own stride. He sighed, deeply nonplussed. Here we go again, he thought.
The other ceased walking, just as he did. They stood, a stone’s toss apart. Which is when he noticed the self gazing back at him was female. Her hips descended in more hourglass fashion than his own. Her face’s subtle softenings were less male. The curve of breasts displaced her lapels. Her sardonic leer no doubt caused his own to bloom defensively.
“Hello, you,” she said.
“Well this is something,” he answered, with a tiny bored exhalation.
“There isn’t much time,” she urged. “Listen.”
“There’s nothing but time,” he groused. “We can stand here all day, all week. Nothing will change. It’ll still be raining.”
“It’s actually the end of the rainy season,” she corrected. Her eyes sharply shifted. “Go left! Now!”
He jumped, bashful at having obeyed. Something thudded on the pavement, where he’d just been standing.
It was grey, fleshy and larva-like, the size of a grown raccoon. It wriggled desperately, as raindrops touched it and sizzled. Yet the larva weathered the caustic mizzle.
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Stories above, a window slammed shut.
“There will be more,” she cautioned. “Come on.”
Windows snicked open and sidewalks pounded with more impacts.
She led him a merry chase over wet streets. The two careened around corners and finally shot into a narrow alley. In three days, he hadn’t noticed there were alleys.
Pipes erupted from the tower’s back wall, pulsing and throbbing like intestines. Porous, tongue-like stumps extruded near them, licking off rainwater.
Bombardments continued beyond the alley—where nothing hit from above, since there were no windows.
“These things need acids to break down the outer membranes,” she explained. “That triggers the next instar.”
He studied her expression, which was unreadable, like his own usually was. He was unnerved by a glimmer of erotic fascination for her.
“If you don’t mind my asking…”
“Yes?” she said, most definitely minding.
“You’ve been here before, I take it?”
“Now that,” she said, “is an interesting question.”
At which point a small volume of air before his face distended suddenly. At first there was minor dimpling, which inflated into a dark sphere. Shimmering surrounded its contours, but the sphere, itself, was lightless, without reflectance, like a hole painted on the floor in an old cartoon.
Of course the Worm would pick this moment to arrive and swallow him.
It advanced, half-obscuring his second self. Its shimmer lensed her, funhouse fashion.
“You could have waited,” he said.
Unnoticed, one larva had flopped into the alley and jiggled up to his left heel. He saw it just as he and it both were engulfed in the Worm’s warping non-space.
He thought he’d seen his other self shrug, as if all this was expected.
Then he was falling.
(Next: Boy Falling)
