Chapter 3

"Who's Livia, then?"

Harold dropped the box of green glass plasma heads with a tremendous crash. "God and blood!" he shouted, stumbling away from the shelves.

Wodzec jumped up from the plush knitted lounge chair and reached out a hand, his fez in disarray. "Sorry, old man. Didn't mean to startle you."

Harold waved to dismiss his room mate's concern. "It's nothing. I... the box just slipped. A bit heavy." He smiled and put his hands on his hips. "I shouldn't be putting plasma on top of a shelf full of indirection coils anyway." He absently kicked the crumpled box, which let out a tinkle.

He looked around their tiny apartments. This room had shelves rather than walls, but the spaces that Wodzec had managed to clear for him (by stuffing the books horizontally into the gaps between the normally shelved books and the shelf above them, a practice which set Harold's teeth on edge) were all near the ceiling. Useless. All that heavy rotted scientific stuff needed to come out of the closet so his new fall clothes (the latest in student fashions, recommended by Wodzec, but not, one couldn't help but notice, worn by him) could go in. The floors were covered in brightly patterned rugs, tipped hookahs, steaming lamps, brocade pillows and empty bottles, so there was no place to set these stacks of murkochips down on the chance that just leaving them there might dupe someone into thinking them a rickety avant-garde coffee table.

Wodzec flopped back down onto the lounge, his velvet dressing gown flaring up at the quilted edges, revealing paisley silk trousers. "We'll just have to make do until they find you suitable lodgings. I did tell you I was sorry I had three subjective weeks to get to thinking these rooms would be all mine." He picked up the plastic bound copy of Mystic Mysticus he'd been reading and flipped to the coffee stained envelope that marked his place.

"I know, Simon. And I appreciate you making the effort you have. It can't have been easy with a place this... intricate." Harold looked up at the still wooden fan on the ceiling, watching the tiny dangling skeletons flutter.

Wodzec's dark-haired head fell back from the book immediately. "I think what I love most about being me is that I'm flexible. Three subjective days ago I was a gay bachelor graduate student, a randy lion of the intellectual veldt with a devastating den capable of removing panties from vixens within a hundred yards, and now I find myself a bosom companion, a partner in academic cohabitation, a barracked soldier in the intimate company of a startling and brilliant brain-weapon..." He frowned, and flicked his eyes over to Harold. "No, that last one wasn't very good, was it?"

"You've had better. I liked 'the Watsonian relation of great men thrown together at seeming chance, peradventure to chronicle the lives of one or both.'"

"I said that the first hour we met, old man. Small wonder they want you diving into the mathemagical bean bin. Tip-toppermost in the grey matter, you are."

Harold laughed sharply. "It's just memory. It's nothing real."

"Spoken like a true timeless."

Harold ran his hand along the nearest books, noting the uncreased spines. "When were you born, Simon?"

Wodzec clapped and sat up, swinging his legs to the floor. "Ah, personal questions. Let's throw darts for them."

"No, no," said Harold, throwing up his hands and making for the hallway. "I have to get these suits hung up. Forget I asked."

Wodzec, slipping into his plaid slippers, picked up a goldenwood pipe and stood. "Nonsense, dear fellow. A Wodzec never forgets! We'd sooner burn down a library, if there were any libraries left to burn." He took great strides across the room, reaching out to grasp Harold's shoulder with one hand while fitting the pipe into clenched teeth with the other. "I'll get the equipment. Shet thee doon!"

Harold turned and sighed, stepping past the box of shattered green glass. He'd already learned that Simon Wodzec could become the undisputed world master of psychological kung fu when he wanted his way. Insisting that he could find the shopping district and new clothes on his own had ultimately resulted in Harold being treated to a twelve minute a capella rendition of "Blue Suede Shoes." Was that equivalent to kung fu? Something inscrutable and unrelenting, anyway.

Simon stopped to open the door to the hall closet. Harold took a seat on the edge of the divan. He was sleeping on this for now. It wasn't bad, but he would need something better than the folding bird print Chinese curtain for privacy. Had he actually mentioned Livia, for fuck's sake? In his sleep, most likely. He didn't always recall his dreams, but for sure she was there. Waiting for him by the lake. He needed his own room. He needed to find out who was head of the Necrology Department. Dean Humbert had been terrific at first, but now he'd disappeared into "studenty malarkey, my friend," and everyone else seemed to expect everyone to know the way of things already. Fuck. No need to be talking about Livia with anyone. Livia was close to Dylan, and Dylan had been left behind in that room when that horrible syncopated breathing had finally stopped. Or if he hadn't quite stayed there with the real Harold, he was a ghost now, a ghost searching for a dead girl. Another glassy crash, this one with a metallic edge, startled Harold, causing him to look up from his palms.

Wodzec's voice drifted in. "What's blue, and has a coppery smell?"

"Is this a joke?" Harold called back.

"No, this is eating through my Pramayansthavi rugs."

Harold shook his head. "There should be a bottle in there that says "Pb." Pour that on it."

"Check, bottle, Peanut butter."

There was a rustle, a clank, and a slight sizzling.

"Less than faboo, old man. It's now fiery. As in, on fire. Green fire."

Harold watched the skeletons sway. "Is it spreading?"

"No, just sort of trending downward, at no thought of the expense. And I would have to describe this new odor as almondy. Suggestions from the alchymically oriented member of our dynamic duo would now be welcome."

"Don't take any deep breaths."

"Sharp as a Nubian tack, Curtiz. Had I told you yet that the hardwood floors underneath my difficult-to-acquire carpets are treated with a special gasoline varnish? Or that you are sleeping on a gunpowder mattress?"

"You'll have to do better than that to get me excited, Simon. Just step on it. It's Elmo fire now. Kid stuff."

After a moment, there was the sound of a slipper whacking against a smoldering rug. Then a giggle and a whistle.

Wodzec bounced back into the room, holding a circular old dart board under his right arm and a pipe full of emerald flames between his teeth. "Now thish ish what shienshe ish all about!"

He quickly set the board on a nail sticking out from the shelves on the north wall by the gilded door leading to his bedroom. He took the pipe out of his mouth and tapped the fire into his palm, tilting it to run down his fingers. "Brilliant!"

"Be careful; that may not be hot, but it can still be caustic. Current theory is that it's related to plasma, but the thermal energy is running off through a tertiary vibrational division, most likely generating the temporal vernal effects in Easter Europe."

Wodzec shook the remaining flames off his fingers and stamped them out, frowning. "You sound like one of those texts I managed to fail to read whilst taking required courses."

"Daggett's Standard Book Of Extraordinary Phenomena, with a guide to Fringe Terminology, 1st Edition. It's in the closet along with the equipment."

"Then next time I shall use it to beat out the conflagration. Now," said Wodzec, fanning out alternating gold and black darts in his fingers like playing cards, "Let us get to know each other. Every twenty-five points buys you a question. We play to a hundred, or three darts each, to keep this from turning into a confessional."

"This is silly, I want that noted," said Harold. He got to his feet, though, and tapped a black shaft. A cheer came in through the open stained-glass windows of the breakfast nook. Simon had arranged ivoried pillows there, turning it into a napping nook.

"That's the eighth time I've heard them do that," said Harold. "Is there a sports hall nearby?"

Wodzec gathered the three gold darts in his right hand and handed the others to Harold. "It's just German radio, announcing that Hitler is dead. Happens every three or four days." He sniffed. "We get a lot of new arrivals, and this is primarily a Semitic district. God may have left the world, but there are still tiny victories."

Harold shook out his arm, settling into a throwing stance. "I must have heard Edison's first broadcast of the the phonograph a hundred times on the way here. Every zone picks that up. Oh, damn."

"Ten points only, my rubber wristed pal." Wodzec held up a handled mirror and faced the window. "My go, and I'm giving you a sporting chance. Over the shoulder." He began humming as he centered the image of the dart board in the silvered glass. "There is a Crystal Theatre nearby, but it usually only tunes in financial reports from the early 1970's. Still, they do pack the aisles with punters. Nostalgia, fascination with with the future, whichever, they - God, blood, and fuck!"

Harold laughed and tossed a dart lightly up and down in his palm, testing the weight. "Well, if that copy of Psycho Sexual Historionics had been a vampire, we'd have nothing to worry about." He threw. "35 points to me. When were you born?"

Wodzec's lips pursed for a bit and he looked accusingly at the darts in his hand, but then he smiled and threw his arm out in an encompassing gesture. "The aprilteenth of neverwhen! Or 27 subjective years ago, here on the Omniversity grounds, if you wish. Indeed, you may gape. You find yourself basking in the presence of entirely post-Crash technology, Curtiz."

Harold whistled low. "The Crash was about ten years ago for me. What's the conversion here, say, three to one? You would have been born about a subjective year into that, making you a 2013-2014 baby in my home town."

"Meaningless to me, old chum. Your mouth opens yet only the whooping of a great ape comes out. Times have either happening or they aren't. My parents were apparently past-time Phoenecians; they found themselves flotsam up here, and no one else could speak their language so they fell in love. Or so I'm told."

"Did something happen to them?"

"No. I just never learned Phoenecian. My go!" Wodzec drew a dart up to his eye, stretched out his arm in a sewing gesture, drew it back, held it out, drew in a breath along with the dart, then let it fly. Harold whistled murder strings.

"Eye of the bull, my dear Harold. I get two personal questions." He held up a finger. "Query the first: Are you having sex with Dean Rowan Humbert?"

Harold's mouth fell open again.

"Come now," said Wodzec. "Respect for privacy is the firm foundation of any good close-quartered mate relationship, unless there's sport involved. Spill all."

The side of Harold's mouth tugged up again, giving him a smirk. He gave out a relieved laugh. "No, Simon. I'm not having sex with anyone at the moment."

Wodzec held out his hand as though resting it on an imaginary cane and lowered his voice an octave. "Touch, Mister Curtiz. Play none of your semantic games with me. I can see you are not engaged in congress at the moment, and there is some speculation down at the commissary as to how you derive such special attentions. Ass ridey sorts of thing, and the like."

Harold shook his head, still smiling. "No tricks. Sometimes an ass ride is just an ass ride." He placed his right hand over his heart. "There has been no sex in my nth-dimensional vicinity for a time bubble with a radius of no less than five years." The real Harold had liked to say things like that, loudly, in coffee shops.

Wodzec looked disappointed. "Still... don't sell yourself short. We are at Omniversity, you know."

The room shook briefly. Plaster dust rattled down and the skeletons jangled on their strings. Another hookah tilted to the floor. Wodzec placed a finger over his lips and rolled his eyes back, looking up at some distant, invisible point in the sky. Harold gripped the bed.

"Was that...?" he whispered, but Wodzec flapped his fingers in a shushing gesture.

A long, low boom sounded from out the windows, filling the room. Wodzec nodded. "Just the guns."

"Not an earthquake?"

"No, you don't get many here. Maybe further south, in Paradise Alley-"

Harold jumped on that. "I thought it was Rats' Alley."

Wodzec furrowed his brow. "Either. Yes. Maybe it's paradise for the rats? I don't know. Could you let go of my sleeve, pray?"

"Of course, I'm sorry." Harold patted the velvet back into shape and sat down on the divan again.

Wodzec blinked, slowly, then swept up his hand with two fingers extended. "Query the second! Why haven't you gone to see your department head yet?"

Because I'm scared he's going to see right through me, or if he doesn't, he's going to assign me to teach some class, or lead some experiment that will wind up shifting half the world into the Dead Channel, that's why. "This is so embarrassing..."

"Finally! A fingerhole in the great golden armor worn by Harold of Athens!" Wodzec settled in close on the divan. "Allow me to waggle and penetrate."

Harold leaned down and pulled his valise out from under the blankets. He opened it and withdrew the folded acceptance letter sealed with the Omniversity logo. "Look at this. Can you make out this signature?"

Wodzec moved his head back on his neck, doubling his chin and squinting. "Good Christmas. That is a one. Ginz? Glam... dring? Gulkarov? I haven't had call to visit over to the F.F.U.U. compound yet."

Harold sighed with mock frustration. "My best guess was Johnson. I don't want to walk in there and not know who I'm supposed to see, you know, making me look like less than a genius, so I've just been putting it off. I figure Humbert will let it slip one of these days, then I'll go in and say I was recovering from zone feedback fever." I'm planning on being out of here as soon as I can get attached to a necrology field team and I hope to never see the inside of the Fundamentally Fucked Up University compound.

Wodzec tsked. "I like that you're going to fib, but that's lamer than a one-legged Walker stumbling through a junkyard full of prosthetic limbs. And decidedly unjuicy, salacious facts-wise. You disappoint me. Your toss."

Harold stood, stretching out his back. He tossed. "Forty-five. I'm out."

"Now watch the true skill of a master." The dart in Wodzec's hand trembled as he held it high and out to the side. "Underhand."

The dart thwipped into the board, a quarter inch from its twin. "Blast and hell!" shouted Wodzec.

"What's the matter? You still got another question on me," said Harold.

"Yes, but I wanted two. All right, query the third." The young man held up three fingers under a renewed smile. "Who's Livia, then?"

She's the reason I'm here, you asshole. She's the love of my life. She's the thing that keeps me going. She's disappeared from me twice, and I think I'm going crazy when I think about how I think about her, so I don't. "What makes you ask that?"

"Oh, ho! Avoidance! Now I am certainly on to something. Call out the Guardsmen!"

"This is not avoidance. I'm just curious."

"You thought I'd forgotten, but it was you who had forgotten that a Wodzec never forgets." He did a little dance step.

"You know, it's no big deal, but I really do have to find out what my assignments are, you're right. I need to get over to Extraordinary Sciences."

"Still it squirms! Still it tries to get away, but it forgets that it is under the mighty magnifying gaze of master dartsman Simon Wodzec and it owes me tribute!" Simon leapt atop the lounge chair across from the divan and spread his arms high. "The panic-stricken passenger from the past 'gainst the wondrous wizard of the new world! Who will triumph in this mighty clash of wits?"

Harold massaged his temple. "All right. Calm down. No need to get the neighborhood excited, or they will call out the Guardsmen."

The pillows bounced to the floor as Wodzec collapsed with an eager, burning smile. "Is she a lover, a wife? The wife of another lover? Tell me, O Genius, of the Muse which has inspired you so, that you must invoke her name with mathemagical precision and set her down immortally in theorems ecstatic."

Harold looked up. "What are you talking about, Simon?"

Another satiny pillow came off the bed. "Please. I know I may not be the bucket of smarts you are, but I did take the time to read your thesis." He gestured over to the table at the foot of the divan piled with scattered papers and bindings. "It's dedicated to this Livia, "Sweet Arcadia, remember the new and beautiful, for the order is a dying world," and she appears in gematriatically in every one of the equations as a randomizing factor. You must have thought something of her, and everyone wants to know what."

The sound rushed out of the room, replaced by the thudding of Harold's heart. It was dim now, for him, and he had trouble moving, but he did, he did move to the end of the divan, and pulled open the bright orange cover to look at the first page, the page he'd skipped a dozen times trying to cram the vocabulary of the text into his mind. And there it was

To Livia,

"Dulce Arcadia memento novus et decorum per ordo est mori seclorum"

"Son of a bitch," Harold heard himself say distantly, and he slumped forward, unconscious, knocking against the lamp with the twined fish balancing grapes on their snouts, sending the light spinning down, out of sight, not hearing Wodzec's shouts at all.

• Title Page
• Chapter One - The Impostor
• Chapter Two - The Dean



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