Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

"I don't mind being out," said Keith. "I was sitting around waiting for my O Level results. Or CSEs. Or call-up papers. Or…"

He shrugged, and shut up.

"We make decisions all the time, which send us on varying paths," said Gene. "Keith can see his other paths. The ones he might have taken. Apparently, it's like being haunted by ghosts of yourself. All those doppelgangers."

"If I concentrate, I can anchor myself here," said Keith. "Assuming this is the real here. It might not be. Other heres feel just as real. And they bleed through more than I'd like."

Sewell Head was interested for a moment, as if filing some fact nugget away for a future Brain of Britain quiz. Then he was chewing Bertie Bassett's licorice cud again.

"He's seen two other entirely different lives for me," said Gene.

"I'm having enough trouble with just this one," commented Susan.

"So's everybody," said the pale girl. "That's why we've been called — the good, the bad and the undecided."

She opened her envelope and gave Jamie a map.

"We're heading West. Keith knows the territory. He was born in Somerset."

Jamie opened the rear doors of the van. He had tidied up a bit, and distributed cushions to make the space marginally more comfortable.

Susan borrowed a fifty pence coin from him and the foursome tossed to see who got to sit up front with the driver. Keith called «owl», then admitted to Gene his mind had slipped into a reality with different coins. Head droned statistics and probabilities but couldn't decide what to call, and lost to Susan by default. In the final, Gene called tails. The seven-edged coin spun surprisingly high — and slower than usual — then landed heads-up in Susan's palm.

"Should have known not to toss up with a telekinetic," said Gene, in good humour. "It's into the back of the van with the boys for me."

She clambered in and pulled the door shut. There was some kicking and complaining as they got sorted out.

Susan gave the coin back to Jamie. It was bent at a right angle.

"Oops," she said, arching her thick eyebrows attractively.

"You said it wore off."

"It did. Mostly."

They got into the front of the van. Jamie gave Susan the map and appointed her navigator.

"She can do it with her eyes closed," said Gene, poking her head through between the high-backed front seats.

"Just follow the Roman road," said Keith.

Susan held the map up the wrong way, and chewed a strand of her hair. "I hate to break it to you, but I'm not that good at orienteering. I can tell you about the three people — no, four — who have owned this map since it was printed. Including some interesting details about Little Miss Burgundy. But I don't know if we're best off with the A303."

Gene took the map away and playfully swatted Susan with it.

"Mr Head," she began, "what's the best route from the Post Office Tower, in London, to Alder, in Somerset?"

"Shortest or quickest?"

"Quickest."

Sewell Head swallowed an allsort and recited directions off the top of his head.

"I hope someone's writing this down."

"No need, Jamie," said Gene. "Tell him, Susan."

"It's called eidetic memory," said Susan. "Like photographic, but for sounds and the spoken word. I can replay what he said in snippets over the next few hours. I don't even need to understand what he means. Now, 'turn left into New Cavendish Street, and drive towards Marylebone High Street…'"

Relaying Sewell Head's directions, Susan imitated his monotone. She sounded like a machine.

"One day all cars will have gadgets that do this," said Keith.

Jamie doubted that, but started driving anyway.

An hour or so into Professor Cleaver's rhotacist monologue, Richard began tuning out. Was hypothermia setting in? Despite thermals and furs, he was freezing. His upper arms ached as if they'd been hit with hammers. His jaws hurt from clenching to prevent teeth-chattering. He no longer had feeling in his fingers and toes. Frozen exhalation made ice droplets in his moustache.

Cold didn't bother Clever Dick. He was one of those mad geniuses who never outgrew a need for an audience. Being clever didn't count unless the people who he was cleverer than knew it. The Professor walked around the room, excited, impassioned, frankly barking. He touched ice-coated surfaces with bare hands Richard assumed were freezer-burned to nervelessness. He puffed out clouds of frost and delighted in tiny falls of indoor hail. He constantly fiddled with his specs — taking them off to scrape away thin film of iced condensation with bitten-to-the-quick thumbnails, putting them back on until they misted up and froze over again. And he kept talking. Talking, talking, talking.

As a child, Dick Cleaver had been indulged — and listened to — far too often. He'd been an adventurer, in the company of immature grownups who didn't take the trouble to teach him how to be a real boy. When that career ended, it had been a mind-breaking shock for Clever Dick. Richard had read Catriona Kaye's notes on the Case of the Splendid Six. Her pity for the little boy was plain as purple ink, though she also loathed him. An addendum (initialled by Edwin Winthrop) wickedly noted that Clever Dick suffered such extreme adolescent acne that he'd become known as "Spotted Dick". Angry pockmarks still marred the Professor's chubby cheeks. As an adult, he had become a champion among bores and deliberately entered a profession that required talking at length about the most tedious (yet inescapable) subject in Great British conversation — the weather. Turned out nice again, eh what? Lovely weather for ducks. Bit nippy round the allotments. Cleaver's bestselling book was impossible to read to the end, which was why many took The Coming Ice Age for a warning. It was actually a threat, a plan of action, a promise. To Professor Cleaver, the grip of glaciation was a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Behind his glasses, Cleaver's eyes gleamed. He might as well have traced hearts on frozen glass with a fingertip. He was a man in love. Perhaps for the first time. A late, great, literally all-consuming love.

Derek Leech, who rarely made the mistake of explaining his evil plans at length, had missed the point when he funded Cleaver's research. That alarmed Richard — Leech might be many things, but he was not easily fooled. Cleaver came across as a ranting, immature idiot with a freak IQ, but had serious connections. If anything could trump a Great Enchanter, it was the Cold.

"The Cold was here first," continued Cleaver. "Before the dawn of man, she weigned over evewything. She was the planet's first evolved intelligence, a giant bwain consisting of a near-infinite number of ice cwystals. A gweat white blanket, sewene and undying. When the glaciers weceded, she went to her west. She hid in a place out of weach until now. Humanity is just a blip. She'd have come back eventually, even without me. She was not dead, but only sleeping."

"Lot of that about," said Leech. "King Arthur, Barbarossa, Great Cthulhu, the terracotta warriors, Gary Glitter. They'll all be back."

Cleaver sputtered with anger. He didn't like being interrupted when he was rhapsodizing.

"You won't laugh when blood fweezes in your veins, Mr Leech. When your eyes pop out on ice-stalks."

Leech flapped his arms and contorted his face in mock panic.

"How many apocalypses have come and gone and fizzled in this century, Jeperson?" Leech asked, airily. "Four? Five? Worm War, Wizard War, Water War, Weird War, World War… and that's not counting Princess Cuckoo of Faerie, Little Rosie Farrar as the Whore of Babylon, the Scotch Streak and the Go-Codes, the Seamouth Warp, six alien invasions counting two the Diogenes Club doesn't think I know about, two of my youthful indiscretions you don't think I know you know about, and the ongoing Duel of the Seven Stars."