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“Unclear. The existence of the multiverse is common knowledge in UD17, but we’ve kept this particular portal hidden. They have it in their pea-sized brains that they’ll be able to use it to travel to alternate dimensions, locate alternate versions of themselves, then bring them back through, into UD17, to bulk up their numbers.”
At the foot of the steps, Jane is incredulous. “What on earth is UD17?” she whispers to Jasper. “And how can a house be boarded by pirates?” And how can pirates have alternate-dimension versions of themselves? And, seriously, just, what the hell?
“Why is that a pea-sized idea?” asks Ravi. “Wouldn’t that work?”
“Of course it would work!” the voice exclaims. “That’s why I’m so worried! Here, have your stupid UD17 Monet and stop pestering me with questions!”
“Oh, come on, Mum,” says Ravi. “Don’t take it out on me. It’s your own fault; you opened those portals. You and all the alternate versions of you.”
“I’ve never told anyone outside the family about the portals. You can’t blame me if alternate-dimension versions of me are indiscreet within their own dimensions. I am not they!”
“And yet I have an idea of what most of them are like,” says Ravi wearily.
“Be respectful,” says the first Mrs. Thrash. “We’re your mother.” There is a pause. “Well?” she says, rather aggressively. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Mum,” says Ravi, an edge to his voice. “Worried about Kiran. She still seems low.”
“Still blaming me for that, are you?”
“Ma,” says Ravi sharply, while Jane wonders if maybe Kiran’s depressed because her mother is delusional.
“What Kiran needs is a job,” says the first Mrs. Thrash. “Such a brilliant child, and she’s wasting it, mooning about with no direction. I’ve noticed quite a motivational range across the spectrum of Kirans I’ve met, have I told you? I never know what Kiran to expect. Some of them are dynamos. The Kiran in Unlimited Dimension 17 is now—”
“Oh my god!” Ravi says. “I don’t want to know! Haven’t we done enough damage with that already?”
“Oh, don’t be silly. How’s Ivy? You could bring Ivy to visit me, you know. I could hide my little pets upstairs.”
“Ivy knows all about your pets. Kiran told Patrick everything; you know that. Patrick told the Vanders family and Ivy.”
“And you criticize me for being indiscreet.”
“It won’t go any further if Vanny has anything to say about it,” says Ravi. “Anyway, she’s decided it’s a fairy tale. You know how Vanny is.”
“She doesn’t understand it, therefore she thinks it’s magic, eh?”
“Precisely.”
“What do you tell Vanny when you bring her the paintings from UD17?”
“She makes a point of not asking,” Ravi says.
“Just like you make a point of not asking Vanny why she knows so many out-of-the-way collectors who want to buy your weird art for their personal collections.”
“It’s her field. Of course she has contacts.”
“I think there’s something fishy going on there. She’s mixed up in the art black market or something.”
“Oh, Mum,” says Ravi, sighing. “Mrs. Vanders is the world’s most respectable person. She helps me out of kindness. First she convinces herself that the pictures are normal, then she passes them on to collectors she met in grad school. It’s that simple. Are you going to show me what you brought me?”
There’s another pause. Then the first Mrs. Thrash says, “Well? Is it the sort of picture you hoped for?”
“Better than,” says Ravi. “You’ve done well. Buckley’s going to love the animatronic frogs on the lily pads.”
“There’s a Limited Dimension I’ve visited,” says Mrs. Thrash. “LD387. Their Monet didn’t paint frogs on his lily pads at all. In fact, I don’t think a single art movement in that world has ever focused on frogs, with the possible exception of their Muppets. Which makes me wonder, where did the Kermit of their world come from?”
“Is he any different?”
“Well, he’s not blue. He’s pea green.”
“Pea green!”
“And he’s in love with Miss Piggy.”
“Oh, just stop it,” Ravi says.
“Would you like a frogless lily pad Monet in your inventory? I’ll see what I can do next time I’m there. It’s trickier in a Limited Dimension because—well—we’re dealing with smaller-minded versions of ourselves, of course. Less imaginative. They may not want to sell.”
“I thought our own dimension was a Limited Dimension.”
“Well, yes, we’ve categorized it as one, for the moment. But the categorization is an ongoing process, and the more we learn about what’s commonplace across dimensions and what isn’t, the more our categorizations change. I won’t be at all surprised if our dimension is recategorized as Unlimited someday. There could be transnormal phenomena here we haven’t discovered yet.”
“Ha. You just don’t like to imagine yourself as limited,” says Ravi dryly.
“Oh, pah,” she says. “I’m a scientist. Transnormal phenomena are simply phenomena that we do not yet understand. Even now the scientific community in our dimension is dissatisfied with our explanations for, oh, I don’t know, why humans need sleep, or why it rains frogs. But everything everywhere has a scientific explanation, whether or not we know what it is. We’ll have to come up with better labels than ‘Limited’ and ‘Unlimited’ eventually. But—there’s Limited and there’s limited, my dear. When I appeared through the portal belonging to LD387’s me, where they have these frogless Monets, she actually fainted. She’d left her portal open, so she had to have known one of us might show up, but even she, it turns out, doesn’t entirely believe in the multiverse, or in transdimensional travel. Even now that I’ve met her! I gather her family considers her some sort of madwoman in the attic, to the extent that she almost believes it herself. She’s not certain I wasn’t a hallucination. They’ve got her taking medication.”
“Hm,” says Ravi. “Well. Is the frogless art any good?”
“It’s simple, but sublime. I think it’s lovely.”
“Then yes, if you can. Get me anything. I like making Buckley’s head spin.”
“I don’t see why you have to lie to him about where all these paintings come from,” the first Mrs. Thrash says. “You who can be so snotty about the provenance of the art in your own house. It’s not like they’re stolen, or pillaged in a war. You’re spending a fortune of your own money to import them and it’s only going to mislead the art historians of the future. Not to mention the dimensional archaeologists. Someday there will be dimensional archaeologists, you know.”
“First of all, I’m ke
eping records,” says Ravi in a scoffing tone. “Secondly, how can you suggest I reveal the secret just moments after you criticized others for revealing the secret? It could cause a lot of trouble if I told Buckley. What if he was indiscreet? We’ve got plenty of people in this dimension who’d take advantage.”
“Well, I don’t understand what you get out of it, Ravi.”
“It’s a game,” Ravi says, “and I’m winning. I get to plant transdimensional art all over the world and no one knows its provenance, except for you and me. And Kiran’s friend, who’s listening at the bottom of the steps.”
Oh hell.
“Ravi!” says the first Mrs. Thrash. “Is that why the door never slammed?”
“My best guess, anyway,” says Ravi.
“And presumably why you switched me to English. You wanted this person to overhear. Honestly, Ravi. Is this one male or female? I assume this is another of your conquests?”
“Oh, don’t be so haughty,” says Ravi. “You know it’s not like that.”
“You could be doing more with your time and your talents,” says the first Mrs. Thrash. “When’s the last time you picked up a paintbrush? You were so talented.”
“Mum,” says Ravi impatiently, like the word is a small explosion. Then he finds his pleasant voice again. “You’d like her. What do you say? Want to meet a new friend who probably thinks we’re both delusional?”
“Or,” says the first Mrs. Thrash, “that I’m the delusional one and you just come up here to keep me company and humor my delusions.”
These are exactly the two possible conclusions Jane has come to. Transdimensional art-dealing. Alternate versions of house-boarding pirates. Kermit in love with Miss Piggy?
