Free Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text by Chris Beckett Page A

quality that he had so detested in her fellow-deskies up in Janet Richards’ office.
    ‘Thanks, I’ll have a look at them. I’ll probably need to talk to the staff at the residential unit as well. And the therapist too.’
    He looked down at the picture. Tammy was beautiful, but he now realised that she was also familiar.
    ‘Oh! I saw her this morning! With an Asian woman, a rather large…’
    ‘Oh yes, that’d be Rita Fernandez from the Unit.’
    ‘I’ll need to talk to Rita then.’
    Charles remembered the feeling he’d had that morning when he’d seen Tammy with Rita, the sense of an approaching void. And now, quite suddenly, it felt as if the void was all around him: that emptiness, that feeling of vertigo and dread.
    Jazamine was watching him with a puzzled frown.
    ‘So is that all you need from me?’ she asked.
    He told her yes, for the moment, and she stood up.
    ‘Do you really believe in shifters and all that?’ she suddenly asked. ‘Isn’t it just a theory? Isn’t it more likely that Tammy is just off her head as usual in some empty garage somewhere and this is all just a great big wind-up?’
    ‘Officially yes, it is just a theory. But… well, I’ve actually seen people do a shift, right in front of my eyes. It’s happened to me a couple of times: people standing or sitting no further away from me than you are and then them just vanishing. You can hear the air rush into the vacuum where they’ve been, you can even feel it, and there’s nothing left of them but a sort of burnt electrical smell, and a… well a feeling , the feeling that shifters call fizz . It’s a bit like vertigo, like a weird kind of all-embracing vertigo, and at the same time it’s like... It’s like a kind of grief. I know I can’t prove that those people who disappeared in front of me went to another universe, but they certainly vanished, and no one has come up with an alternative story that’s any easier to believe.’
    ‘And people don’t come back?’
    ‘It seems not.’
    ‘So it’s as if she’s died in a way? Died to us in any case.’
    ‘To us, perhaps. But she hasn’t really died. Not only is she still alive, but she’s alive in this place and this point in time. It’s just that we can’t reach her.’
    Jazamine took hold of the door handle but didn’t turn it
    ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘when I said that thing earlier about you guarding the universe, it probably sounded very sarcastic. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I was just upset for Tammy. I don’t like to think of her all alone in some other… in some other place. I mean she’s always been alone really and she’s probably got far more of the skills to cope in a situation like that than you or me. But I still feel wretched for her… Plus I’m a bit spooked by the whole business if I’m honest. Which I guess you must get a lot of? Probably it even spooks you sometimes doesn’t it?’
    ‘Well… I’m used to it in a way. But yes, I’m like most people. I would prefer to think there was just one world.’
    ‘Just one world? I’m not sure I care how many worlds there are. It’s the thought of people disappearing from this one that freaks me out. But anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I didn’t mean to be rude, specially when I upset you at the party as well. I wouldn’t want you to think I had something against you because I really haven’t. You seem very nice. I like it that you’re passionate about what you do.’
    Charles smiled.
    ‘Actually I found it very interesting what you asked me at the party. About why I do this job, I mean. Interesting and, well, sort of instructive. I wasn’t so much upset as…’
    He stopped, shook his head, and laughed.
    ‘Who am I kidding? I was upset, as you could obviously tell. But I found it interesting that I was. You gave me something to think about.’
    ‘Oh, well, good.’ Jazamine hesitated. ‘You don’t… um… fancy meeting up sometime, socially