Strange Highways

trunks. His face was a block of granite that some artist had tried to sculpt with a butter knife, a straight pin, and a blunt screwdriver. All sharp planes, eyes set under a shelf of bone, a jaw better than Schwarzenegger's. Over all that: fur.
     If I hadn't been used to watching afternoon TV talk shows when business was slow, all those programs featuring husbands-who-cheat-with-their-wives'-mothers and transvestite-dentists-who-have-been-abducted-by-aliens, then sure as hell the sight of a talking bruin would have crumpled me like an old paper cup. But even being a couch potato in the nineties and facing up to what's creeping around on our city streets is enough to make you tougher than Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe combined.
     "Spill it," I said.
     "My name is Bruno," he said.
     "And?"
     "You only asked who I was."
     "Don't get cute with me."
     "Then you weren't being literal?"
     "Say what?"
     "By asking who I was, you were actually asking for a general accounting, a broader spectrum of data."
     "I could blow your head off for that," I told him.
     He seemed surprised and shifted uneasily on the sofa, making the springs sing. "For what?"
     "Talking like a damn accountant."
     He considered for a moment. "Okay. Why not? What do I have to lose? I'm after Graham Stone, the first man you heard in here a few hours ago. He's wanted for some crimes."
     "What crimes?"
     "You wouldn't understand them."
     "Do I look like I was raised in a nunnery, don't understand sin? Nothing any sleazeball would do could surprise me. So how did this Stone character get in here? And you?"
     I waved the .38 at him when he hesitated.
     "I guess there's no concealing it," Bruno said. "He and I came through from another probability."
     "Huh?" It was hard to make even that sound with my mouth hanging open as if I were a stoned fan at a Grateful Dead concert.
     "Another probability. Another time line. Graham Stone is from a counter-Earth, one of the infinity of possible worlds that exist parallel to one another. I come from a different world than Stone's. You've become a focal point for cross-time energies. If this is the first time it's happened to you, then your talent must be a new one. Besides, you're not mapped - no record of you in the guidebook. If it were an old talent-"
     I made a number of wordless grunts until he got the idea to shut his yap. I made him go pour me half a glass of Scotch and drank most of it before I said anything. "Explain this ... ability I've acquired. I don't scan it."
     "It's possible to travel across the probabilities, from one Earth to another. But the only portals are those generated around living beings who somehow absorb cross-time energy and dissipate it without the rudeness of an explosion."
     "Rudeness."
     "Yes. That can be messy."
     "How messy? Very."
     "Anyway, you're one of those talented people who don't explode."
     "Good for me."
     "You broadcast a portal like - well, sort of like a spiritual aura in a twenty-foot radius, in all directions."
     "Is that so?" I said numbly.
     "Not all possible worlds have such talented creatures on them, and therefore the infinity of possibilities is not really completely open to us.'
     I finished the Scotch and wanted to lick the glass. "And there is a ... a counter-Earth where intelligent bears have taken over?" I couldn't any longer blame this business on my hot night with Sylvia. Not even the most persuasive shrink in the world would ever convince me that postcoital depression could be like this.
     "Not exactly taken over," Bruno said. "But on my probability line, there was a nuclear war of distressing dimensions shortly after the close of World War Two. In the aftermath, science survived, but not a great many people did. In order to survive as a race, they had to learn to stimulate intelligence in lesser species, master genetic engineering to create animals with human intelligence and dexterity. "
     He held up his hands, which were graced with stubby fingers rather than paws. He wiggled them at me and showed all his square teeth in a broad, silly grin.
     "If I can somehow get us an appointment with Steven Spielberg," I said, "we're both going to be filthy rich."
     He frowned. "Steven Spielberg?