Strange Highways

Land.
     "You killed him!" I shouted as Bruno burned down the white forest of fungus on all other sides of me.
     Then I must have had an attack of low blood sugar or something, because I passed out. I'm sure I didn't faint.

    5

WE HAD TO DISPOSE OF THE YACHT. IN ABOUT FIFTEEN SECONDS, WHEN Bruno was done with it, it was only a dusting of ashes slowly washing away on the water. No fire, really. Just whoosh - and it was nothing but dust. He destroyed the powerboat too, every trace of what had taken place here this evening.
     We walked the dark shore for about a mile, until we found a waterside club where we could call a cab, and went back to my place. The driver kept wanting to know if Bruno had won the prize at the costume party, but we didn't answer him.
     At home, we cleaned up, ate every steak in my refrigerator, every egg, every slice of cheese, every - well, everything. Then we finished off three bottles of Scotch between us - though I have to admit that he drank most of it himself.
     We didn't talk about Graham Stone once. We talked a lot about being a cop - both the private and the badge-carrying kind. We talked about the types of punks at work out there - and discovered that they don't vary much from probability to probability. He explained why my Earth is not civilized enough to be welcomed into the probability societies - besides that credit thing. Strangely, he said that it won't be quite good enough until my type has all but vanished from the face of the Earth. Yet he liked me. I'm sure of that. Strange.
     Shortly before dawn, he gave himself an injection that sobered him instantly. We shook hands (or at least he reached down and shook mine) and parted company. He went off to find a transmitting point to return to his own probability. And I went to sleep.
     I never saw Bruno again.
     But there have been other odd characters. Stranger than all the crooks I've known in this city. Stranger than Benny "the Ostrich" Deekelbaker and Sam "the Plunger" Sullivan. Stranger than Hunchback Hagerty, the deformed hired killer. Stranger, in fact, than either Graham Stone or Bruno. I'll tell you about them sometime. Right now, I've got a date with the cutest redhead you ever saw. Her name's Lorella, she can dance like a dream, and aside from a weird interest in ventriloquist dummies, she's got her head on straight.

WE THREE

    1

JONATHAN, JESSICA, AND I ROLLED OUR FATHER THROUGH THE DINING room and across the fancy Olde English kitchen. We had some trouble getting Father through the back door, because he was rather rigid. This is no comment on his bearing or temperament, though he could be a chilly bastard when he wanted. Now he was stiff quite simply because rigor mortis had tightened his muscles and hardened his flesh. We were not, however, to be deterred. We kicked at him until he bent in the middle and popped through the door frame. We dragged him across the porch and down the six steps to the lawn.
     "He weighs a ton!" Jonathan said, mopping his sweat-streaked brow, huffing and puffing.
     "Not a ton," Jessica said. "Less than two hundred pounds."
     Although we are triplets and are surprisingly similar in many ways, we differ from one another in a host of minor details. For example, Jessica is by far the most pragmatic of us, while Jonathan likes to exaggerate, fantasize, and daydream. I am somewhere between their two extremes. A pragmatic daydreamer?
     "What now?" Jonathan asked, wrinkling his face in disgust and nodding toward the corpse on the grass.
     "Burn him," Jessica said. Her pretty lips made a thin pencil line on her face. Her long yellow hair caught the morning sun and glimmered. The day was perfect, and she was the most beautiful part of it. "Burn him all up."
     "Shouldn't we drag Mother out and burn the two of them at the same time?" Jonathan asked. "It would save work."
     "If we make a big pyre, the flames might dance too high," she said. "And we don't want a stray spark to catch the house on fire."
     "We have our choice of all the houses in the world!" Jonathan said, spreading his arms to indicate the beach resort around us, Massachusetts beyond the resort, the nation past the state's perimeters - the world.
     Jessica only glared at him.
     "Aren't I right, Jerry?" Jonathan asked me. "Don't we have the whole world to live in? Isn't it silly to worry about this