From the previous part:

Before Mart could reply, a bump could be heard from around the corner of the house, where she had been only a few moments before. Trixie wondered if it was the sound of Dan landing after a flight, or if, perhaps, he had been watching from the branches of the tree. He soon appeared from that direction, his hair ruffled. She watched the silent communication between the two men and considered her options.

“You’re not the right Trixie,” Mart accused, before she had made up her mind. “You’re wearing the wrong clothes and you don’t flinch when I say Jim’s name. What are you doing here? Who brought you?”

Part Three

“Does it matter who brought me?” she asked, effectively admitting that his accusation was correct.

“Yes, of course it does. I doubt that Jim or Brian brought you; I know I didn’t. It wasn’t you, Dan?” The other man shook his head. “Which means that someone else has opened a portal, whether accidentally or on purpose.”

“How do you know it wasn’t me?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

He smiled. “Nice try, Trix. We’ve proved fairly conclusively that only people who originate in this reality can open a portal. You aren’t able to, whether you like it or not. Now, spill: who let you in and what are you doing here?”

Trixie slapped her thigh in frustration. “I don’t see any reason why I should tell you. You’ll probably go off and tell Brian all about it right away.”

The other two exchanged another glance. “Boy, have you pegged us wrong,” her alternate-brother muttered. “We’re trying to stop Brian, not help him.”

“You are?” She stared at him, amazed. “But I thought you were in this scheme with him!”

“Are you kidding?” Dan asked, speaking for the first time in their encounter. “We don’t think that having extra powers gives us extra rights. He’s gonna get us all killed – or worse.”

“Who brought you here, Trixie?” Mart asked again.

Even as she was considering her answer to that question, her alternate self stepped into view. “I did. I wanted their help to stop Brian before he did something we’ll all regret.”

Mart stared at her. “How did you do that?” he demanded. “No one sneaks up on me!”

She shrugged. “You were concentrating on something else – and anyway, I think you’ve noticed it, haven’t you? Something is changing; some of the side-effects of whatever it was are starting to wear off.”

“Now, what do you mean by that?” Jim’s voice asked, sounding rather indignant, and making the others jump. “You didn’t mention that before you brought us here. What would happen if you lost the ability to make a portal and we got stuck here? Or if the powers suddenly stopped working and I appeared somewhere – naked? Or what if this reality bursts like a bubble – what would happen to us?”

“We just need to get this sorted out and you can go home, Jim,” alternate Trixie explained. “It’s happening slowly. You’re not going to be stranded or left outside in the nude or anything.”

“How many people did you bring through?” Mart asked, eyeing his sister in suspicion. “All the Bob-Whites? The original ones, I mean.”

Trixie shook her head. “Just these two. Now, are we going to join forces, or what?”

The other two shared a glance, then both nodded. “Let’s move.” Mart pointed down a nearby path and mouthed ‘clubhouse’. They moved off in small groups, meeting at the clubhouse a short time later. Once he was inside, Jim dressed in the bathroom and became visible once more. Alternate-Trixie was the last to arrive, having stopped to get Honey and Di.

While they had waited, regular Trixie had taken the paper she had found from her pocket and unfolded it. When the three Bob-White girls from that reality arrived, it was to find the others poring over the single page of scribbled notes.

“It’s got to mean something,” regular Trixie muttered. “Any ideas?”

“What does it say?” Diana asked. She read, aloud, “‘Switch lovers. Rat tax in beat horse. Ride dames. Hide pants.’ Most of this note makes no sense at all, and the bits that do sound kind of rude.”

Mart groaned, as the girls all laughed. “That’s because it actually says, ‘Switch covers. Pet text in boathouse. Hide plans. Hide parts.’ Minds out of the gutter, please. We’ve got serious things to discuss.”

Di opened the box she was holding and wafted it under his nose. “I don’t think so, Mart,” she crooned. “Give in; you know you want to. Come to the gutter, we have cookies.”

His eyes closed for a moment as he breathed deeply, then his hand darted in to take one. “Okay, you’ve won me over.”

“Whether it’s rude or not,” regular Trixie added, “it’s suspicious that he would need to write any of that down.”

“So, we’re agreed that Brian has to be stopped?” alternate-Trixie asked, looking around the group. “How are we going to do that?”

“I thought you had a plan,” Mart accused. “You brought them here. Didn’t you have something in mind?”

“It’s gone wrong somehow,” his sister wailed. “We had plenty of plans, but Brian has evaded some of them and the others don’t seem to have stopped him, even when they seemed to be successful. And I think he’s done some minor experiments sometime today. I think that’s why we’ve been feeling so… ineffectual.”

“I don’t know how he’s done it, though,” regular Trixie mused. “Haven’t you had him under surveillance? No one’s seen him doing anything suspicious…”

At the same moment, she and her alternate both gasped and said together, “He’s brought himself here!”

“But himself from the other world is sensible,” Honey complained, “unlike himself here, who isn’t, so how would non-sensible Brian convince sensible Brian to cover for him when he’s doing something so non-sensible that he’s likely to stop there being either sensible or non-sensible copies of himself?”

“He must have lied to him.” Regular Trixie nodded in agreement with her own logic. “We’ll have to figure out which Brian is which and get my one on our side.”

“And I think it’s time to bring in the rest of your Bob-Whites,” the other Trixie added. “I’ll go and see if I can get them now, do you think? Trixie, you can be in charge of making plans while I’m gone.”

“What about us?” her brother asked. “Dan and I are good planners, too.”

“Fine, but she’s in charge, okay?”

“So, who has any ideas on how to find out which Brian is which?” Trixie asked, without waiting for the previous question to be answered.

“Honey could try coming on to him,” Di suggested, laughing. “If it’s the decent Brian, he’ll respond and if it’s the horrible one he’ll act like she’s crazy.”

“No way am I doing that!” Honey shook her head vehemently. “I don’t care if our entire world is destroyed if I don’t. I’m just not.”

Trixie shook her head. “And anyway, if you picked the wrong Brian to try it on, you’d give the game away. I think it needs to be something a bit more… subtle.”

“You need Dan or Jim or I for this,” Mart put in. “Brian will be suspicious if it’s one of you girls.”

“That’s a good point,” Trixie allowed. “I guess the first thing we need to do is find both Brians and make sure they stay apart, so they can’t tip each other off. If we can lure one Brian away from the other, we might be able to figure out which is which.”

Honey stood up and walked to the window. “Is there something that we could say that would tell us which is which without alerting the wrong Brian to us? Something that only your Brian would know, or say, or do?”

They all thought for a few moments. “You could ask him some advice,” Di suggested. “Sensible Brian would give good advice and our Brian here would give the worst advice possible.”

“I guess that would work.” Trixie frowned. “Okay, so once we’ve figured out which Brian is which, I guess we make sure that the Brian from here doesn’t know that we’re talking to the Brian from there. Then, we convince my Brian that he needs to spy on your Brian for us.”

“That’s a good plan,” Honey complemented. “I especially like the bit where your Brian spies on our Brian, but what happens if he doesn’t believe us and says that he won’t? He’d tell our Brian that you were here, helping us to stop him, and then he’ll help him to stop us stopping him.”

Trixie thought for a moment. “Well, when we figure out which Brian is which, we bring the Brian that we’re going to convince to help us here. If he won’t then we’ll have to keep him prisoner or something.”

Honey shook her head. “How could we? Di can keep him compliant for a little while, but what about after that? He’s too strong for us.”

“Can he break chains?” Trixie asked. “I think I know where there are some. Maybe, if we use really strong ropes, plus some chains, we can keep him held down.”

“I think that would work,” Honey decided. “So, we need Di to stay here and be ready to subdue Brian. You’ll go and get some ropes and chains. Who’s going to ask the Brians for advice?”

“I will,” Mart volunteered. “As soon as Trixie lets me know you’re ready.”

At that, the group split up, each intent on their given tasks. Less than an hour later, Trixie was back in the clubhouse, finding most of the Bob-Whites there, including those from her own world, and everything they needed in place. Seeing that the new plan was ready to execute, she was about to go and find her brother when something strange happened. A kind of wave washed through them all, making them all stagger a little in place and making Trixie feel slightly sick in the stomach.

“What was that?” she asked, but no one knew. She shook her head. “Well, I guess I’ll just go and tell Mart we’re ready.”

“Before you do,” her double interrupted, “have you completed all the rest of the plans?”

“The only thing left to do is get rid of these books,” she told her alternate self. “We’ve done all of the other things – even if it doesn’t seem to have helped all that much.”

Alternate Trixie frowned. “They can’t stay here while we’re talking to one of the Brians, just in case we get the wrong one… I don’t suppose we could burn them – no, it would take too long and he’d probably see the smoke and come and save them. … I guess we could throw them in the lake, but how long would it take for them to go to bits?”

“We were going to take them to a second-hand book store, but we haven’t had time to get to one that’s far enough away for him not to just buy them back.”

“I don’t think we have time for that, now,” the other Trixie muttered. “We need somewhere close, but where he can’t get to them.”

“Well, make me a portal and I’ll go home and hide them there,” Trixie suggested, walking into the bathroom.

Her double made all of the right moves, but the portal did not look like any of the ones Trixie had seen previously. After a few moments, the usual blues and greens turned to orange and the whole thing blinked out of existence.

“That never happened before,” alternate Trixie muttered, trying again. The next portal did the same thing and so did the one after. “This is bad,” she added. “Really bad.”

“I guess we’re stuck, then,” regular Trixie whispered. “We’ve just got to find out what Brian’s doing and try to reverse it.”

Still worrying about this latest development, she went outside to hide the books among the thick vines behind the clubhouse. After that, she looked for Mart to tell him that he could get started. She found him without difficulty in the back yard of Crabapple Farm, where he was keeping an eye on one copy of Brian. Without her eldest brother seeing, she gave Mart a nod and manoeuvred herself into a spot where she could hear them but that Brian could not see her. Almost at once, she was joined there by Dan, who had evidently also been watching and waiting.

“Brian, can I ask you something?” Mart asked, sauntering up to his brother. At his nod, he continued, “Do you think Di would notice if I took that cute new girl to the movies at White Plains?”

Brian shrugged. “Probably not,” he answered. “Just be careful and she won’t notice a thing.”

Mart smiled. “Thanks, bro. That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

He walked away in as casual a manner as he could manage, until out of Brian’s sight around the corner to where Trixie and Dan waited. Dan wore a questioning look on his face.

“That’s the one from here; I’m sure of it,” he said softly.

Dan nodded and set off to keep that Brian in sight. Meanwhile, Mart and Trixie went in the direction of the clubhouse, Mart to look for the other Brian and Trixie to report progress. They were still walking that way a few minutes later, when they came across one of the Honeys.

“Have you done it yet?” she asked, her voice hoarse with excitement.

“I found one,” Mart answered, “and it was the one from here. I’m just looking for the right one now and we’ll repeat the test, just to be sure.”

“There was a Brian down near the clubhouse when I was there just before,” she told him. “It must be him.”

Mart walked in that direction and saw his older brother, wearing different clothes from those he had seen him in just a little earlier. Trixie ducked out of sight once more, peeking through the foliage of some bushes to get a view of the conversation.

“Can I ask you something, Brian?” Mart repeated, as they came close together. Just as before, the other man nodded, so he continued, “Do you think I could get away with taking that cute new girl to the movies at White Plains, or would Di notice?”

For a moment, a complex mixture of expressions battled for supremacy but all of them were suppressed. “I think she’d be sure to notice,” Brian answered, in a strange, unnatural voice. “You would be mad to attempt that, Mart. You’d better put the whole idea right out of your head.”

A grin broke across Mart’s face. “You’re not from here, are you?” he asked.

There was a pause, as the other man considered his options. “Is it that obvious?”

“Put it this way: I just asked your other self the same question and he told me to go for it, that she’d never notice.”

Brian cringed. “I guess I’ve blown my cover, then.”

“I’m glad you did, though.” Mart drew him towards the clubhouse, where several of the group were waiting. They arrived at the door almost at the same time as Trixie. “We really need to talk to you about something.”

He opened the clubhouse door and pushed Brian inside.

“Is this the right one?” alternate Trixie demanded. “Are you positive?”

“He passed the test, and the other one failed,” Mart answered. “And, if he’s not the right one then we’re in trouble now, whether we say another word or not.”

“Point taken,” she answered. “Take a seat, Brian. We have some things to talk about.”

Her brother looked around the room, seeing two Marts, two Dianas, one Dan, one Jim, two Trixies and two Honeys. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

“What is going on here?”

“That’s what we need to ask you,” his sister countered. “What did your other self tell you was happening?”

Brian frowned. “That you were up to something and he needed my help to stop you.”

Trixie bristled at this. “For your information, I am your sister, not his. And anyway, the thing that she’s up to is stopping him from destroying this reality. He’s doing experiments that are jeopardising the stability of this sub-reality!”

“What?” His astonishment was complete. “How do you know this, Trixie? What evidence do you have?”

She began enumerating points on her fingers. “He has been hiding electronic componentry in out of the way places. He has been secretly assembling some sort of device. The assembled parts bear a striking resemblance to a plan marked ‘Reality Displacement Device MKII.’ The Mart and Dan who live here had asked him about this and he had given a dishonest answer – not that that means all that much by itself, but it’s there for what it’s worth. On an earlier reconnaissance mission, we found the plans I mentioned, which had elements from the original reality displacement device included. Since he began these experiments, we have started experiencing instability in the strength, range and effectiveness of our powers – and for the last hour or so they’ve been having trouble creating stable portals.”

At the last point, the blood drained from Brian’s face. “Trouble creating stable portals? Do you mean that we’re all stuck here?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what we mean!” The Honey who was speaking sounded more than a little hysterical and the other one tried to comfort her. “You’ve got to help us stop him, Brian. Whatever it is he’s making, it’s almost finished and we’re so afraid that we’re all going to stop existing if he does.”

He straightened his shoulders. “What do you want me to do?”

“Do you talk to him at all?” Trixie asked. “Do you have regular meetings or anything?”

“Semi-regular. Mostly, I just either take his place, or keep out of the way. I’ve got my next meeting scheduled with him in less than an hour.”

“Then, every time you meet with him, we’ll need you to meet with one of us,” she answered. “You probably shouldn’t talk to Jim, just in case it’s the other Jim and not this Jim, but any of the rest of us can pass the message along.”

“Is there anything else I can do?” Brian asked. “I want to make up for helping him in the first place.”

Trixie shook her head. “I think you’ll be in enough danger as it is. Just keep us posted on his movements and what you know of his plans.”

Brian nodded and headed for the door. “Okay, I’ll do that, certainly. I’ll let you know if anything occurs to me that might help stop him, too.”

“Thanks, Brian,” his sister answered, as he left. “We really appreciate it.”

Half an hour later, alternate Dan arrived with bad news. “I’ve lost the Brian I was trailing. I met up with one of the Marts while I was looking for him and he hasn’t seen either of them since he and Jim left here right after Brian did. He split up with Jim and hadn’t seen him, either, but I guess that doesn’t mean anything.”

“It does,” Trixie objected. “Jim was visible when he left here – he couldn’t achieve full invisibility any more.”

Mart and Jim had gone out for some reconnaissance, almost as soon as regular Brian had left the clubhouse. Jim had originally intended to go invisibly, but had only managed to become partially transparent. One of his eyebrows had remained fully visible no matter what he tried. Meanwhile, the remaining Bob-Whites had tried to come up with some new plans. At the news that the situation was deteriorating, regular Trixie’s frustration boiled over and she jumped to her feet.

“I’m going out looking. You don’t need me here – you’ve got Trixie. I’ll go and find Jim.” She looked across at her alternate, who nodded. “Maybe he’s trapped somewhere.”

She spent the next three-quarters of an hour searching in any place she could think of for any of the three missing men. Running out of potential places they could be, she was beginning to go around in circles when she walked by the lake and saw Jim in the distance. Her pace quickened as she tried to catch him up. She was so relieved that she forgot that it might not be the right one.

“Oh, Jim! There you are; I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Trixie noted, with a jolt, the look of surprise on his face and deduced that she had the wrong Jim. Her mind spun as she tried to improvise the next sentence to save the situation. “Mart needs some help right away, up at the old school-house. Mr. Maypenny isn’t feeling well today and Dan’s sitting with him, so Mart’s trying to get all the work done. Can you go up there and help him?”

“I’m kind of busy, Trixie,” he replied, frowning a little. “Can’t someone else help him?”

She shook her head. “He asked specifically for you.”

The man before her shook his head, seeming to struggle with the difficulty. “I’ve got something that I promised to do. I’ll go up there when I’m finished – maybe in an hour or two.”

Trixie frowned after him as he walked off into the Preserve. She was still pondering the significance of the changes she had noticed in him when she noticed her best friend – or, perhaps, her best friend’s double – beckoning her from a short distance away. Glancing around to make sure she was not being observed, Trixie went to her at once.

“Is there a problem?” she asked, in a low voice.

Honey nodded. “Oh, Trixie, I don’t know how it happened, but we thought we had the right Brian, and he’d said all the right things, but it wasn’t and we can’t find the right Brian and we’re afraid that the wrong Brian has done something wrong to him and now we’ve got the wrong Brian in the clubhouse and we can’t let him go, but he won’t tell us where the right Brian is!”

Continue to part four.

Author’s notes: A huge thank you to Mary N. (Dianafan) who did a very speedy edit for me. I have altered some parts of this section since she saw it, though, so please attribute any errors you find to me! This story will be CWP Anniversary 7. An element list will appear at the end of the story.

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