Watson, Ian - Novel 10 (26 page)

 
          
Standing
tall, holding her chin high,
Alice
dominated the room. “I asked you to meet me
down here, Noel, because, well...”
“Because this is the
centre of things?”

 
          
“Yes,
isn’t it just? I assumed
Norman
would be here.”

 
          
“Oh,
so you did know about the emergency?”

 
          
Alice
laughed. “That’s a line from the soap
opera, Noel. It’s an ‘I know powerful secrets that you don’t know’ line.” She
frowned. “What emergency? What do you mean?”

 
          
Resnick
indicated number two holo.

 
          
“It
seems that I blew him up with a bundle of dynamite. But he didn’t return from
the fantasy. He’s stuck.” He explained what had happened.

 
          
“Oh dear.
Oh dear, dear.”
She
peered at the tiny dolls seated on the green baize lawn. “Well, I wanted this
meeting —”

 
          
‘Oh,
so it’s a meeting now?
A meeting that
you
called?

 
          
‘BewareV
Resnick reminded himself.

 
          
“—
because
I’ve been reviewing some of the implications
of
Norman
’s miraculous crystal transducers —”

 
          
Sarcasm?
Norman Harper stiffened visibly,
then
relaxed, no doubt reminding himself, too, of the difference between the actual
and the psychotic.

 
          
“—
with
the assistance of a very good physicist friend of
mine up at the Neumann Centre.”

 
          
Ah,
so she had ‘friends’? Was the man in question a very good friend — or just a
very good physicist? Such delicate ambiguity!

 
          
Was
the friend a man at all, or a woman? Resnick twitched his head, to try to shake
some of the Todhunter mazes out of it.

 
          
“Item,
the synaptic switching choices in Todhunter’s head are being mirrored by the
quantum electron shifts in these crystals which receive the brain signals and
supply related output to the holo projectors via the computer.”

 
          
Oh,
she was at her most hoity-toity this afternoon!

 
          
Wo
, she isn’t!

           
“If the process wasn’t conducted at
the electron level,” said
Norman
reasonably, “we’d have no way of processing the huge volume of
information through into visible and audible play-outs.”

 
          
“Yes
indeed, and one little feature which my friend has pointed out about projecting
a macrocosm — a world-reality, which is what this is — by using electron
quantum jumps dictated by mental choices within our own world-reality, is that
it is reliably theorised by the bright boys at Neumann and elsewhere that we’re
actually part of a multiple universe, a
multiverse
of infinitely many reality states — and, what’s more, that every single quantum
event evokes a whole separate coherent universe where that event never took
place, as well as one where it did.”

 
          
Her
index finger forked left, right, left, tracing out branches of alternatives.

 
          
“So
we
might
just have something more
than a role-playing therapy machine here. In so far as every possible state of
the universe is equally real, we might just have a simulator of this branching
process on the large scale.
A sampling device.
A peephole, even.”

 
          
“You
surely aren’t suggesting that Todhunter’s world — this holo here — could be
real?
An alternative reality somewhere else?”

 
          
“One
where all sorts of different choices have been made — because
mind
is the real determining factor in
the branching process, according to the Neumann boys — so that Todhunter really
is a guide in a House of Death!”

 
          
“Good
heavens.” Norman Harper stared at the audience seated on the lawn waiting,
while Mayor Barnes held forth, for Norman Harper — poet — to rise and bid
farewell.
Exactly as in the first run of Father Todhunter’s
fantasy, before he had gained his wild proof of the nature of death.
Only, this time Father Todhunter — the unfrocked priest, former helper in the
House of Life who had enticed children to his den and unfrocked them as their
initiation into a secret society of minions, which would one day combat his
imaginary enemies — only this time, he knew all about death ... As well he
should, having murdered one of his minions who was going to betray him.
Which inevitably led to his own betrayal, and to the whole world
turning against him.
And the total snapping of his
mind.

 
          
“Language
doesn’t describe this properly,” explained
Alice
. “It isn’t ‘somewhere’ else, you see. It’s
off at a million right angles to here, whilst still being ‘here*. Only the
maths can cope with transfinite dimensions. Through the psychoscope we might
actually be in tune with one out of the myriad alternative states of existence
— because ‘somewhere’ in transfinity
this
too must exist.
Certainly it
could
exist.”

 
          
“Be
reasonable,” said Weinberger. “That’s a universe where little Deaths fly around
rescuing the human race from a fate worse than death, on behalf of dead aliens.
How on earth could that be a real universe?”

 
          
“There’ll
be much weirder universes than this one, Nathan. You can bet on it. But they’ll
be too different from ours for us even to conceive of them, let alone get in
rapport with them — because they’re based on choices that branched off aeons
ago. This one’s actually very close to ours —
give
or
take the Death creatures, the crystal fog and so on.”

 
          
“And
little things such as the society of death, and the Sino- Soviet War,”
Weinberger reminded her.

 
          
“If
it’s a matter of choice,” suggested Marta in hushed tones, “then a madman would
choose a mad universe.”

 
          
Alice
smiled. “Maybe there are infinitely many
mad universes.
As well as infinitely many sane ones.
Who’s to say which infinity outnumbers the other?”

 
          
“I’ll
stick with the Montegro version of reality,” said Marta stolidly. “Just so long
as we don’t let ourselves get confused by what happens in this, this —” •

 
          
“This
life game,” prompted
Resnick
.

 
          
“So
long as, then we’re all quite happy, thank you very much.
Except
for Father Todhunter.”
She sniffed.
“Father to nobody,
corrupter of many.
It’s odd that he didn’t project his actual sexual
misdemeanours into the . . . the universe he chose to echo.”

 
          
“Oh
but he did,” said Weinberger. “He dumped them on my head,
then
he dismissed them as a slander. Actually, I’d be inclined to describe his
sexual behaviour in this fantasy as fairly promising — in so far as sexual
behaviour of any sort is considered promising in a priest! But that’s
their
affair. No, he’s attempting adult
relationships. You’ll note that he had to abolish the Church, to do so?”

 
          
“How
can he possibly be engaged in behaviour that’s promising, or unpromising, if
he’s simply echoing some alternative universe?” asked Marta, puzzled.

 
          
“This
universe in the holo branches and rebranches all the time too,” said
Alice
. “Todhunter made the big choice of which
general reality best suited him, when he first entered it. Now that he’s in
there, he’s faced with all the minor choices that he cares to make, every
moment.”

 
          
Norman
Harper waved his hand.

 
          
“Watch
the holo, will you? I’m due to speak. Noel’s nearly finished, now.”

 
          
“Shall
we have audio?” asked Marta.

 
          
“Not
likely! I can do without another performance of ‘my’ poetical works.” Harper
shook his head in mock exasperation. “The queer thing is
,
I actually did write poetry when I was a teenager, many moons ago. Oh, it was
the usual adolescent stuff.
Morbid stuff, mostly about death.
Then I grew up.”

 
          
“So
you could indeed have lived like Goethe!” Resnick chuckled.
“In
another world!
Wasn’t Goethe a bit of a scientist, as well as a poet?”

 
          
“
That
was one of
the most damned warped . . .! Do you know how the original of that Hdlderlin
poem goes? I looked it up.

 
          
‘
Lebt ich
,
wie Gotter
. . .’It means ‘I have lived like the Gods.’ Lived like
Goethe, indeed!”

 
          
“But
there aren’t any Gods in Todhunter’s universe,” said Weinberger.
“Just stick-insect angels and crystallized devils.
Maybe.
. . maybe a God only applies to some universes, and not
to others?”

 
          
“There
we are!” Harper pointed. “Up on my hind legs again, mouthing morbid banalities
to the enthralled mob. Wait for it,

 
          
Nathan:
your moment of glory soon.”

 
          
Weinberger
locked his hands together in his lap.

 
          
In
silence they watched the homunculus of Norman Harper mouthing with his eyes
shut.

 
          
The
Weinberger homunculus scrambled to his feet and rushed towards the dais. He
pointed a gun . . .

 
          
Norman
Harper rocked in his seat, as though it was he who had been hit. He clasped his
chest, agony and terror on his face.

 
          
“Oh
God
,” he gasped.

 
          
He
slid off the chair on to the floor.

 
          
Weinberger
was kneeling by him in a moment, checking his pulse. Rolling Harper over, he
began to thump his chest.

 
          
“It’s
a heart attack! Get the resuscitation unit here, Noel.”

 
          
Resnick
scrambled to the wall phone and dialled. He spoke briefly, then swiftly he
opened the glass door and the outer door, pinning both back.

 
          
“He
must have known about his heart!” cried Weinberger. “He must have had warnings!
Why didn’t he say?” He pressed his head to Harper’s chest, devotedly. “Why did
he stay to watch his own murder?”

 
          
“He
had to stay,” said
Alice
tightly, “to prove that he didn’t believe in the evil eye — from some
other reality!”

 
          
“I
should have seen the signs,” moaned Weinberger. “It’s as though I killed him
myself.”

 
          
“You
had nothing to do with this!” snapped Resnick. “
Nothing
, do you hear? Did you say ‘killed’? Are you sure he’s
— ?”

 
          
“Of
course I’m sure.”

 
          
“He
isn’t lost to us yet. Where’s that unit!”