Worlds of Maybe

by Robert Silverberg

  We’ve traveled sidewise, in a sort of oscillation from one time-path to another. We happen to be in a—well —in a part of time where Fredericksburg has never been built, just as a little while since we were where the Chinese occupy the American continent. I think we’d better have lunch.”

  He dismounted. The four girls tended to huddle together. Maida Haynes’ teeth chattered. Blake moved to the horses’ heads.

  “Don’t get rattled,” he said urgently. “We’re here, wherever it is. Mr. Minott is going to explain things fully in a minute. Since he knows what’s what, we’re in no danger. Climb off your horses and let’s eat. I’m hungry as a bear. Come on, Maida!”

  Maida Haynes dismounted. She managed a rather shaky smile.

  “I’m—afraid of—him,” she said in a whisper. “More than—anything else—stay close to me, please!”

  Blake frowned. Minott said dryly:

  “Look in your saddle-bags and you’ll find sandwiches. Also you’ll find firearms. You young men had better arm yourselves. Since there’s now no conceivable hope of getting back to the world we know, I think you can be trusted with weapons.”

  Young Blake stared at him, then silently investigated his own saddle-bags. He found two revolvers, with what seemed an abnormally large supply of cartridges. He found a mass of paper, which turned out to be books with their cardboard backs torn off. He glanced professionally at the revolvers and slipped them in his pockets. He put back the books.

  “I appoint you second in command, Blake,” said

  Minott, more dryly than before. “You understand nothing, but you want to understand. I made no mistake in choosing you, despite my reasons for leaving you behind. Sit down and Til tell you what happened.”

  With a grunt and a puffing noise, a small black bear broke cover and fled across a place where only that morning a highly elaborate filling-station had stood. The party started, then relaxed. The girls suddenly started to giggle foolishly, almost hysterically. Minott bit calmly into a sandwich and said pleasantly:

  “I shall have to talk mathematics to you, but Til try to make it more palatable than my class-room lectures have been. You see, everything that has happened can only be explained in terms of mathematics, and more especially certain concepts in mathematical physics. You young ladies and gentlemen being college men and women, I shall have to phrase things very simply, as for ten-year-old children. Hunter, you’re staring. If you actually see something, such as an Indian, shoot at him and he’ll run away. The probabilities are that he never heard the report of a firearm. We’re not on the Chinese continent now.”

  Hunter gasped, and fumbled at his saddle-bags. While he got out the revolvers in it, Minott went on imperturbably:

  “There has been an upheaval of nature, which still continues. But instead of a shaking and jumbling of earth and rocks, there has been a shaking and jumbling of space and time. I go back to first principles. Time is a dimension. The past is one extension of it, the future is the other, just as east is one extension of a more familiar dimension and west is its opposite.

  But we ordinarily think of time as a line, a sort of tunnel, perhaps. We do not make that error in the dimensions about which we think daily. For example, we know that Annapolis, King George Court House, and—say—Norfolk are all to eastward of us. But we know that in order to reach any of them, as a destination, we would have to go not only east but north or south in addition. In imaginative travels into the future, however, we never think in such a common-sense fashion. We assume that the future is a line instead of a coordinate, a path instead of a direction. We assume that if we travel to futureward there is but one possible destination. And that is as absurd as it would be to ignore the possibility of traveling to eastward in any other line than due east, forgetting that there are north-east and south-east and a large number of intermediate points.”

  Young Blake said slowly:

  “I follow you, sir, but it doesn’t seem to bear—”

  “On our problem? But it does!” Minott smiled, showing his teeth. He bit into his sandwich again. “Imagine that I come to a fork in a road. I flip a coin to determine which fork I shall take. Whichever route I follow, I shall encounter certain landmarks, and certain adventures. But they will not be the same, whether landmarks or adventures. In choosing between the forks of the road I choose not only between two sets of landmarks I could encounter, but between two sets of events. I choose between paths, not only on the surface of the earth, but in time. And as those paths upon earth may lead to two different cities, so those paths in the future may lead to two entirely different futures. On one of them may lie opportunities for riches. On the other may lie the most prosaic of hit-and-run accidents which will leave me a mangled corpse, not only upon one fork of a highway in the state of Virginia, but upon one fork of a highway in time. In short, I am pointing out that there is more than one future we can encounter, and with more or less absence of deliberation we choose among them. But the futures we fail to encounter, upon the roads we do not take, are just as real as the landmarks upon those roads. We never see them, but we freely admit their existence.”

  Again it was young Blake who protested:

  “All this is interesting enough, sir, but still I don’t see how it applies to our present situation.”

  Minott said impatiently:

  “Don’t you see that if such a state of things exists in the future, that it must also have existed in the past? We talk of three dimensions and one present and one future. There is a theoretic necessity—a mathematical necessity—to assume more than one future. There are an indefinite number of possible futures, any one of which we would encounter if we took the proper ‘forks’ in time. There are any number of destinations to eastward. There are any number to futureward. Start a hundred miles west and come eastward, choosing your paths on earth at random, as you do in time. You may arrive here. You may arrive to the north or south of this spot, and still be east of your starting-point. Now start a hundred years back instead of a hundred miles west!”

  Groping, young Blake said fumblingly:

  “I think you’re saying, sir, that—well as there must be any number of futures, there must have been any number of pasts besides those written down in our histories. And—and it would follow that there are any number of what you might call presents/ ”

  Minott gulped down the last of his sandwich and nodded.

  “Precisely! And today’s convulsion of nature has jumbled them, and still upsets them from time to time. The Northmen once colonized America. In the sequence of events which mark the pathway of our own ancestors through time, that colony failed. But along another path through time that colony throve and flourished. The Chinese reached the shores of California. In the path our ancestors followed through time, nothing developed from the fact. But this morning we touched upon the pathway in which they have colonized and conquered the continent, though from the fear that one peasant we saw displayed, they have not wiped out the Indians as our ancestors did. Somewhere the Roman Empire still exists, and may not improbably rule America as it once ruled Britain. Somewhere, the conditions causing the glacial period still obtain and Virginia is buried under a mass of snow. Somewhere even the Carboniferous Period may exist. Or to come more closely to the present we know, somewhere there is a path through time in which Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg went desperately home, and the Confederate States of America is now an independent nation with a heavily fortified border and a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward the United States.

  Blake alone had asked questions, but the entire party had been listening open-mouthed. Now Lucy Blair said:

  “But—Mr. Minott, where are we now?”

  “We are probably,” said Minott, smiling, “in a path of time in which America has never been discovered by white men. That isn’t a very satisfactory state of things. Were going to look for something better. We wouldn’t be comfortable in wigwams, with skins for clothing. So we shall hunt for a more congenial environment. We
will have some weeks in which to do our searching, I think. Unless, of course, all space and time is wiped out by the cause of our predicament.”

  Tom Hunter stirred uncomfortably.

  “We haven’t traveled backward or forward in time, then.”

  “No,” repeated Minott. He got to his feet. “That odd nausea we felt seems to be caused by travel sidewise in time. It’s the symptom of a time-oscillation. We’ll ride on and see what other worlds await us. We’re a rather well-qualified party for this sort of exploration. I chose you for your training. Hunter, zoology. Blake, engineering and geology. Harris—” He nodded to the rather undersized young man, who flushed at being noticed. “—Harris is quite a competent chemist, I understand. Miss Ketterline is a capable botanist. Miss Blair—”

  Maida Haynes rose slowly.

  “You anticipated all this, Mr. Minott, and yet you brought us into it. You—you said well never get back home. Yet you deliberately arranged it. What—what was your motive? What did you do it for?”

  Minott climbed into the saddle. He smiled, but there was bitterness in his smile.

  “In the world we know,” he told her, “I was an instructor in mathematics in a small and unconsidered college. I had absolutely no chance of ever being more than a professor of mathematics in a small and unconsidered college. In this world I am, at least, the leader of a group of reasonably intelligent young people. In our saddle-bags are arms and ammunition and—more important—books of reference for our future activities. We shall hunt for and find a civilization in which our technical knowledge is at a premium. We shall live in that world—if all time and space is not destroyed—and use our knowledge.”

  Maida Haynes said:

  “But again—what for?”

  “To conquer it!” said Minott in sudden fierceness. “To conquer it! We eight will rule a world as no world has been ruled since time began! I promise you that when we find the environment we seek, you will have wealth by millions, slaves by thousands, every luxury and all the power human beings could desire!”

  Blake said evenly:

  “And you, sir? What will you have?”

  “Most power of all,” said Minott steadily. “I shall be the emperor of the world!”

  He turned his back to them and rode off to lead the way. Maida Haynes was deathly pale as she rode close to Blake. Her hand closed convulsively upon his arm. “J-jerry!” she whispered. “I’m—frightened!”

  But Lucy Blair rode onward with an odd, excited smile on her face.

  The boy ran shouting up to the village. “Hey, Grampa! Hey, Grampa! Lookit the birds!” He pointed as he ran. A man looked idly, and stood transfixed. A woman stopped, and stared. Lake Superior glowed bluely off to westward, and the little village most often turned its eyes in that direction. Now though, as the small boy ran shouting of what he had seen, men stared, and women marveled, and children ran and shouted and whooped in the instinctive excitement of childhood at anything which entrances grown-ups.

  Over the straggly pine forests birds were coming. They came in great dark masses. Not by dozens, or by hundreds, or even by thousands. They came in millions, in huge dark clouds which literally obscured the sky. There were two huge flights in sight at the boy’s first shouting. There were six in view before he had reached his home and was panting a demand that his elders come and look. And there were others, incredible numbers of others, sweeping onward straight over the village.

  Dusk fell abruptly as the first flock passed overhead. The whirring of wings was loud. It made people raise their voices as they asked each other what such birds could possibly be. Daylight again, and again darkness as the flocks poured on. The size of each flock was to be measured not in feet or yards, but in miles of front. Two—three miles of birds, flying steadily in a single enormous mass some four miles deep. Another such mass, and another, and another . . .

  “What are they, Grampa? There must be millions of ’em!”

  Somewhere, a shot-gun went off. Small things dropped from the sky. Another gun-shot, and another. A rain of bird-shot went up from the village into the mass of whirring wings. And crazily careening small bodies fell down among the houses. . . .

  Grampa examined one of them, smoothing its rumpled plumage. He exclaimed. He gasped in excitement.

  “It’s a wild pigeon! What they used t’ call passenger pigeons! Back in 78 there was these birds by billions. Folks said a billion was killed in Michigan that one year! But they' gone now. They’ gone like the buffalo. There ain’t any more.”

  The sky was dark with birds above him. A flock four miles wide and three miles long literally made lights necessary in the village. The air was filled with the sound of wings. Droppings fell like snow. The passenger pigeon had returned to a continent from which it had been absent for more than fifty years. Flocks of passenger pigeons flew overhead in thick masses equalling those seen by Audubon in 1813, when he computed the pigeons in flight above Kentucky at hundreds of billions in number. In flocks that were literally innumerable they flew to westward. The sun set, and still the air was filled with the sound of their flying. For hours after darkness fell, the whirring of wings continued without ceasing.

  A great open fire licked at the rocks against which it had been built. The horses cropped uneasily at herbage nearby. The smell of fat meat cooking was undeniably savory, but one of the girls blubbered gustily on a bed of leaves. Harris tended the cookery. Tom Hunter brought wood. Blake stood guard a little beyond the firelight, revolvers ready, staring off into the blackness. Minott pored over a topographical map of Virginia. Lucy Blair tried to comfort the blubbering girl.

  '‘Supper’s ready,” said Harris. He made even that announcement seem somehow shy and apologetic.

  Minott put down his map. Tom Hunter began to cut great chunks of steaming meat from the haunch of venison. He put them on slabs of bark and began to pass them around. Minott reached out his hand and took one of them. He ate with obvious appetite. He seemed to have abandoned his preoccupation the instant he laid down his map. He was displaying the qualities of a capable leader.

  “Hunter,” he observed, “after you’ve eaten that stuff, you might relieve Blake. We’ll arrange reliefs for the rest of the night. By the way, you men mustn’t forget to wind your watches. We’ll need to rate them, ultimately.”

  Hunter gulped down his food and moved out to Blake’s hiding-place. They exchanged low-toned words. Blake came back to the fire. He took the food Harris handed him and began to eat it. He looked at the blubbering girl on the bed of leaves.

  “She’s just scared,” said Minott. “Barely slit the skin on her arm. But it is upsetting for a senior at Robinson College to be wounded by a flint arrow-head.”

  Blake nodded.

  “I heard some noises off in the darkness,” he said curtly. “I’m not sure, but my impression was that I was being stalked. And I thought I heard a human voice.”

  “We may be watched,” admitted Minott. “But we’re out of the path of time in which those Indians tried to ambush us. If any of them followed, they’re too bewildered to be very dangerous.”

  “I hope so,” said Blake.

  His manner was devoid of cordiality, yet there was no exception to be taken to it. From his standpoint, Minott had deliberately gotten the party into a predicament from which there seemed to be no possibility of escape. He had organized it to get it into just that predicament. He was unquestionably the leader of the party, despite his action. Blake made no attempt to undermine his leadership. But Blake himself had some qualifications as a leader, young as he was. Perhaps the most promising of them was the fact that he made no attempt to exercise his talents until he knew as much as Minott of what was to be looked for; what was to be expected. He listened sharply, and then said: “I think we’ve digested your lesson of this morning, sir. But—how long is this scrambling of space and time to continue? We left Fredericksburg and rode to the Potomac. It was Chinese territory. We rode back to Fredericksburg, and it wasn’t there. Lat
er we hit a highly primitive area with ape-men in it, and then a glacial area, and afterward we encountered Indians who let loose a flight of arrows at us and wounded Bertha Ketterline in the arm. We were nearly out of range at the time, though.”

  “They were scared,” said Minott. “They’d never seen horses before. Our white skins probably upset them, too. And then our guns, and the fact that I killed one, should have chased them off.”

  “But—what happened to Fredericksburg. We rode away from it. Why couldn’t we ride back?”

  “The scrambling process has kept up,” said Minott dryly. “You remember that queer vertigo? We’ve had it several times today, and every time, as I see it, there’s been an oscillation of the earth we happened to be on. Hm . . . Look!”

  He got up and secured the map over which he had been poring. He brought it back and pointed to a heavy penciled line.

  “Here’s a map of Virginia in our time. The Chinese continent appeared just about three miles north of Fredericksburg. The line of demarcation was, I consider, the line along which the giant sequoias appeared. While in the Chinese time we felt that giddiness and rode back toward Fredericksburg. We came out of the sequoia forest at the same spot as before. I made sure of it. But the continent of our time was no longer there. We rode east and before we reached the border of King George County there was another abrupt change in the vegetation. From a pine country to canelike grass and primitive trees and tapirs and ape-men, which are not exactly characteristic of this part of the world in our time. We saw no signs of any civilization. We turned south, and ran into that heavy fog and the snow beyond it. Evidently, there’s a section of a time-path in which Virginia is still subject to a glacial climate.”

  Blake nodded. He listened again. Then he said:

  “You’ve three sides of an—an island of time marked there.”

  “Just so,” agreed Minott. “Exactly! In the scrambling process, the oscillating process, there seem to be natural ‘faults’ in the surface of the earth. Relatively large areas seem to shift back and forth as units from one time-path to another. In my own mind, I’ve likened them to elevators with many stories. We were on the Fredericksburg ‘elevator,’ or that section of our time-path, when it shifted. We rode off it onto the Chinese continent. While there, the section we started from shifted again, to another time altogether. When we rode back to where it had been—well—the town of Fredericksburg was in another time-path altogether.” Blake said sharply: