He rang the bell again. Worlds split within him. In one his mother had died; in another his father lay dying while his son waited at the door; in a third the Obrions had remained childless; in a fourth he had brothers and sisters and there was no electric bell on the door, forcing visitors to rap on the wooden frame; and in an infinity of others the differences were so trivial that it might take weeks to ferret them out. What was the range of humankind's possible worlds? He saw them stacked against each other like photo negatives, with ghostly images overlaying each other.
The inner door opened. His mother's gray eyes examined him through the screen. She seemed thinner, younger.
“Joe, he's here!” she called into the house, then struggled with the latch.
Juan heard his father's familiar cough. “Well, get him inside,” he answered in a trembling voice.
The old lock clicked at last, and the door opened. He stepped inside.
“Where's your bag?” Adela Obrion asked, leading him into the living room. He didn't answer. “Dinner's just about ready,” she said as he kissed her on the cheek. “Do you need to use the bathroom or anything?” She looked at him as if something about him puzzled her.
His father raised himself from his chair, came forward and grasped him by the elbows as if about to hug him, then stepped back. José Obrion was heavier, but his black hair showed only a sprinkle of gray.
“You look well,” he said, motioning for Juan to sit down. Adela hurried from the room as his father poured him a glass of red wine. Juan sat down on the sofa across from his chair.
The room seemed unchanged, with its blue walls and the red, blue, and black carpet his parents had brought back from a vacation in Cozumel. His father sat down in the straight-backed chair from which he had always presided and said, “Your old friend Bert's doing well with his construction business.”
“Oh? I didn't know he was back here.”
José Obrion raised his brows. “Three years now. I'm sure I told you. He'd be glad to see you.”
Juan sipped his wine, trying to ignore his father's accusatory tone. Bert's back and doing well at something practical, like you might have done, his father had meant to say; he had not changed.
Juan glanced around the room. Family pictures still stood among the few books on the shelf near the video screen. A younger Juan, wearing a cap and gown, stood next to his father, who in his world had never seen him graduate from high school. Another photo, of Juan and his mother, had obviously been taken at his college graduation.
“He's married,” his father said, still about Bert. “Got together with the Snyder girl. They'll have a kid in a few months.” The Bert Juan knew had decided to join the Navy and see the world, and had always feared that this small town would trap him.
“Dinner's ready!” his mother called. The familiar odors of simmering beans and onions reached Juan. He got up and went into the dining room.
His mother looked at him strangely as he sat down next to her. “What is it?” he asked, tensing.
His father came in and sat down at the head of the table, at Juan's right.
“Joe, don't you notice?” she asked him.
“I see him sitting there.”
“His eyes don't seem gray. They look as brown as yours.”
“Must be the light,” his father said, squinting.
“Are you wearing contacts?” his mother asked, gazing at him with suspicion.
“Yes, I have to wear lenses now,” Juan lied.
His father grimaced. “His own color wasn't good enough for him, I suppose.” He started to serve himself.
“Joe, don't,” his mother said softly.
Suddenly Juan wanted to explain, to blurt out that he was still their son, to tell them that in the world from which he had come and in countless others his father was dead. He wanted to shout to them that this was a miraculous meeting, even though they would be unable to understand. A chill went through him as he realized that perhaps no Juan Obrion had returned to his Earth. He and his companions had died far from home as they struggled through the alien maze. He wondered if there was some sense in which he was one with the infinity of his other selves; the dreams of one would be the reality of another as the moments of decision split off from him. He imagined an absolute self standing apart from the if-worlds, gathering the infinity of perspectives that swam in the ocean of physical truth.
“What is it, dear?” his mother asked. All suspicion was gone from her eyes. Her face seemed unlined, almost youthful.
“Just a bit tired, Mom, that's all.”
“So how's work?” his father asked. “Earning more?”
“I've been in the orbital park a lot, and in some. . . remote places.”
His father grimaced. “What kind of life is that? I guess I'll never understand what it is you do.”
“I go where conditions are right to study certain kinds of things,” Juan said defensively. “It's the only way for the work to get done.”
“Yeah, but what do the rest of us get out of it? We pay taxes and the world is still falling apart.”
“That's not the point,” Juan started to say and stopped himself, determined not to be drawn in. His father was right about human folly, but he had a habit of linking things together unfairly. Here, Juan realized, was a small juncture. A whole world had just split off, one in which he was arguing vehemently with his father. He could almost hear the sounds of that world fading away. Every choice was being made both ways, with infinite variations. There was even one world in which he had won the argument, in which his father had understood and agreed with him.
“Who do you think you're fooling?” his father demanded. “You dreamers and tinkerers are out for yourselves, not to help the rest of us. You build your toys for yourself. Sure, the rest of us aren't better, but you put matches in the hands of children. It's a bad world, but don't tell me you're making it any better.”
“Joe—please!” his mother cut in, suddenly looking old and tired.
Her husband pushed his food away and stared at her with outrage. “It's down on us every day! Who do you think pays him? He should be raising decent people to come after him, assuming there'll be a world for them. When the environment collapses they'll draw their weapons to fight over what's left.” He looked at Juan. “You haven't been here to see all the dead trees. There's no fish in the streams, and our drinking water stinks worse every year. Who do you think you are to stand apart from the rest of us? I'll tell you who you are—when there's no more air to breathe, you'll be one of the few who lives in the sealed air-conditioned cities while the rest of the world chokes, because you'll be needed to make them work.” He shut up suddenly.
“Go ahead,” Juan said, “finish what you have to say.”
José Obrion took a deep breath. “You bow before a thing called knowledge, which doesn't help most people but keeps you amused. Ordinary peoples' lives are nothing to you.”
“It's not like that at all.”
“Then how is it?”
Juan shrugged. “We work, we do some good, we pass on what we know, much like everyone else.”
“The 'we' sounds grand in your mouth. We work, we do some good. Listen to yourself lie!” He looked away and seemed to struggle with himself. “According to you, the rest of us don't live in the real world.”
“I know how you feel,” Juan said as he stood up, “but we need more expertise and better technologies, not less. Our kind's just come out of a disastrous century—we had problems never faced by any past civilization. You can't set the clock back and start again. We have to tame what we've created.”
His father grimaced at him. “But we can't tame ourselves! It's like trying to organize pigs to become horses.” He stared at him intently when Juan failed to answer. “Ahah—you don't really believe what you're saying.”
“Isn't either of you going to eat?” his mother asked.
Juan shook his head. “I'm not hungry. I think I'll go for a walk.”
José Obrion
stared at his food, looking defeated. “I guess you'll just go on doing what you want. It's too late for the rest of us.”
His mother followed him to the door. “He hasn't been himself,” she explained. “Don't be too hard on him. He's getting old, and this is his way of letting go, of giving up so he doesn't have to feel the loss. Maybe you could spend some time alone with him tomorrow, before you leave.”
Juan kissed her on the cheek. “You understand him. He's disappointed by life, but so are we all. Whatever he wants from me, I can't give him.”
“Don't be angry, dear. It will only hurt you the way it did him.”
“I'm not angry,” Juan said, opening the door. She reached out to touch him as he hurried out. The door clicked shut. He knew that she was looking after him through the small window as he went through the gate.
The street was full of people, faces set in expressions as uncomfortable as ill-fitting shoes. An old man hobbled past him, looking vaguely like his high school history teacher. Two women glanced at him from across the street, unsure whether they knew him or not. One of them resembled Angela, but he didn't look back to make sure.
Wind swirled leaves around him as he turned the corner and decided to get his bag from the station. He felt the infinity of his selves stepping across the fracture lines of probability, making all choices at once. He looked up at the overcast sky. The alien maze waited beyond the daylight of worlds. What will we do with it, he asked himself as his father's fears blossomed within him.
19. REUNION
At his left and right, as he entered the alien frame, Juan saw himself replicated to infinity, crossing the universe in perfect step. Lena confronted the line, searching for him among his endless doubles. She doubled by the power of two, determined to provide one of herself for each of his infinity, but it would still be forever before she found his original, and he would never know her. . .
He awoke. The clock next to his bed glowed brightly. He focused and saw that it was a minute past nine in the morning. He sat up and brushed the touchplate below the clock face. The window of the hotel room lit up into a scene of ocean and palm trees. He pressed again, clearing the window to reveal the hazy New York skyline.
The phone buzzed.
“Yes?” he said.
“Are you up?” Lena asked. “I've been in the hotel since last night, but I didn't want to disturb you.”
He leaned over and turned on the small screen. Her smiling face appeared. He smiled back, surprised at how glad he was to see her.
“How was your trip?” she asked.
He raised the bed to a sitting position and swiveled the screen up in front of himself. “My father wasn't much different from the man I remembered. How about you?”
“My parents are alive,” she replied, “but my father is just as absent here, except that he sometimes sends a letter. I was also divorced a year ago—from the man I almost married before. It seems we're on good terms, judging from a note he sent.” Her face became solemn. “What if we'd had a child? I can't imagine how I would have dealt with coming back to a child I didn't know, who would have been mine even if I hadn't carried it.” She paused. “My mother's hair is blond here, but maybe she tints it. I think a few of my acquaintances have different eye colors. One oddity—a few street numbers are off by one or two.”
Juan said, “My mother noticed my eye color, so I told her I was wearing contacts.”
“And she believed you?”
“I didn't stay long enough to be found out. It's still our world, I suppose.”
“Juan, may I come up?”
“Just give me a few minutes to shower.”
He pushed the screen away as it faded. The phone buzzed again as he sat up on the edge of the bed.
“Yes?” he asked, afraid that Lena had found some reason not to see him.
The picture did not come on. “Obrion, this is Summet. This message will remind you that I'll be there some time before noon. Have your group ready. We have to be at the UN by half past noon.”
There seemed to be no change in the ERS chief. Malachi still claimed to understand him, but he was the same old failed scientist playing at UN politics and supervising talent. He did his job, but an unfeeling bastard was an unfeeling bastard in all possible worlds, Juan told himself as he went into the bathroom to shower.
* * *
Malachi smiled and sat back on the hotel's sitting room sofa. “I went back to my family's village, just out of curiosity, please understand. And my grandmother was alive—the one who told me fanciful stories when I was a child.”
“How did she greet you?” Lena asked, sitting cross-legged on the rug. Juan shifted from his slumped position in the heavy chair.
“She was convinced,” Malachi said, “that I was filled with spirits. Came from traveling through their worlds.”
“And the rest of your family?” Lena asked.
Malachi took out a cigarette, struck it on the pack, and took a deep drag. “Still in the ground, I'm afraid.” He exhaled toward the ventilator.
The doorbell chimed. Juan looked toward it nervously. “Come in,” he shouted.
It slid open and Magnus entered.
“Hello!” Malachi sang out. Lena stood up, smiling. Juan felt a moment of agony for the other Magnus as he rose to greet him.
“Summet won't be here until later this afternoon,” Magnus said as he sat down in the straight-backed chair by the writing table.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Malachi crushed out his cigarette. Lena sat down uneasily on the edge of the sofa. “What is it?” Juan asked softly.
“What you would expect. Summet is under great pressure from the Russians, and just about everyone else, to share information. He's told them what he knows, namely that you left Earth in the alien starship and came back by a more advanced system to a second starship somewhere in Brazil. But of course Ivan Dovzhenko isn't satisfied with a secondhand report, and he wants the ship's location.”
“We don't know exactly where it is,” Malachi said.
“But you can find it?”
“Yes.”
Magnus scratched the white stubble on his balding head. “Titus will brief you for the UN-ERS hearing.”
Lena said, “You mean he's going to tell us what not to say.”
Magnus took a deep breath. “Most everyone already expects to hear an edited version, so they'll be suspicious no matter how much you reveal. The major UN-ERS members are examining the satellite scans of the Amazon, and may want to send observers into the jungle. They have a right to do it, and a right to all ERS information.”
“So what is Summet up to?” Lena asked.
“He wants to know everything first,” Magnus replied. “Only a few people realize that the alien technology may affect us profoundly, so they're preparing to control how that will happen, or even if it will be permitted to happen. Titus is trying to keep the lid on, so the network of power cliques doesn't become paranoid. And he sees a chance to enhance ERS power, I'll admit. He sees no reason why it shouldn't benefit ERS. Given past ERS failures in world affairs, he feels that ERS both needs and deserves to have more authority.”
“What do you think we should do?” Juan asked.
“Hold nothing back. The only safety lies in everyone knowing everything, whatever adjustments occur among the power groups.”
“I agree,” Lena added. “It's too late for secrecy. We must try to influence what happens.”
Malachi said, “But will old Titus let us tell all?”
“What can he do?” Lena asked. “Can he lock us up, Magnus?”
“We'll know,” Malachi said, “if he shows up with security types.”
* * *
As they waited, Magnus said, “I wonder what determined that the three of you would return to this particular variant?”
“Are you suggesting that we had a choice?” Juan replied.
“Perhaps you all wished that I had not gone out there with you.” He glanced at Juan as if about
to add something.
“Pure speculation,” Malachi said.
“Of course,” Magnus answered. “But if it's true that the field of human experience branches as waves break into a mind, then a fluid reality is at every instant affected by a variety of factors, among them, perhaps, the will of the perceiver—which is just another determinism, but from the inside. Apply any force to the plenum of ghostly possibilities and a specific world presents itself.”
“Are you suggesting,” Juan said, “that there are no parallel variants, but one world which twitches through an infinity of states?”
Magnus smiled. “I'm not very clear. Perhaps that's all that branching should mean, with variants confined to our imaginations.”
Malachi said, “But your ghosties would have to be actual in order to be able to come forward.”
Magnus nodded. “Yes, but imagine a prime-world line, with an infinity of variant offshoots existing at lower energy states.”
“It's chilling,” Lena said, “to think there might be feebler versions of our lives, trailing off into nothingness. Some days it feels that way.”
Magnus smiled. “Given the coarseness of our perceptual gear, such a shadowy world of low probability would still appear continuous to people living in it. We just can't see fine enough to see through it.”
“They're all our world,” Juan said, “except that we've moved from one to another and remember the previous one. The builders of the web broke more than the tyranny of space-time.”
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