by John Barnes
We heard the clatter of a dozen pairs of high heels in the hallway; the Billies were on the floor and looking for us. “My office, north of Surabaya, a week from now,” Iphwin said.
There was a thunder of feet outside, and all five of us just went, moving through all of the myriad worldlines until we found something where Beard wasn’t coming, then walking out the door, taking the Jeep—each of us individually, since the Jeep was there in so many worlds—and driving back down to Mexico. I had a couple of interesting conversations at the frontier, but there was no rule against driving in from that side, and my passport, of course, didn’t show that I had been anywhere since Torreón. Once I was far enough south, I got a decent hotel room, a long night’s sleep, and a ticket for Surabaya, which in this timeline was inexplicably called by some long Russian name.
A week later, I caught Mac the limo back to the Big Sapphire, collected Fluffy the cat and a few possessions, and went in for our meeting with Iphwin.
“Really,” he said, “since you’re always leaving selves behind as you do this—it’s an unpleasant thought but undoubtedly all of us got some self or other killed back in Santa Fe—from here on out you can live by moving into worlds where you’re rich, as needed, and you can more or less pursue any happiness you care to. I just thought we might all want to agree as to how to meet up at the virtual reality cottage; I had a feeling we might want to see each other.”
Terri wasn’t planning on returning to her parents; what teenager, given infinite money and choice, would? “It’s a big lots of worlds out there,” she said, “and I’m going to see plenty of it. Just now I’m a little depressed, but I figure there’s infinite adventure out there, or at least finite adventure so big I’ll never get done.”
Jesús nodded. “I understand the urge. I think I will take a little walk through a few million worlds, and see if there are places where I can do some good.”
Paula and I decided to make a vacation of it, down in Oz, since we had found out we were so compatible in the cottage. But after a couple of weeks of her perpetually wanting to go out and surf, or to the pistol range, or that sort of thing—and my wanting to sit on the beach and read—we understood it wasn’t going to work out. She left a very nice note saying she was off to stir up trouble in a few billion worlds, and not to leave the light on for her.
Me, I zipped through a billion worlds or so, taking about a year, till I found an event sequence where Helen had broken her arm the day before my leaving for the job interview, turned up in her hospital room with some ridiculous excuse, multiple armloads of roses, and the much-harder-to-explain Fluffy. It took a lot of explaining and some outright tale-telling, but Helen seems to be no longer suspicious, not even about my hypothetical rich uncle who left us the large fortune with which we were to raise kids in a big house in Auckland. We’ve got a Paula and a Terri, but an American girl wasn’t about to have a son named Jesús, so
I had to settle for Joshua. Jesús says he doesn’t mind much. Iphwin doesn’t want any kids named after him.
It’s been years since I faced or felt real fear. In an abstract way it’s not a bad thing to know that I can handle fear, pain, or privation if I have to, but then I can endure headaches, too, if I have to. Now and then I take a second or even two off, and go to the cottage for a while, where I meet some of the others; the embodied Iphwin is there often, as he’s never really gotten used to a fully real world.
Mostly I am content.
What I hear of the others is what you might expect; Jesús, Paula, Terri, they’re all out winning glory and wandering across the worlds, flying Dutchmen on a quantum sea. I shall probably always prefer, like Iphwin, to stand on the shore and wave.
Now and then, late at night, I go to the cottage, and Iphwin and I spend a few days running on the beach together, and drinking wine, and talking. Then one of the three adventurers will drop in, and I will sit up all night while they talk of their adventures. I know that I enjoy listening to the stories more than I would ever enjoy the adventures. And knowing that, I am very happy.