by Rudy Rucker
Yuuugh!
I sat up groaning, this time truly awake. Alma was still asleep to the right of me. Paul’s bed was empty, scattered with closely written papers. I could hear his voice outside, some way uphill from our cabin. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, nor could I be sure if anyone was answering him.
The sky was getting brighter. According to my watch it was five in the morning. My stomach was okay now, and my mind felt preternaturally clear. I was thinking faster, and in a higher- level way than ever before.
Paul was talking to Roland Haut. I made this deduction all at once, with no additional evidence and no intervening steps.
For the moment, the feel of my rapid thought process interested me more than the conclusion. Was this what the aliens had meant by hierophantics? Perhaps, as Tanya had promised, I’d been learning hierophantics all night by digesting the flesh of the Nataraja sea cucumbers. And hierophantics was what? Think of it this way. Hierophantics was to me as math would be to a nonmathematician: an arcane way to supercharge one’s mode of thought.
Where my mind had once been a thicket, it was now an orderly bed of flowers. My perceptions and emotions were automatically constellating themselves into crystalline patterns. I felt sure that Paul was talking to Haut, and that they were scheming about how to keep my Alma from accompanying us to the new Earth.
I reasoned that Paul wanted my Alma out of the way so he’d have a good shot at the new Alma on the new Earth. And why couldn’t we just have both Almas on the new Earth, one for each of us? Because of an esoteric quantum-information-theoretic result Paul had mentioned earlier: the no-cloning principle. I’d never fully understood quantum information theory before, but this morning the discipline was hierophantically clear to me, as was the chain of reasoning that led from the no-cloning principle to the ironclad conclusion that only one version of a given person can be on a given Earth.
Moving silently, stealthily I left the hut and crept uphill through the jungle, rapidly calculating the forces and angular movements of my leg and arm motions so as to minimize any crackling of the underbrush. Moments later I was lying on a mossy rock, peering at Paul and Haut through a scrim of ferns.
Haut was dressed in a silky white robe that the Nataraja must have made him, an angel’s outfit. On his back were a pair of insect-style wings, transparent and irregularly veined like those of a giant housefly. His robe had a large lump in one pocket.
Haut and Paul were sitting on a fallen log by the side of a little stream, orchids and butterflies all around them. Despite my expectations, they weren’t talking about Alma at all. They were talking about math; to be more precise, they were talking about Haut’s new solution to a problem in higher analysis involving the axiom of hyperdeterminacy and projective sets of Hilbert-space vectors.
“It’s a really major result,” said Haut. “I can hardly believe how easily I’m making these discoveries. The longer I stay here, the smarter I get.”
“You should move to this level and be friends with the aliens who’ve colonized Nanonesia,” said Paul. “They’re mathematicians, Roland. Our crowd. Last night they were telling me—”
“I don’t want to be near them,” said Roland, frowning and shaking his head. “Giant cone shells, roaches, lizards—ugh.” He patted the bulge in his robe. “I’m just glad I have this wonderful ray gun. I came across five of those lizards in the cave I crawled through to get here, and I cleaned them right out.” He glanced around. “I do like the bright sunlight on this level. Maybe I should clean out all of Nanonesia so I can live here with Alma. She’ll come to me after you and Bela go back. I dazzle her, you know. I could tell when she visited my office with Bela.” He gave a fatuous chuckle.
Paul’s face had clouded over. “You’re—you’re saying you killed Mulvane and Vulma? And their kids? Damn you, Roland, they were the same as people. Number theorists. I was eating ice cream with those kids last night." Paul rose to his feet. “That was an evil, evil thing to do. I can’t believe you murdered them in cold blood.” Paul pressed his hands to his temples, thinking. “And now the aliens are gonna give us the boot. Look, that plan we were talking about? You’re gonna have to be ready to carry it out in an hour or two. And you’re not coming back with us, right? I’d almost rather you didn’t.”
“I’ll stay on,” said Roland calmly. “I’m sensing profound new consequences of the ideas you were just telling me about the mathematical physics of La Hampa and the Earths. A nice start, that, Paul. And now the master can finish the apprentice’s work. When I’m done, I’ll be like a god. I’ll set up the perfect world for myself and return in clouds of glory. Don’t worry, Paul, after you see me at that lacy natural bridge this morning, you won’t see me again. So you’re foolish to be angry with me.”
“Whatever,” said Paul curtly. “I gotta go.”
I barely beat Paul back to the room. I positioned myself on the edge of my bed as if just waking up. Paul looked abashed to see me. And no doubt my face wore an odd expression as well.
“Almost dawn,” said Paul, forcing a hearty tone. “I’ve been barfing all night, that and doing mathematical physics.” He waved his hand at the papers on the bed. “I figured out a result. La Hampa’s time dimension is the same as the stacking direction of the alternate Earths. It’s a virtual dimension that you might call ‘otherness.’ Hampatime is otherness.”
“I heard your voice outside,” I said, testing him. “That’s what woke me. Who were you talking to? Roland Haut?”
“No, no,” said Paul, squeezing his eyes shut to mime sincerity. He always did this when he lied. “I was retching and mumbling to myself. Making noise to scare off the pigs, bats, and jellyfish.”
Fine. For my part, I wasn’t going tell Paul I knew he was lying. In order to shepherd Alma back to an altered California, I’d need to stay a few steps ahead of Paul’s little games. Meanwhile, disturbed though I was about Haut’s murder of the lizards and about Paul’s plans for Alma, I was genuinely curious about what Paul said he’d proved.
“Hampatime is otherness?”
“There’s a whole lot of Earths,” said Paul. “You can think of the Earths as drawings on a stack of papers, one Earth per sheet. And each drawing is a little different. Our Nataraja jellyfish keeps making our drawing better. Revising it. My calculations indicate that she makes precisely one new version of Earth for each week of hampatime that elapses here. Every Friday. She’ll make a new one today. Note that since the time here is totally different from Earth time, that means we’re likely to tunnel back to the same Earth-time that we left from. A little after noon on Thursday, June 3.”
Alma shifted in her bed, making a grumbling waking-up noise. Dear Alma.
“Our world’s been revised all those times, and things are still so screwed up?” I said, trying to absorb Paul’s strange notion.
“A certain amount of unhappiness is inevitable,” said Paul. “It’s the natural order of things. Also keep in mind that a Nataraja jellyfish’s idea of a better and more interesting world might not be the same as ours. We should remember to be amazed that Earth hangs together as well as she does. Sunlight, gravity, clouds, oceans, life—things are very together. Complaining about, say, President Doakes’s reelection is like bitching about one crooked bump of paint in van Gogh’s Starry Night.”
“Oh, you’re dazzling me, Paul,” I said. My anger over his intended betrayal of Alma was heating up. “You’re not talking about the really important thing, are you?”
“How do you mean?” he said evasively. He busied himself gathering his wetsuit and his papers. “I think we should get going on the trip home right away. It’s getting light now. I’ll talk to those roaches and cone shells about opening another hypertunnel. It’ll lead to the jellyfish-god’s latest version of Earth. You see how that works? We can't tunnel back to a version that corresponds to an earlier hampatime. We can’t go back to our old Earth.”
“Yeah, I get it,” I said
impatiently. “But the important—”
"You go see that freaky jellyfish and make your wishes,” interrupted Paul. “I don’t need to be there for that. Just be sure and tell her there’s no meth or Ritalin for Paul on the new—”
“The important thing is that you’re going to try and ditch Alma,” I exclaimed. “Because she loves me. You’re gonna want to be with that other Alma on the new Earth. You think that if the other Paul didn’t take speed, then the other Alma would still be living with him. Call them Paul-2 and Alma-2. You’ll boot out Paul-2 and settle down with Alma-2 yourself. Our real Alma would get in the way. You already said so before.”
“And what about you and Cammy-2?” challenged Paul. “Isn’t that what this is all about?”
“Stop arguing," muttered Alma, waking up. She was tan and lovely. “God, you two are uptight.” She yawned and stretched an arm, holding her sheet over her breasts. “Were you talking about me? Was I bad last night?”
“You were being yourself, Alma,” said Paul. “I gotta run.” And then he was out the door.
“That cuke-weed was wack,” said Alma. “I was acting like my father. Ugh. But today I’m good. I feel—smarter.” She laughed. “As if that were even possible.”
“I’m smarter too,” I said, sitting down on the edge of her bed. “It’s the hierophantics kicking in. Paul puked, so he didn’t absorb as much as us. We can think rings around him now.”
“I always could,” said Alma. “When it comes to things that really matter.” She was silent for a second. “Okay, I just pieced together what I heard while I was waking up. Paul is planning to leave me here.”
“And Roland Haut is gonna help him,” I said. “The issue is that there’s gonna be copies of you, me, and Paul in the world we go back to.”
"And a Cammy for you,” said Alma in an aggrieved tone. “I wonder what I should ask for?”
“I’m sure you have a plan,” I said. “Last night you said that all the rest of us were losers.”
Alma guffawed. “I said that? It’s that jealousy thing. And feeling less-than because I don’t dig math. What I want is a career in politics, Bela. I want to be a speechwriter, or maybe run for office myself. Senator Alma Ziff. And you can be my little house-husband. With his cute equations.”
“Last night you said—”
“Let go of it, Bela. Do you still love me?”
“I do.” I lay down next to her and kissed her. “You’re fun,” I said. “I’m starting to realize it’s okay that you’re so high maintenance.”
"What do we do about Alma-2, Bela-2, and Paul-2 when we go back?” asked Alma, molding herself against me.
“Supposedly the new Earth’s reality would get unstable if there were two copies of anyone,” I said. “So I figure we’ll bump those guys back through the hypertunnel into La Hampa. And then they’re on their own.”
“That’s kind of pushy isn’t it?” said Alma. “Kicking them off their home world? Not that I mind being pushy. Do you actually think they’ll be at Miller Beach right near the natural bridge? Conveniently positioned to be forced into the hypertunnel?”
“I think the jellyfish will fix it that way. Or maybe it’ll happen automatically. There’s higher-order patterns that I don’t understand. I think no matter when we leave here, we’ll end up back at Big Sur on June 3, with our counterparts in the water near the bridge.”
“So then what’s the rush?” said Alma cozily. “I’d like to hang around and explore La Hampa for awhile. Don’t you want to? What’s so great about another Earth? Same old, same old.”
“You have a point.” Lying here with Alma, saving Cammy didn’t seem quite so urgent anymore. The laws of logic ensured that I could never change the past of Earth-1. Cammy-1 was dead for good and she wasn’t ever coming back. For the first time I fully accepted this. But there was still the problem of Roland Haut.
“Let’s stay here for a month,” suggested Alma.
“Well, the aliens are gonna want to evict us,” I said after a pause. “Haut killed Mulvane and Vulma and their kids.”
“No!”
“And Haut’s promised Paul to keep you from going back through the hypertunnel,” I added.
“Haut’s going to kill me?” said Alma, hierophantically getting the picture.
“Maybe not. He wants you to be his mate.”
“Yuck,” said Alma. “Death before dishonor.” Despite all the problems this morning, her mood remained sunny. It was like she wasn’t taking anything that seriously. “So if you’re about to leave, you’re gonna visit that jellyfish to make magic wishes, right? I’m going with you. I’m not gonna be the submissive girlfriend cheerleading on the sidelines.” She gave me a kiss. “You should be the one to cheer for me.”
“Yay, Alma!” Swept into her giddiness, I hopped up and executed a convincing Herkie cheerleader jump, with my legs stretched like a hurdler’s, one fist on my hip and one hand high in the air.
“You’re on my squad,” said Alma. And then we made love. Afterwards we found Paul by the lagoon with the cone shells and the cockroaches on the marbled patio. The baby cone shells and roaches were romping around playing centrifugal bumble-puppy again.
“Paul says you three are tunneling back today?” said Osckar. “Busy, busy.”
“I hear there were three others who came through with you,” said Tanya. “They’re up at the next level, the one we call Paradi- sio? If you bump copies of yourselves back here, maybe we’ll send the copies up there too. Nothing personal, but, mathematically speaking, you people aren’t all that interesting.”
“What about those people above the sky?” said Alma, gazing up. She was dressed in her bikini and necklace. “From the helicopter. The woman and the two men. Why can’t we go hang with them, Bela? Instead of with Paul the traitor and Haut the killer. Come on.”
“Go for it, Alma,” said Paul. “But Bela and I are going back today. Right, Bela?”
“Maybe not,” I said. If we moved to Paradisio, the Nanone- sian aliens might leave us alone, even after they found out about Mulvane. “I’m sticking with Alma, whatever she does. We can talk to the jellyfish, sure, but we’re thinking we might stay here for a few weeks.”
“Yay, Bela!” said Alma.
“Jellyfish almost ripe,” said Rowena, her voice a windy gust from her striped mouth tube. “Soon she make sun. Then no more Earth tunnels.”
“Miss Glyphic English is trying to say that if you want to talk to the jellyfish, you have to do it soon,” said Tanya. “Each of the jellyfish is a god for a series of versions of a particular world. And once the beings from a jellyfish’s worlds begin finding their way to La Hampa, the jellyfish is almost done with that stage of her life. She gets so much energy from the tunneling that she becomes a La Hampan sun. It’s all part of the Nataraja life cycle.”
“I do want to make sure that Cammy gets to live in another Earth,” I said.
“And that I don’t have my problem with speed,” put in Paul with an earnest smile. “Don’t forget to ask for that.”
“You actually think that staying clean is all it would take for you to keep me?” put in Alma, reading him like a book. “I wonder. I do have that security-seeking side to my personality, but, Paul, you’re such an insufferable—”
“God dammit, Alma,” snapped Paul, “If you don’t watch yourself—”
“Why even futz around with wishes?” interrupted Osckar. “You newcomers always want to do that. Breathing down God’s neck. Like she doesn’t know what to do on her own? You’re so much wiser? Dear God, don’t forget to make the plants grow. Dear God, make sure that cows give milk. Dear God, let me crawl up my butt and shovel out my own crap because I’m worried my colon doesn’t know what to do.”
“It just seems best to stick to our original plan,” I said, feeling foolish.
“Is there a very last Earth that our jellyfish-god is gonna make?” asked Alma. “A best of all possible worlds? The final draft of the B
ig Bestseller?”
“Unger and Mulvane argue about that all the time,” said Osckar. “Unger thinks that a world’s jellyfish flares up in a, whad- daya, infinite Zeno series without a limit point. Like always covering ninety percent of the remaining distance without ever reaching the goal; I’m talking 9, 9.9, 9.99, 9.999, and so on, forever falling short of the perfect 10.0. But number-skulled Mulvane says that obviously there’s a very last one, the final best version of whatever world that jellyfish was working on. We should find those two characters and get them to argue for us. I know Unger’s sleeping off those grork toxins, but where is Mulvane? And Vulma? Usually they’re up bright and early with the kids.”
“Roland Haut murdered them and their children in their sleep,” said Alma. “Roland flew up from his island, crawled up through the lizards’ tunnel, and incinerated them with his ray gun. You might as well know.”
“Alma!” exclaimed Paul in a scolding tone. “Don’t listen to her,” he told the others.
Tanya twisted her head from side to side, the light glinting off the facets of her eyes. She looked at us one by one, and then at the vacant black mouth of the lizard’s tunnel on the hill above.