House of Many Worlds

by Sam Merwin Jr

  "But what do you do?" said Elspeth.

  "In effect," Mr. Horelle told her, "we try to look after the health of all the shapes and forms of Earth."

  III

  "SO YOU'RE awake," said Elspeth acidly as Mack stirred and groaned in the seat beside her. She had been driving the Pipit for a couple of hours now and they were approaching the border of South Carolina. The sun was still an hour shy of the meridian.

  Mack opened one bloodshot eye and regarded her balefully. "Can't you run this thing more smoothly?" he complained. "How's a man to get any sleep with you tap dancing on the brake?"

  "If you hadn't done whatever you did with Juana last night, you'd be up to the mark today," she said, corrosively virtuous.

  "It was worth it," said Mack and an infuriating sated tomcat grin spread over his somewhat battered features. He yawned and stretched without inhibition, sat up and lit himself a cigarette.

  "I still think we're both bats," he said. He fumbled in the breast pocket of his jacket, produced a worn pigskin billfold and pulled a sheaf of bills from it, eyeing them dubiously. "I wonder if this stuff is any good," he murmured and squinted at it.

  "It's good," said Elspeth. "I bought some fuel for the Pipit with it half an hour ago. The attendant thought you were dead."

  "Okay," said Mack. "Suppose I take over for a stretch, since you've managed to keep us out of ditches, and you brief me for a while on what this is all about. I hope your poetic mind hasn't scrambled it too badly. I don't mind telling you I got a shock last night when I went outside and found the old boy wasn't kidding." He climbed out of the car as Elspeth pulled to a stop at the roadside and slid over to make room for him behind the wheel.

  "You seemed to take a long time getting over it," said Elspeth maliciously. Despite the utter strangeness of recent events she was still full of annoyance at her companion.

  "Past history," said Mack, getting the Pipit underway. "I wish we were allowed to fly this thing. We could make New Orleans in a couple of hours. But I suppose it's out."

  "You suppose correctly, "said Elspeth.

  "I also suppose we're both fired from Picture Week back in whatever world we really come from," said the photographer.

  "Mr. Horelle said not," Elspeth told him. But she could not repress a tremor of worry. Life as a poet, before Orrin Lewis and Picture Week, had involved a number of substitutes for regular eating of varying degrees of unpleasantness.

  "He seemed to think he's God," said Mack. "Lord, what a putrid highway! Well, how about giving me the info?"

  "Very well," she replied. In spite of her desire to be as unpleasant as possible to Mack Fraser she was too aware of the importance of their new assignment to risk wrecking it through pique.

  She organized her thoughts, trying to put in order the amazing things that had happened from the time they had been engulfed by the darkness on Spindrift Key. All at once she felt very small and very alien and, save for Mack, very alone in a strange world. She reminded herself of Mack's behavior the night before.

  Intentionally or otherwise Mr. Horelle had been vague upon some points of the job ahead of them. "You have everything you need," he had said with a quiet assurance that swept away possible errors. "When the time comes you'll know what to do."

  Apparently they were entering the affairs of this alien world as catalysts to solve a crisis which was threatening the entire North American continent in war. They were to proceed in the Pipit to New Orleans, where they were to make contact with the agents of an American rebel named Reed Weston, a former cabinet member who was heading a group of recalcitrants with headquarters somewhere in the rugged Ozark country.

  "Weston's the man the country needs," Mr. Horelle had told her. "But if you can't reach him soon with the Pipit, it will be too late. To pull the country together the government in New Orleans is planning a war with the empire in Mexico. Weston must get the whip hand and quickly. You two can do it with the Pipit.

  "But you must keep it on the ground until you reach him. Once its abilities are known you will be lost. You see, in this world there are no airplanes, no flying machines but balloons. Scientific and industrial growth have been stifled in the name of autocracy."

  It was hard going, readjusting to a world so different from her own. But she had managed to absorb most of it— she hoped. If not, it was now too late to go backward. She passed this on to Mack who listened intently, his eyes on the road, his brow furrowed.

  "We'll have to watch our step, Elly," he said when she had finished. "And don't you get off on any tangents—Lord, that word again! I've been around a bit more than you have. Better let me make the contacts when we get there."

  "You did all right last night," she said, thinking of Juana and how unfair it was that one girl should have so many devastating weapons in her arsenal. Mack ignored her and said nothing.

  She wondered why he bothered her so. It wasn't love—not with a crude ex-pug who went roaring off after everything in skirts, shorts or slacks, who beamed an eye in his direction. She resented the fact that she was thinking of him so much of the time, decided that the long-fabled dangers of propinquity were a trifle too real. Something would have to be done about that. She felt grimy with the dirt from the plowed fields and tobacco plantations that lined the road at intervals. She felt unwanted.

  Thanks to her long session with Mr. Horelle, Elspeth had not been especially startled by the discoveries of the morning. The gleaming white-shell causeway to the mainland that had overnight replaced the water route by which Corey had brought them to Spindrift Key, the sight of the Pipit, repaired and washed and ready to take them on their journey, the changes in the little town.

  THERE were differences, also, in the country through which they rode while the sun rose higher and passed its zenith. Fewer towns dotted the terrain and the road itself was a high-crowned, single-lane affair which would barely have qualified as a third-class road in their own world.

  Moreover they passed an average of four cars every twenty miles, save in the larger communities. And not once was the skyline broken by the towers of a high-tension line, not once did a silver transport plane gleam in the light blue sky as it wheeled slowly overhead. People were shabbier for the most part, and for every prosperous looking mansion or farmhouse they passed there were scores of decrepit-looking hovels, mostly inhabited by large Negro families, whose visible members regarded the Pipit with sullen disinterest.

  They lunched in a strangely archaic public house in Spartanburg, noting with some surprise the portrait of President Wilkinson, a languid and somewhat hollow-cheeked citizen, upon the wall. The food was plentiful and surprisingly cheap but the mutton which was the main dish was almost inedibly high in flavor.

  "No air travel, no refrigeration," said Mack sourly, pushing away his plate. "I'd like to take the Pipit up and scare the whey out of some of these cretins." Then he brightened up as the waitress, a comely chubby brunette of perhaps nineteen summers and but one aim in life, ogled him as she poured a bottle of wine out into remarkably fine crystal glasses.

  "Relax, mate," said Elspeth when the girl had departed with a provocative flirt of her apron strings. "We have a long way to go yet if we're to reach Atlanta tonight."

  "Yes, teacher," said Mack. When he paid the bill he seemed pleasantly surprised that the money Mr. Horelle had given them was good. "This," he told Elspeth, "is a very soft snap."

  "So far," said Elspeth, keeping her finger crossed. To date they had seen no symptoms of conflict brewing—no uniforms, no marching troops, no air of tension.

  They reached a strangely altered Atlanta, a small city of no tall buildings but one of wide ill-tended parks, at dusk. Elspeth was tired and bedraggled and was glad to settle for an inside room at an old American-plan hotel, which seemed to be the best the town had to offer.

  For a change the food was both good and plentiful and was served with deftness by polite colored waiters. There was tension in the air about them, tension that was to increase geometrica
lly with their arithmetical nearness to the capital, New Orleans.

  A large-necked and expensively-dressed man, seated with two over-ornate females of uncertain age at the next table, regaled his companions throughout the entire meal with a vicious diatribe against "that limb of Satan, Reed Weston, and his rotten subversive group of anarchists."

  Weston, he claimed, was not only undermining the proper government as duly elected, was not only threatening to destroy all Columbian civilization with his anarchic ideas, but was proving himself a traitor as well now that the country was facing war.

  There was more, much more, but it was in the same vein and repeated over and over again. Mack wagged his head in mock exasperation, causing one of the women at the next table to smile faintly at him. But she did not look at him again. Perhaps, Elspeth thought, because the fat man continued to pour his women champagne.

  "Champagne and bulging vests," she thought. There was the germ of a poem in it, she decided. She drifted off, seeking the phrase, the form, the rhythm that would give it clarity, mood and bite. Which, she wondered, was sadder—the drab whose insensate craving for the gay life could be assuaged only through letting herself be pawed by such a gross and loathesome creature —or the fat man, ignorant of love save that which his money could buy?

  "Come out of it, Ellie," said Mack, shattering the pleasant lilac sadness of her mood. "We'd better turn in if we're going to get an early start tomorrow morning."

  "Look who's talking," said Elspeth. But she went along to her room meekly enough. She was too worn out, physically, nervously and emotionally, to let even Mack irritate her further. She almost fell asleep in the weird wood-and-copper horror that passed as a bathtub.

  SHE was roused at six the next morning from the desk downstairs by a whistling voice that emerged from a speaking tube arrangement close to the head of her bed. This was, apparently, a world without telephones, though she had noticed what looked like a telegraph desk of some kind in the lobby the night before.

  She was considerably pleased on getting downstairs to discover that Mack was not in the dining room, where an alert young Negro was serving breakfast to early risers. But he informed her courteously that Mr. Fraser had already eaten and was waiting for her in the garage across the street.

  She limited herself to toast and coffee, paid the check and joined the photographer. He was studying a large six-wheeled vehicle parked next to the Pipit, acknowledged Elspeth's arrival with a nod and said, "Get a load of this buggy. Looks like a dinosaur."

  "It's big, that's all," she said, puzzled at his interest.

  For her comment she received a long technical lecture. It was as different from the Pipit as day from night. Mack lifted a hood that swung oddly on a pivot, showed her an engine that looked to Elspeth like any other engine. "The blessed thing runs on ammonia," he told her. "Didn't you notice the way any of the cars we saw on the road yesterday looked?"

  "Unh-unh," she said, shaking her head. "But look—the Pipit has new plates." She stared at them in surprise.

  "We wouldn't have got far yesterday without them," Mack told her contemptuously. "Get in. We're going to make a try for Baton Rouge. We can eat lunch in Selma."

  Feeling like an ignoramus, Elspeth obeyed. Not until they were well beyond Atlanta did she straighten from a slumped position in the seat and utter the word, "Teeth."

  "What's that?" Mack asked her, his eyes on the road.

  "Teeth, teeth, teeth!" she told him. "Didn't you notice?"

  "Notice what?" He seemed honestly puzzled, risked a quick glance at her as if to reassure himself of her sanity.

  "Look." She pulled from her handbag a small container like a pepper shaker with little holes under its hinged lid. "I found this in my alleged bathroom at the hotel. Apparently everyone uses the stuff here—it's got a government seal."

  "So it's a monopoly," Mack told her with a shrug.

  "Maybe, but have you noticed everybody's teeth—they're perfect. And we didn't see a dentist's sign in either Spartanburg or Atlanta. They may not have airplanes and telephones but they've found something to keep enamel from decaying."

  "I take it all back—you have got eyes," Mack said graciously. She restrained an impulse to box his visible ear.

  "This could be pretty valuable back in our own world," she said. "Apparently they just pour some into water and rinse out their mouths with it. That's what the directions say to do."

  As they drew close to Selma in the late morning they discovered that railroad tracks ran parallel with the road. They were the first Mack and Elspeth had seen in this strange new world. After a while they spotted the smoke from a train. It was a gaudy affair with an engine at the rear which, by its tail of smoke, appeared to be jet or rocket propelled. It was painted bright blue and the seven cars in front of it were arranged to form a rainbow spectrum, from red to purple. They were elaborate with much gilt and fretwork.

  "She goes right along, doesn't she?" asked Elspeth, for which bit of amiability she received only a look of contempt.

  Elspeth wondered why Mack despised her so. Perhaps, she thought, he merely despised all poets. He was a crass materialistic beast in many ways. Yet he could be as fussy about framing a photograph just so as any poet over selecting exactly the right word to fit into a couplet. He was, she decided, an iambic pentameter type. She studied the sweeping lawn of a great estate as it swept past and forgot about him in the emerald comfort of clipped sward.

  THEY lunched as planned in Selma, with another picture of President Wilkinson on the wall. Inevitably their fare consisted chiefly of Southern-fried chicken, mashed potatoes and biscuits. When she had eaten all she wished Elspeth looked at Mack and sighed.

  "Apparently a change in worlds does not change regional cooking," she said. "I'll wager this same fare is being served in five hundred thousand different Southern restaurants on five hundred different versions of Earth. It frightens me."

  "It's probably a lot more frightening to the chickens," mumbled Mack. He had been thoughtful and silent all morning. Now he added, "I don't like this job of ours at all."

  "Afraid?" Elspeth asked him lightly. He shook his head.

  "Not afraid—just cautious," he replied. "It's tough enough to play a three-cornered mess like the one we're getting into when you know the local angles. We're hitting this one mighty cold. We could make a fatal misstep and never know we'd done it."

  "Look at the map," said Elspeth, nodding toward the wall opposite that on which President Wilkinson hung. It showed a North America utterly different from that of their own world.

  The United States, renamed the Columbian Republic, stretched from Maine to Key West as before. Evidently, however, the Oregon controversy of a century earlier had gone against the Columbian Republic, for the Columbia River marked the border in the northwest. And while Texas was intact to the Rio Grande, most of the Southwest —Arizona, New Mexico, part of Nevada and the southern portion of California —belonged to a Mexican Empire that extended all the way to the Isthmus of Panama.

  "Wonder how that Mexican Empire thing got started," said Mack. "Wonder how this became the Columbian Republic."

  "Parallel time tracks," said Elspeth sweetly. "Things went differently way back when. Do you believe it now?"

  "I'll have to until I wake up," he growled. She judged that the experience of adjusting to a tangential universe was proving a strain on his sense of logic. For herself, she had long since given up trying to look ahead. It was better, in this instance, to take things as they came along—or so it seemed to her.

  They drove on and on through the Deep South during the afternoon and early evening. They went through Meridian, Mississippi, not long after lunch, then headed southwest toward Baton Rouge over a road, whose lack of excellence varied from township to township according to local whim and budget.

  Once they had to pull over almost into a swamp as a long military convoy passed them at high speed en route to the Mexican border. The big multi-wheeled vehicles were propelled
by some jet drive similar to that of the train, with outtake vents flaring fiercely along their sides. In the trucks were green-clad soldiers armed with odd-looking weapons.

  "They may not have planes," said Mack thoughtfully, "but somebody's been seeing that they know how to kill on the ground. Some of those weapons look mighty tough."

  "No matter what sort of civilization man rears he always sees to it that he has the tools to kill his own kind," Elspeth said with a dash of bitterness.

  "If he doesn't his civilization perishes," said Mack quietly. "It's a story as old as Rome—a lot older."

  They drove on through gathering dusk until, within a few miles of Baton Rouge, they were stopped by a light being swung back and forth across the road in front of them. Mack pulled to a stop and a sun-tanned young officer in a pale blue uniform with silver insignia walked over to the car. A couple of helmeted soldiers moved up behind him.

  "I'd like to see your papers," he said. "We're checking at the river for rebels. A lot of them are trying to get to Weston."

  The papers with which Mr. Horelle had equipped them were in order, and Mack mopped sweat from his brow as the officer stood back and motioned them to proceed. "That's a neat looking car you have, Mr. Fraser," he said. "Is it foreign?"

  "English," said Mack. "They make the best."

  "Wish we had their know how," said the officer sadly.

  As they drove on Mack was even more thoughtful than before. Finally he asked, "Did you notice the guns those soldiers were carrying? They looked to me like some sort of machine-rockets.

  And our friend's pistol—unless I'm crazy that's a rocket job too. Funny they haven't learned to fly."

  IV

  BATON ROUGE was a surprise. Instead of the sleepy little river city of their own world they found themselves driving into a metropolis far larger than the down-at-heel Atlanta in which they had slept the night before. The buildings were not tall but they were many, large and frequently magnificent.