Nest of Worlds

by Marek S. Huberath

  “How do you like our new purchase?” asked Jutta. “We got it at Morley’s.”

  Gary examined the car.

  “It was in an accident,” Daphne couldn’t help saying.

  “Yeah. We’re cleaning it up,” said Margot, rubbing at a bloodstain with her rag. “Because of the blood, we got it for even cheaper. I was spooked, but the boys talked us into it.”

  “It’s a mess, all right,” agreed Jutta. “Look at that upholstery.”

  “Use a strong detergent,” advised Gary, taking his cue from Daphne.

  “If we can’t get the stains out, we’ll replace it. It’ll still be worth the trouble,” said Stack, joining the conversation. He wore a green tunic.

  Gary and Daphne went to the police again, and again the police dismissed the story. They were seen by the same officer as before. This time he wore a T-shirt with the words Municipal Police. On the back of the chair hung a uniform jacket that had his name sewn on: Lieutenant Benjamin Cukurca.

  Cukurca was old and completely gray. When he was agitated, his eyes watered, and he stroked the sparse hair plastered across his pate.

  “Impossible,” he said, his glassy eyes bugging even more than usual. “The Bolyas are in Tolz. A report came in yesterday.”

  He wouldn’t even listen to their arguments. Why should he waste his time?

  104

  Between the pages were two index cards with Zef’s writing.

  Today I put down the two formulas I worked out, one beside the other:

  The number of Lands = (n + 2)2.

  The number of Significant Names = 144 x 12(n -1).

  I left out the number of versions of Nest of Worlds as well as the time of staying in a Land, since so far no pattern suggests itself. So far.

  I dislike the inelegance of the second formula. If this is supposed to be a fundamental law governing the nested worlds, every constant that appears in it (every number, Dave!) should mean something. I think I have too many (there are three: 144, 12, -1) for a basic relation, and the first two are too big.

  How to simplify? Intuitively I feel they should be reduced to small constants like 1 or 2, factored down.

  The pattern for number of Lands doesn’t look bad: only one constant, 2.

  And the second card:

  I returned to this problem after an hour break. I have the feeling that if I keep digging into my head (through one nostril or another), there will be some harvest soon.

  We need to look differently on these patterns. The number of Names in a given nested world equals:

  144 x 12(n -1)

  I must have had one heck of a froze not to have seen that this is also:

  12 x 12 x 12(n -1)

  Or simply: 12(n + 1)!

  Much prettier. Do you see how superior it is to the one before? I got rid of one of the numbers, and at hardly any cost: replacing a -1 with a +1.

  This is how one does science—tracking down nature’s bright ideas. Some lightbulbs did go on in my skull before, but lately I’ve been unfocused, distracted, because of the deaths.

  Dave, no doubt you’re bored to tears with this cogitating and number juggling, this replacing of one constant with another. Well, maybe you’re right, and it’s all silly, just the mental contortion of a science nut playing with a book. And yet this is good exercise, staying in form, because in science first you find the relations that join fact to fact, and then you try to simplify those relations as much as you can, in order to see the deeper sense in them . . .

  105

  Dr. Nott suggested that he see for himself what Ra Mahleiné looked like inside. First, for comparison, she allowed him to look inside herself. She opened her mouth wide and tilted her head back. He peered in. The interior resembled the hall of a great factory.

  Strong, elastic tendons joining massive muscles crossed space like stairs, like bridges; reddish belts of muscle, vein, nerve went in different directions. All this machinery of flesh moved rhythmically; one could hear the muffled beat of a distant, powerful engine. From the slight gaps in the joints among the pulsing vessels, drops of blood or colorless juices seeped. Seen from inside, the hanging double chin of Dr. Nott resembled a mountain slope covered not with rocks but with yellow-orange bladder spheres in a spiderweb weave of tubes that carried blood. Gavein thought that turkeys had such air sacs in their wattles, and that was why they tried to fly. He dared to look up: the ceiling was lost in darkness, and below it hung, like gigantic icicles, tongue-pink protuberances. He also saw the tonsils: yellowish, bulging, potatolike. When he strained his eyes upward into the darkest gulf, there loomed the enormous surface of the brain, smooth as a ball, a deep-brown honey color. It slowly dripped into a huge funnel that was suspended on pink membranous ropes and ties. From this funnel flowed a mixture of red blood and a yellowish fluid.

  “The dripping signifies that I’m thinking,” said Dr. Nott. “If I wasn’t thinking, you would see no fluid. And now look inside your Magda.”

  The interior of Ra Mahleiné’s body was similar, at first glance identical.

  The same dark hall, the bridges of tissue, the stairways of pulsing tendon, the conduits of veins and nerves, the giant brain in far darkness. The only difference was that into the funnel placed below the brain a considerably greater quantity of fluid dripped.

  Ra Mahleiné thinks a lot more than the doctor, Gavein thought with pride. He had always suspected that Dr. Nott was not that bright.

  “Look closely” came the doctor’s voice.

  He examined the interior with more care. He hadn’t noticed them before, but they were everywhere, on the veins, on the tonsils, on the red bridges: fleshy cauliflower spheres, deeply rooted in the floor. All the other parts were dim, toned down, as if faded. Only the cauliflowers flourished with an enviable, triumphant, pink vitality. He looked at the brain of Ra Mahleiné, mighty in the dark, and it too, like a firmament speckled with stars, was covered with these evil pink growths. One of the cauliflowers was growing at the mouth of the funnel and would soon block it. As Gavein watched, a bridge leading deep into the giant hall that was the body of Ra Mahleiné buckled under the weight of its burgeoning cauliflowers and fell like a limp rag. The spheres began to eat it voraciously, until they had consumed it completely, uniting to make one, furrowed, intensely pink, massive growth.

  “You see, Dave. There’s no hope. It’s a lost cause.”

  He wanted to shout, to defy the spheres, to tear them and remove them, but of course there was no way he could enter the body of Ra Mahleiné.

  As if a hand had him by the throat, he was unable to cry out, and yet he heard a cry. Someone was calling. The dream slowly dissolved.

  Ra Mahleiné repeated his name. Kneeling on the sidewalk, she was holding the head of Lorraine, who lay still.

  “Gavein, call an ambulance! Tell Nott to come immediately, or someone else.”

  Gavein’s mind cleared. He jumped from his chair.

  “She was hit by a fragment from the helicopter. She’s conscious, but it has paralyzed her.”

  An unknown doctor answered the phone and promised to send an ambulance.

  Lorraine could not say what hurt her the most. She spit blood. There was a stabbing in her legs, a numbness, the same in her arms.

  “It’s time for me now, Dave?” she said, with a pleading look. “I did my best. Magda didn’t complain . . .”

  Her voice, usually high and piping, was hoarse now. On the other side of the street an aluminum bar from the copter clattered to the pavement. Lorraine had been struck with two pieces: the first, larger fragment in the back; then, when she fell and rolled, a piece of a pipe hit her in the stomach. Several other fragments had fallen on the street in the course of the day. The two women had been watching as if it were a show: the objects almost motionless in the sky, then suddenly accelerating, to strike the pavement or buildings like bull
ets. None of them fell so close as to alarm the women. Ra Mahleiné had been knitting. Lorraine had gotten up to make some tea when she was hit. Ra Mahleiné had barely lifted her eyes from her work when the second missile reached Lorraine on the ground. On the sidewalk lay the metal fragments, indifferent to the tragedy they had caused.

  Gavein saw in time that Lorraine was going to throw up; he turned her on her side, so she wouldn’t choke. She vomited long and abundantly, first dark blood, then bright. With a groan she lost consciousness.

  They heard the ambulance siren, but Lorraine’s body began to twitch.

  “She’s dying,” Ra Mahleiné said.

  The ambulance drove up, and the medics began resuscitation: oxygen, massaging the heart. It didn’t help. The physician pronounced death from internal bleeding, and the body was removed. On the sidewalk a pool of darkening blood remained.

  “What was her Name?” asked Ra Mahleiné.

  “Aeriella. It fits. Be careful: you have the same Name, and the explosion isn’t over.”

  “You do too.”

  “I? David Death?” He shook his head.

  He helped his wife up, put an arm around her waist, and led her inside. Through her clothes he felt how thin she was, and hard, like a swollen belly. He said nothing, and had she asked him a question then, he would have been unable to speak. He understood that he held a treasure that was lost to him.

  “You know, that blow, I remember it only generally. The details began only when you woke. Before that, also, I felt no pain . . . Please, read,” she said as he put a blanket around her.

  In her nightshirt she looked even more pathetic.

  “Your Little Manul will go to sleep like a good girl and wake up strong and healthy. Just start reading.”

  This absurd idea she has got into her head, he thought. He also noticed what little impression Lorraine’s death had made on her. Sighing, obeying, he reached for the book.

  106

  To sum up. I have two formulas.

  The number of Lands = (n + 2)2.

  The number of Significant Names = 12(n + 1).

  Plus: two sequences of numbers for which I have found no rule of progression, though I am certain that a rule exists.

  Consider, Dave: since n is merely the number of the world chosen by me, it should be possible . . . But surely now you see it. If not, then, amigo, you have concrete inside your skull and no amount of nose picking will help. The solution lies under the folded card . . .

  A good thing that his notes are so complete, thought Gavein. If he had jotted down only a few numbers, his ideas would all have perished with him.

  Though thinking this was a capitulation.

  The folded index card had been glued shut, for security, by some of the brain matter Zef alluded to. Gavein unstuck it. The card read:

  The solution is simplicity itself. I get rid of a constant by changing the numbering. For example, if you take N = n + 1, then

  The number of Lands = (N + 1)2.

  The number of Significant Names = 12N.

  Both formulas become prettier, for they are simpler.

  So the world of Gary and Daphne will have the number N = 1 + 1 = 2, the world of Jaspers and company N = 3, the world of Ozza and Hobeth N = 4, and the world of Jack and Linda N = 5.

  By changing the numbering, one of the constants drops out of my terrific formulas, but the question now arises: What world has the number N = 1?

  Reading Zef’s notes was annoying: his facility in manipulating formulas, his substitution of variables, his quick conclusions. But possibly the kid had thought things through solidly and was recording only the best fruits of his labor . . .

  It came to me in a flash! If you can’t guess which world, I’ll write it out for you. Here is what we know about that world from the formulas: it has 22, that is, 4 Lands, and in it there are 121, or 12, Significant Names. It’s our world! The four Lands: Lavath, Davabel, Ayrrah, and Llanaig. The Significant Names are: Aeriel, Udarvan, Flued, Flomir—the Names of Element; Vorior, Plosib, Murhred, Sulled—the Names of Conflict; and Yacrod, Aktid, Intral, Myzzt—the Names of Man.

  Nest of Worlds has been nested in our world according to the same rules of nesting obeyed by the worlds that follow in the sequence. The two versions of Nest of Worlds aren’t two trees, as I thought. No, they are two branches that have grown from a common trunk, from the World!

  Behold what a powerful instrument is the ability to juggle constants in a formula. It has revealed the hidden idea of the author of the book, the book I’m reading!

  One final point, a nut that still requires gnawing.

  If the World has number N = 1, then according to the author’s system the number of books in the successive nested worlds for N = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 will be: 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. Because there exist two versions of Nest of Worlds.

  I am fascinated by this new sequence: it is powerful. I know—I feel intuitively—that it contains some relation. This began with numbers, but I still do not know where it is leading. Any ideas, Dave?

  107

  Gary went out for beer.

  The district in which he lived was very quiet. The traffic basically stopped when the sun set. There weren’t many pedestrians during the day, and at night no one ventured out. The liquor store wasn’t far. He returned at a slow walk, hauling a plastic shopping bag filled with cans.

  Three men came around the corner, in a hurry.

  When they passed him, two of the men grabbed him by the arms, and the third punched him in the stomach.

  Taken completely by surprise, Gary couldn’t defend himself. A yellow light flashed over and over before his eyes. They were beating him professionally. Each blow fell just as his head cleared from the one before and just before he was able to offer any resistance. The blows to the chin took away his consciousness, the blows to the liver took away his will to fight.

  They didn’t kick him when he was down. One pulled his head up by his hair.

  “If you want another helping, keep on about the red Amido,” the man said, his face covered with a nylon stocking.

  The assailants took the bag full of beer. Gary made it home with difficulty. At first he could hardly walk—he staggered—but then it was better. His teeth were loose, but none of them fell out.

  Daphne came in the afternoon, worried by his absence. He couldn’t swallow, his jaw hurt so much. At least his teeth stopped wiggling.

  When Gary reported the beating to the police, Cukurca didn’t believe it. The story of the threat that had been made brought an ironic smile to his face. But at least this time the policeman wrote it down in the blotter.

  Gary was furious. The lazy bastard, he thought, doesn’t want to complicate his life so close to retirement.

  Later he realized that his assailants had beat him with great skill, leaving no marks—no black eyes, no split lips, no bloody nose. Cukurca could think, looking at Gary, that here was a nutcase who had made the whole thing up.

  108

  The salesgirl at Morley’s didn’t remember a red Amido or any buyers in green tunics. She gave Gary and Daphne a hard look. Why? There were no bruises on Gary’s face, and Daphne’s freckles were not that unusual.

  They made the rounds of the commission shops methodically. A lot of furniture resembled what the Bolyas had had, but it resembled the furniture of many families, including Gary and Daphne’s. There was nothing clear, no evidence.

  Gary bought himself a pistol and twenty-four bullets. The purchase was semi-illegal and the quality of the weapon poor: rust, scratched paint on the handle, worn parts. Afraid the gun might blow up in his face, Gary cleaned it, polished and oiled it.

  Daphne decided to write up the story for the newspapers. An article like that would have an effect. But she needed to get all the facts right: a mistake could mean a lawsuit for libel.

  Gary found the shop in wh
ich Spig had bought the Amido. It took him a long time to convince the salesgirl. If only he had a little personal charm. It didn’t help that as he grew older, his left eye got weaker; his brain, not wanting to process an image from it, let the eye wander. The girl actually went red trying to keep from laughing, because Gary’s eye, when he asked her more and more urgently, turned further and further inward, toward his nose. A man might be no older than he felt, but having a lazy eye and a stomach rumbling from hunger added twenty years.

  Only after he told her what had happened and what he suspected—he even included the disbelief and sweaty gray uniform T-shirt of Cukurca—did she begin to listen seriously. Fear appeared on the girl’s narrow, expressive face. He noticed then that she actually had a good figure, in her tights. His first impression of her hadn’t been positive: pink, transparent eyes; colorless, greasy hair; the pallid skin of an albino. He must have made an equally bad impression on her. He relaxed, and his eye turned in less. He looked good enough now, apparently, to get her to give him the serial numbers of the engine and the chassis of the Amido Civic sold to the Bolyas. He also wrote down her telephone number. Sabine, the girl who was attractive when you looked a second time.

  Gary and Daphne got along fine with the Green Tunics. Jutta and Margot borrowed spices from them and invited them to supper, though Gary and Daphne kept saying no. To complete the article that would unmask the gang (they were both certain it was a gang), they needed to obtain the serial numbers of the Tunics’ Amido. The editor of the paper Daphne went to felt that without that clinching evidence it was impossible to print the article. He saw it on the front page, making a great sensation, but airtight proof was needed first. Losing a lawsuit could push the paper, not that wealthy, into bankruptcy.

  109

  The thugs were waiting by the garbage cans on the side of Frisch’s Bar. In green tunics, red epaulets, and nylon stockings over their heads. Gary tried to defend himself, but they had rubber clubs. He was beaten as professionally as before. Then they kicked him. Hard, but not in the head. They told him several times that it was for the Amido. One of the men, after a particularly strong kick, gave a muffled shout.