Nest of Worlds

by Marek S. Huberath

  But in the Superworlds?

  In Superworld Zero you get 140 years, which isn’t ridiculous, because if you spend your entire life in one Land, then the duration of stay must equal your lifespan. And whoever heard of anyone living longer?

  In Superworld Minus One the duration of stay is infinite.

  And yet two ones sit at the beginning of Bonacci Junior’s series—so that the 2 that follows can follow. I can’t dismiss the first 1.

  Therefore I repeat my analysis. Maybe I’ll have better luck the second time. The number of Significant Names comes to 1/12, but a Significant Name cannot have a fractional number. Do we then approximate, going to the nearest integer? That would mean zero Names, no Name, for the Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One. This is pure speculation, but I’ll write down what I think.

  First: A Significant Name gives the path that death will take toward an inhabitant of a world. In Superworld Zero, the name is one: “You must die.” Or, in other words, the inhabitant is mortal. The absence of a Name for the Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One means that he is not mortal, since no Name hangs over his head. Which tells us nothing about whether or not he was born or has always existed. I write “Inhabitant” with a capital letter and not “inhabitants,” and this conclusion too I owe to a sleepless night.

  Second: The number of Lands in which the Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One must live equals zero. I reasoned this out in the same way. Normally, we live in four Lands in turn; only death frees us from that obligation. Each inhabitant of Superworld Zero can stay in the whole world at any age, unconstrained by the obligation to travel to any Land, which is a subworld, because there are no subworlds in Superworld Zero. But the number of required Lands in Superworld Minus One equals zero, and therefore its Inhabitant does not necessarily dwell in the world; He may dwell outside it. This goes hand in hand with the infinite time passed in a Land.

  (Zero Lands may suggest that the Reader of Superworld Minus One Himself fills the Universe, is the Universe. But no, surely a universe can be no more than a passive collection of objects . . .)

  I can’t figure out why the author made the number of Significant Names fractional but also greater than zero. Could it be that the Reader of Superworld Minus One, though immortal, had some brush with death?

  To the card was glued one more piece of card, scribbled over. Gavein squinted to decipher the tiny scrawl:

  Final conclusion: In both Superworlds there is only one version of the book that contains nested worlds. A solid trunk for the Tree! From this it follows that the world in which I live has no nested counterpart.

  119

  Gary was informed that Daphne Casali perished in a run. He had lost his only witness. Cukurca could testify only to the beatings Gary had received; the rest he didn’t believe. All the documentation that had been gathered to write the article was missing, and the manuscript had gone up in smoke. Eight bullets were found in the apartment, two on the stairs. All had come from Gary’s pistol.

  The trial proceeded in a predictable way. The court ruled that Gary had fired all the shots. His excellent aim? He had developed that on the police firing range. Balloch’s testimony there was decisive. The newspaper editor-in-chief stated that Daphne had submitted no article, though he did remember a conversation about it some time ago and her proposal to write it. He had never had a temporary substitute at work, he said.

  Even Gary’s lawyer doubted the existence of the lost manuscript. But manuscript or no manuscript, Gary had taken the law into his own hands.

  He was found guilty of five counts of murder in the highest degree. The court gave no credence to the story that Gary had been beaten by his neighbors. There could be but one verdict: five consecutive life sentences. He would travel to Tolz after one sentence was served, by prison transport after he had served his fifteen years, six months, and twenty days. His possessions were all auctioned off; the money from their sale would cover some of the cost of his punishment. The loss of his possessions meant that he would have no means to appeal. The fivefold life sentence meant that he would sit in prison for the remainder of his days. Any mitigation of his punishment could do no more than reduce the number of his life sentences.

  120

  In the city jail he was given a double cell. It wasn’t bad. When he put the stool on the table and stood on it, he could see, through chinks in the rusty metal blinds, parts of the street, a miserable little lawn, a tree with a grate around it, and occasionally a pedestrian. If he was lucky, the pedestrian would be a woman.

  His cellmate was a character called Humpty who had done time before. By two months they had discussed, in full, everything there was for them to discuss. Humpty was an income tax evader. He had received the minimum sentence—that is, to the day of his departure—which for him came to three years. In Tolz he could begin a new life. For income tax crime you didn’t lose your possessions.

  But one day Humpty said something new:

  “You were set up.”

  It was a hot day and stifling in the cell. Humpty was fat. He sweat like a pig, panted, but never stopped eating. For a small bribe the guards brought him extra food.

  Gary perked up his ears.

  “Here’s how they did it,” Humpty went on. “The beatings you got were staged. You never saw your attackers’ faces.”

  “Not with the stockings they wore,” said Gary. He was chewing a crust of black bread.

  “Exactly. And they used names so you would think they were the Tunics.”

  Gary nodded but wasn’t convinced.

  “You left the door open when you barged in on the Tunics. The other guys fired from the corridor behind you.”

  “The bullets were from my gun.”

  “The bullets were from the same kind of gun. The Lupar has a modular barrel. They fired and then switched the barrels. You fired only once, at Eby. That was the missing bullet. After all the killing, when you were still in a daze, one of them finished Eby off.”

  “But what was Eby doing on the stairs?”

  “Maybe he heard sounds of the fighting and was coming to help you.”

  Proud of himself, Humpty wolfed down a hamburger. He had unpleasantly humid eyes. Ketchup dribbled from the corners of his mouth.

  Gary stretched out on his bunk, hands behind his head. “To help me, you say. And I . . .” He was silent for a moment. Then he sat up, the shirt sticking to his sweaty back. “But why would they go to all that trouble? To put an unimportant guy out of the way? It makes no sense.”

  Humpty opened a can of Lone Sail. He chugged down half of it, gasped for breath, and with his sleeve wiped the foam and ketchup from his mouth. He burped softly and began another hamburger.

  “You were not an unimportant guy,” he said, knowing that he had Gary’s attention. He gave a wink, his gaze more humid than usual. He sipped slowly at the rest of the beer.

  Gary sat forward. “Come one, Humpty, tell me. You can’t spend all day on that beer. Your hamburger will get cold.”

  “I think it had to do with that furniture, the Amido, the clock. Maybe they take back, from the people moving, everything that wasn’t paid for . . . The possessions remain in Mougarrie that way. The next person buys them on credit. Not a bad business to run. And of course it’s important, seeing as they went to such lengths to keep it out of the newspaper.”

  “You think they killed the Bolyas?”

  “I don’t know. The blood in the Amido doesn’t have to mean that. In three years I move to Tolz, but I won’t try to find out if Spig and Suzie Bolya are alive. You’re surprised?”

  “Not at all. You always were a little shit, Humpty.” “Little” sounded funny, since Humpty was a head taller than him.

  “Little shits live longer,” said Humpty. His blue eyes were so pale, they were hardly different from the whites. On his revolting mouth formed something that resembled a smile.

&
nbsp; 121

  My idea, once it hatched, has become an obsession. I can’t look at reality now except as a narrative in a book. The days pass monotonously, however, as if the main action is not with me but elsewhere. At least the reading still absorbs.

  Today I came across a note in the margin made by Wilcox: “Our world is a book. Dave, Zef, and I are all alter egos of the author.”

  He got that right. Though the alter ego thing is an exaggeration. Wilcox was plenty smart, though he didn’t show it at the beginning.

  122

  If the book is a nested world, then its reader, by reading, moves time in it. When the reader stops, time stops. But how can time be stopped? Perhaps it becomes a semiconscious state of the world’s inhabitants, who reminisce. Because what can they experience beyond what has already been written in the book?

  123

  Another index card showed when Gavein turned the page. It was not dated. Perhaps it was out of order, stuck there randomly:

  The creator of the nested world is the book’s author, whereas the reader’s role is only to set that world in motion. The Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One is immortal and omnipresent, so it is reasonable to assume there is only one. If there were more than one, they could not all be omnipresent at once. And if there is one, then He is both Author and Reader of Superworld Minus One.

  Maybe the inhabitants of the higher-numbered worlds are also not people, thought Gavein. Simpler beings, like bacteria. Maybe that is how they can multiply so quickly, during their stay in a Land . . . And if there are many Lands, then the area of each must be very small. The globe would then resemble a biological tissue culture, in whose Land-cells lived the microorganisms that were the heroes of the narrative.

  The Significant Name becomes a kind of thread of sequential information, resembling—as Linda said—a polypeptide chain. As if there were a Code of Death that played a role exactly opposite the role played by the transmittal of genetic information in living matter, the Code of Life.

  Or could this be only a matter of semantics? A sufficiently long Code of Death, carrying complete information about the fate of its possessor, would also contain every fact about his physical makeup. In that case, one could not distinguish between the Code of Life and the Code of Death . . . They would in fact be one and the same Code . . . I don’t know how far to take the analogy. A pity you’re not still with us, Zef. Here I’ve come up with an idea of my own, and there’s no one to share it with . . . Ra Mahleiné has commanded me to read. She doesn’t want to hear from me about anything else.

  124

  In Jaspers’s world there is no time scale common to all Lands, which means that there is no road that goes from Land to Land in such a way that time elapses at a constant rate for the traveler. The same holds for all worlds of higher number than Jaspers’s.

  In the world of Gary and Sabine there are lines of common time, thanks to which one can calibrate time in separate Lands.

  We have surfaces of common time, which are determined by the altitude above the continental shelf. In a plane that flies at a constant height, time flows at a constant rate.

  To sum up: in world number 3 there are points of common time, in world number 2 lines of common time, in the normal world (ours) surfaces of common time, and in Superworld Zero there is volumetric space of common time (either totally or to a great extent).

  For time’s uniformity-symmetry to be increased in Superworld Minus One, it cannot flow at all. A strange conclusion yet consistent with the others, since the Inhabitant of that world is more easily immortal if no time elapses.

  125

  If the inhabitants of our hypothetical Superworld Zero are similar to us, the solitary Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One is both Author and Reader, that is to say, both Creator and Animator; is immortal, outside time; and is everywhere. With Him ends the hierarchy of authors and heroes of books. He is therefore in all respects a being apart.

  When Dave returns, I will talk to him about Superworld Minus One. Laila isn’t interested, and Magdalena is too weak, too sick. Today we’re going out to renew some old acquaintances. I doubt that Earthworm, Beanpole, or Rooster will have anything valuable to say, but it’ll be good seeing them again after all this time.

  That was Zef’s final note. Gavein put the book down and punched the number for the police.

  Medved answered.

  “Hello, Frank. Death here.”

  “Stop that, Throzz. I have trouble enough as it is on your account. Spare me the jokes. What do you want?”

  “Well, I think maybe I’m better than you at solving unsolved crimes.”

  “No doubt, since you are their architect.”

  “I’m not the architect of anything. I have a clue about the death of Laila Hougassian, NC, and Zef Eisler, R.”

  “Go ahead. I’m recording this.”

  “In a note from Zef I found, he speaks about going to meet with his old gang. He was reading a book and putting index cards in it, with his notes, as he went, and this is the last card. Laila went with him to this meeting.”

  “All right, I’ve now pulled the gang from his file. It’s shrunk a bit. Hans Hartnung is dead . . .”

  “Zef said he was going to see Earthworm, Beanpole, and Rooster.”

  “I’ll send someone for the card.”

  “Nothing doing. I need the card.”

  “Then someone will come with a photocopier and make a good-quality copy for you to keep. Agreed?”

  Gavein agreed.

  126

  Ra Mahleiné’s condition worsened rapidly. She didn’t leave the bed. In her face, grown unnaturally gray and thin, only her eyes shone. His reading the book no longer helped. An invisible force was now claiming her. He knew this.

  Zef’s guesses and speculations had become certainty for Gavein. It annoyed him that Zef, despite all his powerful arguments, had left most of the conclusions in the form of assumptions only, postponing them for further discussion. Gavein could not resist the elegance and the beauty of the theory. It was clear to him, with the clarity of an obsession, that his world too was nested in another—in a greater, wider, perhaps more varied world. The sequence of worlds contained in the book did not stop with his world. He was the main protagonist of the book in which they called him Death. Events took place with particular vividness around him, while the rest, elsewhere, was shadowy, like a memory or allusion. His world continued only when it was read. Whenever the unknown reader put down the book, everything slowed and nothing essential could happen.

  I am a text, he thought. Somehow I can accept this. It does not frighten me. Actually, it makes little difference.

  “Take my hand,” said Ra Mahleiné quietly.

  He sat beside her on the sofa and wept.

  She too had tears in her eyes.

  “I don’t want to die,” she said. “I waited for you so long, and we were together for so short a time.”

  “And I don’t want to live when you die.”

  A solution came to him. Not caring that it appeared ridiculous, he raised his head, looked in the air above him, and began:

  “I’m speaking to you. You who now hold this book in your hands. Stop reading! I beg you. Put it down. Ra Mahleiné, whom I love, is dying, and there is no hope for her. When you read, my world moves inexorably toward her death. If you put aside Nest of Worlds, everything here will freeze into a quasi existence . . . It’s better for us that way. I want her to live. I want to be with her. Give us this chance!”

  “Who are you talking to, Gavein? I see no one. I still have my eyes, my wits, at least that.” She gave his hand a feeble squeeze. Her body burned with fever.

  “You’ve seen so much death in Davabel. Isn’t it enough for you?” Gavein said.

  “Is it Nott you’re talking to? Has Nott come? Tell her to give me an injection. The Red Claw, I feel it again.”

 
Through the window fell the rays of the setting sun, but darkness had settled on the face of the woman he loved.

  “My world, it’s a crime novel pure and simple,” Gavein exclaimed. “What more do you require? The crime has been solved now, hasn’t it? The epidemic of deaths was a consequence of the fact that you read; when you stopped, no one died. That’s the answer to the mystery. And I didn’t go mad like Wilcox!”

  Ra Mahleiné grew extremely pale.

  “Gavein,” she said. “I’m alone. Speak to me. I need you.”

  “This is not my paranoid creation of reality, no, this is, must be, a book!” When he shouted it, all his doubts were stilled. “And for the plot, the rules have been broken. Ra Mahleiné is an Aeriella, yet she’s dying like an Intralla, of cancer.”

  He held her weakening hand.

  “And you,” he continued. “Isn’t your world also a book in the hands of an unknown Reader? When He reads, the fate of your world unfolds, history unfolds. And sometimes Death hovers, taking those near and dear. And the Main Hero has passed you only at a distance.”

  “It helped. The injection helped. The pain is going.” Ra Mahleiné fixed her large blue eyes on him. Regret, reproach remained in them.

  “If this is a book, put it down now, don’t turn the page . . . She will owe you her life, and I all my happiness.”

  “Gavein,” whispered Ra Mahleiné, “I love you.”

  Epilogue

  127

  Her eyes clouded over, her hand grew cold. He kissed her on the lips one last time and closed her eyes gently with his fingertips.

  “You want to know how this ends? Very well . . . There will be one more piece of action for you.”