Ginsburg and Solomon?
The music began—bright, cheerful tunes worked into a pleasing medley. Vernon felt better, almost from the first note. But while the music sounded vaguely familiar, he couldn’t quite place the melodies. Or the operetta. He thought he knew the G&S canon by heart. The Yentas? He vaguely recalled that one. Something about young lovers and interfering in-laws. And one family was Jewish and the other Irish? But that wasn’t a G&S operetta. That was—he couldn’t remember.
Ginsberg and Solomon?
With a roar, a rocket sled zoomed past him, its rider making an obscene gesture as the sled threw up a cloud of noxious fumes.
Vernon Browne’s brightened mood was shattered.
He got off the freeway at the University Avenue exit and drove up to UC. The heat had not broken, and the air was wetter than ever. In fact, the moisture condensed as a sort of hot mist, soaking his face and hair.
On the lush lawn outside the physics building a couple of lunar trees had settled in. They were surrounded by an iron fence. The sign on the fence warned that the trees were carnivorous and fond of humans. Vern stood watching them for a few minutes. They were quarreling over something, snapping at each other with giant claw-edged fronds. Vern shook his head—he’d always thought it unwise of the Apollo-Soyuz expedition to bring back dangerous lunar life-forms. But it was too late to get rid of them now—they had taken too well to Earth’s soil and climate. They had become a regular part of the ecology.
He found Professor Carstairs’ office at the end of a second-floor hallway. Carstairs was a heavyset man who looked like a pile of soft dough. His handshake was tentative and his questioning suspicious.
After Vernon had spoken for a few minutes, Carstairs picked up a two-way radio mike and called Alejandro Nuñez. He darted glances at Vernon while whispering into the microphone. Finally he put it back on its hook.
“Alex says you’re for real.”
“Yes, I am.”
“And you’re having these odd hallucinations. I’m not sure why Alex sent you to me. He’s the shrink. I’m just a theoretical physicist.”
“They’re not hallucinations.”
Carstairs raised his eyebrows. “No?”
“Everything is changing.”
“Of course it is. We’ve known that since Democritus.”
“I don’t mean that everything is changing. I mean—well, it is changing. It is!”
“Mr. Browne, maybe you ought to go back to Alex Nuñez and ask him to recommend a good facility. A resident facility.”
“You think I’m crazy?”
“Who, me? I’m not a psychiatrist, I told you that.”
“Look, Dr. Carstairs—ahh—okay, so I’m crazy. Maybe. Maybe I am crazy. Okay, but I’m not violent. I’m not dangerous. So will you humor me? Will you talk to me for a little while, listen to what I have to say?”
Carstairs steepled his puffy fingers, leaned his soft chin on them. Only his eyes were hard and sharp. “Five minutes. If you insist.”
Behind Carstairs, through a window, Vernon could see the lawn. The hot mist was so thick that water was condensing on the window and running down it like rain. Even so, Vern could see the two lunar trees in their cage. A large woman stood outside the bars. She carried a huge handbag. She reached into it and pulled something out. She reached back and threw it over the fence. Whatever it was, Vernon could see it writhing even as it coursed in an arc. One of the trees caught it skillfully but the other grabbed it away. They quarreled and fought silently over the morsel.
“I can’t waste time, Mr. Browne,” Simon Carstairs was saying.
“Wh—what?”
“I just told you I’d give you five minutes if you really insist. But then you just sat there staring out the window.”
“Dr. Carstairs—how long have we had lunar life forms on Earth?”
“Are you serious? Since the first moon landings. Nineteen sixty-nine. Back during President McCarthy’s first term. I remember how he called the astronauts on the moon and read them a sonnet he’d just composed. That’s what we get for electing a poet president.”
“Right—1969. That’s what I thought. I mean I knew that all along. I think I did, anyhow.”
The mist had finally turned to rain, and the lawn outside the physics building was rapidly turning into a swamp.
Vernon said, “Either the world is changing, or maybe I’m changing. Somehow I’m getting false memories. But I don’t think so. I think the world is different. Like—have I always had an Indian bike? I think I have. I’ve got my helmet, gloves, the registration slip, everything. It says I’ve owned the Indian for three years. But—I feel as if I maybe had something else.”
“A different brand of motorcycle, you mean?”
“Yes. Or no. I don’t know. Maybe I had a car.”
“Maybe you did. Until you traded it for the motorcycle. Or maybe you own a car and a motorcycle.”
Vern shook his head. “I guess it could be. But—could one turn into the other? I mean, ah, I guess I don’t mean could you take the parts of a, say, a Tucker Torpedo and take ’em apart and cut ’em down and build a bike out of them. I mean, could the one just turn into the other? Could the world change? And everybody takes it for granted, nobody notices, because they change along with it? But somehow I didn’t change? The change didn’t take right, it didn’t work completely for me, so I have these memories of the way things were before?”
Carstairs leaned back, grinning broadly. “Have you ever studied physics, Mr. Browne?”
“High school. Let’s see, we had units on heat, optics, mechanics—is that what you mean?”
Carstairs nodded condescendingly. “I had in mind high-energy theoretical physics. Specifically, quantum probability theory.”
Vern shook his head. No. Behind Carstairs, the water had risen so the lawn was completely obliterated. The sun looked like a fuzzy yellow disk in the gray, wet sky. Occasional splashes marked the surface of the swamp.
“You see,” Simon Carstairs said, “what you’re talking about fits in rather nicely with quantum theory. Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Planck of course. The great names of the century.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Let me put it this way, Mr. Browne. According to quantum probability, we don’t really know the location and energy state of very small particles. Not only do we not know, we cannot know. To find out, we have to put energy into the system, thereby changing the very information we were seeking. So when we find out what we wanted to know, the data is no longer valid. I’ve always thought that Einstein would consider this one of God’s great jokes.”
“You mean—I don’t know whether I have a Harley or a Tucker? Can’t I just go outside and look?”
“That isn’t exactly what I mean. More to the point, you might own a Harley and a Tucker. Also a Kaiser, a Packard, a Nash and an infinite number of others. And an infinite number of each. A convertible, a sedan, a station wagon. And an infinite number of each of those—one in every color of the spectrum, one with a scratch on the hood, one without a scratch on the hood, one with—well, you see my point, don’t you? There are an infinite number of particles in the universe, and the condition of each is an uncertainty, a statistical probability. Not a fact.”
“But I only have one Harley.”
“In this universe, yes. But suppose there is another universe, identical to this in every way, except that you own a Tucker Torpedo instead. Do you see?”
“There’s only one me.”
“In this universe there is. But there might be a universe exactly like ours, except that you were twins. Or triplets. Or where you are a woman instead of a man. Or where you died in infancy. Or were never even conceived.”
Behind Carstairs, the water completely covered the windows. They were thick and strong, however. Thoroughly sealed. Through them, Vernon Browne could see hungry-looking creatures baring their fangs. Something big and gray charged straight at Carstairs and collided with the glass. It b
ounced off, drifted momentarily as if stunned, then swam away disappointed.
Vernon said, “This sounds like something out of The Twilight Zone.”
“The what?”
“The Twilight Zone.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t you remember the old TV show? What’s his name, Rod Sperling, Sterling, something like that. Weird sci-fi stuff.”
“Oh, you mean Tales of the Dusk. I used to watch that when I was a kid. That was a great show, yes. They did deal with ideas a little like this. Ed Sullivan was the host.”
Vern decided not to press the point. “Look, doctor. You’ve been pretty generous with your time. You said you’d give me five minutes and it’s already been a lot longer than that. But I don’t know if we’re getting anywhere.”
Carstairs reached for the bowl on his desk and drew out a lobster snack. He crunched it between his teeth. “Help yourself if you’d like,” he said.
A huge form swam by behind Carstairs. For a split second it reminded Vernon uncannily of himself. “Professor Carstairs, this theory, this business of other worlds just like ours except for one or two things, like a motorcycle is a car or a man is a woman—is that just your idea?”
“Oh, no! There are papers on it. Bennett at Minnesota, Klass at Penn State, Jenkins at Norfolk. Several others as well.”
“Well, look, is there a way that somebody could get from one world to another? Like, could I somehow slip into a different universe? One that’s almost exactly like this? And maybe not even know the difference?”
Carstairs grinned, showing rows of triangular teeth. “If the other universe is enough like ours, there will be another Vernon Browne already in it.” Behind him, the form that reminded Vernon of himself reappeared. It plastered itself to the window like a clinging starfish, waving tentacles in a manner both suggestive and repellent. Suddenly it was torn from its place by a school of tiny, flashing fish. The huge creature struggled, but only briefly. Within seconds it was reduced to a cluster of dead gobbets. The small fish fought and tore at the chunks of flesh, devouring them greedily. A pinkish stain slowly dissipated. Simon Carstairs appeared oblivious of the event. “Surely, this other you would take exception to your taking his place, taking over his life.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Vern stood up and moved around the room. The warmth and moisture felt good on his skin. “But suppose that guy moved over to the next world. Are these things all next to each other? Or stacked like pages in the—the Daily Call-Clarion? That’s where I work. I’ve been commuting to work over in the city for years.”
“The city?”
“Sure. You know. San Fran—San—uh, give me a minute, I’ll remember it.”
“You mean Yerba Buena?”
“That’s it. Right. Yerba Buena.” What a relief that was!
“You actually commute to Yerba Buena every day?” Carstairs shook his head. “You actually travel through the swamps and the geysers and the lunar field every day? Amazing! My hat’s off to you for that!”
“What about these different worlds, Professor?” Vernon persisted.
Carstairs cleared his throat. “If these multiple worlds exist, they’re more like multiple realities. In a sense, the points within each of them occupy the same time-space loci. But in another sense, they do so in different continua. So they are locally mapped onto each other. Superimposed, you see.” He laid one hand on his desktop, palm down, then turned the other palm up and laid it on top of the first, so that thumb covered thumb and fingers covered fingers.
“They are separated in a manner totally ineffable to us.”
“Prof, I don’t even know what you mean by that. But just suppose one of these guys—one of these me’s—started shoving sideways. Shoved his way out of his world and into ours. He could shove the me from this world out of his way. Shove him over into the next world. You see? And the next, and the next.”
Carstairs took another lobster snack. “You’re sure? No? Well, Mr. Vernon, I suppose if we carry that notion to its logical conclusion, we will find an infinite series of you’s rotating among an infinite number of universes. Each time you get shoved—and shove—you will find yourself in a universe farther from the one where you began. Farther and farther. And stranger and stranger. Stranger and stranger and stranger.”
“And is there an end to this? An end and a beginning? Do you fall off the edge eventually? Or does it go in a circle? If I keep on shoving, world after world, me after me, will I wind up back where I started?”
“That’s a very interesting question. I suppose the universes of reality might be circular in nature. I’m afraid, though, that even if they are, you’ll never get home. No. The worlds are getting stranger as you get farther from your point of origin. Sooner or later you will find yourself in a world where you cannot survive. Once you reach such a world—well, I wish I could offer you some hope, sir or madam, but I’m afraid that there is none. No hope for your survival. No hope at all.”
“No hope at all? But why me? Why me?” Bronenstein sobbed, on the edge of hysteria and despair.
“Scientists talk about what, Mr. Steinbacher, and about how, but not about why. Never about why. That is a philosopher’s question, Mrs. Klemper. Or a clergything’s. Not a scientist’s. And now, I have to meet a class, and so I will have to ask you to leave.”
Carstairs showed his visitor out of the physics tank, and the visitor swam slowly, puzzlement still visible in uncertainly wavering antennae and dismally pulsating pigment spots, slowly toward home. As the traveler swam past the Venusian enclave, purple-tentacled aliens sang in the complex, amazingly beautiful harmonies for which they were famous over all the worlds, and giant feathery fern-eels visiting Earth from the civilized moons of Neptune danced merrily to the tune.
The Doom that Came to Dunwich
We are told that humans—or creatures that could reasonably be defined as humans—have walked the earth for 2,000,000 years at the least, and perhaps for as long as 5,000,000 years. And yet civilization, in any form that we would recognize and acknowledge, has existed for a mere 10,000 to 15,000 years. We are thus asked to believe that Gug and her mate Ug led a primitive existence, hunting and gathering or perhaps scratching a few crude holes in the ground and dropping seeds into them each spring, and made little more progress than that for a minimum of 1,985,000 years. Following this there sprang into being virtually simultaneously the miracles of Angkor Wat, Babylon, Thebes, Kukulcan, Yucatan, and Cuzco.
We are also told that life has existed on the earth for at least 2,000,000,000 years, and perhaps as long as 6,000,000,000. Uncounted millions of species have evolved and disappeared. Whole orders of life have emerged and departed. Creatures as tiny as a virus and so huge as to dwarf the mammoth or the whale, creatures of infinite variety and endless complexity, have lived and died on this world. And yet we are told that of all these species, only one, our own, and at that, only in a relative flicker of an eyelash, has developed true consciousness and intelligence.
What nonsense! What arrogance! What blind, ignorant balderdash!
—from the preface to Paleontology and Paleoanthropology: the Failure and the Fraud, by Lindsey and Plum, Canyon Press, San Carlos, California, 1981
When a traveler in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury Pike just beyond Dean’s Corners he may feel that he has fallen through a crack in time and emerged into an earlier era in New England. The countryside is marked by rolling hills and meadows, spotted here and there with stands of woodland that, at first glance, appear lush and healthy, but that, upon closer examination, seem to emit an almost palpable miasma of wrongness. The grasses are oddly yellow. The tree trunks seem to be writhing in pain, while their leaves appear oddly fat and to give off an unpleasantly oily exudation.
If one arrives in what has become known as Dunwich Country at night, the sense of temporal alienation is especially strong. The few advertising billboards that were erected along the Pike in earlier dec
ades have fallen into wrack and ruin, but no one has bothered either to rehabilitate or to remove them. The few tatters of once-colorful posters that remain attached to their frameworks, flapping in every errant gust of wind, remind the traveler of products long removed from the market: Graham-Paige automobiles, Atwater-Kent super-heterodyne radio sets, Junius Brutus Cigars.
Even tuning the radio to stations in Boston, Providence or Worcester does little good, for the particular conformation of the terrain, or perhaps the presence of deposits of as yet undetected ores beneath the ground or of unexplained atmospheric conditions, makes it impossible to receive more than an unpleasant melange of sound, interspersed with indecipherable whisperings and gurglings.
Rounding the base of Sentinel Hill on the outskirts of Dunwich, the site of the infamous “horror” of 1928, the traveler beholds an incongruous sight: a modern laboratory and office building of mirrored glass construction. Activity in the building proceeds uninterrupted, day and night. A wire-mesh fence surrounds the facility, and a single rolling gateway is guarded at all times by stern-faced young men and women. These individuals are clad in dark uniforms of unfamiliar cut and tint, identifiable neither as military nor police in nature. Each uniform jacket carries a shoulder patch and each uniform cap a metal device, but the spiraling helix into which these insignia are formed is also unique to the Dunwich facility. This ensign, it may be noted, is laminated as well on the stock of the dull-black, frightening sidearm which each uniformed guard carries.
A small wooden plaque is mounted beside the rolling gate, in sparse letters identifying the facility as the property of the Dunwich Research Project. No newspaper files or directories of government organizations make mention of the Dunwich Research Project, and neither the directory issued by the Dunwich Telephone Company, nor that company’s Directory Assistance operators are able to furnish a number by means of which the facility may be contacted.
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