Universe 7 - [Anthology] Read online

  So maybe, before you read the rest of this, you ought to drop in at Rafferty’s. Tonight, if you can make it; or if you can’t, tomorrow at the very latest. You’ll have no difficulty finding the place: just drive north on Twenty-ninth until you come to the big wrought-iron gates of the North American Institute of Parapsychic Technology. Then slow down and shift to the outside lane, if you aren’t in it already. It’s only another three blocks, and then you swing right onto Washington Avenue—which is named after the Washington, George Henry I mean, the man who invented the Transcendental Impulsifier. Keep going for two more blocks and you’re there.

  The sign over the entrance is small and tastefully discreet, but you can’t possibly miss it if you have your eyes open and your wits about you. It reads “Rafferty’s why not? Tavern,” and the “why not?” is in Old Gothic Black-letter while the rest is in flowing Spencerian script. The words are carved into a varnished slab of Oregon cedar, which is said to come from the very tree that Rafferty’s grandfather chopped down a century ago in order to release the dryad who later became his wife. It’s illuminated from below by two small spotlights which have been burning steadily for twenty-seven years now, ever since the day Rafferty and his bride Moira first took over the establishment Rafferty screwed in one bulb and Moira the other, and they both together pulled the switch that made the power flow. Some say there’s magic in those lights, but there isn’t—you have my word for that. What makes them glow is electricity, and there’s nothing magical about electricity.

  Anyway, as I said before, you can’t possibly miss the place— unless, of course, there are gremlins around. But you know how gremlins are, and you’re in a pretty sad state if you haven’t learned yet how to get on with them. Just be patient and keep your wits about you, and above all don’t lose your temper—if you don’t let them ruffle you, they’ll tire of the game soon enough. Still, maybe I should warn you that if you’re one of those smug, stuffy types who can’t stand gremlins, you’d best stay away from Rafferty’s. There’s usually a whole crowd of them in the neighborhood, you see; they seem to like the place. Myself, I’m glad they do; I’d be pretty lonely without them. But that’s an opinion you’re not obligated to share.

  So anyway, now you’re at Rafferty’s; and there’s not much point in having gone that far unless you stop and go inside. Fortunately, parking is no problem; the City has seen to that. There are meters all down the street, both sides, and you shouldn’t have much trouble finding one that isn’t full yet and paying to have your car dematerialized for as long as you plan to stay. Of course, sometimes the gremlins take it into their minds to interfere with the meters, so there’s an off-chance that your spanking new Cadillac Eldorado might rematerialize as a cranky old Volkswagen Beetle. But it’s only a very off-chance, and it won’t happen unless one of them takes a personal dislike to you. And anyway, the loss will be covered by your insurance, if you’ve been sensible enough to take out one of those new policies that cover Acts of Gremlins as well as Acts of God.

  And that’s the last of my warnings, even though there are one or two other points I might perhaps have mentioned. But don’t worry about them—they don’t concern you, not unless you happen to be a white-headed man with a red beard or an illegitimate descendant of Oliver Cromwell or the thirteenth daughter of the seventh daughter of a thirteenth son. Which isn’t likely, these days; and besides, if you are one of these things, you’ve already learned that you’ve got to tread carefully. If you hadn’t, you’d never have managed to survive this long, as Charles Darwin made himself famous by pointing out.

  So from this point on, you’re on your own. Once you’re inside Rafferty’s, literally anything might happen—provided, of course, it’s permitted by both the Laws of Nature and the Constitution of these United States of America, together with the rules Rafferty himself has laid down for the conduct of a decent, well-run establishment. Even the gremlins respect those; they know they’ll be thrown out if they don’t. There aren’t many people who can say No to an obstreperous gremlin and make it stick, but Rafferty is one of them. It’s his dryad ancestry, I suspect—that and his marriage to Moira. No one would want to offend Moira, not even a gremlin. And besides, Moira is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and you know what that means.

  Now, on this particular night I’m telling you about, it just so happened that there weren’t any gremlins around—not at first, anyway. Rafferty was there, of course, and Moira was upstairs washing the dinner dishes, and Soleful Susie, the barmaid, was sitting in the rear booth with her feet up, resting, and amusing herself by tickling the tummy of James Clerk Maxwell, the cat. It was early in the evening, sevenish, and there were still only half a dozen customers in the place. Old John Edgar Harding, the retired professor of ‘Pataphysics who used to head the department at Miskatonic, was sitting at one end of the bar, discoursing ponderously to Rafferty on his theory of the Unrequited Middle. At the other end Louella van Doren, a red-headed three-times-divorcee who writes a monthly column on Creative Marriage Management for Fortune magazine, was conversing animatedly with Isherwood Foster, a handsome stockbroker some twenty years younger than herself. In the center booth on the left was Byron Wilcox, the Neo-Dadaist poet, who always insists that he doesn’t come to Rafferty’s in search of inspiration, as other poets might, but only to get stinking drunk. And finally, in the last-but-one booth on the right, were two of the young whiz kids from the North American Institute, engrossed in a game of three-dimensional chess. Their names were Spassky and Fischer— but they weren’t the Spassky and Fischer you’re thinking of, nor even their doppelgangers, but two different people entirely. It’s just a coincidence that they were both chess players, so don’t worry about it: these things happen sometimes, especially in Rafferty’s.

  And that’s the lot—more or less, because I was there too, of course. But I don’t count, not really, because I wasn’t corporeally present. I seldom am; I come and go, you see. But don’t let that bother you—I don’t, not any more. I’m used to it by now.

  So anyway, that’s how things were when The Fat Man came in. I call him The Fat Man because you wouldn’t be interested in his family name, not if you know what’s good for you, and he wasn’t the type you’d care to be on first-name terms with. All you need to know about him is that he was ugly-fat, with jowls that oozed down the sides of his face like candle drippings. And he was mean, too—you could tell that just by looking at him. It’s said that inside of every fat man there’s a thin man crying to get out; well, the thin man inside of this one had been swallowed up entirely and he wasn’t even screaming any more. You can’t get any meaner than that; it’s positively cannibalistic.

  It goes without saying that The Fat Man wasn’t a regular at Rafferty’s—for one thing, the gremlins would never have stood for him; and for another, he wasn’t the sort who’d survive for long with a whole passel of gremlins around. But it just so happened, as I’ve already told you, that there weren’t any gremlins there, not just then. So The Fat Man waddled up to the bar, all sticky-pink and for now unmolested, and heaved himself up onto one of the stools and sat squinting around. When he spotted Rafferty he crooked his finger and called out: “Hey! How about some service, eh?” His voice was gruff and grunty, like all the rest of him.

  So Rafferty came over and said, as politely as he could manage: “Well, sir, what can I do for you?”

  “You can get me a drink,” said The Fat Man. “And make it strong, hear?” He wiggled his finger as he spoke, like it was a stick he carried round with him to beat on helpless animals and children when they had the effrontery to cross his path.

  “Yes, sir,” said Rafferty. He didn’t ask what kind of drink it was that The Fat Man wanted—like all good bartenders, Rafferty is prescient in these matters. And The Fat Man knew this; I’m not sure how, but he knew.

  So Rafferty mixed up a double whiskey sour for him; and meantime The Fat Man sat squinting around piggily. “Nice place you got here,” he said. “Fun
ny I never noticed it before. Been here quite a while, from the looks of it.”

  “Twenty-seven years,” said Rafferty.

  “Now that’s pee-cool-ier,” said The Fat Man. “Twenty-seven years you been in this neighborhood, and I never noticed—not even once. Now that’s what I call pee-cool-ier— most pee-cool-ier.”

  “It’s been known to happen,” said Rafferty, feeling obliged to comment. “Some people just ain’t observant—you know how it is.” He knew that it must be gremlins’ work, of course; but he wasn’t going to say that to The Fat Man’s face— Rafferty is a great believer in Etiquette. “That’ll be a buck twenty-five,” he added, setting down the whiskey sour.

  “You don’t say,” said The Fat Man, hauling out his wallet “But take me, now,” he went on, “I’ve always considered myself a pretty observant guy.” He handed Rafferty a ten. “No sir, I don’t make a habit of missing things, not me. I’d never of gotten where I am today if I hadn’t of kept my eyes peeled all the way. Now this is a real nice place you got here—yes sir, it surely is. Does pretty good business, too, if I don’t miss my bet.”

  “Not bad,” said Rafferty, ringing up on the cash-register and counting out The Fat Man’s change.

  “Of course,” said The Fat Man, “it could be better—now ain’t that so?”

  “Could be,” said Rafferty. “Here’s your change.”

  “That’s what I thought.” said The Fat Man, taking it. “Wouldn’t take much, neither, to jack your earnings up quite a bit. A little sprucing up here and there, maybe a little music to keep things lively—now take me, for instance, I’m a sentimental sort, I like a little music when I drink. Which reminds me,” he added, picking up his glass. “Cheers.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Rafferty.

  The Fat Man set down his glass. “Good stuff,” he said, smacking his lips, which set his jowls to quivering like custard. “The very best, if I’m not mistaken. Yes sir, a guy like me appreciates the best—and you know, there’s a lot more out there like me. Good liquor, good music, and good-looking women—we got a taste for those things. Now take her, for instance”—he jerked a thumb toward Soleful Susie, who had just emerged from the booth at the back—”not bad, not bad at all. But not too good, neither, not the way she’s looking at present. Now if you hoisted her skirts up another foot or so, and gave the customers a little something to gawk at . . .” He laughed, and the laugh made him quiver all over. “Well, you get my meaning, don’t you?”

  “I do indeed,” said Rafferty, flashing a glance at Soleful Susie to see how she was taking this. Which to all intents and purposes she wasn’t—taking it, I mean. Not that anybody but me could be sure, just by looking; because with Soleful Susie it’s sometimes hard to tell.

  “Yes, sir,” said The Fat Man, “it pays to move with the times. Now this setup here, you got to admit it’s kind of old-fashioned.” He squinted around. “Not that I’m knocking it, mind you; it’s got atmosphere, and that’s an asset. But it ain’t enough, not by a long shot—not in this day and age. We’re living in an age of progress, see; things are changing and they’re gonna keep on changing, and we’ve all of us got to change along with them just in order to keep up. Change is the nature of things, and there’s no point holding back from it—it just don’t pay, no sir, not in the long run.” He leaned forward and waggled his finger at Rafferty. “You know what it is, mister, this Change thing I’m talking about? It’s opportunity, that’s what it is—and it’s the smart guys like me that know how to cash in on it. Yes sir, I got a real nose for opportunity—I can smell it out from a mile off. I never missed a bet friends tell me; and I daresay they’re right about that.”

  “I daresay,” said Rafferty, not batting an eyelid; but I could feel the hackles rising on the back of his neck. Mine would have been rising, too, if I’d happened to have any—which I didn’t not being corporeal just at that moment. That’s dangerous talk, you see, the same kind that Barnabas Tobin used in selling his Exopsychic Deontologizer to his backers. I should know, seeing as how it was that same talk got me where I am now—not that I’m complaining, mind you, since I only got my just deserts; but all things considered, I can’t honestly recommend it, not to those of you who don’t have any just deserts coming to you.

  The fact was, I sensed a storm brewing. Everything added up to that, now that I stopped to think about it: The Fat Man, the two whiz kids named Fischer and Spassky, and above all the absence of gremlins. It all added up because it didn’t add up, if you get what I mean. There was no pattern to it that I could see, and that worried me: in a well-run universe like this one there’s always a pattern, unless something has gone wrong somewhere.

  Maybe I was just imagining things, but I didn’t think so. In any case, I figured I’d better check into it, just in case Causality was beginning to get a little out of hand. So I gathered my energies together, concentrating myself, so to speak; and then gave myself a Moebius twist, reversing parity; and all at once I’d slipped over, and was on The Other Side.

  I was right about the storm; it was still only in the early stages, building up, but I could tell right away that it was going to be a real humdinger. Even now, when things had hardly got started, it was pretty impressive: great waves of statistical anomaly roaring in to smash and spatter against the frame of Objective Reality like breakers along a rocky coast; and the gremlins were whooping and hollering and skeering in on the wave crests like California surfers gone berserk with the sheer power of it all. It was a great game for them, no doubt about it; but for me it was different—I didn’t dare let myself get carried away. I clung like a limpet to Objective Reality, gluing as much of my attention as I could spare on Rafferty’s and its inhabitants and the whole firm, solid, not-quite-unshakable continuum of which they were a part, at the same time keeping a weather eye peeled to take in this storm which was battering at their foundations.

  Well, I’m exaggerating a little—actually it wasn’t as bad as all that. I mean, the foundations were safe enough, at least in this neighborhood; the chaos threatening us fell somewhere short of being primordial, if that was any consolation. Not like the storm Barnabas Tobin kicked up, when all but one or two of the Eternal Verities were temporarily knocked for a loop and the entire Orderly Frame of Things was teetering on the edge of collapse—this time, I could tell, we were nowhere near the center of the disturbance. Elsewhere, maybe, a galaxy or two would blink out of existence, or a few dozen stars go supernova, or a planet shatter and dissolve; maybe they had already, maybe that was what this tempest was all about. But here on the outskirts nothing much would happen, relatively speaking—things would be shaken up, of course, but no worse than a plague of mischievous gremlins could manage if they set their minds to it; and after a while the forces of Natural Law and Order would slowly but surely reassert themselves. That didn’t bother me particularly; the world’s survived worse. Maybe it’d even be a good thing, shaking The Fat Man and all the others like him out of their customary self-satisfied complacency—though in most cases, I’m afraid, it’d take more than a mere Probability Storm to manage that. Look at what it took to enlighten me for instance, and how much it cost me. . . .

  But I’m digressing. It’s a bad habit of mine—sort of hard to avoid, though, when you’re smeared out like I am into a sub-corporeal slur of low-order probabilities. But a bad one all the same.

  So anyway, there I was, hanging on tight to Reality as if my continued existence depended on it, while all around me waves of Uncertainty beat and shattered. Everything was blurred and kind of hazy, as it always is on The Other Side, and with each wave that came it blurred some more and shimmered out of focus as if it were getting ready to melt and run; and then, as the wave passed, it would kind of waver back again into almost-but-not-quite sharpness, only to shimmer and smear once again as the next wave came. Every now and then a gremlin would come skeering past me, or maybe even through me, and I’d feel it as a sort of electric tingle of joyously untrammeled irresponsibi
lity that didn’t have a care in this or any other world. I wouldn’t have been human (or ex-human, or whatever you want to call me) if a part of me hadn’t leapt at the touch of it and yearned wildly to respond. They were like children at play, all glory and mischief and irrepressible energy rolled up into a tight little frenzy of marvelously uninhibited innocence; and if I was unable to join them in their game I was the poorer for it. But I hung back because I had to—I couldn’t join in; my sense of responsibility to the Scheme of Things said otherwise.

  And besides, I was thinking of Rafferty’s and what would soon be happening over there—if it hadn’t started already. I wasn’t too worried about the rest of the world; all they’d have to contend with was a sudden upsurge of statistical anomalies. Maybe half a million normally level-headed New Yorkers would all at once take it into their minds to go for a drive through the Lincoln Tunnel, and maybe a couple of hundred thousand bridge players all around the world would pick up their hands and discover they’d been dealt thirteen spades, and maybe all the babies who happened to be conceived on this particular night would be born identical triplets with genius-grade IQ’s, and maybe all the cars stacked in all the world’s parking meters would be shuffled together so that when their owners paid to retrieve them they’d get back some rather interesting hybrids. Little things like that are none too serious; people take them in their stride, after the initial shock.