Universe 7 - [Anthology] Read online

  But Rafferty’s, you see, is a kind of focal point—that’s what gives the place its special charm, or a part of it anyway. There are statistical fields just as there are magnetic ones, and they too have poles, and Rafferty’s happens to be located smack-dab on top of one of those poles. “The still point of the turning world,” old John Edgar Harding calls it sometimes—but only when it’s late in the evening and he’s getting maudlin. Maybe it’s second sight on his part, or maybe it’s only the liquor; but anyway, he’s right, after a manner of speaking.

  So that’s why, just then, the Probability Waves were rolling in on me from all directions at once. Don’t try to figure out the geometry of it—you can’t, because geometry on The Other Side is different from anything you could ever conceive of. You’d have to be crazy to try, like Ludwig Kleinsdorfer was— you know what his formulas did to him, and he was nowhere near the truth of it.

  But I’m wandering again, which is exactly what I was hanging on trying not to do at this time I’m telling you about. Confusion was compounding itself all around me; the last thing in the world I wanted to do was let any of it spill over into myself. Even if old Kleinsdorfer had been there in person, which he wasn’t at that particular moment, I’d have done my best to ignore him; I’d have known I was being impolite, him being an old friend of mine, but the last thing I needed just then was a Disturbing Influence, and if there’s one thing that can be said of old Kleinsdorfer in spades, it’s that he’s very much a Disturbing Influence. So instead of him I concentrated on The Fat Man, because I sensed that in some way he was the key to all this, at least in its local manifestations. Either he was a Disturbing Influence himself, a kind of statistical Typhoid Mary, which didn’t seem too likely; or else the Scheme of Things was seeking to regain its equilibrium by throwing him in as a counterbalance. If so, God only knew what would happen to him in the end, because the Scheme of Things isn’t much concerned about the ultimate fate of its uncomprehending counterbalances, as I know all too well. But anyway, I focused on The Fat Man, and did another Moebius twist, and flipped back over into Our Side.

  It was a pretty nauseating experience. I found myself coextensive with The Fat Man, interpenetrating his body so to speak, and I didn’t like it. He felt as mean as he looked, mean clear through, in every joint and flabby muscle of his body. Sinking into him was like drowning in a pool of warm Jello. But it had to be done, so I gritted my incorporeal teeth and did it.

  Something in him felt my presence and resisted. He gave a little twitch, spilling some of the drink he was holding in his hand, and I felt his eyes cross, mean and narrowly calculating. He had stopped talking to Rafferty, somewhere in midsentence, as I slipped into him. Rafferty didn’t say anything, but bent to wipe the spilled drink from the counter.

  “Jee-zus!” said The Fat Man suddenly. I had an inside view of the fact that he wasn’t feeling too good.

  At the other end of the bar, old John Edgar Harding turned and looked toward us. “It is you, my good man, is it not?” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, struggling to control The Fat Man’s vocal cords. “It’s me, all right—Quintus MacDonald. At your service.”

  Old John Edgar rose and came strolling over to us. The Fat Man sat rigid, mainly because I was holding him that way— and quite an effort it took, I assure you. John Edgar stopped in front of us. “I gather that there is a Storm brewing,” he said deliberately.

  “That’s right,” I said around The Fat Man’s greasy tongue. “A big one, coming this way.”

  “Thank you,” John Edgar said. “It is good to be warned.” He inclined his head to one side. “You heard, Rafferty?”

  “I heard,” said Rafferty.

  “Perhaps you had best fetch Moira down,” said John Edgar. “I have noticed that she frequently exerts a calming influence on such occasions.”

  “You’re right,” said Rafferty. He turned and went out through the door behind the bar to call Moira.

  “A Storm, you say?” said Louella van Doren from the other end of the bar. She turned to Isherwood Foster. “You’ve never been here during a Probability Storm, have you, darling? It’s really quite thrilling—a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

  Isherwood Foster looked as if he hoped to hell it would be.

  “You may rely on us,” John Edgar assured me. “Even in the moment of crisis we shall not lose our heads.”

  “Better not,” I warned him—with some difficulty, because already I could feel my control over The Fat Man’s body slipping; he was stronger than I’d expected. “Gotta be going— “bye.”

  “Good-bye,” said John Edgar. “And good luck.”

  I couldn’t respond, because I was already engaged in decorporealizing. I exploded out of The Fat Man, and fragments of me spread like ripples to every corner of Rafferty’s. For a moment parts of me were simultaneously caught up in the consciousnesses of Soleful Susie, John Edgar Harding, Fischer and Spassky, Byron Wilcox, Isherwood Foster, Louella van Doren, and James Clerk Maxwell, the cat It was like being jerked in eight different directions at once. Then I caught hold of myself and pulled myself back together. It felt good—you have to have been split eight ways simultaneously to appreciate just how good being a decorporealized microstatistical smear can feel.

  Rafferty had just returned, with Moira following him. The Fat Man sat quivering piggishly in front of them. “Something just happened to me, didn’t it?” he said in an accusing tone. “Don’t deny it—I felt it happening to me!”

  “Maybe,” Rafferty said. “I didn’t notice.”

  “You’re lying,” said The Fat Man. “I could feel it all through me!”

  “Don’t be foolish,” said John Edgar Harding superciliously. “It is nonsense to speak of ‘feelings’ in reference to a swinish creature like you.” He turned and marched back to his stool.

  Byron Wilcox stuck his head out from his booth. “Hey, Susie,” he wailed, “don’t dry up on me! I need another shot”

  “Coming,” called Soleful Susie. She went behind the bar.

  Louella van Doren was explaining loudly to Isherwood Foster just what the last Probability Storm at Rafferty’s had been like. James Clerk Maxwell was curled up asleep in the rear booth. Undisturbed, the whiz lads Spassky and Fischer continued their game of three-dimensional chess. That’s the way things are in Rafferty’s: the habitues have learned to take just about anything in their stride.

  The Fat Man shuddered. “You could at least call a doctor,” he said. “For all you know, I might be dying.”

  “There’s a phone in back,” said Rafferty. “You can use it if you want.”

  “It’ll cost you a dime, though,” added Moira.

  The Fat Man closed his eyes. “Jee-zus!” he said again.

  At this point something in me tingled, and I became aware that there was a gremlin in the room. Maybe he’d followed me across from The Other Side, or maybe he was one of the regulars who were here most nights—I couldn’t say, because I often have difficulty telling one gremlin from another. In any case, I felt a whoop of joy that kind of shimmered in the atmosphere as he spotted The Fat Man. That’s torn it, I thought to myself; the trouble’s about to start

  The Fat Man shifted on his barstool. Now maybe I’d better tell you that Rafferty’s isn’t one of those places that have modern-type barstools which are screwed down to the floor; Rafferty insists that his customers prefer the old-fashioned wooden kind that you can tilt backward or forward if you want to. So The Fat Man’s stool wasn’t fixed down, and there was this little depression in the floor right behind it where it had been worn down over the years; the chances were maybe one in a million that The Fat Man’s shifting would slide one leg of the stool into this depression in just such a way that the stool would topple right over—but what’s a one-in-a-million chance to a gremlin? I felt the little bugger seize it and give it a sort of a twist; and then it had materialized and The Fat Man was sprawling on the floor, all pink and tumbled like a stranded jellyfish. He’d
let out a sort of porcine squeal as he went down, and it seemed to hang in the air and mingle with the silvery tintinnabulation of the gremlin’s laughter.

  Soleful Susie rushed around the end of the bar and helped him to his feet. The Fat Man sort of leaned on her as he got up; it was like his gross flabby self was oozing around her to swallow her up, just like it had already swallowed up the thin man who was no longer screaming inside. Then he let go of her and leaned panting against the bar. “Jee-zus!” he said. “You oughta do something about those goddamn stools—I might of been killed!”

  “It ain’t the stools,” said Rafferty. “It’s the gremlins.”

  “I oughta sue,” said The Fat Man. “I’d be within my rights.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Moira. “You can’t sue a gremlin.”

  “An interesting point,” said John Edgar Harding from the end of the bar. “Is the proprietor of a respectable establishment such as this one legally responsible for the acts of such gremlins as might be said to haunt it?”

  “He isn’t,” Louella van Doren volunteered. “There was an article about it in Fortune just last month. Isn’t that right, Ishy darling?”

  “That’s right,” said Isherwood Foster. “I read it myself.”

  “You see?” said Rafferty to The Fat Man. “Gremlins is classed as an Act of God, so I ain’t legally responsible for how they behave.”

  “That’s right, Raffy,” said Louella van Doren cheerfully. “I told you this ‘ud be fun,” she added in a loud aside to Isherwood Foster.

  The Fat Man quivered all over with piggy indignation. “What kind of a place is this?” he demanded.

  “A nice, clean, decent one,” said Moira.

  “As you can see,” added Rafferty.

  “Jee-zus Christ!” said The Fat Man.

  “Here,” said Soleful Susie, “if you’ll just move aside I’ll get your stool set up for you again.”

  The Fat Man turned and glared at her, like he was contemplating using her for a toilet-plunger, then stumped over to the booth behind Byron Wilcox and eased himself into it. “I could use another drink,” he said, obviously doing his best to keep himself under control. “How about it, sister?”

  “Be right with you, sir,” said Soleful Susie. She upended the stool and set it back in place.

  The Fat Man sat glowering. He hadn’t left yet, though, in spite of the utmost provocation—which meant that he hadn’t just dropped by casually, like he’d tried to make it appear. So he had something on his mind—business, probably; I’ve had enough experience with businessmen that I can tell. It wasn’t good, clean, open-and-aboveboard business, either; otherwise he’d have come right out with it in the first place. I smelled a rat, in other words—a big, pink, slimy one.

  I also smelled a couple more gremlins, who’d presumably been whistled up by their friend to come and join in the fun at The Fat Man’s expense; they sort of flashed and glittered in the air, like Christmas-tree tinsel. And there was a land of electric tension building up, as the Probability Storm began to spill over from The Other Side. I felt all taut and tingly and keyed-up; I knew inside that something was about to break.

  Two of the gremlins darted over to The Fat Man’s booth; I couldn’t see what they were doing, but from the way The Fat Man was acting I guessed that they were amusing themselves by triggering off all sorts of itches and twitches and aches in his internal organs. The third gremlin drifted across to the booth where the two whiz kids were sitting; and I drifted over, too, being kind of interested in what might happen to their game. Spassky was bent over the board, about to move a pawn, when the gremlin got to him. He hesitated, then suddenly darted his hand across and shifted his queen one space to the left Fischer frowned; the move didn’t make sense to him. It wouldn’t have made sense to me, either, if the gremlin hadn’t brushed against me as it left, so I picked up the fact that this particular move would lead inevitably to a mate twenty-three turns later, unless Fischer happened to make exactly the right countermove eleven turns from now. Which he probably would, knowing the way gremlins work; in any case, I was sure this game would be one that would go down in the history books, at least the kind of history books that are read by three-dimensional chess freaks.

  Then one of the bottles behind the bar seemed to pick itself up and begin to shake itself. It was the molecules of the air doing it—I knew that—and the odds against its happening spontaneously were an uncountable number of trillions to one. There were no gremlins behind the bar—Moira is very strict on keeping them out from there—so I knew it was the anti-statistical chaos from The Other Side beginning to spill over. Isherwood Foster was watching the bottle bug-eyed, while Louella van Doren was prattling along beside him giving a highly inaccurate running commentary on just exactly what was happening. The Fat Man in his booth didn’t pay any attention; he was lost in his own miseries.

  Rafferty picked the bottle from the air and set it down carefully on the shelf. It stayed put. Rafferty has The Power, so he’s quite capable of handling that sort of thing.

  Soleful Susie was carrying a couple of drinks across to The Fat Man and Byron Wilcox; suddenly she slipped, and the two glasses flew off her tray as neatly as if they’d been aimed and cascaded their contents down the front of The Fat Man’s suit. That was gremlins’ work—I could tell. Moira could, too, and she waggled an admonitory finger in their general direction; she doesn’t like to have gremlins taking advantage of poor Susie. The Fat Man was too immersed in his internal indignities to pay much attention to what was happening to him.

  More bottles started dancing on the shelves, clinking together; the sound gradually formed into the opening bars of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The chance of that happening naturally was infinitesimal. I knew then that the Storm was upon us.

  And with it came a flurry of gremlins, tens and hundreds of them. There were so many that from now on I wasn’t able to distinguish between what was gremlins’ doings and what was caused by the Probability Storm itself. Maybe it didn’t make any difference, anyway; after all, old Ludwig Kleinsdorfer has always claimed that gremlins are merely improbabilities personified, much as I am now; and while Kleinsdorfer may be crazy, he isn’t so crazy that he isn’t absolutely right every now and then. But be that as it may, Rafferty’s was chaos from this point on.

  For me it was pretty chaotic, too, since I couldn’t avoid being sucked into it. I corporealized and decorporealized, bundled up and spread out into a spiral wave form, bobbing in and out of various people’s consciousnesses, all in a sort of cosmic waltz that whirled me up and dissolved me into dancing almost like a cloud of midges. But my being never quite disintegrated, and I retain all my memories intact—so you can take my word for everything I’m going to tell you. As a matter of fact, I was never the least bit confused—which is quite an accomplishment, and one that I have the right to be proud of.

  In the beginning, I’ve got to admit, I almost slipped into confusion. Everything seemed sort of hazy and distorted, as if I were seeing it through waves of flowing water. Everybody except Rafferty and Moira was all out of focus, as if they were on the edge of dissolving into the other people they might have been if their lives had gone otherwise than they actually had. Even the thin man that The Fat Man had swallowed up inside him was back, screaming his head off to be let out—I don’t mean screaming out loud, because he had no vocal cords of his own; it was an etheric scream, which only I and the gremlins could hear. Rafferty’s flowed too—not the walls themselves, which were solid and secure enough, but the bar and the booths and the stools and all the fixtures, which might have been set up subtly otherwise even by a masterhand such as Rafferty’s. But all this was only at first; then I began to catch the rhythm and flow with it, and everything became clearer.

  But only for a moment. Then suddenly I was bunched up and concentrated inside the consciousness of James Clerk Maxwell. I’d never been corporealized in a cat before; and believe me, it’s quite an experience. I was curled up in the
rear booth, peacefully dreaming of my happy kittenhood, when all of a sudden it struck me that there were dozens of she-cats I’d known that I might have had but for one reason or another hadn’t. The specters of all those might-have-been shes rose en masse in my mind as if they were all physically present, a great roiling phalanx of them; the air was redolent with their rich musky scent. That scent was calling me, and I was horny as hell, and I rose and arched my back and yawned and spread out all my front claws, and then I settled back onto my haunches and let out a deep musical yowl that was compounded half of excitement and half of sheer unalloyed frustration at all those golden opportunities that seemed almost palpably present but I knew somehow I’d had the misfortune to miss forever. Then my eyes happened to light on Louella van Doren, who was also emitting a rich musky odor of civet that I could pick up even from here (I suppose it was her perfume; not being gifted with a sense of smell when I’m in my decorporeal state, I hadn’t noticed it before); and then all at once, willy-nilly, I was her instead of James Clerk Maxwell.