Worlds of Maybe Read online

  He spent most of the day studying Crosstime, Inc. News stories, official handouts, personal interviews. The incredible suicide rate among Crosstime pilots could not be coincidence. He wondered why nobody had noticed it before.

  It was slow going. With Crosstime travel, as with relativity, you had to throw away reason and use only logic. Trimble had sweated it out. Even the day’s murders had not distracted him.

  They were typical, of a piece with the preceding eight months’ crime wave. A man had shot his foreman with a gun bought an hour earlier, then strolled off toward police headquarters. A woman had moved through the back row of a dark theater, using an ice pick to stab members of the audience through the backs of their seats. She had chosen only young men. They had killed without heat, without concealment; they had surrendered without fear or bravado. Perhaps it was another kind of suicide.

  Time for coffee, Trimble thought, responding unconsciously to a dry throat plus a fuzziness of the mouth plus slight fatigue. He set his hands to stand up, and—

  The image came to him in an endless row of Trimbles, lined up like the repeated images in facing mirrors. But each image was slightly different. He would go get the coffee and he wouldn’t and he would send somebody for it, and someone was about to bring it without being asked. Some of the images were drinking coffee, a few had tea or milk, some were smoking, some were leaning too far back with their feet on the desks (and a handful of these were toppling helplessly backward), some were, like this present Trimble, introspecting with their elbows on the desk. Damn Crosstime anyway.

  He’d have had to check Harmon’s business affairs, even without the Crosstime link. There might have been a motive there, for suicide or murder, though it had never been likely.

  In the first place, Harmon had cared nothing for money. The Crosstime group had been one of many.

  At the time that project had looked as harebrained as the rest: a handful of engineers and physicists and philosophers determined to prove that the theory of alternate time tracks was reality.

  In the second place, Harmon had no business worries.

  Quite the contrary.

  Eleven months ago an experimental vehicle had touched one of the worlds of the Confederate States of America and returned. The universes of alternate choice were within reach. And the pilot had brought back an artifact.

  From that point on, Crosstime travel had more than financed itself. The Confederate world's “stapler,” granted an immediate patent, had bought two more ships. A dozen miracles had originated in a single, technologically advanced timeline, one in which the catastrophic Cuba War had been no more than a wet firecracker. Lasers, oxygen-hydrogen rocket motors, computers, strange plastics—the list was still growing. And Crosstime held all the patents.

  In those first months the vehicles had gone off practically at random. Now the pinpointing was better. Vehicles could select any branch they preferred. Imperial Russia, Amerindian America, the Catholic Empire, the dead worlds. Some of the dead worlds were hells of radioactive dust and intact but deadly artifacts. From these worlds Crosstime pilots brought strange and beautiful works of art which had to be stored behind leaded glass.

  The latest vehicles could reach worlds so like this one that it took a week of research to find the difference. In theory they could get even closer. There was a phenomenon called ‘the broadening of the bands’. . .

  And that had given Trimble the shivers.

  When a vehicle left its own present, a signal went on in the hangar, a signal unique to that ship. When the pilot wanted to return, he simply cruised across the appropriate band of probabilities until he found the signal. The signal marked his own unique present.

  Only it didn’t. The pilot always returned to find a clump of signals, a broadened band. The longer he stayed away, the broader was the signal band. His own world had continued to divide after his departure, in a constant stream of decisions being made both ways.

  Usually it didn’t matter. Any signal the pilot chose represented the world he had left. And since the pilot himself had a choice, he naturally returned to them all. But—

  There was a pilot by the name of Gary Wilcox. He had been using his vehicle for experiments, to see how close he could get to his own timeline and still leave it. Once, last month, he had returned twice.

  Two Gary Wilcoxes, two vehicles. The vehicles had been wrecked—their hulls intersected. For the Wilcoxes it could have been sticky, for Wilcox had a wife and family. But one of the duplicates had chosen to die almost immediately.

  Trimble had tried to call the other Gary Wilcox. He was too late. Wilcox had gone skydiving a week ago. He’d neglected to open his parachute.

  Small wonder, thought Trimble. At least Wilcox had had motive. It was bad enough, knowing about the other Trimbles, the ones who had gone home, the ones drinking coffee, et cetera. But—suppose someone walked into the office right now, and it was Gene Trimble?

  It could happen.

  Convinced as he was that Crosstime was involved in the suicides, Trimble—some other Trimble—might easily have decided to take a trip in a Crosstime vehicle. A short trip. He could land here.

  Trimble closed his eyes and rubbed at the corners with his fingertips. In some timeline, very close, someone had thought to bring him coffee. Too bad this wasn’t it.

  It didn’t do to think too much about these alternate timelines. There were too many of them. The close ones could drive you buggy, but the ones farther off were just as bad.

  Take the Cuba War. Atomics had been used, here, and now Cuba was uninhabited, and some American cities were gone, and some Russian. It could have been worse.

  Why wasn’t it? How could we luck out? Intelligent statesmen? Faulty bombs? A humane reluctance to kill indiscriminately?

  No. There was no luck anywhere. Every decision was made both ways. For every wise choice you bled your heart out over, you had made all the other choices too. And so it went, all through history.

  Civil wars unfought on some worlds were won by either side on others. Elsewhen, another animal had first done murder with an antelope femur. Some worlds were still all nomad; civilization had lost out. If every choice was cancelled elsewhere, why make a decision at all?

  Trimble opened his eyes and saw the gun.

  That gun, too, was endlessly repeated on endless desks. Some of the images were dirty with years of neglect. Some smelled of gunpowder, fired recently, a few at living targets. Some were loaded. All were as real as this one.

  A number of these were about to go off by accident.

  A proportion of these were pointed, in deadly coincidence, at Gene Trimble.

  See the endless rows of Gene Trimble, each at his desk. Some are bleeding and cursing as men run into the room following the sound of the gunshot. Many are already dead.

  Was there a bullet in there? Nonsense.

  He looked anyway. The gun was empty.

  Trimble loaded it. At the base of his mind he felt the touch of the handle. He would find what he was seeking.

  He put the gun back on his desk, pointing away from him, and he thought of Ambrose Harmon, coming home from a late night. Ambrose Harmon, who had won five hundred dollars at poker. Ambrose Harmon, exhausted, seeing the lightening sky as he prepared for bed. Going out to watch the dawn.

  Ambrose Harmon, watching the slow dawn, remembering a two thousand dollar pot. He’d bluffed. In some other branching of time, he had lost.

  Thinking that in some other branching of time, that two thousand dollars included his last dime. It was certainly possible. If Crosstime hadn’t paid off, he might have gone through the remains of his fortune in the past four years. He liked to gamble.

  Watching the dawn, thinking of all the Ambrose Harmons on that roof. Some were penniless this night, and they had not come out to watch the dawn.

  Well, why not? If he stepped over the edge, here and now, another Ambrose Harmon would only laugh and go inside.

  If he laughed and went inside, other Ambros
e Harmons would fall to their deaths. Some were already on their way down. One changed his mind too late, another laughed as he fell. . . .

  Well, why not? . . .

  Trimble thought of another man, a nonentity, passing a firearms store. Branching of timelines, he thinks, looking in, and he thinks of the man who took his foreman’s job. Well, why not? . . .

  Trimble thought of a lonely woman making herself a drink at three in the afternoon. She thinks of myriads of alter egos, with husbands, lovers, children, friends. Unbearable, to think that all the might-have-beens were as real as herself. As real as this ice pick in her hand. Well, why not? . . .

  And she goes out to a movie, but she takes the ice pick.

  And the honest citizen with a carefully submerged urge to commit rape, just once. Reading his newspaper at breakfast, and there’s another story from Crosstime: they’ve found a world line in which Kennedy the First was assassinated. Strolling down a street, he thinks of world lines and infinite branchings, of alter egos already dead, or jailed, or President. A girl in a miniskirt passes, and she has nice legs. Well, why not? . . .

  Casual murder, casual suicide, casual crime. Why not? If alternate universes are a reality, then cause and effect are an illusion. The law of averages is a fraud. You can do anything, and one of you will, or did.

  Gene Trimble looked at the clean and loaded gun on his desk. Well, why not? . . .

  And he ran out of the office shouting, “Bentley, listen. I’ve got the answer. . . .”

  And he stood up slowly and left the office shaking his head. This was the answer, and it wasn’t any good. The suicides, murders, casual crimes would continue. . . .

  And he suddenly laughed and stood up. Ridiculous! Nobody dies for a philosophical point! . . .

  And he reached for the intercom and told the man who answered to bring him a sandwich and some coffee. . . .

  And picked the gun off the newspapers, looked at it for a long moment, then dropped it in the drawer. His hands began to shake. On a world line very close to this one . . .

  And he picked the gun off the newspapers, put it to his head and

  fired. The hammer fell on an empty chamber.

  fired. The gun jerked and blasted a hole in the ceiling.

  fired. The bullet tore a furrow in his scalp.

  fired. The bullet took off the top of his head.

  Living Space by Isaac Asimov

  Since the legendary Dr. Asimov is renowned for his imaginativeness, it is unsurprising that he should take an approach to the parallel-universe theme that had, I believe, never been mentioned before. Why not use the abundance of alternate worlds to solve Earth's population problem? Since the number of parallel universes is infinite, and the human population, however large it grows, must nevertheless remain finite, there should be room for everyone.

  Unless, of course, some other species also wants its slice of infinity . . .

  Clarence Rimbro had no objections to living in the only house on an uninhabited planet, any more than had any other of Earth’s even trillion of inhabitants.

  If someone had questioned him concerning possible

  objections, he would undoubtedly have stared blankly at the questioner. His house was much larger than any house could possibly be on Earth-proper, and much more modern. It had its independent air-supply and water-supply; ample food in its freezing compartments. It was isolated from the lifeless planet on which it was located by a force-field, but the rooms were built about a five-acre farm (under glass, of course) which, in the planet's beneficent sunlight, grew flowers for pleasure and vegetables for health. It even supported a few chickens. It gave Mrs. Rimbro something to do with herself afternoons, and a place for the two little Rimbros to play when they were tired of indoors.

  Furthermore, if one wanted to be on Earth-proper; if one insisted on it; if one had to have people around, and air one could breathe in the open, or water to swim in—one had only to go out of the front door of the house.

  So where was the difficulty?

  Remember, too, that on the lifeless planet on which the Rimbro house was located, there was complete silence except for the occasional monotonous effects of wind and rain. There was absolute privacy and the feeling of absolute ownership of two hundred million square miles of planetary surface.

  Clarence Rimbro appreciated all that in his distant way. He was an accountant, skilled in handling very advanced computer models; precise in his manners and clothing; not given much to smiling beneath his thin, well-kept mustache, and properly aware of his own worth. When he drove from work toward home, he passed the occasional dwelling-place on Earth-proper and he never ceased to stare at them with a certain smugness.

  Well, either for business reasons or due to mental perversion, some people simply had to live on Earth-proper. It was too bad for them. After all, Earth-proper's soil had to supply the minerals and basic food supply for all the trillion of inhabitants (in fifty years, it would be two trillion) and space was at a premium. Houses on Earth-proper just couldn't be any bigger than that; and people who had to live in them had to adjust to the fact.

  Even the process of entering his house had its mild pleasantness. Rimbro would enter the community twisting-place to which he was assigned (it looked, as did all such, like a rather stumpy obelisk) and there he would invariably find others waiting to use it. Still more would arrive before he reached the head of the line. It was a sociable time.

  “How’s your planet?” “How’s yours?” The usual small talk. Sometimes someone would be having trouble—machinery breakdowns, or serious weather that would alter the terrain unfavorably. Not often.

  But conversational cliches passed the time; then Rimbro would be at the head of the line. He would put his key into the slot; the proper combination would be punched; and he would be twisted into a new probability pattern—his own particular probability pattern. This was the one assigned him when he married and became a producing citizen—a probability pattern in which life had never developed on Earth. And twisting to this particular lifeless Earth, he would walk into his own foyer.

  Just like that.

  Rimbro never worried about being in another probability; why should he? He never gave it any thought. There were an infinite number of possible Earths, and each existed in its own niche, its own probability pattern. Since on a planet such as Earth, there was—according to calculation—about a fifty-fifty chance of life developing, half of all the possible Earths (still infinite, since half of infinity was infinity) possessed life, and half (still infinite) did not. And living on about three hundred billion of the unoccupied Earths were three hundred billion families, each with its own beautiful house, powered by the sun of that probability, and each securely at peace. The number of Earths so occupied grew by millions each day.

  And then one day, Rimbro came home and Sandra (his wife) said to him, as he entered, “There’s been the most peculiar noise.”

  Rimbro’s eyebrows shot up and he looked closely at his wife. Except for a certain restlessness of her thin hands and a pale look about the corners of her tight mouth, she looked normal.

  Rimbro said, still holding his topcoat halfway toward the servette that waited patiently for it, “Noise? What noise? I don’t hear anything.”

  “It’s stopped now,” Sandra said. “Really, it was like a deep thumping or rumble. You’d hear it a bit, then it would stop. Then you’d hear it a bit, and so on. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

  Rimbro surrendered his coat. “But that’s quite impossible.”

  “I heard it.”

  “I’ll look over the machinery,” he mumbled. “Something may be wrong.”

  Nothing was wrong that his accountant’s eyes could discover and, with a shrug, Rimbro went to supper. He listened to the servettes hum busily about their different chores, watched one sweep up the plates and cutlery for disposal and recovery, then said, pursing his lips, “Maybe one of the servettes is out of order. I’ll check them.”

  “
It wasn’t anything like that, Clarence.”

  Rimbro went to bed, without further concern over the matter—and wakened with his wife’s hand clutching his shoulder. His hand went automatically to the contact-patch that set the walls glowing. “What’s the matter? What time is it?”

  She shook her head. “Listen! Listen/”

  Good Lord, thought Rimbro, there is a noise. A definite rumbling; it came and went.

  “Earthquake?” he whispered. Such things did happen, of course—though with all the planet to choose from, one could generally count on having avoided the faulted areas.

  “All day long?” asked Sandra, fretfully. “I think it’s something else.” And then she voiced the secret terror of every nervous householder. “I think there’s someone on the planet with us. This Earth is inhabited”

  Rimbro did the logical things. When morning came, he took his wife and children to his wife’s mother. He himself took a day off, and hurried to the Sector’s Housing Bureau.

  He was quite annoyed at all this.

  Bill Ching of the Housing Bureau was short, jovial, and proud of his part-Mongolian ancestry. He believed that probability patterns had solved every last one of humanity’s problems. Alec Mishnoff, also of the Housing Bureau, thought probability patterns were a snare into which humanity had been hopelessly tempted. Mishnoff had originally majored in archeology, and had studied a variety of antiquarian subjects, with which his delicately-poised head was still crammed. His face managed to look sensitive—despite overbearing eyebrows—and he lived with a pet notion that so far he had dared tell no one, though preoccupation with it had driven him out of archeology and into Housing.

  Ching was fond of saying, “The hell with Malthus!” It was almost a verbal trademark of his, “The hell with Malthus; we can’t possibly overpopulate now. However frequently we double and redouble, Homo sapiens remains finite in number, and the uninhabited Earths remain infinite. And we don’t have to put one house on each planet; we can put a hundred, a thousand, a million. Plenty of room and plenty of power from each probability sun.”