The Hollow Man (35 page)

But you said that teleportation was impossible
.

“Not teleportation …” He begins pacing, rubbing his cheek. Then he fumbles through the junk drawer and comes up with a pen, sets the chair back up, draws it over next to Gail’s, and begins sketching on a napkin. “Remember this diagram? I showed it to you right after my first analysis of Jacob’s data.”

Gail looks down at the doodle of a tree with its branchings and rebranchings.
No, I … oh, yes, that parallel-world idea that some mathematician had. I told you that it was an old idea in science fiction
.

“These aren’t parallel worlds,” says Jeremy, still scribbling branches from branches, “they’re probability variantes
that Hugh Everett worked out in the 1950s to give a more rational explanation of the Copenhagen interpretation. See, when you do the two-slit experiment and look at it Everett’s way without the quantum-mechanics paradoxes intact, all the separate elements of a superposition of states obey the wave equation with total indifference to the actuality of the other elements.…” He is scribbling equations next to the tree.

Whoa! Wait. Slow down. Think words
.

Jeremy sets down the pen and rubs his cheek again. “Jacob used to write to me about his theory of reality branching.…”

Like your probability-wave thing? That we’re all like surfers on a crest of the same wave because our brains break down the same wavefronts or something?

“Yeah. That was my interpretation. It was the only theory that explained why all these different holographic wavefronts … all these different minds … saw pretty much the same reality. In other words I was interested in why we all saw the same particle or wave go through the same slit. But while I was interested in the micro, Jacob wanted to talk about the macro.…”

Moses,
Gandhi, Jesus, and Newton
, offered Gail, sorting out his jumble of thoughts.
Einstein and Freud and Buddha
.

“Yeah.” Jeremy is still scribbling equations on the napkin, but he is not paying attention to what he is writing. “Jacob thought that there were a few people in history—he called them ultimate perceptives—a few people whose new vision of physical laws, or moral laws, or whatever was so comprehensive and powerful that they essentially caused a paradigm shift for the entire human race.”

But we know that paradigm shifts come with big, new ideas, Jerry
.

No, no, kiddo. Jacob didn’t think this was just a shift in
perspective.
He was convinced that a mind that could conceive of such a major shift in reality could literally change the universe … make physical laws change to match the new common perception
.

Gail frowns. “You mean Newtonian physics didn’t work before Newton? Or relativity before Einstein? Or real meditation before Buddha?”

Something like that. The seeds were all there, but the total plan wasn’t in place until some great mind focused on it.…
Jeremy abandons language as he begins seeing the math diagrams of it. Vague Attractors of Kolmogorov winding like incredibly complex fiber-optic cables, carrying their message of chaos while the small resonance-island nodes of classical quasi-periodic linear functions nestle like tiny seeds in the substance of uncollapsed probability.

Gail understands. She moves to the table on unsteady legs and collapses into a chair. “Jacob … his obsession with the Holocaust … his family …”

Jeremy touches her hand. “My guess was that he was trying to concentrate totally on a world in which the Holocaust never occurred. The pistol wasn’t just an instrument of death for him, it was the means by which he could force the experiment. It was a probability nexus … the ultimate act of observation in the two-slit experiment.”

Gail’s hand curls around his.
Did he … jaunt? Did he go to one of those other branches? Someplace where his family is still alive?

“No,” whispers Jeremy. He touches his scribbled diagram with a shaking finger. “See, the branches never cross … there could be no way to go from one to the other. Electron A can never become Electron B, only ‘create’
the other. Jacob died.” Even as he feels the swirl of grief from Gail, he blocks it out as a new thought strikes him. For a moment the intensity of the idea is so powerful that it is like a mindshield between them.

What?
demands Gail.

Jacob knew that
, he sends, the thoughts coming almost too rapidly to formulate.
He knew that he could not travel to a separate Everett-branch superpositional reality … a
world where the Holocaust had never happened, say … but he could
exist
there
.

Gail shakes her head. ??????

Jeremy grips her forearms.
See, kiddo, he could
exist
there. If his concentration were total enough … all-encompassing … then in that microsecond before the bullet took out his mind, he could have brought the Everett counter-reality into existence. And that branch
 … Jeremy stabs at a random branch in his diagram.
That branch could have
him
in it … and his family who died in the Holocaust … and all the millions of others
.

“And his daughter, Rebecca?” Gail says softly. “Or his second wife? They were part of his … of
our
reality because of the Holocaust.”

Jeremy is dizzy. He goes to the sink for a glass of water. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “I just don’t know. But Jacob must have thought so.”

Jerry,
what kind of mind would it take to … what did you say? … encompass all of a counter-reality. Could any person really do that?

He pauses. Knowing Gail’s resistance to religious metaphors, he still has to try to explain through one.
Maybe that’s what the Garden of Gethsemane was about, kiddo. And maybe even the Garden of Eden
.

He does not feel the flash of anger with which Gail usually responds to a religious concept. He senses instead
a great shifting in her thinking as she encounters a profound religious truth without the absurdities of religion getting in her way. For the first time in her life Gail shares some of her parents’ awe at the spiritual potential of the universe.

Jerry
, she shares in a mental whisper,
the Garden of Eden fable … the important thing wasn’t the forbidden fruit, or the knowledge of sin it’s supposed to represent … it’s the Tree! The Tree of Life is precisely that … your probability tree … Jacob’s reality branches! Mother always used to quote Jesus saying ‘My Father’s house has many rooms.…’ Worlds without end
.

For a while they do not talk or share mindtouch. Each walks alone in his or her thoughts. Both are sleepy, but neither wants to go to bed quite yet. They douse the lantern light and go out front to rock on the porch swing awhile, to listen to Gernisavien purring from her place on Gail’s lap, and to watch the stars burn above the hillside to the east.

T
hey take a picnic lunch to the shore the next day, bypassing Big Slide Mountain to descend to the beach north of their earlier spot. The sky is a flawless blue and it is very warm. Gernisavien had wakened from her midday nap to stare at them with sleepy, disinterested eyes and had shown not the slightest interest in accompanying them. They left her behind with a command to guard the house. The calico had blinked at their foolishness.

After lunch Jeremy declares that he is going to follow his mother’s admonition to wait an hour before going into the water, but Gail laughs at him and runs into the surf. “It’s warm today!” she shouts from forty feet out. “
Really.
”

“Uh-huh, sure,” calls Jeremy, but he does not want to doze now. He gets to his feet, steps out of his shorts, and begins walking toward her.

NO!!!

The blast roars from the sky, the earth, and the sea. It knocks Jeremy into the surf and thrusts Gail’s head underwater. She flails, splashes to make the shallows, and crawls gasping from the receding surf.

NO!!!

Jeremy staggers across the wet sand to Gail, lifts her, and holds her against the sudden violence. Wind roars around them and throws sand a hundred feet into the air. The sky twists, wrinkles like a tangled sheet on the line in a high wind, and changes from blue to lemon yellow to a deathly gray. Jeremy hangs on to Gail as they both fall to their knees while the sea rolls out in a giant slack tide and leaves dry, dead land where it recedes. The earth pitches and shifts around them. Lightning flashes along the horizon.

NO!!! PLEASE!

Suddenly the dunes are gone, the cliffs are gone, and the receding sea has disappeared. Where it had been a second before, a dull expanse of salt flat now stretches to infinity. The sky continues to shift down through darker and darker grays.

There is a sudden flash to the east, as if the sun is rising again. No, Jeremy and Gail realize, the light is moving. Something is crossing the wasteland toward them.

They climb to their feet again, Gail starts to break away, but Jeremy holds her tight. There is nowhere to run. The beach and mountain and cliffs behind them are gone … there is only desolation stretching to infinity
in each direction … and the light moves across the dead land toward them.

The radiance grows brighter, shifts, sends out streamers that make both of them squint and shield their eyes. The air smells of ozone and the hair on their arms stands out.

Jeremy and Gail find themselves leaning toward the blaze of pure light as if toward a strong wind. Their shadows leap sixty feet behind them and light strikes their bodies like a shock wave from an atomic blast. Through their fingers they watch while the radiance approaches and resolves itself into a double figure just visible through the corona.

It is a human figure astride a great beast. If a god were truly to come to earth, this then is the perfect human form he would choose. The beast the god rides is featureless, but besides its own corona of light it gives off a sense of … warmth, softness, infinite solace.

Robby is before them, high on the back of his teddy bear.

TOO WEAK! CANNOT KEEP

The god is not used to limiting himself to language, but he is making the effort. Each syllable strikes Gail and Jeremy like electrical surges to the brain.

Jeremy tries to reach out with his mind, but it is no use. Once at Haverford he had gone with a promising student to the coliseum where they were setting up for a rock concert. He had been standing in front of a scaffolded bank of speakers when the amplifiers were tested at full volume. This is much worse than that.

They are standing on a flat, reticulated plain. There are no horizons. Above them levels of translucent, gray-colored
nothingness cover them like the cold folds of a plastic shroud. White banks of curling fog are approaching now from all directions. The only light comes from the Apollo-like figure before them. Jeremy turns his head to watch the fog advance; what it touches, it erases.

“Jerry, what …” shouts Gail over the rising wind that drowns out their mindtouch.

Suddenly Robby’s thoughts strike them again with physical force. He has given up an attempt at structuring language, and images cascade over them. The visual and auditory images are vaguely distorted, miscolored, and tinged with an aura of wonder and newness around a core of sorrow. Jeremy and Gail reel from their impact.

With the images comes the emotional overlay, almost unbearable in its knife-sharp intensity: discovery, loneliness, an end to loneliness, wonder, fatigue, love, sadness, sadness, sadness.

Gail looks around in terror as the fog boils and reaches its tendrils for them. It is closing around the god on his mount, already obscuring his brilliance.

Gail sets her face against her husband’s.
My God, why is he doing this? Why can’t he leave us alone?

Jeremy raises the volume of his thoughts above the roar all around them.
Touch him! Reach him!

They step forward together and Gail extends a shaking hand. The fog obscures all but the fading corona. She
jerks at the electric shock as her hand melds with the radiance, but she keeps her hand in place.

My God, Jerry, he’s just a baby. A frightened child
.

Jeremy extends his hand until the three are a circle of contact.
He’s dying, Gail. He’s been holding me here against terrible forces … he’s been fighting to keep us together, but I can’t stay. He’s too weak to hold me … he can’t resist the pull any longer
.

Jerry!

Jeremy pulls away, breaking the circle.
If I stay any longer, I’ll destroy us all
. With that thought he steps closer and touches Gail on the cheek. Gail sees what he plans and starts to protest, but he pulls her closer and hugs her fiercely. They both feel Robby as part of the embrace, even while Jeremy’s mindtouch amplifies the hug, adding to it all of the shades of feeling that neither human touch nor human language can communicate in full.

Then he pushes away from both of them and turns before he can change his mind. The fog surrounds him almost instantly. One second Robby is visible only as a fading glow in the white mist, an Apollo child clutching the neck of his teddy bear, Gail little more than a gesturing shadow next to him, and then they are gone and Jeremy is plunging deeper into the cold whiteness.

Five paces into the fog and he can see nothing, not even his own body.

Three more paces and the ground drops out from beneath him.

Then he is falling.

T
he room was white, the bed was white, and the windows were rectangles of white light. A monitor somewhere out of sight electronically echoed his heartbeat.

Bremen moaned and moved his head.

There was a plastic tube of oxygen hissing under his nose. An IV bottle caught the light and he could see the bruises on his inner arm above where the needle was hidden under gauze. Bremen’s body and skull were one vast, integrated ache.