The basic thesis, of a gang who murdered and robbed people who moved, was well substantiated, carefully argued, so there was no chance of a lawsuit. The editor’s criticisms concerned smaller matters: the style, the vocabulary.
Gary said that this was the typical fault finding crap you got from editors. Daphne threw the papers to the floor in a fury and said she couldn’t look at the article anymore. But they had to fix it without delay, because the substitute editor had given them only three days, and they had a run scheduled soon. Gary took the manuscript to his place. He put it on an end table and dropped into bed. After a night without sleep, he slept like a stone.
116
He was woken by people moving around suspiciously and a burnt smell. It was evening. He jumped up, and immediately his chin met with a fist. A flash of yellow, and he was on the floor. When he tried to get up, someone grabbed him by the collar, and another blow followed.
“You’re a truck driver, you shit, not a writer.” The words reached him between blows.
The Tunics again, he thought. This time they’ll finish me off…
They were thorough. Each time he fell, he was kicked in the ribs and thighs. As with the last beating, the pain deprived him of the will to fight. Someone kept pulling him up by his pajamas, and there was another burst of yellow, and he lost consciousness.
“Where’s the copy?”
“No copy,” he said, which was true, though it brought another blow. “There isn’t any.” It was too bad that Daphne hadn’t made one. A carbon copy would have satisfied the thugs.
“Stack, he’s telling the truth,” said a muffled voice. “Let’s take it and get out of here.”
A lot of footsteps.
He came to his senses quickly and ran to the dresser for the pistol. He had to get the manuscript back. The pistol was there—the attackers hadn’t found it. Running out, he removed the safety.
Eby was coming toward him up the steps. Apparently he had forgot something. He wore no mask. Gary shot him in the stomach. Eby waved his arms and made a face, as if astonished. Gary elbowed him aside and ran downstairs. He kicked open the door to the apartment on the ground floor. Stack and the third guy turned. They had managed to get rid of their masks.
“You sons of bitches!” Gary roared. “Give me that manuscript! The article!” Aiming at Stack.
“What article? What are you talking about, Gary?” Stack turned as green as his tunic. He stood rigid, at attention.
Gary’s finger must have moved on the trigger, because a shot rang out. Not a shot, a series of shots. Stack clutched his chest and dropped to his knees. Then he was facedown on the floor.
Margot ran in from the kitchen. A bullet caught her as she ran. More bullets flew, whistling. Jutta tried to crawl behind an armchair but didn’t make it. The last of the Tunics took three bullets: in his head, neck, and arm.
Gary looked down at his gun. It was too easy. When had he pulled the trigger? When had he aimed? The weapon was not completely recoilless—he would have felt himself shooting. He remembered one shot, on the stairs, at Eby, but only that one.
He stood, stunned. A police siren sounded in the street. Soon after, someone pinned his arms, someone else took away the pistol, and a third someone put handcuffs on him.
117
He waited in the cell until evening. Cukurca conducted the interrogation. He didn’t believe Gary’s story, because, as before, Gary had been beaten professionally, without marks. The notes and materials for the article were gone. The manuscript itself had burned, ignited by a cigarette. A charred hole in the upholstery was all that remained of it.
Cukurca expressed doubt that Gary had the ability to gun down his neighbors so efficiently, but he was withholding judgment until he heard from the ballistics expert. Gary’s story did not seem very likely. Fortunately most of the fired bullets were recovered. Gary claimed he had shot Eby only once, but three bullets were found in the body: in the stomach, the middle of the forehead, and the ribcage. Eleven bullets in all had been fired. The magazine of the police-issue Lupar Attac held fifteen rounds, and there were indeed four left in Gary’s pistol.
Gary asked to speak to Daphne, but that turned out to be impossible. Apparently, after his arrest, Sabine had called her, unaware that he and Daphne were a couple. The affair came to light, and Daphne would have nothing more to do with him.
118
I couldn’t sleep because of Bonacci Junior’s series. The author of Nest of Worlds made use of it, so he must have had some concept of Superworld Zero and Superworld Minus One. Superworld Zero doesn’t present that much of a problem, but Superworld Minus One (required by the first 1 in Bonacci’s series) seems totally absurd. From the formulas you get nonsense: the number of Lands in Superworld Minus One equals zero. The number of Significant Names is 12-1 = 1/12. Nonsense too. From this I draw the simple conclusion: the author of Nest of Worlds devised his laws so that Superworld Minus One would constitute a breach of logic!
Gavein bent back the second half of the card.
Zef had taped on another card: notes written later, perhaps that same day, or else he had taped it to continue his reasoning then and there.
Babcock allowed me access to the division’s computer. That is, to the library of programs available only to the sharks. Though I am a lowly graduate student!
In less than three-quarters of an hour I had the formula for length of time spent in a Land.
The number of years spent in a Land = 140/(N + 1)2.
With good accuracy this accounts for the time one must live in each Land, for each degree of nested world. For us, it’s thirty-five years. As it should be in normal reality!
But in the Superworlds?
In Superworld Zero you get 140 years, which isn’t ridiculous, because if you spend your entire life in one Land, then the duration of stay must equal your lifespan. And whoever heard of anyone living longer?
In Superworld Minus One the duration of stay is infinite.
And yet two ones sit at the beginning of Bonacci Junior’s series—so that the 2 that follows can follow. I can’t dismiss the first 1.
Therefore I repeat my analysis. Maybe I’ll have better luck the second time. The number of Significant Names comes to 1/12, but a Significant Name cannot have a fractional number. Do we then approximate, going to the nearest integer? That would mean zero Names, no Name, for the Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One. This is pure speculation, but I’ll write down what I think.
First: A Significant Name gives the path that death will take toward an inhabitant of a world. In Superworld Zero, the name is one: “You must die.” Or, in other words, the inhabitant is mortal. The absence of a Name for the Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One means that he is not mortal, since no Name hangs over his head. Which tells us nothing about whether or not he was born or has always existed. I write “Inhabitant” with a capital letter and not “inhabitants,” and this conclusion too I owe to a sleepless night.
Second: The number of Lands in which the Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One must live equals zero. I reasoned this out in the same way. Normally, we live in four Lands in turn; only death frees us from that obligation. Each inhabitant of Superworld Zero can stay in the whole world at any age, unconstrained by the obligation to travel to any Land, which is a subworld, because there are no subworlds in Superworld Zero. But the number of required Lands in Superworld Minus One equals zero, and therefore its Inhabitant does not necessarily dwell in the world; He may dwell outside it. This goes hand in hand with the infinite time passed in a Land.