(Zero Lands may suggest that the Reader of Superworld Minus One Himself fills the Universe, is the Universe. But no, surely a universe can be no more than a passive collection of objects…)
I can’t figure out why the author made the number of Significant Names fractional but also greater than zero. Could it be that the Reader of Superworld Minus One, though immortal, had some brush with death?
To the card was glued one more piece of card, scribbled over. Gavein squinted to decipher the tiny scrawclass="underline"
Final conclusion: In both Superworlds there is only one version of the book that contains nested worlds. A solid trunk for the Tree! From this it follows that the world in which I live has no nested counterpart.
119
Gary was informed that Daphne Casali perished in a run. He had lost his only witness. Cukurca could testify only to the beatings Gary had received; the rest he didn’t believe. All the documentation that had been gathered to write the article was missing, and the manuscript had gone up in smoke. Eight bullets were found in the apartment, two on the stairs. All had come from Gary’s pistol.
The trial proceeded in a predictable way. The court ruled that Gary had fired all the shots. His excellent aim? He had developed that on the police firing range. Balloch’s testimony there was decisive. The newspaper editor-in-chief stated that Daphne had submitted no article, though he did remember a conversation about it some time ago and her proposal to write it. He had never had a temporary substitute at work, he said.
Even Gary’s lawyer doubted the existence of the lost manuscript. But manuscript or no manuscript, Gary had taken the law into his own hands.
He was found guilty of five counts of murder in the highest degree. The court gave no credence to the story that Gary had been beaten by his neighbors. There could be but one verdict: five consecutive life sentences. He would travel to Tolz after one sentence was served, by prison transport after he had served his fifteen years, six months, and twenty days. His possessions were all auctioned off; the money from their sale would cover some of the cost of his punishment. The loss of his possessions meant that he would have no means to appeal. The fivefold life sentence meant that he would sit in prison for the remainder of his days. Any mitigation of his punishment could do no more than reduce the number of his life sentences.
120
In the city jail he was given a double cell. It wasn’t bad. When he put the stool on the table and stood on it, he could see, through chinks in the rusty metal blinds, parts of the street, a miserable little lawn, a tree with a grate around it, and occasionally a pedestrian. If he was lucky, the pedestrian would be a woman.
His cellmate was a character called Humpty who had done time before. By two months they had discussed, in full, everything there was for them to discuss. Humpty was an income tax evader. He had received the minimum sentence—that is, to the day of his departure—which for him came to three years. In Tolz he could begin a new life. For income tax crime you didn’t lose your possessions.
But one day Humpty said something new:
“You were set up.”
It was a hot day and stifling in the cell. Humpty was fat. He sweat like a pig, panted, but never stopped eating. For a small bribe the guards brought him extra food.
Gary perked up his ears.
“Here’s how they did it,” Humpty went on. “The beatings you got were staged. You never saw your attackers’ faces.”
“Not with the stockings they wore,” said Gary. He was chewing a crust of black bread.
“Exactly. And they used names so you would think they were the Tunics.”
Gary nodded but wasn’t convinced.
“You left the door open when you barged in on the Tunics. The other guys fired from the corridor behind you.”
“The bullets were from my gun.”
“The bullets were from the same kind of gun. The Lupar has a modular barrel. They fired and then switched the barrels. You fired only once, at Eby. That was the missing bullet. After all the killing, when you were still in a daze, one of them finished Eby off.”
“But what was Eby doing on the stairs?”
“Maybe he heard sounds of the fighting and was coming to help you.”
Proud of himself, Humpty wolfed down a hamburger. He had unpleasantly humid eyes. Ketchup dribbled from the corners of his mouth.
Gary stretched out on his bunk, hands behind his head. “To help me, you say. And I…” He was silent for a moment. Then he sat up, the shirt sticking to his sweaty back. “But why would they go to all that trouble? To put an unimportant guy out of the way? It makes no sense.”
Humpty opened a can of Lone Sail. He chugged down half of it, gasped for breath, and with his sleeve wiped the foam and ketchup from his mouth. He burped softly and began another hamburger.
“You were not an unimportant guy,” he said, knowing that he had Gary’s attention. He gave a wink, his gaze more humid than usual. He sipped slowly at the rest of the beer.
Gary sat forward. “Come one, Humpty, tell me. You can’t spend all day on that beer. Your hamburger will get cold.”
“I think it had to do with that furniture, the Amido, the clock. Maybe they take back, from the people moving, everything that wasn’t paid for… The possessions remain in Mougarrie that way. The next person buys them on credit. Not a bad business to run. And of course it’s important, seeing as they went to such lengths to keep it out of the newspaper.”
“You think they killed the Bolyas?”
“I don’t know. The blood in the Amido doesn’t have to mean that. In three years I move to Tolz, but I won’t try to find out if Spig and Suzie Bolya are alive. You’re surprised?”
“Not at all. You always were a little shit, Humpty.” “Little” sounded funny, since Humpty was a head taller than him.
“Little shits live longer,” said Humpty. His blue eyes were so pale, they were hardly different from the whites. On his revolting mouth formed something that resembled a smile.
121
My idea, once it hatched, has become an obsession. I can’t look at reality now except as a narrative in a book. The days pass monotonously, however, as if the main action is not with me but elsewhere. At least the reading still absorbs.
Today I came across a note in the margin made by Wilcox: “Our world is a book. Dave, Zef, and I are all alter egos of the author.”
He got that right. Though the alter ego thing is an exaggeration. Wilcox was plenty smart, though he didn’t show it at the beginning.
122
If the book is a nested world, then its reader, by reading, moves time in it. When the reader stops, time stops. But how can time be stopped? Perhaps it becomes a semiconscious state of the world’s inhabitants, who reminisce. Because what can they experience beyond what has already been written in the book?