"Far Potter Stewarting out," Simon said. "You mean, I dig red-haired women because my first Millett was with a red-haired girl in high school?"
"You've got it," Williams said. "If it had been a young um lady of color, you'd be one of those cats who only like to swing with Black chicks."
"If it had been with a boy," Simon said, "I'd be Gay!"
"That's it, that's it!" Clem Cotex cried. "If the Finkelstein multiworlds model in quantum mechanics is true, there are universes in which you did not take those imprints."
"Yeah," Simon said. "I can see myself hanging around Gay bars in one universe, chasing Black foxy ladies in another… My God, it's probably true on the semantic circuits too. There might be a universe where I imprinted mathematics instead of words. I might be a physicist or a computer specialist over there instead of a novelist…"
"And," Father Starhawk said solemnly, "there might be a universe where, with a different set of emotional and semantic imprints, I might be a professional criminal, a jewel thief, or something."
There was a pause while everybody considered what they had been saying.
"This is all rather speculative," Fred Digits said finally. "We're being carried away by our own rhetoric, I suspect."
"Urn another thing," Father Starhawk said. "People seem to be changing rather abruptly and in strange, unexpected ways lately. Those negative entropy connections and unusual combinations, you know? I mean, people who've been Straight all their lives and suddenly they're Gay or Bi or something. And conservatives suddenly becoming liberals, as if all the semantic imprints are fading everywhere. Stable people schizzing out. Emotional neurotics suddenly becoming mature. It can't all be the shocks of accelerating social change, can it?"
Blake Williams beamed. "That's the question I've been asking myself for months," he said, "and I think I have the answer. Gentlemen, all the so-called recreational drugs that have come into wide use in the last few decades may be chemical shock devices. I think people are bleaching out their old imprints, and accidentally making new ones, when they think they're just getting high and having fun."
"Wait a minute," Simon said. "Isn't there a guy in prison in California for the last twenty-seven years or so for saying that? Some psychiatrist named Sid Cohen or something?"
"Never heard of him," said Prime Time. "Besides, we don't put people in jail in this country for their ideas."
"Well, anyway," Simon said, "even if all these new imprints made with dope are more or less accidental and the people doing it don't know what they're doing actually, it sure has stirred up a lot of the creative energy we were talking about. New combinations-bizarre, unthinkable, taboo combinations-are forming in brains all over the world every few minutes. Maybe that's why the Libertarian Immortalist Party could come out of nowhere and win the election by a landslide. 'No more death and taxes.' My God, who would have thought of it, twenty years ago?"
After the meeting broke up Clem Cotex hung around the office awhile, bringing the files up to date, dusting the Venetian blinds, wondering why Dr. Hugh Crane, the most brilliant mind in the whole society, had been so quiet during this meeting, and also speculating idly about how the novel he was in was going to end.
There was a knock on the door.
"Come," said Clem. He had picked that up from his hero, Captain (now Admiral) James T. Kirk, and he thought it was much classier than "Come in."
A small, brown, charismatic Puerto Rican opened the door. "Hugo de Naranja," he said, introducing himself Continental fashion.
"Clem Cotex," Clem said. "What can I do for you?"
"You investigate the impossible, not so?"
"Have a seat," Clem said. "We investigate the Real," he added, "especially those parts that the narrow-minded and mentally constipated regard as impossible, yes."
Hugo sat down. "I am initiate," he said, "in Santaria. Also in Voudon. I am poet and shaman. I am also-how you say?-goan bananas over one meestery all my training in Magicko cannot explain. I theenk the Novelist play a treek on me."
"Oh, ah," Clem said thoughtfully, "you're aware that we're living in a novel?"
"Oh, si, is it not obvious?" Hugo smiled, one weathered quantum jumper to another. "You look at the leetle details, you see much treekery, no?"
"Remind me to study this Santaria sometime," Clem said. "It's given you a broad perspective, I can see. Now, what's your problem?"
"Poetry, it earns no much the dinero," Hugo said. "I work nights as watchman, to keep body and soul together. You know? So one night at the warehouse I see thees cat-thees son-of-a-beetch of a cat-and it is there and it is not there. You know?"
"Oh, certainly," Clem said. "You should take Blake Williams' course on quantum physics and neuropsychology."
"Son-of-a-beetch," Hugo said. "I took that course, but I no pay attention much. Just to get the credit to get the degree. You know? I mees something important?"
"Every modern poet and shaman should know quantum physics," Clem said sternly. "Specialization is old-fashioned. You see, Senor de Naranja, what you encountered was Schrodinger's Cat, and Schrodinger's Cat is only in this novel part of the time."
NO LIMITS ALLOWED
No limits allowed, no limits exist.
–john lily, The Center of the Cyclone
"The man from the FBI is here again," Ms. Karrig said, "with a man from the District Attorney's office."
Dr. Dashwood breathed deeply. "Send… them… in," he said as calmly as he could, clicking off the intercom.
He stared at the door for one frozen moment, still breathing deeply, relaxing every muscle; and then the door opened, and the two men came in.
I could jump out of the window, Dashwood thought. But then he controlled himself.
He recognized Tobias Knight at once, but the man from the D.A.'s office-who looked like a young Lincoln, or Henry Fonda playing young Lincoln-was a stranger.
"Dr. Dashwood," Knight said cordially, "this is Cotton DeAct, from the District Attorney's office."
"Named after Cotton Mather?" Dashwood asked inanely.
"Named after Cotton Hawes, the detective," DeAct said, looking embarrassed. "My mother was a great mystery-story fan."
"Oh," Dashwood said. There didn't seem to be any other appropriate comment.
There was a pause, and Dashwood noticed that Tobias Knight looked a bit embarrassed also.
"Well, gentlemen," he said heartily, "what can I do for you?"
"Hrrrmph!" DeAct cleared his throat. "Dr. Dashwood," he said formally, "there are two detectives from the Vice Squad waiting outside. They have a warrant for your arrest um for violating Section 666 of the revised criminal code ah Bestiality." He was actually blushing.
"I see," Dashwood said. He realized that his breath had become shallow and his muscles were tensing; with an effort, he relaxed. "I've known this day might come," he said with icy calm. "Why don't they just come in and arrest me, then?"