As the guests settled themselves at the table, one of the English neurologists, Dr. Axon-a jovial, red-cheeked man who probably hunted as a hobby-asked Dr. Carter, "Does your theory actually propose that there are real tangible universes on all sides of us in hyperspace?"
"In superspace," Carter corrected genially. "Yay-us," he added blandly. "There are millions of such universes. Or to be more precise, there are about 10100 of them. Ah only refer to possible universes," he explained quickly, lest anybody think his theory was extravagant.
"Some more wine heah," Carter's brother said loudly. "Ah think you've had enough, Bill-uh," Carter muttered in an undertone.
"Do you think President Kennedy will get the space-cities program through Congress, now that the space factories are paying for themselves?" asked the other English neurologist, a pale, saturnine man named Dr. Dendrite.
"Ah don't understand politics," James Earl Carter said. "Ahm a scientist."
"Some MORE WINE heah," Carter's brother repeated. "Then there are universes in which I was never born." Dr. Axon pursued his own line of thought.
"There are universes in which John Baez became a general instead of a folk singer," Carter said easily. "Ah suppose he would be equally vehement about nuking people as he now is about not nuking them. If it's a possible universe, it exists. The equations say so. All ah've done, really, is to show that any other interpretation of the equations is contradictory."
"Somebody ought to psychoanalyze the physicists," the Austrian psychiatrist muttered to the Swedish film director.
"It's like the Buddhist concept of karma," the Swedish film director said. "We all get to play every role, somewhere in hyperspace."
"Superspace," Carter corrected again.
"Then there's a universe where Kennedy is a physicist," Eva Gebloomenkraft said, "and you're President of Unistat."
"Well, Carter said with his genial smile, "ah hope ah could get along with the people who run the country. What do they call themselves-the Triangular Connection?"
"I don't care whether this theory is true or not," the German novelist pronounced. "As a metaphor, it is perfect. We all live in parallel universes. I am Faust in my universe, and the rest of you are all extras or walk-ons. But each of you is Faust in his universe, and I am an extra-maybe just a spear carrier."
But by this time the wineglasses had been refilled several times and everybody was getting more relaxed, especially the physicist's brother, Billy, who was heard reciting to Ms. Gebloomenkraft, "Who Burgered? Tom Burgered! Bullburger! Who Burgered?"
"… the Second Oswald… in Hong Kong…" somebody was muttering at the other end of the table.
"In some universe maybe Schiller didn't write Faust at all…"
"I wonder," Dendrite said, "if there's a universe where Pope Stephen became a singer instead of a priest."
"Everyboduh knew that 'Who Burgered?' routine when we were growing up in Georgia," Billy was saying.
"Verdammte publishers," the German novelist was telling the Swiss theologian. "They're all thieves."
"Did somebody mention Pope Stephen?" the theologian asked.
"Strumpfbander, Strumpfbander, Strumpfbander," the psychiatrist chortled.
"They stay up nights thinking of new ways to cheat their writers," the novelist rambled on, now evidently addressing his wineglass, since nobody else was listening to him.
"I'd like to know who started all those rumors about Pope Stephen," the theologian fumed.
"I have written a poem commemorating your great discovery," Francois Loup-Garou told Dr. Carter, hacking his way into a pause in the conversation.
"A poem about me? In French?" Carter was enthused. "Ah love French poetry, especially RAM-BOW."
"No," Loup-Garou said, "in your honor, I have written it in English." Actually, he had written it in English to get even with T. S. Eliot, who had written a few rondels in French.
"Ah wonder if you could recite it," Carter prompted.
"Certainly," said Loup-Garou. And he began to declaim:
Schrodinger's cat and Wigner's friend
Cause us problems without end
The cat is both alive and dead
In the math that's in our head
And the regression of Von Neumann
Never ceases to annoy Man
The uncertainty just has no end
Until Wigner goes to tell his friend
For, until the friend receives the news
That the cat still purrs and mews
The cat remains (suspended Fate!)
In some formal Eigenstate
"Some MORE WINE heah!" Carter's brother bellowed at the butler.
Loup-Garou frowned and went on:
But if Wigner makes a beeline
To report the now-dead feline
All the friend can really know
Is just one branch of time's swift flow
For in Carter's multispace
Every time-branch has its place
So the cat remains alive
In the half cases (That's.5)
Lead us not to Copenhagen,
Nor to Shylock, nor to Fagin:
"The result's not parsimonious!"
Yet I find it quite harmonious
Nobody understood this except Dr. Carter himself, but he was so moved that his eyes watered a bit. "Ahm honored," he kept saying, shaking his head. "To have a poem written about me by a French artist in English. …"
But at this point the chef exploded into the room, haggard and wild-eyed. "The goats!" he cried. "They march!"
And indeed it was true; the goats had gotten out of the pantry. It took ten minutes, and a great deal of exertion for both the house staff and the guests, before the animals were rounded up and herded back to captivity.
Everybody was breathing a bit heavily by then, and the Austrian psychiatrist muttered something about "artistic temperament," which Loup-Garou unfortunately overheard.
"There is nothing esoteric about the artistic temperament," he replied, flatly and dogmatically. "The real mystery-and the tragedy of humanity-is that so many lack esthetic sensibility. I sometimes believe the legend that there are robots among us, passing themselves off as human beings."
"That's absurd," Dr. Axon said. "If I were to claim that everybody should be a neurologist, you would all quite properly regard that as an eccentricity. Yet when an artist says we should all be artists, we are apt to agree, a bit sheepishly. And if a religious person says we should all be religious, we not only agree, but feel a bit guilty about our shortcomings in that department. Well, I've never had an artistic or religious impulse in my life, and I'm not ashamed of the fact."
"Research is your art and your religion," said the Japanese monk, speaking for the first time. "What a person truly is, in any universe, is the Buddha Nature," he added blandly. He knew that he existed in this continuum only to make that one Dharma revelation, so he immediately resumed his impassive silence.
The others decided that the monk's remarks made no sense.
"What do you think, Dr. Axon," Loup-Garou asked rhetorically, "if only a few people had sex in their lives, and the majority were, not merely ascetics, but simply unaware of sex-deaf, dumb, and blind to the erotic side of life? Would you not think that was at least a little bit odd, a symptom, perhaps, of some pathology? ArrrrrrrrrghH!"