“You mean the trip drives them crazy?” I asked unbelievingly.
He chuckled. “Oh, no. You’re sane. It’s the rest of ’em. That’s the problem. And it gets worse and worse each season. But the trip’s extremely profitable. So we try to match the crew to the ship and hope they’ll accept it. If they do it’s one of the best damned ferry jobs there is.”
“But what causes it?” I managed. “I mean—I saw people dressed outlandishly. I saw other people walk through each other! I even saw a girl commit suicide, and nobody seemed to notice!”
McNeil’s face turned grim. “So that’s happened again. Too bad. Maybe someday there’ll be some chance to save her.”
“Look,” I said, exasperated. “There must be some explanation for all this. There has to be!”
The ticket agent shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette.
“Well, some of the company experts studied it. They say nobody can tell for sure, but the best explanation is that there are a lot of different worlds—different Earths, you might say—all existing one on top of the other, but you can’t see any one except the one you’re in. Don’t ask me how that’s possible or how they came up with it, it just is, that’s all. Well, they say that in some worlds folks don’t exist at all, and in others they are different places or doing different things—like getting married to somebody else or somesuch. In some, Canada’s still British, in some she’s a republic, in others she’s a fragmented batch of countries, and in one or two she’s part of the U.S. Each one of these places has a different history.”
“And this one boat serves them all?” I responded, not accepting a word of that cazy story. “How is that possible?”
McNeil shrugged again. “Who knows? Hell, I don’t even understand why that little light goes on in here when I flip the switch. Do most people? I just sell tickets and lower the ramp. I’ll tell you the Company’s version, that’s all. They say that there’s a crack—maybe one of many, maybe the only one. The ship’s route just happens to parallel that crack, and this allows you to go between the worlds. Not one ship, of course—twenty or more, one for each world. But, as long as they keep the same schedule, they overlap—and can cross into one or more of the others. If you’re on the ship in all those worlds, then you cross, too. Anyone coexisting with the ship in multiple worlds can see and hear not only the one he’s in but the ones nearest him, too. People perception’s a little harder the farther removed the world you’re in is from theirs.”
“And you believe this?” I asked him, still disbelieving.
“Who knows? Got to believe something or you’ll go nuts,” he replied pragmatically. “Look, did you get to St. Michael this trip?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Looked pretty much like this place.”
He pointed to the navigation atlas. “Try and find it. You won’t. Take a drive up through New Brunswick and around to the other side. It doesn’t exist. In this world, the Orcas goes from here to St. Clement’s Island and back again. I understand from some of the crew that sometimes Southport doesn’t exist, sometimes the Island doesn’t, and so forth. And there are so many countries involved I don’t even count.”
I shook my head, refusing to accept all this. And yet, it made a crazy kind of sense. These people didn’t see each other because they were in different worlds. The girl committed suicide five times because she did it in five different worlds—or was it five different girls? It also explained the outlandish dress, the strange mixture of vehicles, people, accents.
“But how come the crew sees people from many worlds and the passengers don’t?” I asked him.
McNeil sighed. “That’s the other problem. We have to find people who would be up here, working on the Orcas, in every world we service. More people’s lives parallel than you’d think. The passengers—well, they generally don’t exist on a particular run except once. The very few who do still don’t take the trip in every world we service. I guess once or twice it’s happened that we’ve had a passenger cross over, but, if so, we’ve never heard of it.”
“And how come I’m here in so many worlds?” I asked him.
McNeil smiled. “You were recruited, of course. The Corporation has a tremendous, intensive recruiting effort involving ferry lines and crewmembers. When they spot one, like you, in just the right circumstance in all worlds, they recruit you—all of you. An even worse job than you’d think, since every season one or two new Bluewater Corporations put identical ferries on this run, or shift routes and overlap with ours. Then we have to make sure the present crew can serve them, too, by recruiting your twin on those worlds.”
Suddenly I reached over, grabbed his beard, and yanked.
“Ouch! Damn it!” he cried and shoved my hand away.
“I—I’m sorry—I—” I stammered.
He shook his head and grinned. “That’s all right, son. You’re about the seventh person to do that to me in the last five years. I guess there are a lot of varieties of me, too.”
I thought about all that traffic. “Do others know of this?” I asked him. “I mean, is there some sort of hidden commerce between the worlds on this ferry?”
He grinned. “I’m not supposed to answer that one,” he said carefully. “But, what the hell. Yes, I think—no, I know there is. After all, the shift of people and ships is constant. You move one notch each trip if all of you take the voyage. Sometimes up, sometimes down. If that’s true, and if they can recruit a crew that fits the requirements, why not truck drivers? A hell of a lot of truck traffic through here year ’round, you know. No reduced winter service. And some of the rigs are really kinda strange-looking.” He sighed. “I only know this—in a couple of hours I’ll start selling fares again, and I’ll sell a half dozen or so to St. Michael—and there is no St. Michael. It isn’t even listed on my schedule or maps. I doubt if the Corporation’s actually the trader, more the middleman in the deal. But they sure as hell don’t make their millions off fares alone.”
It was odd the way I was accepting it. Somehow, it seemed to make sense, crazy as it was.
“What’s to keep me from using this knowledge somehow?” I asked him. “Maybe bring my own team of experts up?”
“Feel free,” McNeil answered. “Unless they overlap they’ll get a nice, normal ferry ride. And if you can make a profit, go ahead, as long as it doesn’t interfere with Bluewater’s cash flow. The Orcas cost the company over twenty-four million reals and they want it back.”
“Twenty-four million what?” I shot back.
“Reals,” he replied, taking a bill from his wallet. I looked at it. It was printed in red, and had a picture of someone very ugly labeled “Prince Juan XVI” and an official seal from the “Bank of New Lisboa.” I handed it back.
“What country are we in?” I asked uneasily.
“Portugal,” he replied casually. “Portuguese America, actually, although only nominally. So many of us Yankees have come in you don’t even have to speak Portuguese any more. They even print the local bills in Anglish, now.”
Yes, that’s what he said. Anglish.
“It’s the best ferryboat job in the world, though,” McNeil continued. “For someone without ties, that is. You’ll meet more different kinds of people from more cultures than you can ever imagine. Three runs on, three off—in as many as twenty-four different variations of these towns, all unique. And a month off in winter to see a little of a different world each time. Never mind whether you buy the explanation—you’ve seen the results, you know what I say is true. Want the job?”