Nest of Worlds (27 page)

To sum up. I have two formulas.

The number of Lands = (n + 2)
2
.

The number of Significant Names = 12
(n +
1)
.

Plus: two sequences of numbers for which I have found no rule of progression, though I am certain that a rule exists.

Consider, Dave: since n is merely the number of the world chosen by me, it should be possible . . . But surely now you see it. If not, then, amigo, you have concrete inside your skull and no amount of nose picking will help. The solution lies under the folded card . . .

A good thing that his notes are so complete, thought Gavein. If he had jotted down only a few numbers, his ideas would all have perished with him.

Though thinking this was a capitulation.

The folded index card had been glued shut, for security, by some of the brain matter Zef alluded to. Gavein unstuck it. The card read:

The solution is simplicity itself. I get rid of a constant by changing the numbering. For example, if you take N = n + 1, then

The number of Lands = (N + 1)
2
.

The number of Significant Names = 12
N
.

Both formulas become prettier, for they are simpler.

So the world of Gary and Daphne will have the number N = 1 + 1 = 2, the world of Jaspers and company N = 3, the world of Ozza and Hobeth N = 4, and the world of Jack and Linda N = 5.

By changing the numbering, one of the constants drops out of my terrific formulas, but the question now arises: What world has the number N = 1?

Reading Zef’s notes was annoying: his facility in manipulating formulas, his substitution of variables, his quick conclusions. But possibly the kid had thought things through solidly and was recording only the best fruits of his labor . . .

It came to me in a flash! If you can’t guess which world, I’ll write it out for you. Here is what we know about that world from the formulas: it has 2
2
, that is, 4 Lands, and in it there are 12
1
, or 12, Significant Names. It’s
our
world! The four Lands: Lavath, Davabel, Ayrrah, and Llanaig. The Significant Names are:
Aeriel
,
Udarvan
,
Flued
,
Flomir
—the Names of Element;
Vorior
,
Plosib
,
Murhred
,
Sulled
—the Names of Conflict; and
Yacrod
,
Aktid
,
Intral
,
Myzzt
—the Names of Man.

Nest of Worlds
has been nested in our world according to the same rules of nesting obeyed by the worlds that follow in the sequence. The two versions of
Nest of Worlds
aren’t two trees, as I thought. No, they are two branches that have grown from a common trunk, from the World!

Behold what a powerful instrument is the ability to juggle constants in a formula. It has revealed the hidden idea of the author of the book, the book I’m reading!

One final point, a nut that still requires gnawing.

If the World has number N = 1, then according to the author’s system the number of books in the successive nested worlds for N = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 will be: 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. Because there exist two versions of
Nest of
Worlds
.

I am fascinated by this new sequence: it is powerful. I know—I feel intuitively—that it contains some relation. This began with numbers, but I still do not know where it is leading. Any ideas, Dave?

Gary went out for beer.

The district in which he lived was very quiet. The traffic basically stopped when the sun set. There weren’t many pedestrians during the day, and at night no one ventured out. The liquor store wasn’t far. He returned at a slow walk, hauling a plastic shopping bag filled with cans.

Three men came around the corner, in a hurry.

When they passed him, two of the men grabbed him by the arms, and the third punched him in the stomach.

Taken completely by surprise, Gary couldn’t defend himself. A yellow light flashed over and over before his eyes. They were beating him professionally. Each blow fell just as his head cleared from the one before and just before he was able to offer any resistance. The blows to the chin took away his consciousness, the blows to the liver took away his will to fight.

They didn’t kick him when he was down. One pulled his head up by his hair.

“If you want another helping, keep on about the red Amido,” the man said, his face covered with a nylon stocking.

The assailants took the bag full of beer. Gary made it home with difficulty. At first he could hardly walk—he staggered—but then it was better. His teeth were loose, but none of them fell out.

Daphne came in the afternoon, worried by his absence. He couldn’t swallow, his jaw hurt so much. At least his teeth stopped wiggling.

When Gary reported the beating to the police, Cukurca didn’t believe it. The story of the threat that had been made brought an ironic smile to his face. But at least this time the policeman wrote it down in the blotter.

Gary was furious. The lazy bastard, he thought, doesn’t want to complicate his life so close to retirement.

Later he realized that his assailants had beat him with great skill, leaving no marks—no black eyes, no split lips, no bloody nose. Cukurca could think, looking at Gary, that here was a nutcase who had made the whole thing up.

The salesgirl at Morley’s didn’t remember a red Amido or any buyers in green tunics. She gave Gary and Daphne a hard look. Why? There were no bruises on Gary’s face, and Daphne’s freckles were not that unusual.

They made the rounds of the commission shops methodically. A lot of furniture resembled what the Bolyas had had, but it resembled the furniture of many families, including Gary and Daphne’s. There was nothing clear, no evidence.

Gary bought himself a pistol and twenty-four bullets. The purchase was semi-illegal and the quality of the weapon poor: rust, scratched paint on the handle, worn parts. Afraid the gun might blow up in his face, Gary cleaned it, polished and oiled it.

Daphne decided to write up the story for the newspapers. An article like that would have an effect. But she needed to get all the facts right: a mistake could mean a lawsuit for libel.

Gary found the shop in which Spig had bought the Amido. It took him a long time to convince the salesgirl. If only he had a little personal charm. It didn’t help that as he grew older, his left eye got weaker; his brain, not wanting to process an image from it, let the eye wander. The girl actually went red trying to keep from laughing, because Gary’s eye, when he asked her more and more urgently, turned further and further inward, toward his nose. A man might be no older than he felt, but having a lazy eye and a stomach rumbling from hunger added twenty years.

Only after he told her what had happened and what he suspected—he even included the disbelief and sweaty gray uniform T-shirt of Cukurca—did she begin to listen seriously. Fear appeared on the girl’s narrow, expressive face. He noticed then that she actually had a good figure, in her tights. His first impression of her hadn’t been positive: pink, transparent eyes; colorless, greasy hair; the pallid skin of an albino. He must have made an equally bad impression on her. He relaxed, and his eye turned in less. He looked good enough now, apparently, to get her to give him the serial numbers of the engine and the chassis of the Amido Civic sold to the Bolyas. He also wrote down her telephone number. Sabine, the girl who was attractive when you looked a second time.

Gary and Daphne got along fine with the Green Tunics. Jutta and Margot borrowed spices from them and invited them to supper, though Gary and Daphne kept saying no. To complete the article that would unmask the gang (they were both certain it was a gang), they needed to obtain the serial numbers of the Tunics’ Amido. The editor of the paper Daphne went to felt that without that clinching evidence it was impossible to print the article. He saw it on the front page, making a great sensation, but airtight proof was needed first. Losing a lawsuit could push the paper, not that wealthy, into bankruptcy.

The thugs were waiting by the garbage cans on the side of Frisch’s Bar. In green tunics, red epaulets, and nylon stockings over their heads. Gary tried to defend himself, but they had rubber clubs. He was beaten as professionally as before. Then they kicked him. Hard, but not in the head. They told him several times that it was for the Amido. One of the men, after a particularly strong kick, gave a muffled shout.

“Ah! I broke a toe on that son of a bitch!”

“Quiet, Eb,” shushed another.

More than that Gary didn’t remember. He lost consciousness. He woke at dawn, full of pain. They had broken his nose.

On the corner of 830 Avenue and 763 Street was an empty lot. It had a closely cut lawn in the center, bushes and trees growing wild on the perimeter, and among them, here and there, rusted pieces of metal, bits of glass, rubble, and trash.

The lot was once a garbage dump. Later they cleaned it up, leveled it, put in the grass and trees. On holidays public concerts were held here. For a few pence you could sit on the lawn, pant from the heat, and hear deafening music. The music had to be deafening, because on the perimeter the noise of the city would drown out any melody. Gary liked going to such concerts; Daphne didn’t.

Vendors of ices or hot dogs picked their way among the audience spread out on the grass. The heat was oppressive, humid. Covered with a thick coat of suntan lotion, Gary licked a sour ice. The band ground out its number, torturing guitar strings. They sang of the swill printed in some newspaper, concluding with the sentiment that the newspaper was good only for wiping one’s behind. Nowadays you protested in a crumpled shirt that had buttons missing and in pants that had holes, and you used the foulest language you could. The band was roundly applauded. An obese individual sitting in front of Gary roared bravo until the folds of flesh on his sides shook rhythmically. For the moment he had put aside a greasy cardboard boat containing a sausage.

How many calories did you burn up clapping? Surely not many. Gary folded his jacket into a ball and put it under his head; he had taken the jacket in case it poured. He stretched out comfortably and closed his eyes. Despite the loud music, he fell asleep—the heat won. He had just completed an exhausting run. He didn’t know the people who were moving, but he remembered a clock with a blue ceramic face and brass columns. For some reason he couldn’t get that clock out of his head.

Today is a great day! I did it! I discovered the formula behind the number of books in a nested world. If you figured this out ahead of me, Dave, then you’re a brain of the first order, and you can chop farther than the eyes can see.

I’m no brain of the first order, thought Gavein, and I certainly don’t chop far. He had no idea what the sequence was. It was hard enough following Zef and his number-magic act; he wasn’t about to compete.

The new numbers helped a lot. Consider them again:

2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . . (the dots are the next nesting, which I haven’t got to yet in
Nest of Worlds
), and now imagine that at the beginning there is something, a number also, because the whole thing may have been set up precisely in this way by the author.

so we have:

x, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 . . .

You see? X must be 1. Add 2 to x, and you get 3, add 3 to 2, and you get 5, and so on. That’s the algorithm! It goes as follows: The next number is the sum of the two preceding. A lovely, elegant rule. I call it Zef’s Series. If not for the current mess with all these deaths, I would be awarded a degree for coming up with such a series and studying its properties. Zef’s Series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, . . .

I’ll call Dr. Babcock at the Mathematics Division. What a great master’s thesis this will make. They’ll allow a physics student to do his dissertation in math.

In Lavath they don’t, Gavein thought.

That wasn’t the end of the note. A telephone bill was taped to the index card. On the back of the bill, more writing:

I have this idea, Dave. I won’t tell you it right away, because it’s kind of paranoid. Just read my notes in the order I wrote them. They’re stuck in the places they should be found.

My idea has to do with the 1 at the beginning of the series of versions of
Nest of Worlds
. The 1 must be there for the series to make sense. But . . .

Suppose.

If the worlds are nested one inside the other, let us posit the existence of a Superworld, a world in which is nested the world where I live, and where Laila lives, and Dave, Mom, and everyone else. Such a Superworld would possess the number N = 0, according to the formula. What follows from this?

First: the number of Lands would equal 12, that is, 1. In other words, a world with only one Land, and in that Land you would have to stay for the entirety of your life. The Land would be coextensive with the Superworld, since there would be no other Land! With N = 0, the world would be homogeneous, that is, you could travel throughout it at any age.

The existence of a Superworld is nothing I can prove, but at least my hypothesis is self-consistent.

Let’s look at the other formula. We find that in this Superworld Zero the number of Significant Names equals 12
0
, that is, 1. Again 1! How is that to be understood, one Name for everyone?

I looked in the encyclopedia. It says there that the Significant Name is the emblem of a person’s fate. It tells how a person’s death will come.
Flued
, for example, means “From water,”
Udarvan
means “From lightning.” No exception to the Rule of Names has been recorded. Had there ever been one, it would have been remembered throughout the generations.

But one Name only for the inhabitants of Superworld Zero? What could it say about the death of each, so that the information would be common to all, true for all?

The message could be only “You will die.” Only that information is common to every death.

To sum up: If there exists a Superworld Zero (a world having the number N = 0), then it is homogeneous, not divided into Lands in which every person must spend a portion of his life. Each inhabitant may live in any place, at any time, in Superworld Zero. And secondly: No one knows what he will die of; he knows only that he will die. What do you think, Dave? Would you like such a world?

Actually, the difference is not so great, Gavein thought. A Name contains such general information about one’s death that few conclusions can be drawn from it. Only after the fact does it become evident that the Rule of the Name was fulfilled. And the number of Lands? If we didn’t have to move, life wouldn’t be so very different. But it’s more interesting to move . . . You travel, you get to know a new Land, a new way of life. If people didn’t have to move every thirty-five years, a lot of them wouldn’t stick their nose outside their door. Imagine the isolationism!

He grew serious. Had Ra Mahleiné and he not had to move from Lavath to Davabel, she would not have traveled by prison ship. Would not have been beaten. Would not have got cancer. They would have been a normal, happy couple . . .