CHAPTER IV
The price of the paper was $3,000.
"Doug—do we dare—"
"No. We've only got a second or so, as though we were just interested passersby, looking at the headlines. Got to be careful."
PRELATINATE OKs MORE FUNDS FOR SCHOOLS the eight-column streamer read. Doug scanned the two-column lead quickly.
"Washington, April, 17—(WP)—Prelate General Wendel announced through his press headquarters here tonight that both houses of the Prelatinate have unanimously voted to grant the request of the Council of Education, 27th Department, for seven trillion dollars in additional funds for school building. The funds will be used for the replacement of 34 outmoded buildings in the Department, the newest of which, it was said, is more than 12 years old. The Council's original request for five trillion dollars was increased by the Prelatinate to seven trillion in recognition of—"
Good Lord, he thought, good Lord....
City Cabinet Praises Mayor On Budget Expansion....
Area Industries Vote Shorter Work Week....
Liberals, Conservatives In Accord On Labor Issue....
S-Council Reports Second Arrest In Four Years....
Veteran Civic Leader Admits Wisdom Of Youth Group's Plan....
"Doug—oh Doug, none of this can be real...."
"We'd better go. Back to the house. And take it easy, lady...." He managed to grin a little.
No one passed them on the walk back, but Dot clung close to him as they walked, as though the mature years since college had never been, as though simple happiness were again all that mattered.
The mature years....
Doug wondered. Somewhere, he had always known, there was the place between resigned acceptance of things as they were and perpetual refusal to recognize a condition for what it was. Somewhere, happiness was a simple, honest thing, uncomplicated by the devious machinations of sadistic moral codes that would make a struggle of that right. Somewhere there was meaning to action, and the hypocrite was at last fallen from the mocking pedestal of lip-service righteousness.
Somewhere, perhaps long ago, a man had said "I question" even as, at the same time, another had said "I condemn" and another had said "I follow". Thus far, had they travelled the same road, but here, the road was forked. One was a wide path. One an aimless twisting thing that had no destination. The other, narrow, and ever narrower as it progressed. And there would be other forks, other paths, that split and re-split as they tracked the infinite reaches of time itself....
He remembered the first thing he'd learned in his first plunge into space-mechanics research. Space cannot exist without time; time cannot exist without space. Space-time, then, is the fabric of the Universe.
So the threads were real. As real as the fact that one day in his life, he had decided to study law rather than to continue as a physicist. There had suddenly been a new split in the thread, and he chose, and had become an attorney, and then a man of politics.
What had Carl said? "... you'd've made that try for the moon a success last month instead of another near-miss ..."
And how many other might-have-beens could there be?
We conceive of Time, as it is integral with the structure of Space, an infinite ... The second thing he had learned.
And therefore—therefore each thread of might-have-been, unto itself, was.
Somewhere, there was a Congressman named Douglas Blair. Somewhere, there was an astro-physicist, an artist, a sculptor, a writer, a cab-driver, a general, a sailor, a doctor, a thief, perhaps even a corpse named Douglas Blair....
"I know," he said to the woman at his side then. "Dorothy, I think I know."
They entered the beautiful house set far back from a wide, beautiful highway on a lush, beautiful lawn.
And he tried to explain, until he thought she understood.
He was tired, then. She located food in the house, and he found money in a wallet in which the identification card said simply Douglas Blair, Senior Quadrate of Games.
But everything was changed—everything. Not just himself, not just Dorothy. A whole world. All on another thread, that had started back somewhere, much further back. Through history, there had been so many ifs....
In a little while she lay beside him, and they slept.
They had intended to begin the search for materials to build another contraption, but before he was fully dressed, from somewhere, there was a soft tinkling sound. It was repeated, signal-like, from a far corner of the room. It came from what could only have been an extremely simplified, compact version of the telephone, installed integrally with the ample arm of a lounging chair.
"Shall I?" he hesitated.
"Be careful...."
Doug lifted the slender receiver. "Blair," he said.
"Quadrate Blair, sorry, sir, that the liberty was taken to disturb you at your home. However, because of the urgency of this morning's conference at your offices, it was considered wise to remind you of the time it is planned to convene, as per Instruction 43-A. May you be expected at 1100 hours, sir?"
He dared not hesitate.
"Yes, yes of course." The voice he answered was a woman's.
"Will you wish the 'copter as usual, sir?"
"Why—yes of course, as usual. Thank you...." He hung up quickly. Dot was looking at him with the question held at her lips.
"I'm expected at some sort of high-powered pow-wow in—" he glanced at a delicate clock inset in the chair's opposite arm, "—less than a half-hour. They're sending a 'copter for me. God knows what will happen if I don't show up."
And, he observed to himself, only God knew what would happen when he did.