She halted a few feet from him and looked at him without saying a word. “I … I brought your dog back,” he said lamely. “I found him in the back seat of my car.”
“Thank you. I've been looking all over Pfleugersville for him. I left my Valleyview doors open, hoping he'd come home of his own accord, but I guess he had other ideas. Now that you've discovered our secret, Mr. Myles, what do you think of our brave new world?”
“I think it's lovely,” Philip said, “but I don't believe it's where you seem to think it is.”
“Don't you?” she asked. “Then suppose you show me the full moon that rose over Valleyview tonight. Or better yet, suppose I show you something else.” She pointed to a region of the heavens just to the left of the statue's turned-up nose. “You can't see them from here,” she said, “but around that insignificant yellow star, nine planets are in orbit. One of them is Earth.”
“But that's impossible!” he objected. “Consider the—”
“Distance? In the sort of space we're dealing with, Mr. Myles, distance is not a factor. In Möbius space—as we have come to call it for lack of a better term—any two given points are coincidental, regardless of how far apart they may be in non-Möbius space. But this becomes manifest only when a Möbius coincidence-field is established. As you probably know by now, Francis Pfleuger created such a field.”
At the mention of his name, Francis Pfleuger came hurrying over to where they were standing. “E,” he declared, “equals mc².”
“Thank you, Francis,” Judith said. Then, to Philip, “Shall we walk?”
They started down one of the converging paths, Zarathustra bringing up the rear. Behind them, Francis returned to his Narcissistic study of himself in stone. “We were neighbors back in Valleyview,” Judith said, “but I never dreamed he thought quite so much of himself. Ever since we put up that statue last week, he's been staring at it night and day. Sometimes he even brings his lunch with him.”
“He seems to be familiar with Einstein.”