She never feels the silent enemy gripping her throat and her lungs, but she knows how frightful it must be to have the quiet chemistry of one’s being violently disrupted, to have poisons surging through one’s blood, devouring one’s very soul.
She knows… and she carries that knowledge with her through dimensions unknown to those she has saved, unsuspected by those who will now escape to continue their betrayal, their defiance of all that is or ought to be sacred.
“Get dressed, Margaret. We have to leave now.”
Dr. Huxley’s voice was unnaturally calm; Margaret could tell that he was trying to give the impression of being in complete control, but she knew that he was fooling himself.
“You don’t understand, doctor,” she told him, making every effort to match his appearance of calm. “I know what’s happening now.”
He thrust a bundle of clothes toward her: it included a grey skirt and a starched white blouse; blue socks and a brown pair of shoes. She already had her underwear on, beneath her nightdress; it was a habit she’d acquired in Flanders and never let go. It was always wise to be ready, in case something untoward happened that required a rapid response.
Dr. Huxley obviously thought that something untoward had happened, but it hadn’t. This was a safe place—as safe as any could be, given the nature of the world, and the nature of the worlds beyond the world.
“I’ve figured it out,” she told him, as she began to put the clothes on, taking her time so that she’d have time to spell things out. “At first I thought the others were in me, but they’re not. At first I thought I’d been splintered into a hundred or a thousand selves by some kind of bomb exploding in my mind, but I had it all inside out. I really do have a thousand or a million other selves, but the ones close at hand are all screaming, all in agony. Even the ones that are farthest away are under threat. I’m being hunted, you see, doctor… hunted across a million or a billion worlds. It was supposed to be over long ago, doctor—three thousand years ago, or maybe more. All the chimeras’ children were hunted down, everywhere they existed… but some of them weren’t so easy to detect, and there are more worlds than anyone ever imagined… worlds beyond the worlds beyond the world. They think they’re everywhere, but they can’t really be everywhere, because everywhere’s too large. No matter what they see, there’s always an infinity that lies beyond, glimpsed but essentially unseen. No matter how long the Imperial adventure goes on, it will always be continuing; no part of the work can ever be complete, because there’s always somewhere where it’s only just beginning.”
“Come on, Margaret,” said Dr. Huxley, softly, as she finally had to finish tying her shoelaces. “I’m going to need your help now. We have to get away from here tonight. I’ve found a place for you to hide—a place where they’ll look after you, and give you a proper chance to recover. There’ll be no more drugs, and the dreams will gradually die away. It’ll help a lot if you try to forget them, and try to stop searching them for some kind of cosmic truth that simply isn’t there.”
While he was speaking Dr. Huxley led her out of the room and down the corridor. She tried to hold back but he wouldn’t let her. While they were going down the stairs and through the hall she continued trying to explain, although she knew in her heart of hearts that he wasn’t capable of listening to what she said, and couldn’t even begin to take any of it seriously.
“It’s not the drugs, doctor,” she told him. “They just helped to trip the switch. I don’t need them anymore; they’ve done their work. Once the contact is made, it becomes much easier to maintain. If only my nearer selves were living peaceful lives I could borrow some of their stability, their peace of mind—but they’re not, and they’re mostly in such terrible distress that I have to start… well, not at the other end because there is no end, but at a level of contact that’s much slighter… so slight that it wouldn’t be achievable if it weren’t for the horrid necessity of avoiding everything closer at hand. I wish you’d listen to me, doctor, because it really is important. If I could only make you understand…”
They were outside now. The night was cloudy and the windows of the sanitarium were blacked out; only the hall light, shining through the open door, lit the way to the doctor’s battered Morris.
“Get into the car, Margaret,” Dr. Huxley said, still speaking with the carefully contrived voice of masculine authority. “Just get into the car, and try to stay calm.”
Try to stay calm! If only he knew what the price of calmness was! If only he could see that the awesomely simple world he inhabited was simple only because he was blind to its myriad alternatives, and that the sanity he valued so highly was nothing but determined ignorance of the actual nature of the universe… of the multiverse. If only he could catch a glimpse, if only for a instant, of the vast spectrum of Dr. Huxleys that extended across the vast spectrum of the worlds that contained him: the thriving and the dying; the wise and the foolish; the joyous and the despairing; the pain-racked and the…
The car engine wouldn’t start. Dr. Huxley reached under the seat for the crank-handle that had to be inserted into the hole beneath the radiator grille, so that he could turn it over by hand, forcing life into it by the power of muscle and will. That was what he tried to do with his patients. He thought of them as recalcitrant engines that needed to be started by the power of muscle and will.
“You don’t understand, Dr. Huxley,” she told him. “I can see now. I was blind, but you helped me to see. I know now what the world is really like, and what I really am. None of us is alone, Dr. Huxley—we only think we are because we can’t make contact with our other selves. Maybe that’s a good thing, in a way, because there’s so much pain out there and so much confusion. Everybody is dying somewhere, everybody is screaming in pain somewhere, everybody is something they don’t want to be, everybody is something they don’t even believe in, everybody is everywhere and everything and it simply isn’t bearable unless you can somehow get past the ones who are hurting… even then, it isn’t easy, especially when they’re the nearest ones, but it can be done…”
The engine wouldn’t start. Dr. Huxley kept turning the handle, but it only went clunk, like something dead and leaden.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Huxley,” said a new voice, “but I really can’t allow you to do this.”
Dr. Huxley dropped the crank-handle and whipped around. His composure had vanished on the instant and he was all panic now. Margaret recognized the woman who’d spoken; she was called Joanna, and she was a regular visitor at the sanitarium. Recently, she’d taken quite an interest in Margaret and her dreams. It was almost as if she understood what was happening to her.
Unfortunately, almost wasn’t good enough.
Margaret didn’t recognize the two men Joanna had with her. They reminded her of policemen or army officers because of the way they carried themselves, but they weren’t in uniform. That was surprising—almost all men of their age were in uniform nowadays. There was a war on.
In fact, there were more wars on than they could possibly imagine, and bigger ones too.
Margaret heard the purr of an engine then, but it wasn’t the engine of Dr. Huxley’s car; it was the engine of an airplane high in the sky. She couldn’t see it, because the night was too dark, but she strained her ears, trying to figure out which way it was going.