Two trains were inadvertently switched on to the same track in Holland. But another switch, intended to stay closed, opened fortuitously, and the freight slid out of the path of the holiday passenger express.
In the systems of the Limberg Sanatorium, there was nothing overt.
“All right, then,” Domino said, “if you don’t want to listen, will you talk? What happened at the sanatorium? Limberg’s keeping everybody out of the room with Cikoumas’s body, seeing no one, sitting in his office, and obviously waiting for someone to tell him what to do next.”
Michaelmas grunted. He said: “Well, they were laboratory curiosities and the person in charge of them is sentimental and intrigued. When they proposed something ingenious, such as moving something coherent from one arbitrary frame of reference into a highly similar frame, they were indulged. Why not? The experiment may be trivial, or it may be taken as proof that there are no orders of greater or lesser likelihood among sets, but in either case it was suggested by a member of the experiment. You have to admit that would intrigue almost anyone, let alone a poet in heat.” Michaelmas smiled as though something had struck his mouth like a riding whip. “Poke around, now that you’re inside Limberg’s system. Open one part of the circuitry at a time. You’ll meet what’s been chasing you. Be careful to keep a firm hold on the switching.”
There was a pause. Then the machine was back. “It… it seems we here are considered an effect.” Domino paused again.
“We are an effect,” Michaelmas said. “They have a means of scanning infinity. When they want a model of an elephant, they tune out everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. When they deduce there’s a human race, they get a human race. Warts and all. The difference between the model of the elephant and the human race is that the representatives of that race can speak; they can request, and they can propose. They can even believe they think they represent the human race. But in all of infinity, the chances are infinite that they are only drifting particles.”
He said nothing more for a long time, blinking like an owl in the bright mid-afternoon sunshine of Long Island, looking a little surprised when his bag was put aboard his cab for him.
In the apartment, he sat at the desk, he brooded out the window, he tuned his guitar, and then a lute, and a dulcimer. Finally he began to be able to speak, and spoke to Domino in a slow, careful voice, pausing to marshal his facts and to weight them in accord with their importance to the narrative.
He barely listened to himself explaining. He sat and thought:
“So that was it?” Domino asked. “Mere scientific curiosity? This Fermierla contacted Limberg at some point in the past —Well, why not? They must have been very much alike, at one time; yes, I can see the sense in that—and then Limberg began to see ways in which this could be useful, but it was after he brought in Cikoumas that the enterprise began to accelerate. Fermierla still thinking it was in touch with fantasy creatures —”
“Not in touch. Not… in touch.”
“In contact with. And Medlimb prospered. But Cikoumas became worried; suppose UNAC found Fermierla? Suppose Doktor Limberg was exposed to the world for what he was, and Cikoumas with him. But that’s all unrealistic. Fermierla’s no more on Jupiter than I am. These biological people are all scientific illiterates, rife with superstition. You tell them radio signals, and they think WBZ. They have no idea of the scale of what’s involved here. They—”
“Yes, yes,” Michaelmas said. “Take over Limberg, will you? Manage the rest of his life for him. Meanwhile, there’s one more thing I have to do before I can end this day.”
“Yes, I suppose,” Domino said, and put in a call to Clementine Gervaise, who was in Paris. Michaelmas squeezed his hands and punched up full holo; she sat at a desk within a few feet of him, a pair of eyeglasses pushed up into her hair, her lipstick half worn off her lower lip, and a hand-editing machine beside the desk.
“Laurent,” she said, “it is good to have you call, but you catch me at a devil of a time.” She smiled suddenly. “Nevertheless, it is good to have you call.” The smile was fleetingly very young. “From New York.” Now she appeared a little downcast. “You departed from Europe very quickly.”
“I didn’t expect you in Paris. I thought you’d still be in Africa.”
She shook her head. “We have a problem,” she said. She turned to the editor, flicked fingers over the keyboard with offhand dexterity, and gestured : “See there.”
A sequence aboard the UNAC executive plane came up. Norwood was smiling and talking. The point of view changed to a reverse angle close-up of Douglas Campion asking a question. As he spoke, his forehead suddenly swelled, then returned to normal, but his eyes lengthened and became slits while the bridge of his nose seemed to valley into his skull. Next his mouth enlarged, and his chin shrank. Finally the ripple passed down out of sight, but another began at the top of his head, while he spoke on obliviously.
“We can’t get it out,” Clementine said. “It happens in every shot of Campion. We’ve checked the computer, we’ve checked our mixers.” She shrugged. “I suppose someone will say we should check this editor, too, now. But we are either going to have to scrap the entire programme or substitute another interviewer.”
“Can’t you get hold of Campion and re-shoot him?”
She made an embarrassed little face. “I think he is overdrawn at his bank, or something of that sort. He cannot get validation for an airplane seat. Not even his telephone works,” she said. She blushed slightly. “I am in a little trouble for recommending that sort of person.”
“Oh, come, Clementine, you’re not seriously worried about that. Not with your talent. However, that is amazing about Campion. He seems to be having a run of bad luck.”
“Well, this isn’t why you called me,” she said. She waved a hand in dismissal behind her. “Either that works or it doesn’t; tomorrow conies anyway. You’re right.” She rested her elbows on her desk-top and cupped her face in her hands, looking directly at him: “Tell me—what is it you wish with me?”
“Well, I just wanted to see how you were,” he said slowly. “I rushed off suddenly, and—”
“Ah, it’s the business. Whatever you went for, I suppose you got it. And I suppose the rest of us will hear about it on the news.”
“Not — not this time, I’m afraid.”
“Then it was personal.”
“I suppose.” He was having trouble. “I just wanted to say Hello.”
She smiled. “And I would like to say it to you. When are you next in Europe?”
He took a breath. It was hard to do. He shrugged. “Who knows?” He found himself beginning to tremble.