Gene sighed, "All right," he said. He reached into his pocket, took out a little cloth bag with a drawstring and slid it down the table. The others stood up to see better as Wilcox opened the bag and drew out an oblong bar of bright gold. On the surface of the bar was the embossed legend, "CREDIT SUISSE, 500g GOLD, 999.9."
"Have you ever seen one of those before?" Gene asked.
"No, never. My lord, that's heavy. What's it worth?"
"About seven thousand dollars, I suppose. I haven't followed the market lately. Have you got a penknife?"
"A knife? Yes."
"Scratch your initials in it, or any symbol you like. Pongo, will you get a grocery bag from the kitchen?"
"Aha," said Wilcox good-humoredly. He took a knife out of his pocket, opened it, and carved the initials "MBW" on the bar.
Pongo came back and handed him a brown paper bag. "Examine it, please," said Gene. Wilcox turned the bag over in his hands, opened it, and peered in.
"Now put the bar in the bag. Take it out again. Now fold the top of the bag and hold it with both hands. Raise the bag a little, so it doesn't touch the table." Wilcox followed instructions, watching Gene with a glint of amusement in his eyes.
Gene stood up. He walked down the table until he was behind Wilcox; then he reached over and lightly touched the side of the brown paper bag. The bag dipped suddenly in Wilcox's hands and hit the table with a solid thump.
Wilcox had turned pale. He opened the bag and looked in, then drew out a gold bar and laid it beside the first. They gleamed in the middle of the table, each one with the same initials scratched in it.
After a moment Wilcox looked up. "I'll give you a thousand dollars if you'll teach me that trick," he said.
Gene sat down again. "Mike, if I can do this, what do I need your money for? Haven't you ever asked yourself how I got so rich?"
"Well, I did wonder -- "
"I bought diamonds and copied them, just the way I copied that gold bar, and sold them to Piet's firm in Amsterdam."
Linck was nodding. "lt's true. Millions of dollars' worth, over a period of years. It was very profitable to us."
"I still think it is a trick," said Coomaraswami, laughing weakly.
"Why?"
"Because it is impossible,"
"Have you ever heard of the 'many-worlds' explanation of quantum physics?"
"Yes, of course. That is Hugh Everett's theory. He says that when two things can happen, at the particle level, both things do happen, and so you get a kind of splitting of reality into two separate worlds. It is a very interesting theory."
"And it's true, I've known it all my life. I can see into those other worlds, a little bit; I can reach in and turn them, I haven't created anything, I've just taken that gold bar from another world and moved it into this one. And I now know that I can heal people the same way."
He went on, "This is what I've been waiting for. A couple of years ago, in Japan, I woke up one morning and realized I was almost forty years old, and I had a power that I'd never done anything with except to kill people and make myself rich. So I came back here and built this house. I wanted a place where I could sit still for a while and get things straight in my head, and I wanted a place where I could spend the rest of my life in reasonable comfort, if I couldn't figure out anything better to do."
"And now you know what you want to do?" Irma asked..
"Irma, I knew what I wanted to do before -- I just didn't see how to do it."
"And what is that?" asked Linck.
"Save the world." He sat back and looked at them. "Why not? The problems are not that difficult. I mean, most of these things are obvious: we have to reduce population and pollution, we have to have world-wide disarmament, and so on. People aren't dumb. They know their institutions are pushing them into stupid and destructive things, but nobody wants poverty, and nobody wants to get killed. Suppose you could get, let's say, sixty percent of the people on earth into one room and talk to them, show them how to get out of this mess. If you could convince them, and then send them home, do you think they wouldn't change the world?"
"That's a very large number of people," said Linck.
"Sure it is. Three billion. But let's take some arbitrary numbers. Suppose I can sign up ten thousand people a month through public appearances, and suppose each one of those can recruit one more person a month -- how long would it take to get up to three billion? Has anyone got a calculator?"
"That is not necessary," said Coomaraswami. He thought a moment. "At the end of eighteen months you would have about two and a half billion people, and of course, doubling at that rate, at the end of the nineteenth month you would have five billion. But that is not a reasonable rate of increase. People can only recruit other people who live in their own locality, you see. Pretty soon, if you have a rapidly growing organization, everybody is trying to recruit everybody else. That is why pyramid schemes always collapse."
"What would you say was a reasonable rate of increase?"
"That depends on a lot of factors. But I would say that if you have good organization and very enthusiastic people, a million at the end of the first year would be a reasonable goal, and then perhaps ten million the second year, and so on. Most organizations of this kind reach a point of diminishing returns fairly early, but supposing yours did not, then I would say it would take at least ten years to reach three billion."
After a moment he added, "Gene, you know, what you are talking about sounds a good deal like what some other people are already doing -- Barry Commoner, for instance, the Planetary Initiative, and so on. They are doing all right, but they are not sweeping the world. Why do you think you can succeed where they are failing?"
"Because I can do something they can't do. I can really heal the sick. Think about this a minute. I'll have people with incurable ailments. Paraplegics, people with cancer. They'll be screened by physicians, we'll do before and after x-rays. I'll heal them publicly, you'll see it happen. And people will listen to me."
"And what will you tell them?"
"That's what I want you all to think about. Tomorrow we'll meet again after breakfast, if you're willing. Good night." He stood up and left the room.
The rest looked at each other. No one seemed to want to speak. At last Wilcox said, "There's your question again with knobs on, Maggie. What would you do if you were God? I'm not sure I want to know."
They got up and separated, Pongo and Irma to the kitchen, Margaret and most of the others to separate corners of the living room. Wilcox went into the garden by himself; through the glass doors they could see him pacing up and down. After a while he went up to his room. One by one, the others joined Linck in his pool of light at the end of the room. Conversation was desultory until Salomon said, "Did you see in the paper that there's another expedition to Ararat to find the Ark?"
"No, but I am not surprised," Coomaraswami answered. "It seems to me they have found it three or four times in the last thirty years, but it always gets lost again."
"Maybe so, but I think the reason for this expedition is interesting. it's a little fundamentalist group in Florida -- they say they have to find the Ark in order to measure it, so they can find out how long a cubit is."
"Why a cubit?"
"Because until they know how long a cubit is, they can't rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and until they do that, Christ can't come again."
"Have they got government funding?" Linck asked drily.
"Not that I know of, but it may come to that. You know, these people give me a royal pain. Of all the ways there are of being wrong, I think theirs is the worst."
"What do you mean by that? What way are they wrong?" Cliff Guthrie asked. "I'm a Baptist myself," he added.