“Uncrossable, that is, until the year 1897, when two Italian scientists, Maxoni and Cocini, stumbled on a principle which changed the course of history—of a billion histories. They created a field in which the energy of normal temporal flow was deflected at what we may consider right angles to the normal direction. Objects and individuals enclosed in the field then moved, not forward in time as in nature, but across the lines of alternate reality. From that beginning grew the Imperium—the government claiming sovereignty over the entire Net of alternate worlds. Your world—which is known to us as Blight Insular Three—is but one of the uncountable parallel universes, each differing only infinitesimally from its neighbors. Like this world, it lies within the vast disaster area we call the Blight, a desert formed when an unfortunate miscarriage in early experimentation with the M-C principle led to the utter destruction of a vast complex of worlds, to the abortion of their destinies into the chaos which you no doubt saw as you crossed that area coming here.
“Among the relationships existing between parallel lines are those linking individuals, Mr. Curlon. Think for a moment: If two worlds differ by only the disposition of two grains of sand on a beach—or of two molecules within a grain of sand—then it follows that analogues of individuals will exist in all those world-lines whose date of common history—the date at which their histories diverged—is later than the birth date of the individual in question. Your case, Mr. Curlon, is an exception—and that fact is at the root of the problem. Your world is an island in the Blight, surrounded not by viable parallel worlds, but by a desert empty of normal life. You are unique, Mr. Curlon—which renders the present situation all the more poignant.”
“That’s a mild adjective, General,” I said. “I’m still listening for what’s going to make sinking my boat sound like a friendly move.”
“As I said, Major Renata made a number of errors—but his intentions were good. He’d been working here with me, under great strain, for many weeks. As for his mission, consider, Mr. Curlon: You are a man destined for a role in great affairs—yet what did I know of you? Nothing. And time was short. It was necessary—unfortunate, but absolutely necessary—to put you to the test. I apologize for the Major’s excessive zeal. Of course, he wasn’t aware of the full ramifications of the situation—of your importance to the present contretemps.”
“That makes a pair of us.”
Roosevelt’s expression flickered; there were emotions boiling under that bland facade, but he wasn’t the man to show them.
“In the lost worlds of the Blight, your family loomed like a colossus, Mr. Curlon. Now, of all that mighty stock, only you remain.” His eyes held me. “The destinies of many men died in the holocaust of the Blight—and human destiny is a force equal to the evolutionary pressure of the Universe itself. Remember: the vast energies choked off by the disaster were not destroyed, but instead shunted into the orgy of pattern-loss vitality that characterizes the Blight. Now those energies seek to reorient themselves, to force a pattern on reality. Unless this power is channeled, guided, given form—our worlds will be engulfed in the cancer of the Blight. Already, signs of the coming plague are here!”
He waved a hand at the gold and blue royal seal on the wall behind him. There were flecks of green on the gilding, and at one corner a tiny crust of mold had formed.
“That crest was polished this morning, Mr. Curlon. And observe this.” He pointed to the gold wire insignia on his collar: it was pitted by tarnish. “And this!” he pushed a leather-bound folder across the table. The regal coat of arms embossed on it in silver was bubbly with corrosion.
“Symbols—but symbols that represent the fixed parameters of our cosmos—and those parameters are being eroded, Mr. Curlon!” He leaned back, forced the fire out of his eyes, his voice.
“Unless something is done now, at once, to reinforce the present reality, existence as we know it is doomed, Mr. Curlon.”
“All right, General,” I said. “I’ve listened. I don’t understand all this, but I’ve seen enough in the last few hours to keep me from calling you crazy to your face. What is it you want from me? What do you expect me to do about the toadstools growing in the corridors?”
He stood and walked the length of the room, turned and paced back, stopped beside me.
“My plan is a dangerous one; you may think it fantastic, Captain Curlon…” I looked the question at him; he nodded and smiled. “I’ve ordered that you be commissioned in the Imperial Service, and gazetted to my staff,” he said casually.
“Thanks, General,” I said. “But you can skip the fancies. I’ll settle for facts.”
He looked disturbed for an instant. “This isn’t intended as a bribe,” he said, and picked up a thick parchment from the desk. “It’s already accomplished—”
“Not without some kind of commitment on my part, it isn’t,” I said. “Not in any army I ever heard of.”
“The oath is required, of course,” he said. “A mere formality—”
“A symbol, I believe you said, General. For what it’s worth, I’m still a civilian.”
“Very well,” he tossed the fancy commission aside in a way that I sensed wasn’t quite as casual as it looked. “As you wish. Perhaps something Colonel Bayard said has prejudiced you—”
“By the way, where is Bayard now? The last I saw of him he was having a set of stomach cramps brought on by Major Renata’s itchy trigger finger.”
“Colonel Bayard was misguided. His intentions were good, no doubt, but he was uninformed. I don’t wonder that he formed a false impression of the operation on the basis of the few facts he stumbled on.”
“I’d like to see him.”
“That won’t be possible at present; he’s in the hospital. However, I contemplate no action against him for breach of discipline, if that’s what concerns you. He has an excellent record—until now. He was merely overzealous in this instance.”
“You said something about working together. What is it you want from me?”
He stood, came around the desk and clapped me on the shoulder.
“Come along, Captain,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
The room he took me to was an underground vault, guarded by three relays of white-jacketed troopers with guns in their hands. One high wall was filled by a ground-glass screen, on which lines and points of light twinkled.
“This is a chart of the Net, covering the area lying within the hundred-thousand-year CH range,” Roosevelt said. He picked up a pointer, indicated a red light at the exact center. “This is the Zero-zero world-line of the Imperium. Here”—he showed me another glowing point, not far away—”is your home-line, B-I Three. Note that all around these isolated lines, for a vast area, there is nothing—a desert. This, Mr. Curlon, is the Blight. Calculations by our physicists tell us that the probability imbalance, dating from the original cataclysm that formed the Blight some seventy years ago, is now seeking equilibrium. Fantastic energies are trapped there in a precarious stasis; energies of the kind that generate reality instant by instant as normal entropy progresses. I needn’t tell you of the inconceivable potency of such powers. Consider only that in each instant of time the Universe is destroyed and recreated—and that here, in this blighted region, that process has been aborted, blocked like a choked volcano. For seven decades the pressure has mounted.
Now it will not longer be denied. A great probability storm rages at the centroidal point of the Blight. When it blasts through, unless we take some action first, it will carry our world—and all other worlds within a vast range—with it into a limbo of probability disaster which beggars the imagination. Even now, probability waves are moving outward from the holocaust, with results that anyone can see—a mere hint of the holocaust to come.”