The Forest of Time - Hugo Nominated Novella Read online

  Knecht shook his head. “Not only do we have a United States,” he muttered.

  The next entry was briefer and contained the first hint of trouble. It was headed “Jump #2.” Except for the reversal of plus and minus signs, the coordinate settings were identical with the first set.

  A slight miscalculation. I should be back in the lab with Rosa, but I’m in somebody’s apartment, instead. It’s still Philly out the window—though a shabbier, more run-down Philly than I remember. I must be close to my home timeline because I can recognize most of the University buildings. There’s a flag that looks like the stars and stripes on the flagpole in front of College Hall. There’s something or other black hanging from the lamppost, but I can’t make it out.

  Well, work first; tourism later. I bet I’ll need a vernier control. There must be a slight asymmetry in the coordinates.

  Knecht skipped several lines of equations and picked up the narrative once more.

  I must leave immediately! That black thing on the lamppost kept nagging at the back of my mind. So I got out my binoculars and studied it. It was a nun in a black habit, hanging in a noose. Hanging a long time, too, by the looks of it. Farther along the avenue, I could see bodies on all the lampposts. Then the wind caught the flag by College Hall and I understood. In place of the stars there was a swastika...

  Jump #3. Coordinates...

  Wrong again. I was too hasty in leaving the Nazi world. The settings were not quite right, but I think I know what went wrong now. The very act of my Jumping has created new branches in time and changed the oscillatory time-distance between them. On the shorter Jumps it didn’t matter much, but on the longer ones...

  I think I finally have the calculations right. This is a pleasant world where I am, and—thanks to Goodman deVeres and his wife—I’ve had the time to think the problem through. It seems the Angevin kings still rule in this world and my host has described what seems like scientific magic. Superstition? Mass delusion? I’d like to stay and study this world, but I’m already a week overdue. Darling Rosa must be frantic with worry. I think of her often.

  The next page was headed “Jump #4” with settings but no narrative entry. This was followed by...

  Jump #5. Coordinates unknown.

  Damn! It didn’t work out right and I was almost killed. This isn’t an experiment any more. Armored samurai in a medieval Philadelphia? Am I getting closer to or farther from Home? I barely escaped them. I rode north on a stolen horse and Jumped as soon as my charge built up. Just in time, too—my heart is still pounding. No time for calculations. I don’t even know what the settings were.

  Note: the horse Jumped with me. The field must be wider than I thought. A clue to my dilemma? I need peace and quiet to think this out. I could find it with Goodman deVeres. I have the coordinates for his world. But his world isn’t where I left it. When I Jumped, I moved it. Archimedes had nothing on me. Haha. That’s a joke. Why am I bothering with this stupid journal?

  I dreamed of Rosa last night. She was looking for me. I was right beside her but she couldn’t see me. When I awoke, it was still dark. Off to the north there was a glow behind the crest of the hills. City lights? If that is South Mountain, it would be Allentown or Bethlehem on the other side—or their analogs in this world. I should know by next night. So far I haven’t seen anyone; but I must be cautious.

  I’ve plenty of solitude here and now. That slag heap I saw from the mountain must have been Bethlehem, wiped out by a single bomb. The epicenter looked to be about where the steelworks once stood. It happened a long time ago, by the looks of things. Nothing living in the valley but a few scrub plants, insects, and birds.

  I rode out as fast as I could to put that awful sight behind me. I didn’t dare eat anything. My horse did and is dead for it. Who knows what sort of adaptations have fit the grass for a radioactive environment? I may already have stayed too long. I must Jump, but I daren’t materialize inside a big city. I’ll hike up into the northern hills before I Jump again.

  Knecht turned to the last page. Jump #6. Settings, but no notes. There was a long silence while Knecht digested what he had read. Vonderberge was watching him. Outside, the wind rattled the windows. A nearby lightning strike caused the lights to flicker.

  “Herr Festungskommandant...”

  “His last Jump landed him right in your lap out on the Wyoming Trail.”

  “Herr Festungskommandant...”

  “And instead of the solitude he sought, he’s gotten solitude of another sort.”

  “You don’t believe...”

  “Believe?” Vonderberge slammed his palm down on the desk with unexpected violence. He stood abruptly and walked three quick paces to the window, where he gazed out at the storm. His fingers locked tightly behind his back. “Why not believe?” he whispered, his back to the room. “Somewhere there is a world where Heinrich Vonderberge is not trapped in a border fort on the edge of a war with the lives of others heavy on his back. He is in a laboratory, experimenting with electrical science, and he is happy.”

  He turned and faced Knecht, self-possessed once more.

  “What if,” he said. “What if the Pennamite Wars had not turned so vicious? If compromise had been possible? Had they lived, might not Washington and Franklin have forged a strong union, with the General as king and the Doctor as prime minister? Might not such a union have spread west, crushing Sequoyah and Tecumseh and their new Indian states before the British had gotten them properly started? Can you imagine a single government ruling the entire continent?”

  Knecht said, “No,” but Vonderberge continued without hearing him.

  “Suppose,” he said, pacing the room, “every time an event happens, several worlds are created. One for each outcome.” He paused and smiled at Knecht. “Suppose Pennsylvania had not intervened in the Partition of New Jersey? No Piney War. New York and Virginia cut us off from the sea. Konrad Schneider does not become a great general, nor Rudi Knecht a famous spy. Somewhere there is such a world. Somewhere...close.

  “Now suppose further that on one of these...these moeglichwelten a man discovers how to cross from one to another. He tests his equipment, makes many notes, then tries to return. But he fails!”

  A crash of thunder punctuated the Kommandant’s words. Knecht jumped.

  “He fails,” Vonderberge continued, “because in the act of jumping he has somehow changed the ‘distance.’ So, on his return, he undershoots. At first, he is not worried. He makes a minor adjustment and tries again. And misses again. And again, and again, and again.”

  Vonderberge perched on the corner of his desk, his face serious. “Even if there is only one event each year, and each event had but two outcomes, why then in ten years do you know how many worlds there would have to be?”

  Knecht shook his head dumbly.

  “A thousand, Rudi, and more. And in another ten years, a thousand for each of those. Time is like a tree; a forest of trees. Always branching. One event a year? Two possible outcomes? Ach! I am a piker! In all of time, how many, many worlds there must be. How to find a single twig in such a forest?”

  Knecht could think of nothing to say. In the quiet of the office, the storm without seemed louder and more menacing.

  In the morning, of course, with the dark storm only muddy puddles, Knecht could dismiss the Kommandant’s remarks as a bad joke. “What if?” was a game for children; a way of regretting the past. Knecht’s alert eye had not missed the row of technofiction books in Vonderberge’s office. “What if?” was a common theme in that genre, Knecht understood.

  When he came to Kelly’s cell to interrogate the prisoner, he found that others had preceded him. The guard at the cell door came to attention, but favored Knecht with a conspiratorial wink. From within the cell came the sound of angry voices. Knecht listened closely, his ear to the thick, iron door; but he could make out none of the words. He straightened and looked a question at the guard. The latter rolled his eyes heavenward with a look of resigned suffering. Knecht
grinned.

  “So, Johann,” he said. “How long has this been going on?”

  “Since sun-up,” was the reply. “The Kommandant came in early to talk to the prisoner. He’d been in there an hour when the Hexmajor arrived. Then there was thunder-weather, believe me, sir.” Johann smiled at the thought of two officers bickering.

  Knecht pulled two cigars from his pocket humidor and offered one to the guard. “Do you suppose it is safe to leave them both locked in together?” He laughed. “We may as well relax while we wait. That is, if you are permitted...”

  The guard took the cigar. “The Kommandant is more concerned that we are experts in how to shoot our rifles than in how to sneak a smoke.” There was a pause while Knecht lit his cigar. He puffed a moment, then remarked, “This is good leaf. Kingdom of Carolina?”

  Knecht nodded. He blew out a great cloud of acrid smoke. “You know you should not have allowed either of them in to see the prisoner before me.”

  “Well, sir. You know that and I know that; but the Hexmajor and the Kommandant, they make their own rules.” The argument in the cell reached a crescendo. Johann flinched. “Unfortunately, they do not make the same rules.”

  “Hmph. Is your Kommandant always so...impetuous?” He wanted to know Heinrich Vonderberge better; and one way to do that was to question the men who followed him.

  The guard frowned. “Sir, things may be different in the Scout Corps, but the Kommandant is no fool, in spite of his ways. He always has a reason for what he does. Why, no more than two months ago—this was before you were assigned here—he had us counting the number of pigeons flying north. He plotted it on a daily chart.” Johann laughed at the memory. “Then he sent us out to intercept a raiding party from the Nations. You see, you know how the sachems still allow private war parties? Well...”

  There was a banging at the cell door and Johann broke off whatever yarn he had been about to spin and opened it. Vonderberge stalked out.

  “We will see about that!” he snapped over his shoulder, and pushed past Knecht without seeing him. Knecht took his cigar from his mouth and looked from the Kommandant to the doorway. Hexmajor Ochsenfuss stood there, glaring at the Kommandant’s retreating form. “Fool,” the doctor muttered through clenched teeth. Then he noticed Knecht.

  “And what do you want? My patient is highly agitated. He cannot undergo another grilling.”

  Knecht smiled pleasantly. “Why, Herr Doctor. He is not your patient until I say so. Until then, he is my prisoner. I found him north of the Mountain. It is my function to interview him.”

  “He is a sick man, not one of your spies.”

  “The men I interview are never my spies. I will decide if he is...sick.”

  “That is a medical decision, not a military one. Have you read his journal? It is the product of a deluded mind.”

  “If it is what it appears to be. It could also be the product of a clever mind. Madness as a cover for espionage? Kelly would not be the first spy with an outrageous cover.”

  He walked past the doctor into the cell. Ochsenfuss followed him. Kelly looked up from his cot. He sat on the edge, hands clasped tightly, leaning on his knees. A night’s sleep had not refreshed him. He pointed at Knecht.

  “I remember you,” he said. “You’re the guy that caught me.”

  The Hexmajor forestalled Knecht’s reply. “Bitte, Herr Leutnant,” he said in Pennsylvaanish. “You must speak in our own tongue.”

  “Warum?” Knecht answered, with a glance at Kelly. “The prisoner speaks English, nicht wahr?”

  “Ah, but he must understand German, at least a little. Either our own dialect or the European. Look at him. He is not from the West, despite his Spanish forename. Their skin color is much darker. Nor is he from Columbia, Cumberland, or the Carolina Kingdom. Their accents are most distinctive. And no white man from Virginia on north could be ignorant of the national tongue of Pennsylvania.”

  “Nor could any European,” finished Knecht. “Not since 1917, at any rate. I cannot fault your logic, Herr Doctor; but then, why...”

  “Because for some reason he has suppressed his knowledge of German. He has retreated from reality, built himself fantasy worlds. If we communicate only in Pennsylvaanish as we are doing now, his own desire to communicate will eventually overcome his ‘block’ (as we call it); and the process of drawing him back to the real world will have begun.”

  Knecht glanced again at the prisoner. “On the other hand, it is my duty to obtain information. If the prisoner will speak in English, then so will I.”

  “But...”

  “And I must be alone.” Knecht tapped his lapel insignia meaningfully. The double-X of the Scout Corps.

  Ochsenfuss pursed his lips. Knecht thought he would argue further, but instead, he shrugged. “Have it your way, then; but remember to treat him carefully. If I am right, he could easily fall into complete withdrawal.” He nodded curtly to Knecht and left.

  Knecht stared at the closed door. He disliked people who “communicated.” Nor did he think Vonderberge was a fool like Ochsenfuss had said. Still, he reminded himself, the Hexmajor had an impressive list of cures to his credit. Especially of battle fatigue and torture cases. Ochsenfuss was no fool, either.

  He stuck his cigar back between his teeth. Let’s get this over with, he thought. But he knew it would not be that easy.

  Within an hour Knecht knew why the others had quarreled. Kelly could describe his fantasy world and the branching timelines very convincingly. But he had convinced Vonderberge that he was telling the truth and Ochsenfuss that he was mad. The conclusions were incompatible; the mixture, explosive.

  Kelly spoke freely in response to Knecht’s questions. He held nothing back. At least, the scout reminded himself, he appeared to hold nothing back. But who knew better than Knecht how deceptive such appearances could be?

  Knecht tried all the tricks of the interrogator’s trade. He came at the same question time after time, from different directions. He hopscotched from question to question. He piled detail on detail. No lie could be perfectly consistent. Contradictions would soon reveal themselves. He was friendly. He was harsh. He put his own words in the prisoner’s mouth to see their effect.

  None of it worked.

  If Kelly’s answers were contradictory, Knecht could not say. When the entire story is fantasy, who can find the errors? It was of a piece with the nature of Kelly’s cover. If two facts contradict each other, which is true? Answer: both, but in two different worlds.

  Frustrated, Knecht decided to let the prisoner simply talk. Silence, too, was an effective tactic. Many a prisoner had said too much simply to fill an awkward silence. He removed fresh cigars from his pocket humidor and offered one to the prisoner, who accepted it gratefully. Knecht clipped the ends and lit them. When they were both burning evenly, he leaned back in the chair. Nothing like a friendly smoke to set the mind at ease. And off-guard.

  “So, tell me in your own words, then, how you on the Wyoming Trail were found.”

  Kelly grunted. “I wouldn’t expect the military mind to understand, or even be interested.”

  Knecht flushed, but he kept his temper under control. “But I am interested, Herr Kelly. You have a strange story to tell. You come from another world. It is not a story I have often encountered.”

  Kelly looked at him, startled, and unexpectedly laughed. “No, not very often, I would imagine.”

  “Ach, that is the very problem. Just what would you imagine? Your story is true, or it is false; and if it is false, it is either deliberately so or not. I must know which, so I can take the proper action.”

  Kelly ran a hand through his hair. “Look. All I want is to get out of here, away from you...military men. Back to Rosa.”

  “That does not tell me anything. Spy, traveler, or madman, you would say the same.”

  The prisoner scowled. Knecht waited.

  “All right,” said Kelly at last. “I got lost. It’s that simple. Sharon tried to tell me that a fiel
d trip was premature, but I was so much smarter then. Who would think that the distance from B to A was different than the distance from A to B?”

  Who indeed? Knecht thought, but he kept the thought to himself. Another contradiction. Except, grant the premise and it wasn’t a contradiction at all.

  “Sure,” the prisoner’s voice was bitter. “Action requires a force; and action causes reaction. It’s not nice to forget Uncle Isaac.” He looked Knecht square in the eye. “You see, when I Jumped, my world moved, too. Action, reaction. I created multiple versions of it. In one, my equipment worked. In others, it malfunctioned in various ways. Each was slightly displaced from the original location.” He laughed again. “How many people can say they’ve misplaced an entire world?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Knecht. “Why not two versions of all worlds? When you, ah, Jumped, you could for many different destinations have gone; and in each one, you either arrived, or you did not.”

  His prisoner looked puzzled. “But that’s not topologically relevant. The Jump occurs in the metacontinuum of the polyverse, so...Ah, hell! Why should I try to convince you?”

  Knecht sat back and puffed his cigar. Offhand, he could think of several reasons why Kelly should try to convince him.

  “You see,” the prisoner continued, “there is not an infinity of possible worlds.”

  Knecht had never thought there was more than one, so he said nothing. Even the idea that there were two would be staggering.

  “And they are not all different in the same way. Each moment grows out of the past. Oh, say...” He looked at his cigar and smiled. He held it out at arm’s length. “Take this cigar, for instance. If I drop it, it’ll fall to the floor. That is deterministic. So are the rate, the falling time, and the energy of impact. But, I may or may not choose to drop it. That is probabilistic. It is the choice that creates worlds. We are now at a cusp, a bifurcation point on the Thom manifold.” He paused and looked at the cigar. Knecht waited patiently. Then Kelly clamped it firmly between his teeth. “It is far too good a smoke to waste. I chose not to drop it; but there was a small probability that I would have.”