Frederik Pohl - The Coming of the Quantum Cats

"How the hell do I know?" I cried.

"But you know that it happened," he pressed. "So you know that it's possible. So you know that somebody—say a criminal— could do something, say commit a murder, in one place, and have a hundred good witnesses to swear that he was someone else. Jesus, boy! Do you know what that would mean to somebody like me? I mean, somebody who needed that kind of alibi?" he corrected himself.

"But I don't know how it was done!" I wailed.

He said sourly, "So I found out. Wake up, will you? Do you think Nyla's going to let you go home and tell people that such things can be?"

I sat down, shaken. -

I could see the logic to what he said. The stories were that the FBI camps were full of people who were unfortunately in possession of information that couldn't be allowed to become public. If I was one .

If I was one, my next stop wouldn't be Chicago. It would be a road gang in the Everglades, digging drainage ditches and fighting off alligators-or cutting down trees for that endless road in Alaska. Anywhere. Wherever. The exact place might be in doubt, but what was sure was that, wherever it was, that would be my permanent address, at least until the time came when my secrets were no secrets any more.

Or until I died. Whichever came first. And I was pretty sure that after a year or two in the camps, I wouldn't care which came first.

When the shadows of the flagpole outside had nearly disappeared, because the sun was straight up, they brought us ham and cheese sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and terrible lukewarm coffee out of a machine—both from the filling station in front of the cabins. I was starving, but I took no pleasure in them. I slowly put them away, and was ready with the empty cup and wrappings when the door opened to take them out.

Only it wasn't Moe or the other guard come for that. It was Moe, all right, but he stepped aside, and after him entered Nyla Christophe. She had a sloppy grin on her face. In one thumbless hand she held a bottle of champagne, cradled against her chest so it wouldn't fall. "Congratulations, boys," she said. "You passed. You're exactly the same."

Neither Douglas nor I said a word. She pouted. "Aw, hon," she said to Douglas, giggling a little—it wasn't really a reassuring giggle, "don't you see this is my way of telling you I'm sorry. Glasses, "she said, in quite a different tone, and the second goon stumbled in his hurry to get into the room with his tray of thick hotel tumblers. She jerked her head. The two of them left, and she gave the bottle to Douglas. "That's the way, sweetie," she said, watching him as, looking more at her than at what he was doing, he began to peel the foil off and thumb back the cork. "Glad to see you haven't lost your touch." There was something in his worried (but faintly belligerent) and her tender (but not so faintly mocking) expressions that told me I didn't know all that was going on. Whatever the relationships between them, they were not just a matter of Federal agent and informer.

Then pop went the cork.

Douglas poured. Nyla Christophe accepted the first glass, wrapping all four fingers around it securely enough. "Know what I'm talking about?" she asked. With a hiccup-this bottle of champagne, I thought, wouldn't be her first that day. I shook my head. She said, "Thought not. The tests came out perfect. Same blood, same bones, same prints. You're the same guys—and my report's on the way to headquarters, and that's where I'll be before long myself. So let's drink to Nyla Christophe, next maybe deputy chief of the whole damn bureau!" -

I drank her damn champagne. I drank it because I didn't particularly want to make her angry, and partly because a guy like me doesn't get imported French champagne every day, and most of all because I didn't know what else to do. Maybe Douglas was right! Maybe this was so big a thing that Nyla Chris tophe really could get a big promotion out of it - . . and in that case maybe he was right about the rest of his nasty remarks too.

I wondered what Greta would do when I just never showed up again. Maybe they'd let me write? At least to say good-bye?

It was not good news for me, what Nyla Christophe said, but Larry Douglas thought it was for him. "That's swell, hon!" he enthused. "Boy! You'll show them in Washington. And, listen, I've got a lot of ideas for you! This business of establishing two identical identifications—did you ever think what that might mean to the bureau? I mean, infiltrating subversive organizations, for instance? I don't know exactly how it works, of course, but . . . "

Christophe let him go on, a dreamy smile on her face. While he was still talking she came over beside him and ran her hand down his back in a friendly way. "Sweetie," she said affectionately, "you're a real jerk."

He swallowed. "You—you don't want to take me with you?" he stammered.

"Take you? That's the fucking last thing I would do, Larry hon."

He blazed up. "Then let go of me, damn it! You've got no business sweeting me up like that!"

She let her smile grow deeper. She was actually quite good-looking when she wanted to be. I thought I saw actual dimples above the corners of her mouth. "Larry," she said sweetly, "maybe there are some other people who can get on my back for making love to somebody when I don't really mean it, but you're sure not one of them."

I had no idea what she was talking about. He obviously did. His face went gray. "You don't know shit about it," she told him. "It's a lot bigger than you could possibly guess." She glanced at me. "Want to know what's going on?" she asked.

Oh, boy, did I! I didn't have to answer. She knew the answer and went right on, "Let me start from the beginning. Suppose—"

She hesitated. Then she shrugged and grimly raised her right hand, the four fingers spread and the missing thumb nakedly, shockingly obvious. "Suppose I hadn't got into trouble with the law when I was seventeen. Suppose I grew up in a normal way. My life would have been a lot different, wouldn't it?" I nodded, meaning I guessed so but I was too lost to have a useful opinion; Douglas just went on looking stricken and grim. "So there might have been one life in which I grew up just the way I did—the way I am now, right? And there could have been another one in which I became, oh, I don't know. A musician. Maybe a concert violinist."

Her expression didn't really change, but I got the idea from something in her eyes that she was waiting to see if I would laugh at that idea. I didn't laugh. "See, I would have liked that at one time," she said. "And the thing is that you can't say one of those possibilities is real and the other is just imaginary. Not any more. Because they're both real. All the possibilities are real, maybe. It's just that we only live in one possibility, and we can't see the others."

I darted a glance at Douglas. He was as lost as I was, and a lot more scared—probably, I thought with a sinking feeling, because he knew more than I did about what was likely to happen to us.

"Hell with that," she said suddenly. "Come on, I'll show you. Moe!"

The door popped open, and the bigger goon filled the doorway. Nyla pushed past him, beckoning for us to follow. It was unbelievably hot outside in the sun. Her footsteps were unsteady—partly sun; partly high heels in the sand; mostly, I thought, either champagne or pure delight in her probable future. She led the way to another cabin, with a previously unobserved FBI man hulking in front of it. When Nyla Christophe nodded he threw the door open. She peered inside, then nodded to Douglas and me.

"Take a look," she invited. "Here's two good possibilities for you."

I still did not have an idea in the world what she was talking about, but I did what I was told. There were two men in the room. One was over in the corner, gently patting cream onto one of the worst cases of sunburn I'd ever seen. He had no shirt on, and he was lobster red to just above his wrists, and down to a V around his neck. With his hands over his face I couldn't get a good look at him.