Frederik Pohl - The Coming of the Quantum Cats

"She's crazy, sir," I said, currying favor.

"Damn right she's crazy! But," he said darkly, "at least I understand the way she's crazy. She's not a traitor. And that goddam egghead—"

"Sir?"

"That scientist!" he snarled. "I don't mean Douglas, I mean our own guy. You know what he tells us now? We could have saved the whole fucking operation! There's worlds we could have used where there aren't any people at all!"

"No people, sir?"

"Where the whole damned human race blew itself up years ago," he said testily. "He's peeped them. Like where they had an all-out nuclear war back in the seventies or so. Sure, some are too radioactive, we can't use them. But there are some that aren't. We could have gone into one of them. No opposition. Nobody there to give us any. We could have sent a fleet of transports through, flown them over to Russia, set up portals wherever we wanted them. Shit! We wouldn't even have needed bombs! Just push a nuclear warhead through, a thousand of them if we wanted to, all over the goddam country—or what used to be their country. You want a cup of joe?" he finished abruptly.

"Why—"

"Come on," he said, and tramped across the street to the headquarters building. "We didn't know," he said gloomily over his shoulder. "Now it's all fucked up."

Even a general relieved of command gets what he wants. The colonel with the papers in his hand glared at me, but I was shielded by the stars. He didn't say anything as Ratface drew two cups out of the urn and handed me one.

"This new operation, General—" I began.

"Yeah, yeah. We've got her pinned, I think. Only how much time have we got left?"

"Time, sir?"

"The Russians," he explained. "They're getting antsy." He took a long pull of the coffee. It was about two degrees under boiling, and just sipping it seared my throat. He had a throat of cast iron. "The word's getting out, DeSota," he said wearily. "Prisoners talk to their guards, guards talk to their girl friends. Casualties talk to their nurses. They even talk to reporters. We can't keep the lid on much longer—What's the problem, Colonel?" he demanded, looking at the commandant.

The colonel was pawing through his papers. "Excuse me, sir," he snapped, not in an excusing tone, "but is this man Dominic

DeSota? Yes? Jesus, DeSota, what the fuck are you doing here? You're in the wrong place! You're supposed to be going through at the sally point—get your ass up to the zoo right away!"

Magruder hitched a ride with me. He didn't ask. He just jumped into the jeep from one side as I was climbing in from the other, and I didn't argue. He didn't say a word as the driver gave it the hammer. There weren't many cars. Civilians had got the word; they weren't venturing out much any more. The traffic lights turned their colors at their own pace, and we went through the intersections with the horn blaring, red or green regardless; and there was nothing to stop us until we turned into the avenue.

Then there was plenty.

The whole of the avenue was blocked. It was like the lineup for an Inauguration Day parade, with all the military might of the republic filling the little side streets, the squad leaders in their gold and crimson helmets pacing restlessly back and forth in front of their vehicles, talking into their shoulder radios, ready to go on signal. Only they weren't getting ready for a parade. They were getting ready to go through the portal after Madame President. And there was another incongruous note. One lane along the avenue had been kept clear to evacuate some of the larger zoo animals, upset by the noise, scared by the commotion. Vehicles like horse vans, but with heavily barred windows, were taking away lions and leopards and gorillas. Behind them the frantic keepers were leading the giraffes and the elephants and the zebras through the hot Washington night. Our drivers lammed his horn button. An elephant trumpeted furiously back. "Shit," yelled Magruder in my ear, "we'll never drive through this! We'll walk!"

Even walking was no joy. The combat vehicles were not moving; dodging around them meant dodging out of the way of elephants—and, now and then, away from steamy great heaps of elephant turds. Ratface Magruder moved like a quarterback carrying the ball through scrimmage, yelling over his shoulder at me. I couldn't hear what; I was too busy trying to follow him to the portal inside the zoo gate.

Nothing was going through the portal.

"Shit," yelled Magruder again. "Come on!" And he headed for the zoo cafeteria, where the commanders were huddled around a television screen.

"What's the problem here?" he snarled. A two-star general looked up.

"See for yourself," he said, jerking a thumb at the screen. "That's a satellite transmission from the League of Nations in Geneva."

A fat man with pince-nez glasses was reading a speech into the cameras; the voice that came with it was a woman's, not his, translating the Russian into English.

"The Russkies?" guessed Magruder.

"Good thinking," said the major general. "That's the Soviet delegate speaking. Notice how sleepy he looks? It's maybe six A.M. there; he must've been up all night."

"What's he saying, sir?" I asked.

"Why," said the general politely, "he's saying they have-what did he say?—incontrovertible evidence that we're planning to attack his country by means of a parallel time. He's saying that unless we discontinue our 'invasion' at once his people will treat it as though it were an attack on their own country. That's a laugh, isn't it? The Russians protecting the Americans from the Americans?"

I swallowed. "Does that mean—?"

"That they'll attack? Yes, that's what it seems to mean. So take a load off your feet. We're holding off on any further troop movements until somebody figures out what we're going to do-and, thank God, that somebody is higher up than me."

Because she was one of the very few who could understand the man's slurred speech, she was the one allowed to guide his wheelchair over the bumpy, ancient walks of the college. But she could not manage the steps. "I'll find someone to help," she said, and bent to listen to the breathy whisper. "Oh, no, "she said, "it's no trouble, Dr. Hawking!" And she meant it. Even in the sweltering heat of England's hottest August—it had to be over seventy-five degrees!—helping a world-famous scientist to navigate Cambridge's pretty paths was not an imposition. It was an honor. And a responsibility; and when she came back with a husky crew member and an eager Greats from King's College she cried out in pain. "But he couldn't have got out of the chair! "she wailed. Yet there was the empty chair, straps still buckled, footrest still set high for his shrunken legs . . . but Stephen Hawking was no longer in it.

Yr 11—110 111—111, mo 1—000, da 11—101, Hr 1—010, mn 11—110

Senator Dominic DeSota

You do not get used to jumping from one parallel time to another, even when you know it's happening.

I didn't know.

All I knew was that at one moment I was hurrying down the stairs from the President's penthouse, looking for my lady love. Then, without perceptible delay (though it must have been hours, might have been days), I was lying flat on my back, listening to a honeyed voice whisper into my ear that I had nothing to worry about. That's the kind of thing that starts me worrying. I knew a lie when I heard one, and I was worried.

That is, the reasoning part of my head was worried. My body did not seem to be worried a bit. It was lying there perfectly relaxed. I don't think I had ever been quite that relaxed before, except maybe now and then after a really good toss-and-tumble with Nyla, when we'd lie back with every knot in either body untangled entirely. I don't mean that my state was in any way sexual, just that I was wholly and completely at a condition of physical ease.