Frederik Pohl - The Coming of the Quantum Cats

"You bet I do," I said with a grin, and I did. It was the first time I had ever kissed her. She tasted of coffee, and rabbit stew, and herself, and it was a great combination. "So then," I said, settling back in my chair, "we'd better get a move on. You'll have to get your things, and tell the people at the museum that you quit. Say two hours for that. That gives us about another hour or two to maybe shop for anything you think you'll need in California before the blimp takes off. We can get the captain to marry us on the way."

She had picked up her coffee cup again, and she actually spilled some of it. "Jesus, Dom," she said, looking as though she were just finding out what she was getting herself into, "you do move a greased streak when you want to. Is that legal?"

"Honey," I said, on purpose this time, "it just might be that you've kind of missed the point of what's happening here. It's a new life. We don't have to worry about what's legal in stuff like this. There are too many different kinds of rules, back in all the places we all came from, so we just make it up as we go along. And that's exactly what's the best thing of all about it."

So a few hours later we were well and truly married, and we proved it to each other in the little crew bunks of the blimp, somewhere over New Jersey. And over Pennsylvania, and probably over Ohio, though we weren't checking geography at the time. We might have proved it again over somewhere around Indiana if Mary Wodczek, who had said the vows for us as soon as we took off the night before, hadn't decorously knocked at the door with coffee and orange juice and toast. "I thought you might like some breakfast," she said, smiling at the newlyweds. It was a kindly thought. Kindly she disappeared again at once.

And a while after that we were sitting propped up in the narrow bed, with our arms around each other and feeling pretty good in the gentle sway of the blimp, when Nyla said, "Dominic? You know, I'm not sure I'd really go back now even if somebody offered it to me."

"Me too," I said, nuzzling her neck.

She pressed her cheek against me absently. "That's funny, though. All the time I was working in the museum I was just praying for a miracle. I had all these fantasies about how great it would be if I could return for a heroine's welcome, or something— But it would really be the same place, wouldn't it? And this is all different and, honestly, I don't think I'd mind if we were stuck here forever."

"That's good," I said, kissing her warm, damp armpit, "although I don't guarantee that it's true. About being stuck here forever, I mean."

She pressed back, then sat up straight, looking down at me with an uncertain smile, as though she suspected there was a joke in there somewhere but hadn't located it yet. "What do you mean? They said they were closing all the portals permanently!"

"And so they have, hon," I conceded. "That might not matter. Listen, the shower here is pretty small, but I bet the two of us could fit in—"

"In a minute, boy! Tell me what you mean!"

I leaned over her to take a swig of cooling coffee from my cup. "I just mean that these big-time people are only human, hon. They aren't gods. I don't doubt they've closed all the portals, not counting some electronic peepholes, because they can't stand what would happen if ballistic recoil got out of hand."

"Well, then?"

I said, "It may not be up to them. See, they were the first to get the portal. They located maybe thirty or forty other times that either had it, or might get it pretty soon, but that's only twenty or thirty. How big a fraction is thirty divided by infinity, Nyla?"

"Don't pull mathematics on me, Dom!"

"It's not mathematics, it's just sense. It's October 1983, right? Not just here. For everybody. They're not ahead of us. They just got lucky fifty or a hundred years ago. But it's October 1983 for an infinite number of parallel times. Not just them. Not just us. All the times, and time is a-marching on in all of them. Maybe right this second, in some time nobody yet has ever even peeped, somebody like me, or you, is just making the breakthrough. And maybe there are four or five others that haven't got quite that far yet but they're on the trail. By Christmas there could be a dozen times with paratime capacity—and maybe twenty-five or thirty more in January and in February . . . and next year, and the year after—"

"Oh, my God," said Nyla.

"And someday," I finished, "there's going to be so darn many of them that there'll be thousands or millions, all breaking through at once-and do you think anybody's going to be able to hold the lid on that?"

"Holy sweet jumping baby Jesus God," said Nyla.

"Exactly," I said.

"All that ballistic recoil," she said.

I nodded, letting it soak in.

She looked at me with what was either fright or respect—I hadn't known my bride long enough yet to know which. "Are you the only one who knows about this?" she demanded.

"Of course not. The people who snatched us are bound to know, but they're not around to ask about it. And I'm sure there are others. I've tried to bring it up a few times. Some people don't seem to get what I mean, like the senator. Most of them—well, they just don't want to talk about it. Scared, I guess."

She flared up. "Damn right, they're scared! Personally, I'm panicked."

"Well," I said, "considering how bad all this might turn out to be, you'd be crazy if you weren't. But look at the good side. You and I ought to be okay. We're going to be out in the desert, where it's not too likely anything really scary is going to be going on in any time. It'll be bizarre, all right, oh, boy, will it! But it won't be as physically dangerous as it would be in a city, say—where, I don't know, maybe a zeppelin could fly right into your bedroom or something."

Nyla gave me a really unbridely look. Not loving a bit. "What you're telling me," she said scathingly, "is that we'll survive and screw the rest of the human race, right? Right?" she yelled. "And you've been having the nerve to tell me I was a tough, selfish, hardboiled—"

"Na, na," I said, gently putting my fingers across her lips, "I never said any of that. Exactly. And I do care about the human race. I care a lot."

"But—but then what are we going to do about it, Dom?"

I said, "Nothing, love. There's nothing we can do. It's just going to happen. . . . There's one good thing, though."

I waited for her to ask what the good thing was. When she started to scowl and her eyebrows knotted and she opened her mouth, I didn't think I was going to like the way she was going to ask me, so I said hastily, "That is, it will start small. I'm pretty sure of that. There'll be lots of warning before it gets really bad—time to evacuate the cities, maybe, or do whatever anybody can do. And—it can't be prevented, do you see? So we'll just have to do the best we can."

She hopped out of bed and stared down at the empty plains below. I let her think it over. Finally she turned to me. "Dom?" she said. "Are you sure we're doing the right thing? I mean, you were talking about having kids and, I don't know, sometimes I think maybe I'd like that myself. But isn't this a kind of scary world to bring kids up in?"

I got up and stood beside her, the two of us naked and touching, hip to shoulder, with my arm around her. "You bet it is," I said. "But was there ever one that wasn't?"