Robert Wilson: Divided by Infinity

“They’re certainly odd. Valuable? Not to me. Tell you the truth, I kind of wish you hadn’t brought them in.”

“Why?”

“They’re creepy. They’re too good. Kind of X-Files .” He gave me a sour grin. “Make up your own science fiction story.”

“Or live in it,” I said. We live in the science fiction of our youth.

He pushed the books across his cluttered desk. “Take ‘em away, Mr. Keller. And if you find out where they came from—”

“Yes?”

“I really don’t want to know.”

Items I noticed in the newspaper that evening:

GENE THERAPY RENDERS HEART BYPASS OBSOLETE

BANK OF ZURICH FIRST WITH QUANTUM ENCRYPTION

SETI RESEARCHERS SPOT “POSSIBLE” ET RADIO SOURCE

I didn’t want to go back to Ziegler, not immediately. It felt like admitting defeat—like looking up the answer to a magazine puzzle I couldn’t solve.

But there was no obvious next step to take, so I put the whole thing out of my mind, or tried to; watched television, did laundry, shined my shoes.

None of this pathetic sleight of hand provided the slightest distraction.

I was not (just as I had told Deirdre) a mystery lover, and I didn’t love this mystery, but it was a turbulence in the flow of the passing days, therefore interesting. When I had savored the strangeness of it to a satisfying degree, I took myself in hand and carried the books back to Finders, meaning to demand an explanation.

Oscar Ziegler was expecting me.

The late-May weather was already too humid, a bright sun bearing down from the ozone-depleted sky. Walking wasn’t such a pleasure under the circumstances. I arrived at Finders plucking my shirt away from my body. Graceless. The woman Deirdre looked up from her niche at the rear of the store. “Mr. Keller, right?” She didn’t seem especially pleased to see me.

I meant to ask if Ziegler was available, but she waved me off: “He said if you showed up you were to go on upstairs. That’s, uh, really unusual.”

“Shouldn’t you let him know I’m here?”

“Really, he’s expecting you.” She waved at the bead curtain, almost a challenge: Go on, if you must.

The curtain made a sound like chattering teeth behind me. The stairway was dim. Dust balls quivered on the risers and clung to the threadbare coco-mat tread. At the top was a door silted under so many layers of ancient paint that the molding had softened into gentle dunes.

Ziegler opened the door and waved me in.

His room was lined with books. He stepped back, settled himself into an immense overstuffed easy chair, and invited me to look at his collection. But the titles at eye level were disappointing. They were old cloth volumes of Gurdjieff and Ouspenski, Velikovsky and Crowley—the usual pseudo-gnostic spiritualist bullshit, pardon my language. Like the room itself, the books radiated dust and boredom. I felt obscurely disappointed. So this was Oscar Ziegler, one more pathetic old man with a penchant for magic and cabalism.

Between the books, medical supplies: inhalers, oxygen tanks, pill bottles.

Ziegler might be old, but his eyesight was still keen. “Judging by the expression on your face, you find my den distasteful.”

“Not at all.”

“Oh, fess up, Mr. Keller. You’re too old to be polite and I’m too old to pretend I don’t notice.”

I gestured at the books. “I was never much for the occult.”

“That’s understandable. It’s claptrap, really. I keep those volumes for nostalgic reasons. To be honest, there was a time when I looked there for answers. That time is long past.”

“I see.”

“Now tell me why you came.”

I showed him the softcover books, told him how I’d taken them to Niemand for a professional assessment. Confessed my own bafflement.

Ziegler took the books into his lap. He looked at them briefly and took a long drag from his oxygen mask. He didn’t seem especially impressed. “I’m hardly responsible for every volume that comes into the store.”

“Of course not. And I’m not complaining. I just wondered—”

“If I knew where they came from? If I could offer you a meaningful explanation?”

“Basically, yes.”

“Well,” Ziegler said. “Well. Yes and no. Yes and no.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That is… no, I can’t tell you precisely where they came from. Deirdre probably bought them from someone off the street. Cash or credit, and I don’t keep detailed records. But it doesn’t really matter.”

“Doesn’t it?”

He took another lungful from the oxygen bottle. “Oh, it could have been anyone. Even if you tracked down the original vendor—which I guarantee you won’t be able to do—you wouldn’t learn anything useful.”

“You don’t seem especially surprised by this.”

“Implying that I know more than I’m saying.” He smiled ruefully. “I’ve never been in this position before, though you’re right, it doesn’t surprise me. Did you know, Mr. Keller, that I am immortal?”

Here we go, I thought. The pitch. Ziegler didn’t care about the books. I had come for an explanation; he wanted to sell me a religion.

“And you , Mr. Keller. You’re immortal, too.”

What was I doing here, in this shabby place with this shabby old man? There was nothing to say.

“But I can’t explain it,” Ziegler went on; “that is, not in the depth it deserves. There’s a volume here—I’ll lend it to you—” He stood, precariously, and huffed across the room.

I looked at his books again while he rummaged for the volume in question. Below the precambrian deposits of the occult was a small sediment of literature. First editions, presumably valuable.

And not all familiar.

Had Ernest Hemingway written a book called Pamplona? (But here it was, its Scribners dust jacket protected in brittle mylar.) Cromwell and Company , by Charles Dickens? Under the Absolute , by Aldous Huxley?

“Ah, books.” Ziegler, smiling, came up behind me. “They bob like corks on an ocean. Float between worlds, messages in bottles. This will tell you what you need to know.”

The book he gave me was cheaply made, with a utilitarian olive-drab jacket. You Will Never Die , by one Carl G. Soziere.

“Come back when you’ve read it.”

“I will,” I lied.

“I had a feeling,” Deirdre said, “you’d come downstairs with one of those.”

The Soziere book. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Not until I took this job. Mr. Ziegler gave me a copy. But I speak from experience. Every once in a long while, somebody comes in with a question or a complaint. They go upstairs. And they come back down with that .”

At which point I realized I had left the paperbacks in Ziegler’s room. I suppose I could have gone back for them, but it seemed somehow churlish. But it was a loss. Not that I loved the books, particularly, but they were the only concrete evidence I had of the mystery—they were the mystery. Now Ziegler had them back in his possession. And I had You Will Never Die .

“It looks like a crank book.”

“Oh, it is,” Deirdre said. “Kind of a parallel-worlds argument, you know, J.W. Dunne and so on, with some quantum physics thrown in; actually, I’m surprised a major publisher didn’t pick it up.”

“You’ve read it?”

“I’m a sucker for that kind of thing, if you want the truth.”

“Don’t tell me. It changed your life.” I was smiling.

She smiled back. “It didn’t even change my mind.”

But there was an odd note of worry in her voice.

Of course I read it.

Deirdre was right about You Will Never Die . It had been published by some private or vanity press, but the writing wasn’t crude. It was slick, even witty in places.