Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

"Wrong. In my time line World War Three, the nuclear war-sometimes known by other names-badly damaged Europe but did not spread; North America under the Prophet had opted out of international affairs. In time line eleven the war started a little sooner, in the Middle East, spread to all the world overnight... and a hundred years later it was still impossible to find any life superior to cockroaches on the land masses of what had once been the cool green hills of Earth. Take it, Hilda."

"Thank you, too much! Lazarus leaves me with a planet glowing in the dark to show why we need better prediction methods. We hope to use Adam Selene-supervising computer Holmes IV known as 'Mike'-the programs and memories that make him unique-to tie the best computers of Tertius and some other planets into a mammoth logic that can correctly project the results of a defined change in history... so that we won't swap Nehemiah Scudder-who can be endured-for a ruined planet that cannot be endured. Lazarus, should I mention the supersnooperscope?"

"You just did, so you had better."

"Richard, I'm way out of my depth; I'm just a simple housewife-"

A groan went up in that hall. Lazarus may have led it but it seemed to be unanimous.

"-who lacks a technical background. But I do know that engineering progress depends on accurate instruments, and that accurate instruments ever since the twentieth century-my century-have depended on progress in electronics. My number-one husband Jake Burroughs and Dr. Libby Long and Dr. Deety Carter are whipping up a little doozy combining Jake's space-time twister with television and the ordinary snooper-scope. With it you will be able not only to watch what your wife is doing while you are away overnight but also to watch what she will be doing ten years from now. Or fifty. Or five hundred.

"Or it could let the Circle of Ouroboros see what would be the result of an intervention before it is too late to refrain. Maybe. With the unique power of Holmes IV-maybe yes. We'll see. But it is as certain as anything can be in this quicksand world that Mike Holmes IV can improve the performance of the Circle of Ouroboros enormously even if the supersnooperscope never comes on line.

"Since we are trying hard to make things better, more decent, happier for everyone, I hope that you will see that Task Adam Selene is worth doing. Any questions?"

"I have one, Hilda."

"Yes, Jubal?"

"Has our friend Richard been indoctrinated in the concept of the World as Myth?"

"I barely mentioned it, once, in telling him how we four- Zeb and Deety, Jake and I-were hounded off our planet and erased out of the script. I think Hazel has done better. Richard?" "Not anything I could get my teeth into. Nothing that made sense. And-forgive me, Hilda-I found your story hard to swallow."

"Of course, dear; I don't believe it myself. Except late at night. Jubal, you had better take it."

Dr. Harshaw answered, "Very well. The World as Myth is a subtle concept. It has sometimes been called multiperson solipsism, despite the internal illogic of that phrase. Yet illogic may be necessary, as the concept denies logic. For many centuries religion held sway as the explanation of the universe- or multiverse. The details of revealed religions differed wildly but were essentially the same: Somewhere up in the sky-or down in the earth-or in a volcano-any inaccessible place- there was an old man in a nightshirt who knew everything and was all powerful and created everything and rewarded and punished... and could be bribed.

"Sometimes this Almighty was female but not often because human males are usually bigger, stronger, and more belligerent; God was created in Pop's image.

"The Almighty-God idea came under attack because it explained nothing; it simply pushed all explanations one stage farther away. In the nineteenth century atheistic positivism started displacing the Almighty-God notion in that minority of the population that bathed regularly.

"Atheism had a limited run, as it, too, explains nothing, being merely Godism turned upside down. Logical positivism was based on the physical science of the nineteenth century which, physicists of that century honestly believed, fully explained the universe as a piece of clockwork.

"The physicists of the twentieth century made short work of that idea. Quantum mechanics and Schrodringer's cat tossed out the clockwork world of 1890 and replaced it with a fog of probability in which anything could happen. Of course the intellectual class did not notice this for many decades, as an intellectual is a highly educated man who can't do arithmetic with his shoes on, and is proud of his lack. Nevertheless, with the death of positivism, Godism and Creationism came back stronger than ever.

"In the late twentieth century -correct me when I' m wrong, Hilda-Hilda and her family were driven off Earth by a devil, one they dubbed 'the Beast.' They fled in a vehicle you have met. Gay Deceiver, and in their search for safety they visited many dimensions, many universes... and Hilda made the greatest philosophical discovery of all time."

"I'll bet you say that to all the girls!"

"Quiet, dear. They visited, among more mundane places, the Land of Oz-"

I sat up with a jerk. Not too much sleep last night and Dr. Harshaw's lecture was sleep-inducing. "Did you say 'Oz'?"

"I tell you three times. Oz, Oz, Oz. They did indeed visit the fairyland dreamed up by L. Frank Baum. And the Wonderland invented by the Reverend Mr. Dodgson to please Alice. And other places known only to fiction. Hilda discovered what none of us had noticed before because we were inside it: The World is Myth. We create it ourselves-and we change it ourselves. A truly strong myth maker, such as Homer, such as Baum, such as the creator of Tarzan, creates substantial and lasting worlds ... whereas the fiddlin', unimaginative liars and fabulists shape nothing new and their tedious dreams are forgotten. On this observed fact, Richard-not religion but verifiable fact-is based the work of the Circle of Ouroboros. Hilda?"

"Only a short time until we should break for lunch. Richard, do you have any comment now?"

"You won't like it."

LAzarus said, "Spill it, Bub."

"I not only will not risk my life on wordy nonsense, I will do all that I can to keep Hazel from doing so. If you really want, and need, the programs and memories of that out-of-date Lunar computer there are at least two better ways to get them."

"Keep talking."

"One way simply uses money. Set up a front organization, an academic fakery. Funnel money into Galileo University as grants, and walk in the front door of the computer room, and take what you want. The other way is to use enough force to do a real job. Don't send an elderly married couple to try to watergate it. You cosmic do-gooders have not convinced me."

"Let's see your ticket!"

It was Little Black Sambo, the sky marshal. "What ticket?" "The one that entitles you to unscrew the inscrutable. Show it. You are just a lily-livered coward, too yellow to do your plain duty."

"Really? Who appointed you God? Look, boy, I'm mighty glad that your skin color matches mine."

"Why so?" "Because, if it didn't, I would be called a racist for the way I despise you."

I saw him draw his side arm, but my cane, damn it!, had slid to the floor. I was reaching for it when his bolt hit me, low on the left.

As he was hit from three sides, two to the heart, one to the head, by John Sterling, by Lazarus, by Commander Smith- three crack gunmen, where one would have sufficed.

I didn't hurt yet. But I knew I was gut-shot-bad, final bad, if I didn't get help fast.

But something was happening to Samuel Beaux. He leaned forward and fell off his chair, dead as King Charles-and his body began to disappear. It didn't fade out; it disappeared in swipes, through the middle, then across the face, as if someone had taken an eraser to a chalkboard. Then he was gone completely; not even blood was left. Even his chair was gone.