Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

“The dripping signifies that I’m thinking,” said Dr. Nott. “If I wasn’t thinking, you would see no fluid. And now look inside your Magda.”

The interior of Ra Mahleiné’s body was similar, at first glance identical.

The same dark hall, the bridges of tissue, the stairways of pulsing tendon, the conduits of veins and nerves, the giant brain in far darkness. The only difference was that into the funnel placed below the brain a considerably greater quantity of fluid dripped.

Ra Mahleiné thinks a lot more than the doctor, Gavein thought with pride. He had always suspected that Dr. Nott was not that bright.

“Look closely” came the doctor’s voice.

He examined the interior with more care. He hadn’t noticed them before, but they were everywhere, on the veins, on the tonsils, on the red bridges: fleshy cauliflower spheres, deeply rooted in the floor. All the other parts were dim, toned down, as if faded. Only the cauliflowers flourished with an enviable, triumphant, pink vitality. He looked at the brain of Ra Mahleiné, mighty in the dark, and it too, like a firmament speckled with stars, was covered with these evil pink growths. One of the cauliflowers was growing at the mouth of the funnel and would soon block it. As Gavein watched, a bridge leading deep into the giant hall that was the body of Ra Mahleiné buckled under the weight of its burgeoning cauliflowers and fell like a limp rag. The spheres began to eat it voraciously, until they had consumed it completely, uniting to make one, furrowed, intensely pink, massive growth.

“You see, Dave. There’s no hope. It’s a lost cause.”

He wanted to shout, to defy the spheres, to tear them and remove them, but of course there was no way he could enter the body of Ra Mahleiné.

As if a hand had him by the throat, he was unable to cry out, and yet he heard a cry. Someone was calling. The dream slowly dissolved.

Ra Mahleiné repeated his name. Kneeling on the sidewalk, she was holding the head of Lorraine, who lay still.

“Gavein, call an ambulance! Tell Nott to come immediately, or someone else.”

Gavein’s mind cleared. He jumped from his chair.

“She was hit by a fragment from the helicopter. She’s conscious, but it has paralyzed her.”

An unknown doctor answered the phone and promised to send an ambulance.

Lorraine could not say what hurt her the most. She spit blood. There was a stabbing in her legs, a numbness, the same in her arms.

“It’s time for me now, Dave?” she said, with a pleading look. “I did my best. Magda didn’t complain…”

Her voice, usually high and piping, was hoarse now. On the other side of the street an aluminum bar from the copter clattered to the pavement. Lorraine had been struck with two pieces: the first, larger fragment in the back; then, when she fell and rolled, a piece of a pipe hit her in the stomach. Several other fragments had fallen on the street in the course of the day. The two women had been watching as if it were a show: the objects almost motionless in the sky, then suddenly accelerating, to strike the pavement or buildings like bullets. None of them fell so close as to alarm the women. Ra Mahleiné had been knitting. Lorraine had gotten up to make some tea when she was hit. Ra Mahleiné had barely lifted her eyes from her work when the second missile reached Lorraine on the ground. On the sidewalk lay the metal fragments, indifferent to the tragedy they had caused.

Gavein saw in time that Lorraine was going to throw up; he turned her on her side, so she wouldn’t choke. She vomited long and abundantly, first dark blood, then bright. With a groan she lost consciousness.

They heard the ambulance siren, but Lorraine’s body began to twitch.

“She’s dying,” Ra Mahleiné said.

The ambulance drove up, and the medics began resuscitation: oxygen, massaging the heart. It didn’t help. The physician pronounced death from internal bleeding, and the body was removed. On the sidewalk a pool of darkening blood remained.

“What was her Name?” asked Ra Mahleiné.

“ Aeriella . It fits. Be careful: you have the same Name, and the explosion isn’t over.”

“You do too.”

“I? David Death?” He shook his head.

He helped his wife up, put an arm around her waist, and led her inside. Through her clothes he felt how thin she was, and hard, like a swollen belly. He said nothing, and had she asked him a question then, he would have been unable to speak. He understood that he held a treasure that was lost to him.

“You know, that blow, I remember it only generally. The details began only when you woke. Before that, also, I felt no pain… Please, read,” she said as he put a blanket around her.

In her nightshirt she looked even more pathetic.

“Your Little Manul will go to sleep like a good girl and wake up strong and healthy. Just start reading.”

This absurd idea she has got into her head, he thought. He also noticed what little impression Lorraine’s death had made on her. Sighing, obeying, he reached for the book.

To sum up. I have two formulas.

The number of Lands = (n + 2) 2.

The number of Significant Names = 12 (n + 1).

Plus: two sequences of numbers for which I have found no rule of progression, though I am certain that a rule exists.

Consider, Dave: since n is merely the number of the world chosen by me, it should be possible… But surely now you see it. If not, then, amigo, you have concrete inside your skull and no amount of nose picking will help. The solution lies under the folded card…

A good thing that his notes are so complete, thought Gavein. If he had jotted down only a few numbers, his ideas would all have perished with him.

Though thinking this was a capitulation.

The folded index card had been glued shut, for security, by some of the brain matter Zef alluded to. Gavein unstuck it. The card read:

The solution is simplicity itself. I get rid of a constant by changing the numbering. For example, if you take N = n + 1, then

The number of Lands = (N + 1) 2.

The number of Significant Names = 12 N.

Both formulas become prettier, for they are simpler.

So the world of Gary and Daphne will have the number N = 1 + 1 = 2, the world of Jaspers and company N = 3, the world of Ozza and Hobeth N = 4, and the world of Jack and Linda N = 5.

By changing the numbering, one of the constants drops out of my terrific formulas, but the question now arises: What world has the number N = 1?

Reading Zef’s notes was annoying: his facility in manipulating formulas, his substitution of variables, his quick conclusions. But possibly the kid had thought things through solidly and was recording only the best fruits of his labor…

It came to me in a flash! If you can’t guess which world, I’ll write it out for you. Here is what we know about that world from the formulas: it has 2 2, that is, 4 Lands, and in it there are 12 1, or 12, Significant Names. It’s our world! The four Lands: Lavath, Davabel, Ayrrah, and Llanaig. The Significant Names are: Aeriel, Udarvan, Flued, Flomir —the Names of Element; Vorior, Plosib, Murhred, Sulled —the Names of Conflict; and Yacrod, Aktid, Intral, Myzzt —the Names of Man.

Nest of Worlds has been nested in our world according to the same rules of nesting obeyed by the worlds that follow in the sequence. The two versions of Nest of Worlds aren’t two trees, as I thought. No, they are two branches that have grown from a common trunk, from the World!

Behold what a powerful instrument is the ability to juggle constants in a formula. It has revealed the hidden idea of the author of the book, the book I’m reading!