Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

One final point, a nut that still requires gnawing.

If the World has number N = 1, then according to the author’s system the number of books in the successive nested worlds for N = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 will be: 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. Because there exist two versions of Nest of Worlds .

I am fascinated by this new sequence: it is powerful. I know—I feel intuitively—that it contains some relation. This began with numbers, but I still do not know where it is leading. Any ideas, Dave?

Gary went out for beer.

The district in which he lived was very quiet. The traffic basically stopped when the sun set. There weren’t many pedestrians during the day, and at night no one ventured out. The liquor store wasn’t far. He returned at a slow walk, hauling a plastic shopping bag filled with cans.

Three men came around the corner, in a hurry.

When they passed him, two of the men grabbed him by the arms, and the third punched him in the stomach.

Taken completely by surprise, Gary couldn’t defend himself. A yellow light flashed over and over before his eyes. They were beating him professionally. Each blow fell just as his head cleared from the one before and just before he was able to offer any resistance. The blows to the chin took away his consciousness, the blows to the liver took away his will to fight.

They didn’t kick him when he was down. One pulled his head up by his hair.

“If you want another helping, keep on about the red Amido,” the man said, his face covered with a nylon stocking.

The assailants took the bag full of beer. Gary made it home with difficulty. At first he could hardly walk—he staggered—but then it was better. His teeth were loose, but none of them fell out.

Daphne came in the afternoon, worried by his absence. He couldn’t swallow, his jaw hurt so much. At least his teeth stopped wiggling.

When Gary reported the beating to the police, Cukurca didn’t believe it. The story of the threat that had been made brought an ironic smile to his face. But at least this time the policeman wrote it down in the blotter.

Gary was furious. The lazy bastard, he thought, doesn’t want to complicate his life so close to retirement.

Later he realized that his assailants had beat him with great skill, leaving no marks—no black eyes, no split lips, no bloody nose. Cukurca could think, looking at Gary, that here was a nutcase who had made the whole thing up.

The salesgirl at Morley’s didn’t remember a red Amido or any buyers in green tunics. She gave Gary and Daphne a hard look. Why? There were no bruises on Gary’s face, and Daphne’s freckles were not that unusual.

They made the rounds of the commission shops methodically. A lot of furniture resembled what the Bolyas had had, but it resembled the furniture of many families, including Gary and Daphne’s. There was nothing clear, no evidence.

Gary bought himself a pistol and twenty-four bullets. The purchase was semi-illegal and the quality of the weapon poor: rust, scratched paint on the handle, worn parts. Afraid the gun might blow up in his face, Gary cleaned it, polished and oiled it.

Daphne decided to write up the story for the newspapers. An article like that would have an effect. But she needed to get all the facts right: a mistake could mean a lawsuit for libel.

Gary found the shop in which Spig had bought the Amido. It took him a long time to convince the salesgirl. If only he had a little personal charm. It didn’t help that as he grew older, his left eye got weaker; his brain, not wanting to process an image from it, let the eye wander. The girl actually went red trying to keep from laughing, because Gary’s eye, when he asked her more and more urgently, turned further and further inward, toward his nose. A man might be no older than he felt, but having a lazy eye and a stomach rumbling from hunger added twenty years.

Only after he told her what had happened and what he suspected—he even included the disbelief and sweaty gray uniform T-shirt of Cukurca—did she begin to listen seriously. Fear appeared on the girl’s narrow, expressive face. He noticed then that she actually had a good figure, in her tights. His first impression of her hadn’t been positive: pink, transparent eyes; colorless, greasy hair; the pallid skin of an albino. He must have made an equally bad impression on her. He relaxed, and his eye turned in less. He looked good enough now, apparently, to get her to give him the serial numbers of the engine and the chassis of the Amido Civic sold to the Bolyas. He also wrote down her telephone number. Sabine, the girl who was attractive when you looked a second time.

Gary and Daphne got along fine with the Green Tunics. Jutta and Margot borrowed spices from them and invited them to supper, though Gary and Daphne kept saying no. To complete the article that would unmask the gang (they were both certain it was a gang), they needed to obtain the serial numbers of the Tunics’ Amido. The editor of the paper Daphne went to felt that without that clinching evidence it was impossible to print the article. He saw it on the front page, making a great sensation, but airtight proof was needed first. Losing a lawsuit could push the paper, not that wealthy, into bankruptcy.

The thugs were waiting by the garbage cans on the side of Frisch’s Bar. In green tunics, red epaulets, and nylon stockings over their heads. Gary tried to defend himself, but they had rubber clubs. He was beaten as professionally as before. Then they kicked him. Hard, but not in the head. They told him several times that it was for the Amido. One of the men, after a particularly strong kick, gave a muffled shout.

“Ah! I broke a toe on that son of a bitch!”

“Quiet, Eb,” shushed another.

More than that Gary didn’t remember. He lost consciousness. He woke at dawn, full of pain. They had broken his nose.

On the corner of 830 Avenue and 763 Street was an empty lot. It had a closely cut lawn in the center, bushes and trees growing wild on the perimeter, and among them, here and there, rusted pieces of metal, bits of glass, rubble, and trash.

The lot was once a garbage dump. Later they cleaned it up, leveled it, put in the grass and trees. On holidays public concerts were held here. For a few pence you could sit on the lawn, pant from the heat, and hear deafening music. The music had to be deafening, because on the perimeter the noise of the city would drown out any melody. Gary liked going to such concerts; Daphne didn’t.

Vendors of ices or hot dogs picked their way among the audience spread out on the grass. The heat was oppressive, humid. Covered with a thick coat of suntan lotion, Gary licked a sour ice. The band ground out its number, torturing guitar strings. They sang of the swill printed in some newspaper, concluding with the sentiment that the newspaper was good only for wiping one’s behind. Nowadays you protested in a crumpled shirt that had buttons missing and in pants that had holes, and you used the foulest language you could. The band was roundly applauded. An obese individual sitting in front of Gary roared bravo until the folds of flesh on his sides shook rhythmically. For the moment he had put aside a greasy cardboard boat containing a sausage.

How many calories did you burn up clapping? Surely not many. Gary folded his jacket into a ball and put it under his head; he had taken the jacket in case it poured. He stretched out comfortably and closed his eyes. Despite the loud music, he fell asleep—the heat won. He had just completed an exhausting run. He didn’t know the people who were moving, but he remembered a clock with a blue ceramic face and brass columns. For some reason he couldn’t get that clock out of his head.