Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

I am a text, he thought. Somehow I can accept this. It does not frighten me. Actually, it makes little difference.

“Take my hand,” said Ra Mahleiné quietly.

He sat beside her on the sofa and wept.

She too had tears in her eyes.

“I don’t want to die,” she said. “I waited for you so long, and we were together for so short a time.”

“And I don’t want to live when you die.”

A solution came to him. Not caring that it appeared ridiculous, he raised his head, looked in the air above him, and began:

“I’m speaking to you. You who now hold this book in your hands. Stop reading! I beg you. Put it down. Ra Mahleiné, whom I love, is dying, and there is no hope for her. When you read, my world moves inexorably toward her death. If you put aside Nest of Worlds , everything here will freeze into a quasi existence… It’s better for us that way. I want her to live. I want to be with her. Give us this chance!”

“Who are you talking to, Gavein? I see no one. I still have my eyes, my wits, at least that.” She gave his hand a feeble squeeze. Her body burned with fever.

“You’ve seen so much death in Davabel. Isn’t it enough for you?” Gavein said.

“Is it Nott you’re talking to? Has Nott come? Tell her to give me an injection. The Red Claw, I feel it again.”

Through the window fell the rays of the setting sun, but darkness had settled on the face of the woman he loved.

“My world, it’s a crime novel pure and simple,” Gavein exclaimed. “What more do you require? The crime has been solved now, hasn’t it? The epidemic of deaths was a consequence of the fact that you read; when you stopped, no one died. That’s the answer to the mystery. And I didn’t go mad like Wilcox!”

Ra Mahleiné grew extremely pale.

“Gavein,” she said. “I’m alone. Speak to me. I need you.”

“This is not my paranoid creation of reality, no, this is, must be, a book!” When he shouted it, all his doubts were stilled. “And for the plot, the rules have been broken. Ra Mahleiné is an Aeriella , yet she’s dying like an Intralla , of cancer.”

He held her weakening hand.

“And you,” he continued. “Isn’t your world also a book in the hands of an unknown Reader? When He reads, the fate of your world unfolds, history unfolds. And sometimes Death hovers, taking those near and dear. And the Main Hero has passed you only at a distance.”

“It helped. The injection helped. The pain is going.” Ra Mahleiné fixed her large blue eyes on him. Regret, reproach remained in them.

“If this is a book, put it down now, don’t turn the page… She will owe you her life, and I all my happiness.”

“Gavein,” whispered Ra Mahleiné, “I love you.”

Her eyes clouded over, her hand grew cold. He kissed her on the lips one last time and closed her eyes gently with his fingertips.

“You want to know how this ends? Very well… There will be one more piece of action for you.”

He went to the red telephone and lifted the receiver. “Give me the president. This is David Death.”

After a moment came the rough voice of the president. “Yes? I’m here.”

“My wife is dead. I was unable to keep her alive.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Throzz.”

“Yes. I solved the puzzle of the epidemic of deaths.”

“What was the cause?”

How do you tell the world that it is a crime novel read by a stranger? A crime novel, moreover, that is too easy to figure out? He smiled bitterly. No, it would be doing a kindness to them to keep this secret.

And if it isn’t true? A game of numbers described by Zef, only his little joke, one of the dozens that he made? And I took it seriously and fell into madness, like Wilcox, after all?

“Throzz, are you there?”

“Yes. The cause is Fate.” Wasn’t Fate the name Wilcox once gave to the main protagonist?

“You mean, a random fluctuation of probability?”

“This fluctuation isn’t random. The epidemic of deaths ends when I stop living. That is the solution.”

And if, in Superworld Minus One, there is a Library that houses all the Nests of Worlds , and they sit on the shelf equally, without regard for degree of nesting? And beside them, on a shelf of its own, is a Catalogue. A complete index of characters. A list of the characters from all the books.

If a book can be a world, then why can’t an Index be a happy place where everyone meets and converses? (Or at least they do when the Librarian leafs through the Catalogue.) A place where Jaspers and Sabine and Gary drink beer, and the cat Roan dozes on the table beside their mugs. That is where I’ll find Ra Mahleiné.

He wiped his brow. This is not insanity, he thought. It’s no more insane than what Zef discovered.

A Catalogue was entirely possible. The Rule of Names was broken, because Ra Mahleiné died as an Intralla , not as an Aeriella . So perhaps there is not the perfect symmetry of nothingness, four incarLands, nothingness.

“Mr. Throzz!”

“Yes.”

“There’s a problem with the line.”

“The phone’s working. No, I have decided to commit suicide.” (Thinking: That’s the only way to get around the reader in Superworld Zero. To go straight to the Index.)

“We can’t argue with you. But please don’t ask that you be killed. The disastrous experience of the Commission of Defense proved that that is impossible. Death cannot be killed.”

“I will do it myself, but I need your help. The help I need is technological. My name is Aeriel . (Thinking: But what difference does that make, now that the Rule of Names has been broken?)

“No one will bomb you or shoot at you from the air,” said the president. “Even if you ask. I will not permit it.”

“I have a better idea. Give me a copter. One of the last three left in Davabel’s air force.”

“We have three new copters from the factory. There’s a squadron of them now.”

“It doesn’t matter. The copter will drop a rope ladder, because there is no place here to land. I will climb on board and jump from the highest altitude.”

“The copter is taking off now. Please wait in the middle of the street, so the pilot can see you. I’ll send an ambulance for your wife’s remains.”

“I’ll wait. I have one more request.”

“What is it?”

“I’d like her body to be frozen, kept frozen forever.”

“You make this a condition of your suicide?”

“That’s right. It’s a condition.” Gavein understood the president’s putting it formally, for the record.

“Very well. This conversation is being recorded, and my decision has the force of law: government funds will be allocated and placed in the Bank of Davabel. They will cover the cost of preserving your wife’s body. Your remains are to be placed beside hers?”

“Yes. Have the copter come at once. I don’t want to be here when they take her away.”

“It will be there in minutes.”

“My regards to Colonel Medved.”

“Medved is no more. He suffered a stroke. Please wait for the copter.”

Gavein sighed. “He too. Did he like beer?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Throzz,” snapped the president.

He looked at Ra Mahleiné. She seemed to have dozed off for a moment.

The sky was clear. The buildings threw long shadows as the sun set. He felt light, clearheaded. He would be rejoining her soon—this time forever. The Index, he could almost see it: a thick tome, dog-eared from constant thumbing. Possibly it lay not on a shelf but on the Librarian’s desk.

Before long he heard the growl of the copter. He saw the war machine, large, familiar to him now. This time unarmed.