Elsewhen. Part 1

ELSEWHEN.

Heinlein, Robert A.

Excerpt from the Evening, STANDARD: SOUGHT SAVANT EVADES POLICE City Hall Scandal Looms.

Professor Arthur Frost, wanted for questioning in connection with the mysterious disappearance from his home of five of his students, escaped today from under the noses of a squad of police sent to arrest him. Police SergeantIzowski claimed that Frost disappeared from the interior of the Black Maria under conditions which leave the police puzzled. District Attorney Kames labeledIzowsld's story as preposterous and promised the fullest possible investigation.

"But, Chief, I didn't leave him alone for a second!" "Nuts!" answered the Chief of Police. "You claim you put Frost in the Wagon, stopped with one foot on the tailboard to write in your notebook, and when you looked up he was gone.D'yuhexpect the Grand Jury to believe that?D'yuhexpect me to believe that?"

"Honest,Chief ," persistedIzowski , "I just stopped to write down-"

"Write down what?"

"Something he said. I said to him, 'Look, Doc, why don't you tell us where you hid 'em? You know we're bound to dig 'emup in time.' And he just gives me a funny faraway look, and says, Time-ah, time . .

. yes, you could dig them up, in Time.' I thought it was an important admission and stops to write it down.

But I was standing in the only door he could use to get out of the Wagon. You know, Iain't little; Ikinda fill up a door."

"That's all you do," commented the Chief bitterly. "Izowski, you were either drunk, or crazy-or somebody got to you. The way you tell it, it's impossible!"

Izowskiwas honest, nor was he drunk, nor crazy.

Four days earlier Doctor Frost's cla.s.s in speculative metaphysics had metas usual for their Friday evening seminar at the professor's home. Frost was saying, "And why not? Why shouldn't time be a fifth as well as a fourth dimension?"

Howard Jenkins, hard-headed engineering student, answered, "No harm in speculating, I suppose, but the question is meaningless."

"Why?" Frost's tones were deceptively mild.

"No question is meaningless," interrupted Helen Fisher.

"Oh, yeah?How high is up?"

"Let him answer," meditated Frost.

"I will," agreed Jenkins. "Human beings are const.i.tuted to perceive three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. Whether thereare more of either is meaningless to us for there is no possible way for us to know-ever. Such speculation is a harmless waste of time."

"So?" said Frost. "Ever run across J. W. Dunne's theory of serial universe with serial time? And he's an engineer, likeyourself . And don't forgetOuspensky . He regarded time as multi-dimensional."

"Just a second, Professor," put in Robert Monroe. "I've seen their writings-but I still think Jenkins offered a legitimate objection. How can the question mean anything to us if we aren't built to perceive more dimensions? It's like in mathematics-you can invent any mathematics you like, on any set of axioms, but unless it can be used to describe some sort of phenomena, it's just so much hot air."

Fairly put," conceded Frost. "I'll give a fair answer. Scientific belief is based on observation, either one's own or that of a competent observer. I believe in a two-dimensional time because I have actually observed it."

The clock ticked on for several seconds.

Jenkins said, "But that is impossible.Professor. You aren't built to observe two time dimensions."

"Easy, there ..." answered Frost. "I am built to perceive them one at a time-and so are you. I'll tell you about it, but before I do so, I must explain the theory of time I was forced to evolve in order to account for my experience. Most people think of time as a track that they run on from birth to death as inexorably as a train follows its rails-they feel instinctively that time follows a straight line, the past lying behind, the future lying in front. Now I have reason to believe-to know-that time is a.n.a.logous to a surface rather than a line, and a rolling hilly surface at that. Think of this track we follow over the surface of time as a winding road cut through hills. Every little way the road branches and the branches follow side canyons. At these branches the crucial decisions of your life take place. You can turn right or left into entirely different futures. Occasionally there is a switchback where one can scramble up or down a bank and skip over a few thousand or million years-if you don't have your eyes so fixed on the road that you miss the short cut.

"Once in a while another road crosses yours. Neither its past nor its future has any connection whatsoever with the world we know. If you happened to take that turn you might find yourself on another planet in another s.p.a.ce-time with nothing left of you or your world but the continuity of your ego.

"Or, if you have the necessary intellectual strength and courage, you may leave the roads, or paths of high probability, and strike out over the hills of possible time, cutting through the roads as you come to them, following them for a little way, even following them backwards, with the past ahead of you, and the future behind you. Or you might roam around the hilltops doing nothing but the extremely improbable. I cannot imagine what that would be like- perhaps a bit like Alice-through-the-Looking-Gla.s.s.

"Now as to my evidence- When I was eighteen I had a decision to make. My father suffered financial reverses and I decided to quit college. Eventually I went into business for myself, and, to make a long story short, in nineteen-fifty-eight I was convicted of fraud and went to prison."

Martha Ross interrupted. "Nineteen-fifty-eight, Doctor? You mean forty-eight?"

"No, Miss Ross.I am speaking of events that did not take place on this time track."

"Oh." She looked blank, then muttered, "With the Lord all things are possible."

"While in prison I had time to regret my mistakes. I realized that I had never been cut out for a business career, and I earnestly wished that I had stayed in school many years before. Prison has a peculiar effect on a man's mind. I drifted further and further away from reality, and lived more and more in an introspective world of my own. One night, in a waynot then clear to me, my ego left mycell, went back along the time track, and I awoke in my room at my college fraternity house.

"This time I was wiser- Instead of leaving school, I found part-time work, graduated, continued as a graduate fellow, and eventually arrived where you now see me." He paused and glanced around.

"Doctor," asked young Monroe, "can you give us any idea as to how the stunt was done?"

'Yes, I can," Frost a.s.sented- "I worked on that problem for many years, trying to recapture the conditions. Recently I have succeeded and have made several excursions into possibility."

Up to this time the third woman, Estelle Martin, had made no comment, although she had listened with close attention. Now she leaned forward and spoke in an intense whisper.

"Tell us how, Professor Frost!"

"The means is simple. The key lies in convincing the subconscious mind that it can be done-"

"Then theBerkeleian idealism is proved!"

"In a way.Miss Martin. To one who believes in Bishop Berkeley's philosophy the infinite possibilities of two-dimensional time offer proof that the mind creates its own world, but aSpencerian determinist, such as good friend Howard Jenkins, would never leave the road of maximum probability. To him the world would be mechanistic and real. An orthodox free-will Christian, such as Miss Ross, would have her choice of several of the side roads, but would probably remain in a physical environment similar to Howard's.

"I have perfected a technique which will enable others to travel about in the pattern of times as I have done. I have the apparatus ready and any who wish can try it. That is the real reason why these Friday evening meetings have been held in my home-so that when the time came you all might try it, if you wished." He got up and went to a cabinet at the end of the room. "You mean we could go tonight.

Doctor?" "Yes, indeed. The process is one of hypnotism and suggestion. Neither is necessary, but that is the quickest way of teaching the sub-conscious to break out of its groove and go where it pleases. I use a revolving ball to tire the conscious mind into hypnosis. During that period the subject listens to a recording which suggests the time-road to be followed, whereupon he does. It is as simple as that. Do any of you care to try it?"

"Is it likely to bedangerous.Doctor?" He shrugged his shoulders. "The process isn't- just a deep sleep and a phonograph record- But the world of the time track you visit will be as real as the world of this time track. You are all over twenty-one. I am not urgingyou, I am merely offering you the opportunity."

Monroe stood up. "I'm going, Doctor." "Good! Sit here and use these earphones.Anyone else?"

"Count me in." It was Helen Fisher.

Estelle Martin joined them. Howard Jenkins went hastily to her side. "Are you going to try this business?"

"Most certainly."

He turned to Frost. "I'm in.Doc."

Martha Ross finally joined the others. Frost seated them where they could wear the ear-phones and then asked, "You will remember the different types of things you could do; branch off into a different world, skip over into the past or the future, or cut straight through the maze of probable tracks on a path of extreme improbability. I have records for all of those."

Monroe was first again. "I'll take a right angle turn and a brand new world."

Estelle did not hesitate. "I want to- How did you put it?-climb up a bank to a higher road somewhere in the future."

"I'll try that, too." It was Jenkins.

"I'll take the remote-possibilities track," put in Helen Fisher.

"That takes care of everybody but Miss Ross," commented the professor. "I'm afraid you will have to take a branch path in probability. Does that suit you?"

She nodded. "I was going to ask for it."

"That's fine. All of these records contain the suggestion for you to return to this room two hours from now, figured along this time track. Put on your earphones. The records run thirty minutes. I'll start them and the ball together."

He swung a glittering many-faceted sphere from a hook in the ceiling, started it whirling, and turned a small spotlight on it. Then he turned off the other lights, and started all the records by throwing a master switch. The scintillating ball twirled round andround, slowed and reversed and twirled back again. Doctor Frost turned his eyes away to keep from being fascinated by it. Presently he slipped out into the hall for a smoke. Half an hour pa.s.sed and there came the single note of a gong. He hurried back and switched on the light.

Four of the five had disappeared.

The remaining figure was Howard Jenkins, who opened his eyes and blinked at the light. "Well, Doctor, I guess it didn't work."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "No? Look around you."

The younger man glanced about him. "Where are the others?"

"Where?Anywhere," replied Frost, with a shrug, "and way when."

Jenkins jerked off his earphones and jumped to his feet. "Doctor, what have you done to Estelle?"

Frost gently disengaged a hand from his sleeve. "I haven't done anything, Howard. She's out on another time track."

"But I meant to go with her!"

"And I tried to send you with her."

"But why didn't I go?"

"I can't say-probably the suggestion wasn't strong enough to overcome your skepticism. But don't be alarmed, son-we expect her back in a couple of hours, you know."

"Don't be alarmed!-that's easy to say. I didn't want her to try this d.a.m.n fool stunt in the first place, but I knew I couldn't change her mind, so I wanted to go along to look out for her-she's so impractical!

But see here, Doc-where are their bodies? I thought we would just stay here in the room in a trance."

"Apparently you didn't understand me. These other time tracks are real, as real as this one we are in.

Their whole beings have gone off on other tracks, as if they had turned down a side street."

"But that's impossible-it contradicts the law of the conservation of energy!"

"You must recognize a fact when you see one- they are gone. Besides, it doesn't contradict the law; it simply extends it to include the total universe."

Jenkins rubbed a hand over his face. "I suppose so. But in that case, anything can happen to her- she could even be killed out there. And I can't do a d.a.m.n thing about it. Oh, I wish we had never seen this d.a.m.ned seminar!"

The professor placed an arm around his shoulders. "Since you can't help her, why not calm down?

Besides, you have no reason to believe that she is in any danger. Why borrow trouble? Let's go out to the kitchen and open a bottle of beer while we wait for them." He gently urged him toward the door.

After a couple of beers and a few cigarettes, Jenkins was somewhat calmed down. The professor made conversation.

"How did you happen to sign up for this course, Howard?"

"It was the only course I could take with Estelle."

"I thought so. I let you take it for reasons of my own. I knew you weren't interested in speculative philosophy, but I thought that your hard-headed materialism would hold down some of the loose thinking that is likely to go on in such a cla.s.s. You've been a help to me. Take Helen Fisher for example. She is p.r.o.ne to reason brilliantly from insufficient data. You help to keep her down to earth."

"To be frank.Doctor Frost, I could never see the need for all this high-falutindiscussion. I like facts."

"But you engineers are as bad as metaphysicians- you ignore any fact that you can't weigh in scales.

If you can't bite it, it's not real. You believe in a mechanistic, deterministic universe, and ignore the facts of human consciousness, human will, and human freedom of choice-facts that you have directly experienced."

'But those things can be explained in terms of reflexes."

The professor spread hisRands . "You sound just like Martha Ross-she can explain anything in terms of Bible-belt fundamentalism. Why don't both of you admit that there a few things you don't understand?"

He paused and c.o.c.ked his head. "Did you hear something?"

"I think I did."

"Let's check. It's early, but perhaps one of them is back."

They hurried to the study, where they were confronted by an incredible and awe-inspiring sight.

Floating in the air near the fireplace was a figure robed in white and s.h.i.+ning with a soft mother-of- pearl radiance. While they stood hesitant at the door, the figure turned its face to them and they saw that it had the face of Martha Ross, cleansed and purified to anunhuman majesty. Then it spoke.

"Peacebe unto you, my brothers." A wave of peace andlovingldndness flowed over them like a mother's blessing. The figure approached them, and they saw, curving from its shoulders, the long, white, sweeping wings of a cla.s.sical angel. Frost cursed under his breath in a dispa.s.sionate monotone.

"Do not be afraid, I have come back, as you asked me to.To explain and to help you."

The Doctor found his voice. "Are you Martha Ross?"

"I answer to that name."

"What happened after you put on the ear-phones?"

"Nothing.I slept for a while. When I woke, I went home."

"Nothing else?How do you explain your appearance?"