"Look, Kate," I said. "I don't want to see you. I'm not your husband,
really. He's a pleasant fellow, I met him today, and he's not me. I
never became a doctor. No doubt you remember what I was doing instead
of studying."
That was a mistake, for she came and sat on the edge of the bed and ran
her fingers into my hair.
"I thought it was odd I should dream about my husband," she said. "I'll
believe you, because I don't know how I got here and you do look like
the Harry I used to know, before he went all high scientific surgeon
and no time for fun."
She curved more fully than she had when she was eighteen, but there was
neat symmetry to her sine formulae, and she still had blonde hair. Her
perfume was the same as the one in the lab I had been smelling all day,
it was now reaching me at high amperage.
So that was the key, the evocative power of smell association. I
sniffed deeply at the perfume in appreciation.
"Like it?" Kate asked, wriggling.
"Only for its scientific values," I said. "It suggests a most valuable
line of research."
"I'm in favor," she said, and pressed me to the bed.
"Your husband is coming!" I shouted, and it worked. She disappeared.
Presumably she woke up in her own probability time-space. And no doubt
Kate's reflexes by now were trained to snap her awake and away at the
suggestion that her husband was around. It was highly improbable that
Kate would alter much.
I got up to make myself some coffee. There was no point in wasting
sleep without a plan. Clearly, I had to take the pills and fix the
appropriate smell in my mind, and when I woke up I would drag the
proper slice of another probability with me. And then I would interview
the me who had solved the ultra-uranium heavy element equation. And the
bomb to end all bombs would be perfected. The test was ready, waiting
for me to say, "Let's go, boys. We know what will happen this time."
But there was, it struck me, the difficulty of finding the right scent
to evoke the right probable me.
* * * * *
I collected all the toothpaste, deodorant, shaving stick, aftershave
lotion I could find in the bathroom and started on the toothpaste. I
inhaled deeply and lay down, with the first tube on my chest. But after
the coffee, I slept very briefly, and when I looked up there was only a
toothbrush on the carpet. It was not mine in this world and I had no
idea whose it was, or rather which probable me it belonged to.
But at least this established the principle. The smell produced the
object--and, if I went deep enough in sleep, it would produce the whole
Jones.
I dressed quickly and went out for a walk in the night air, breathing
deeply and memorizing every scent I came across. Then I went back to
the apartment, sniffed hard at the row of personal unguents, and lay
down to sleep.
When I woke up, it was morning and the room was full of people.
There were about a dozen of me, some wearing very odd clothes, some
scowling, others grinning unbecomingly, and some looking just plain
stupid.
"Gentlemen," I said, standing up on my bed, "I am sorry to disturb your
dreams but a matter of vital consequence has made me call you all here.
I am Harry, or Harold K. Jones, and I became a physicist. I need your
help. Do any of you know anything about the octaves of elements beyond
uranium?"
There was a babble, through which I heard chiefly:
"The man's mad.... He says he's me.... Who are you, anyway?... No,
you're not. _I'm_ Jones...."
"Please, gentlemen," I said. "I don't expect we have much time
before some of you wake up in your own probability. You, sir, in the
armchair--yes, you in the tight pants--how about you?"
"Me?" he said. "I'm Captain Jones. Third Vector Spacefleet. Engineer
rank. Who the galactic hellix are you, eh?"
Even from the bed, I could detect the smell of sweat and grease from
his working uniform.
"I suppose you took up flight engineering at high school?" I suggested.
"Quite right," he snapped.
An early deviation, obviously. I remembered being enthralled with the
arrival when I was a kid of the early space rockets, but my enthusiasm
was daunted by old Birchall, who made us stick to airplanes. Obviously,
his was not.
"How about you?" I asked, pointing to the thinnest me in the room.
"Penal colony on Arcetus," he said. "Eternal labor."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I wonder which time--well, how many physicists are
there here, or physical chemists, or astronomers, or even general
scientists?"
I walked around the room, detecting toothpaste brands A, B, C and
Whitebrighter, and a range of toilet preparations with manly odors
contributing to our popularity with friends, relatives, girls and
bosses, but no other physicist. Not a trace of research in my line. And
one or two of them were already showing signs of waking up elsewhere
and disappearing from the room.
I was about to start tracing it back to the point when I abandoned a
medical career, and I could still smell the formaldehyde, when Dr.
Harold K. Jones appeared.
"Look," he said, "I want you to keep away from Kate. Perhaps I didn't
make that clear yesterday.... Good heavens, where did you get all of
these me from? Does anyone here know anything about post-operative
hyperspace relapse?"
* * * * *
Disgustedly, I saw that more than half of them did. Perhaps I should
have been a doctor, after all. The probabilities were heavily
represented in medicine. I sat on the bed and stared at my toes while
the doctors babbled excitedly together. I gathered that Dr. Harold K.
Jones had solved his problem, anyway.
"Excuse me," said a thoughtful me in a very quiet voice. "I didn't want
to make myself obtrusive, but I did do a certain amount of research
on the theoretical possibilities of elements heavier than uranium. It
seemed to me they might go on being discovered almost indefinitely."
"They are," I said quickly, "octave after octave of them. Tell me about
it, please."
"Look," he said, "it was only an idea. I really specialized in
biochemistry, but we do use trace elements, and the formula I worked
out at the time was--let me see...."
"Please try to remember," I said.
"Ah, yes, it was this," he said, and the strain of remembering woke him
up and he disappeared back to his own probability.
"This was damned well planned, Harry!" said Dr. Harold K. Jones
enthusiastically. "I think we can save hundreds of people every year
now. I always knew I had it in me."
"Listen, Jones," said Captain Jones of the Third Vector Spacefleet,
pushing himself through the crowd. "I've been talking to one or two of
the others, see, and if you have the galactic gall to disturb my sleep
again, I'm going to blast you. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly," I said.
"It's tricky out in space, you know. No hard feelings, but the fraction
of a micro-error and _poof_! You see what I mean. I must get a sound
sleep at stand-down."
"Don't forget what I said about Kate," Dr. Harold K. Jones remembered
to warn me. "I know how to do it, too. And you can have an accident
with my instruments--easily."
He disappeared. I watched as the others woke up and went, one by one,
even the felon from Arcetus, until they were all gone and I was alone
with dark thoughts on heavy elements. It was so improbable that I was
the only me who had worked on these lines, and very probable that if
two of us with similar minds did work on the same problem, we could
between us find the answer. Look at Dr. Jones and his hyperspace
relapse.
Thinking of Dr. Jones made me think of Kate, and I fell asleep again
with the memory of her scent in my head, as if I were really smelling
it. When I woke up again, halfway through the morning, there she was in
my room. She was at least dressed this time, but she smiled familiarly
at me.
"For God's sake, Kate," I said, "go back to your husband!"
* * * * *
She began to cry. "Oh, Haroldkin," she said. "I'm so glad to see you. I
must be dreaming, because I know you're dead, but I've kept everything
just the way it was. Look--I haven't even touched your messy desk."
"Are you sitting in a room?" I asked.
"I'm in your study, Haroldkin," she said, surprised. "Can't you see?"
"No, as a matter of fact, I can't."
"Oh! Then I can throw out all these old papers?"
"What old papers?"
"Oh, I don't know, Haroldkin," Kate said. "You made such a fuss about
failing that silly medical exam that you never let me touch your desk
when you graduated in physics."
"Physics!"
"Yes," said Kate, throwing paper after paper onto the carpet. She made
sweeping motions in the air and dumped a mass of notes into her lap.
They appeared on her fingertips, but they stayed in existence when she
dropped them on the carpet.
"How did I die?" I asked, bending down and thumbing rapidly over the
papers.
"A bomb went off," she said. "I really don't want to talk about it. But
you were so _eminent_, Haroldkin!"
I must have been very soft in the discrimination to have allowed that
revolting nickname, I thought, but it was clear from the papers I was
holding that I knew my physics. And there it was, printed in an issue
of the _Commission's Journal_ that never existed in my time-space, the
whole equation I was looking for. It was so obvious when I read it that
I could not understand how I failed to think of it for myself--for my
own myself, that is.
When I looked up, this probable Kate had gone. I wanted to thank her,
but the evening would do. Meanwhile, here was the ultra-uranium fourth
octave equation.
I called the laboratory, read it off to my assistant, and told him to
get on with the test.
"Right, Chief. I'll go down myself and give you a report when I get
back."
I said fine and took the rest of the day off. It was the peak of my
career so far, and from the widow Kate's comments, it seemed as if
I had a great probable career to come. Of course, I would have to
redouble our safety precautions at the labs and it would be best if I
never went near the proving grounds. That other physicist me probably
made some error that I would avoid, being forewarned.
By evening, I decided to try to locate that probable Kate again, to
thank her, and to find out exactly how that poor me blew himself up
with a bomb. With care, I recalled the perfume and also the musty smell
of the papers, for I did not want Dr. Harold K. Jones' Kate appearing.
Then I removed all other odoriferous substances from the bedroom, took
three pills and was about to lie down to sleep when my assistant
called to report on the test.
"That you, Chief? What a success! We're made. Your name's in lights,
Chief! It was the most colossal explosion I've ever seen. It burned the
area like toast. It even smelled like toast, with a touch of ozone and
sulphur. Very strong smell...."
"Stop!" I screamed. "Stop!"
But it was too late. I could smell it clearly as he had described it.
And now the pills are working. How in the name of heaven am I going to
stay awake? Because once I fall asleep....