A Blink of the Screen

‘Big Yin is learning real fast. I think I might have to do something about him one day.’
    ‘Right now’d be favourite.’
    ‘Maybe I’ve got a soft spot for him.’
    Valienté doubted it; any soft spots of Linsay would still be diamonds.
    ‘He’s one of a kind. I’ve been all through the worlds round here and the same troupe is around, but not him. Maybe he’s some kind of mutant. Maybe the ’boons will inherit the earth.’
    There was something weird about the rifle. Without any apparent effort Linsay managed to keep it pointing towards him like a compass needle.
    ‘Is that necessary?’ said Valienté. ‘Even if you don’t believe my story you’ve still got my gun.’
    ‘Just walk.’
    Earths, untold Earths. More Earths than a computer could count, they said.
    It was hard to talk about them accurately without referring to folded universes and the quantum packet theory. It was even harder to explain to a TV audience how a belt worked; once you invited them to consider the multiplex universe as a rubber sheet the initiative was fumbled. The pack of cards analogy was totally inappropriate, although most people felt at home with it. The universe was in fact a large pack of three-dimensional cards. The belt allowed you to travel up and down the pack, boring, as it were, through the cards themselves.
    A belt was simple enough to build, if you were desperate enough not to worry about safety devices. All over the world, people were. All you needed was the transistor radio you’d earned via your vasectomy, about one hundred metres of copper wire, and blind faith that you wouldn’t emerge inside a tree.
    It was worth the risk. The nearby Earths were identical on all but the microscopic level. California was already sparsely colonized out to several K, and at the far ends was beginning to develop in ways that even Californians thought were nutty. In what remained of the USSR security men were combing nearby worlds for the previous lot of security men.
    The world was crowded, but the universe was empty. It was a gold economy. What was happening would make the Diaspora look like a family outing.
    Of course, some minds couldn’t cope.
    Linsay’s camp was tucked into a small hollow on a south-facing hillside; it was little more than a tent, and a slightly more substantial shed for the instruments. And, of course, there was a stockade. It was not large, and not high, but the thin red wire that ran around the top of it assured all the privacy Robinson Crusoe could have desired.
    Outside the tent was a small solar station and a row of batteries. There was also the usual cage of white mice.
    Linsay disappeared into the tent and laid the unconscious woman on the bed. When he came out Valienté was sitting by the remains of the fire, which was still smouldering. It was well after noon.
    ‘How come she was unconscious?’ Valienté said.
    Linsay hauled the gate into place and hooked a strand of the red wire across the top of it. ‘Neither of you has got the right belt for the high meggas,’ he said.
    ‘Is that an answer?’
    Linsay turned.
    ‘Sure. The normal belts just protect you from coming out inside anything thicker than air. The Low Earths are so similar, that’s all you need. You don’t have to worry about the ground. It’s always there. Where she came out, the Fist had punched the ground away.’
    ‘Fist?’
    ‘Didn’t you see any craters?’
    ‘Yeah, I thought the ground was getting rough.’
    Linsay looked at the mouse cage. A mouse, strapped inside a little belt unit atop a battery pack, could get a message to Forward Base within six hours. Could it get right back to the low numbers? It’d take a week, maybe ten days. There would have to be feed, water – say two more batteries for them. Plus a multiband here-I-am screamer, which meant another battery. Plus four more batteries to give enough power to carry the extra batteries. Plus – forget it …
    ‘Are you human?’ said Valienté. ‘I mean, I was told you were a cold sort, but when you hear that fifty people have been massacred you’re supposed to do something, you know? Like say “How terrible”, or something.’
    ‘Would you like some coffee?’ said Linsay. ‘It’s only black.’
    ‘What?’ Valienté was trembling now, with exhaustion and anger.
    ‘Did you do anything about the goats?’
    ‘
What?
’
    ‘They had a herd of goats at Forward. I never had the patience to trap them here, myself. I expect they’ll need