Dreams of the Stars

Reichmann and even Felter joined in the laughter. Then, looking again at the pile of ashes that had been Aldiss Jameson, all humor fled from Boddy and he was ashamed of himself. This had not been the end that he or anyone else had been hoping for. Well—Jameson and Garr both wanted him dead, but he had hoped, hoped desperately to get out of this without any bloodshed.

Felter stepped up beside him, his own chuckles subsiding, and he said, “You know this is just the beginning. Garr will see this as his opening. Now that blood has been spilled, it’s gonna be open season on you.”

“I know.” Boddy thought for a moment. It wouldn’t be easy keeping the death of a shipmate a secret for long, but... “Listen, you guys, for now, don’t say a word about it. Hopefully we can keep the others in the dark, at least for a while. Jameson kept to himself a lot anyway—it’ll be a while before he’s missed. The longer we can keep the others from finding out what’s happened, the more of an advantage we’ll have.”

“What kind of advantage?” Felter asked. “Now that you’ve killed one, you plan on killing them all?”

“Not if I can avoid it.” Of course, he hadn’t wanted Jameson to die...but events seemed to be spiraling out of his control. Had been for a long time. He gestured at Jameson’s ashes. “This poor fool forced our hand. He slit his own throat. Garr is more crafty—we have to be equally crafty.”

“So what do we do with the ashes?” Reichmann asked.

“Felter, grab a dust pan and a broom.”

In contrast to the stark horror he expected to cross Felter’s face, the pilot just laughed. “Oh. Okay. Sweep him up, eh?” And for the first time Boddy could recall, Felter set forthwith enthusiastically to obey Boddy’s order.

“How do we explain the damage to the control center?” Reichmann asked.

“That’s a good question... . Let’s just say we had a small fire and no one is to enter the control center for the time being until we’ve...repaired the damage.”

Felter, who was kneeling over and sweeping up Jameson’s ashes, said, “The repair job is an engineering duty. Garr will want to come in here and have a look.”

“Sure—aren’t there any wires or anything in here that give off toxic fumes when burned? We could claim the air in here is poisoned, and no one is to come in until it’s filtered out.”

Felter nodded. “Yeah, there’s carbon monoxide—actually, there probably really is some that we’ve inhaled.”

“Okay. It only needs to work long enough for us to come up with a plan. Hopefully just a few hours. Can you both do this? Keep this a secret?”

“Yes, sir,” Reichmann said.

“Don’t you worry,” Felter said. “Garr’s got a Boddy-zapper, not a Felter-zapper. He’s got nothing on me.”

“So you’ll help?” Boddy said.

“Sure. Now, seriously, what do you want me to do with these ashes?”

Boddy pursed his lips. Did a mutineer and attempted murderer deserve a funeral? “Toss him in the garbage.”

Felter laughed again. “Okay, whatever you say.”

“Now, let’s seal off the control center, announce to the ship that the room is quarantined, and then get a damage report. We’ll meet in my quarters in one hour.” Then it occurred to him that he would be leaving Reichmann and Felter alone together, something he had promised he would not do. He thought quickly, then said, “Felter, you look over the damage to the structure, Reichmann, look over the systems. Bring your reports to me afterward. Got it?”

“Yes, Commander,” Reichmann said.

Felter shrugged. “Sure, that’s cool.”

He looked at Reichmann, whose expression he couldn’t read. He hoped the specific assignments would do the job of keeping the two men separated. If not...well, with the crisis deepening, the interpersonal relationships of the crew were paling in significance. With any luck, even Felter would be so preoccupied with the damage report that his attention would remain focused. After all, this would be another opportunity for him to show off his expertise. If ever he needed Felter to be his ally, now was the time. He left the control center, saying, “Bring me your reports in one hour.”

In fact, it was two hours. Reichmann spotted a carbon dioxide leak that would threaten the atmospheric integrity of other sections if it wasn’t sealed off. But the room was finally sealed, Felter made an announcement that the room was quarantined until further notice, and Reichmann posted a sign on the door.

The damage assessment took half an hour, then the three of them gathered in Boddy’s quarters.

“We’re in, like, serious shit,” Felter said. “At this speed, with this much kinetic energy, you just can’t be blasting holes in the side of the ship. To say nothing of the huge shift in energy that Jameson’s death caused.”

“Yes,” Reichmann said. “We definitely displaced a series of intense gravity waves. Our ship’s rotation, plus its enormous kinetic energy, set up a series of vibrations which reverberated throughout the ship, enough to cause impact damage to some of the outer bulkheads and some of the weaker plates.”

“Can we shore up?” Boddy asked.

Felter shook his head. “Not in time. The time it takes just to locate all the breaks, we’ll shake apart.”

“Fine—we’ll have to lose some speed.”

“Can’t. The pilot’s console was damaged. We’d have to reroute through engineering—whichh not only means tipping off Garr, but it’ll be a time-consuming process. Besides which, it’s the same problem—the ship’s structure won’t handle the strain of the shift in kinetic energy if we try to alter our velocity.”

“So what are you saying? We’re going to blow up and there’s nothing we can do about it?”

Felter nodded.

“Well, I am not so pessimistic,” Reichmann said. “I think if we simply continue, minimize any further strain, we might yet even out.”

So this is how it ends, Boddy thought. Appropriate enough—we reach the end of the universe; where is there to go but oblivion? He looked at Reichmann, then at Felter. He didn’t know what to say or do. Drained, he no longer even felt humiliated by his repeated failures as a commander, or annoyed by Felter’s condescension. Now, for once, he hoped Felter had the solution that he couldn’t think of himself. “What do you think, Felter? Does that sound possible?”

Felter, for once, seemed disinclined to launch into a lengthy, self-promoting lecture. “I don’t know.”

Boddy leaned against his desk, placed his palms flat against the smooth, cool surface. The ship’s engines produced no vibration; there was no actual propulsion in the traditional sense. The engines created a space of controlled inertia through which the Eldorado “fell” faster and faster. That was why the ship could continue to accelerate without the crew feeling any gee forces—indeed, why the ship needed to rotate to produce artificial gravity. Nothing felt wrong; in fact, oddly enough, now that they were almost at the speed of light and the time universe had crystallized around them, things paradoxically felt normal. Perhaps the extra energy of their brains was being siphoned off into the extra dimensions that had become available. Or maybe they were simply used to it by now.

But then—he didn’t feel completely normal. There was a feeling—just an unaccountable certainty—that there were multiple solutions to this crisis, if it was even really a crisis. As though he had an intuitive awareness that, here and now, more than one outcome could be played out. Gradually, his sense of helplessness, loneliness, and ineffectiveness subsided. As he pondered what to do, a thought occurred to him. He looked at Reichmann—and at Felter. At the same time. He maintained the stare for a few moments before the weirdness of it forced him to concentrate his eyes on Felter alone. But he had done it. He had done two things at the same time. It was possible now, possible to command matter in a way that had never been possible before.

And now, staring down the subdued and discomforted Felter, he felt for the first time a superiority to the pilot; as though, at last, he knew that he and he alone belonged in command of the Eldorado. He alone was destined for this time, this place—as though some feedback from the future had, in fact, brought events together to put him here.

Causality had already taken a few blows; why not a few more? Perhaps, from this time on, he might change the present by shifting the past—like a car changing lanes on a highway and averting a collision. He had not yet the knowledge of how to change the past, but now he knew it could be done. Or if not, at least he could change lanes now, from a timeline in which things were a certain way to one in which they were not; that was always possible, of course, except that now he could see the other lanes—and they were becoming clearer all the time.

“It’s time to make some tough decisions,” he said both to Felter and Reichmann, though he continued to stare pointedly at Felter. “Whose side are you on? Mine or Garr’s?”

“Yours,” Felter gulped.

“Yours,” Reichmann said.

“Good. There are several ways this can play out—and Garr has accounted for all but one of them.” Boddy closed his eyes, tried to see the future. He wasn’t sure if he was really capable of that, but he could see several alternatives to the present. “Garr thinks he’s thought of everything. He’s an engineer, he knows all about redundancy. If one plan fails, he knows to have a backup—and a backup for that, until he’s weaved a trap so interlinked that there’s no way I can escape. It’ll take time to sever the links in his plot—time that we don’t have. So we have to get rid of him.”

“Kill him?” Reichmann asked.

“No—I’m the commander. I’m sworn to protect the lives of my crew, not kill them. I can’t imagine a more heinous betrayal than a captain killing his crew, unless it’s a father killing his children. No, I will not kill Garr—but as commander, I can terminate his position on this ship. And that’s what I intend to do.”

“That’s gonna have to have some teeth,” Felter said. “He’s not just going to look at his pink slip, shrug, and say ‘so much for that.’”

“No, he won’t.” Boddy looked at Reichmann. “That’s where you come in. You’ve been my spy. You’ve gotten Garr to trust you. So you’ve got to lure him to the escape launch.”

“How?” Reichmann asked, startled.

Boddy closed his eyes again, trying to see the various alternatives; and one materialized. “By using his own plot against him.”

From the point of view of any observer—assuming an observer could watch an object hurtling by at nearly the speed of light—the Eldorado would have betrayed no clue to its original configuration. Just as time-width and time-depth have no meaning in ordinary space, so the third dimension of space no longer applied to the Eldorado. The ship would have appeared to be almost two-dimensional, but for the perplexing fact that four sides continued to shift as the ship continued to rotate.

To observers within the ship, the physical universe was gone. In its place was a new, fantastic reality, a universe glowing gold, suffused with brighter bands and dots and globules whose composition had yet to be determined.

Yet even as the ship was reduced to two dimensions as its speed fell just short of the speed of light, additional dimensions now haunted its crew. For beyond the rotating structure was another, and another, and another, as if the ship were a tesseract, replete with hidden passages and chambers about which the crew knew nothing. The cupola was now a dizzying hall of mirrors in which some of the reflections were slightly different, to the point that infinite regression was no longer a perfect regress, but blended with more distant and differing images, until the most distant hazed into a cloud.

Some scientists had ridiculed the theory that the universe diverged for every decision ever made, pointing out that such a fission would violate conservation of matter and energy. But there was room for those divergences here, in the universe of time.

Would that Garr could map them all, Boddy thought as he wandered halls and looked across space at himself—himself with longer hair, himself with two weeks’ growth of beard, himself with a large bruise on the forehead, and farther distant, himself as a woman, and more distant still, not himself, but Owen James, then Owen James with a missing arm, then Owen James as a woman, and farther distant from that, a character who was neither himself nor James, but who appeared in a different light spectrum, as though space itself behaved differently in that far-distant timeline. So many possibilities, so many ways for Garr to kill him.

Somewhere in here, Garr lurked, searched, plotted and planned. But he could not cross into those other timelines. Even Boddy couldn’t, not yet. He felt he would figure it out soon—there was some trick to it, something that would be common sense as soon as he realized what it was. Why, that parallel universe appeared to be right there beside him—yet when he tried to cross into it, it retreated from him in all directions. No, there must be some other way to cross through, some use of energy.

Jameson could have helped... .

Yet even without the infinite timelines, Garr had booby trapped the entire ship. He had planned well; though Boddy had only figured out parts of the plan. Though Boddy was capable of seeing alternate possibilities, he could only see what was there. He couldn’t see what was hidden, and he couldn’t see into Garr’s mind.

This much he knew:

The Boddy-zapper was in Garr’s office. Components were hidden in various everyday devices; Boddy knew what some of them were, but if he destroyed them, Garr had backups hidden throughout the engineering deck. But even if Boddy knew where they all were, he could not destroy them all, for each was equipped with a signaling device which would alert Garr should any of them be destroyed, therefore he could trigger the device before Boddy was finished destroying it. But even if something went wrong and Boddy succeeded in destroying the entire device and all its backups, Garr would simply shoot him, as Jameson had attempted. But Jameson’s plan had, of course, failed; not that Garr knew about that, but he was a more careful planner than Jameson. So he would not blunder into so tenuous a position as Jameson had been in; no, he had he faithful lapdog Lawrence Acker. The two of them together would isolate Boddy from any help and kill him. And if help arrived in the nick of time (as it had before when Reichmann had unexpectedly arrived, though Garr didn’t know about that), Garr would have arranged to have himself positioned with his eyes toward any entrance, so that if someone came in shooting, Acker the sacrificial lamb would take the shot and Garr could then eliminate the rescuer and Boddy.

Those were a few of the components of the plan, but Boddy did not doubt there were more. One thing was certain: if Garr was eliminated, Acker would not follow through on any assassination plots. Once his beloved master was gone, Acker would shift sides to whoever promised him an emotional reward. Acker was a tool; that was his place in life, he was incapable of being anything else. So the key was to get rid of Garr without killing him, and to do so without springing any part of his trap.

And there could be no delay. The device was almost finished. Garr would not be waiting around for Boddy to take pre-emptive action; this close to the speed of light, Garr would spring his trap as soon as it was complete. So the trick was to unravel his web before the web was woven.

And so just as Garr used Acker as a tool, so Boddy used Reichmann. The difference was, Reichmann knew it.

It was risky coming into the engineering section—Garr’s nesting place. But if Felter had done his job, Garr should not be here. There was a timeline waaaay over there in which Garr intercepted him as he entered—but he was in the clear here, here, here, here, and here. And even here Garr was in his office and didn’t notice Boddy’s entrance.

But Acker was there in most probabilities. In a stirring cacophony, he asked, “What can I do for you, Commander?” in a sonic blur that mingled with similar sentiments such as “What are you doing here, Commander?” and “What’s up, Commander?” and “Can I help you?” Funny—in a far corner of reality, Acker actually punched him, attracting Garr’s notice...branching into several more possibilities. In one of them, Garr’s device was complete and he activated it. Yet Boddy felt no part of himself die; no, in that reality he must know how to shift realities, and fled to one in which the device was not complete.

Or perhaps there were simply so many of him—or, should we say, he was aware of so much of himself throughout the multiverse—that a single reality in which he died scarcely registered. Oh, well—he still had a long way to go before he could truly grasp the meaning of all this.

“We need to make sure the launch is fully stocked,” he said in this reality—though the Boddy next to him said, “I need to check on something. Why don’t you go help Garr?” Soon, Boddy wondered if he would be able to distinguish between the different realities. Or perhaps the key to survival here was not distinguishing between them. Perhaps he should allow them to merge into a great whole. Just as a painting should not be observed as a series of individual brushstrokes, the whole of reality could not be appreciated as a series of individual timelines. Just as a piece of music would be ruined if you paused to evaluate every single note; you had to simply let the notes flow, merge, harmonize, creating a thing of beauty which was more than the sum of its parts.

But he wasn’t ready for that yet.

Acker seemed puzzled here, accepting there, hurt over there, shrugged and went about his business up there. In this reality Acker followed him to the launch—at least he was pretty sure it was this reality. Though his own perspective was becoming skewed—occasionally he was seeing through the eyes of multiple Boddys at the same time, something which, again, he would have to get used to. In time, he would have to see through the eyes of all of them at once; for, in truth, they were not an infinite series of separate Boddys, they were all in fact him, simply seen from different higher angles.

Acker asked “Can I give you a hand?”, “So what is it you’re doing?”, “I’d better let Garr know you’re siphoning off power,” “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” and various other sentiments.

In a variety of ways, Boddy dismissed Acker. He preferred to work in private. In whichever reality he was looking at, he was firmly against killing Garr. This was the only way that he could live with.

As far as Reichmann was concerned, there was no moral ambiguity—not really about anything anymore. He could see the shifting realities around him just as Boddy could. Actions were no longer events, but merely portions of events. No matter what he did in this timeline, somewhere else he was doing something different, until every possibility was played out. It was a relief in a way; it relieved him of any responsibility for his actions. He was a consciousness, nothing more, a focus of various events, all of which occurred. Anything he did, he only did here; elsewhere, that doing faded into half-doing, then non-doing, then the doing of something utterly different. If he walked up to Garr and shot him through the head, to feel guilty about that would be as preposterous as feeling guilty for being a belly button; for of course he was only a belly button down there, in the navel area, whereas up here he was a head, a brain, eyes, ears, nose, mouth. It was rather liberating, losing free will.

At any rate, he was not going to kill Garr—at least in this timeline. He looked forward to the simultaneity of events that would come when he was able to be aware of all of his selves at the same time. How thrilling an experience, how godlike he would be; yet also powerless. Long ago, astronaut Edgar Mitchell had said that God existed but was powerless; Reichmann wondered if Mitchell had ever considered this particular version of his theory.

In this timeline and most of the neighboring ones, Garr was in his office, applying the finishing touches to his Boddy-zapper. Reichmann wondered if Garr comprehended the futility of trying to overthrow Boddy here and now, or how absurd were his petty aspirations to power. Was not the human mind capable of transcending its own evolutionary shortcomings? Reichmann hoped so, but he also knew that it was quite possible the human brain would forever be trapped as what it was: a three-dimensional glob of jelly, evolved from the tiniest nerve centers of Earth’s first animals. No more than one animalistic drive layered upon another, until random mutation brought about the benign tumor that eventually became the cerebral cortex, the source of human intellect.

But if the cerebral cortex could form, perhaps a new part of the brain could develop here, a higher-dimensional mutation.

Unless that happened, they were all doomed. They could not function here as three-dimensional humans for much longer.

“Garr?” he said as he entered Garr’s office.

Garr did not acknowledge. Perhaps he was ignoring Reichmann, or perhaps he was simply trying to cope with the overload of sensory information as he tried in vain to concentrate on a project which no longer had relevance.

“Garr, excuse me,” Reichmann said. “You need to know that Commander Boddy knows about your plan.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Garr mumbled. “In a few more moments, there will be no more Ed Boddy.”

“You do not understand,” Reichmann said in multiples. He tried to block out his other selves. Some conscious effort managed a tentative collapse of wave function, so that, for at least a few moments, he and Garr existed only in this timeline—or at least seemed to. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Boddy has devised a way to retaliate. If you engage the device, it will mutate into a nanovirus programmed to home in on your DNA.”

“Bullshit. He hasn’t had time to perfect something like that.”

“That is what he said about your device.”

“He did?” Garr looked up from his screen, his cold, blue eyes staring daggers at Reichmann. “How do you know that? How did he learn about my device?”

The best way to lie is to tell as much truth as possible. “I told him. I wasn’t sure whose side I was on.”

“Really? So how do I know I can trust you now?”

“Because I am here to help you. The escape launch is prepared. Please, come with me, I will preset its trajectory to intersect with the Eldorado after the nanovirus loses its potency.”

Garr continued to stare at him. Then he turned and went back to work.

“Garr?” Reichmann leaned over his shoulder. “Please. Come with me. I will launch you on a trajectory that you can double-check yourself, and then I will engage the machine once you are gone.”

“Go away, will you?” Garr said, radiating thinly contained contempt.

Part of Boddy’s plan had encompassed the possibility of Garr refusing to come to the launch. No matter. It was simply time to move on to the next phase of the plan. “Garr—that is not all.” He sighed. “Boddy ordered me not to tell you this—“ Well, that was true; no matter that Boddy had also recently ordered him to tell Garr—“But Jameson already tried to kill Boddy. They shot it out in the control center. Boddy killed Jameson.”

Garr slammed his hand on the desk. His face went livid.

“In the battle, some portions of the control center were damaged.”

“So that was the bullshit about a carbon monoxide leak. I would have tried to get in there, but I was busy with this.” Garr shook his head, suddenly laughed without humor. “Jameson. Blundering oaf. Well, at least I don’t have to fight him now.”

“No—but check the energy readings. The ship is doomed. We need to get into the escape launch anyway.”

Garr minimized his screen and called up a chart of the ship’s energy emanation and absorption. Next to a diagram of the ship illustrated with colors to indicate temperature, a list of sections aligned with types of energy and intensities. As he studied it, Garr said, “You really want to get me into that escape launch, don’t you?”

If Garr caught on to that, Reichmann was to withdraw with apologies, leaving the next phase to Felter. But Garr still studied the chart, frowning. “Hmm—looks like you might be on to something after all. The vibration in A section is destabilizing the structural integrity of the entire block. Once that starts bell motion, that’ll tear the whole ship apart—unless we stop the ship’s rotation.”

“That much energy will—”

Without another word, Garr casually reached into his drawer, pulled out a long box cutter for opening specially sealed equipment, and sliced Reichmann’s belly open.

There was no pain at first, only a mild startlement. When he looked down and saw how profusely he was bleeding, he registered a sad surprise that this was the way he was to die. Then he was comforted by the thought that this death was valid only in this timeline. But as he slumped to the deck, he no longer saw his other selves, even with what effort he could still summon.

By way of explanation, Garr said, “I don’t trust you.”

As consciousness seeped away in a cloud of dizziness and nausea, Reichmann’s last conscious thought was, This wasn’t part of the plan.

Wandering glumly away from where Boddy was working on the escape launch, Acker heard Reichmann’s startled gasp. He recognized the all-too-familiar smell of blood, so pungent for all these years since Brittani Madigan had caught her hair in that lathe in wood shop... .

He hurried into Garr’s office just in time to see Reichmann die. Though he had some awareness of the parallel timelines, they confused him and he shut them out, ignored them so thoroughly that he was now oblivious to them. As far as he was concerned, Reichmann was dead. That was the only reality. There could not be more than one outcome; a man was either dead or alive, and Reichmann was dead. Acker had never liked that damned cat.

Since his resolve to knock off Garr and take command as soon as the mutiny was over, he had carefully guarded his words and behavior around Garr, but the sight of the contorted body lying in a pool of dark, sticky blood collapsed his control, and he cried out shrilly, “My God! What have you done?”

Garr’s eyes flashed in his direction. Seeing what Garr was truly capable of, Acker involuntarily stepped back away from him. He tried to erase the horror from his face, tried to hold back the hysterical epithets which he felt rising in his throat.

The bloody instrument was still in Garr hand. The hand did not shake, Garr’s eyes remained fixed on Acker’s. His tone was flat, firm, and confident. “You’re either with me or against me.”

Acker shrugged. “Well, I, I, I’m with y-y-y-you—Just, was this really necessary?”

“As I said, you’re either with me or against me.”

Acker swallowed. “Well, okay, I’m with you, like I said. But what do you want to do with the body?”

Garr set the cutter on the desk near his left arm—where he could reach it more quickly than Acker could. “Get rid of it. I don’t care how.”

So he’s making me the fall guy—Maybe I ought to just tell Boddy the whole truth. “O—Okay, I’ll just, uh, box him in one of the freezers.”

“You do that,” Garr said, waving him away.

Nauseous, Acker picked up Reichmann’s legs and dragged him from the office. Boddy must still be in or near the escape launch; not in visual sight, but probably in hearing range, and could come around the bend at any time. If he did—what to tell him? He could simply switch sides, help Boddy against Garr. Whatever Boddy’s shortcomings, he was no cold-blooded murderer. And come to think of it, had Acker ever really had anything against Boddy? Or had he simply been seeking Garr’s approval? He didn’t know what to do.

His mother had always told him that if you don’t know what to do, do nothing. For now, he would obey Garr’s orders. If Boddy stopped him, he would simply tell the truth; the truth had the fewest question marks. It wasn’t easy to drag a body across the uncarpeted bay quietly, but the one-third gee helped a bit. Fortunately, the emergency freezers, installed in case crew members died in flight, were in the opposite direction from the escape launch. As Acker pulled Reichmann in that direction, movement caught his eye. He tried not to look, for he knew it was an alternate version of himself, probably dragging an alternate version of Reichmann. These visions of parallel realities frightened him; he shut his eyes for a moment, concentrated on being the one and only Acker in the one and only Universe—how could there be more than one universe? Uni. One. The Universe was everything. Focusing on his task, he succeeded once again in ignoring the other Ackers, collapsing the wave function, being in only one place at a time.

Here were the freezers, lined up like beds. Seven of them. Only seven. But what about Dr. Gray and Nurse Hicks? What about Alvin, Ramis, and Coyne? But no...no, searching his memory, there were no such people, never had been—otherwise there would be freezers for them. –Wouldn’t there?

He shook his head, tried to clear all thoughts from his brain. Thoughts had never been particularly kind to him; he must remain busy, physically and mentally. He opened one of the freezers; cool air whooshed out, along with a flurry of tiny snowflakes—more ice crystals, really. He should undress Reichmann before putting him in the freezer, but somehow that felt wrong. The man had only been dead a few minutes; Christ, his body was still warm. There was actually a whole elaborate prep procedure that was supposed to be done before a body was put into the freezer; rather ridiculous, in Acker’s opinion. Might as well just shoot the body into space. One thing a spaceship could always use less of was excess mass. But anyway, he wasn’t a specialist in cryogenics and he didn’t feel like taking Reichmann’s clothes off, so he picked up the body and flopped it into the freezer. Feeling rather ghoulish, he swung the lid shut and walked away, sick to his stomach.

He didn’t return to Garr’s office for further instructions; he was through with Garr. He needed to think. He decided to go to his cabin. It was time for some big decisions. He needed either to make his move against Garr or to side with Boddy. Either choice was frighteningly dangerous. But no matter what he did now, he was close to death—a fact driven home as he walked past the glazed eyes of his own corpse, staring bloodily from a partially severed neck. He shut his eyes again, wondering how much longer he could block these visions out.

Boddy knew that Reichmann was dead. He hadn’t been expecting it, but he knew it. He saw the possibilities play out. In some of the neighboring timelines, Reichmann cried out a little louder, attracted Boddy’s attention. In a nearby timeline, Acker came running to him, breathless, sobbing, abasing himself for joining the mutiny and begging to be let back into the righteous fold, and in the timeline in which Boddy did not slap him and call him “traitor,” he instead asked what the trouble was, and Acker answered a number of variations on “Garr killed Reichmann.”

So by watching the pattern of realities from the more distant to the nearer, he knew that in this reality, Garr had in fact killed Reichmann.

The launch was supplied, prepped, and powered, but Garr had not taken the bait. He was now wise to Boddy’s plan; there would be no coaxing him into the launch. No matter; there was a good chance the launch would still be needed. The problem now was figuring out a way to avoid killing Garr. It was beginning to occur to him that with two crew members already dead by violence, the time for killing was at hand.

He shut the trap door which led to the launch and set off for Garr’s office, for his quarters, for the control center, and for the science lab. For a moment he was aware of each of these simultaneously—he was the Boddy-cloud which he craved. But it lasted only a moment. Either his mind was not ready or the ship was not yet moving fast enough or both, but wave function collapsed and he found himself in this timeline—still aware of the others, but yet still firmly a three-dimensional human being isolated in one particular reality.

In this reality he went to the control center. There was no more point keeping Jameson’s death a secret; it was time for a change of strategy. Felter had cracked the seal and was now cleaning up some of the damage. He seemed pleased when Boddy joined him. “Oh, hi, Ed...just making the place a bit more presentable.”

“Reichmann’s dead,” Boddy said without preamble. Although his words were curiously the same in each of the nearby realities, his posture varied greatly—here putting a hand on Felter’s shoulder, there leaning against the wall, over there actually wiping a tear from his eye, here striding toward the command desk as he said it, there slumping to the floor. In this reality he simply stood, hands in pockets, made the pronouncement, then went over to the command desk.

Focusing on this reality, Boddy saw Felter get up, stagger over to the desk, mouth hanging open. “No way,” he said. “Good God, how?”

“Garr killed him.”

“Jesus Christ—what do we do now?”

Everything, he thought in this reality, even as he said “Everything” aloud in many neighboring realities. Felter seemed unaware of the multiple timelines surrounding them; even as Boddy’s awareness expanded, it seemed that Felter’s was shrinking—as was his strength of will. From the arrogant, overly talkative, self-promoting and almost bullying jerk he had been, Felter had become timid, deferential, scared. Oddly enough, that fact seemed to span all the realities. Felter grew smaller as Boddy grew larger.

“We know that Acker and Samuels are part of the mutiny,” Boddy said. “But Acker—can be swayed, I think. And with Jameson dead, the wind is probably gone from Samuels’ sails.”

“You want to swing them over to our side?”

Boddy’s cacophony of acknowledgements temporarily baffled him as to what he said or did in this reality, but the ultimate result was that Felter received the general answer of “yes.”

Boddy reached out and, for a moment, clasped Felter’s arm, before wave function again collapsed—tentatively this time, more the gentle push of a stream than the snapping shut of a steel wall—but enough that he was still more or less isolated in his own timeline. This wouldn’t last much longer, he knew—soon he would be able to embrace his entire self, spanning all the realities, at once. And then—then this mutiny would not matter. Nothing would matter, for every possibility would play out, as far as human awareness of time and events were concerned. He would have to find another dimension of change, another way to experience life.

Concentrating on his own reality, he said to Felter, “Acker is in his quarters. Let’s go talk to him first. Samuels may yet be planning something against me. If we can take out Garr now, with Acker’s help, Samuels might give up.”

Acker sat on his bed, unable to concentrate on anything. His pulse was racing, he felt flushed, restless. The felt trapped by what he needed to do—to turn against Garr. One way or the other, it was time to turn against Garr. He had known this for some time, but now that the reality was upon him, he couldn’t bear it. And he couldn’t understand why. Garr had never shown him anything but contempt, had always frozen him out of decisions, had never made him feel welcome or part of the team. So why, he wondered, why was it so unspeakable to turn against him? Why was he so confoundedly loyal to that obnoxious bastard?