'Tom, Wally, I'm sorry for the brusque introductions,' Agnes Lampion apologized. 'We'll have plenty of getting-to-know-each other time over dinner. But the people in this room have been waiting an entire week to hear from you, Tom. We can't wait a moment longer.'
'Hear from me?'
Celestina indicated to Tom that he should sit at the head of the table, facing Agnes at the foot. As Wally lowered himself into the empty chair to Tom's left, Celestina picked up two items from the sideboard and put them in front of Tom, before sitting to his right.
Salt and pepper shakers.
From the far end of the table, Agnes said, 'For starters, Tom, we all want to hear about the rhinoceros and the other you.'
He hesitated, because until the limited explanations he'd made to Celestina in San Francisco, he had never discussed his special perception with anyone except two priest counselors in the seminary. At first he felt uneasy, talking of these matters to strangers-as if he were making a confession to laity who held no authority to provide absolution but as he spoke to this hushed and intense gathering, his doubts fell away, and revelation seemed as natural as talk of the weather.
With the salt and pepper shakers, Tom walked them through the why-I'm-not-sad-about-my-face explanation that he'd given to Angel ten days previously.
At the end, with the salt Tom and the pepper Tom standing side by side in their different but parallel worlds, Maria said, 'Seems like science fiction.'
'Science. Quantum mechanics. Which is a theory? of physics. But by theory, I don't mean just wild speculation. Quantum mechanics works. It underlies the invention of television. Before the end of this century, perhaps even by the '80s, quantum-based technology will give us powerful and cheap computers in our homes, computers as small as briefcases, as small as a wallet, a wristwatch, that can do more and far faster data processing than any of the giant lumbering computers we know today. Computers as tiny as a postage stamp. We'll have wireless telephones you can carry anywhere. Eventually, it will be possible to construct single-molecule computers of enormous power, and then technology-in fact, all human society-will change almost beyond comprehension, and for the better.'
He surveyed his audience for disbelief and glazed eyes.
'Don't worry,' Celestina told him, 'after what we've seen this past week, we're still with you.'
Even Barty seemed to be attentive, but Angel happily applied crayons to a coloring book and hummed softly to herself.
Tom believed that the girl had an intuitive understanding of the true complexity of the world, but she was only three, after all, and neither ready nor able to absorb the scientific theory that supported her intuition.
'All right. Well? Jesuits are encouraged to pursue education in any subject that interests them, not theology alone. I was deeply interested in physics.'
'Because of a certain awareness you've had since childhood,' Celestina said, recalling what he'd told her in San Francisco.
'Yes. More about that later, just let me make it clear that an interest in physics doesn't make me a physicist. Even if I were, I couldn't explain quantum mechanics in an hour or a year. Some say quantum theory is so weird that no one can fully understand all its implications. Some things proven in quantum experiments seem to defy common sense, and I'll lay out a few for you, just to give you the flavor. First, on the subatomic level, effect sometimes comes before cause. In other words, an event can happen before the reason for it ever occurs. Equally odd? in an experiment with a human observer, subatomic particles behave differently from the way they behave when the experiment is unobserved while in progress and the results are examined only after the fact-which might suggest that human will, even subconsciously expressed, shapes reality.'
He was simplifying and combining concepts, but he knew no other way to quickly give them a feel for the wonder, the enigma, the sheer spookiness of the world revealed by quantum mechanics.
'And how about this,' he continued. 'Every point in the universe is directly connected to every other point, regardless of distance, so any point on Mars is, in some mysterious way, as close to me as is any of you. Which means it's possible for information-and objects, even people-to move instantly between here and London without wires or microwave transmission. In fact, between here and a distant star, instantly. We just haven't figured out how to make it happen. Indeed, on a deep structural level, every point in the universe is the same point. This interconnectedness is so complete that a great flock of birds taking flight in Tokyo, disturbing the air with their wings, contributes to weather changes in Chicago.'
Angel looked up from her coloring book. 'What about pigs?'
'What about them?' Tom asked.
'Can you throw a pig where you made the quarter go?'
'I'll get to that,' he promised.
'Wow!' she said.
'He doesn't mean he'll throw a pig,' Barty told her.
'He will, I bet,' said Angel, returning to her crayons.
'One of the fundamental things suggested by quantum mechanics,'
Tom proceeded, 'is that an infinite number of realities exist, other worlds parallel to ours, which we can't see. For example? worlds in which, because of the specific decisions and actions of certain people on both sides, Germany won the last great war. And other worlds in which the Union lost the Civil War. And worlds in which a nuclear war has already been fought between the U.S. and Soviets.'
'Worlds,' ventured Jacob, 'in which that oil-tank truck never stopped on the railroad tracks in Bakersfield, back in '60. So the train never crashed into it and those seventeen people never died.'
This comment left Tom nonplussed. He could only imagine that Jacob had known someone who died in that crash-yet the twin's tone of voice and his expression seemed to suggest that a world without the Bakersfield train wreck would be a less convivial place than one that included it.
Without commenting, Tom continued: 'And worlds just like ours-except that my parents never met, and I was never born. Worlds in which Wally was never shot because he was too unsure of himself or just too stupid to take Celestina to dinner that night or to ask her to marry him.'
By now, all here assembled knew Celestina well enough that Tom's final example raised an affectionate laugh from the group.
'Even in an infinite number of worlds,' Wally objected, 'there's no place I was that stupid.'
Tom said, 'Now I'm going to add a human touch and a spiritual spin to all this. When each of us comes to a point where he has to make a significant moral decision affecting the development of his character and the lives of others, and each time he makes the less wise choice, that's where I myself believe a new world splits off. When I make an immoral or just a foolish choice, another world is created in which I did the right thing, and in that world, I am redeemed for a while, given a chance to become a better version of the Tom Vanadium who lives on in the other world of the wrong choice. There are so many worlds with imperfect Tom Vanadiums, but always someplace? someplace I'm moving steadily toward a state of grace.'
'Each life,' Barty Lampion said, 'is like our oak tree in the backyard but lots bigger. One trunk to start with, and then all the branches, millions of branches, and every branch is the same life going in a new direction.'
Surprised, Tom leaned in his chair to look more directly at the blind boy. On the telephone, Celestina had mentioned only that Barty was a prodigy, which didn't quite explain the aptness of the oak-tree metaphor.
'And maybe,' said Agnes, caught up in the speculation, 'when your life comes to an end in all those many branches, what you're finally judged on is the shape and the beauty of the tree.'
'Making too many wrong choices,' Grace White said, 'produces too many branches-a gnarled, twisted, ugly growth.'
'Too few,' said Maria, 'might mean you made an admirably small number of moral mistakes but also that you failed to take reasonable risks and didn't make full use of the gift of life.'
'Ouch,' said Edom, and this earned him loving smiles from Maria, Agnes, and Barty.
Tom didn't understand Edom's comment or the smiles that it drew, but otherwise, he was impressed by the ease with which these people absorbed what he had said and by the imagination with which they began to expand upon his speculation. It was almost as though they had long known the shape of what he'd told them and that he was only filling in a few confirming details.
'Tom, a couple minutes ago,' Agnes said, 'Celestina mentioned your? 'certain awareness.' Which is what
