Read Counterfeit World Online

Authors: Daniel F. Galouye

Tags: #Science Fiction

Counterfeit World (19 page)

Befuddled, I lay motionless. There was no pain, no burning flow of blood from my many wounds. Whereas a moment earlier I had cringed before the vicious assault of nonresonant coupling forces, now there was only a peaceful stillness.

Then I realized I could feel no pain because
there were no wounds!

Confounded, I opened my eyes and was instantly confronted with the effects of a strange room spread out all about me.

Although it was a room I bad never seen before, I could recognize the simulectronic nature of the equipment that filled almost all available space.

I glanced down and saw that I lay on a couch much like the one I had used before while coupled with reactional units in Fuller’s simulator. I reached up and removed the empathy helmet, then sat staring incomprehensively at it.

There was a couch next to mine. Its leather surface still bore the indentation of the person who had occupied it—for a long while, judging from the depth of the impression. On the floor nearby were the shattered remains of another headpiece that had evidently been dropped or hurled aside.

“Doug!”

I started at the suddenness of Jinx’s voice.

“Lie still! Don’t move!” she whispered desperately. “Put the helmet back on!”

She was off to my left, before the control panel of a large console. Rapidly, she began throwing switches, turning dials.

Responding to the urgency of her words, I dropped back on the couch and sank into my bewilderment.

I heard someone enter the room. Then a sober male voice asked:

“You’re deprogramming?”

“No,” Jinx said. “We don’t have to. Hall found a way to save it. We’re just suspending operations until we can program in some basic modifications.”

“That’s fine!” the man exclaimed. “The council will be glad to hear this.”

He came toward me, “And Hall?”

“He’s resting. That last session was rough.”

“Tell him I still think he ought to take that vacation before he activates the simulator again.”

Withdrawing footsteps evidenced the man’s departure.

And suddenly I was thinking of that day in my office when Phil Ashton had come barging in on me in the form of Chuck Whitney. Like Ashton, I too had somehow crossed the simulectronic barrier between worlds! But how?

The door closed and I looked up to see Jinx standing over me.

Her face burst into a grin as she knelt and removed my helmet. “Doug! You’re
up here
now!”

I only stared densely at her.

“Don’t you see?” she went on. “When I kept asking you if he had established contact, that was so I could time my return!”

“You withdrew,” I said, groping. “And you came up here. You knew you’d find him coupled. And you stepped up the circuit he was using
to sudden, peak voltage!

She nodded. “It
had
to be done that way, darling. He was destroying an entire world, when he could have saved it.”

“But why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do?”

“How could I? If I had,
he
would have known too.”

Still dazed, I rose. Incredulously, I felt my chest and abdomen, my jaw. It seemed almost impossible that there should be no injury. It was a moment before I could assume the diametric perspective. In swapping places with that other Hall,
he
had come into possession of the mortally wounded body barely in time to take a final breath!

Floundering across the room, I passed before the shining metal surface of one of the modulators and saw my reflection. Feature for feature, it was I—as I had always been. Jinx had not exaggerated when she had said the physical traits of Hall the Operator and Hall the analog were identical.

At the window, I stared down on an altogether familiar street scene-pedistrips, air cars cushioning along traffic lanes, landing islands, people dressed just as the reactors in my own world were. But why
should
anything be different? My analog city had to be a valid reflection of this one if it was to satisfy its purpose, didn’t it?

Looking more closely, I saw there
was
a perceptible difference. More than a few persons were nonchalantly smoking cigarettes. Up here there was no Thirty-third Amendment. And it was clear that one of the simulectronic functions of my counterfeit world was to test out the feasibility of a prohibition against tobacco.

I turned abruptly on Jinx. “But can we get away with this?”

She laughed. “Why not? You
are
Douglas Hall. He was going to take a two-month vacation. With the simulator out of operation, I’ll be able to take a leave too. We’ll just take it together.”

Eagerly, she continued, “I’ll familiarize you with
everything—
—pictures of the personnel, the facts and features of our world, your personal background and mannerisms, our history, politics, customs. After a few weeks you’ll know Hall’s role perfectly.”

It
would
come off! I could see that easily enough now. “What about—the world down there?”

She smiled. “We can patch it up like new. You know what reforms and modifications have to be made. Just before I deactivated it, I had Heath energize Reaction’s repulsion screen. When you turn the simulator back on, you can take it from there.”

“There’ll be a violent hailstorm to scatter the mob before they can crash through the screen,” I said, suddenly enthused. “Then I’ll have a whole schedule of developments and reorientations to program in.”

She led me over to the desk. “We can get started now. We’ll draw up a list of instructions and leave it with the staff. They can be taking care of the preparatory work while we’re away.”

I settled down in Hall’s chair, only then beginning to realize that I had actually risen up out of illusion into reality.

It had been a jarring transition, but soon I would become accustomed to the idea. And eventually it would be almost as though I had always belonged to this material existence.

Jinx kissed me lightly on the cheek. “You’ll like it up here, Doug, even though it doesn’t have quite the quaint atmosphere of your own world. You see, Hall had a flair for the romantic when he programmed the simulator. I thought he showed a lot of imagination in selecting such background prop names as Mediterranean, Riviera, Pacific, Himalayas.”

She shrugged, as though apologizing for the comparative drabness of her world of absolute reality. “You’ll also find that our moon is only a quarter of the size of yours. But I’m sure you’ll get used to all the differences.”

I caught her around the waist and drew her close. I, too, was sure I would.

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