In Free Fall (29 page)

Ever since his conversation with Sebastian, the detective has been working on a formulation that he himself does not fully understand:
The world is the way it is because there are observers to watch it existing
.

Schilf regrets that television programs don’t permit interruptions.

“That is a cheap response to a question of metaphysics,” Oskar says. “Totally unusable as a scientific viewpoint.”

“Why unusable?” the host asks, raising a hand to shush another murmur rising in the audience.

“Because other universes avoid experimental examination.”

Oskar leans back as if he has had the last word for the evening. In the same instant Sebastian bends forward and speaks into the microphone.

“That’s how it is in theoretical physics,” he says. “Even Einstein’s
ideas were partly worked out on paper to begin with, and then proven later in experiments.”

“In the words of Einstein himself,” Oskar replies calmly, “‘Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.’”

“What I’m talking about here,” Sebastian says, “has been described by many reputable physicists: Stephen Hawking, David Deutsch, Dieter Zeh.”

“Then Hawking, Deutsch, and Zeh have just as little an idea of physics,” Oskar says.

As the audience protests, a close-up of Oskar’s laughing face is shown. The arrogant expression has disappeared and he looks like a schoolboy who is delighting in pulling off a successful prank. The camera turns to Sebastian, who is shaking his head and lifting a finger to show that he has something to say. Schilf leans forward so that his nose is practically touching the monitor. Don’t let yourself be wound up by him. Don’t defend anything that you don’t believe in. Tell them that there is no time and space. That Many Worlds and one world are all the same, even if matter is nothing more than an idea in the observer’s thoughts.

The host calls for silence so that Sebastian can speak.

“The discussion here doesn’t seem to be about the intersection between physics and philosophy,” Sebastian says, “but about the intersection between physics and polemic.”

Laughter from the audience shows that they are on his side again.

“Much as barbed language can be fun—”

“By the way,” Oskar interrupts, placing a finger on his cheek as if something has just occurred to him, “according to your theory, it is not just the Creator who does not have to make any decisions. Nobody else does, either.”

“On the contrary,” Sebastian says. “One of the philosophical advantages of the Many-Worlds Interpretation is that it can explain the free will of mankind. In linear time—”

“Now it’s getting esoteric!” Oskar laughs.

The camera is too late to catch Oskar, reaching him only as he waves away the host’s admonishment. Schilf, who is watching the screen so intently that his eyes are burning, notices that Oskar’s left foot is twitching.

“In linear time,” Sebastian says, “our fates are determined from the earliest past into the most distant future. Our decisions are nothing more than biochemical processes in the brain that are subject to the laws of cause and effect.” He leaves a dramatic pause before continuing. “Now imagine that every conceivable causal sequence exists at the same time in parallel universes. The way every individual universe develops may be predetermined, but our freedom consists of being able to choose one of these many worlds with every decision.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, justification for the freedom of will through physics,” the host says exultantly. His glasses reflect the spotlights, and he looks incredibly happy, as if he can see his program director’s beaming face as he speaks.

“And that holds true, although science and determinism normally—”

“Then I would like to know,” Oskar interrupts, “why we can’t simply exercise an act of will to choose a universe in which the Second World War never happened. That would be nice.”

The blood has risen in Sebastian’s face. He slides forward and sits upright.

“That’s because we are subject to the principle of self-consistency,” he says. “And you know that only too well! Otherwise, according to the second law of thermodynamics, we could dissolve into a state of cumulative chaos.”

“And that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Oskar says. “Looking at you, one might conclude that this dissolution can sometimes happen all too quickly.”

He gives Sebastian a challenging look and taps his finger on his forehead.

“Excuse me,” the host says, “we can’t …”

The uproar in the studio drowns him out. Oskar makes an impatient gesture with his hand to wave away any further disturbance, and turns his perfect profile to the camera, looking past the host, straight at Sebastian. The twitch in his left foot has grown more violent. His relaxed manner suddenly seems a poor front. He looks like a man whose smooth facade conceals boundless rage.

“If every decision is accompanied by its opposite,” he says, “then it is no decision at all. Do you know what your justification for free will is? It’s a license to behave like a swine!”

“Please …” the host says.

“That’s …” Sebastian attempts.

“
One
universe,” Oskar says. “With no possibility for escape. That’s what you should be researching. That’s where you should be living. And where you should take responsibility for your own decisions.”

“That’s not a scientific argument,” Sebastian says, barely managing to control himself. “That’s moralistic dogmatism!”

“And a good deal better than immorality legitimized by physics.”

“Not one word more!” Sebastian screams.

“In your double worlds,” Oskar says with feverish intensity, “you live a double life. And you pretend that you can do something and also not do it at the same time.”

There is a merciless close-up of Sebastian’s Adam’s apple rising and falling as he swallows heavily. The unrest in the audience has increased again. One man raises his fist, but it is not clear against whom or what.

“Let me put it in Orwell’s words,” Oskar says, standing up.

He has left the microphone on the glass table. He points his index finger at Sebastian and says something that cannot be heard in all the commotion. The host’s mouth is opening and shutting helplessly.

Oskar says something else that cannot be heard, and then the picture freezes.

The detective has grown warm. He has grabbed hold of the mouse to pause the clip, and is looking for a way to play the last few seconds again.

“That’s not allowed,” the librarian says.

Schilf gives a start, as though someone has stabbed him in the neck. A shadow falls over the workstation.

“You can’t download films here. The computers are here for research.”

This country is made up of prohibitions just like a house of cards is made of cards, the detective thinks. Perhaps I ought to have applied for something on the other side back then.

“This is a scientific program,” he says out loud. “I’m from the police.”

“And I’m enforcing the rules,” the librarian says. “Do you have a search warrant?”

Without waiting for his reply, she leans forward and closes every open window with a rapid tap of the keys. Schilf has to get up from his chair in order to create some distance between himself and the woman. Her eyelids are covered with a thick layer of purple eye-shadow.

“Can I help you in any other way?”

“No thank you,” the detective says. “I was just about to go.”

On the street, he stands under a lowering sky and does not know where to go next. Cars pass in both directions and people stride toward secret destinations. Pain drills into his lower jaw. Schilf puts both hands to his face to prevent it from falling apart. He has to keep watching the cars so that they will continue moving, has to lean against the wall so that it won’t collapse. He has to watch the passersby so that they won’t crumble into dust. He is a pillar of the sky, a generator of time, the perpendicular in the earth’s axis. If he closes his eyes the earth will no longer exist. Only the headache.

Not yet, not now, the detective thinks.

His next few steps land on firm ground, small paving stones that are exactly the same size as the soles of his shoes. He takes out his mobile phone and gets through to international directory assistance. He asks for a number in Geneva.

[7]

BIRD FLU HAS SCURRIED INTO EUROPE
on its clawed feet. Migratory birds spread the virus to the farthest corners of the world. Seagulls are dropping dead from the sky near the coast of Hamburg and mankind is preparing for an epidemic. Everything that flies is being executed. Soon the last feather will float to earth in a forest clearing. After that, Detective Schilf will be carrying the last surviving bird’s egg in his head.

He puts down the crumpled newspaper that he found on his seat. Bird flu. As if there were no other problems. He has used up the doctor’s painkillers, and has managed to get only ibuprofen in the pharmacy at the station. Sitting opposite him is a mustached man in his mid-fifties, who is busy copying the train schedule into a notebook with a marker. The barren stomp and jangle of twenty-first-century music is forcing its way out of a girl’s headphones. Two rows down, a train conductor is rebuffing an angry woman’s accusations. Please let me finish what I am saying. The staff is doing its best. Everything that is possible happens.

Outside, the gray ceiling of sky stretches westward. A successful performance of late autumn in July.

When the train starts moving again, the gentle eyes of a few lost calves glide by. They are the reason the train has been held up in this
field for almost an hour. A trampled-down fence, men in orange protective suits doing their work.

Wet calves are a good omen, the detective decides. They are the opposite of black cats, crows, and hooting owls. The ZDF television station has agreed to send a video recording of
Circumpolar
to him today. Schilf rubs his hands together and tries to calm himself down by breathing in and out slowly. He cannot shake the feeling that he has missed something, as if he has made the irrevocable decision to be in the wrong place. Suddenly he sees a cat in front of him, and he recognizes it as the cat in the photographs on Rita’s bulletin board. It is sitting behind a patio door cleaning its front paws with a knowing expression on its face, as if it were responsible for the two wrists being roughly pressed together in an apartment at the other end of town. A boy’s fair head appears in the gap of a half-opened bedroom door. A look from those eyes, widened in shock, drives a splint into the father’s brain. A metallic click as the handcuffs snap shut. A hysterical blond woman runs down the hall, dissolving. She is not trying to scratch the people in uniform but the man in the middle.

You have a son!

The scream performs somersaults and is cut off by the crash of a door slamming shut. Blue light flashes rhythmically over the backdrop of an overcast day. The cat leans its head to one side and scratches itself behind an ear.

The series of pictures does not stop when the man in his mid-fifties packs his markers and leaves the train.

A woman in a flowery dress and a cardigan pushes her thick curls back. Sitting opposite her is a man, now free of handcuffs, but with a gray face. A lovely couple. The hatred between them spreads swiftly, like a gas diffusing through the room.

Do you know why you are here?

Where is Detective Schilf?

I
am the one heading this investigation.

The woman’s look suggests a score of over 90 percent in the shooting
range. The man grows paler. Schilf clutches at a suffocating feeling in his chest. The woman laughs through her nose and switches on a recording device. She tells the man about his right to remain silent, to lie, or to hook up with some crooked lawyer. The man does not want to know about his rights.

He dictates his confession and says that he was blackmailed. The cat stops moving when a sparrow lands on the patio. The woman lets the man talk and updates him on the investigation. There are no traces in the car. The son knows nothing. The people at the service station know nothing. There are only those two calls to his mobile from withheld numbers, and he could have made those himself, if he doesn’t mind her saying so. The sparrow decides to look for another spot to rest. The cat feigns indifference. The man says something now about rights and justice. The woman flips through her papers and then she says:

You may go now.

The man is at a loss.

What did you say?

Don’t leave town, and be prepared.

The woman assumes an official air and takes notes. The man does not move.

Kindly put me on remand.

The cat smiles. The train drills into the next wall of rain.

If you’re going to rip my life to shreds, the man screams, then please at least keep hold of the remains!

The woman in the flowery dress takes a deep breath and bellows so loudly that her voice echoes throughout the corridors of the police department:

Out!

The train has drawn into a station, so Schilf steps outside, paces up and down the platform angrily, and lets the rain cool his face. His heart tells him that it would have been better simply to have taken
Sebastian out of the country, but his head tells him that it was right to follow the path of law.

So Schilf stands in the rain and says to hell with head and heart, in equal measure.

The good news is that he has gotten out of the train in Basel, where he has to change trains anyway. In the InterCity train a man in his mid-fifties with a handlebar mustache is sitting opposite him, looking down at a book without moving his eyes. By the time they get to Delémont, he has not turned a single page. He looks exactly like the man with the markers.

If it is my consciousness that is creating the world, it clearly doesn’t have much imagination, the detective thought
, the detective thinks.

He gulps down two more ibuprofen. See you again soon, the man with the handlebar mustache says in Geneva.

THE WATER OF THE RHÔNE HAS BEEN SCULPTED
into blades of black that sweep into the city in long rows. It is unusually dark for nine thirty on a summer’s evening. Yellow light runs from post to post along the embankment and over the bridge toward the city center. In this bad weather, the detective is practically alone with the elements.