Link Arms with Toads! (3 page)

Baring-Gould and Purnell both realised that the little man was trying to convince himself he was happy here. It was obvious, therefore, that he was not. After interrogating him further, Purnell was astonished when he broke down in tears. This was a scene they had little wish to witness. They ignored him until he had regained his composure. To change the subject, Baring-Gould encompassed the figurehead collection with a wave. “There are so many of them. I had been reliably informed there were but a score. Here you have a hundred.”

The curator wiped his eyes on his sleeve and nodded feverishly. “That is because thirteen is not an unlucky number on this island, not now.” These words had on Baring-Gould and Purnell an effect presumably akin to that of a lightning-bolt. It seemed to them that something was amiss; something awry in the very fabric of reality. They stood and trembled and sought to shake a deep unease from their minds. By the time they recovered, it was time to close the museum, and the curator wanted to go home to his tea; there was no more to be had out of him. They had learned only that he, like themselves and Wilhelm Magnus, had experienced stormy waters when crossing from the mainland, and also that he shared with their Nordic landlord the talent of uttering seemingly meaningless, yet oddly affecting sentences.

Back at the Island Hotel, the Swede in question confirmed the previous status of the hunched fellow. There were, apparently, a number of people on the island who had arrived in a tempest; for some reason this stormy fact precluded them returning home. Apart from Wilhelm himself and the curator, Baring-Gould ascertained that the entire party of amateur geologists who shared their hotel were also of this fraternity, a group that the Swede liked to term ‘self-imposed exiles’. Purnell was much annoyed by these revelations. “I certainly do not intend staying here longer than a fortnight,” he informed the landlord. “When I am quite rested, I intend to return to my Department.”

“
We all want to return,” Wilhelm Magnus replied, “but a little thought of the consequences dissuades us. There is no room for us back on the mainland now.” Here came a strange pause of irresolution, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, he went on: “We are no longer in the world we know. We are in a universe next door!”

“
What?!!” It was Baring-Gould (so Purnell tells me) who, ever the hotheaded one, seized a nearby croissant and made as if to strike the hapless Swede. “What manner of nonsense is this? Do you take us for fools?” Only with great difficulty did Purnell manage to restrain his colleague from lunging with the crescent roll. The Swede fell back with a look of abject terror and then muttered something about them all being ghosts, in a dimension that was not their own.

“
Explain yourself further,” Purnell demanded, and he hinted that he might release Baring-Gould if the landlord did not quickly comply with his demand. The Swede sighed, told them that they had to find out about the whole business sooner or later and invited them into a back room where he kept his own quarters. On a desk were a handwritten book, half completed, and a paraffin lamp, doubtless washed up from some wreck. He bade them be seated and idly fingered the leaves of the book. It was, he confessed, his second work:
The Vampire Book Of Mammoths
. This was a serious subject, and not one to be mocked; evidence of a blood-sucking type of woolly elephant had turned up in the grounds of his Hotel. At any rate, it gave him something to do.

Somehow (and he would not dare to venture any theories about this, not being a scientist) they had all – that is Baring-Gould, Purnell, the curator of Valhalla, the geologists, a Mrs. Bunch of the Abbey Market Gardens and he, the seafaring Swede – drifted into a dimension parallel to the one they had formerly inhabited. The storms they had experienced had knocked them into a cosmos existing adjacent to our own. This new universe was identical to the old one in every respect save one: the unluckiest number was no longer 13. It was, instead, 13½.

“
Well it is an idea!” cried Baring-Gould, whose belligerence had been transmuted into enthusiasm by this intellectual notion. “The concept of the multiverse is not a new one.” He then went on to explain that quantum theory had given rise to the possibility of an infinite number of universes, each slightly different from the other, that existed simultaneously. Heisenberg, apparently, developed an experiment in which a single photon was directed at a screen with two slits. The fact that the photon could be measured as having passed through both slits at once seemed to indicate that there were actually two universes next to each other, in one of which the photon passed through the first slit, and in the other through the second. This experiment gave rise to the famous Uncertainty Principle. But I am not writing a layman’s guide to physics. Seek, if you will, his
Über Quantentheoretische Umdeutung Kinematischer und Mechanischer Berziehungen
.

Eventually Purnell – who hated photons and felt that any theories concerning them were lightweight – was also tempted to consider the possibility they had strayed into another dimension. But how was the Swede to know that nothing had altered save the value of the unluckiest number? And why did this prevent him and the others returning to the mainland? Puffing out his cheeks, Herr Magnus began to illustrate how, over years, his suspicions had been subtly confirmed.

The first thing, he said, was the collection of figureheads at the museum. There were simply too many of them; it indicated that in this world there were a great many more ships plying the oceans than in his own. And the visitors who arrived on calm days (this is a very important difference) were much more affluent and noble of bearing than those who arrived during storms. They were better nourished and in trimmer shape. Thirdly, the coming of the curator had acquainted him at second hand with an ancient text, recently discovered in Hull University’s archives. (The curator was a lecturer from those hallowed halls.)

This text was the aforementioned Pytheas of Massalia’s lost book,
Travels With My Aunt’s Trireme
. As the first Greek explorer to venture into Britain, Pytheas had approached from the south, arriving first at the isles and then crossing to Cornwall. During this crossing he had encountered a violent storm that had buffeted his modest vessel with astounding fury. He had feared for his life; he had raced to the deck in order to ascertain whether they were anywhere near land, when he had a curious, though momentary, vision. He seemed to see an endless seascape of distorting mirrors rising out of the ocean in all directions. It had suddenly occurred to the Swede that this might represent an account of a rare sighting of one of those points where several universes converge. Needless to say, Pytheas made it safely to Cornwall.

“
Each parallel dimension would indeed be slightly different,” Baring-Gould here interposed; “in some, sheep would have six legs, and in others, mice would be green or cats would be able to talk. But you have not explained why in this one the unluckiest number is 13½ and not its integer. What has a tiresome preponderance of figureheads to do with it?” He sullenly sat back in his chair and took a vicious bite out of the croissant he still held in his hand.

I do not know what is the ideal course to pursue in a situation of this kind. I can only tell you what Wilhelm Magnus did. He repaired to a bookshelf in the corner of the study and took down an old dictionary. Then he opened the volume under Baring-Gould’s nose. The worthy academic glanced at the word before him and sneered. “Triskaidekaphobia? Fear of the number thirteen? It is not unusual.”

“
Yes!” cried Herr Magnus; “but do you know exactly what it entails? Most cultures in the world – our world, that is – have an irrational terror of that number. Here there is no such fear. The number to be avoided here is a whole half greater. Can you not see what this means? In our world, some people stay home on the 13
^th
of each month; they are reluctant to conduct business transactions; they are loathe to travel. There is more illness and consequently, a loss of efficiency in the workplace. Millions upon millions of man-hours are lost every year simply because of this fear – billions of pounds!”

Purnell rubbed his jaw. “I should have thought that fear of the square root of two would have been an ‘irrational’ fear.” But the Swede did not understand the mathematical joke, so he proceeded: “You are absolutely right, of course. Triskaidekaphobia wastes a vast deal of resources. This still does not answer my question.”

Baring-Gould was quicker on the uptake. “You are saying that in a world where thirteen is not an unlucky number there would be no such depression in the global economy on the 13
^th
of every month? And thus it would be a richer world than the one we know? You are suggesting that people would be more ‘affluent’ as a consequence, that they would be ‘trimmer’ than we are due to a healthier diet?”

Wilhelm Magnus nodded his head, and with growing excitement and nervousness, as our two travellers thought, continued: “Yes and more shipping would sail on such dates; and thus more would come to grief, and the museum of figureheads on Tresco would be more full than it has any right to be. And hotels with thirteen windows would be as popular as those with more or less; and a meal numbered 13 on a menu would not be shunned by gourmets on account of superstitious aversion!”

Purnell frowned. “Perhaps this does illustrate why 13 is not an unlucky number here; but it does not suggest that 13½ has taken its place. And why does it signify the impossibility of you returning home?” He chewed his lip and fixed the landlord with a fierce stare. “If this is some sort of Nordic joke!”

The Swede took a number of deep breaths. “I shall say simply that we are ghosts in this dimension – attenuated echoes of our old selves. We can no longer cope back on the mainland. Just imagine: this world is more advanced than the one we were familiar with. A healthier economy equals more investment in scientific research; this means, in turn, that technology is ahead of anything we have experienced. You may have been experts in your own fields when you left; now your knowledge is less than that of the average undergraduate. The same applies to me. I was once the greatest chef-explorer in the whole of Uppsala. The
Roving Cordon Bleu
, I was called. No longer; in this new world, cooks sail round the world in coracles as a matter of course.”

Baring-Gould was disgusted. “Good God, what a man is this! Yes, I have better teeth than that of any storm and shall brave the waters back, come what may!” And so saying, he took a second bite out of the much-bruised croissant, spitting crumbs with his contempt. He then went on to reflect upon the probability that the writings of Pytheas, Herr Heisenberg and Wilhelm Magnus himself may have been instrumental in bringing about this disaster. “But what of 13½?”

The poor landlord threw up his arms, reflected for a moment in this most solemn attitude; then moving swiftly to a sea chest identical to the one in the travellers’ room, he opened it and produced therefrom a large book, wrapped in a white cloth. Even before the wrapping had been removed, Baring-Gould and Purnell had ceased to be interested in the size and shape of the volume. It was a conventional scrapbook filled with photographs of famous paintings, not dissimilar to those as are often encountered in bargain bookstores. The Swede cleared his throat, and with a good deal of effort he spoke:

“
Messrs, I can tell you this one little tale, and no more – not any more. You must not ask anything when I am done. This book was washed up from the outside world – that alien place – at the same time as one of the many figureheads. Why is it that 13 is deemed so unlucky in our own dimension? Is it not because that was the exact number of guests at the Last Supper? Take a look then at this – you will find what you seek soon enough. You will then be horribly satisfied.”

Baring-Gould and Purnell opened the book and leafed through it. At first the familiar paintings yielded no answers. But then they came across it; one of the most well known of all works of art, it jolted their sensibilities as no other sight had ever done. Identical in every respect to the picture they knew, save in one minor detail. I entirely despair of conveying by any words the impression that this detail made upon those who looked at it. Purnell’s face expressed horror and a rare kind of loathing. He pressed his hands upon his eyes in some agitation; his friend, holding up the half-devoured croissant in a sudden cold sweat, began counting his atomic weights feverishly.

For the next two hours the three companions sat and watched the picture by turns. But it never changed. They agreed at last that it would be safe to leave it and that they would return after supper and await further developments. It was certain that neither scientist would be able to sleep that night, and certainly would not dare putting out the light. They accordingly repaired to the
salle à manger
and calmed themselves as much as possible with Sjömansbiff-and-chips, another of Herr Magnus’ tasty and adventurous hybrids.

The impatient reader is here wondering when the ghost I earlier promised is going to make an appearance. Let me respond by saying that although there has been little hint of the supernatural in our tale so far, it does in fact permeate the whole substance of the account. It will be best to first reiterate what we have learned: two academics, having survived the stormy seas on a crossing to the Isles of Scilly, discover that they have drifted into a parallel dimension. This universe is identical in every way to our own save that the unluckiest number is not 13, but 13½. The consequences are that, unfettered by superstition, the wheels of business run more smoothly; the world is a richer place; standards of living (and therefore education) are higher, and our two academics’ skills are suddenly redundant.