Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [30]
Sweeper was impressed at Vimes’s lack of reaction.
“This is a test, right?”
“You’re a quick study, Mister Vimes.”
“But in some other universe, believe me, I hauled off and punched you one.”
Again, Sweeper smiled the annoying little smile that suggested he didn’t believe him.
“You haven’t killed your wife,” he said. “Anywhere. There is nowhere, however huge the multiverse is, where Sam Vimes as he is now has murdered Lady Sybil. But the theory is quite clear. It says that if anything can happen without breaking any physical laws, it must happen. But it hasn’t. And yet the ‘multiverse’ theory works. Without it, no one would ever be able to make a decision at all.”
“So?”
“So what people do matters!” said Sweeper. “People invent other laws. What they do is important! The Abbott’s very excited about this. He nearly swallowed his biscuit. It means the multiverse isn’t infinite, and people’s choices are far more vital than they think. They can, by what they do, change the universe.”
Sweeper gave Vimes a long look.
“Mister Vimes, you’re thinking: I’m back in time, and damn me, I’m probably going to end up being the sergeant that teaches me all I know, right?”
“I’ve been wondering. The Watch would offer any gutter trash a job in those days, because of the curfew and all the spying,” said Vimes. “But look, I remember Keel, and yes, he did have a scar and an eyepatch, but I’m sure as hell that he wasn’t me.”
“Right. The universe doesn’t work like that. You were indeed taken under the wing of one John Keel, a watchman from Pseudopolis who came to Ankh-Morpork because the pay was better. He was a real person. He was not you. But do you remember if he ever mentioned to you that he was attacked by two men not long after he got off the coach?”
“Hell, yes,” said Vimes. “The muggers. He got this—he got his scar that way. A good old Ankh-Morpork welcome. But he was a tough man. Took ’em both down, no problem.”
“This time, there were three,” said Sweeper.
“Well, three’s trickier, of course, but—”
“You’re the policeman. You guess the name of the third man, Mister Vimes.”
Vimes hardly had to think. The answer erupted from the depths of darkest suspicion.
“Carcer?”
“He soon settled in, yes.”
“The bastard was in the next cell! He even told me he’d grabbed some money.”
“And you’re both stuck here, Mister Vimes. This isn’t your past anymore. Not exactly. It’s a past. And up there is a future. It might be your future. But it might not be. You want to go home now, leaving Carcer here and the real John Keel dead? But there’ll be no home to go to, if you could do that. Because if you do, young Sam Vimes won’t get a swift course in basic policing from a decent man. He’ll learn it from people like Sergeant Knock and Corporal Quirke and Constable Colon. And that might not be the worst of it, by a long way.”
Vimes shut his eyes. He remembered how wet behind the ears he’d been. And Fred…well, Fred Colon hadn’t been too bad under the halfhearted timorousness and lack of imagination, but Quirke had been an evil little sod in his way, and as for Knock, well, Knock had been Fred’s teacher and the pupil wasn’t a patch on the master. What had Sam Vimes learned from Keel? To stay alert, to think for himself, to keep a place in his head free from the Quirkes and Knocks of the world, and not to hesitate about fighting dirty today if that was what it took to fight again tomorrow.
He’s often thought he’d have been dead long ago if it wasn’t for—
He looked up sharply at the monk.
“Can’t tell you that, Mister Vimes,” said Lu-Tze. “Nothing’s certain, ’cos of quantum.”
“But, look, I know my future happened, because I was there!”
“No. What we’ve got here, friend, is quantum interference. Mean anything? No. Well…let me put it this way. There’s one past and one future. But there are two presents. One where you and your evil friend turned up, and one where you didn’t. We can keep these two presents going side by side for a few days. It takes a lot of run time, but we can do it. And then they’ll snap back together. The future that happens depends